Toys and Pictures

From time to time, I check up on what's going on in Kotlas.  It's interesting, because we have a definite, although tenuous, connection to the city; more importantly, Elena spent a lot of her time there and may be interested later in knowing about it.

It's also interesting because I'll run across some news about or pictures of the Baby House.  That's how I found the video history of the baby house I posted a few weeks back, and that's how I found this:



 It's a local TV story about a photography studio who ran a project where they set aside an afternoon every week or so to take portraits, using the proceeds to buy toys for the orphangage. Here's their VK page (for those of you who haven't heard of it, VK is like the Russian Facebook), which includes more still photos from the event.

What was said and what was meant

One thing you prepare for, when preparing for adoption, is dealing with comments from other people about adoptive children. 

Unlike many adopted kids, Elena actually looks similar to Teresa and me. I think that's not co-incidental; the Russian Ministry of Education intentionally matches children to parents in part by looks.  Whether or not that's true, it means we don't have to deal with the same kind of questions or comments from strangers (well-intentioned or otherwise) that, for example, White parents of an African-American child deal with.

However, we were recently chatting with an acquaintance, while watching Elena play, about how similar she looks to us.  In the course of the conversation, the other person said, "oh, you can't even tell she's not your daughter."

More dancing

Late last year we enrolled Elena in a dance class - "pre-dance," actually - as we mentioned in this post.  Attending a class like this was partly to get Elena used to doing things without Mom & Dad, partly to give her practice following instructions, and partly to give her something fun to do.  The class seems to have been successful on all counts.

 

The class had their year-end recital recently.  The theme for the recital, for the pre-dance kids, was an undersea ball.  They dressed in dance costumes that looked something like 1920s style bathing suits and danced with flowing, swimmy motions.  We're talking four-year-olds here, so the performance wasn't as crisp as you'd see at the Bolshoi, but everyone got about 90% of the movements right, which is an A in my book.

 

More importantly, everyone had a lot of fun, Elena included.  We stayed to see the performances by the older kids - tumbling, ballet, flamenco, breakdancing, musical instruments - a lot of which Elena liked, and thought would be fun to do when she's older.

 

Elena in her "swim" costume.

Chugg-chugga-choo-chooing onto the floor.

Everyone having fun.