It's been one full year

We first met Elena on Thursday, April 28, 2011.  That's exactly a year ago today.  Here's what we did a year ago, with some pictures.  It's a little hard to believe it's been a full year, particularly when I remember that a year is nearly 1/3 of Elena's entire life. 

Moreover, this is one of three important yearly milestones in our family life with Elena: her birthday, the first day we met her, and the day she was actually ours.  For most families, those three days are all the same; for us, they're spread evenly through the year.  That's cause for three times as many celebrations, I think.

More language: science gets it right

If you recall reading this post from a couple months ago, I talked about language acquisition and transition from one language to another. Although Elena has been picking up English at a pretty rapid clip, we've still had general (as opposed to specific) concerns about her language acquisition.  In general, internationally adopted children are at high risk for delayed language devolopment, because of issues with transition to a second language, and, often, a dearth of positive language feedback in their early years in an orphanage. 

Although Elena seems to be doing very well in acquiring English, language delay can be subtle, and may even crop up unexpectedly when the child starts school and encounters the more formal, less contextual language of the classroom.  In addition, way back when we petitioned the judge for parental rights, we had promised that we would have Elena's language skills evaluated, and provide professional assistance if needed.

So we wanted to be proactive about language issues, and in any case a promise is a promise (especially to a Russian Judge), so we made an appointment with a speech-language pathologist.  I think the pathologist is used to dealing with profound speech and language delay, because her first questions were "does Elena use words?" and "does she use more than one word at a time?"

We explained Elena's background, and our general concerns, and the pathologist ran some tests to determine Elena's language ability.  The tests were designed for native English-speaking children, the pathologist explained, so we'd just have to see where she scored and adjust based where Elena might be lacking in her English vocabulary.

Happy Easter

This coming Sunday is Easter in Orthodox Christianity (which includes the Russian Orthodox Church), so it's still the Easter season.  Here are a few Easter-related pictures from our house.

The Bunny Cake. Coconutty!

A Li'l Traveler chocolate bunny for li'l traveler Elena.

The ears are of course the first to go.

What's Easter without an Easter bonnet?
That's a bag, of course; compare to
Elena's hat on the airplane.

Playing with a large ball.