Some updates on kids!

James: sings perfectly:

• Irish drinking songs

• Good night songs: 'U jednoj zimskoj noci', 'Laku noc, laku noc, laku noc mali Guguli', 'Spavaj, snivaj, cedo moje malo', 
• Bijelo dugme: 'Ruzica si bila'
• He is picking up songs in English from school after his first week there (they must have recited an Eric Carle's book because I hear him reciteing it rhythmically at home now).
• He is starting to draw while sitting neatly at the little table, just like the older kids.  He'll put a bin of crayons and a bin of colored pencils next to his paper and look very focused as he draws using both left and right hand at different times.  We can't tell yet if he is a leftie or a rightie.

Nikolas is awesome at chess.  I'm having a hard time beating him.  He is still a Lego master, too, and a huge Minecraft fan.  He still also likes to draw, getting inspiration from Zoobooks and their photos of various animals.  Michael is getting into this too--looking at pictures and reproducing them.

Mikica: he draws well and has very interesting ideas (always some people/soldiers/animals in motion).  He pays attention to little details of his  drawings.  His handwriting is neat too, except that he tends to bunch words together (he is finally making them look like words and not a single word 2 rows long), but he is still flipping a lot of numbers and letter left to right (esp. J, 5, 6...) 

Sonja:  She used to usually draw a house and family in front of it over the past year, but now she likes color and abstract with lots of hearts and decorations, so her pictures resemble notecards.
She enjoys playing Othello, Backgammon, and Uno.
Her math is great, all addition and subtraction for her grade she is finding easy.

Both Sonja and Michael hover over Nikolas's shoulder when he gets to play Minecraft on weekends, that he completely hooked on since last winter.

Manners:
James beats the rest of the kids by far!  During meals, he sits properly at his little table facing the table, uses utensils (if I forgot to give him a fork or a spoon, he'll ask for one).  Nikolas usually stands at the table or leans with a knee on the chair and makes most mess.  Michael still takes forever to finish his meals, gets distracted by TV or by Nikolas, and Sonja mastered spreading food she doesn't care about all over the bowl to maximize the leftover and still be able to say that she is done.  I can always count on James to bring his plate back to the kitchen when he is done, while the others always need to be reminded.
James always says 'please', 'thank you', 'bless you' (after someone sneezes).  The other kids... not so much.  Nikolas isn't bad, but he is not as good at mannerism as James is.
In Serbocroatian, James says 'hvala mama' nicely.  I have to teach him to say 'nazdravlje'.
When he asks for something, he says 'Meni ... ', like 'Meni meka.' (asking for milk), whether he is speaking in English or Serbocroatian.  In English, he always adds 'please' at the end.  He knows to ask for 'pelene' (diapers), tene (tennis shoes, as opposed to crocs), shorts, majica (shirt).