So we tried out all our new toys on a ride to a new park on Sunday afternoon. Both boys loved it. Alex said “more!” Evan said “eta fun!” It also helped that the park we rode to was next to an elementary school with 3 additional playgrounds. Oh, the choices! I only thought to take a picture of Alex in his trailer. I’ll have to get on of Evan on his later.

Later that afternoon we walked to our local park for some kite flying. The wind was somewhat uncooperative, and it’s probably been 30 years since either Lara or I flew a kite, but we managed. I think the boys enjoyed that even more than riding bikes. Alex couldn’t stop giggling for the first 20 minutes. Evan ran up and down the field trying to get his in the air. What a great way to burn off that excess energy!

It’s been fun listening him tell everyone that he turned 4 years old, and has now attained all the privileges and rights tied to that momentous milestone. For example, he is now allowed to climb into his booster seat on his own, without needing the safety buckle. He was so proud, that seemed to follow about half of his statements about turning 4 yesterday.

The neighborhood Easter egg hunt has gained some new energy. There have been several families with young children that have moved in around the circle over the last couple of years, so we had a pretty good crowd for the event yesterday. Both boys got right into the act. Evan collected 20 eggs in about 10 minutes, and proceeded to eat about 10 eggs worth of candy in about 5 minutes. Alex was of course a little slower, and wasn’t so keen on meeting the Easter Bunny, but had a great time nonetheless.

This morning both boys were excited to see that the Easter Bunny had visited the house last night, and left them a couple of toys and a big chocolate bunny. We had a beautiful spring weekend here, with lots of sun and mild breezes. It’s nice to start getting the boys more outside time. Evan is honing his gymnast skills on the swing set, and Alex is building core strength climbing the slide backwards. All in all things are going fine. I hope you all had a wonderful Easter too.

The boys must have gotten used to grandparent visits. The warm-up time has gone from 15 minutes to about 15 seconds. Evan marched in the door showboating right off the bat. We may be the only ones who have noticed that the boys hyper-activity level has been slowly decreasing. Grandma and grandpa might not think so, but it’s true.

This past Thursday marked six months since the long plane ride home. We’ve seen enough milestones come and go in the last couple of weeks, but it’s interesting to note how fast time is flying. It’s very nice to see winter receding, with the days getting longer and the weather warming up. Some neighbors gave us their old swingset for the back yard. The boys have thoroughly enjoyed that. They are also very excited to have their wardrobe changing to t-shirts and shorts.

There is one other incidental update. As many of you heard from the national news, there have been some fires in our vicinity. They are in the foothills, so about 25 miles from our house, and about 5 miles from our offices. Other than the annoyance of inhaling smoke, we really weren’t affected, although you can see from he picture (taken from our back deck Monday night), it was certainly visible.

The one year mark isn’t quite as dramatic for Evan as it was for Alex. Part of that is probably just because he’s a year older. He also has shown less developmental delays than Alex, so he then/now pictures just aren’t so obvious. Clearly though, it’s been a big year. I think back to the kid who was hesitant to even get down on the same floor with Lara and me when we were introduced, and am amazed out how far we’ve come. Of course, Evan didn’t take long to break down that barrier.

He has always shown an uncanny ability to draw people in. There is just something about his personality that you just can’t resist. It was obvious from the day we met him, and it has carried through to all of his (and our) friends today. What’s scary is that he seems to know it, and is a master at manipulation. We can only hope that he harnesses that power and chooses to use it for good rather than evil. Otherwise, we’re all in trouble.

One of the first questions everyone asks is “does he speak English?” At this point, it almost seems like a silly question, despite the fact that he’s only been exposed to the language for a few months. Evan picks up new words every day. Some of them, we wish he would drop, but overall, his ability to communicate is about all we could have hoped for.

What more can we say about the last six months? I think it speaks volumes that we’ve already forgotten many of the stories. There just isn’t time to look back. Every week brings a whole new set of stories and challenges. While “pre-boys” seems like another life, it also seems like it was just yesterday.

We had yet another birthday party this morning. It is becoming a Saturday routine. Somehow, 20 kids seem to have 52 birthdays. I’m not quite sure how that works, but it does. After the party, we went out for lunch at Red Robin (to listen to “Happy Birthday” no less than 8 times during our meal). Then it was back home to work in the yard and on the boys “new” swing set. Some neighbors up the street gave us their old set. Like all wood in Colorado, it needed a little TLC to get rid of the splinters. We spent the entire afternoon out in the sun, which definitely tired us all out.

We now have three whole weeks until the next milestone, which is Evan’s 4th birthday – the day before Easter. These firsts just keep coming fast and furious. We’re planning to take a break from posts until then, assuming no significant news. Let’s hope for a quiet couple of weeks!

We snuck in a nap, and then headed off to yet another birthday party for one of Alex’s classmates at the tumble room in our local rec center. Basically, it was a mad house. There were probably two dozen kids. Evan was actually in the little girl’s class until January, so he was invited too. Both boys had a great time. Evan unveiled yet another set of talent, showing off his skills on the gymnastic rings. Maybe it’s just another latent Russian talent.

After the party, we came home to frost Alex’s cake, open presents, and have dinner. Alex thoroughly enjoyed it all, of course. It’s hard to say what his favorite present was, but the look on his face as we sang happy birthday was precious.  It definitely left us wondering if we shouldn’t have made more effort to throw a big party, but there was just too much happening to organize that. Next year, for sure.

It’s been almost a month since our last update. There haven’t been any major headlines since the adoption was finalized, but there’s been plenty going on. Alex has started both speech and physical therapy. He probably has yet another ear infection. At this point, we’re ready to get the tubes put in and get him past all of that.

Evan seems to have shaken most of his congestion, and is in reasonable health for the first time in a while. We’re definitely looking forward to spring! The main thing with Evan is dealing with some behavioral stuff. Nothing serious – he just seems to be on a path of misbehaving at school for the purpose of getting attention. We’re working with the school to deal with it. We started a system where we give him a Russian coin every day he stays out of trouble at school, and he can cash in the coins for little treats like toys, ice cream, etc.

Lara and I are continuing our on-the-fly parenting lessons. I think we’ve finally found a pretty good system for bedtime, but discipline is a whole other matter. We just can’t seem to find a system that works consistently. Lara will continue to check out parenting books from the library until we find a real rhythm. In the mean time, we’re just happy to see the days getting longer and the weather getting warmer. More fresh air and time in the sun will do us all some good.

The judge is an adoptive parent himself, and likes to keep the proceedings informal and fun. He asked us three simple questions, and said, “OK”.  We spent the rest of the time playing around in the courtroom. He let the boys climb up behind his stand, pound on the desk with his gavel, and sing into the microphone. They also had balloons set out for the kids. As you can see in the pictures, they enjoyed themselves.

The boys continue to make their adjustments. Evan learns more English every day. Today he even wrote out his name without have to trace on top of an outline. Lara and I were both impressed. He has also started to understand the difference between English and Russian. Every once in a while, he’ll point to an object and say “in Russian, that’s…”, or he might ask us to please speak to him in Russian. It’s pretty cool watching a little kid learn to distinguish languages.

He’s also starting to show some signs of confused feelings. We’ve received a couple of calls from school about him throwing his shoes or hitting his teachers. It usually seems to happen around “quiet time”, which he has never really handled very well (though that’s no excuse). He’ll occasionally say something like, “I want to go home to Russia”. We don’t take it to be anything serious. It’s like a lot of kids who might say they wished they lived somewhere else when not everything is going their way.

Alex is starting to feel his oats as he approaches the “terrible threes”. He gets more and more testy, which as frustrating as it can be, is actually kind of encouraging too. He started off a little too compliant for a two year old, so we’re glad to see him developing a sense of himself. Alex has quite a bit going on. He’s going to have tubes put in his ears, he is starting physical therapy to improve his strength and gross motor skills, occupational therapy to improve his fine motor skills (especially chewing), and speech therapy. It seems like a heavy load, but at the same time, it’s hard to deny him help if someone is willing to offer. We’ll just see how all of this goes.

Both boys have taken to spontaneous signs of affection, which has drawn a few tears from Lara. Out of the blue, they’ll walk up and give one of us a hug or a kiss. Evan will even say “I love you”, for no apparent reason at all. Needless to say, that’s one of the most encouraging experiences of all.

In another first, the boys celebrated Valentine’s Day at school on Tuesday. They came home with a bag of cards and candy bigger than what they had for Halloween. Hey, America is an awesome place! In the pictures, you can also see that they were pretty excited to get a stuffed Valentine’s bear from Grandma Judy and Grandpa Gary. They now have new sleeping partners.

That’s about all for now. We’ll be off to swim lessons again in the morning. Now that Christmas is past, Target started stocking pool toys again, so we got each of them a pair of goggles. We’ll get to try those out for the first time tomorrow. It should be fun!

Bacchus will be getting weekly chemo treatment for perhaps the next 4-5 months. Oy vay.  We’re well past the point where most sane people decide that they can’t justify paying for that kind of treatment for a pet, but we just can’t make ourselves let go. He is still very much a happy and energetic dog. We can only hope that he battles this thing into remission, and gets back to a reasonable quality of life soon.

If it is indeed T-cell, the odds of success are not all that good. The doctor said that a typical patient could expect to be in remission for about 6 months after the first course of chemo. What we didn’t realize is that “remission” begins from the moment they see the cancer cells pull back, which if all goes well will happen in the first month or so of treatment. That means that Bacchus would be looking at 2-3 months after wrapping up chemo before the cancer comes back, and with T-cell lymphoma, the follow-on treatments are much more difficult.

Apparently, either type of lymphoma develops very quickly. The doctor thought that left untreated, Bacchus would have 2-6 weeks until he was right back in the position he was in prior to surgery, only this time, he is going in with 20cm less intestine. It is entirely possible that Bacchus won’t react well to his chemo course, or that the lab results indicate we’re dealing with something pretty malicious, in which case we may be forced to make “the decision” much earlier.

If we get lucky, there is some chance that Bacchus either has B-cell lymphoma, or that he just happens to fall in a very small group of dogs (~5%) who are able to battle T-cell into remission for a year or more. Obviously, this isn’t exactly the news we were hoping for, but we’re still keeping our fingers crossed for the lab results.

Chris will take Bacchus tomorrow morning to get the staples out, and we’re hoping we can go to a 2x per day meal offering, and perhaps even allow him to come upstairs at night to sleep in our room.  I’m sure Bacchus would rather know when he can have his first Greenie…

As you might imagine, shoveling has been job #1 over the last couple of days. Today turned into another neighborhood shovel party, although many of the neighbors have broken down and are now sporting shiny new snowblowers.  I have to admit, I was pretty thankful when our neighbor John started blowing out the plow pile in front of our driveway.

The thing about Denver is, 2′ of snow hardly makes people flinch. The boys’ swim lessons were still on for 8:30 this morning. So we started our day at the pool. Both boys are really starting to catch on, but Evan especially. This was his first lesson, after about 6-8 visits to the pool. One of the other parents asked how many times he had been in lessons, because he seemed to be swimming like a fish.

Later, we got a little play time out in the back yard, which is where most of today’s pictures come from. Both boys found it pretty difficult to maneuver in the snow, but after we stomped down a few paths for them, we had fun building a snowman, and a couple of snow forts. We were planning a family picture around the snowman built with the kit from Aunt Alana, but Evan decided to knock the snowman’s head off just before we could take it. That was the beginning of the end for Evan. He kind of turned into a stinker through the afternoon. So much so that we had to skip his friend Ella’s birthday party tonight. It was just a passing storm – probably because of all the activity with no naps. By evening, he had settled back down and actually asked to go to bed at 8:00. Wonders never cease.

We continue to wait for the biopsy results from the mass they removed from Bacchus. Hopefully we’ll have that on Monday. We can hardly stand the wait any longer. In the meanwhile, Bacchus is returning to his normal self. His appetite has returned, and then some. He even managed to get out a #2 yesterday! Right now our biggest challenge is keeping him sedate enough. He just wants to get in the action with the family. We take that as a great sign, but it is still frustrating to try to keep him calm when we would all love nothing more than to play with him.  We’ll pass on word whenever we hear something.

He’s supposed to be pretty limited for the next 3 weeks.  No walks, no stairs, no fun…  I’m not sure how we’re going to survive that long without letting him come upstairs with us at night, or without being able to let him go down into the backyard to do his business, but we’ll find a way.

He’s actually back on kibble (at least some mixed in with his fancy high-fat canned food) already. We need to give him several smaller meals (about 1/3 of what we used to give him, now every 4-6 hours). Looks like we’ll be working meal shifts for the next week or two. The vet said he ate very well last night and earlier today. He just nibbled a little bit once he got home, but that’s been pretty typical behavior after any kenneling or vet visits. Hopefully we’ll see him gobbling down some meals tomorrow.

Still no word on the biopsy results. The Doc thought we would hear tomorrow, but the tech told us not to expect anything until perhaps Monday. So, the waiting game continues.  At least for now he seems to be in excellent spirits, and much more comfortable than he’s been for the past couple of weeks.