Early Observations

So today I made it to 3:45 before I couldn’t sleep so that’s my best night yet!  Since I’ve been up for awhile I wanted to jot down some early observations since being home.  May be jumbled but they’ll make sense to me.

• Stranger anxiety is gone.  It’s good and bad.  Yesterday he walked up to a lady at Laila’s therapy and grab her hand to hold.  My mom pointed out that with the large group at the airport and now with a few people stopping by a day it’s probably making him this way.  All these people are strangers to him but I’m telling him it’s OK to hug them and sit on their lap.  Hmmm, gonna have to figure out how to explain this to him.  Random therapy lady was nice about it though ;)
• I wonder about sleeping in the orphanage.  Remember he first hid his cries in the night?  Now he’s comfortable showing that to us since we said it’s OK but then we realized that we’re not sure he was allowed to get up to go to the bathroom in the night either.  About 1am every night he cries and usually needs to go to the bathroom.  So then we told him that was OK which led to…….
• Bravery to get out of his bed in the night.  Every night is a new adventure!  So we told him he’s not allowed to get out of bed (I’m paranoid he’d go outside or something without me hearing him!) but that if he needed us all he needed to do is call because he has a monitor right next to his bed.  Soooo that led to him not willing to get out of bed in the morning when Jackson told him it was OK because mommy told him not to get out of his bed.  Is anyone else running through this like one of those “If you Give  a Mouse a Cookie” books??
• He’s adjusting way better than we thought so we’ve already taken him out to Laila’s therapies, out to lunch with the Hamstra clan, to the church to explore so he’d be comfortable when we go, to our favorite little Indian grocery/diner, Walmart and a few other stops.  He’s amazing.
• At lunch on Tuesday there was paper on the table and crayons and he wrote his name by himself without something to copy from.  He’s so smart!!
• His name:  I have him writing Ranjit so he knows how to write his full name but we have now been informed by him that his name is RJ.  A few times already he has corrected me by pointing to himself saying “mom, RJ please.”  Or if I introduce him to someone as Ranjit he will correct me and say “RJ.”  Guess he’s OK with his nickname!
• The train we got off ebay that he had at the orphanage was genius!  He plays with it several times a day.  He would sit and rock and sing the ABCs along with it all day long if I would let him.  Ours has all the piece and actually has batteries too so he’s having so much fun.  And it’s a learning one so that’s GREAT!
• He loves to be outside even if his little hands are cold and he’s bending them and saying “oww!”  He racked leaves with daddy and loves to play on the trampoline.  Wish he didn’t have to come right at the beginning of winter.
• He LOVES the bath.  He calls it soap.  Goes in every morning.  He doesn’t like to lay down and get water in his ears but he’s easing into it.  I find that funny because in the pool he was going under and loving it.  I guess laying down in the bath is a bit more gradual and tickles more.  sensory stuff.
• He’s teaching me more and more marathi words and it’s fun that he trusts me with that.  He doesn’t use them because usually it’s something he already knows the English word for but it’s a fun game to play together and I’m always interested in a new language.
• Today is going to be the first day that everyone is back to school and work and it will just be he and I in the morning.  He’s had a good taste of people leaving and knowing they’ll come back because Laila’s been going to school the past few days and therapy.  I always make sure to get down on eye level with him and explain that whoever is going to do such and such but this is their home and they be back in a little while.  He asks for them a few times when they’re gone but not in a panicked way.  Emma has gone to girl scouts and GEMS and Laila had gone to school and therapy but today will be interesting with everyone gone.
• Enrolling him in insurance was easier than I was dreading.  They were OK with him not having his SS# yet.  It’s not completely done yet but when it comes through it will back date to the day of application which is good because he goes to his first Dr appointment on Monday!
• I hadn’t really decided on what to do for home schooling him yet but that decision was made for me yesterday.  The Christian school Emma & Jackson go to participates in our states voucher program.  There are a lot of guidelines to qualify for the voucher and it turns out only one homeschool curriculum qualifies for the prior year schooling guideline.  Even better is that it’s free and online and they send you all your materials.  Going to try to finish up that application today and get that going.  We’re going to try 1st grade.  That would make him in the same grade as Jackson.  That could be good or bad.  I’ve heard both sides of the “twinning” debate but it seems to be where he is academically right now so we’ll just take it as it comes.
• He’s still a very good eater.  He’ll pick apart what he’s eating and take things out if you’ll let him but if you don’t he’ll eat it.  Not that we’re making him eat things he doesn’t like, it’s stuff he likes but isn’t sure about.  Example:  last night was his first try at broccoli and he seems to have a green aversion (typical kid).  He didn’t even want to try it but when daddy brought out the yummy cake he gobbled it right up so he could have cake.  Again, so typical.
• He’s already losing a little of his accent on certain words and I’m so sad.  He used to say etch for H and now he says it the boring old English way :(  I need to get about 15 hours of video of him talking and singing so I can hold on forever!
• He’s never had a potty accident and we’re almost ready to let him go on #1 on his own.  We had to try several techniques to get it right where he didn’t make a mess.  Sitting is what works.  I’ll just say things “downstairs” were a little different than we had been told and he’s definitely not Jewish.  This made for interesting aim.  Oh he’s gonna hate me for that when he grows up!
• He’s for sure bigger than the final measurements that they gave us.  Not sure if he’s just shot up or if we converted the metric wrong or what.  He’s comfortably in a 5T and has long legs and …..
• No butt!  This child is as flat as a board on the backside!  I’ll pinch his little tush and say “where did your cheeks go???” and he laughs and laughs :)  He’s hiking up his pants all day long.
• He stills loves to play his airplane game with me.  Can’t remember if I described it before.  He flies his hand in the air and then I fly mine to his and we meet in the middle and slide our arms down each others to form an arch.  It always ends in me tickling him which he loves.  Every time I smile because to me it is such a beautiful picture of us.  We were alone and then we flew together and ended in laughs.
• I love him :)