Walking to School & Crushes

Today Ethan and I walked to school. Rather, I should say, Ethan skipped and ran to school, and I walked beside him. On the way, we saved a worm from almost certain death on a sidewalk, and we still beat the bus.

Ethan’s reading is really improving. We read every night for a few minutes, which as my friend pointed out, probably triples his one-on-one reading time every day. (The math: there are 22 kids in his class, one teacher, and 6 hours of school. Even if she spent every minute of the day meeting one-on-one with kids, that would equal 16 minutes per kid. Since there are lots of other things, like lunch, and art, and math, etc, etc, it’s probably less than 5 minutes per kid per day, if that. If we spend even 10 minutes reading with him, we’ve tripled the one-on-one time. Interesting math, isn’t it?)

Ethan seems a lot happier and more confident at school too, which is a huge relief. He can read the really easy Dr. Seuss books, like “Green Eggs and Ham” pretty easily, and is starting to be able to read slightly harder books.

Last Saturday we had a six year old girl and her 5 year old sister come over for dinner with their parents. Ethan was so cute – he treated it as if it was a date. He dressed up in a long button-down shirt and fixed his hair before they came over (the latter of which consists of his wetting his hair and trying to make it go to the side, which, at least in my opinion, is completely futile because his hair is so short). He explained that the younger sister, A. has a crush on him. He, on the other hand, has a crush on R., his 13-year old babysitter.

More Questions

Monday was another snow day. Ethan had a series of play dates with other kids his age, and with the comparison to the other kids, I ended up feeling very grateful and proud of who Ethan is as a person. Ethan is incredibly perceptive of other people, and does listen to us when it’s important (at least most of the time!)

Ethan has had adoption on his mind recently. The other night we were watching the movie “Madagasgar II”. I noticed that Ethan started wiggling and squirming when Alex the Lion ends up in Africa and meets his biological parents. Then, the next night, 10 minutes before we had to go out, he started wanting to play all the roles of baby in the tummy, through five year old. He does a very good job of playing the different ages, including being a new-born baby, a one year old, and a two year old.

The next morning Ethan woke up with the topic of adoption more explicitly on his mind. One of the first comments I got from him was, “You can’t be my mother since your skin is a different color.” I thought quickly and started listing a bunch of non-adopted kids who had different skin colors from their moms.

The next question came fast and furious: “Why did the woman whose tummy I was in take me to the balalar (orphanage)?” I said that there were a lot of reasons she might have – “She couldn’t take care of you, she was young, she was sick, she didn’t have money”. Then he said, “I think she loved me”. “Yes!” I agreed, very relieved that he felt loved by her. What more could I ask for? “Yes, I’m sure she loved you so much she wanted you to be taken care of.”

Then, no break from the little guy, with: “So I have more than one mother!” Thinking fast again, I pointed out to him all the non-adopted kids and grownups he knows who have more than one mom, including his sisters and brother, and his friend who has two moms living with her.

As quickly as it started, it was over, and we were on to playing with Star Wars Legos.