Jodi Speaks Her Mind

Amazing Race goes to Kyiv 11/19/2006

You can’t imagine how excited I was when Phil explained that teams were going to be flying to Kyiv for the next portion of this leg of the race. Woohoo! Once they landed at Borispyl airport they drove to a tank training facility. Teams had a blast driving the huge tanks through the mud and over hills across a course. It really did look fun!

From there they had to drive into the city and find a particular apartment. This could have been challenging because of the way the buildings are numbered, but once in the city, all the teams found a local taxi to follow thus making it a fairly easy task, though one team had a terrible time with the “drive yourself to Kyiv” part of the instructions. None of the teams knew a lick of Russian or how to read the cyrcillic alphabet, so they were really pretty lucky to find taxi drivers who were so willing to help them.

The tasks in the city were to either write a rap song and perform it or find a sheet of Tchaikovsky’s music for piano and then get a concert pianist to play it for them. There were only the briefest shots of the Maidan (pronounced My-don) and Phil showed a shot of St. Sophia’s bell tower when he was first telling about them coming to Kyiv. Other than that, there really wasn’t much of anything interesting shown, though it was nice to see the interior of the Music Conservatory (it is just to the right of the viewable portion of the Maidan picture I linked to). We saw the outside a hundred times, since it is right on the Maidan and next to one of the malls we shopped at (and where I could get my Baskin Robbins ice cream fix while Steve could get his cappuccino fix). I wonder if we could have gone inside it if we’d tried. We never did, so when we go back maybe we’ll do that.

The “pit stop” for this leg was at the Iron Mama (darn, I can’t believe we didn’t post any pictures of her!). Let’s see, it is properly called something else entirely, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. There is a whole War Memorial there with a series of monuments and museums, but the giant iron statue is not something you can miss. It is visible from just about anywhere in Kyiv. And it is uuuuuuugly! It grows on you, of course, and I have an affection for the Iron Mama, but she is not soft, nurturing, or lovely. She is towering and menacing and exudes strength and power. However, just at the foot of the hill she stands upon, there is the most scrumptious Indian restaurant - Steve and I were missing it just the other day. Oh, to be in Kyiv again!

Hopefully next week they will show a bit more of the city, and I think it would have been a much more authentic Ukrainian experience if they had had to brave one of the many forms of public transportation, but oh well. I’m sure next week, they’ll fly off immediately to some other interesting place, but for today I’m glad they got to go to one of my favorite places in the whole world!

our budding flower 11/17/2006

Adelina’s fall soccer season ends this Saturday.  It will be her last game.  We attended the end-of-season party on Tuesday night where she got a certificate and a trophy.  She was pretty excited and the dinner was actually really great.  It was at a locally owned Italian place that reminded Steve and I of the wonderful Italian place we ate at regularly in Kyiv (they’ve officially changed the English spelling from Kiev to Kyiv, so I will be using it that way from here on out.)  The food was fabulous and Adelina had a great time and was so comfortable and relaxed.  It was just another opportunity to marvel at how far she has come.  Dinner out used to be stressful and frustrating.  Now it is fun!

Adelina’s language has taken another leap forward.  She speaks in sentences, and now we can often understand her sentences.  Many times we still cannot, and her grammatical structures are sometimes so far from proper English that unless she signs her message to us, we cannot get it, but many common things are now very understandable.  The amazing thing is that she can understand a much greater percentage of what we say to her.  Her receptive language skills have always been way ahead of her expressive skills, the impressive part is just how rapidly she progresses. We can use much more variety of vocabulary with her now, and we can explain new words in English, and she understands the explanations.  I think her expressive will continue to progress as well, but her intelligibility is still limiting, so it will take more time for her speech to catch up with her language. To put it another way, she wants and is able to say a lot, but much of it is not understandable by the typical adult (or child).

Another improvement of note is Adelina’s ability to play independently.  In the beginning, she did not know how to do this at all, and it was a source of great frustration for Steve and I.  It meant we could never just talk to each other and expect Adelina to play quietly with toys or dolls or coloring.  She needed one of us to interact with her at all times and show her what to play with and how.  But now, she is able to find any number of ways to entertain herself.  She will draw or color,  play with her animals (especially horses), imagine herself to be a dog, cat, or horse, look at books (though she still does this mostly with us), or play on her computer.  Not only is this easier on us, as we are often in need of adult conversation, but it is a sign of emotional and developmental growth for her.

One other thing which has been fun to see is how she is beginning to try to sing.  Sometimes it is distracting because her voice is so high-pitched, but occasionally we can actually recognize a tune.  Mostly, she is at the exploration stage with regard to music and singing, but we know this will eventually develop.  What a blessing that she can hear and enjoy music!

We are so proud of the many ways Adelina is growing up.  She is a beautiful person, and we consider ourselves privileged to be her parents.

Imaginary horses, toy horses, a plush Pony, and a real horse named Dandy

Adelina is in a horse phase.  She loves horses.  She has horses from her farm set and very small horses from other sources (I’m not sure from where - I can’t remember).  She has a nice size horse (about 11″ tall)  she received as a gift from a neighbor (a hand-me-down) that she ignored for  the longest time but who now goes in the bath with her as well as into bed most nights.  She loves to go around the house pretending to be a horse or to pretend to lead a horse or to be a mommy horse or a baby horse, etc.   She pulled out her stick horse (you know the head of a horse on a stick they can pretend to ride around) that had also sat ignored since we bought it many months ago and she discovered it makes horse sounds if you press the ear.  It first makes galloping sounds (hooves on cobblestone) and then the horse whinnies and then it snorts.  She loves each sound and now knows what they each are, too.

Anyhow, so the other day we are in Target and we are looking at toys to get an idea for what she might want for Christmas.  She is much more focused now than last year when she was so overwhelmed by all the toys.  Now, she goes straight for anything horse-related.  She kept finding a horse toy and acting like she was going to die if I didn’t buy it for her, but I would convince her we were just looking to see what she might get for Christmas.  Then, she would move on and, almost immediately, find another horse toy bigger and better than the previous one.  We repeated the “I want it now” scenario for several iterations, until we came across the toy that ended the search and made all the previous toys completely unsatisfying:  the FurReal Pony interactive pet.  Oh my, what an amazing toy.  It took a good bit of resolve for me to not buy one right then and there.  Of course, I know now that they were probably not even in stock beyond the floor model, but I am still quite proud of myself for getting me and - the much harder task - Adelina - to move away from the Pony.  Wow, I can really see now how easy it would be to spoil your child.

Not us - we are going to do one better.  No, we aren’t going to buy her a real pony or a real horse - that is unlikely to ever happen.  But, we have decided to pay for her to get riding lessons.  We found a local lady who does this and already has two students who have cochlear implants.  She has a small horse named Dandy that is perfect for kids Adelina’s size and she customizes the lessons to the child’s interest level and attention span.  She’ll start after Thanksgiving or the following week.  Hopefully I can get pictures to post.  So that is something to look forward to.

God, please let this be a phase she will soon outgrow.  Horses are an expensive hobby!!