Spring

So why talk on and on when I can post pictures?  Here are some recent photos for your enjoyment!

This photos is special in particular because it shows Gianna's growth in social situation.  That blur is her running around with palm branches in church on Palm Sunday.  A year ago she was huddled in my shoulder petrified of other people.

Now here she is the confident little miss, feeling comfortable in her environs!

Here we see Gianna working on right/left coordination, practicing with new gross motor movements, applying her nascent knowledge that if Mom and Dad say it's safe and that she's ok - that she'll more than likely be ok, and overcoming her fears and anxieties and misbeliefs that the world is inherently against her and she must maintain control at all costs or any new situation will likely result in death.  Oh, and she's learning to ride a bike. :)

First Easter eggs!  She looooooovvveeesss hard-boiled eggs, so to Gianna, this tradition is the bees knees!  Next year we tackle the pysanky - the traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs!

Flying a homemade kite in the spring breeze!

Ponds are the best

A tulip that we planted together is growing!  No one is more excited as Gianna.  Tulips were blooming everywhere in Ukraine when we left last year.  It's a bittersweet memory for her, but we paid tribute to this memory by planting our own tulip bed last fall - and here they are blooming just in time to celebrate her adoption anniversary!  Anniversaries are happy but sad.  They're happy-sad.

But there's also mustache day at school - and who can be too too sad while sporting a superior 'stache?  I ask you, who?