Words, Words, and some more Words

Speech. I think that must rank high on the mental list of "things to be concerned about when bringing a child home from another country" that adoptive parents keep in their heads. Well, maybe not you, but it was certainly on my list. You want to communicate with this child. He/she is not a tiny baby without any words based communication skills. What if he/she is already speaking some of his/her native language and you can't understand them? What is he/she is not speaking at all? We got lots of advice on this topic or at least questions about how things might go. I was honestly not sure at all. I know I've taught, but speech was always confusing to me. Why does one child in a home develop a speech difficulty when everyone around him is speaking perfectly fine? I've always just gone with the "talk a bunch and label" method. Obviously I have no research to back this up, although I have had the joy of watching several students transition into a second language over the course of a school year which is always amazing, but Xavier seems to be doing just fine. I keep thinking maybe I'm missing something. We have such a fabulous child! Maybe I'm overlooking some problem in his development, but time and time again he does things or says things that surprise me. J.J. and I had to make a list of words he can say because we can't even keep track. Let's see how many I can remember:

1. up 2. dog 3. on 4. kitty 5. ball 6. blue 7. meow 8. woof-woof 9. quack 10. water 11. snack

12. please 13. thank you 14. bottom 15. eye 16. diaper 17. pull 18. wow 19. oh yeah 20. book

21. walk 22. shoe 23. whoa 24. Dada 25. Mamma 26. sing 27. box

Okay, I know there are more, but they are just not coming to me right now. I feel like I'm bragging on my child and maybe I am. At the same time I don't want to forget how much progress he has made. It is truly amazing to me and a testimony to how wonderful adoption can be. Please don't misunderstand me. Adopting our son was tough and raising him is even more difficult. He is not a perfect child. He hits me in the face. He throws toys that should never be thrown. He pushes the spoon away when he no longer feels like eating something. See, he is a normal two year old! Despite all those normal obstacles I really want to make sure people understand just how wonderful adoption is. I wish I could talk so many people into adopting. So, if you are considering adoption and you are concerned about communicating with your child don't get stuck on that subject. Before you know it your child will be saying and signing "No" to you and if they don't it wasn't a competition to begin with and there are so many resources for speech and development available. Check that one off the mental list.

Confession Time

I tried posting this before, but I didn't get up the courage to actually publish the post. Maybe this one will be even better. Here it is...becoming a stay-at-home mom has not been the easiest transition for me. There! I said it. I know that I asked for this. I know it is the best thing for my child and my family as a whole. It has just taken me some time to warm up the actuality of the idea. Oh, the idea itself is beautiful and looking at it from a distance it seemed so warm and fuzzy, but the day to day living so many hours alone with an active toddler is challenging. J.J. and I spent a long time debating about how our working lives needed to change once we brought Xavier home. We weighed the pros and cons of all the options and then pretty much threw out those numbers and prayed. In the end we knew I was going to stay home and be his full time caregiver. It was just what our family was suppose to become. Now I wanted to stay home and nobody forced me. J.J. never demanded this responsibility of me and I never felt pressured. He has been 100% supportive and always made sure I knew that if I just couldn't give up teaching we would find another way. At the same time I knew staying home was the right decision. Reality is that right doesn't usually equal easy. I loved teaching. I wanted to teach since I was in grade school. It is a challenging and rewarding profession. I never really wanted to do anything else, except be a mom. It took us awhile to reach this point of parenthood and I always espoused that I would stay home when our long awaited child finally arrived, so here I am. Please notice that most of these verbs have been past tense. Things are changing for me and God is helping me adjust to this new stage of life. I haven't said anything because, truthfully, when you work as hard at getting a child as J.J. and I have you feel guilty if you even hint at complaining about something. Like, "Who is she to complain? Didn't she want this so much? What did she think this was going to be a walk in the park? Shouldn't she be happy all the time?" and other things I ridiculously assume other people must be thinking if I dare voice any unhappiness at the present circumstances. So I have been working through things with God's help and J.J.'s help and Xavier's help and a few people who I know will love me regardless. Some of them are family and they have no choice. =) Today I can honestly say I enjoy staying home. Do I love it? That might be stretching it, but I have come to appreciate it more and more. During VBS we hired a babysitter for those 3 hours each morning so I could focus on the task at hand. Each day she would bring Xavier over to the church as parents were coming to pick kids up. He would seem happy to see me, but in his usual happy, g0-lucky way he would hurry to play in the nursery with all the other kids waiting on rides. The last day though he wanted to be picked up right away and he put both of his little hands on either side of my face as if to say, "Is it really you, Momma?". I have often been annoyed by those people spouting about "ah-ha" moments as if you couldn't just learn something slowly over time, it has to just hit you in the face, but I knew at that moment that I not only needed to stay home with my son, I wanted to stay home with my son. So J.J. is back in the classroom and all the kids are back in their desks while Xavier and I make sound effects while throwing clothes in the dryer, jump all over the guest bed, sit on the potty at random times throughout the day, go for walks to air up low stroller tires and do so many other things together that I would miss while working. We are still figuring out ours routines or lack thereof and I do not profess to be very proficient at my new job, but it is a job I am now happy to have.

A picture is worth a thousand words

I have been very lax about putting pictures on the blog lately, so here are a few snapshots from our recent weeks together. By the way, we have now been home for two months. Amazing!!

Taking a nap with Momma. It took him forever to get comfortable and that is the way he chose to lay. Kids! You gotta love them.

Experiencing the joy of licking batter off the mixer blades for the first time. We were making chocolate chip zucchini cupcakes.

Yum!

Swinging always seems to prompt the word, "Again!".

"Do I really have to sit here while you two golf?"

Our first family golf outing let Xavier try out his unique swing on some real greens.

So much has happened in the last two months, but I am still pretty bad at taking pictures. I'm grateful being a good parent is not measured in how well you document your child's days. I hope it is measured in some smiles because those moments are truly priceless.

Dog Days of Summer

We are scurrying around like busy ants at our house, but it is a good thing. We are getting ready for community VBS next week. It is our church's year to host so I am directing this year. I am so excited to see what God has in store. So much prayer has gone into this already. J.J. started back to work Monday with the beginning of two-a-days. They start at 6:30am in an almost feeble attempt to beat the heat. He usually gets home around lunch time, but he's running late today. Who knows? We made it through coach's clinic and camp meeting without too many hitches. We were gone for what felt like two straight weeks, but we did come home for a few days in between the two trips. I got to spend some time with my sister and my nieces which was so nice! My poor brother-in-law was working like crazy so we hardly saw him. I hope he gets some rest before classes resume at the college where they teach.

Xavier is keeps doing well. Sometimes he drives me crazy, but I can't stay frustrated with him for long. Who could look at that face and stay angry. I will have to post some new pictures. Despite his light hair, I think he already has surpassed his mother in the tan skin department. We don't think he has gained weight, but he can put away quite a bit of food in one day, so maybe he is growing. We found out he doesn't have any parasites! Yeah! He has his first dentist appointment next week and his first check-up with our family doctor the week after. He is saying so many words. I feel like I should write them down because I'm losing track. For example: water, eye, uh-oh, owie (I have a sore on my leg that he often refers to), baaa (sheep sound), cluck cluck (chicken sound), just to name a few. I think he might be obsessed with dogs. Maybe it is just because he feels like I understand him, but he talks about dogs ALL the time. I'm not kidding, once he woke up when I got him out of the car seat and he managed to say, "D-dog?" before giving back in to sleep. So the big question is does he actually like the dogs now and I think the answer is yes. We worked in the backyard this morning when it was fairly cool and he didn't even fuss when Carson licked him in the face (Sorry Dad). I will try to be more regular about posting, but I make no promises. We are doing just fine though.

Quirky Thoughts

Just some things I think about. I think I'll list them. Why not?

1. People often comment that Xavier resembles J.J. or myself in outward appearance and they always act so pleasantly surprised. I suppose that the way he looks is a good thing, but it just never mattered to me. I really didn't care if he looked one bit like us. I suppose maybe very early on, but you really have to examine the way to think about your family and your legacy when you commit to adoption and so I went through all that long ago. What amazes me are the traits he possesses that help him "fit" if you will into our family. He loves cottage cheese. He loves music and is always ready to dance. He smiles when you hand him a book. He hates to brush his teeth. He would be content to spend the majority of his day in water. These things and many others are traits that J.J. and/or I possess. These are the things that pleasantly surprise me.
2. What is with the publishers of books for babies? I'm totally serious, we have one "shapes" book and it took me awhile to figure out how they got a triangle out of the photograph for triangle. It just must not take much to produce a book for babies these days. I have quickly and happily moved on to mostly children's pictures book. Whew!
3. Okay, I know I asked for this, but we went from one hard to pronounce name to another. Picking our child's name was this huge dilemma. We had Xavier all picked out, but then we liked Aleksey. At the same time I knew that he would end up being called Alex, so we decided to keep it as his middle name and use Xavier for his first name. I also knew people would pronounce his name X-Zavier, but it has been surprising just how frequently that happens. I usually don't correct them. It just doesn't seem worth it, but so you can all confidently say his name we are pronouncing it Zavier (pretend the x sounds like the beginning of xylophone).

I'm all out of thoughts for tonight. I'm sure more will come to me. Just on a really happy note, Xavier is currently sound asleep in his pack-n-play in a hotel room. I successfully got him completely asleep by 8:40pm even though we are in a brand new place and his dad was gone to a class for coaches. Thank You Jesus! Keep those prayers coming. We are going to get this falling asleep thing figured out.

Showers of Blessings

Things are going well around our house. Xavier's sleeping has improved tremendously since we moved him back into our room. He now sleeps in there at nap time and at bed time. He still takes a long time to fall asleep some nights, but he stays asleep until it is time to get up in the mornings. Praise the Lord! Thanks so much for the prayers. I am feeling much more calm about the situation. We have tried going for a walk while pushing Xavier in the stroller in the evenings, but that did not lessen the time it took him to fall sleep. It was nice for us as a family though. The best approach still seems to be rocking while singing, then rocking while praying and thanks to my great grandma, via my parents, we now have a beautiful old rocking chair that saves my back and keeps me from walking around in circles. We had a nice shower that our friends and local churches hosted last weekend. We got some nice very nice things. In fact J.J. is driving right now to pick up the swing set that was our hostess gift. We have been told it is part of the experience to have the dad put the whole thing together alone. Hmm? We might have to forgo that one. We also got some awesome hand-me-downs from J.J.'s cousin and his wife, including 3 car seats! WhooHoo! Then we picked up a cute storage unit for all the random toys with a gift card from our first baby shower. We are getting this place to feel more like a home for three people all the time. Thanks so much everyone!

Not Mr. Photogenic...Except

Our son is really cute, but it is awful trying to capture that on camera.

Oh, that one was almost so cute!

Then we have the "I'm too fast for you Momma" shots.

The "finger in my mouth" shots

The "Really? You're taking my picture again?" shots

And, of course, the "I want to be up there with you!"shots

These pictures make the next few photos just as amazing as they should be. The next few pictures were taken by our friend Lindsey Danner. She is a professional photographer and she agreed before we even left to take our first family pictures after we came home. I've know Lindsey my whole life, literally, and she is a beautiful woman, inside and out. She does some wonderful things with a camera. If you are looking for a photographer and you live anywhere near us you really should contact her.