Lazy days of summer...

Sorry for the lack of written posts but I honestly don't have much to say about anything interesting. We have been enjoying the warm days and doing the bare minimum. The house could really use a good dusting, and I can only imagine what is growing in my toilet bowl, but I figure what the heck, Olena will only be 2 once, I might as well enjoy her :) **sounds like a good excuse anyway?!?! **

I hurt my back last Friday and spent this past weekend doing nothing but sitting in the recliner. I never felt so much pain in my life!! It hurt to move, it hurt to be still, it was ridiculous. Today has been the best day so far - I am moving around with a dull achy pain verses the sharp stabbing pain :)

We are also working on potty training. We started about a week and a half ago. It is going well but I was really expecting it to be easier. She only has about 1 accident every other day, but she won't go by herself. She waits for us to "remind" her or make her go, and when she does we have to help with the removing of the pants and getting her on the potty. She won't use the potty chair so we got one of the those insert able seats with a stool next to the toilet but she is just so darn small it is a lot of work for her. She wears a pull up at night and if we are leaving the house, but in panties the rest of the time. She is too comfortable in the pull up and will just let it flow. With panties on, she can feel it and will come running to me when she realizes what happened. Which usually results in a pee trail across my house and an empty bladder by the time we make it to the potty, while tearing off clothes and trying to maneuver the toilet seat. I took for granted the fact that she was potty trained in the orphanage so I figured it would be a piece of cake, but I failed to remember how strict they were with the potty schedule, and they remained sitting there until they went.

She goes to nina and dadu's house on Thursdays and Fridays. (Nina was Nana - my mom - but one day she just starting calling her Nina?? and Dadu is my dad. When we introduced him as her daduska - grandpa in Russian - she started calling him dadu.) It gives us a break to get a few things done and have some alone time, and my mom takes her to a gymnastics class on Thursday night. We had her in daycare 3 days a week but I quickly changed my mind about that and took her out after 3 weeks. I am sure that there are plenty of good day care centers out there but I am just too neurotic to have them care for my daughter. She now stays home and my best friend cares for her. They have a "preschool" schedule that they follow, and she is much happier when I come home :)

She is now talking is sentences most of the time. Though she needs reminding every once in awhile. She has a habit of being impatient and starts to whine and babble...which of course drives me crazy! So we are working on this. If any of you read the Kissack blog, Tonya recommends Raising Godly Tomatoes. A guide to raising your children to be obedient. I ready the entire website, and we are currently trying to follow the recommendations. We need a little more work because unfortunately it requires you to have 100% control over your children which is impossible for us because we do both work. I have a better advantage at that I only miss out on 4 hours of her day, but that is 4 hours that I loose. She understands the consequence that come with her actions, because the second she misbehaves she either stomps herself to the corner or grabs her tush and sits down and starts to say "no cry mommy - good girl mommy" . I am strong and I don't let it pass without correction regardless of the fact that she is so darn cute. The biggest problem is the fact that she knows it is wrong, but she is determined to try and get her way! so we spend a lot of time trying to correct one thing, over and over, and over again.

I was positive she could count yet I haven't heard her do it alone, unprompted. That is until today, she counted all the way to 10 without hesitation. I was very proud, yet crazy out of my mind because she is sooo smart, but also stubborn beyond belief. She does it when she wants and how she wants - period the end. The ABCs too, she hears them 900 times a day, but yet she will NOT repeat a single letter. What do you do??