Hi everyone!  Well, Karina and I have made it to almost the end of the first month together.  The first two and a half weeks was bumpy but that is behind us now.  Karina has about 50 English words that she can say at will if asked and uses consistently about 30 different English words on her own without prompting.  This Friday, Karina and Mommy will spend three hours at a Kindercare daycare that is about seven minutes away from my office.  I ended up nixing my first daycare choice and went with one that seemed cleaner, more geared towards learning and had a nicer open classroom setting.   Hopefully, all will go well and Karina will get to spend four hours a day playing and learning with other children.  This will most certainly speed up the process of her learning English.  I am concerned about her switching languages and getting fully caught up with her peers in all areas in time for kindergarten next year in August.  She is so smart that I don’t want her to be behind because I didn’t give her the opportunity to learn as much as possible before then. 

This last weekend Karina and Mommy had some serious fun.  The weekends are made for fun and at least one day of the weekend I try and make sure we go on a great outing together.  This weekend it was Brookfield Zoo.  Karina had a blast and so did Mommy.  Here are some pictures of that.

And then there was video:

Then here are some other pictures and video Mommy captured of Karina at work with Mommy.  She was dancing to her musica one day, dressing up to the nines in thrift shop clothes another day, so much fun.

 Then there was last weekend at the Dupage Children’s Museum.

Karina and I are having a great time.  The testing continues but on a smaller scale and Mommy has finally adjusted fully to having a little one around all the time.  Things are going great and I know they will only improve as Karina realizes that this is home for good now and forever, and once her English is better and her and Mommy can really communicate more thoroughly.  Amazingly, I am already contemplating going back for #2.  Clearly I have completely forgotten all the “labor pains” of #1 and / or the first go around made me insane.  ; )