Ancestors

Last weekend we went down to visit Ethan’s grandmother in South Carolina, the one who lost her husband in December. Ethan had never met her before, and it was very sweet to see them bonding. She had bought him a big carton of chocolate ice cream, and she watched cartoons with him. She may be moving up here soon, so hopefully that relationship can continue to grow. While we were down there, we went to the zoo and to a wonderful children’s museum in town. Ethan now loves traveling because we let him have more screen time when we’re away from home.

A couple of weeks ago, I took Ethan to have his teeth checked out for braces (poor kid – despite his good job at quitting sucking his thumb, the tooth extraction a year and a half ago has resulted in his two front teeth growing in with a hug gap between them). Early in the conversation the orthodontist looked at me and asked if I had worn braces. I wish I had made a bigger point of alerting them in advance that he was adopted – I hate when these questions come up (even though the other part of me is glad that they don’t assume he’s adopted).

In the few weeks before MLK day, Ethan seemed to have had race on his mind. Since we had never really talked to him about race, I finally pulled out a map one day and sat him down in front of it. We found Kazakhstan, and then I pointed out the countries around it, including Russia, China, and Mongolia. I explained that his ancestors were from those countries. He then repeated proudly many times, “My ancestors are from Kazakhstan, China, and Russia.”

It felt a little weird talking about ‘his’ ancestors, and not ‘our’ ancestors, but I wasn’t sure how else to talk about it. I also felt a little bad we hadn’t talked with him about it before, but who knows when the right time to bring things up?

Fourth Christmas

We celebrated our fourth Christmas together this year – I can't believe it's been so many! This year, Ethan was much calmer in December. He didn't really start getting nutty until the day before, about normal for any kid.

Ethan has actually been pretty generally wonderful. A few time-outs, but mostly just sweet and much easier to be with. Sometimes you don't realize how hard things are until they get better.

Santa & Grandparents

We were dealing with both of Ethan’s dad’s parents being in the hospital this week. Mark is down South helping them out, and Ethan and I are holding down the fort here. It isn’t affecting Ethan’s routine too much, so he seems to be doing ok, especially since he has never met these grandparents.

The other night Ethan said he wasn’t sure if he believed in Santa Claus because his friend Jonathan said it was your parents who put out the presents. Somehow I evaded the question, and we came up with the idea that he could do an experiment – he could try to wake up Christmas night and see if he saw Santa, or if it was his parents. He seemed pretty satisfied with that plan, except that he worried that he wouldn’t get any presents if Santa saw him.

Captain Rex and Secret Service Agent

Yesterday Ethan woke up with laryngitis, but otherwise seemed fine (it’s probably the remnants of a bad cold he’s had for the last week). I took him to school, but as I was dropping him off, he looked miserable, and asked to come home. Five minutes after getting home, he came out of his room with new pants on, and announced he was ready to go back to school. Apparently he was very upset that the jeans he was wearing were too short. This process took approximately one hour.

Ethan was Captain Rex from Star Wars on Halloween this past weekend. That morning, he threw a complete fit, and begged to go back to the store, because the gun he had with the costume was not the right gun. It was a Star Wars style gun, but not Captain Rex’s gun. (He knew this when he bought the costume, but later had regrets). Mark said that he should say that Captain Rex captured the gun from someone else on the battlefield. Ethan bitterly countered that “No one takes anyone else’s guns in Star Wars.” This was one of those moments in parenting when I just couldn’t sympathize with his point of view, feeling like it was a concession on my part to let him take any gun in the first place. And, of course, no one, no one at all, noticed that it was the wrong gun.

The other day I asked Ethan what he wants to be when he grows up, and he said he wants to be a Secret Service Agent. I asked him why, and he couldn’t really say, except that it was cool. I’m thinking that maybe it’s because they get to wear sunglasses, are important, and perhaps most important, they can carry a gun – the right gun.

8am, 22yrs old, and size 3

Ethan finally will now often sleep until 8am. It’s hard to describe just what a luxury it is not to be woken up early (before 7am) every morning, and to actually get up before him some days.

Ethan has a mad crush on one of the teachers at his after school program. He blushes, and admits he loves her (she is very pretty, plus Ethan likes that she wears a lot of make up). I’ve pointed out to him that not only has this teacher recently gotten married, so he’d have to wait until they got divorced, but that she’s also more than three times his age. The other day we were talking about magic, and he wistfully said that if he could wish for anything, “I’d wish if I were 22”.

Ethan’s feet recently catapulted up to size 3, spending about a week at size 1, and seemingly skipping size 2 altogether.

Three years!

This year, Ethan has another boy in his class, B., who was also internationally adopted. I'm really grateful for this, because Ethan relates to him (they have similar personalities in many ways), and it makes his experience seem more normal.

The other Ethan was playing with stuffed animals with another friend when I overhead him saying: "Let's pretend that some of the animals are adopted -- do you know what that means? It means that they did not come out of their mother's tummy. Let's pretend that these two are adopted, and that this one came out of the mom's tummy." How cool is that!

As Ethan and I were driving by the hospital in our town a couple of days ago, Ethan asked if some kids were born at the hospital, to which I said yes. Then he asked, "How did that happen?" I explained that the woman had a baby in her tummy, and that she went to the hospital where it came out. "No!" he protested. "No -- they came from the hospital!" I had to assure him that every baby came out of a woman's tummy -- that they could not actually be formed another way at a hospital, despite all the fancy machines.

Today it is officially three years since we met Ethan! It's amazing how much he has grown in that time, in all dimensions -- emotionally, size, language, etc. As I was writing this blog entry, I received an email saying that one of the coordinators we worked with in Kazakhstan died in a flood while traveling in India recently. Very strange.

Little Mei Visits, 2nd Grade

A couple of weeks ago little Mei came to visit us from Ohio. The last time we saw her, she was an 8-month old in the KO baby house. She and Ethan seemed to have a good time together. We wish she lived closer!


We also had a playdate with Rada.

We visited big sister Julie and Jon in Portland Maine. Ethan had fun playing their Wii, and seeing the fish.

Ethan also started 2nd grade. He has a wonderful teacher this year. Here he is getting on the bus the first day of 2nd grade.