Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Four Months Home

Like most travel groups, the families in ours bonded well. Our common bond of our adoption and our days together in Ethiopia brought us together. I wonder how long that bond will last. A few months, a few years, a lifetime?

Our travel group started a fun little monthly update. I think some of us tend to write the updates though we’re most interested in hearing from everybody else. Now that we’ve been home 4 months, do we have all the many milestones like first ice-cream, first trip to the zoo, etc? Will our group continue the monthly updates or will it fizzle out? I sure hope that we continue our monthly conversation of what’s going on in our home, even as most of us that are home are comfortably in the new normal.

With that said, here’s my 4 month update (and it won’t be near as well put together as Shonda’s):


Judah does not shut his mouth (he’s learned quickly to take after yours truly). He talks non-stop. When I read to the kids at night, he’s repeating words constantly. I find it both cute and annoying. Cute when he’s counting to five and can’t say the words well, let alone get his fingers up with the right numbers. Annoying when I’m trying to nap during the football game but all I can hear is my riled up son. He’s still not sounding out all of the sounds quite right.

For four months we’ve taken Judah to the toilet and he pays his homage to the porcelain king. If we don’t get him to the toilet in time, he goes potty anyway. That seemed to improve a few months back when I finally just started putting him in undies (except for traveling or social gatherings where he plays and we do too). For four months we’ve explained to him that he needs to tell someone that he has to go potty yet he never does. Maybe something was lost in communication. Maybe he didn’t understand me telling him to tell us when he had to go potty these last four months. When will it click with him? Well, this past week, he started telling his Papa that he has to go potty. Not my mom. Not Ryan. Not me. Just Papa. That’s fine I guess since he is telling someone and he spends almost 10 hours of his day at Grammy and Papa’s house. Get this though, he doesn’t even need to tell us now because he’s finally tall enough to crawl up on the toilet by himself. Okay, so he knows how to go on the toilet, he has an increased control of his bladder, and he can get on the toilet by himself. Why is it that he peed in his undies while standing on my bamboo rug which soaked through onto the wood floor? As annoying as it was, Ryan was right there and reacted quite well and ran him to the bathroom. As annoying as it was, it beats the two kids who have constipation and pooping issues. Just sayin’.

My baby is growing. Finally. I’m sure he’s been growing all along, but the 2t jeans I took to Ethiopia for him are finally fitting. By fitting I mean the hidden elastic waist line is cinched all the way up but the length fits him quite well. He regularly wears 3t shirts but I put a Cyclone jersey on him the other day that is sized at 24 months and it fit just fine. He’s still a small peanut. Since he’s still our good child and he’s a peanut, it’s obvious that he doesn’t have either mine or Ryan’s genetics (you can decide who was the wild kid and who’s built like a line-backer).

I still haven’t been anywhere that I’ve been asked if he’s mine. That might be due to the fact that we don’t go anywhere except our close friends and family or we stick to our town in which everyone already knows our story. I had a fun and interesting experience though. On our way home from Kansas, we stopped to see Ryan’s grandparents who live in an assisted living facility. As the kids and I went with Grandma for a walk down the hall, she had to introduce us to Aunt Edna who also lives there. Wait, did I say us? I meant Judah. Grandma had told Edna about her newest great-grandchild and had to show him off to her. Edna’s response to Judah: “I really like your shirt!” I thought it was funny that she didn’t comment on how adorable he is, what a great smile he has, etc. She commented on his hand-me-down faded black t-shirt (go Bulldogs!). What I also thought was funny was that Grandma was not as eager to introduce the other adorable great-grandchild standing with her. Just Judah, the newest addition to her family.

Tonight, we had a fun few moments. The first was when I handed some injera to Judah that had been frozen over the 4th of July weekend and recently thawed. Ryan said he had quite the look of pure joy on his face. The second fun moment was when Bethany went to bed with the boys for the second night and once again had to reach over and kiss her baby brother good night but didn’t acknowledge her other brother. For those who remember her actions and reactions to Judah in the first eight to nine weeks, I love any moment where she, on her own, shows him genuine affection.

And for those who saw Kerry’s (way to brief) update, that mouthy little beauty is mine!