Our Blended Family

Dave sez,

Hi! Thanks for stopping by. We are Cathy and Dave. This is our continuing adventure as new parents with our boys, Justin and Ethan; and our adventure bringing our daughter Masha home. Thanks for keeping up and following along with us!

I grew up hooked on television re-runs of Gilligan's Island and the live action Batman starring Adam West and Burt Ward. So, I totally understood it, when we went to Kiev, Ukraine to bring our sons, Justin and Ethan home, we lost them at the same time every afternoon to Avatar: The Last Airbender and SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon. Justin and I spent almost a year bonding, watching Nickelodeon. We watched every episode of Avatar; and I got familiar with Mermaidman and Barnacle Boy - SpongeBob's homage to DC Comics' Aquaman and Aqualad. I got curious, so I did a Google search and learned that Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway - who I had grown up with on reruns of McHale's Navy and The Carol Burnett Show - were now entertaining my son! Together we watched Big Time Rush, Victorious, Drake & Josh and iCarly. Cathy ended up leaving the room, because for months before Ethan came home, she had two boys; and now she has three.

Together we wore out the remake of The Karate Kid, with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. We can recite lines of dialogue from that movie! The Karate Kid for Justin is like The Blues Brothers, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein - well, any Mel Brooks movie - is for me.

We've only had a couple of disagreements, Justin and I. The first was over the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Like most kids, he loved it. Like most diehard Star Wars fans, I can't stand Jar Jar Binks or Hayden Christensen. Justin's favorite of the three is Revenge of the Sith. Where Anakin Skywalker makes his final descent into evil and darkness as Darth Vader. As a fanboy, there are so many things wrong, starting with The Phantom Menace it's hard to know where to begin. I think it starts with George Lucas' tinkering with the original trilogy and adding extra scenes and special effects. The special effects were cool, but it seems like they got away from him.

The other disagreement we had was over comic book super hero cartoons. Justin is just not a fan of them like I am. He'll watch Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk and The Avengers movies; but, not the DC Comics cartoons or movies. A couple weeks ago he asked Cathy why I collected comic books. Why I didn't just read the one - the ONE - I had. Ha! I laugh, because he is just as hooked on Avatar Aang as I am on Batman.

I'm sorry if this is a long walk around the park; but as much as Cathy and I are passing on to our boys, we are learning from them. Learning from them started a few days before Justin and I first came home. We were enjoying a quiet afternoon in the apartment in Kiev. Things had wound down and I wanted to catch up on some rest before our nineteen hour flight home. I was napping and Justin was channel surfing. He had found a movie on television. It was a Bollywood film starring Shah Rukh Khan, called Mohabbatein. It was a Hindi movie with subtitles translated into Ukrainian. Take a second to wrap your brain around that one. This was how Cathy and I started to learn more about our boys and where they were originally from.

Our boys have told us that they are originally from India. That they came to Kiev, Ukraine with their families and were abandoned by their families there.

Both Justin and Ethan are fans of Bollywood films. This is what Cathy and I are learning from our two boys. I think I've told you about Mohabbatein before. Shah Rukh Khan plays a music teacher that gets a job in a seminary and uses the opportunity to encourage the men to find true love. While in seminary. Like all Bollywood films, it's a musical. And three hours long.

We're making an effort to keep their original culture. Cathy makes Borscht - beat soup. In turn, the boys have developed a taste for spaghetti, chicken wings, pizza and hamburgers.  It was a long time in coming but Justin has developed a taste for biscuits and gravy. At first, he wasn't to crazy about it. He was a finicky, picky eater. Ethan's more of a seafood eater. He sees food - he smells food, he hears food - he eats it.

We make a big deal on Friday and Saturday nights -  when there's more time - to watch Bollywood films. We've watched Dhoom and Dhoom 2, about a couple of Mumbai policemen. Imagine if Rocky had been a musical. Or Die Hard. Or Terminator. We saw that Dhoom 3 was at the theater the other day, and we all were very excited. On a weekend that Anchorman 2 and Saving Mr. Banks opened, we went to see Dhoom 3.

Let me tell you why I liked Dhoom 3. It is set in Chicago! Like the Nolan-Bale Batman films, this film runs around the city! It tells the tragic story of an orphan circus boy that grows up to rob the bank that destroyed his ringmaster father's life. It's like The Prestige, with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman and has been described as Now You See Me. You can immediately sympathize with this young man, because the bankers are portrayed as the real villains of the film. The Mumbai policemen - Abhishek Bachchan and Uday Chopra - come to Chicago and race around the city chasing the bank robber - on motorcycles. It's a very entertaining film. With subtitles. Did I mention it's set in Chicago? Dhoom 3 debuted at number nine of the Top Ten films - the highest ever US debut of a Bollywood film, making (3) Three Million Dollars it's opening weekend! Did I mention it was set in Chicago?

This is how I know we are becoming a blended family. Shared experiences. Like television shows, movies, food, music and books. We're getting there, just a little slower with their reading. It took Justin almost a year to develop an interest in reading. we're still working with on his reading and English skills. Like most boys, they're more interested in activity than sitting still reading.

I'm very curious about what we are going to learn from our daughter...