Strawberries and Cellos

I am documenting these two stories because I don't ever want to forget them. It's true that a lot of terribleness can come with two year olds but there is so much sweetness too. I love watching LB become a little person and sometimes it is just too much and I have to step away and shed a few tears of gratitude.

Story #1 - Strawberries

We've been getting together a lot recently with LB's new buddy, Simon, and his mom, Megan. Simon's dad works with D, which is how we met them. About a month ago we met them at a nearby park and Megan brought cheese and strawberries for the boys. She cut the cheese up until little squares and ever since then LB always requests "Megan cheese." So I am getting pretty good at cutting cheese up into bite sized squares. He also ate strawberries for the first time that day. I had offered him strawberries on many occasions but he would always just suck the juice out and then spit it out. Annoying. But he ate and actually swallowed Megan's strawberries. After that park play date, anytime we saw strawberries LB would say "Megan and Simon park." The Friday before Mother's Day, Megan and I scheduled another park play date. That morning I told LB that we were meeting Megan and Simon at the park. He got super excited and ran into the kitchen and pointed to the fridge and said "Megan cheese and strawberries." To confirm I asked him if he wanted to take strawberries and cheese to the park for Megan and Simon. He said "yes" and started jumping up and down with excitement. Luckily I had both so I packed them up and put them into a little lunch bag for the park. We got there and LB insisted that I bring the bag even though they weren't there yet. He kept walking around the park saying, "Megan! Simon! Strawberries and cheese!" He was so happy and proud to have brought this snack to the park for them. He seemed so grown up to me in that moment. Sadly, the time we were supposed to meet passed and there was still no sign of Megan and Simon. LB continued to play and every now and then would call out for them. I told him that maybe Simon got an owie and they couldn't come. I was thinking to myself that it was weird that they didn't show. We stayed for a little over an hour and then I convinced him to head home. The look on his face was heart breaking. LB seemed so dejected that he didn't get to share his special snack. I was holding back tears the entire time because he was so disappointed and sad. I thought that it showed such a sweet part of his personality that at two years old he would want to bring the same snack that made him so happy and share it with his friend. Sigh. What am I going to do when a kid is truly mean to him for the first time? I might die.

(Side note: Megan and Simon were in an accident on the way to the park. My statement about Simon's owie ended up being correct. So scary! Thankfully, they are okay.)

Story #2 - Cellos

Saturday morning we went to our local farmer's market. They usually have someone there playing guitar or banjo or something like that. This week they had a brother and sister duet that were probably about middle school age. The sister was playing the violin and the brother was playing the cello. They were really good and LB was so obsessed with them. He stood there for a long time just watching them and would clap enthusiastically at the end of each song. He would occasionally do the air guitar and had a lot of the nearby vendors laughing pretty hard. At one point we told him it was time to go but he got the saddest look on his face and started to tear up so we told him he could stay a little longer. What kind of parents pull their child away from a violin and cello concert? Not us. Then LB got it in his head that he wanted to touch the cello. The kids' mom was there and I was actually chatting with her a bit. She was telling me her kids started music lessons when they turned 3. So I asked her if it would be okay at the end of the song for LB to touch the cello. She was very sweet and was actually enthusiastic about him touching it. That mom was all about encouraging LB's love for music. So at the end of the song LB went up to the cello player and the mom told him to let LB see it. The boy was so adorable and started telling LB about all the parts of the cello and then when LB touched it he got he best expression on his face. I asked LB if he was happy and he said, "Yes. Happy. Touch cello." LB was so smitten with those older kids and they seemed to love his attention as well. After he got to touch it then he was able to leave in peace. We got home and LB ran straight to his toy bin in the living room. He came into the kitchen with his Elmo guitar under his chin and had made another toy the bow. He played the "violin" for a while and then he went and sat on the bottom step and put the Elmo guitar between his legs like a cello and started to play. He exclaimed, "Just like him!" At that point I had to step in the kitchen and shed a few tears. It was one of the most precious things he had ever done. I was overcome with how happy and proud he was of himself. Damon managed to snap a few photos of our little musician.

How did we get so lucky? He is such a gift.

Gift Lover

Sometimes I feel the need to come to this space and confess all the not so great parts of my personality. I am not sure why this is. But here I go with my latest confession. I really like gifts. Ugh. I am sure you would like me more if I said that I like to give gifts. I do. I am not that great at it but I do like picking out gifts for people. But the truth is that I really like receiving gifts. A lot of people in my family are really good at giving gifts. I seem to have inherited the gene that makes me really good at receiving gifts. My sister got the gift giving gene. For Christmas last year, one of the things she gave me was a safe delivery for a woman in a developing country. She purchased the gift from the International Rescue Committee. She knows me well and knows what matters to me. I was touched. She also gave D several pint glasses. D brews his own beer and it's quite tasty. She had them personalized to say "Buster Brewing Co." and had the lion of Judah etched on the glasses as well. So amazing and thoughtful!! My sister also had a bag made especially for me. I always told her how I much I loved her bag. It was very unique and her friend got it for her in California. I wasn't likely to find it anywhere in Ohio. My sister doesn't sew but has a good friend that does. She bought the fabric and asked her friend if she could replicate the bag. Her friend did a great job and every time I wear it out I always get compliments. What's even more wonderful is that I have now become internet friends with her friend who made the bag. Double gift!

My sister clearly inherited the gift giving gene from my mom. She is also excellent at giving gifts. My mom is really good at making notes of little comments that you make and then a few weeks later something shows up at your door step. She is the queen of that tactic. The last time we were in Tulsa, I complimented her bag. Are you noticing my love of bags? Well, of course, for Mother's Day this year my mom bought the bag for me in a different color. I love it. She is also really good at sending little gifts in the mail as encouragement. I remember receiving many a Starbucks gift card from her when we were going through infertility. They were always accompanied with a sweet note telling me to treat myself. As a side note, my mom also sends me coupons in the mail. It makes me smile every time. She is a thoughtful one. And thrifty.

It's no shock that the man I married also has the gift giving gene. Even though his cousin teased him at our rehearsal dinner for something D said about "not giving a woman flowers very often or they'll start to expect it" he is very good at giving gifts. D also times his gifts very well. The ring I wear on my right hand was a gift from D at the end of 2008. That was an incredibly tough year and he said it symbolized the end of one chapter and the beginning of another. A few months later we were filling out paperwork to adopt from Ethiopia. Like my mom, occasionally little packages, like a movie I wanted, will show up at our doorstep. And while it is true that he doesn't do the flower thing very often when he does it is very well timed and always unexpected. This Mother's Day he really surprised me. I have been making it known that I wanted a new, high tech blender. My plan was to sell a few things that I never use anymore and put that money towards a new blender. We had a working blender and it seemed silly to spend the money. But the one we had didn't chop stuff up that great and I have been working on hiding veggies into LB's fruit smoothies. I did some reading and it seemed like the Vitamix and Blendtec were the creme de la creme of blending. But they were pricey! One night I was using our old blender to puree some beans and something went terribly wrong. It's possible I didn't screw it on tight enough but as the beans were swirling around the base started spinning off the actual blender and beans started going all over the countertop and floor. I screamed. D came running and we managed to stop it but the damage had been done. LB came into the kitchen and said, "whoa dudes." All we could do was laugh. I told D I was done with that blender and was going to get serious about selling my bike. Little did I know he was already doing some blender research of his own. A few days later, which was a couple days before Mother's Day, I was taking out the trash and D told me he left something in his trunk and asked if I could bring it in. I got out to the garage and opened his trunk and there was a Blendtec box. I turned to look back at the house and he was standing in the door holding LB with a big grin on his face. He had taught LB to say "Happy Mother's Day." (I think LB thought it was my birthday.) I cried.

I'm working on perfecting a few smoothie recipes. Some have been downright nasty. My fault. Not the blender's. And yesterday I used it to make super delicious black bean burgers. I'm in love with it. Isn't that terrible. Here she is.

Hopefully D's ability to give gifts will rub off on LB. Considering that LB scolded me the other day for not putting my shoes away it is safe to say that he is picking up on more of D's tendencies than mine. That's a good thing. Mostly.

Clippers Game

D had a week of a vacation that he needed to use or lose so he has been home with LB and me all week. It's been wonderful. Since we are going to Pennsylvania in a few weeks for my cousin's wedding we decided just to hang out at home and try to find a few special things to do. We've had a great week and LB has been so happy to spend the week with his dad. We've visited lots of parks, went to the zoo, had a picnic lunch at the park and D got to go to LB's swim lessons. But the highlight occurred on Tuesday morning.

One of the things I've really been wanting to try with LB is to start going to sporting events. D and I basically love all sports and really enjoy going to actual games. My dad was always a big baseball fan so I grew up watching a lot of baseball. These days I don't watch a lot of baseball on tv except for the World Series and sometimes the Little League World Series. (I always cheer for the kids from Japan.) As D's week off approached, I decided to check the schedule for our minor league team here in Columbus. They recently redid their stadium and it's super nice and very kid friendly. I was thrilled when I saw that they had a 10:30am game. All the other games would have meant sacrificing nap or pushing the limits of bed time. Neither ideal in my world. LB is a kid who needs his sleep and I am a mom who prefers to stick to schedules. But the 10:30am game was the perfect time! LB is probably still a bit young for this stuff but D and I figured we might as well introduce him early and then hopefully he'll learn to love it as much as we do. The morning was definitely a success and he has told several people since then that he went to a baseball game. I'll take that as a sign that he had fun. Our seats were perfect. We we were way out in left field because we didn't want to spend a lot of money in case it was a bust. But we were in the second row so we were still pretty close to the action and there was no one in front of us. That meant LB could move around and not disturb anyone. We also lucked out and there was a nice grandparent-like couple behind us who were very entertained by LB and they talked to him a lot, which he loved. Sadly for the Clippers the other team scored a bunch of runs but that was good news for LB because it meant a lot of action in the outfield. He got into the cheering and booing and we had some animated fans in our section that added some spice to the whole scene. The night before the game D taught LB how the players "step and throw the ball." So throughout the whole game when the outfielders would throw the ball back to the infield LB would exclaim to D, "step and throw." It was cute.

When LB started to get a little fidgety we went searching for food and mascots. Thankfully, we found both. I think LB liked the statues of the mascots just as well as the real thing. I wanted to document every moment of it and I'm glad I got some good shots.

I am hopeful we can go again later in the summer. I am thinking a Columbus Crew game will be next up on LB's Sporting Event Tour of 2012. Can't wait!

Finger Painting

I decided to give finger painting a try this past week. LB had done a little bit of finger painting at OT but it was more mixing color with shaving cream. I brought a big sheet of paper outside and then put four colors in four different bowls. I showed LB that he could put it on his fingers and then put it on the paper. Then I stepped back and just let him experiment. What happened is that he was much more interested in painting himself than painting on the paper. He got a lot of pleasure out of putting the paint on his knees and then crawling across the paper. Admittedly, I was cringing a bit at how messy it was but I kept telling myself, "It will wash off. It will wash off. This is good for him. This is good for him." That should be my mantra. The painting didn't hold his attention for a really long time but I think he had fun and it was a good first experience. I am really trying to focus on the experience aspect of it and not the duration part of it. I've also noticed that as we do certain activities over and over he tends to get a little bit more creative and into it each time. He is like that now with shaving cream. The first couple of times he played with it he would want to stop after 15 minutes or so. But the last time we did shaving cream we had friends over and I basically had to call it quits after 30 minutes because LB's buddy was ready to be done. LB was covered head to toe and if I had let him he would have made the table a shaving cream slide and probably would have continued to play for a while.

The sun was really bright that day but I tried to capture LB's first finger painting creation.

When he seemed completely done I brought out his water table and the hose and as he played the paint came off pretty quickly. The bummer part about the messy activities is LB now enjoys the act of getting messy but is often put off by the fact that he has to clean up. He is sometimes like that in the bath as well. He likes playing in the bath but gets irritated when I try to actually apply a little soap and get him clean. And, oh my, do not even think about going near his ears unless you are prepared to hear some screaming. Thankfully, this time he was playing with the water table and hose so there wasn't much opportunity for him to object. We'll definitely be doing this again.

Touch A Truck

The community center near our house held an event this morning called, Touch A Truck. The weather was perfect and I was really excited for LB to get a chance to actually touch new things. He is really into that these days and one of his most common sentences starts with "I touch." Recently, we left our local aquarium with LB in tears because he wanted to touch the fish. Since I am incapable of moving a big sheet of glass for all the fish to come spilling out on to all the children, that was a request I could not say yes to. But if the event has the word touch in it then I thought he would like it. We got there early before the lines got super long and he was definitely impressed with all the fire trucks, tractors and police cars. He was skeptical to actually get in them at first but he warmed his way up to it. I think when he saw one of his buddies climb into the tractor then peer pressure kicked in and he was willing to try. LB was definitely happy that there were no restrictions on what he could touch or what buttons he could push. He kept saying, "me tall!" I am sure he felt very powerful. They had a helicopter flying overhead the whole time too and that provided tons of entertainment. He got on the smaller tractors at first and then worked his way up to the trash truck, fire truck and semi truck.

In the photo below he is in a police car. The police officer was especially sweet and kept showing LB all the buttons he could push. She even let him play with the walkie talkie. Heaven.

However, the highlight of the morning for LB was the Sports Ohio Peanut. I have no idea why he became so obsessed with him but once LB spotted the giant peanut he was done with the trucks.  He just wanted to follow the poor peanut everywhere. He kept asking for high fives and at one point said to me, "me picture peanut huggie." So I asked the peanut if LB could give him a hug and snapped a quick photo. The entire drive home he talked about that peanut. Not a single word about all the trucks. Funny kid. 

Bye Bye Bottles

Back in February LB made a big transition but I was nervous to post about it because I feared he might revert back. However, that was several months ago and the transition seems permanent. We finally said goodbye to his bottles. It happened kind of naturally and very much on his terms, which I was really happy about. When we brought LB home at seven months of age we knew that we wouldn't be following any sort of typical bottle cut off schedule. However, at the time I definitely didn't envision using them until he was 2. A lot of things factored into using them longer than predicted. He was so tiny when we brought him home and the nannies at the orphanage were waking him in the middle of the night to feed him. It was the right decision because he really needed all the nourishment he could get. He continued with that schedule for about a year after being home. Luckily, it was a pretty easy process. Most nights LB would wake up and I would give him a bottle and then he would go right back down. Of course, I was not a fan of getting up almost every night but he needed it. Our pediatrician was also on board, which I know sometimes doesn't happen, and having her reassurance meant a lot. LB's OT also didn't push us to get rid of them and said that actually he probably got a lot of good sensory output from the sucking.

We also knew that bottle feeding and that time rocking together is really good for bonding and attachment. LB had a lot of anxiety surrounding his bottles the first month or so he was home. He would see the bottle and would cry and cry until it was safely in his mouth. But once it was in his mouth he was so calm and I really enjoyed that quiet time together. Dr. Purvis, author of "The Connected Child," talks a lot about how important it is to take the time to hold your child close and make eye contact. Since we missed out on the first 7 months of his babyhood, I really cherished that time to sit in his rocking chair and tell him over and over how much we love him. Everything stood still in those moments and LB was so peaceful. However, as his second birthday loomed I started to feel really self conscious about his bottle feeding. At that point he was only taking two a day. One was before afternoon nap and the other before bed at night. It was the perfect transition to sleep. I emailed some fellow adoptive moms about LB's bottle feeding just to see if others out there were in the same boat. I got a lot of encouragement not to worry about it or push LB to quit before he was ready. Many of those moms confirmed that their two year olds were also still on bottles. I breathed such a sigh of relief.

One of the moms reminded me to read the sections on bottle feeding in the book, "Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child," by Patty Cogen. I own that book but had completely neglected to check it. There were a few sections on bottle feedings and they actually encouraged extended bottle feeding. I wish I had thought to check that book months ago to save myself hours of agonizing. She says, "A young child's sucking activates the vagus nerve, which in turn regulates the child's breathing into a smooth, slow pattern of inhaling and exhaling and slows the child's heart rate." She continues to say that "when a child associates sucking with a parent's voice, eye contact, and general presence, and eventually with a cuddly object, a foundation is laid for new soothing possibilities that do not rely on sucking. Infants suck on bottles and thumbs, preschoolers hang on to their favorite blankets or stuffed toys, and older children wear a favorite shirt day in and day out." Thankfully this part didn't apply to me but she did confirm that "most pediatricians and dentists see primarily non-adopted children, who have had lots of opportunities to develop their co-regulation; it is easy for them to overlook the special meaning of a bottle for an internationally adopted child." I found it all to be really fascinating and it was reassuring to think about LB's development through those steps. When we first brought him home we noticed that even when he didn't have a bottle he would make a sucking sound when he was tired and ready to fall asleep. He eventually latched on to a favorite blanket and the sucking sound changed to a motoring sound. Clearly, he was developing ways to soothe himself. Now he still has his blanket and I make sure we never leave the house without it. He rarely makes the motoring sound anymore although I do hear him doing it in the middle of the night occasionally. I'm not sure what it says about me since I am pretty sure I sucked my thumb past kindergarten but we won't go there.

We had been trying to give him milk through his sippy cup in the months leading up to his birthday but he would give you a funny look if there was milk in his sippy. The look said, "Hey! This is supposed to be water or juice. I don't drink milk out of this thing." Soon after LB's second birthday it seemed like he just wasn't interested in the bottles anymore, especially at night. He wanted to read books or play with toys. It took a while to get through the whole bottle so we started offering some of his milk in the sippy and some in his bottle. When it seemed like he was more comfortable with this sippy we tried one night to do all of the milk in the sippy. I told myself that if he asked for his bottle we would do that too but he didn't. It was a little harder to transition off at nap but a few weeks later he was fine with just his sippy then too. It took a little trial and error to come up with the right pre-nap routine but I think we are there now. It feels good. Bye bye bottles. I miss you but am glad my boy is comfortable without you.

Mixed Feelings

"I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us." - Anne Lamott

Mother's Day is one of those holidays that I have mixed feelings about it. However, after a lot of reflection over the past couple of days I have decided that it's okay to feel that way. Mixed. I don't need to make sense of it and I don't have to chose one feeling over the other. I get caught up in that need to choose sometimes. But I can feel sadness, empathy, grace and gratitude all at the same time. Not that long ago Mother's Day was filled with so much anguish and grief that it was overwhelmingly hard. Yesterday and in the days leading up to Mother's Day I felt a lot of that deep sadness. I felt it for the women who are going through what I went through and for all women out there hoping that someday they will be a mom. I felt sadness for friends who have lost their mothers and for friends who have lost their babies. I remembered the faces of the children I met in Ethiopia who would do anything to feel the love of a mother. I prayed for the little girl in Addis who held my hand and asked if she could be my daughter. And, of course, I thought of the woman who gave LB life. It's all so messy because I also experienced an overwhelming sense of gratitude for my sweet boy. I felt deep happiness. I am so lucky to be his mom and to have people in my life who made me feel extra special yesterday. I can't deny that I loved that. I loved the cards and texts and Facebook messages and gifts. I also can't deny that I am grateful to truly feel that empathy and sadness. In the end, infertility made me a better version of myself. It helped me to think more about my words, to judge less and to reach out more to people who are struggling. It taught me that in tough times it's okay to show myself a little grace and to extend that grace to other people. I don't always get it right but I am glad that yesterday I allowed myself to live in the middle of it all. I let it just be.

My mom. And the boy who made me a mom. Thankful.

Let's Talk Time Out

About a year ago, I wrote a post about how we started time outs with LB and that they seemed to be working. At the time he was about 14 months old and not yet walking. I guess there is a reason for the saying, "the only thing constant in life is change." The tides have turned around here and in the past couple of months I have become increasingly negative about time outs. I recently read a blog post about time outs and wanted to shout "Amen" about a million times as I was reading it. I just don't feel like they work for LB anymore. I know there are some kids that time outs seem to really help curb bad choices but in our case it seems like they make the situation worse. I'll set the scene for you. LB is tired or in a bad mood and is playing with a toy. It won't do what he wants it to do so he turns to me and hits me on the leg in frustration or he screams really loudly or both. I tell him that I understand he is upset but it is not nice to hit so he needs to go to time out. (I stopped giving warnings because it just seemed to taunt him to do it again. And I thought one hit justified a time out.) Then he starts screaming in protest. I have to pick him up while he is kicking and screaming and put him in the time out spot in the hallway. I walk away and he gets ups and follows me while he is still screaming. My blood pressure is going through the roof from the screaming and I tell him (sometimes yell) to go back to time out. He goes back but two seconds later is up again. At this point I feel like all we are doing is battling each other and there is zero amount of learning occurring. The time out has stopped being about him hitting me and is now just a fight to get him to sit in the hallway for a minute to calm down. It is just making him and me more angry. Please tell me that this is familiar story for some of you. I am giving you permission to lie to make me feel better about my parenting.

For a couple of weeks or so I have been focusing on using techniques from the book, "Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood" as well as "The Connected Child." I just recently finished reading "Love and Logic" and found it to be really helpful. I've owned the book for a long time because I had remembered another blogger recommending it but I finally got around to reading it. Here are the main things I took away from it. 1.) Give your child a healthy sense of control by giving them choices all throughout the day. This was something I have always tried to do but am now really making an effort to do. I find when I am on my game and constantly giving him choices he responds much better when it is my turn to make a choice. Here are some examples. Do you want your dinosaur cup or your Toy Story cup? Peach yogurt or apple yogurt? Do you want Mommy to carry you or do you want to hold my hand? Do you want to take your soccer ball or basketball to the park? You get the idea. The point is to give options that are okay no matter which one he chooses. LB loves being able to choose and in fact one his favorite things to say right now is "me choose." 2.) When you are implementing a consequence do it with empathy. This one is harder for me to do. But as I have been practicing I am getting better at saying, "It's so sad but we have to say bye bye to this toy." They suggest using the same short, empathetic phrase each time like "It's so sad." Or "What a bummer." 3.) Set the limit once and then follow through. I like this because, as I said above, I really hated all the warnings. So when LB throws a toy it goes bye bye. End of story. I do have to say that I got a little annoyed with the authors' constant warnings that if parents don't use their techniques then essentially the child will be doomed for life. Basically they implied that if you don't use "Love and Logic" then your child will a.) be very unhappy b.) possibly succumb to peer pressure and use drugs as a teenager c.) abuse animals. They painted a pretty dire picture. So although I liked most of what they had to say the constant "do this or else" bugged me. In their defense, I think LB is really responding it.

I have not read "The Connected Child" from cover to cover but have read chapters here and there and always find myself parenting with more patience after I read it. One of things that the authors suggest is to help the child practice good behavior through "re-dos" or "try agains." We have been doing this for a while and have seen a lot of success with it. LB used to have a really bad habit of dropping or throwing his juice cup. When he does this we tell him "to try again and either hand me the cup or put it on the table." I love it when I observe him start the motions to throw it but think twice and place it on the floor nicely instead. It makes my whole day. I have started the re-dos with his tone of voice as well. Often he will whine or use a loud voice to ask for something. I tell him to "try again using nice words" and I don't give him whatever it is, usually goldfish crackers, until he asks nicely. Recently, when he uses nice words without me prompting him he will exclaim, "Mommy happy!" And he is absolutely right. It's possibly the cutest thing ever. I really like the idea of training their muscle memory to do something correctly and praise that rather than focus on the bad behavior. The authors also emphasize the need to limit the words that you use. This kind of overlaps with "Love and Logic" because basically you enforce the consequence and that's it. There isn't some long drawn out lecture about why hitting is bad and it's ill effects. They say when the child is upset and stressed then they aren't going to absorb that information.

In my effort to toss time out I have been using the "say bye bye to the toy" technique when he hits or screams. I am liking it much more than time outs. I feel like we say "bye bye" to the toy and that's it. Sometimes he cries and wails about it and other times he moves on. I am able to stay calm because I am not repeatedly asking him to go back to time out. But the screaming and hitting are definitely my biggest frustrations in terms of behavior and I am open to suggestions. I also still really struggle with how to enforce consequences when we are in public or at a friend's house.

What do you think about time outs? Am I missing something? What techniques have you found success with? Educate me!

Simple Things

I thought I would share a few simple but fun things LB and I have done recently.

A while ago I saw a list for 40 Ways to do Sensory Play. (It's a great list. Check it out!) I was pleased as I glanced through the list that LB and I had tried the majority of them. One of the items stuck out to me though because it was such a basic thing and yet I realized I had never let LB try it. Late last week we had really warm weather around here so I decided it was time. Are you ready for it? Playing in the grass barefoot! LB was pleasantly shocked when I told him we were going outside to play in the grass and that he didn't have to wear shoes. I could tell that when he first stepped on the grass he was really testing it out to see if he was cool with it. After a few minutes of walking tentatively he was off and having a blast. I couldn't help it and had to snap a few pictures of his cute, little feet. He spent most of the morning playing with his water table and the hose. I loved it when he started spraying his bare feet with the water. I get so happy when I see him exploring the way different things feel. It just confirms that all of these activities are worth it and helping in his development. He enjoyed every single moment of it.

We had equally nice weather the following day so I pulled out our sprinklers and let him run around barefoot again. His face is filled with such joy in these photos. LB will play with the water all day long!

The other great thing we did involved a $1 purchase at Target and a few cups of warm water. One afternoon LB was getting anxious for his dad to get home but I knew we still had about 30 minutes or so until he would walk through the door. I hoped this little experiment would buy me some time. Do you remember playing with these?

I saw them when I was looking for stuff for LB's Easter basket and was admittedly excited to give them a try. I told LB he could put them in the water and then we would watch them grow into animals. He was intrigued. I could believe it but he sat and waited patiently for something to happen.

After they changed shape and we determined the animal of each of them LB got really into the fact that they were little sponges. He kept dropping them back in the water and then squeezing them. He started to make a bit of a mess so I moved him to his chair. He continued to play with them until D got home and then he asked to play with them again in the bath. 

If you think about it since all 12 capsules were $1 and we only played with 4 of them that day then it was actually a fun activity for less than forty cents! That's my kind of math.

Lucky

Thank you so much for all the wonderful advice! I definitely feel encouraged and empowered to talk about it with the librarian the next time we are there. And I love the idea of suggesting the book, A Mother for Choco. My mom, a retired librarian, emailed me yesterday that she told a few librarian friends about our experience and they all agreed they would not be offended if a parent approached them. And they hadn't thought about how outdated the "Are You My Mother" book is so my mom got the opportunity to explain it to them. Thank you, Mom!

Despite the situation at the library, I have been thinking about fortunate we are in that the majority of the comments we get about our adoption are positive. Last week we went out to dinner with our neighbors, who are some of LB's biggest fans, and one of them asked me if we had ever received any negative comments about the fact that LB is black. I paused for a moment to think about it and happily was able to tell her no. Ever since we brought LB home I have been preparing myself for such a situation. There are people who have been overly curious in asking questions about his birth story and kids at the park commonly ask questions but there has been nothing that overly offended me. This morning at the park a six year old boy asked me if I was LB's babysitter. I told him, "No. I'm his mom." And his response was, "Oh. Okay." Kids tend to be pretty accepting. Several weeks ago a girl, who was also about six, asked me if I was LB's mom. I told her that I was and she said, "Oh. So he's adopted." Her tone was so matter of fact that it surprised me. And then she went about playing before I could confirm she was correct. I remember last summer a little girl looked at me and then looked at LB and exclaimed, "Your baby doesn't look anything like you!" True. Obviously, at this age I have no idea if these comments are registering with LB. And I have to imagine that as he gets older it could be a source of embarrassment and frustration that we always have to confirm our relationship as mother and son. But I am grateful that the questions have been of a curious nature and not mean spirited. We've been lucky. In more ways than one.

Oh man, I love this kid. Such a stud.