Kiddos

We're in a pretty good place with the kiddos lately. Nikolai was home from preschool for 3 weeks when he was sick and we all went a little crazy, but he returned to school this week and balance has been restored in our little universe. 

I've had several moments lately where I look around at these kids, and Jesse, and think, "Wow. Look at these awesome people that I get to spend my life with." Those moments sometimes even happen in the middle of both kids screaming over dinner, or running around crazy right before bed (though sometimes those moments also make me feel like I'm going nuts).  

None of those moments have been captured on photo but I'm including some other pictures here so I can try to remember the feeling. 

Nikolai and Miriam watching Romanian kids tv:

I usually leave Miriam's hair down in a messy bob that gets in her face because she hates me putting it up, but the other day I put on a show for her and somehow she let me put her hair in adorable little french braid pigtails. She pulled them out an hour later during her nap, but they were cute while they lasted! 

Speaking of Miriam: she's recently transitioned to two naps (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) to one nap (in mid afternoon) AND we made her pacifier disappear (previously used almost exclusively for nap and bedtime) SO that has been really rough for everyone. Basically, Miriam used take a pacifier and go straight to sleep like a tiny cherub, and now she runs around the room and wiggles and shrieks instead of letting us snuggle her and sing her lullabies, and it's really rough. Nikolai ditched the pacifier on his own at 7 months so we've never had to do this before, and it's hard giving up our angel sleeper! 

But she still really cute during the day:

Speaking of Nikolai going back to preschool, he's learning tons of Russian! My classes have been going really well too, and we've started to be able to speak a fair amount of Russian together. I wanted to capture him counting to ten in Russian the other day, and then he surprised me by counting twenty, which I had no idea he could do! He does that a lot--surprises me with words that I had no idea he knew. Way to go smart Nikolai!