Richie and Jen

First day of school:

Last day of school:

I think they look happier now.

They all “dressed up” today because it’s Kola’s birthday. I would like to point out that what Rustic considers dressy is almost exactly the same as my father: a short sleeved plaid top tucked into jeans. Also, Kola refuses to not button the top button on his shirts, he’ll never stop looking Eastern European if he keeps that up, but I’m just going to let his wife deal with that one day. I’m too busy fixing Richie’s clothes.

The other day after the boys came home from school and had their snack I told them to go get their bathing suits on. I probably had to tell them 30 times each we weren’t going anywhere. Eventually they believed me. The only guess they had as to what we were doing was that I was going to stand in the front yard and hose them off. Which they were 100% up for. Imagine the excitement, then, when I set up the Slip-n-Slide.

Lining up for take off.

Right after that picture I had to tell Sasha twice to stop laying in the middle of the driveway, so he had to sit by himself in the chair of shame.

It was bad enough he had drool hanging down to his knees when the neighbors stopped by to talk, I don’t need people thinking I let them just sleep wherever they pass out.

Summer vacation doesn’t officially start here until next Wednesday, but the boys are already starting on their summer fun.

I tried to get a picture of Rustic and Sasha sitting in their lawn chairs right at the edge of the sidewalk like two little old men (I’m not sure, but I suspect they were yelling at traffic) but Malta and Cyprus got to them first.

Putting the chairs back so the damn neighbor kids don’t touch them.

On Sunday our Russian friends invited us to go to The Fox River to Jet-Ski and fish (or in my case to sit and try not to get sunburned). The boys were very excited about the “water motorcycles”.

Sasha’s all suited up.

That’s the Russian Dad out there with them.

Kola was next - I could hear him giggling the whole time.

Then it was Papa’s turn.

Russian dad just showed Richie how to use it. I was kind of hoping Russian dad would drive and I could get pictures of Richie holding on to him and screaming.

Rustic went with Richie.

There was also fishing.

Sasha was the only one to catch anything.

And some watermelon eating.

I hope they don’t think every day of summer is going to be like this, because they’ll be very disappointed.

Sometimes (usually during his hour long lunch - I’ve never seen someone eat a salami sandwich so slow in my life) Sasha will pontificate on his future plans. It changes a lot. Last week he told me he wanted to be a soldier to protect America (I think this had a lot to do with all the Captain America/Avengers commercials that were running). Sometimes he tells me he’s going to live with me forever and just have a motorcycle or teach dogs to surf. Now he wants to be a landscaper. He has been watching the guys who are cleaning up our disaster zone backyard pretty much non-stop since they showed up yesterday.

So, there’s been a lot of talk about machines, work crews, and sod around here.

Oh, and our nasty guard dogs?

This one goes from hiding under the table whenever a machine starts up to laying in the sun on the dining room floor. She has no interest in the 6 grown men milling about our backyard.

While this one is only interested in guarding Cyprus’ food bowl. From Cyprus.

We had a great Mother’s Day. The boys were more excited than I was. They were buzzing for weeks about it. Anyway, it started out with Sasha and Papa making pancakes.

Sasha purposely picked a short sleeved button down shirt because now that Sasha also has a buzz cut he “wants to look like Papa”.

Then I forced them to all take a nice picture before lunch.

We went to a Polish restaurant. It was a buffet (because when ever we go to a regular place the boys are all personally offended that they are only served one plate of food). Of course, all three of them had to poop while we were there (they love trying new toilets) and they ate an obscene amount of food.

When we got back I was treated to a soccer game in the front yard.

I finally convinced Richie to have a drink with me in the front yard as we watched. He was a little embarrassed, though.

He thought it was to “white trash” to be drinking on the front lawn. I told him a) I was doing it the whole time the kids were at school and he was in Florida last week so everybody already knows what kind of house this is; b) people keep donating things to us because they assume we are poor; and c) people think we have vicious man-killing dogs (see photos below) and don’t let their kids come over, so every one already assumes we’re white trash - just drink your beer.

Cyprus airing her lady-dog bits after a particularly difficult walk.

Malta hiding from my sneezes.

The children wanted their portraits taken:

And I got very nice presents they all made me at school.

From Sasha:

(He dictated the poem to his teacher)

From Rustic:

Translation: Dear Mama Happy Mama day Thank you for giving me my bike. You are very nice. I like the circus with you. Thank you for the chips and juice. Rustic

And Kola:

We had a great day.

We haven’t done anything earth shattering in a while, which is why I haven’t really pout anything up here, but I was looking at some things and thought I’d share some photos.

Sasha getting ready for dinner.

Rustic made me take like 9 pictures of him for his student of the week poster because I didn’t get his hands in the first 8.

We went to the circus the other night, it was very exciting. This is the first time Rustic actually smiled for a picture without my threatening him.

The best part of the circus was the cotton candy and popcorn, obviously.

Easter ended up being pretty good, although it got off to a bit of a rough start. For about a week before Easter Kola would pretend to have to go to the bathroom like 7 times before it was time to get up for school, I’m assuming it was because he just didn’t want to be in bed. We told him it was important to stay in bed until we came and got him on Easter, so of course Richard caught him sneaking downstairs at 6:30. So when it was time to come down and hunt for eggs he had to wait for a minute at the top of the stairs while the other two found candy.

So, he was already a little upset when we went to go see what the Bunny had left as a gift. Everybody got a chocolate bunny and gardening gloves. Sasha also got a big sticker pad, Rustic got a giant activity book, and Kola got a Shel Silverstein book (which he spent hours telling me how much he liked to read at school), which sent him over the edge.

So Rustic and Sasha got to look at their presents and eat a carton of eggs while Kola calmed down.

I normally wouldn’t write a lot about personal struggles the boys have on here, but I think this was a good example of why we prefer people not giving the boys gifts. They (and Kola especially) still don’t know how to handle them. Kola had this fantasy in his head of exactly how Easter should be and when it didn’t go precisely as he planned he flipped out. You would have thought I told him we had to put Malta down and he was next, that’s how much he was crying - because he wanted to have stickers. It’s not like he doesn’t already have stickers. He does and he never uses them - they just collect dust in his room. He also doesn’t really like to do mazes (which is like 70% of Rustic’s book) but he’s so terrified he’s missing something fun he just breaks down. This doesn’t just happen with gifts. I got Rustic new shoes the other day and Kola’s mysteriously ripped apart as soon as he saw Rustic’s, even though that morning they were fine. He spent the first 10 years of his life having nothing, so when you throw a bunch of gifts at him he doesn’t react the way a 10 year old who is used to getting presents would. He doesn’t appreciate that he’s being given something, he gets nervous and anxious and worried that since what he imagined didn’t happen that maybe he can’t trust anything he thinks anymore. I’m not saying this to make you think he’s nuts, but just so you can understand why we try to limit his possessions. It’s not because we are being mean or stingy, it’s because he needs to be specifically prepared for everything.

Anyway, we had a long talk about how presents are nice extras, but not something people deserve or will always get. Once he calmed down he really like his book and admitted that even if he got no presents this Easter was better than last year when he didn’t even get to see Sasha or Rustic, let alone get any candy.

After all the tears we did have a present from Mama and Papa for the boys (which Sasha was apparently very excited about):

They all got a snorkel mask and a Bey Blade, which are these stupid little spinning tops that I don’t quite understand, but they like anyway.

Richie didn’t get left out:

The boys were very excited about Easter. On Friday they spent most of their day off school just coloring and painting decorations.

On Saturday they painted eggs.

Why is there a picture of an empty chair, you ask? Because that was the “Chair of Shame”. The first time they whined they had to sit in it for five minutes. If they whined a second time they had to sit in it and watch while the other two finished all the eggs.

No one whined.

The boys all got their bikes last week. They had to earn them. Every day they didn’t get into any real trouble they got an X on their little charts and after 20 X’s they earned their bikes.

Sasha got his first. He didn’t miss a single day of getting an X.

Rustic got his two days later (he missed an X for throwing a book at the Vice Principal because he didn’t want to go to ESL and for throwing away his sandwiches at lunch).

And then Kola got his the day after Rustic (he missed an X for eating like 9 granola bars from the neighbor and they lying about it, having his teacher call me to say he wouldn’t stop drawing Angry Birds pictures no matter how many times she told him to stop and being mean to Rustic and Sasha).