Happy Half Birthday!

Today was Roman's "half-birthday" (he turned 18 months old!).

We decided to celebrate it since we missed his first birthday. So we got him a lemon cupcake and put one and a half candles on it. When the people at the coffee shop heard how he had just got here from Russia and it was his half birthday, they said he could have any cupcake he wanted for free!

His eyes lit up when we brought the cake to him and sang "happy half-birthday" This made us really happy because he seemed to know what a birthday was, and we think the caregivers must have celebrated birthdays with the kids at the baby home. It definitely seemed like he had seen a cake and candles before.

While we were at the coffee shop playing in the kids area, we met two little girls who were about 8 years old. It turned out that they had been adopted from Russia too. They proudly announced "we're Russian." One was from St. Petersburg and the other was from Kazan. They only knew one word of Russian (Nyet), but when we saw them again later in the pet store, Helen taught them the Russian word for cat! 

Roman's half-birthday present was some books including "Brown Bear Brown Bear" and "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." He loves books and often brings them to us so we can read to him. We're really happy that he is a bit of a bookworm as well as being very active and mischievous!

So far, Roman has six words in his vocabulary, two English ("Hi" and "Dad") two Russian ("dye --- more" and "adna----one", a word that is used in both English and Russian ("Hello"), and one that isn't really a word at all but most babies say it ("da da"). He loves to pick the phone up, put it to his ear and say "hello" (our phone bill is going to be huge when he is a teenager). Whenever he hears the phone ring he says "hello ... hello." 

On Sunday, we went to the "Basset Hound Meet Up" at WestCrest Park (an off leash dog park in West Seattle). Missy always loves chatting with her basset friends, there must have been about 20 bassets there. Roman had lots of fun. At one point he had four bassets licking him simultaneously, and he was just giggling away. He really enjoyed being around the dogs and being licked and sniffed. We're always sure to keep an eye on him around dogs and cats as he doesn't yet know that not all animals are friendly and gentle (our five are very sweet with him).

This week, we are going to check out "Lil Kickers." It's a soccer class for kids 18 months to 12 years (so Roman just qualified today!). Helen's excited to take him because she wants soccer to be his favorite sport. Now Rich has to find a football class soon before it's too late and he gets the soccer bug :-)