ONE YEAR!!

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary since Ethan arrived in the United States! Hard to believe. Impossible to conceive of life without him.

I asked Ethan what was his favorite thing was over the past year. I was figuring he’d say something like going to the beach, or candy, or Halloween, or something like that. Instead he said “You pick me up and hold me.” I was blown away.

This year will actually be the second Christmas we’ve been together, but last year we were all still in a haze, so in most ways it feels like the first Christmas together. We went out on Saturday and picked out a tree. He was a little nervous beforehand – getting the tree seemed rather significant to him. We brought it home, and he helped decorate it. He especially enjoyed looking at all the different ornaments, and Mark held him up so he could put the angel on top. He said the tree was very pretty.

We also met Santa at the mall on Saturday. Ethan was a bit scared at first, but Santa was very nice, and Ethan told him he wanted a “transformer”. (Later I asked Ethan to show me in a kid’s toy catalogue what he had asked from Santa – otherwise I had no clue what he meant!)

Today I read a story to his kindergarten class (parents take turns doing that). Afterwards, I drove him to his after-K program, and hung out a bit with him. He really, really didn’t want me to leave. He told me how much he misses me when he’s gone. Boy was it hard to leave! Last night he cried before bed saying he was afraid we would die. Can you say "bonding"? It's hard to take it all in, the intensity, sometimes.

Re-adoption

On Thursday Ethan, Mark and I went to court to formally “re-adopt” Ethan through the American court system. Even though the adoption was finalized by Kazakh law last year, the re-adoption process allows it to go through the American system, and he ends up with an American birth certificate (huh?). The re-adoption process is a pro-forma thing that familes do for the extra level of security of having the US legal system formally approve it too.

Anyway, we met with the judge in her chambers (just a room), after waiting in the crowded court room with a wriggling Ethan, and lots of somber looking grownups and their attorneys. Even though we told Ethan it wasn’t anything bad, he was pretty nervous – not knowing exactly what to expect. He grabbed onto a chair when it was time to meet with the judge, and didn’t want to let go.

But as soon as the judge started talking nicely with Ethan, he warmed up immediately, and started bombarding her with questions. “That’s a J on your desk! What’s that for?” She explained the metal paperweight “J” was for Judge. “Are there bad people here?” he asked, to which she assured us there weren’t.

There was also a court officer there, who was indistinguishable from a policeman to a small boy. That made Ethan’s day. He asked the man what his name was (Bill), then asked about all the keys on his key chain. There was a giant jail key, and Ethan got to play with it and the real handcuffs, and try opening them with the key. Very cool.

Reading a book to Ethan

Reading a book to Ethan means being peppered with three to four questions for each sentence read. For example, yesterday we were reading a book about a princess who was turned into a dragon by her evil stepmother. “Is it a girl dragon?” “Is that her father?” “Is that her mother?” “Is she bad?” “Who is that?”

I love all his questions. I also love trying to answer them – thinking of how frustrating it must be for him at school and other places where there are so many kids he can’t get all his questions answered. (At his after-K open house recently they had a video of the kids being visited by firemen – the teachers remarked, and I watched, as Ethan shouted happily to the firemen as many questions as there was time to inject – “Is that your hat?” “Is that the ladder?” “Why are you wearing that?” “What’s that?” until he had several of them laughing.)

Ethan has started the very beginning of being able to sound out words. It’s very cute. He’s also a persistent and happy guesser (something we’ve always seen in him), made apparent when he happily shouts out random answers for what the word might be (he guessed ‘piano’ for the word ‘storm’ (??), or ‘cat’ for the word ‘seven’ (??). This skill will serve him very well for school and standardized tests in a few years, I think, since he’s often right).

Last night we watched the movie Star Wars, since he’s been asking about it a lot. We saw “Dark Vader” battle with “Lute Skywaller” with their “Life Savors”. There were lots of questions about “Is that the good guy?” “Is that a bad guy?” “Are they good or bad”, and finally in the last dramatic scenes, “Is that Luke? Is that Luke? Is that Luke?” since Luke and all the other good guys were wearing helmets.

When he woke up this morning he told us he had a dream in which he was fighting with ‘Dark Vader’ using their “Life Savors”, and he won, gave 'Dark Vader' a band aide, and then they were friends.