Boys Will Be Boys

Today was a great day on so many levels!

Once again Dzintars slept in and I had to wake him at 10 to make him eat breakfast before we headed out for the day. He fought me like crazy, and forced me to blast the music in the house and unleash Brennan and Kaelyn armed with mini metal trashcans and drumsticks! He kept saying he wanted to sleep even after I explained that we were going swimming with some boys his age.  

Dzintars and I spent 4.5 hours at my in laws pools with my most favorite teenage boys EVER!!  Many of you know that before Brennan was born I used to teach first grade, I was fortunate enough to have all three of the Ellis brothers in my class and I still keep in touch with their family. I knew I wanted to try and connect Dzintars with some teenagers during his stay and these boys were at the top of my list. They just have the best personalities ever and are so much fun to be around! I knew they wouldn’t let the language barrier intimidate them or hold them back from including Dzintars in whatever they were doing and I was right!

Isaiah and Joel came to swim with him today and they helped him practice his swimming and get more comfortable releasing the wall when in deeper water. They taught him how to do cannonballs and how to do crazy jumps off the side of the pool. They played volleyball, catch, basketball and their favorite game was probably trying to pelt me with the water baseballs and footballs. It was 3 on 1, they totally killed meJ  I showed all three of them how to use our waterproof camera and set them loose. I now have some of the craziest shots ever!!

Volleyball.

Somone missed the ball, oy!

Working on his goofy face:)

His first cannonball EVER!

Dzintars took a few self-portraits today. They turned out pretty good:)

Once again the waterproof camera provides endless fun!

Dzintars took this photo of Isaiah, it pretty much sums up his personality. What a fun kid!

Cleary Isaiah wins the prize for best tan, I had Dzintars swim without his rash guard today so he could start working on his tan!

Dzintars personality is coming out more and more. He’s very playful and likes to play jokes. Even as we got to the pool he was still joking that he wanted to sleep, silly boy. But after 4+ hours of swimming we had to leave to go pick up Brennan and Kaelyn and he didn’t want to get out of the pool! He told me via google translate “Today pool was fun!” Thankfully Isaiah and Joel are going to Jump N Jammin’ with us next week so they’ll all get to play together again soon!  And we'reworking on getting a big group of boys together for some baseball and soccer fun as well!

He has yet to all out disobey a request we’ve made, but he’ll playfully try to get his way. The Latvian kiddos are required to call a representative from their orphanage once per week to check in. Last night we were watching a movie and he kept telling me he wasn’t tired, but as soon as I said it was now time to call Latvia he said he was just too tired and needed to sleep. We went back and forth and he knew he was going to have to obey, reluctantly he called “home”.  While he’s definitely trying to get away with more things, it’s done playfully and if we insist he obey, he will. He also likes to tease and joke, as much as the language barrier allows, it’s fun seeing this more laid back side of him.

Yesterday marked one full week with Dzintars. We've learned a lot about our guy in the past few days, right about Wednesday he just really started coming out of his shell and feeling comfortable enough to really be himself. He's quite a fun kid. A total joker, he loves to be silly and make you laugh. He seems to really enjoy trying teasing with Peter.  He's competetive but still a gracious loser as well. He's athletic and though his "form" seems a little off for our more "American sports" he's still good at everything.

We had another great family night at the street fair! We always let each child choose one activity to do. I thought for sure Dzintars would want to do the bounce house obstacle course again this week, but when Brennan showed him the petting zoo he asked to do that instead. I'm so glad he did. It was his first time in a petting zoo and it was so sweet to watch him take turns holding each of the animals. He sat for quite some time with a guinea pig just gently petting him and feeding him a cucumber, then a goat walked up beside his chair and he got to pet them both at the same time. He got to pet goats, chickens, rabbits, guinea pigs, and a pig. When I asked which one he liked the most he chose the rabbits.

I just LOVE this one. Such an innocent kiddo! Finding joy in the little things in life. 

We spent some more time with the "Bubble Guy" this week and again I was impressed with how great he was with Dzintars. He remembered him from last week and paid him special attention and created some really neat bubble creations I'd never seen him make before. Dzintars was just in awe. He also really enjoyed tricking Peter into shaking his hands once they were covered in leftover juice:)

Bubble baseball mitt. 

This was so cool. It was like a snowglobe. It's hard to see in the photo, but there is actually a small bubble swirling around inside the big one. 

Enjoying his first ever kettlecorn. 

The difference between a 14 year old and a 4 year old, Brennan thought these were cool and asked me to take his picture, Dzintars didn't want a picture and made this face to prove it:)