Trains are a favorite of Maxim's as are puzzles. Here's a picture he took of his work today and a cat (another of his favorites) puzzle from a few days ago. Our visits with him include at least one puzzle each time. He's very good at figuring out how to put all the pieces back together. Oh, sure, occasionally we give him a hand, but most of the time, he sees how they pieces fit back together before we do. This past week we taught him to play Trouble, the game where you have to count to get around the board and by landing on an opponents token can send that person back to start. Maxim caught on very quickly to this game. Though he loves landing on us and getting sent back, it makes him just a little sad if we end up landing on him. Maxim has also taken very readily to playing games and music on John's iphone. He's going to be another boy who loves gadgets, much like our older sons. We also played the little wind-up fishing game (thanks, Kelly) this week; Maxim enjoyed the use of the magnet on the end of the pole. John also found this very small remote control car that Maxim remembers to ask us for each day. His word for car is something like "machina."
We're also working on the English alphabet with Maxim. Though many of the letters look the same, their sounds are far different, so it's quite a challenge to learn that the same letter sounds totally different in another language. Still, Maxim is giving it a good effort, but he is far from being able to speak English yet. He is learning how to say a few of the numbers, though. Games like Trouble and Uno are helping as are the math worksheets we ask him to do daily. He gets to choose a pretty sticker for each page he completes; he really likes stickers so this is a good tactic to get him to do this activity. For language we just talk to him a lot and get him to repeat some words. That Memory game I've mentioned before is still a favorite. We are using the one with animals so it should help him know the words for many animals before too long. Maxim was asking us to play Memory with him every single day, but I think we've skipped a day of it here and there the last week or so. Not so, Trouble. I guess it's replaced Memory as his current favorite.
It is cold and snowing here and blustery. A couple of inches of snow are predicted overnight with maybe another inch tomorrow; I think it's predicted again on the next day, too, but I'll try not to think about that right now. I hate the cutting cold winds and very wet blowing snow; they chill you to your very bones! But overall, I still think we've had fairly good weather considering where we are and the time of year it is. Of course, spring couldn't get here too soon for me.
Finally, last night I got the peanut butter cookies made. This apartment came with very sparsely supplied kitchen utensils, etc. With no cookie sheet, no mixing bowl, no mixer, no sturdy stirring spoon, no measuring cup, no measuring spoon, and all the ingredients having the writing on them in English, maybe I should just be glad that the cookies are at all edible. Margarine here is not sold like at home. That means we buy it in a block and there were no numbers on it to indicate how much weight was in it so I tried to guess. I guessed that since it was only a little bigger than our 4 sticks of margarine that I should cut off 3/4 of the package and use it for the one pound of butter. Then I took a small glass and estimated how much would equal a cup. Alla helped me find vanilla the other day and baking powder. Both are sold in little tiny packets. The vanilla was not liquid but powder too. The flour I couldn't figure out if it was self-rising, but I assumed it wouldn't be. So I added in the amounts of flour, sugar, brown sugar (much bigger grains here and much more expensive), eggs, etc. and mixed all together. It was way too liquidy. So I added in one more cup of flour and the sugars. Then I figured I'd better put in another egg. Even after all that, the dough just wasn't like dough but more like a thick paste. But I decided to try baking one pan full. So I put them into a roasting pan (we had to buy one of those in order to be able to cook anything in the oven) and put them into the gas oven. Then the real fun began--trying to figure out how far to turn up the gas in the oven in order to be at 325 degrees. Even though I checked on them every two or three minutes, somehow the bottoms got just a little too dark and the butter just oozed from the tops. So into the rest of the batter I added in another round of all the dry ingredients and another egg. Of course by then, I'd run out of vanilla and especially baking powder. After using up most of the bag of flour and bags of sugars, I decided it would just have to do and, thus, gave the oven another shot. John and I thought they weren't too bad, though quite rich from all that butter and sugar. But the real test came today when I nervously handed one to Maxim. He took a bite and I asked him if it was good. He nodded his head, smiled and circled his palm over his tummy. What better compliment could any Momma want? : )
For some reason today the bus driver on our ride back from the orphanage pulled over to the side of the street and started handing back the bus fee money to each rider. So John and I just went with the flow and took our $2 Hrvna and exited the bus. Luckily, it was next to a McDonald's and indoor shopping area. So we split some fries for a snack and then found a toy store where we were able to locate a gadget that says the English alphabet and sounds aloud. We hope that will help Maxim learn how to say the letters a little better than we alone can do.
We had planned to visit the Lavre Cathredral today; it's the one Craig and Gail blogged about going to that has tunnels underneath it where you can see the people buried there from years ago. I'm not sure I really want to look at dead people; even John doesn't seem too interested in that part, but then again, we can't imagine being here and not at least going to look at the cathedral. Since our day today was taken up otherwise as mentioned above, the cathedral visit will have to wait for another day--would be nice if the sun smiled on us for that anyway.
The other picture is of that red bag I mentioned last blog that John totes for us back and forth to visit Maxim every weekday. It is jam packed with all kinds of different activities, plus snacks and a camera or two, so it gets kind of heavy. But boy, do Maxim's eyes light up when he sees it; he always wants to look in it and see what new or different activity we might have for that day. Fun.
Lastly, the shoes. Don't think we need to say what caused John's shoes to get so worn out that we bought him a new pair yesterday.
Well, that's about it from Kiev.
Keep those comments and e-mails coming, please.
Charlene
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