Back when we adopted Bella many years ago, the post-placement report requirements were different than they are today. They were done at 3 months, 6 months, 12 months, two years and three years. Today they no longer require reports until the child has been home a year, but they are then needed every year after that till the child is 18.
So although no one is knocking down my door for the 6 month report, I thought I'd give an unofficial one anyway since the kids have been home with us 6 months as of yesterday, July 9th.
In a nutshell, they're doing fanatstic.
They have both celebrated birthdays with us: James turned 14 in March and Julie turned 11 in May.
James enjoys taking long rides on his bike and producing breath-takingly beautiful artwork and projects of one kind or another. He loves swimming and horsing around with Patrick. He takes great delight in "ninja-ing" his family members, and he and Patrick have a running contest to see who is more Ninja. James likes middle school and brought home straight A's. He was also voted most artistic 7th grade boy by his classmates.
Julie loves to play school or kitchen with Bella, paint her nails with Rosie, go swimming, and sew. We're currently working on making some pajamas for her and she always has some little embroidery project in the works. She loves, loves, loves going to family weddings and dancing the night away all dolled up. Probably her favorite pasttime, though, is to cuddle up in my lap and just snuggle and love.
Though they were both a bit fearful of the dogs when they came home, they absolutely love them now. They also enjoy holding the bunnies or our guinea pig. James loves to watch the frogs go cricket-hunting when we feed them, and Julie adores our fat-cat Mamfy. James has a great time fishing in our pond or skating on it in winter time. Julie is not as much of a nature-child as her brother, but likes to go for walks to the creek or play outside in the driveway with chalks or her bike.
Their mastery of the English language has been nothing short of amazing. They can both read, write and speak English with impressive fluency. Here Julie has an edge over James, though whether that has more to do with her younger age, or being a girl, or just having an innate talent for languages I guess we'll never know. Though she still gets her pronouns mixed up and has more vocabulary to learn, she's pretty much understood by all who talk with her. James still struggles with sentence structure, so sometimes his point is lost as we try to rearrange his words and figure things out. But he'll get there. They still speak Russian with each other, which we've strongly encouraged so they don't lose their native tongue.
Six months down, a lifetime to go.
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