First Christmas

We're having such a blast with Yulia as she celebrates her first Christmas:

- She loves to sing Christmas carols. Gets about 20% of the words, but gets the points across.

- Just like her Mom, she's quite the tamborine player. Our small group at church went Christmas caroling Sunday night and she was jammin'.

- She loves to get Christmas cards in the mail. My aunts and several friends have sent Christmas cards addressed to her or with her name on them and she was so excited. Tore them right out of the envelope(and in half) and placed them firmly on the refrigerator for display.

- She's beginning to get the Merry Christmas/Happy Birthday Jesus thing! She says "Merry Christmas" all the time. Every baby that she says sees, it's "Happy Birthday Baby Jesus."

- Part of her homework tonight was to list things she likes about Christmas:
1. Christmas trees.
2. Ornaments on the trees
3. Snow
4. Candy(She and Pop have been making the world famous "Paul Barry Turtles." Pictures to follow!)
5. Church
6. Coca-cola(in the Santa bottle from Wally World)
7. Pepsi(Very big in Russia)
8. Santa
9. Fruits
***Wonder how this list will change by next year as she becomes more worldly???

- Things she doesn't like:
1. Cheese
2. Spankings


For those of you wondering, she was able to spell about 20% of the words on her likes/dislikes list. She's really coming along in school, although they're currently in the process of testing her for academics, intelligence and social preparation.

For all you speechies out there, she's beginning to put together 2-3 word utterances. She's having trouble with the "me, you and I" concept. Uses gestures and other non verbal speech to communicate when she can't "get" the word.

We received an e mail from her teacher tonight saying she was very proud when Yulia told a friend in class today, "That's not funny!" That's the longest phrase the teacher has heard her use.

Will close for now, Love Karen