(Maureen’s Post)
Hard to imagine, but 2 years have already passed since we were blessed with the gift of our son, James. On February 13th we celebrated the anniversary of the day James joined our family. To quote our friend and travel partner, Jodi Mechem, 2 years ago the judge said “Da” (yes) and life became 100% sweeter! I went back to our travel journal and read Sean’s entry for that day. I remember him volunteering to blog that night, giving me the wonderful opportunity of trying to put our son down to sleep for the first time…which only took an hour and a half. Going back and reading our entries from our trip brought back so many memories from a life-changing adventure. I use the word ‘adventure’ because that is exactly what the trip was for us! We have some wonderful memories, and some not-so-great ones, too (you try being cooped up in a small apartment with your spouse for 6½ weeks straight, pretty much 24/7 around the clock, catching a stomach bug followed by catching the flu, in a city where it was minus-39 degrees in the dead of winter, where the power and/or water kept going out, where hardly anyone spoke English, and your Russian wasn’t anything to brag about, either). Yet, I would totally do it all over again, just to be able to bring James into our lives. We will forever be grateful for having the privilege of raising this beautiful child.
James continues to be Mr. Independent, and I continue to pray for patience. Actually, James’ personality continues to develop and shine through. When he’s not being a typical 2½-year-old and thinking of himself, he’s quite thoughtful of others. If he hears another child crying in church or in the store, he gets a concerned look on his face and asks, “Who’s that crying? What happened to him/her?” Or he’ll see me or Sean try to grab something just out of reach, and he’ll give words of encouragement, “Come on, Mama, you can do it! Yay – you did it! I knew you could do it!” We’ve got our own personal cheering section.
One thing that is pretty interesting is that James has recently taken it upon himself to critique my driving. He does it to Sean, too. He says, “this is not the way to Lolo’s house, Mama,” or “be careful, Daddy – don’t drive too fast!” This is coming from the child who used to tell us to drive faster. Instead, now it’s like having a Texas Dept. of Public Safety state trooper in the car giving us instruction from the back. I’ve heard of back seat drivers before, but back seat-car seat drivers?! However, James doesn’t like it when people drive too slow, either. This past Friday while Sean was driving another car pulled in front of us driving very slowly. Before Sean could even say anything a little voice from the back piped up, “Come ON, people!” Oops – good thing we watch what we say around him.
Jumping continues to be a favorite pastime for James, whether it be jumping on the bed, jumping on/off the couch, or now jumping to the ground floor from four steps up. Again, I am thanking God for the invention of carpet. He still loves cars and trucks and loves tossing around balls of all sizes (soccer ball, kiddie softball, beach ball). James can recite the whole alphabet now and can actually recognize some letters of the alphabet. Lately, he’s been picking out letters when he sees them - on signs, on the world map in his room, on his juice box, you name it.
James can also recognize written music. Obviously, he cannot read it, but when he sees the piano or guitar sheet music or opens one of the church hymnals he gets very excited, telling me, “look Mama, this is music!” James likes to “play” our piano. Often, he is accompanied by the dogs’ singing when he does that. However, he is getting pretty good at wrapping his hand around the neck of my guitar and getting his fingers on the fretboard. Of course, this is much easier for him when the guitar is on the stand. Recently, he saw a Wiggles DVD where one of them was playing the trumpet and has since then told us that he wants to play the trumpet, too.
The “why” questions have also been coming forth more frequently. I think one of the more interesting ones was when we were walking through the church parking lot and James asked, “why are there so much cars here, Mama?” Sometimes when he asks questions like this I turn them around on him and ask him what he thinks, but then all he does is just repeat my question and doesn’t answer it. Already, he is mastering the art of deflection. James is turning into a little tattletale, too. For example, if he asks Sean for a cookie too close to dinner time and Sean tells him no, he comes running over to me saying, “Mama – Daddy won’t let me have a cookie,” as if my answer is going to be any different.
Lately, James has been pretty good about going to sleep on his own, as long as his bedroom door is partway open and he knows we’re close by (we shut the door later after he’s fallen asleep). Every now and then he’ll have a nightmare which awakens him, but overall he’s been sleeping pretty soundly through the night. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that he will get through this particular rite of passage as a “big boy.” Potty training, however, is another story altogether! Let’s just say we’re working on it.
One thing that is so endearing is seeing James become very nurturing in his own way. For example, at night after his bath and before reading a bedtime story he lines up his teddy bears along his pillow and lays them down to sleep (mind you – he doesn’t leave enough room on the pillow for his own head). Sometimes the teddy bears stay awake to listen to me reading the book, and if there’s a particular picture in the book that seems interesting to James he’ll pick up one of the bears and show the bear the picture. Other times the bears may be sad and crying (James tells me all this, by the way), and he picks them and cuddles them and kisses them on the head to make them feel better. It’s so wonderful to see this sweet side of James come through. If anything, it validates his attachment to us.
We decided this past November that it is time to grow our family some more! So, our paper chase for Baby #2 from Kazakhstan is in full swing. Things are very busy right now as we gather the remainder of the documents for our dossier. We received our home study report from our social worker at the beginning of February and were finally able to send in our I-600A application. We’re almost finished collecting the necessary letters from from our employers, our bank, our mortgage company, getting our medical reports completed, etc. Also, last week consisted of getting 2 sets of fingerprints done. One was a “paper and ink” set done with the local police department. This hard copy of our fingerprints was FedEx’d to the FBI for our criminal background checks. We also had another set of fingerprints done for our I-600A application for USCIS – Dept. of Homeland Security, this time electronically via the biometric machines. James came with us and kept asking the technician lots of questions about what she was doing while she was fingerprinting me on the machine (the “why” questions were really in abundance this day). The technician eventually commented, “I feel like I’m the one being investigated!” Hopefully, it will not be much longer before the rest of the I-600A application is processed and we receive another big part of our dossier, the I-171H. Last time it only took 2 weeks after our biometric fingerprinting appointment, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed it will be just as quick this time around. We’ve only got about three or four documents left that we’re waiting on, so it’s just a matter of weeks before that dossier is outta here!
Well, that’s our update for now. Thanks so much for coming along and keeping up with all of us!
