Ours six months!

Alex has been ours for six months as of March 5th. Our Gotcha date was March 17th.

We are amazed at his progress. He can now say his blessing, count to 10, sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and tries to sing the ABC song. He knows his shapes & colors, can count to 10 and understands all English and speaks it 99% of the time. They are working on the alphabet and he is learning to identify the letters and how to write them. He can write A's really well and we still need to work on the B's. He is growing taller, but has not gained much weight. We think that he is just going to be tall and thin. I have a photo of him when he was younger and he was a little chunkier, so maybe he is just in a growing taller spurt. He is eating better and we actually got him to eat a hamburger patty with cheese on it. He does not want it on a bun. At least he is broadening his horizons a little. If I could only get him to eat some green vegetables! I tried mayo on green beans and it didn't work. Several people told me to try this and I remember that my younger sister used to eat them like that. Mayo seems to be a staple in Ukraine, but he doesn't care for it.

He has been good at school most of the time. He has been on green every day for some time, but he got time out today. They only move them to yellow if they get in trouble 3 or more times, but I have asked if they let me know if he gets it even once because he will fully take advantage of his three times if we are not strict on him.

We are really excited that there are several families in the process of adopting special needs children from Alex's Baby House. There is also another precious little boy from there who is available and someone is working on a button for him, so I will post it on the blog as soon as I get it. He is cute and sweet and we saw him a lot when we were there.

I attended my first Missions Committee meeting tonight at church and I am excited to work towards fundraising for missions in Ukraine. That is the subcommittee that we were assigned to and there is a mission trip scheduled for April 2011. We are not going to be able to go this time, but hopefully one of us can go in 2012. I would also like to see if we could possibly start a grant for those who would like to adopt a special needs child from Ukraine. I feel that more people may be willing to adopt if they had the finances. I know we would!

As of last Sunday, I am a Sunday School teacher for the 5 year-olds. There are two teachers in each class and the other teacher had the class last year also. I was supposed to be a helper, but the other teacher couldn't do it again this year, so I agreed to step in. I was hesitant to step in as a teacher, but God put me in that place where I should be, so I will give it a try! I couldn't say no with all those little kids in there, could I?

Better go,

Love,

R & T & A