Proud, proud mama

We have so many reasons to be proud of our boys:

A moved up from "guppy" to "minnow" in his swim lessons at the Y. He'd been stuck for months because of the @#$% backstroke. Luckily, being the most stubborn kid in the world also makes him very persistent, and he prevailed.

D learned to pump himself on the swing. No more yelling Giffee! Giffee! (push) at me when we go to the park (that makes me a little sad too).

A started baseball. The coach pitches and the kids can take as many swings as they need to get on base. He's learning a lot of baseball basics and he LOVES it. Not surprisingly, I've heard a lot of "holy sh*t's" as people witness his throwing arm for the first time.

D is learning sight words and is super excited about them. He asks me to quiz him on the spelling of words like "one," "the" and "you." He's also working on the Reading A-Z books that I used with A last summer.

And the reason I am most proud of our sons... They talked to their family in Burjii this weekend. Our calls to Ethiopia are incredibly confusing and difficult for them. But we gave them the words for "How are you?" and "fine" in Burjinya, and they said them, loudly and clearly. And they had to say them many times, as there was much simultaneous shouting from five people in three languages. We had a lot of information we'd hoped to pass on and some questions to ask, and none of that happened, but A and D heard W's voice and W heard A and D's voices. I am so, so proud of them and of their bravery and resilience.

Surprise!

During spring break T's uncle called him to say he was coming to Philadelphia and wanted to meet our boys. He was coming in his company's new private jet and he wondered if the boys might like a ride.

Um, that'd be a yes.

We didn't tell the boys because we didn't know if the weather would allow for a flight and the disappointment would have been crushing. In fact, we didn't tell them until we were on our way to the airport. When we finally revealed the surprise, D threw up. Luckily he recovered quickly and was soon doing the preflight check with the pilot.

A had no hesitation and was very excited to check the plane and get ready for the flight.

There was one more surprise for them when we got on the plane. The boys could take turns sitting in the copilot's seat and helping to fly the plane. Yup, this happened.

D did the takeoff. He got to put on the headset and put his hands on the controls, under the pilot's guidance.

We flew to New York City and turned over Manhattan.

Then it was A's turn.  He took over the copilot's seat and the yoke for the return flight and the landing.

I have a policy of not showing our boys' faces on this blog, so you'll just have to imagine how enormous their smiles were. If they had grinned any bigger, I'm pretty sure their ears would have popped off.

Today when I ran errands with D he told everyone he met, "I flew a plane!" Everyone responded exactly the same way: smile because he's so damn cute, pause as they processed what he said, smile more uncertainly as they tried to decide what he meant, and then look at me for an explanation, at which point I confirmed, "Yes. He flew a plane."

We have a couple of really happy kids in our house right now.

Spring break

We had a great spring break. The boys and I went down to Maryland to visit my brother's family. There are two boy cousins, five and eight years old (our boys are five and seven). D and C disappeared into C's bedroom and played police something-or-other for hours. A and S disappeared on their bicycles. And the four of them spent hours playing the Wii together, cooperating the whole time, while this mama relaxed upstairs. Best of all, D was fully present for the entire visit. No "blocking" whatsoever. It made my heart all fuzzy.