Mother's Day Reflections

I didn't know what direction I wanted to go with the blog today on my first Mother's day. It's taken me seven years to get here, you would think I would have this post written years ago in my head. But at the close of my first Mother's day I'm kind of speechless and not sure what I want to say.

*Should I write about how grateful I am to Artem's biological mother for giving birth to him rather than terminating her pregnancy? Without going into detail about Artem's birth mother's past, as Randy and I feel that is his story to tell when he's ready, she is not exactly Russia's citizen of the month, but she could have found out she was pregnant and then ended the pregnancy and we would never have been given the opportunity to have this spirited, giggling, open-mouth-kissing, little guy that has stolen our hearts.

*Should I write about how Artem now pats us on the back when he hugs us and how he carries his gigantic teddy bear around hugging it and patting it on the back like we do to him? Or how he puts that teddy bear on the floor, backs up to get a running start, and does a diving belly flop onto poor teddy as he giggles hysterically?

*Maybe I should tell you about what a monkey we have on our hands that has figured out how much fun it is climbing on his swing set tower. Or how he can almost get his chubby little leg onto the couch to pull himself up. (something mommy is more than happy to delay as long as possible)

*I could always go the route of telling you how much he loves to dance and sing and how close he is to getting the movements to Itsy Bitsy Spider. He twists his hand up in the air and can do the rain falling down, but the sun coming up has been kind of hard to learn, but he's trying. We sing it over and over every time we eat, every time we go for a walk, every time we are in the car, every time we...well you get the picture.

*There is always the cute stories about how much Artem waves to everyone he sees. He waves to birds, cars, trashcans, people. He is always waving. Every afternoon the school bus drives by our house and he waves at the bus. The other day the bus driver saw him waving and she stopped the bus and turned on her flashing lights for Artem. Artem started clapping and saying, "ta-da!" It was really cute. What a small gesture from the bus driver that was such a big deal to a little 17 month old toddler.

*I could tell you about the beautiful moment I had with Artem this afternoon as we were sitting on the kitchen floor reading one of his new books. It was the Wild Animals Touch and Feel book and he had just discovered the tree frog's sticky toes. He would touch it over and over again and say, "oooohh" and get a huge smile on his face. He took my hand and put my finger on the frog's toes and clapped his hands when I said, "oohhh". Just then he got really quiet and started to turn red in the face, I knew what was coming. The moment passed pretty quickly and he went back to reading his book when the odor hit. Artem said, "caca" (we didn't teach him that word, it is the Russian word for poop) and I took him in to change him so we could get back to reading. I did not expect to be greeted with his first full-on-blow-out diaper that went up the back, up the stomach and down the legs. Yuck! I decided to take him straight to the tub as a 5X5 wet wipe wasn't going to be strong enough to fight this battle. I cleaned him up, toyed with the idea of just burning the onesie he was dressed in rather than trying to get it clean by hand, and got the bathroom cleaned up so we could get back to the sticky toes of the tree frog. (You think Hallmark has a Mother's day card for that?)

Good, bad, or just downright ugly, there are so many things for me to be grateful for this year now that we have Artem in our lives. It's been four weeks since we've had him and we are amazed by him every day and count our blessings that God put him together with us.