Boys are nothing like girls!

Are boys just LOUD???? Andrei is so loud! We are going to have to work on some serious voice control soon. He has one volume---ear splitting! I can't even hear myself think some times, let alone try to read the girls a book with him in the same room. And the spit! Raspberries are spewed all over the place all day long. He makes truck noises even when there isn't a truck to play with in sight. He does everything with noises--from sitting in his high chair to crawling across the floor. Oh my! It was so different with my girls!

I think he may be an early NASCAR lover. I had him in the stroller the other afternoon, and the girls were wanting to ride their bikes. They wanted to race me up to the road. I said, "On your mark...get set, GO!" and the second I said "GO" and started running with the stroller, Andrei starts squawking (loudly of course) like he was saying, "Go faster! Go faster!" As soon as both girls left us in the dust, literally, he stopped talking and looked up at me like, "That was all you could do???" I thought it was just coincidence that he acted like that, but later Kennedi wanted to race me again. Same thing happened. He was kicking his feet and chattering up a storm until he saw that he was getting dusted, and then he settled back down. Maybe I should introduce him to the story of the Tortoise and the Hare; he's obviously dealing with some issues of perserverence.

We're going to have to get Andrei to the barber. We need a professional to take a look at his hair. The orphanage buzzed it down pretty well, but it has always had strange growth pattern. We have the Justin Bieber look going on as it seems to naturally want to grow forward towards his face. Then we have the section that is growing straight out. I mean, straight out. Doug calls it "hedgehog" hair. I'm not too sure about that term, but all I know is it's about 2 inches long, and grows at a 90 degree angle out. Water will not tame it. I'm not sure even bubblegum would. Doug tells me I should be combing it backwards if I want him to have a part--that it's not girls' hair. I thought hair was hair and I could train it to do what I wanted. I guess not...So, in preparation for his first official American hair cut, Doug's been asking me, "Do you want something like a 1 block and fade in to a 1/2 or go with a 2?" Huh????? What ever happened to scissors?

We got our paperwork and Andrei's Russian passport back from the Russian Consulate this week. So, we are now officially registered with them. I found it interesting that while in Russia, everyone carried their "legal" or important papers in plastic files or plastic sheet protectors. Every time we got a document in Russia, the secretaries always handed it to us in a sheet protector--like those that you'd put in a 3 ring binder. We were never given any papers without some sort of protective covering. Low and behold, the letter we got from the Russian Consulate, which is written in Russian and I have absolutely no idea what it says, came in...drum roll.....a plastic sheet protector! I am now the proud owner of enough sheet protectors I could set up a kiosk on a college campus and have quite a little side business.

And in other news...Annsley was asking me the other day what kind of candy they had when I was a kid. I told her my favorites were Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups and Willy Wonka's Wacky Wafers. Do you remember those? I'm drooling thinking about the green apple and banana ones. Do they even make those any more? Anyway, she'd never heard of the Wacky Wafers, but she did recognize the Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups (maybe because her mother still has a penchant for them today??). She wrinkled up her face and asked, "They had those way back then? That is some old candy, Mom!" Yes, my dear, and I can still remember the TV commercial jingle..."Two great tastes that taste great together....Reeses' Peanut Butter Cups!"