AttitudeAdopt

Lilly

2010-12-15T05:46:00.000-08:00

Ethan is now officially an uncle. Little niece Lilly was born a couple of weeks ago, and is incredibly cute! Ethan has been very good with her, and it's fun to have a baby around. I'll try to get photos up when I can navigate the technology.

A game that Ethan and I play, which he is really good at is: "It's not impossible because..." It goes like this: the first person says something that sounds impossible, and the other person has to figure out a way it could be possible. Like: "No one can pick up a house with one hand". Sounds impossible, right? Nope -- not if the house is a toy. Or, "No one can run faster than a car". Impossible? Nope -- not if they're running on an airplane that's going faster than a car. You get the idea. Ethan is remarkably good at this game!

His after school says he's also great at Uno, switching seamlessly from being a boisterous, competitive player with the older kids, to a gentle, mentoring help with the younger kids. The teacher was just gushing with how much she loved Ethan. (This is something I get a lot, by the way.)

Braces

2010-11-16T06:43:00.001-08:00

Ethan got braces today. He was very excited, and he chose the purple bands. He looked a lot older with them on.

The last month has been very busy. In mid-October we went to Bermuda where I did a 2.5 mile ocean swim. In the last few weeks, Mark's mom went into the hospital for emergency surgery, and is recovering well.

This past Saturday, we went to dinner at Anastasia's house, where she made us a Russian/Kazakh dinner of lamb stew. (Anasatasia is the woman who took Ethan and me to the zoo in Almaty, and she just moved up to the Boston area.) L., also born in Kazakhstan, came to dinner with us as well, and Ethan enjoyed getting to know him better. They are quite adorable together, and at one point I just had to give L. a big hug because he reminds me so much of Ethan.

One Minute, Twilight

2010-10-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

One night recently when Mark had to work late, Ethan and I watched the movie "Twilight". Two days later, Ethan came up to me in the morning as I was making breakfast, and said "Mom, can we talk about Twilight?" Of course. "You know when the doctor vampire told the people that the man was killed by the same animal, well, he was lying, wasn't he, because he knew it wasn't an animal, that it was another vampire." I was a bit blown away that not only had he reviewed the movie in his head, but also re-analyzed the sequence of events (when the scene plays, we the audience don't know the doctor is a good-vampire, and so naturally have no way of knowing he's lying, unless you go back and review the scene with the later knowledge -- pretty cool, huh?).

That same morning, my smart, energetic son managed to: put hair conditioner in his hair after I had wetted it once to tame some bed-head thereby requiring a second hair rinsing; reading a book backwards to make it more interesting; putting on his friend's pants because they were different; insisting on wearing his adult XXL school jacket (which he bought for $5 one evening when he was cold at a school picnic).

Ethan has also taken to doing renditions of movie scenes and experiences we have had. For example, after watching the movie Iron Man 2, he role-played one of the fights, first taking the bad-guy role (complete with his version of a Russian accent -- not bad!), then stepping a foot away and turning around to be Iron Man, falling to the ground. Or, after watching Arthur on TV, he took on the role of Mr. Ratburn the teacher, then several of the children's characters, using different voices for each. And, after taking Ethan to the local church one recent Sunday morning, he replayed the hour, complete with his taking roles as the minister giving a sermon with arms waving and as a deep a voice as he could manage, and the choir singing.

On a more serious note, we have a new game at the house called "One Minute". It started recently because Ethan has a habit of blurting out mean words, like saying "jerk". It's not very pleasant, and for a while I was responding that we would take away 10 minutes of screen time every time he said something that wasn't nice. The other morning he lost 40 minutes before I dropped him off at school, and during the day I realized that in the grand scheme of things, a) I'd much rather him say mean things than hit something, and b) I'd much rather he say them to us rather than to anyone else.

So, brilliant mama that I am, during the day I invented a game called "One Minute" which I explained to him on the way home, and he picked up immediately and even practiced. It goes like this: if he says something mean, and I say "one minute", he loses screen time unless within one minute he first apologizes, then explains what he was really upset about. This has turned out to be a wonderful window into what Ethan is actually feeling, and infinitely more pleasant than the mean words.

3rd Grade, Retainer, and Webkinz

2010-09-08T05:17:00.001-07:00

Ethan started 3rd grade yesterday. He is now older than more than half the kids in the school, and it suits him well. He continues to blossom when he is the "big kid on the block". This year there was a lot less anxiety the week before school -- not sure why, but it was a welcome relief.

Last night we watched an Arthur episode called "The Real Mr. Ratburn" which, appropriately, is about Arthur and his friends' first day of 3rd grade. Mark and I, at least, thought it was very funny, although it might have struck too close to home for Ethan (it's about how the kids compare their teacher to the others, and think he's a scary guy).

This morning, Ethan and I went to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast. I asked Ethan if it was because he liked the food, or because he sees people there. My little social guy answered that it's because he runs into people there. Today we saw Lindsey, his after school teacher, and a work friend of mine named Dave who often works there using the internet.

In the continuing trend of odd, but mostly healthy food preferences, Ethan likes to order coffee with milk, and just the egg from the egg sandwich (or two eggs today). Apparently, Ethan is the only one to order just the egg (no bread, no cheese, etc), because the cashiers were completely baffled how to ring it up when he first started ordering them. But, also apparently, we do it so often that they've now trained their cashiers how to ring us up (ring something else up that costs 99 cents, like cream cheese side, and then go tell the guy making sandwiches to just give us the eggs).

We finally got Ethan a computer recently -- a little, inexpensive laptop. It has a learning curve, and Ethan has gotten frustrated. Meanwhile, we did go to the WebKinz site and "adopted" a pet. It was a bit strange to be sitting next to Ethan as we "adopted" an animal.

Ethan's pregnant older sister Jen came over to visit during the weekend, and it seems to bring up a bunch of adoption issues with Ethan. In the morning, he wanted to play being a baby, although he did ask before we did whether he was an adopted baby, or came out of my tummy. I asked him which he wanted to pretend, and he said 'adopted'. He then played baby, and grew up through the progression to toddler in about 5-10 minutes.

We've also gotten some, "You're not my real mom", "You're my step mom", and "I wish I had other parents". The last doesn't phase me, as I felt the same way growing up, but the first two can get me down sometimes. I realize that it's good he feels comfortable enough to tell us this, and that he doesn't feel that way most of the time, but I do wish (unrealistically) that he'd be happy all of the time.

God and Indiana Jones

2010-08-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

As I was making my tea this morning, Ethan was chattering away. He was explaining to me that the movies 'Indiana Jones' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean' were analogous in how they handled violence and humor. Not in exactly those words, but I was struck, as I often am with Ethan, at how good he is with analogies.

Ethan also thinks a lot about things. Lately he has been declaring that he doesn't believe in God. We don't argue it either way with him -- we feel it's important for him to come to his own conclusions. We point out that most people believe that God created life.

Today Ethan explained that God couldn't have created people because obviously cave men came before God. His evidence: God wears robes, and cave men lived before robes were invented, so God had to come after cave men. You have to admire the logic! And also his astute observation that God usually is depicted wearing robes that were invented after cave men.

Ethan also pointed out that Joseph was Jesus's step dad.

Summer Rain

2010-08-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's been a busy summer. Ethan went to the town's summer camp most of the time, and we went up to NH last weekend with a bunch of other families. As usual, Ethan is much happier during the summer. We've gone swimming at the pond, had lots of ice cream, and enjoyed the sunny weather. The last couple of days it's finally been raining, and I've taken Ethan to go swimming at the indoor pool where he could blow off some steam and show off all he's learned in the swim lessons at camp.

Next week Ethan will get round one of his braces installed by the orthodontist. The week after that he starts third (!) grade. The time is just whizzing by.

SC and NC, & Hawk for Dinner

2010-07-09T16:07:00.000-07:00

Last month we took a trip down to North Carolina to visit big brother Alec, and then drove down to South Carolina to visit Grandma Dee. Alec, Kate and Otis are living in Chapel Hill. They steered us to a great roadside BBQ place, and a cafe with some of the best coffee we've ever had. Ethan spent hours playing in the hotel pool. In South Carolina Ethan tried out the neighbor's tree swing, and helped pull a few weeds from the front walk.

Our kitchen table is right beside a bay window overlooking our back yard and the bird feeder. Tonight at dinner Ethan spotted a red-tailed hawk who landed in a tree, looking for his own dinner at the bird feeder. We got to watch the hawk for about 10 minutes. Very cool!

Ethan has been going to summer school (um, I mean reading camp) for the last couple of weeks. This morning when I was dropping him off, he asked me if I wished I had been pregnant. "No", I told him honestly. "Why not?", he asked. "Because it's heavy and uncomfortable," I said. "Oh, you mean it would be hard to run" he wisely observed. But I added, "I wish I could have had you in my tummy, because I love you and would have liked you close to me." And with that he was saying high to the kids who were already there.

We'll see big sister Jen, who is pregnant, this weekend.

Lime Rock Raceway

2010-06-02T05:01:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we went out to Lenox, stayed a night, and then went to the Lime Rock Raceway to see some fast cars. We went to the Berkshire Museum while we were out there, and we went to my favorite chocolate place, Chocolate Springs. It was fun seeing the cars zip around the racetrack, and it made Mark really happy to have us there with him.

Not sure why, but Ethan managed to complain about 80% of the time during the entire trip. He was most happy to be able to sleep in the same room as us (he really doesn't like sleeping alone). Everything else he grouched about. He was probably just very tired, but it was really unpleasant being around him. Still, it was nice to finally get away with the family, and the weather was perfect.

Last night we had a potential contractor stop by the house. Ethan noticed his accent, and asked him if he was born in the U.S. The man said no, and explained where he was from. I thought about mentioning that Ethan wasn't born here either, but then I kept my mouth shut to see if Ethan would bring it up himself. He did not, and I was glad I didn't say anything.

I wish I knew what people said to Ethan about adoption when I'm not with him. The mom of the other internationally adopted boy in his class mentioned that her son had used language that they didn't use at home to talk about adoption. Around the same time Ethan used similar language, which we also don't hear at home. They almost certainly has something happen, but neither will talk about it since discussing the day is considered 'boring'.

Mother's Day

2010-05-12T05:03:00.001-07:00

Ethan woke up at 6:30am bright eyed and bushy tailed on Mother's day. He couldn't contain himself. I was really sleepy, so didn't get up for another 45 minutes. When I got downstairs he was jumping from foot to foot, and bubbling over. He finally told me to cover my eyes, then brought out two gifts for me. One was a pair of earrings he had made at school (very cool!), and the other was a bouquet of hand prints (that looked like flowers), with nice phrases written on them. It was so sweet! He explained how he had hidden the presents in his stuffed animal pile.

Another mother in our life is the cardinal sitting six inches outside both our living room window and our breezeway window. (I thought she would abandon the nest when she saw how often we walked by, but she has persisted). She laid three eggs, and now has three chicks in the nest, and Tom got some great photos of them on Mother's day. (I sent the link to Ethan's teacher, who showed them to the class, since they had just done a unit on baby chickens in their eggs.) I love watching this momma cardinal -- I think she actually now recognizes Mark, Ethan and me since she doesn't get up from her nest anymore when we walk by her, but she does get up when someone else walks by. The bright red male shows up in the mid-day to help with the feeding. Watching her makes me appreciate: having a roof, umbrellas, heat, babysitters, and a husband who spends the night at home. (On the other hand, she only has to do this for a few weeks, and then is done.)

Here was my morning with Ethan today: He woke up at 6am and whispered upstairs. I was awake, so decided to get up with him. He tried on several shirts and pairs of pants before deciding on what to wear (he ended up changing his shirt one more time later in the morning because he spilled milk on it). Today he wanted to wear jeans for the first time ever -- reason is that he's going to his friend N's house after school, and wanted to be able to put on a holster.

Then Ethan started moaning about his homework and getting hysterical (he was too tired to finish the math last night, so needed to finish it this morning. The question he was stumped by was: his teacher is 5 foot 11 inches -- how many inches tall is she?) He also had to alphabetize the spelling words from this week this morning so he could go to N.'s house after school (I've found that getting Ethan to do his homework before playing after school has many benefits -- he does it faster, and he's not all tired by the time he gets to it. This is somewhat of an issue because most days I don't pick him up from after-school care until 5pm, so he's already had a long day. Today I'll pick him up at 5:30pm). He absolutely loves going to N's house, by the way.

I was brushing my teeth this morning, humming a Xmas song. Ethan asked me to please stop. I did stop, but then he said again, "Please stop." I pointed out I had, but then he said, "But you were still singing it in your head, weren't you." Yes. Pretty funny!

Since Ethan turned 8, and no longer is required to use a booster seat, we can have him ride in the front seat of the car. Today I drove him to school at 7:25am, and he hopped out of the car by himself. He will be tired tonight!!

8 years old

2010-05-03T05:09:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe, but Ethan turned 8 on Friday! That night he opened presents from family, and on Saturday he had his kid birthday, which included training from a Jedi Knight Trainer. For some reason, he didn't want the kids at school to sing happy birthday to him, and at his party he had other kids blow out his candles for him. Not sure what that was about, but he seemed to have a good time. Other things I don't understand about Ethan: his teacher allows birthday kids to have lunch with her and choose three friends to bring with them. He chose three kids he did not invite to his birthday party. I suspect, as I have before, that the ways of the 'popular' kids will forever be beyond my comprehension, as much as they were when I was growing up.

One iconic Ethan moment: the Jedi Knight Trainer had Ethan start off some 2-person balloon popping races. Ethan said, "Ready, set, pickles!", then, "Ready, set, John!" with perfect comedic timing.

I was very glad I survived the party. I had a horrible, horrible cold all last week. Luckily we had done all his present shopping the week before, because all I managed to do last week was spend time with grandpa and grandma who were visiting, wrap a few presents between naps, and do the minimum for work. During the party, I sat the whole time, and was extremely grateful we had an energetic person to entertain the kids.

All the family gestures last week meant a whole lot to Ethan. Grandma and grandpa visiting made him feel very special. Sister Jen and Tim driving all the way over just to drop off presents was so thoughtful. Aunt Jenny sending presents in the middle of dealing with their stuff meant a lot. And Ethan appreciated that Kate and Alec sent him presents too.

Out of the blue, on the way to school on Friday, Ethan said something about how his "real mom loved him". I asked him if what he meant by "real mom" was his birth mom, and I agreed that yes, she probably loved him. I added that he had lots of people love him, like us, and his siblings, and his grandparents. "You forgot more" he declared, "My aunt, my uncle, my cousin!". Yes, I agreed.

This is the first time his birth mom has come up recently. I had just been reading an adoption magazine the night before, and realizing we should probably talk a bit more about his origins, so I was almost relieved he brought it up. I asked him if he was thinking of her because he came out of her tummy 8 years ago in the hospital. He quickly asked, "How do you know I was born in a hospital?". I said we had a piece of paper saying he did. I told him, as I have before, that then he went to the Balalar. "That's a funny word, don't you think?" he asked. I said that it was our word for it -- that it was our word for orphanage, a place where kids go when their family can't take care of them. I asked him if anyone ever asked him about being adopted. He said 'no', but I suspect he wouldn't tell me if they did.

I then told Ethan that my grandfather, his great-grandfather lived in an orphanage for a while when he was a kid, and hated it so much that he would never eat macaroni and cheese again. Then I reminded Ethan that we don't have orphanages in America any more, that kids live with foster families. "Like Marina's family" he said, thinking of a family we know who foster kids. Yes, I agreed. Then he changed the topic --it was gone as quickly and abruptly as it had arrived.

I generally try to tell Ethan the truth, and feel it's important that he be able to trust us. Last night I decided to reveal to Ethan the real identity of Santa Clause. We were having a discussion about silly things people believe in, like crop circles, and I realized that I have always felt somewhat uncomfortable about the lies involved with Santa, even if it's for a good cause (clause?). Ethan took it very well, and had a real appreciation for the details, such as our taking bites from Santa's cookies. It felt important to me that we tell him the truth, rather than him hearing it from others (actually he has already heard it from other kids, as we pointed out to him, but he chose not to believe it). We also told him about the Easter bunny, but we didn't bring up the Tooth Fairy.

Uncle and Uncle

2010-04-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

We had some really bad news recently. Ethan's only uncle has been diagnosed with stage 4 abdominal cancer, and has started undergoing chemo. I've been very distracted and upset, and it's been extremely hard on my sister and their kids. It's just plain bad luck, with nothing that anyone could have done to prevent it. I'm just really hoping the chemo works.

We also had some really good news recently. Ethan's oldest sister is two months pregnant. If everything goes ok, Ethan will be an uncle himself in the fall. It's funny sometimes when the best of things happen at the same time as the worst of things. It will be really nice for Ethan to have another kid in the family, as he really is otherwise the only small guy.

Rain, rain, rain

2010-04-02T07:28:00.000-07:00

It looks like, finally, the rain has stopped. We had something like 18 inches of rain in March. Ethan and I went to see the flooding, finding some cars underwater, some houses with nature-made moats, and the North Bridge partly underwater. Wow! Luckily we're at the top of a sandy hill, so no problems with our house.

Time flies. Ethan's 8th birthday is only a few weeks away. We've hired a Jedi Knight trainer to come put the boys through their paces at the party (note the word 'boys' -- that's what Ethan wants, and I've noticed that somehow this year the parties have become more gender separated). Anyway, I found myself crying the other night unexpectedly with grief that he wasn't of all things, 4 any more. He's definitely growing up, and I sort of miss the little guy who was so easy to carry. On the other hand, the reality is that things are so much easier with Ethan now.

The basic point is that I knew that kids grew up fast -- but that fast? I had no idea! The years are just starting to fly by. I look back and the first few months with him seemed to long -- and that was years ago now. This is going to be his 4th birthday with us! So hard to believe. As this reality of the speed of life has sunk in, I've been making lots of conscious choices to just spend time with him, and enjoy him before he grows even bigger.

Are jeans going to finally go away? That's my prediction (noted here in 2010). Reason: the 2nd graders won't wear them. Ethan will only wear the nylon, synthetic athletic pants with the elastic waste. Will not, NOT, wear jeans under any condition. Too tight, he says. At first I thought it was only him, but no, it's many of the boys, and even some of the little girls, and not just at Ethan's school. It's so interesting how trends like this spread.

Gaga for Lady Gaga

2010-02-15T08:01:00.001-08:00

We've had a trip back into the past this week. First, our microwave broke. That may not sound like a big deal, but it's quite disorienting to lose a tool we use numerous times a day. I hadn't reheated food on top of the stove for probably over 20 years. Not so bad, actually.

Then, our heating went out Thursday night. They tried to fix it on Friday, but can't, and we need to get a whole new system in. We have a wood stove in the basement, that's been heating the house ok, and supplementing with some electric heaters. At least it's in the 30's outside, and not 5 degrees. Kids are always trying to make connections between things. At one point Ethan thought that the heating went out because of the microwave.

Another blast into the past was to watch some of the videotape that Karen B. took when we were meeting Ethan at the KO orphanage 3+ years ago. We hadn't watched it before now because we didn't have a VCR player (remember what they are?. Anyway, Ethan claimed not to remember any of the Kazakh, but at one point the translator asked him a question and he turned to us and he said, "I'm telling her 'I don't know'". On the video he then sang a Kazakh song, and he turned to us and said, "What am I singing?". We told him we had no idea, but it had something to do with Kazakhstan. Makes me think that he could probably relearn the language fairly fast if he ever wanted to.

It was also amazing to see how small he was! He's grown over 15 inches since then. It was also amazing seeing him baffled by the crayons -- gave me renewed appreciation of just how far he's come, and how many challenges this brave little guy has tackled so successfully in the last 3 years.

But sometimes I'm also aware of how the adoption issue will never go away. Yesterday I mailed some vitamins and clothes to the KO orphanage. When I explained that our son was from the orphanage, the postal worker behind the desk asked me in a tense way if Ethan still had family there. Why do people ask questions like that?

At least half the time when I mention we adopted an older child, I get the loaded "and how's he DOing" with a face scrunched up ready to be sympathetic to the problems. When I say "great", they almost look confused. I was glad Ethan wasn't with me at the post office, and it made me wish I hadn't brought the topic up. On the other hand, I feel like we're also ambassadors of how adoption can work well. I guess that I bring up the topic more freely when Ethan isn't with me, so he doesn't have to deal with the weirdness. But it is tiring, I have to tell you. I even get this reaction with parents who adopted younger kids -- even though a majority of the time they're the ones with the problems.

Ethan is gaga over the pop singer Lady Gaga (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Gaga) right now. He was first fascinated hearing her songs on the Kiss108 radio station that the bus driver plays, and then seeing her outrageous outfits just sealed the deal.
But really, he's still in madly in love with one of his married after school teachers.

Ancestors

2010-01-29T11:54:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-29T15:15:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-02T11:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-05T11:46:00.000-08:00

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

2009-10-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-10-16T05:53:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T06:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Baker Pond

2009-09-01T06:27:00.000-07:00

In the middle of August we went up to Baker Pond in New Hampshire for our (what's turning out to be) annual trip. This year Cathy & Tim, Dave & Amy & Laura & Michael, and Christopher & Joshua & Mary all joined us. We totally lucked on the weather, as it was the first warm sunny days that they’d had all summer. (I’m declaring this the “Summer that Wasn’t” since it’s either been raining or cold or ridiculously hot for all but about 10 days. Uggh!)

We had a fabulous time at Baker Pond, swimming in the pond, kayaking, playing tennis, collecting berries (Ethan: "Let's put them in the container! Every one, put your berries in the container!" Then, walking home, Ethan opened up his mouth, and poured the entire container of berries into his mouth and swallowed. I wasn't fooled, though -- I only put berries in containers when there are more than I can eat.) Just like the past two years, it was really wonderful to have all the kids for Ethan to play with, and to be able to talk with other interesting adults. We also had some great food between Joshua the serious cook and Tim the former B&B manager.

Mark and I feel like we’re going through another stage of bonding with Ethan. He’s been a lot more scared of random things, and looking to us to pick him up and comfort him. I was sick last week, and Ethan couldn't seem to get enough of me (I was talking with a fellow mom about this – seems that if you’re sick, they just want more of you, even though you have nothing to give, and you're just crabby with them.) Last night Ethan told Mark that he didn't look like him, and that he looked more like me. Mark asked him what he meant, and Ethan pointed to Mark's graying hair. (Ethan worries a lot about us getting older. He's also really afraid of old people.) Mark just told Ethan that of course he was his dad, and lots of people get gray hair, and he isn't really that old. Mark said Ethan was fine with that, and moved on to the next topic. Today our friend Tom offered to take Ethan to the amusement park, and much to my surprise, Ethan just wanted to stick to his normal routine and have me pick him up. Maybe it's also partly because Ethan starts second grade on Thursday. I can't believe it!

Beach Week

2009-08-03T06:03:00.000-07:00

Last week we had a great vacation in Misquamicut (near Westerly) Rhode Island. We rented an apartment that was a five-minute walk from the beach. Ethan had a great time playing in the waves, including: karate chopping them, diving through them, jumping over them, running away from them, and riding a boogie board in them. He built several impressive sand castles, and then had fun destroying them.

Considering what a rainy summer it’s been, we lucked out and had about four fabulous days. The water was warm enough that we could swim, even on the days it was cloudy and foggy. I really enjoyed being away from work for a week, and I think Ethan appreciated spending a lot of time not having to do much of anything. Most mornings we ate breakfast at a little place on the beach at the end of our street. The food wasn’t great, but the view couldn’t be beat.

Ethan also had the chance to play a lot with Julia, who was down there for the week with her family at their vacation house. Even though she’s 12, they played together really well (maybe partly because neither of them had anyone else their own age to play with). Julia showed Ethan how to catch crabs with pieces of hot dog and squid, how to ride a skim board, and pulled him in the wagon down to the beach.

On Wednesday we met Dave, Amy, Laura and Michael at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut. We saw Beluga whales, petted rays, fed birds, saw a sea-lion show, and Ethan managed to get the penguins to chase after his finger through an underwater window at their exhibit. It was great to see Laura and Michael, and how much they’ve grown! I love that Laura and Ethan are in the same grade. A typical Ethan story: Ethan remembered how much Michael loved cars from last summer, and so brought one of his cars to give to Michael.

Another typical Ethan story: This morning Mark had to get up at 5am to take a flight out of town for work. He went to say goodbye to Ethan in his room before he left, but Ethan wasn’t there. He came back upstairs and showed me that Ethan had crawled under our bed at some point in the middle of the night, and was fast asleep in one of his blankets on the floor. With Ethan, I can never quite tell whether he does things like that because he really wants to be in our room and/or because he wants to do something different and/or to see how sneaky he can be. I am sure that if he had to sleep in our room all the time, he would be sneaking downstairs to be in his own room after a while.

And one more characteristic Ethan story: This morning we were both awake since 6am because of Mark’s early departure, so I took Ethan down to the camp’s early drop-off at 7:30am. There weren’t many kids there, and Ethan got suddenly shy because he found out that he was in a different group now that reading camp is over, with new counselors. Even though this is the same kid who walks up to complete strangers and starts conversations, charms random people with his smile and comments, and is one of the cooler kids at school, he wanted me to take him back later when I could be with him to introduce him to the counselor. Sure! Do you think I could get a hug too?

Adirondacks

2009-07-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

We seem to be taking a lot of trips! This weekend we drove to the Adirondacks to visit Ethan’s aunt and uncle and cousins. Ethan said he likes to travel because he gets to play his Nintendo game and watch more DVDs.

We stayed in a little cabin on a lake, took a few hikes, and Ethan absorbed as much attention from his family as he possibly could. It’s amazing to me how much he’s matured in the last six months!

Last weekend his big sister Jen came over with her husband Tim, and Ethan got everyone engaged in a big Nerf gun fight. It was so inspiring that Jen and Tim went out and got their own Nerf guns.

Meanwhile, Ethan has been going to reading camp every morning for the past few weeks. He spends three hours in the morning with six other kids and a teacher and aid. We've seen a lot of progress, and the best part is that he's enjoying going, probably in part because he's at the same level as the other kids in the group. It turns out that his teacher, who he really likes, will be teaching him in second grade in the fall too.

Savannah

2009-06-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we went down to Savannah to visit big brother Alec who just graduated from college. The flight down was an adventure. We were supposed to land in Atlanta and change planes, but as we were circling the airport to land, we were diverted to Augusta Georgia. The airport was so small, they didn’t even have the right type of stairway to let us off the plane.

This situation was so similar to the one on the second trip back to Kazakhstan, that it was eerie. This time at least, we could speak the language, we were delayed hours instead of days, and we were only a few hours drive from our destination instead of 24 hours.

We ended up renting a car and driving to our hotel on the Tybee Island beach, with a stop to visit Alec and his girlfriend Cait’s apartment. They have a cute puppy named Otis, which Ethan spent the whole trip being dramatically terrified of.

Alec showed Ethan how to drive a racecar on his computer, tossed him up over his shoulder, and wrestled with him in the back seat. At one point Ethan squawked that Alec had hurt him, complete with tears of pain. Alec thought Ethan was faking, but I thought tears must mean it was real. Turns out I was wrong, and Ethan somehow managed to make fake tears on purpose. Wow. Ethan later said he wished he lived across the street from Alec and Cait so he could see them more often.

Funny Guy & Birthday Party

2009-05-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

Recent tidbits from life with Ethan:

Yesterday we were at the library, and Ethan ran up to a box of things for sale. He reached in, pulled an old LP out, and asked me: “Are these frisbees?” Wow, hard for someone from my generation to imagine that he’s never, ever seen an LP before!
The other night Ethan was eating dinner with his dad and told him that he wanted to pretend they were both 49, and that they were drinking coffee at a restaurant. “So,” he said to Mark in his most mature voice, “how was your work today?”
Ethan pretended one time with me that he was a grownup whose job was a scientist. He told me that as a scientist he made “potions” all day. I’m so glad to finally understand what scientists do all day!
Ethan was the star of his after-school play about the three Billy Goats Gruff. He was a troll, and said in a big booming voice, “Who’s trip-trapping over my bridge!” He wore a long black beard, and a hat. All the other parents told us we should sign him up for a theater program sometime. Ethan still insists he doesn’t want anyone to look at him, which is always funny when he says it.
We had Ethan’s 7th birthday last weekend. Theme was Star Wars, and we made light sabers out of swim noodles. The cake had Star Wars figures on them, and Star Wars music played in the background. Kids were wild.
Last Saturday we went to the house of two little girls who have lots and lots of dress up clothes. Ethan was in heaven. Two little cute girls who both like him, and tons of things to dress up in. They played for over 4 hours without interrupting us for more than about three minutes. What a treat!

Florida and 7th Birthday

2009-05-03T09:57:00.000-07:00

Ethan turned seven years old this week – yeah! Grandma and Grandpa came and visited, and we had birthday dinner #1 with them, featuring watermelon with candles instead of cake at Ethan’s request (Ethan loves candy, and will eat the frosting on cakes, but is not overly fond of the cake itself). Birthday dinner #2 on his actual birthday included a trip to McDonalds with dad, and as tiny a cake as mom could find, then covered with candy. Birthday dinner #3 was with big sisters Julie and Jen and brother-in-law Tim, and included hot dogs, hamburgers, and yet another small cake covered with candy. All dinners have featured at least some presents that were Lego kits. The kid party is in a couple of weeks.

Last week was spring break, and Ethan, Mark and I went down to the Everglades in Florida. We not only survived, but weather, health, and airlines all cooperated to make it a very enjoyable and relaxing trip. Here are some highlights:
• We enjoyed 80 degree weather all week
• We saw alligators in the wild close-up
• We ate alligator (like chicken, but not)
• We stayed in a cute fishing cabin on a canal in the Everglades
• Pelicans hung out right outside the cabin
• We rented a boat to go out to some beaches on islands only accessible that way
• We had to wade across a lagoon to get to the ocean on Marco Island
• Ethan played and played in the ocean
• We stayed on South Beach in Miami the last night

Brass and Silver

2009-04-14T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday was Easter. We had a big egg hunt over at the Ripley School with 10 other kids, mostly kids from the Sunday play group I started there. Here's a photo of the kids:

The weekend before last Ethan and I went to a brass concert at a local arts studio. It was designed for kids, and performed by six 20-something music students. We met two of his buddies there, and we also walked around the open art studios in the building. One artist was a jewelry maker, and she had Ethan and Lance enthralled. She let them squash some silver metal, and they watching her hammer, melt, and bend the metal. I think the artist got a kick out of it too since she had two little boys so totally fascinated by what she was doing.

On most Tuesdays, Ethan’s school gets out at noon. Most weeks Ethan goes to the town’s “Terrific Tuesday” program for the afternoon, and they run around like crazy guys, or go on field trips. But today, a non-working mom is having her son’s birthday party at 2pm. To get Ethan to his classmate’s party involved a complicated plan of calling a parent, getting a ride there and back, learning the parent had a conflict the night before, calling four other parents to see who could give him a ride home, finding one, calling several back to tell them he had a ride, sending a note to Ethan’s school saying he was taking the bus home with kid #1, forgetting to send said note because Ethan was interrupting me at 6:15 this morning, and finally calling and apologizing profusely to the school for failing to send the note.

In the world of playdates, I’m now -2, and I still end up picking up Ethan earlier than usual. This is why I am so very grateful for all the afterschool programs! They are a great fit for Ethan, who could just play and play and play all day long, as long as he has someone to play with.

Next week Mark, Ethan, and I are headed off to Florida for spring break. Just us. Wish us luck!

Walking to School & Crushes

2009-03-27T08:39:00.000-07:00

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.

East Hill Farm, Jokes

2009-02-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

Ethan thinks that sprinkling bathroom and body-part words at random places in conversations is the epitome of humor. Repeated requests for him not to do it has yielded little. So, the other night, in an attempt to “re-direct” his energy, I suggested he try to come up with some other jokes that would be funny to more people (or as Ethan would say, “more humans”) than just other six year old boys.

He then preceded to tell a long string of jokes that went something like this: “Mom, why did you put the X in the cake?”, where X was anything from something actually funny, like ‘the hairy spider’, to something stupid, like ‘the boot’. After way too many of these, we tried coming up with something funny to say at the beach, but to no avail. At least it was worth a try.

A couple of weekends ago Ethan and I went to East Hill Farm with seven other moms and their internationally adopted kids, four of whom were from Kazakhstan. We had a lot of fun, including taking a sleigh ride with two big horses through the snow, and swimming in the basement pool. I liked being able to talk to other adults, Ethan having other kids to play with, and not having to cook for a couple of days.

The only downer was that Ethan woke up at 5:45am on Sunday morning, and wouldn’t go back to sleep. We got up and out of the cabin so we didn’t wake up Zack and Karen, and we wandered over in the pre-dawn to see the animals in the barn, and try to find some eggs in the chicken house to have for breakfast. When we finally went inside the inn, Ethan found another girl awake, who he proposed to as they were playing a game that involved toppling wooden blocks.

Thought I’d add a description Tom wrote in an email to me about playing with Ethan:

“He's very creative when we play one-on-one. What started out as hide and seek became a game with magic blankets that moved by themselves every time I turned around. Strangely, one of them weighed just as much as Ethan. From there, one of the magic blankets ended up on me and somehow I was then buried under a huge mound of stuff - all his bed covers, books, the bean bag chair, large stuffed animals.”

Yup, sounds like Ethan.

Chess and Star Wars Legos

2009-01-29T12:31:00.000-08:00

Given what I understand of Ethan’s personality, I’ve been surprised at his intrigue with the game of chess. It started at the library (at least my knowledge of it), where there are a few chessboards near the older-kid comic books and graphic novels (Ethan’s affinity to which is completely consistent with his general disposition, including the fascination with the depiction of females within them).

He really wanted to play chess one day, and I figured we’d last about 3 minutes before he got bored, since there are so many rules. He lasted a lot longer, and despite griping about not being able to move pawns backwards, not being allowed to capture every piece under the knights 3-square move, and moaning when I took his pieces, he seemed to enjoy it.

Since then he’s memorized how to set up the board, and has learned how to move many of the pieces. He’s starting to think about the moves ahead of time, although it’s still a challenge to figure out how to let him win. As far as I can tell, the parts he likes about the game are: it’s about war, there are rules, you get to capture the other person’s pieces and keep them on your side, and repeatedly count them and taunt the other person that you’re winning (because if you’re not winning you cry and complain).

Ethan is also quite obsessed with Star War Legos. The more of them you have, the cooler you are, according to Ethan. He doesn’t really like putting together the kits, even the easy ones, but he likes having the finished space ships and figures. He makes little scenes with the pieces – with good guys on one side, and bad guys on the other, both aiming various weapons at each other.

Notice the war/fight/weapons theme? The other day we were playing with lego Darth Vadar and lego Luke Skywalker and they were having a lightsaber fight. Wooze, wooze, wooze (lightsaber noises). I was getting tired, not just of being told everything to do and not being allowed to make up any dialogue myself, but all this violence is not my favorite thing. So I finally said out of exasperation something like, “Can’t we have a tea party”, which was supposed to be ironic and funny.

Actually, he liked the idea (which suggests to me that he doesn’t know about the general gender preferences for this activity). He dutifully got out what passes for our tea set (a set of toy garden tools with the pots serving as tea cups), and started pouring tea. But to my dismay, the violence quickly returned when a tiger came to attack the tea party, and suddenly it was the host wielding a piece of orange Hotwheels car track as a sword (anything long will do!) to defend against the dangerous feline. And so it goes with all games – they all digress into some sort of fight that involves guns, swords, and a certain amount of pounding, hitting, slashing and pretend injuries.

Cross Country Skis

2009-01-12T06:36:00.000-08:00

We bought Ethan a cross-country ski set last night. Sort of a spontaneous purchase, sort of not. (Hard to buy them since you know they’ll last no more than one season, but on the other hand, you get out on them more when you own them. Final justification: the cost of an entire x-country ski set is less than two days of lift tickets at a down-hill center.) Hopefully my passion for x-country skiing will make up for its obscurity in the social lives of his age group. I feel a bit pressured to take Ethan ice-skating and downhill skiing since that’s what other kids are doing, but they just are not my favorite activities.

Anyway, I’m incredibly psyched since x-country skiing one of my all-time favorite things to do in life, and now we can do it together without a huge deal. We got home last night just as it was getting dark, but we managed to ski around the house and yard to the light from the house and streetlights. Today I’m planning on picking Ethan up from school, and taking him over to the Minute Man Trail near our house to ski for a bit.

For some odd reason, Ethan doesn’t use the word ‘people’, but instead calls them ‘humans’. So, where someone else might said, “I see a bunch of people over there”, Ethan will instead say, “I see some humans over there.” Not sure why he does this, but it’s sort of cute.

Four Feet and 50 pounds

2009-01-10T10:59:00.000-08:00

Ethan had his annual check-up the other day and he was almost exactly four feet tall, and 50 pounds. According to a growth chart calculator, this puts him in the 64th percentile for height, and the 54th percentile for weight. Interestingly, these growth calculations are usually based on world-wide figures, not US figures, so most US kids are expected to be a bit bigger. People keep commenting on how tall Ethan is, but maybe that’s because he’s a bit thin, or maybe it’s because mama and papa still dress him in some pants that are way too short (he doesn’t seem to notice, so why get rid of the high risers?)

Speaking of nerdy pants, Ethan is going through a phase right now where he’s very concerned about being “cool”. Apparently, according to Ethan, that means having lots of Pokemon cards, and lots of Star Wars things, especially Star Wars Legos. Unfortunately for six-year olds, Star War Legos are also hot collectors items among a certain type of adult male, who Mark speculates, do not have girlfriends. This gives great incentive to Lego to issue only a few figures at a time, to keep their availability low, and consequently prices high. Ethan is saving up his dollars right now to buy a bigger star ship, which will inevitably be put together by his parents.

A few weeks ago Mark and I were trying to watch the new batman movie, The Dark Night. Ethan just could not stand it, because he wasn’t allowed to watch with us. Finally, totally frustrated at not having been able to watch a grownup movie in a while, I told Ethan that he could stay and watch Trouble In Paradise with us, a 1930’s black and white romantic comedy classic, or go up and watch his own DVD. Much to my surprise, he chose the former, and I figured that he’d last maybe 10 minutes, since at that age I was incredibly bored by that sort of thing. But the little guy managed to sit through the whole thing, ask relevant questions throughout, and enjoy it a lot. Go figure. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad surreptiously watched the superhero flick on a much quieter computer DVD player up in their room late one night after little one had gone to sleep.

Martian Child and “You Be The Storm”

2008-12-15T14:01:00.000-08:00

Mark and I saw the movie Martian Child a few nights ago. It’s about a single dad (played by John Cusack) who decides to adopt a 8 year old boy. The boy is a bit odd and says he is from Mars, which one begins to wonder if it's true. There are some great scenes near the beginning where John Cusack is deciding whether or not to adopt a child that are helpful to anyone who is going through the process, or has already been through the questioning and self doubt that is an integral part of the process.

It’s also a recommended movie for anyone who has or is contemplating adopting an older child. The movie is based on a short story by a science fiction writer David Gerrold (who wrote Trouble with Tribbles episode on original Star Trek series). Gerrold based the story on his own experiences adopting an 8-year old from foster care. The DVD extras has an interview with Gerrold and the now-grown son he adopted. Very inspiring movie, althogh there are some unrealistic parts such as when the boy is interviewed by a room full of grownups who are judging whether the dad is fit to keep him.

The other day I was driving Ethan to school, and it was drizzling. He said it was “drooling” out, which I thought was a good way to describe it.

A couple of mornings ago Ethan decided to pretend it was very cold. He put on a little scarf taken from a stuffed bear, a winter jacket, sunglasses (aka ski goggles), and gloves. Then he told me to “be the storm”. I was supposed to make blowing noises, and he was going to fight the cold. First time I’ve been asked to play an inanimate object.

Hospital, 3 Teeth, Thanksgiving & Family

2008-11-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

We’ve had quite the week. Last Sunday Ethan was helping his dad clean the bathroom, when he banged his tooth (not hard) on the sink cabinet. It didn’t hurt for long, so we didn’t think anything of it. The next day his face was a bit puffy, but that’s normal for bruises to get worse before they get better, so again, we didn’t worry. When he woke up Tuesday morning with his right side of the face puffy as far as his eye, we made an appointment right away with a pediatrician.

At 9am the doctor said he wasn’t worried – it just looked like a bruise. Ethan hadn’t had his flu shot, so they gave him one (I asked at least twice if it was a good idea). We headed home since Ethan looked tired, and he promptly fell asleep. The doctor had prescribed antibiotics, but said it was borderline, so I didn’t buy them right away. When Ethan looked even worse at 1pm, I went and bought them and gave them to him.

By 6pm Tuesday, Ethan had a fever of 101° under his arm. I called the after-hours number for the doctor, and they said just give him Tylenol. I did, and his fever dropped, and he seemed a bit perkier at dinner. At about 8:30pm Tuesday, he said “My mouth smells like poop!” We went to look and puss was streaming into his mouth. Extremely alarmed, Mark made one more call to the after-hours doctor number, where they said he maybe he should see a dentist the next day.

At this point, Mark was livid and insisted we go to the emergency room. I thought he was completely over-reacting since the doctor in the morning had just thought it was a bruise, but Mark made us go anyway (thank goodness!). We arrived at 9pm, and were seen pretty quickly. It was definitely an infection (the doctor in the morning had made a very serious mistake), and they put him on IV antibiotics immediately. (Turns out that an infection in the face can get very dangerous very quickly, and can spread to the eyes and cause blindness.) It took until 2am before we were admitted into a room – we were very sleepy by that point.

They weren’t sure where the infection was since it was so puffy (his mouth wouldn’t even close it was so bad), and so they had to wait until the morning to figure out how to treat it (if it was in the cheek, it would be treated differently than if it was in the gum). The next morning (Wednesday, day before Thanksgiving) we pushed (advocated?) to have him get an x-ray as soon as possible, since the later in the day it got, the less likely we’d be able to get it treated. At 9am, he had a CT scan. The pediatrician at the hospital sent the scan to a dentist, who referred it to an oral surgeon. She said it wasn’t good enough resolution, so would have to see x-rays.

Dentists and oral surgeons are not on call at a hospital, so they ended up letting us take Ethan out so we could drive him over to the next town where the oral surgeon saw him at 1pm. She took some better x-rays, and the good news was that the infection wasn’t in the permanent teeth. The bad news was that the infection was in the roots of the baby teeth. In fact, it turns out that the infection probably happened because the baby teeth are more vulnerable to infection in the time right before they come out (the roots are disintegrating, and so the area is looser, and bacteria can get in there more easily).

The oral surgeon ended up pulling out three of Ethan’s baby teeth to remove anyplace the bacteria could hide, especially since the teeth were due to come out soon anyway. Ethan’s swelling came down even more after that, and he was ready to come home by Wednesday night. Thursday morning he was pretty much back to normal, with only a minor amount of swelling. We managed to cook the turkey on Thursday, and even had a few people over.

Last night (Friday) we also had Ethan’s big sisters and brothers and significant others over for big sister Julie’s birthday. Ethan felt well enough to play tag with Alec, and generally try to keep the attention of 7 adults. We are very grateful he’s ok! It was very scary to see him so sick.

One more thing I wanted to mention was that along the way, the doctors kept asking if Ethan had ever been hospitalized before. We had to answer that we didn’t know, but that we thought so when he was a baby. When we said this to the emergency room doctor, he gave us a big blank stare, and said, “I’m missing something here.” We explained that Ethan was adopted at age 4, and I realized in that moment, with some joy, that it had never occurred to Mark or me to even mention it because it was the furthest thing from our mind, and also that it had not even remotely crossed the mind of the doctor either.

beR Mom

2008-10-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

Ethan came back from school the other day with the following on a piece of paper: “beR Mom, IlCU dCSURSNS”. If you reverse the d's and b's, add a few vowels, and have Ethan translate, it turns out to mean: “Dear Mom, I like you because you are so nice”. I also came home the other day to a note telling me there was a package waiting for me at the post office which Mark helped him write. It’s amazing to see him learning how to read and write.

Yesterday Mark and I spent several hours getting the second annual post placement report notarized and apostilled. The post placement reports are the forms that Kazakhstan wants to get once a year saying that Ethan is doing ok. They have no way to force us to send them in (since the adoption is legally finalized in both Kazakhstan and the U.S.), but if we don’t send them in, our agency gets penalized, and governments are apt to use missing reports as a way to justify cutting off future adoptions.

This year getting the forms got very complicated. My friend the social worker signed the report (which I wrote, by the way). But when I tried to get it notarized, my usual notary, who will notarize after the fact, couldn’t do it. The social worker couldn’t get to a notary, so Mark and I ended up getting a notary to lend us her book, I drove it over to the social worker, and then we drove it back to the notary.

When we went to the state office to get the papers apostilled, they told us that the forms were missing a key “acknowlegement” sentence and they weren’t going to do it. (Apparently they only recently decided to enforce a rule that’s been on the books since 2004.) We panicked. It would take us at least a couple of days of work and a lot of phone calls and driving around to fix the situation. So, I got into full beg/plead/complain/cry/promise mode, not really thinking it would work, since these were full-fledged bureaucrats. I said that we were only doing this so that future parents could adopt, and that if they didn’t apostille, we probably wouldn’t be able to take the time to get them done again. By some miracle, they bought the argument, and apostilled our reports. Whew!

Two Year Anniversary

2008-10-16T06:52:00.000-07:00

Today is exactly two years since we met Ethan. Looking back at the October post from two years ago, I see that he still loves the following things:
--apples and bananas
--playing "house" (although instead of playing “orphanage”, he now plays “family” and “school”).
--pretending to tuck things in for the night
--playing with cars
--music and singing (he’s still got a good ear for tunes)
--strutting around with sun glasses on (or any costume)

It’s become almost impossible for me to fathom life without him. It seems strange to me that he hasn’t always been with us, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for me to remember that he’s adopted. I have to work tonight, and Mark and I are confused as to whether we even want to celebrate tomorrow night because it’s so hard to imagine not always knowing him. On the other hand, Ethan is always happy to get a present!

Meanwhile, Ethan continues to do well in first grade. He seems more self-assured and contented than this time last year (when he was just starting to get bombarded with the English alphabet, and was surrounded by kids who had been exposed to it for the previous three to four years.)

Magic Momma

2008-10-03T10:52:00.000-07:00

Ethan and I were playing a game the other day where I successfully hid some stuffed animals underneath me and then claimed that I magically made them disappear. It frustrated him no end that he couldn't figure out where I had put them. Teasing him, I said that I was a magic momma. Ethan protested shaking his head. "You're not magic!" He put his hands out wide with his palms up and put on his 'duh' face. "You're not Santa Claus. You're not the tooth fairy. You're not the Easter bunny." I had to keep from bursting out laughing, so I just mumbled something about of course I didn't have long ears so couldn't be the Easter bunny.

Speaking of the tooth fairy, Ethan lost tooth #3 yesterday and she gave him some money last night. The tooth's departure from his mouth came a bit earlier than it might have had he not had a close encounter with a hockey stick held by a classmate on the slides earlier this week.

This morning I went into Ethan's classroom for family reading day. It was fun to see him and all the other kids in his class. He proudly 'read' several books which consisted of using his fine memory to recite them, and nothing at all to do with connecting letters with sounds. He can do that, it just takes more work for him than memorizing things. Some of my favorite books to read him at the moment, by the way, are the "Fly Guy" easy reader series about a kid named Buzz who has a pet fly who can say his name and likes to eat smelly food.

First Grade, Presidential Debate

2008-09-28T09:49:00.001-07:00

The other night Ethan was still awake half an hour after we put him to bed, and he wandered out of his room at 9pm when the presidential debate between Obama and McCain came on. I figured we could do something like my friend Andy does with his cats – he only opens the front door for his felines when it’s pouring rain and sleeting outside. I figured, hey, hey, that Ethan would get bored silly and sick of the debate in about three minutes, or fall asleep from pure boredom, thereby learning that watching TV instead of going to bed is more like torture.

Well, mama was ever so wrong. Ethan sat rapt in attention, quiet, listening to the debate. A half hour later, he was still going strong, and even interjecting comments like “He’s telling a story, isn’t he” when McCain launched into one. At his age I would have found this intolerably dull, and I am left to wonder what he could possibly have found so interesting about the impact of the recent fiscal crisis on Afganistan? Could our little budding politician be absorbing lessons about oratory skills? Was he just that determined to show that mama was wrong? Who knows, but at least he was watching something educational. As dad carried him upstairs our cutie waved at the TV and said, “Goodby Obaba”.

Ethan has been in first grade for a couple of weeks now. I can’t believe how fast time is passing! So far he likes his teacher, and has a bunch of friends in the class. The teacher has a great reputation, and seems to know how to keep the energetic boys in line. She’s hardly taller than the kids themselves, but is an incredible bundle of energy. Ethan won’t talk much about school (“I don’t want to talk about it!”) but sometimes I glean things from the parents of the girls in the class.

This year seems to be a lot easier for him than last, since he’s used to a longer day (kindergarten last year was half day), and he’s caught up on a lot in terms of reading. His hand-eye coordination has progressed a lot in the last year, with his drawings getting more intricate, and the lettering getting more even. The other night he drew a picture and wrote “I LV MEO MOM” and “I LV MI DAD” along with an adorable drawing beside it. Under it he wrote “ALEORIT”, which was his way of writing out his and his dad’s favorite car, the Audi R8. (Their favorite car under $1million that is -- over $1million Ethan prefers a Bugatti).

Alex the Power Ranger

2008-08-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

A Power Ranger super hero was just in my office, pretending to be my son named Alex. Next to him was his sister Sophie, who very much resembled a six-year old girl wearing a dragon costume. According to the Power Ranger, I had made them chicken nuggets and French fries for dinner, and they had both just gone to school. When I suggested they have coke for dinner, both pretend siblings shook their heads vigorously and said, “No! Milk or water.” It’s interesting how the rules that Ethan fights all week long are the same ones he chooses to enforce himself in pretend play.

Meanwhile, in real life, I have turned into a spotted red monster with my body covered in big ugly rashes and red spots. My itchy condition is the result of an adverse reaction between the sun at Crane Beach, and the antibiotic, amoxicillin (which I was taking because all of us came down with Strep Throat when we got back from Baker Pond). No, amoxicillin is not supposed to do that, but well, it did.

When I dropped Ethan off at sports camp today, I wondered if everyone would stare at my spots, but they mostly seemed busy and didn’t comment at least. When I picked Ethan up today he complained that the camp was boring because they had no toys to play with, even though I had seen him playing happily and intently for 20 minutes when I arrived early to pick him up. Oh, and he complained that I didn’t pick him up early.

Recently I’ve been watching some episodes of SuperNanny, one of the numerous shows in which a dumpy older woman from England goes to people’s houses and gives them parenting advice. This one is actually pretty good, and I’ve learned a whole lot already from it. It’s also reassuring realizing that Ethan does what other kids his age do, and that parents everywhere get frazzled sometimes.

Baker Pond 2008

2008-08-10T15:09:00.000-07:00

We just came back from several days up in New Hampshire at Baker Pond. We were up there in two houses with 5 other families, including 8 other boys and one other girl ranging in age from 3 to 10. We actually survived! It was inspired by our great time last year with the other kids -- and it was indeed a great thing to do again.

The weather the first two days was cold and rainy, which was hard with so many kids bouncing off the walls. Then yesterday and today it was gorgeous, which made it all worthwhile. We kayaked, swam, walked, picked berries, ran around, and the kids played together all day with real and imagined toys. Ethan had fun playing with Dave and Amy's kids M.(3) and L. (5), and Jane and Max's son Finn (4), and of course Rich and Jennifer's twins M. and J. (who are both 4, plus a lot of extra energy). The older boys (ages 8-10) made their mischief, mostly on the tennis court and fishing.

Our family vacations are done for the season -- we’re in town for the rest of the summer.

Oregon

2008-07-27T16:56:00.000-07:00

Ethan and I are in Oregon right now, visiting my sister and her family. It's been wonderful for Ethan to get to know his cousins. I wish they all lived closer.

We left on a 6am flight on Thursday, which meant getting up at 4am. On the way to the airport we saw lots of frogs crossing the road, their hopping bodies caught in the light from headlights. Ethan predicted that we would also see a deer, and Mark and I sort of laughed and said yes, not really believing it. But sure enough, a mile down the road was a big dear right on the side of the road.

Ethan was a good traveller, and his usually friendly self. In the seats behind us going out to San Fran were two teenage sisters from Maine. Ethan flirted shamelessly with them, but they loved it. ("Mama -- tell them that they are pretty girls"). They even invited him to sit beside them and share their color pencils. They drew for him a unicorn and a green snake, which he got to keep. They suggested to me that he might like acting and drama when he was older, something they like a lot. In the San Fran airport Ethan played in the Kids Spot play area, which made the 3 hour layover go very quickly.

We've done lots of fun things out here. Yesterday we went to a drive-through Safari zoo that had lots of animals running around. We saw bears wrestling in a pond, giraffes that wandered by, cheetahs sleeping in the shade, and hippos wallowing in another pond. It's the closest thing to Africa that's here in the US.

Last night we went to see a stage production of the Wizard of Oz. Ethan sat on my lap and asked questions every three minutes (Why is she mad at dorothy? Is she a real witch? Is she really angry? How did the dog get back? So he thinks he needs a brain? -- you get the idea.) It was quite a good production, and Ethan seemed to like it a lot. Today he's watching the film version with his cousins. Earlier we went blueberry picking, and we all picked 14 pounds of blueberries, plus whatever we ate.

Ethan's cousins S. and P. have been wonderful with Ethan, playing with him and entertaining him for hours. It means a lot to him to have family members giving him so much attention. However, our one six year old has managed to burn out all 5 of us adults in the last few days (S. is 14 and P. is 19, but I'm counting them as adults).

Camping With 3 Six-Year-Olds

2008-07-15T12:48:00.000-07:00

This weekend Ethan and I went camping with Beth, her daughter M., Susan, and her daughter ME at Tully Lake. Here’s a photo of our campsite. Ethan and I arrived Saturday morning, set up the tent, and then went swimming in a beautiful lake. Blueberries were all over, so the kids had a lot of fun collecting them into cups. We also took a walk to nearby falls, cooked dinner over the fire, and made s’mores for desert. Ethan had a great time playing with the two girls – they had a good round of hide and seek, climbed some trees, and went into the ‘enchanted’ forest where Ethan turned into a vampire, and the two girls were transformed into his pet cats. Ethan went right to sleep in the tent, and was a good sport about the whole thing.

This afternoon we’re going to meet Lisa, Mike, and R. at White Pond and have a picnic dinner, and a pizza delivered. We became members of White Pond this year, and it’s worked out well because it’s a bit less hectic and crowded than Walden Pond. Ethan loves to try to catch the fish there with his net, and there are some pleasant picnic tables under the trees where I can relax.

Ethan continues to have a great time at camp. I wish he were this relaxed and happy all year. He continues to amaze me with all that he learns and thinks about. He's started getting into a stage of telling us the facts and information that he's learned. The other day he was telling me that Jupiter is the largest planet, and named several others as well. Then he moves on to naming the other characters he knows in Batman stories.

Lots of Firsts, Fourth and Otherwise

2008-07-08T11:27:00.000-07:00

I took Ethan to the Boston Museum of Art for the first time last Saturday with our friend Beth and her daughter M. Ethan lasted about one hour, in which time we saw a mummy (is it real?), swords (a big hit), lots of wild boars (why are those dogs chasing it?), people walking like Egyptians, and hieroglyphics (snakes instead of B’s, hawks instead of D’s, etc.). At Beth’s suggestion, we brought pen and paper for the kids – a big hit, and a great idea – and they sketched several Greek coins.

Ethan was on especially good behavior since he had been promised a stuffed animal at the gift shop as incentive to view art (dad’s idea). Huge and dramatic disappointment (crying, running around, hiding, threats, etc) followed at the store when mom would not buy the (in her opinion ugly and wildly overpriced) stuffed dog. Much later in the day, he reluctantly admitted that he really liked the stuffed horse that he had plucked from the shelf with dramatic tears and complaints after it became clear mom was not going to back down about the esthetically unpleasing canines.

Last Friday night we took Ethan to see his first fireworks show. In truth, I think he liked running around at the playground, making random friends, more than the actual show itself. It was rather past his bedtime, and he kept complaining about being bored, which in truth, I had to agree, it was not the most exciting display I've ever seen. It was however next to a beautiful lake, and not too crowded, which were big pluses.

During the day on July 4th, Ethan also got his first ride in a hot-air balloon. It went up around 30 feet, and came down about five minutes later. After, he saw a play about Alice in Wonderland. I’m not sure if it’s the first play he’s seen, but the first with us.

My friend Tom took Ethan to the playground the other day. When they got there, there were no little kids to play with, only some older teenagers hanging out on the swings. Ethan got Tom to ask them if they wanted to play tag. They actually said yes, and everyone had a great time with it. This is such quintessential Ethan – engaging complete strangers to do something unexpected and fun.

Later, Tom took this video of Ethan on a swing singing a made-up song. You’ll hear references to the tag, and also to pumping (he only recently learned to pump a swing himself). The hand gestures, drama, gibberish, rhymes, creativity, etc. are all very Ethan. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFB2QT5m8cg

Last Day of Kindergarten

2008-06-24T05:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Ethan’s last day of kindergarten. I can’t believe the year has gone by so quickly! He did really well, and has been excited about having “vacation weeks” for the rest of the summer. He’s a bit confused about how long 10 weeks is (“Do I have to go to school on Wednesday?), but is thrilled at the prospect. Ethan just loves to play with new toys, play with friends, and play all day. This summer he’ll be going to a few different places, ranging from the pre-school where he went last year, to the town’s recreation department camp. I’m taking a couple of weeks off to take him out to visit my sister and his cousins in July.

The last two months seem like a blur. We had Ethan’s birthday party in late April, which was at our house. Despite requests for nice weather, it was drizzly that day, so we had 11 screaming kids inside the house. Our friend Tom was a huge help, with more innovative ways to play Simon Says than I knew existed, and making taking turns in the bouncy a game. He even managed to get a few great photos too (not sure when…)

Ethan got his first pets a couple of weeks ago. He got three platys fish from school which he named Orangy, Greeny, and Greeny. Mom pretty much feeds them and changes their water, but they’re officially his. (They make me very grateful we don’t have anything more complicated!)

Last week we went to four birthday parties. This was more than his class had the entire rest of the year. Meeting parents at the parties, and teachers and others at the end of the school year, made clear just how much Ethan touches other people’s lives. When we bumped into the mother of his fifth grade buddy, N., she gushed over Ethan – how much her daughter had loved working with him. The other parents, as they often do, commented how much their kid talked about Ethan. A neighbor told me how much the boys were competing to hold Ethan’s hand on the class trip. And then there are the numerous marriage proposals from the girls. (I was never so popular – it feels so unfamiliar to me)

Ethan Turns Six

2008-05-01T12:06:00.000-07:00

Ethan had his sixth birthday yesterday. We opened two presents in the morning – a stuffed Webkinz snake, and a pack of Pokemon cards. Then, I dropped him off at school in the morning with some “peanut-free” cupcakes for his class (although the ingredient label indicated they had every other substance in the universe in them). His fifth grade buddy N. stopped by and gave him a Webkinz tiger, which was very sweet.

In the afternoon, I stopped by his after-K program with another set of cupcakes, which Ethan enjoyed passing out to the other kids and the teachers. I took him home, and he went over to play at neighbor N.’s house, until dad got home and we could get to the serious business of opening the rest of the presents, of which there were many. By dinnertime he was on a three-cupcake, cookie, candy and multi-present buzz. Wrapping paper, nerf bullets, miniature knights, Where’s Waldo books, a light saber, shark backpack, and power ranger costume were strewn randomly throughout the room. He soon plopped down in the middle clutching an unopened package in one hand and a candy in the other and started sobbing because he couldn’t play with everything at once. Life is hard sometimes!

A Hundred-Million Googles

2008-04-17T06:24:00.000-07:00

This week at breakfast Ethan declared that an older brother of his friend L. had “a hundred-million Googles”. Translation: he had a lot of stuffed platypuses. How’s that? Well, Ethan named his Webkinz stuffed platypus Google (I don’t know why), and “a hundred-million” means a lot, so this boy has a lot of stuffed platypuses (go figure). I thought this was especially funny because the word google, before it became the name of an internet company, was coined (by a father who asked his child for a name – really) to mean the number one followed by a hundred zeros. So a hundred million googles is really just a one with a hundred and eight zeros after it. But the humor was lost when I tried to explain it to Ethan. He was far more interested in discussing the tooth fairy.

Ethan is a remarkably observant kid. His teacher mentioned last fall that he noticed if she changed a pair of earrings during the day, for example. Or the other day we were looking at a photo of some fencers in the local paper, and I said I thought they were high school students. “No,” he said, “See this one has a beard”. Sure enough, the caption said they were college students. Then, when we were trying to guess who was competing against whom, he noticed that two had their head gear on, and postulated they were the combatants – something I failed to notice.

Sometimes these powers of observation are a challenge for surprises. This week at breakfast he was speculating that the tooth fairy bought some of the cars she left for him at the local toy store (I took him to the store for the very first time a week ago – purposely avoiding it up until then as potential source of constant temptation – which has turned out to be). Anyway, I thought it was especially funny because the tooth fairy had indeed bought them there! Trying to stay one step ahead, however, I pointed out that the tooth fairy could have found them at another store too.

Ethan loves to speculate about the tooth fairy, Easter bunny, and Santa, and how they accomplish what they do. So far we can get away with Magic as the answer, but considering we’ve also told him on separate occasions that magic is pretend, it’s only a matter of time before he makes that inevitable cognitive leap. In the meantime, he makes guesses as to how fast the Easter bunny must move, how the tooth fairy gets into the house, and the other day he wanted to buy a plane ticket to go visit the North Pole to see Santa’s toys. When I told him no one had ever seen Santa’s toys there, we had a long discussion about why Santa would keep hidden: so no one would take the toys, so they’d be a surprise, because he’s shy, etc…

Whose Tummy?

2008-04-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

This morning at 7:15 am, I was trying to get Ethan up and going before work. Mark’s out of town, so it was a bit more difficult than normal anyway. Rushing a bit, I had just pulled some clothes onto him, and was heading him out to the kitchen for breakfast, when completely out of the blue he demands to know, “Why didn't you have a baby in your tummy!”

My first thought was fear that I was somehow deficient because I was never pregnant. That went away fast since I never really wanted to be pregnant. So I answered with something to affirm our relationship -- "Because I have you." I meanwhile was trying to usher a tired, fairly floppy boy from his room into the kitchen.

"Why wasn't I in your tummy" he threw back immediately. Panic struck. More questions I wasn't prepared for. He hasn’t asked any adoption related questions in months. I knew this question would come at some point, and I’ve heard that it comes at unexpected moments – but this was an especially unexpected moment, and my mind was both groggy, and focused on getting food into a resistant five year old.

I stalled for time, settling him into his chair, and handing him a banana and cereal, and trying to be as nonchalant as possible. “Because you weren’t” was the best thing I could come up with on the fly. Hoping it might evade the question nicely, I handed him his vitamin. “No, why wasn’t I in your tummy!” he demanded again, pursing his lips, crossing his arms, and refusing to eat the vitamin until he had an answer.

Oof The first thoughts that came to mind were, well, we couldn’t? But that wasn’t really right, and not the message I wanted to convey anyway. I tried to rack my brain for what the books said to say, but of course, I couldn’t remember a thing. Focusing on the vitamin, I said, “Please eat your vitamin. You were in someone else’s tummy, not mine.”

“But everyone was in their mommy’s tummy” he insisted. I kept focusing on breakfast, pushing in his chair, handing him his milk.

Thinking fast, I smoothly brought up the other adopted kids we know: “No – R. wasn’t in her mommy’s tummy, Z. wasn’t in his mommy’s tummy, and J. wasn’t in either of her two mommy’s tummies. That’s what it means to be adopted --you were in someone else’s tummy" I said as matter-of-factly as I could.

(I realize some readers might bristle here that I wasn’t calling their birth moms their “mommies”, but since it’s not a concept we’ve ever discussed, I wanted to emphasize what he understands as “mom”. )

Then I thought for a second about something more I wanted to convey to him. “I wish you had been in my tummy – it would have been a lot easier” which is true. “I looked very hard for you, and worked very hard to get you,” I said. “I had to go half way around to world to find you – if you had just been in my tummy I wouldn’t have had to look for you so hard”. This final part I was trying to echo some things the orphanage workers told him (at least how it was translated to me from Kazakh), about how we had been searching for him, and that’s why it had taken so long for us to come adopt him (they need to have some way of explaining to kids why things happen the way they do.)

Apparently satisfied, the conversation topic switched immediately, dramatically, and decisively to the ladybug flying around the room, and why we have so many ladybugs in the house this year. I know there are more tricky questions to come, but at least I got an answer out for this one that (hopefully) made us both feel better. When I dropped him off at school, he gave me a big hug, and seemed very secure. I felt very complete.

Second Easter

2008-04-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

Last week we had our second Easter with Ethan. Can’t believe time is flying by so quickly! The Easter bunny brought him candy and a stuffed Webkinz Platypus, which he has no idea has an alter ego in the digital domain. (Webkinz are very popular in the kindergarten set, even without their connection to the web site.) Later, his big sister Julie joined us for an Easter dinner of lamb, and we ended up eating most of the chocolate bunny after he had fallen asleep (woops!).

Somewhere along the line Ethan has learned about Oxygen. He knows that you don’t get enough of it in smoke, or under water. Last night he told us that “If you’re in outer space, and you forget your astronaut suit, then you won’t be able to get oxygen.” I just love the idea of being in outer space and ‘forgetting’ your space suit.

Ethan has learned about rhyming finally. It was a tough concept for him to grasp at first, for some reason (just like he was baffled by jigsaw puzzles when he first saw them). Now he’s quite the rhyming machine. We play a game at dinner (his insistence, believe me, not ours), which is a type of “I spy” with rhyming words. Like this: I’m thinking of a color that rhymes with mellow (answer yellow). Some of my favorites that he came up with: Kevin/eleven, shark/Mark, snake/rake.

As the days are getting longer, Ethan has a lot more energy. When it was dark, he was complaining that he wanted me to pick him up at 3pm from after-K. Now, he’s telling me that he wants me to pick him up after his scheduled 5pm time because he's running around with a bunch of kids outside when the weather is nice. It's a lot less stressful for me knowing that he’s happy there!

Last weekend a girl named L. had her dad call us for a playdate with Ethan. I asked Ethan if she liked him, and he turned his head with a sweet smile. Well, he explained, she always likes to sit next to him on the bus, she does whatever he does at 'choice time', she wants to play with him outside, and she sits next to him whenever she can. I think that counts as a crush, don't you? What's interesting is that he's never really talked about her, being much more focused on what the boys think. In fact, at a party last weekend with the other parents from his kindergarten class, I got a lot of "Oh, my son/daughter is always talking about Ethan", whereas we get very little from Ethan about anything that goes on at school. Recently I volunteered in his class to help plant seeds -- a good way for me to actually meet all the kids in his class. They are so adorable! The teacher is amazing, somehow getting them to behave perfectly without raising her voice once.

Ethan’s favorite things in the world: toys, candy, dress-up pretend clothes, and playing at friends’ houses. Ethan has also taken to going up to his friends’ parents and asking if he can come over for a playdate. Sometimes it even works. Today his friend Cameron’s mom is going to pick him up and he’ll play at Cameron’s house for a couple of hours after school. He left me with instructions this morning to call Nicholas’s mom about a playdate tomorrow. This kid is not shy!

First Friend Phone Call

2008-03-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

The other day the phone rang, and based on the caller ID, I expected it to be Zack’s mom. Instead it was Zack himself, asking to talk to Ethan. It was very cute, apparently with Zack needing to tell Ethan right that moment about something he had seen, and ending with “I love you” on both sides.

This morning Ethan wanted to play “family” with me and his stuffed animals. There were a bunch of boy brothers who were teasing the sister (played by a male lion stuffed animal). When I asked Ethan why the boys were teasing the girl, he said because she was pretty. (? Is that how it works?) Anyway, Ethan played the dad, and did a good job tucking all the boys and girls in. Some of the smaller ones were scared, so Ethan got even bigger stuffed animals for them so they wouldn’t be afraid. In the pretend morning, everyone had to rush to get their breakfast and their teeth brushed so they could go to church for Jen and Tim’s wedding. One of the animals, the biggest boy, got to carry the ring and Ethan pronounced that he “wasn’t afraid”.

I’ve learned that these role playing games take very little effort on my part, and in fact are better if I only say something when told to. There have been a bunch of articles recently about the importance of free play for kids. Truth is, no one knows why mammals (and only mammals) play, although it’s been correlated with cerebellar development (one of my favorite parts of the brain –responsible for balance). And although there are lots of opinions, no one knows for sure what happens if kids don’t have free play. Since I tend to trust in natural systems that have evolved over long periods of time, I favor the ‘free-play’ school of thought, since that’s what kids seem driven to do.

Ethan is at the ‘Quarium right now with his dad, looking at the fishes, while mom tries to get caught up on work, etc.

Dentist, Gym, and Bus

2008-02-08T12:24:00.001-08:00

This week Ethan went to the dentist for a checkup. The dentist let him play with all the buttons, which Ethan enthusiastically did, much to the possible regret of said dentist when he realized the extent and persistence of Ethan’s curiosity (What does this do? What is this for? Why are you doing that? What’s this? Can I see? Can I try?) all why Ethan was pushing on the water spout, and generally putting his hands on any available button, surface, instrument, or water source within his reach.

On Wednesday I volunteered at his school’s gym class. (It’s actually somewhat competitive to volunteer – last month I responded to an email 20 minutes after it was sent out, and didn’t get a spot. Who would guess?) Anyway, there were giant ropes to swing and climb on, a balance beam, and little roller things the kids drove by twisting them back and forth with their arms. The kids were very sweet, but the teacher was fairly unpleasant, chastising them every few minutes. How can you make gym class so unpleasant? Luckily she is only a temp.

A couple of days ago Ethan wanted to take the bus, which he usually prefers not to. At some point he admitted it was because a girl in his class was going to be on it. How cute! I got to meet her at the gym class, and she and Ethan seemed so genuinely affectionate with each other. It’s not clear to me it’s as much of a boy/girl thing, as just two kids who like each other.

First Ski

2008-01-29T07:31:00.000-08:00

On Sunday we took Ethan cross-country skiing for the very first time (at Great Brook State Park). He fell a lot, but loved it anyway. He especially liked the hills, and was even starting to get some glide into his skiing. Can’t wait to take him out again. I think there should be a law that all parents have to take their kids skiing when they’re small, since they learn so much more easily than adults.

Snow Day

2008-01-14T05:04:00.000-08:00

We have a snow day here today (again!). We’ve been pretty white here since mid-December. The snow literally had just melted enough for the hard-working landscape guys to come pick up our leaves yesterday (Sunday), and today we’re getting another 10 inches. .

It’s 7:30am, and Ethan is snuggled in bed watching a “Ben Ten” video that his sister Jen and her husband Tim gave him for Christmas. I’m sitting here beside him, working on my laptop computer, in a somewhat futile attempt to get some work done while I can. Ben’s cousin is named Gwen, so I jump every few minutes when they call out her name in the video. (Ut-oh, Gwen just got kidnapped, so they’re saying her name even more).

It’s nice to have the day off with Ethan. He’s been getting so tired at school, that it’s good to have an excuse not to go today. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been picking him up early from after-school anyway. It had become increasingly apparent that he was just too tired when I showed up at 5pm. I feel very grateful I’ve had the flexibility to pick him up early.

Yesterday I made a mad dash to get Ethan a new pair of snow pants, since he grew out of the old snowsuit. (At his doctor’s appointment last week, they measured him at 45 inches.) He was starting to hate snow since he kept getting wet feet in his old suit.

Merry Christmas

2008-01-02T06:06:00.000-08:00

Monday morning I looked out the kitchen window to see two (2!) foxes frolicking in the snow in our back yard. They were there long enough for me to call Ethan, who saw one of them walking back out of the yard. I can’t help thinking that the children’s stories I read Ethan about the various and sundry wise and tricky foxes must have some merit in order for these creatures to coexist so closely with so many humans.

Christmas went very well. We had all the older kids over on Christmas Eve, and Alec and Julie over on Christmas day. Santa brought Ethan a giant tiger and a transformer. Other presents included a transformer mask, dress up wigs and hats, DVD’s, stuffed animals, and PJ’s. We opened presents slowly, and luckily Ethan didn’t get too overwhelmed. I, however, got quite sick with a bug on Christmas, and have been fighting it off every since.

This weekend my friend Dave and his wife Amy and two kids Laura (5) and Michael (2) came to visit and stayed over. The three kids got on really well, and we were actually able to have some adult conversations (which of course were just about the kids anyway, but oh well….). On Sunday we went to get Dim Sum in Chinatown, and all the kids behaved themselves very well.

When I read books with Ethan, he likes to point to the pictures and say, “I’m going to be this one – which one are you going to be?”. He often points to the kid (or puppy, etc), and wants me to point to the mom. For example, in the three bears, he’ll point to the baby bear and say, “I’m going to be him – which one you going to be?”. He isn’t satisfied unless I point to the middle sized ‘momma’ bear, and I have to be a female character. If there aren’t any creatures on the page, he’ll often pick a superhero, or a car/truck to be (he’ll be the small one, I have to be a bigger one). This morning it was food (he was the pizza, I was the cooked chicken).

ONE YEAR!!

2007-12-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-02T09:19:00.000-08:00

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.

First Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T10:44:00.001-08:00

Ethan loves playing games. We’ll be driving down the road, and he’ll want to play “I spy”. Or, at the dinner table recently he wanted to play a game where we had to go around in a circle, each of us saying an animal that people keep in their houses (a surprising number, I discovered from his game). Or, one of us will say a letter, and the others will have to think of words that start with that letter.

It’s also gotten to the point where I can play actual board games with him. The first one was a Zingo game my friend Trish gave us, which is a type of picture bingo. Ethan understands the concept of taking turns, and who wins, etc. I also bought Ethan a memory matching dinosaur card game. I’m really terrible at finding the matching cards, so he usually wins. I was doing so badly the other day that he started giving me cards, or making me take extra turns so he wasn’t getting all of the cards (very typical of Ethan to want to share things).

Recently we’ve been hiring a 9-year old boy who lives next door to come over and be a ‘mother’s helper’ and play with Ethan. He’s really wonderful, and Ethan adores him. Ethan spends most of him time with any of his babysitters asking them to “pretend this” or “pretend that” with him. The other day I overhead Ethan telling the boy, “I’ll be Wonder Woman, and you be Super Girl.” Or, they’ll pretend some of the cars are good cars, and some are bad cars. Or, they’ll pretend to go on an adventure. At one point I saw them pretending to be skating in the hallway, slipping along in their socks, their hands held high, humming along.

Yesterday we had our first Thanksgiving with Ethan. He was a bit nervous beforehand, which has taken me a while to understand – even though we told him it was just a meal and eating turkey, he didn’t know exactly what to expect. Why should he? He’d never observed it before, and didn’t know if there was something else involved too that we hadn’t told him about.

It’s hard to fathom, but this time last year we were here in the U.S. preparing for our second trip back to Kazakhstan, and Ethan was waiting at the baby house for us to return, asking the translator if she would take us if we didn’t come back.

Visiting School

2007-11-11T15:18:00.000-08:00

Ethan keeps on growing. Everyone is commenting that he looks taller. The pants that seemed impossibly long on him last year now fit. And it’s sort of scary how much he’s been eating. For example, the other morning he consumed between 450-500 calories at breakfast. He’s been eating everything I put in his lunch box most days, which is a lot since I always try to over-pack it. When he comes home, he’s been eating big snacks, and lots at dinner. Luckily, he still eats lots of fruits, between 3 to 5 pieces a day.

Last Friday I volunteered to help at his art class at school. The poor art teacher has quite a job, setting up all the materials before the kids come in, and then cleaning up afterwards. They’re only in there for half an hour, so everything is speeded up. Before they go to the paints, they sat around in a circle and learned that you can make grey by mixing black with white, and pink by mixing red with white, which they then practiced quite successfully themselves.

I didn’t realize how much it meant to Ethan to have me come into his school until he broke down sobbing on Thursday night. I asked him what was the matter and he said, “You weren’t in art class today!” I pointed out to him that he didn’t have art class on Thursday, and that I’d be there the next day.

On Friday, he grabbed me when I came in the class room, pointed to me, and told the other kids that I was his mom. At one point one of his classmates called “Ethan’s mom” to have me help her, and Ethan jumped up and said, “No, she’s my mom!” I pointed out to him that she was saying “Ethan’s mom”, and that she knew I was his. I was very glad I volunteered, and will try to do it again, since it’s also a great way to meet all the other kids in his class too.

First tooth, Halloween, and Tr. conference

2007-11-03T11:23:00.000-07:00

This was a big week for firsts! Ethan had his very first Halloween, and went Trick-or-Treating for the first time. He loved it. The holiday combines two of his very favorite things in life: candy and costumes. Ethan dressed up as a Ninja “with three swords” as he tells anyone who asks. We went trick-or-treating around the block with our neighbors Nicholas (skeleton) and William (Spiderman). Here's a photo with them and two neighbor girls, Ninja Ethan is on the far right. All the kids had a blast, and Ethan is still working on his candy collection (he dumps out the candy on the floor and sorts through it to pick out one piece to eat when he’s allowed).

Ethan also lost his first tooth this week. It’s been loose for about a week, and finally came out at school. I thought it was cute that the nurse has a handy collection of little tooth boxes to give out to the kids so they don’t lose them. Ethan put the tooth under his pillow last night, and the tooth fairy gave him three little cars in exchange, which he enjoyed very much. (Guess the tooth fairy figured he’d enjoy cars more than money.)

We had our first parent/teacher meeting with his kindergarten teacher this week. She said that he was doing very well, and keeping up with the class. The teacher said she found it hard to fathom (as do we) that one year ago he was half a world away speaking a completely different language. She said that he’s well behaved, is helpful, and makes friends easily. I was very happy to hear that she thinks he’s doing so well.

Ethan has been learning a lot in kindergarten. (Kindergarten, by the way, is the new first grade. No more just playing – they work them pretty hard the whole time they’re there). Things he can do now that he couldn’t in August: recognize most of the letters, pronunce of half of them, and hear a word and often figure out what letter it starts with.

We also met Ethan’s “English as a Second Language” (ESL) teacher who he sees twice a week for 30 minutes. It quickly became clear to Mark and me that, ironically, Ethan speaks English about as well as she does. (What could Concord possibly have been thinking by hiring a non-native English speaker to teach ESL? Reminds me of the “blind leading the blind” style of language instruction that we saw in Kazakhstan.) Strangely, when she showed us the assessment tool that was used to place him in ESL tutoring, it showed Ethan to be slightly above average for a kindergartener in language skills. Hmmmmm. Even more strangely, we have to actually sign something and go out of our way to not have him in ESL instruction with a non-native English speaker whose comprehension levels are comparable to his own.

Modern Art

2007-10-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

On the way to school today, Ethan saw a cocker-spanial type dog with long flowing fur. He said, “That dog has feathers!” I laughed and explained that it was just a lot of fur, and he said knowingly “Oh, that dog has 100 fur”. I think he meant that 100 is a lot, and the dog had a lot of fur. But who knows!

Modern Art. You know how you sometimes see certain paintings in a modern art museum and say to yourself: “A five year old could have done that!“ Well, here’s a photo of something that Ethan drew completely by himself (so it actually was done by a five year old) which I think has a lot of stylistic similarities to modern art. “Note the Picasso-like quality to it, the simplicity of form, the crisp lines, the use of white spaces, and abstract shapes” they might say if it hung on a wall (or not) . By the way, just like Picasso went through his “blue period”, Ethan is going through his “orange period”, with his best work being in that color or one closely related.

One Year Anniversary

2007-10-16T16:56:00.000-07:00

Today is the one-year anniversary of first meeting Ethan. I have such a vivid picture in my mind of meeting him. My first impression was that they were showing us a different boy first, since he seemed too gorgeous to really be him.

I have been wondering all year if we would want to celebrate "adoption day" or "gotcha day". For some reason, today seems more significant to me than the court date -- somehow more personal and important. October 16 is also my big sister's birthday, as well as Ethan's best bud Cameron's birthday as well.

We celebrated tonight with a few gifts, and we called Tania, the other girl (3yrs old) who was adopted at the same time. It’s really interesting to hear the two of them having a conversation in English. Ethan had a huge grin as he was talking to her. I asked him why later and he said he was happy that Tania had a mom and dad too. How sweet!

Wedding (real) and War (pretend)

2007-10-11T07:53:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was Ethan’s big sister Jen’s wedding. Here’s a photo of Ethan all dressed up in a tux for the occasion (isn’t he so cute!). Ethan was supposed to carry the rings, but at the last minute, when he looked at the 150 people who would be staring at him as he walked down the isle, he bagged. He was also running a fever, the poor guy. The wedding was great, and we couldn’t be happier for Jen and her new husband Tim. They’re honeymooning in Disney World, hopefully getting better weather than we are right now.

On Sunday, we went to see a WWII re-enactment at the Collings Foundation in Stow MA. The place is fascinating, since no one knows about it (they purposely keep a very low profile), and they only open their doors to the public twice a year, once on father’s day, and this past weekend. The re-enactment was very, very cool. There was a blue and yellow bi-plane (one of Ethan’s first words in English, by the way) that buzzed the spectators, a German plane (see photo) that took off, and a bunch of guys dressed up in authentic costumes and real guns running around with real guns shooting off fake bullets and pretending to be dead.

It was weird being around the guys dressed in the German uniforms, especially as they were telling us to move back behind the line (decades of movies depicting them as evil has it’s effects after all). When all the Germans were dead (one of them complained to me ahead of time about this), we went to see the collection of planes inside. There was a red tri-plane (very cool), a lot of racecars (which Ethan and Mark thought were cooler than I did), a canvas plane, and a plane that could fold up its wings to fit on an aircraft carrier.

After we do things, Ethan likes us all to compare notes on what we liked best (and the rule is you can’t choose the same thing as someone else, so if his favorite animal is the bison, then yours has to be something else like the lion). After the air show, Ethan chose three things he liked best: the soldiers running around shooting at each other, the race cars, and the tri-plane.

Soccer mom

2007-09-26T07:48:00.001-07:00

Well it’s official – I’m now a soccer mom. Ethan played twice last weekend, once in a game, and once in a practice (in that order). It was very cute to see 10 five year olds running around randomly, sometimes in relation to the ball, but often not. The concept that they were trying to get the ball to go in a particular direction was new to most of them. The idea that there was a boundary past which they weren’t supposed to kick the ball seemed incomprehensible to them. But they seemed to be enjoying themselves, which was the most important thing. And somehow Ethan knew how to stop and kick the ball, but I have no idea where he learned it from. A babysitter here? Where he was before? Ethan didn’t seem to know either.

We also went to a fun event this past weekend – called “Touch-a-Truck”. It was free, and I thought it was just wonderful that all these people would clean and bring their trucks to show them off. There were a lot of interesting ones, including an ambulance you could get in, a police mobile unit that you could walk through, and lots of huge trucks that Ethan could sit at the steering while and pretend to drive. Bob The Builder was there – the “real” one according to Ethan.

The other night Ethan was in a really weird mood before dinner. I was wondering what was up, and then after dinner he started asking us a slew of tough questions: Why did we pick him? Was he in somebody’s tummy? Did we want a kid? I knew the questions were coming at some point, I just wasn’t expecting them so soon! Now I have to do catch up to figure out helpful ways to answer them. Ever since he asked the questions he’s been in a great mood, so I think he’d been worried about some of these things. There’s a part of me that so wishes he didn’t have to deal with all this stuff!

First Day of Kindergarten!

2007-09-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Ethan started Kindergarten a couple of weeks ago! He was very excited to start, and so far things have been going very well. Here’s a photo of him getting on the bus with his dad the very first day. He sat next to his friend Nicholas, another incoming kindergartner who lives a couple doors down. I decided to bike down to the school to snap some photos of him getting off the bus. All the kids were so cute, and a little overwhelmed.

Ethan also started his after-school program, which he is thrilled about since his “best buddy” Cameron is in preschool in the next room and they get to see each other every day.

The first week of school was a little rough because Ethan was sick with a fever and cold. He was so excited to go to school that he managed to be well enough to make it, but he’d come home and just collapse. Then that weekend he managed to save up every negative thought, action, and word, and dump it on us, mostly on Saturday. In talking to other parents of kindergartners, it sounds like this was actually pretty much the norm. It’s pretty overwhelming to meet all the new people, adjust to new expectations, new routines, etc. This past week as a lot better.

The weekend before school started (Labor Day Weekend), we took a few day trips around town. We went to the Providence Zoo, where Ethan’s favorite animals were the short-legged donkey (because it reminded him of Donkey in Shrek), and the bison. Here’s a photo with Mark, and if you look closely you can see that Ethan’s mouth is still blue from the 2 foot long frozen popsicle thingy that he got to eat there.

We also took a trip down to see the swan boats in Boston. We had read “Make Way for Ducklings” the night before we went down there. Ethan mostly wanted to go see the real swans, but he had a fun time with the pretend swans as well.

Miniature Golf

2007-08-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Rada’s 7th birthday party which was held at a miniature golf place. On the way there, I had Ethan and Zack in the back seat of my car telling a long series of scatological jokes in the form of: X poo-poos on Y, followed by hilarious laughter. For example Ethan started it out with “I have a funny joke – the elephant poo-poos on a skunk. Ha, ha, ha, ha.” This lasted for about 20 minutes as they substituted such things as cars, houses, various animals, etc. for the X and Y variables. They thought they were extremely funny.

We also had a play date with twins Max and Josh, whose dad is one of my swim buddies. The boys enjoyed making all sorts of mayhem. Afterwards we went to Crane beach where Ethan found semi-live clams (alive enough to keep shut and stick out their necks, but not alive enough to bury themselves safely under the sand). We watched the tide come in and the water was warm enough for Ethan to swim in for quite a while.

Summer Fun

2007-08-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

We’ve been enjoying summer as much as possible. Here are a few highlights from the past few weeks:

--Trip to Davis Farmland with Jane and her son Finn. The boys had a blast playing with the baby goats that were running around, and also feeding the piglets, llamas, cow, sheep, etc. Ethan had his first experience up on a pony, with a huge smile the whole ride. The splash park was an incredible relief on this 90+ degree day. In the end the boys played in a pretend stream, Ethan painted his face random colors (artistic license), and they both had bubblegum ice cream on the trip home.
--Canoeing with Lisa, Mike, and Roberto. We put in at Lisa’s sister’s house in Salem. Ethan spent the entire trip repeatedly asking if we could go to the playground instead. (When he does this I say “yes Donkey” referring to Shrek 2 in which Donkey keeps peskering Shrek and Fiona with “are we there yet? Are we there yet?”) After we landed the hermit crabs diverted his attention for a while.
--Picnic with other families with kids from Kazakhstan (see photo). It was great seeing how well all the kids are doing! People were impressed with how fast Ethan had learned English.
--Playing at Walden Pond with Rich and Jennifer’s twins, and Roberto. Ethan seems to bond especially well with kids he can chase or be chased by. Lisa found a dead fish which Ethan wanted to touch.
--Crane beach with little Molly and Beth. The water was so low that there were huge tidal pools warm enough to swim in. Ethan and I splashed the water as high as we could as we ran through them. Molly and Ethan found a big hole in the sand and buried themselves and various objects in it. Adults had fried calamari and kids had fried chicken for dinner. Ethan got a ring and a necklace for 25 cents each from a toy dispenser at the restaurant.
--Trip to Canobie Lake Park with Tom. Ethan’s first time up in a Ferris Wheel. He also loved the bumper cars, and the pretend planes that went around in a circle which he could lift up or down.

T. Rex's mouth

2007-08-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we had an exciting weekend up at a pond in New Hampshire. There were two houses, 13 adults, 7 bedrooms, 4 boys, two very large dogs (125 and 150 pounds), and perfect weather. Ethan went fishing for the first time, and within about 10 minutes managed to catch the only fish (a 10 inch Perch) that anyone caught the whole weekend. He also went out in a Kayak and in a rowboat with his dad for the first time. Ethan jumped off the dock and swam to shore all by himself, and tried a trampoline for the first time. Here’s a photo of Ethan and Zack and his mom Karen. Zack and Ethan had a great time with the other boys building a big ditch in the sand at the lake, and then walking up the hill and pouring bucket after bucket of water down their mini-waterfall.

The other day I heard Mark and Ethan having a conversation downstairs. Mark said something like “This house is older than me. It was built before I was alive.” To which Ethan responded with “You mean you’re dead?”, which for some reason struck me as incredibly funny.

Ethan has a placemat with a bunch of dinosaurs on it. Recently he noticed that T. Rex’s mouth, with it’s big long teeth, is quite different from the Stegosaurus’ mouth. I explained that it was because T. Rex ate meat, and Stegosaurus ate plants. From just looking at the mouths, he could completely distinguish all the meat and plant eaters on the placemat with 100% accuracy. An observation about the mouths I had never noticed. Meanwhile, he just won’t believe us about T. Rex is the same beast as Tyrannosaurus Rex. He also wouldn’t, for some odd reason, believe us the other night when we explained that bats ate mosquitoes. He insisted that it was not so because they weren’t talking bats. ??

Dogs, lions and princes

2007-07-20T06:40:00.001-07:00

Here’s a photo of Ethan being silly in the car one morning. How he comes up with some of these things, I’ll never know.

Yesterday we had a play date with Cameron, Ethan’s former best friend from school who now goes to a different school, much to the chagrin of both. It was quite adorable listening to their conversation in the back seat. It started out with Cameron pointing to a Subaru saying it was the same as our car, and Ethan correcting him that it was a different color. Then Ethan listed the kinds of cars he can identify (Volvos, hummers, pick up trucks, Audi’s Porsches, etc), and Cameron inquiring as to how Ethan could recognize all of them. Then Ethan asked Cameron if he missed him and liked playing with him, to which Cameron said yes. They both discussed another boy at school who cried, and said they liked playing with each other rather than the other boy. At one point Cameron also declared that his mom could cook anything. Not to be outdone, Ethan said that his mom and dad could cook anything too (if only!). Cameron also said his mom said it would be ok for him to stay over one night, which actually sounds like a lot of fun! Then the conversation quickly digressed into poo-poo and butt references accompanied by much laughing at which point I intervened.

It’s fascinating to me how complex Ethan’s language has gotten. There are still some really egregious grammatical errors, and a continuing persistent confusion about he/she, etc., but meanwhile some of his sentences are getting quite long and interesting. Last night my friend Carolyn came over to visit, and Ethan was able to ask her how many brothers and sisters she has, where she was from, and whether she likes playing on the snow (?). He also uses his budding language skills to direct elaborate role plays in which he is variously a baby lion, a dog, the bad lion scar from Lion King, a boy, a knight, a prince, or a dad. He’ll then tell whoever will listen to take on another role. The other day he and Zack were knights and Zack’s mom Karen and I were princesses. At dinner one night he jokingly told his brother Alec that he (Alec) was a princess (which Alec took very well).

Summer Adventures

2007-07-19T14:14:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago Sophie came over to visit. First we went to play at Walden Pond (Ethan’s first time), then we came home and he decided to pile various things on her head and down her shirt (very typical Ethan). Sophie is an elementary school teacher and knew just how to get into the 5-year-old mind set. She also recommended some great books on parenting, which have turned out to be really helpful.

Every day on the way to school Ethan and I drive pass by some cornfields. We got to see the fields right after the farmers tilled them, then we watched as the little corn plants began to grow. When the plants were an inch tall, I told Ethan that they’d be taller than him pretty soon and he wasn’t sure whether to believe me or not, since he thought maybe I was joking. Last night we got out of the car and he stood next to the corn. Sure enough they were taller than him. He said his very cute “Oh” when he saw I was right. Then he wanted to know if the corn plants were going to grow taller than Nicholas’ papa (the tallest person we know at 6 feet 9 inches). As we were getting back into the car, we found some little yellow snails that Ethan picked up and held in his hand. They obligingly retreated into their shells, then slowly re-emerged with their little antennae/eyes extending out.

We also had a big adventure a couple of weeks ago, going down to visit Julia and her moms Lyn and Joan at their beach house in Rhode Island. (Mark didn’t come because he was off watching car racing with Alec). It was the longest drive we’ve taken together at 2 hours. Ethan did very well, and was thrilled to hang out with Julia and play at the beach. Here’s a photo of them trying to catch crabs, which consisted of putting hot dogs on metal triangle thingies, and lowering them into the water where the crabs came running up and tried to grab on. Except that the crabs just weren’t that hungry. We could see them hanging out on the sand, but they ended up running away from the hot dogs instead of trying to eat them. I thought it might be because they were cheese hot dogs, but Joan assured me that the crabs had been perfectly willing to eat them a few days before.

Here’s a photo of Ethan and Julia on the country’s oldest continuously running carousel at Watch Hill. It was extremely difficult to try to snap their photo with the pathetic lag on my small digital camera, but you can just see them exiting the photo in this one.

Ethan had a blast at the beach during the day, running back and forth in the waves and building sand castles. At 10, Julia seems to like Ethan’s wild 5 year old antics as long as there aren’t older kids to play with, at which point she wonders at how anyone could be that silly. Ethan was so tired by the time we left that he couldn’t even talk. I asked him if he wanted something to eat, and he just mumbled “mmmmb” or something like that. On the way home we passed a kettle corn stand which kept him busy until he fell fast asleep. Thank you Julia, Joan and Lyn – we had a great time!

Strawberries and doggies

2007-06-26T12:22:00.000-07:00

This weekend we had Kipper the dog stay with us for several days. Kipper is a very cute little black dog who is a second generation cockapoo -- meaning his grandparents were poodles and cocker spaniels (in other words, a mutt). He tolerated being around a five year old quite admirably, and even got to appreciate Ethan by the end of the weekend when some of the chasing and fussing calmed down. I had to remind myself that the little boy asking if Kipper could "stay long time" and cuddling with him in his bed was the same one I had brought back from Kazakhstan who screamed and insisted on being picked up whenever a dog was within a 100 feet of him.

Ethan and I also went to a strawberry festival at a nearby farm in Concord. We did a hayride, and Ethan got to climb onto a real tractor, which you can see here. We were too tired to pick strawberries, but we got strawberry shortcake and kettle corn.

Yesterday we went swimming at an outdoor pool as the guest of our neighbors. At first Ethan was clinging to me in fright. Then at some point he realized out that the outdoor pool was really just like the indoor pool, and then he happily paddled around until complete exhaustion took over.

Six months and 2.5 inches

2007-06-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the 6 month anniversary since Ethan landed in the United States. Very exciting! This also means we can start filing the paperwork to "readopt" him in the U.S. This will enable him to get an American birth certificate, as well as adding another layer of finality on the adoption process.

We went to the doctor on Friday (refrain in the car going there:"No shots! No shots? Please no shots! Shots?? No shots! Please no shots!") to have his vision checked for school (no shots, and his vision is fine). We also measured his height, and he has grown 2 and a half inches in the last six months! Wow! A bunch of people had mentioned he seemed taller, but I wasn't sure since we see him every day. Anyway, I was very excited.

He, she, it

2007-06-14T09:13:00.001-07:00

Important things I've learned:
--Hold Ethan's hand even when he says not to
--When Ethan runs away, it means he wants to be picked up
--When Ethan acts crazy, he is almost always hungry, tired, sick, or needs a hug
--Ethan is really good at picking out what to take to "show and tell"
--5 year olds like to bargain

For some reason, mysterious to me as a native English speaker, Ethan finds it really difficult to figure out when to use he, she, and it. He consistently mixes them all up. The other day I was trying to explain that the girl next door is a "she", not a "he", and that it is "her" brother even though he is a "he". Not sure it got through.

School Play

2007-06-13T16:50:00.000-07:00

Tonight Ethan was in his preschool play, which consisted mostly of the kids putting on adorable animal costumes (Ethan was a dragonfly complete with purple wings), parading into the room, and then standing up and saying something about the animal. Ethan, in a rare moment of shyness, didn't want to stand up when it was his time to say something, but he was a real cutie anyway. Afterwards all the families had a picnic (which would have been outside if it wasn't raining and in the 50's).

I also saw this drawing that Ethan had made on the wall of his classroom. He tells me that it is a person inside a tent, the stripy thing on the right being the door (the frilly things around the outside are completely mysterious to me). What I was amazed by was that it's the first drawing of a person I've seen Ethan make where the body has form rather than just sticks, plus it seems to have not only a nose (a recent feature of his drawings), but also square ears. (?) You can also see he has written his name on the right side. The letters are actually in order, which is unusual, although the concept of orientation is still not there. I asked him what "Lizard DVD" meant and he said: "I don't know."

Lions, lions, lions

2007-06-07T17:37:00.000-07:00

A neighbor brought over a set of large paper and some markers that her daughter no longer needed, and gave them to Ethan. He sat right down and drew these three lions with the orange marker -- papa lion, mama lion, and baby lion -- all by himself. I love how one of the lions is standing upright, mostly because he ran out of room on the page. The extra leg on the middle lion is actually a baby lion (?). What's remarkable to me about this drawing is the fact that Ethan didn't know how to draw anything when he first came over. Luckily, his preschool provides the kids lots of artwork and drawing opportunities since we're not very good about doing art projects at home.

Ethan and I have had play dates with Roberto and his mom Lisa once a week for the last couple of months. Lisa and I have been friends for ages, so it's a double 'date'. At first Ethan didn't want to play with Roberto since he's only 2 years old, but now Ethan looks forward to seeing Roberto every week. This week Ethan was able to convince Lisa to be a bad lion, and he and Roberto pretended to be baby lions hiding in the tent. Lisa was a very good bad lion, by the way. Afterwards we went out to eat at a Chinese restaurant in town where Ethan enjoyed chewing the ice cubes, and both boys behaved themselves.

I'm not a present, I'm a boy!

2007-05-29T05:51:00.000-07:00

On Sunday we went to the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston with Zack and his mom. Here's a photo of them playing around on the statue of the gorilla. Ethan has been asking to go to the zoo for a while. But it surprised me how little time he wanted to spend actually looking at each animal. Both boys were anxious to see the lions and tigers, and then after looking at the animals for about 14 seconds, they tugged at our hands begging that we take them back to the zoo playground so they could climb on the pretend trains. (?)

The lion was even obligingly roaring quite ferociously while we were there. The boys thought the camels were smelly, and hence hilarious. And the boys found two sticks in the grass that instantly became knives and guns they toted around proudly. But the playground was definitely the most popular attraction of the day.

My birthday was last Friday, and while I was hugging Ethan, I told him that he was the best present I had. He burst out laughing and said, "I'm not a present -- I'm a boy!" as if what I said was the silliest thing he had heard in a while. Well, I guess both of us are right.

5 months

2007-05-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

It's now been five months and five days since we arrived in the U.S. Ethan is continuing to do really well. Some statistics:
--Ethan hasn't missed a day of preschool since he started at the beginning of this year. He's had a few snuffles, and a case of conjunctivitis, but not really sick.
--Ethan doesn't sleep very much. He goes to be around 9pm, and wakes up around 6:30am, and doesn't take a nap. The good news is that it gives us a lot of time to spend with him after preschool.
--There are now four children (two boys and two girls) on our street who will be attending kindergarten in September. They all live within two houses of us. (!)
--Ethan can now swim about 10 feet all by himself in the big pool (over his head). He does a modified breast stroke and can't breath, but seems to be fearless about the water. We call him the little fish.
--Ethan likes to get "20 big hugs" before he goes to sleep, sometimes with 20 kisses, sometimes without. This morning Mark offered to give him 20 hugs before he left for work, but Ethan specified he wanted only 3 big hugs.

Where money?

2007-05-10T03:18:00.000-07:00

Ethan loves all his birthday presents. He seems very proud to have "lots toys". When he meets new people, including adults, he often asks them if they have "lots toys home".

The other morning at breakfast Ethan was waving out the window at our back yard and asking "where money? where money?" I asked him if he meant his collection of coins, but he shook his head. "Where money?" he asked again. I was baffled since he kept pointing out to the grass. I asked him if he meant the paper things we use to buy things with. Ethan tends to wrinkle his brow and scowl at me when I don't get the obvious. "Like in DVD! Wallace" he said in an exasperated tone. Oh! Was he confusing the word money with bunny?? "Yes! Where bunny?"

Ethan also has a very interesting grammatical habit that can be confusing to the uninitiated. He'll say "Ethan, I like chocolate", which means he likes chocolate (he does!). Or, "Papa, he no like french fries?" which means "does papa like french fries" (Ethan is fascinated by what we like and don't like, and is continually asking. Sometimes if I say I don't like something that he likes, like "cheese-its", he'll just shout back "no!" as if it's just impossible I couldn't like something he does.

Five Years Old!

2007-04-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Ethan turned five years old today.Yesterday he had a party with a bunch of his friends and family. He got lots of presents, ate lots of cake, and ran around with his friends. Here's a photo of Ethan opening presents with Grandma and Grandpa, who came all the way from the west coast to visit him.

Harping with Margot

2007-04-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Margot brought her harp over last week so that Ethan could see it. Actually, she brought two harps over, a little one and a big one, and she let Ethan play them. He thought it was way cool! The photo here shows Ethan playing on the big one. Margot taught him the difference between plucking the strings too hard, and touching them gently to get beautiful music out of them. Thanks Margot!

Ever since we stopped getting up every morning at 6:30am when Ethan wakes up, and instead let him either cuddle with us or go play in his room with his toys (his usual choice), he's been getting dressed by himself before we wake up as well. On Saturday morning, Ethan reached into the upper levels of his closet (still not sure how he got up to the hangers), and pulled down his fancy button-down oxford shirt and put it on. Then he donned a fancy tux/dinner jacket we got at "dollar-a-pound" last week, and we went for a walk around the block at 7:30 in the morning. The neighbors we ran into commented on how well dressed he looked. Ethan loves clothes! Here's a photo of him relaxing on the couch -- if you look carefully you can see that his hair is also sticking up strait on top of his head from sleeping on it wet, which I think is very cute.

Four months, an aunt, and a cousin

2007-04-17T09:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was four months since Ethan and I arrived in the US! Very hard to believe.

This weekend Ethan's aunt Jennifer and cousin Sasha came to visit us from the West coast. They tickled him a lot, and we took him for a walk at the mall since the weather was so yucky. At the mall, Ethan growled at the giant pretend crocodile, and we fed him lots of candy to keep him cooperative. (While she was here, Jennifer told me some insider tricks on how to raise nice kids: feed them Skittles on walks, let them eat crackers and cheese for dinner if they want, and sprinkle sugar on their pancakes if the syrup runs out.)

Ethan also learned some very important things while they were here, including what it felt like to have "this little piggy went to market" played on his toes, and "x marks the spot" played on his back. For their part, Jennifer and Sasha learned what a 'spoiler' is, and that it can snow in New England in mid April (sorry!). Ethan absolutely loved the attention he got from them, and fell fast asleep a mere 15 minutes after they left -- only the second time he's taken a nap at home in the four months he's lived here.

Kindergarten here we come

2007-04-10T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today they had an info session for parents at Ethan's soon-to-be kindergarten school. Parents were in one room, kids in a kindergarten classroom across the hall. After what Mark considers way too much anguished thought on my part, I decided not to bring Ethan to the event which featured (whoo-hoo) a ride on the yellow school bus. My intuition said it would only be confusing for him, and potentially make him nervous. Ethan has been confirming every two days or so that "Ethan never, never, never, never go Ballalar" (his word for the orphanage). This morning he added a question about whether Mama and Papa were happy Ethan lived in the house. "Yes! Very happy!" Can you imagine having to worry about this kind of thing when you're four years old?

Anyway, it's pretty funny to be in a room full of anxious parents, all worrying about the fate of their future kindergarteners -- including me. We had a long, long talk from the school psychologist about the problems that second and third grade girls have socializing (relevance?), and about how kids get blue rhinos, pink fish etc. pinned to their shirts the first day so they can find their classroom. Very, very important for us to know this. (Actually, the session was pretty helpful, I'm just poking fun at how serious all this stuff gets sometimes.)

First Easter

2007-04-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Easter bunny brought lots of candy to Ethan this morning. He was a very happy boy because we let him eat lots of it. Then Ethan had three friends come over and we had an easter egg hunt outside (eggs color coded for each kid so no winners or losers). The kids were so adorable!

Beach

2007-04-04T07:26:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend Ethan visited the beach for the first time (in Gloucester). Kazakhstan doesn't border on the ocean, so this is probably the first time he's ever been to the beach anywhere. Anyway, it was a bit cold, but Tom brought some balls and a bat, there were other kids there, and a couple of kites were flown. We didn't stay very long, but it was fun to go.

Yesterday Ethan and I went to Walden pond with Lisa and Bubbulo. We threw some sticks into the water, saw a red canoe, and a mallard pair. We also chatted with a few people who were fishing, and one of them showed us the three rainbow trout he had caught (yum!). Ethan learned that you shouldn't eat wild mushrooms, and then told a random passing stranger about the dangers of eating wild mushrooms. The man nodded his head, and agreed it was good advice.

I've signed Ethan up to go to kindergarten next year. The questionaire we must fill out includes questions like whether it was a difficult pregnancy, did he crawl at the right age, and whether there is anything in our family medical history of concern. Hmmmm. I just answered "no".

Of Mice and Boys

2007-04-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend we did some yardwork, and pulled out the gas grill since it seems like maybe (maybe?) the snow has finally stopped. When Mark opened up the grill, he discovered that eight deer mice had decided to make it home, using the grass-clipping bag from the lawn mower to build their very comfy nest. Surprisingly, they didn't all jump out when he opened up the grill, so I was able to get a picture of one about 20 minutes after he was first discovered. Ethan thought it was pretty cool, although he also made a point of telling us that he didn't like mice. Even so, we don't want to poison the mice because Oscar the owl keeps his home in our back yard, so I'm not sure how we're going to handle these little intruders.

Meanwhile, Ethan was being very helpful in the yard. Here is a picture of him making a silly face -- I think he's pretending to cry or something. (Ethan loves making silly faces!) You might also be able to see in the background some of our snowdrop flowers. Amazingly (and perhaps why they have their name), the little flowers managed to survive a dumping of 2 feet of snow (at least the ones beside the driveway where all the snow was shoveled on top of them) and still look perky.

Codman Farm Lambs

2007-03-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon we went to Codman Farm in Lincoln, about 10 minutes from our house. The goats had just had kids that were between 3 days and a week old. How cute! They even let us in to pet them. They also let us pet the bunnies, the adult goats, the sheep, the pigs, the cows, and a donkey. There were also a bunch of adorable black lambs.

It was quite an exciting, if muddy, day at the farm. The male turkeys were displaying all their feathers, the cows and sheep were making such a racket that the other boy Bubulo (Ethan's name for him) was a bit scared. Ethan proclaimed himself "not scared", although the truth is that he wanted me to pick him up when he saw big roosters wandering around, or near the adult goats.

Akarium

2007-03-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

Ethan's school was closed on Monday, so Ethan and I went to the Akarium -- you know, the place with all the fish in it. We parked that car at the Alewife subway stop parking lot during the morning rush, and as we walked from the car to the elevator, Ethan waved madly at the cars passing by and shouted "hi!" to them. It was actually quite wonderful. About half the drivers got big smiles on their faces and waved back. I had this overwhelming feeling of awe that he could manage to brighten the day of so many random passersby's.

It was Ethan's first time on the subway train, and he was fascinated by the whole thing. Everyone in the car was quiet, so when I started talking to me he told me "shhhhh". He loved going over the "salt and pepper" (Longfellow) bridge into Beacon Hill (and later we found it in the "Make Way for Ducklings" book too).

When we got to the "Akarium", he raced around the entire place in about 25 minutes, wildly pointing at fish and asking where the dolphins were. We watched the seals and the penguins, and he saw a shark in the big tank, and he played with the spider crab and the horseshoe crab in the "petting zoo" part. Then Ethan suddenly declared it time to go. "Are you sure you don't want to see more?" "No. Ethan home." Outside he wanted to see the big boats, and we spent about a half hour throwing ice and snow into the ocean -- seemingly even more exciting to him than seeing the fish.

Three Months

2007-03-16T06:40:00.000-07:00

Today it is exactly three months since we landed in the US from Kazakhstan. It blows me away how much has happened in that time. Ethan's grammar is still evolving, but he speaks so much and so well that everyone assumes he's always spoken English. In fact, I've discovered that Ethan manages to speak and communicate more than many of the kids his age. It's extremely rare anymore that he can't express an idea, both with his increased vocabulary and our shared history and common understandings (for example, "milk strong?" means that he is asking for the quadrillionth time to confirm that drinking milk will help make him strong and healthy as he grows up).

Ethan asked us for the first time yesterday whether he would have to go back to the "ballallar" (his word for the baby house -- it means 'children' in Kazakh). When we answered "never", he repeated, "never?". "Never, unless you want to", to which he responded with a smile. (Which raises another question -- how and when did he learn the word never? How does one learn such a word? The mind's ability to assimilate language is truly a remarkable thing, especially that of a 4 year old.)

No Farms on the Moon

2007-03-06T11:38:00.000-08:00

It's hard to describe just how extraverted Ethan is. He can strike up a conversation with just about anyone, even grumpy New Englanders. Picking him up from preschool might best be described as watching a candidate running for president -- he throws big waves to everyone, shouting "bye! bye!" as loudly as he can, then flashes his big smile when he finally catches their eyes. Leaving his preschool room usually entails a round of hugs and kisses for whichever kids or adults are willing, then another round of hugs and kisses for whoever is still in want of one.

Ethan also continues to develop his sense of humor. He can imitate himself and others for comedic effect. Yesterday he was incredibly cranky, and insisted, among other things, that "Ethan is English". When I told him no, he burst into huge sobbing tears (I have no idea what he was trying to say, because he was not at all appeased when I explained that he was talking English). Later, when he calmed down, he imitated himself crying, making it clear he realized how silly he was being. Here's a photo of Ethan making a funny face.

Last night Ethan also noticed the full moon rising. He started talking about how soldiers went in rocket ships to the moon (we told him the word was astronauts). For some reason he then started talking about what wasn't on the moon. He ended with "No farms on moon". Yes, indeed, as of today, there are no farms on the moon. Mark thought this might make a good title for a sci-fi book.

Folk Dancing

2007-03-04T14:52:00.000-08:00

Ethan and went folk dancing today. My friend Tom caught this photo of us leaving. When Ethan wasn't running madly back and forth across the room chasing other little boys, he was a good dancer.

Comments Enabled

2007-03-02T10:41:00.000-08:00

Hi, I've enabled the ability to comment on this blog.

"Stop coughing me"

2007-03-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

Ethan told us that he likes our cooking, and that: "Ethan like momma papa house." Very pleased with this, we told him thank you, and that it was "mama, papa, Ethan house". He beamed a big smile. I'm not entirely sure he understands yet that we're permanently his. Like many things in life, his general attitude is to enjoy what he has now.

He started talking a bit more about his experience at the baby house. He likes our food a lot more (he's said that several times). And he said that they had lots of toys, but no "race cars" and that he really likes "race cars". He talked about how one kid had been bitten by a spider, and another stung by a bee.

For a few days Ethan kept saying "stop coughing me". We tried to explain what coughing was by making "cough, cough" noises and that he must mean something else. Eventually we figured out he had misheard what that the other kids at school were telling him which was: "stop copying me". (He likes to repeat what people say, along with the way they say it and any accompanying face and hand movements. It was sort of cute when he was first learning English, but now it's just pretty annoying, although to be honest, he's an awfully good mimic of both voice and motion).

And in a case of reverse language acquisition, Ethan's teacher told me today that some of the other kids in his class are now saying the Kazak word "Atta", which Ethan uses to mean "look!" or "hey!".

Tank You

2007-02-21T08:14:00.000-08:00

There are several things that people comment a lot about Ethan:
--That he's very polite
--That he seems happy a lot (they don't see the crying and pouting of course)
--That he'll be a heart-breaker when he's older
I especially like the polite part. The teachers at school tell me that he says "tank you" more often than most of the other kids. If he accidently hurts me, he'll say "sorry!" very quickly. Then he'll do little extras, like opening the door for people (!), picking up trash when it falls, or offering pieces of his food to other people, even his favorites (like chocolate). Sometimes if I've gotten him a present, or someone else has given him something, he'll just spontaneously say sometime later, "Tank you mama!" or "Tank you, XX" even if the person isn't there. Of course he can be a normal 4 year old brat too, but I think it's so sweet when he does these things.

He's also starting to tell us what he likes and doesn't like. "Ethan like mama, papa house" he said at dinner the other night (meaning he likes our house). Or, "Ethan no like mama" when he's mad. The other night I dressed up to go to dinner, and Ethan looked me up and down and then said "mama look nice" to me (mama was touched). There's a picture up on the fridge where I'm wearing a dress and Ethan made a point of tell me "Mama cute" and smiling.

We went to the movies for the first time a few days ago ("Happy Feet"). We explained to Ethan that it was like a DVD, but much bigger, and that it featured penguins. Ethan patiently sat through the first half of the movie very politely (he understood when we explained that he had to be quiet), and ate his way through an entire large size popcorn (!), plus some candy, then decided it was time to go home ("car" he insisted). We asked him if he wants to go again, and he does, but we figure maybe something that has more than just a lot of penguins (there really were a lot of penguins in this movie, and they all looked pretty much the same, plus there were all sorts of musical and cultural references that he wouldn't understand at this point). On the other hand, Ethan can sit through an entire movie like Lion King 2 (insipid movie) twice in a row at home. (here's a photo of Ethan watching a DVD on his player at home)

Time flies

2007-02-17T04:39:00.000-08:00

It's been two months since Ethan and I arrived in the US. Amazing how much has happened since then. It feels like forever (in a good way). It's hard to imagine life without him (except of course when it's 6:00am and I'm exhausted and he's totally wired and awake).

The other day Ethan decided it should be his birthday, and started crying when I told him it wasn't. "Happy Birthday Ethan!" he insisted. I tried to explain it would be around 80 days before his birthday by saying "tomorrow" eighty times. At the end of this he just shook his head and said again "Happy Birthday Ethan!!" He kept doing this throughout the day, and I was trying to figure out what aspect of the "birthday" business he was so upset about not having. "Ethan wants presents?" I asked. That wasn't it. "Cake?" No, he'll eat sweets, but they're not something he cries over. "Crown?" (they wear a crown at school on birthdays.) Finally, later that evening Mark had the idea of singing "Happy Ethan to Ethan" to the birthday melody, changing the words so as not to confuse the issue. Ethan erupted into a giant grin. "More, more!" he said at the end. That was it. He just wanted the birthday song sung to him. Children can be so complicated and so simple at the same time.

The bounce house has been wonderful. It means I don't have to go driving around to find Ethan indoor places to play. It's also fun for playdates. This week Ethan had his first snow day from school when we got a huge storm on Valentines day. He played all afternoon with two neighbor girls, and I hung out with their mom. Later we all went sledding nearby -- the streets had so much snow in them that we could pull the sleds and kids through them.

Bouncy, bouncy

2007-02-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

Ethan's new "bounce house" arrived in the mail this week. It's wonderful. It's an air-filled 'trampoline' like the ones they have at fairs that is technically supposed to be used outside, but seems to work beautifully inside. Here's a picture showing Ethan with the desired effect it has on him (i.e. exhausted). Anyway, we're all very excited, as it gives us an outlet when it's really miserable or hard to do something outside. Plus it's rated to 250 pounds, so mama gets some exercise as well.

We also finally had enough snow here over the weekend to get a little sledding in. Ethan is really crazy about anything that involves speed: slides, jumping, sledding, biking, etc. Just like his papa. Ethan seems to be pretty fearless about it all, which is fine when things are safe, but a little disconcerting when he goes off the wrong hill towards a building at the bottom (woops!). Luckily Ethan wasn't hurt, but he got an earful from mama and papa, which he recounts to us later something like this: "Mama, papa: 'no Ethan! no Ethan!' Mama run. Ethan slide down. No ouchie")

We took Ethan into the International Adoption Clinic last week just to make sure everything was going ok, and they thought he was doing really well. The doctor jokingly kept saying that she was scared at how fast he was learning English. "Wow" she wrote on his sheet. At the end she said something like, "We don't need to see him again, but it would be nice if you had him come back and say hello when he gets into MIT". That was nice!

Ethan's language continues to progress. Now he has some verbs, sometimes used to advantage in 4-year old humor, such as: "Ethan eat poo-poo?". There are still some funny mix-ups, like when we were driving to school the other day and he said "bagel truck". He had just eaten bagels at school, and the truck had something round on the side, so I figured that was the source of the mixup. Turns out it was my mistake: he was trying to say "back-hoe truck", not bagel truck. Or, the other day we were driving after a rain and he said "pot holes". Since this wasn't anything we had taught him, I figured he learned it at school. "No!" he insisted, "Potholes" holding up his bag of pretzles. Oh, now I get it. He's also learning comparatives like bigger and smaller. Here's another taste of Ethan-style humor: he'll say, "Ethan bigger than papa?". We'll say "noooo". He'll say, "Ethan bigger than mama?". We'll say "nooooo", and on it goes.

Sometimes Ethan will ask the names of things that are pretty obscure. At first I hesitated to fill up his head with non-essentials, but then I just gave up realizing that if he's interested, I might as well tell him. So, Ethan knows the word "spoiler" on the back of race cars (and he knows that "Tom car yes spoiler, papa car no spoiler) {by the way, mama didn't know the word spoiler until a few years ago}. Ethan knows the difference between Stagasaurus (which has 'plates' on its back and 'spikes' on its tail) and Triceratops (which has 'three horns'). He proudly will tell you that one of his teachers drives a "black Jeep" (and he can now recognize Jeeps when he sees them), and that his other teacher drives a "silver Hundai", and that papa just bought a "red Audi" (although at first he'd say "Audi, Audi" thinking it was the same as "howdy, howdy" said by Woody in Toy Story). Then he blows me away when he recognizes other Subarus that aren't even the same model as mama's. He has trouble saying the word "stethascope" at least, but counterbalances that with knowing that the lion in his DVD is Alex, while his brother's name is Alec, with better disctinction than most people can manage. Oh, and when he says goodby, Ethan will often say, "See you later aligator", or maybe it might be, "See you tomorrow aligator", or even "See you later crocodile." Mark is convinced Ethan is going to be a comedian some day.

Ethan is also bonding to us more and more with time. He was always basically pleasant with us and affectionate, but he's showing signs of getting more attached to us specifically (the kids in orphanages are often taught, or learn, to treat any adult they can find like a parent, in hopes the person might actually take them up on it. When he was first home, he would often point to, or run up to other women and say, "mama?", or declare one of his teachers "mama!". It hurt a little, but I had to keep in mind where he was coming from, and trust that he'd get more clear. Now he mostly gets the concept, and only sometimes, mostly to tease, will call someone else mama. Or, when he doesn't want to go home from preschool, he pulls out another kid pointing them in my direction, and says, "your mama!" to them, but he's also smiling when he does it.)

Anyway, now he misses us when we leave the room, and he frequently asks where one of us is when we're not there. "Papa work?" he'll say repeatedly in the afternoon (meaning, 'is papa at work?'). I'm also feeling more attached to him with time. All his cute little hand motions (he waves his hand like royalty when he wants something) and ways he says things ( 'The Ethan?' meaning is this mine? or "Ethan lika-dem" meaning he likes something) are replayed in my head when he's not there. I figure, people are hard wired to fall in love, so with a little time, it's irresistable for all of us. That, plus getting a bounce house in the basement, a new train, and some chocolate now and then doesn't hurt the process.....

Exercising Options

2007-01-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

It's recommended that kids get at least an hour of exercise a day. I notice a huge difference in how calm Ethan is, and how well he sleeps when he gets some pretty intense running around. In the old days, we all just tumbled out the door and played with our neighbors, even when it was chilly, plus we usually walked to school. Now once it's cold, everyone stays indoors, and even preschool doesn't take the kids outside when it's below 20 with the wind chill (like, for example, most of January and February)

I estimate I spend somewhere around 10-14 hours a week trying to make sure Ethan gets enough exericise -- including driving places, making dates, and the actual exericse itself. I have the time -- lots of parents don't have that luxury (ok, when it's happening, it doesn't exactly feel like a luxury to be sitting there watching him play in a room full of screaming kids, but you get the idea). And people wonder why kids are getting more obese......

That's funny

2007-01-24T11:30:00.000-08:00

My car died as well last week, leaving us down to one rental car for the family. It's back in working condition, but stress has been a little high. The other night Mark and I were discussing how much we should spend on a new car, when all of a sudden, Ethan commented, "money, money, money...", in the same ironic intonation people usually use with this phrase. Shocked (since we didn't know he even understood anything of what we were talking about), we looked over at him, burst out laughing and asked him where he had learned this completely appropriate phrase for the situation. Turns out Mr. Potato Head says it during the hold-up in the opening scene of Toy Story, after the piggy bank has been turned upside down.

We went to the DeCordova art museum last Sunday. Ethan did not like it at all. He kept protesting "That's funny! That's funny!" Now this is not at all what it might sound like. He's taken the phrase "Than's not funny" which is what we say to him when we're trying to get ready and he's laughing and being uncooperative, and transformed it into "That's funny" meaning something he's mad about. I think he just didn't hear the 'not' part of the phrase, but I'm not entirely sure on the origins of this phrase, which ironically, is indeed quite funny.

The Ethan's

2007-01-19T05:36:00.000-08:00

Wheras Ethan never used to say any articles (the, a), now he's compensating by adding 'the' (not 'a' yet) to almost any object he can. His sentences are also getting longer, as in "This is the butter?" when pointing to aforementioned substance on his toast. Or, "This is the Ethan's?", meaning that it belongs to him. He's also starting to use pronouns, but mostly just the word "mine" to mean me, I, and mine.

My new plan is to get Ethan exercise every day after preschool, since in the cold weather they often aren't going outside. Tuesday we went to a place called "One Stop Fun" which has lots of slides and tubes to go running through. None of his friends were available to play, so mama tried to crawl through the tubes with him ("When in Rome..."). It was actually pretty fun! Especially the slides, which are about 15-20 feet high, and you get a lot of speed by the bottom.

Same thing at the pool yesterday. We spent almost two hours there, going from the kiddie pool to the big pool and back again. It's really neat seeing how much more comfortable Ethan feels in the water each time. One of the lifeguards had to tell him not to go down the slide until the kid below was gone, and I told her he didn't speak much English so she did a brilliant show with her hands of how to wait. I complimented her on the ability to explain so well with her hands, and she explained that she is a sign language interpreter. Oh, and by the way, mama goes on the water slide too sometimes (When in Rome....)

I have to admit that playground politics is a little baffling to me. When I was growing up we A) were largely unsupervised and B) were allowed to touch eachother. Because I can't ask Ethan what's going on, sometimes I'm left wondering who did what to whom when a cry goes out for "stop it!" or "mama!". Yesterday, it was clearly the other kid's fault (in my opinion). He kept following Ethan, then jumping in front of Ethan like he wanted to be followed, but when Ethan did, he yelled "Stop it!" in this really plaintative voice. From what I've observed so far, it seems like today's kids are getting the message to be afraid of everything. Very sad.

Ouchies

2007-01-14T08:04:00.000-08:00

Mark got into a car accident Friday night. He's ok, but his car is probably totaled. I felt it was important to explain to Ethan what was going on, since mama and papa were going to be upset, and papa's red car wasn't going to be around anymore. So I pulled out Ethan's toy cars, and showed him how Mark's car had run into a car in front of him. Ethan understood immediately that papa's car had an 'ouchy', and even learned the word 'accident'. He then reinacted the crash using his hands, showing one hand running into the other, repeatedly, saying 'papa car accident, mama car accident no.' (picture the no as a long noooo with a few shakes of the head). We also took Ethan along yesterday to look at new cars. He decided that papa should get a black car, although Mark doesn't necessarily agree.

Meanwhile life goes on. At 8:30 this morning (Sunday), as I was standing underneath the slides at the park, trying to keep from getting wet in the 40 degree weather, realizing just how much my life has changed. My friend Lisa says that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. I like her attitude. Only today it was bad weather, AND we had inappropriate clothing. Oh well, so he got sopping wet on the slide -- isn't that what driers are for? Have to burn off energy somehow. When we were kids, we'd just go running outside in our neighborhood, even if it was raining. Now I'm spending my days, driving around, looking for places indoors where he can find other kids and get exercise. Something's not right here.

Later today Ethan goes to his first birthday party (indoors, with other kids, and exercise -- yipee!)

Goggles And A Watch

2007-01-10T07:04:00.000-08:00

I bought Ethan a pair of swim goggles at the sports store last week. It made a huge difference when we went swimming, as he finally liked putting his head underwater. The same kid who screamed and dug his fingernailes into us when we put him into the big pool a couple of weeks ago, was now gladly jumping off the side of the pool into mama's hands -- even after she missed one time and he dropped to the bottom of the pool. He really, really wants to go off the diving boards like he's seen the bigger kids do, and we've explained to him that he can only do it if he knows how to swim. Now (happily for me) he is super motivated to learn to swim.

He loves telling people about the goggles. "Ethan small goggles" he tells anyone he meets for more than five minutes. "Mama, papa big goggles. Three goggles!" he elaborates. It's the same way with the little watch I bought him. "Ethan watch" he shouts and shoves his wrist out to strangers. There are two Ethans at his preschool, and he explains, "One Ethan watch, one Ethan no watch", shaking his head from side to side as he conveys the sad 'no watch' plight of the other Ethan. Of course he can't read the numbers on it yet, never mind tell time, but hey, who cares.