Yuli's Progress and a New Family Member

It has been a long time since I have posted anything on our blog. But, I did want to give everyone some updates on our sweet Yuli and the rest of the family. To say Yuli is doing great would be an understatement. He is doing fantastic, and we are so proud of him! Yuli has been in pre-K since August of 2012 and will be graduating from pre-K in May and then heading to kindergarten at Julia's school in the fall of this year. Let's just say that I am buying one giant box of kleenex for that graduation ceremony.

Yuli has also been in speech therapy for over a year, which has helped him tremendously. When we first started speech in January of 2012, Yuli physically could not make most of the sounds that we use for language. His muscles were not developed in his mouth from a lack of chewing solid foods in the orphanage, and the scar tissue from his cleft lip surgery was very tight, which caused him to be unable to do such things as form a circle with his lips or to put his lips together. All of these things, you need to be able to do to make sounds for both vowels and consonants. I am happy to report that Yuli can make most of his letter sounds now and has gone from only saying one syllable words last year to saying multi-syllable words, phrases and complete sentences of five to six words. His language skills grow every day, including his overall comprehension.  Every day, he amazes me with the new words that he is learning at school or through simple incidental language that he is hearing from others at school, at church and even from Mickey Mouse. He loves Mickey Mouse!

Our handsome little guy just turned six years old on March 30th. This was only his second birthday to share with his family, and I could not believe how excited he was. Here are some pics from that day:

Yuli at Grandma and Grandpa's house getting ready to dive into his cake

Yuli and Daddy with his new bike that he got for his birthday

Yuli, with a little help from his big sister, also has an announcement to make on the blog.

We are getting a baby sister!

Yes, it is true. The Pachciarz family is growing again. We have just begun the process to adopt a 22 month old little girl from Albania. We hope you will follow us on this new journey!