Two Months Home

We have hit the two month mark on returning home from Russia. I know I say this all the time, but I still can't believe how blessed we are and how much our lives have changed since meeting Artem. I think back over the seven years we tried to get pregnant and I think about all the prayers that were said for the procedures to be successful and the shots to the bum to work and I am thankful that God didn't answer those prayers at that time because He knew what was in store for us. Had any of those things worked for us we would not have Artem in our lives today.

Artem continues to grow and change each day. Physically he's always been in the "normal" range but his language skills lag behind other children his age. His receptive skills are very strong and he's beginning to put two words together to make sentences. The other day I told him we were going bye-bye and he headed to the garage and said, "car" and I knew he was telling me we had to get in the car. He has added the words "juice, car, bye bye, all gone, and beep beep" to his repertoire. He tries to say a lot of other words by using their initial sound. His sign language is coming along too and he regularly uses "please", "eat", and "more" at the right times without me prompting him. He also uses "thank you" and "daddy" and "mama".

Artem and I did something special today to mark his 2 month anniversary. To any non-adoptive mother this probably doesn't seem like a big deal but to an adoptive mother that has been working hard on attachment issues, it was a big deal. Artem and I went to the library this morning for the toddler time book reading. I was worried about him not wanting to sit with me, I worried about him acting up or getting overstimulated and causing a scene. On the way there I was mentally preparing myself for how I would handle these situations and deciding on how much I would explain to these strangers about Artem.


Let me digress a minute, I am proud of Artem and how much progress he has made since we've been home. I am proud of him being adopted and I am proud of his Russian heritage but it's not something I want him to wear around on the front of his shirt for the rest of his life. Sometimes I hear from people, "Oh he's doing so good for being adopted" or "He's doing great for only being in the country one month." I know people don't mean anything by it but I just want Artem to be a regular kid that doesn't get measured against deficits and doesn't get treated differently for being an internationally adopted child. In some situations it's inevitable, but for the most part he's just a regular kid with regular toddler issues.

Back to the library, I felt like both of us were ready for this type of outing and after shoveling a bowl full or oatmeal at Artem and getting him dressed and out of the house by 8:50 (he woke at 8:15) we were at the library in time for toddler time at 9:00. I had decided not to tell anyone he was adopted and let him be a "regular" kid today. I ran into an old teacher friend that I hadn't seen in a year, who was there with her son and after greeting each other she said she didn't know I had a child. Ugh, I didn't want this subject to come up, but here we were two minutes into toddler time and I couldn't get out of the question. I gave her the short answer, "We adopted him" and it seemed to be enough. The kids had to wear name tags and one of the mothers that heard me say he was adopted asked how I pronounced his name. I told her, she said she liked it and that was it. No questions on how much he cost or are you afraid his birth parents will change their minds. Yes! I get to be a regular mom today.

The theme for toddler time was dinosaurs, which is something Artem hasn't really been exposed to yet. He knows dinosaurs roar and can make the roar sound but other than that, I don't know that he has even seen a picture of a dinosaur before. Story time started and Artem sat in my lap while listening to the story. Occasionally he would stand up and take a step or two away from me, but then he would turn around and look at me and come running back. He was never more than two steps from me the whole time. After listening to the story, we did the "Dino-pokey" and Artem let me move his hands and legs for him and laughed and then started moving by himself and interacting with the song. After the "Dino-pokey" the kids went on a dinosaur hunt through a small section of the library. I showed Artem where the first one was and then he went looking on his own and found three more dinosaurs and put them into the dinosaur bucket. After the dinosaur hunt the kids could play with the plastic dinosaurs and Artem picked a dinosaur and made it crawl around while making the "roar" sound. I've never shown Artem how to make something crawl around on the floor so I thought it was neat he knew how to do that plus make the roar sound. After an hour I decided it was time to go home. He was doing great and I decided to end it on a good note. I told him we needed to clean up and started singing the clean up song and he stopped playing and put all his dinosaurs away. He even took other kids dinosaurs from them and put them away as well. We'll have to work on that part. I left there feeling so good at our first trip to the library toddler time and felt good that Artem got to be a regular kid just like the other ones there. I was so happy I wanted to shout to everyone on the way out how overjoyed I was that Artem didn't have to be the adopted kid that day and got to be a regular kid but then figured the shouting would probably take away from the moment. I did call Randy on the way home to tell him what a great job Artem did. We're making good progress!

After the library we went to Target to find some dinosaurs. We found four dinosaurs and when we got home Artem started playing with them right away. I took out several of my dinosaur books from my classroom collection that I guess are now Artem's books and we looked at the different dinosaur books. He has had a great time playing with his dinosaurs and they have had a bath in the dog's bowl, have eaten dog food, and took a nap with Artem today.

God blessed us with an overcast day today so Artem was able to go out back and play on his swing set. He played with his dump truck and spent time with mama swinging on the porch swing. I'll leave you with some pictures of Artem and his ever-faithful companion Bella. Those two seem to be joined at the hip this past week.





Smiling after going down the slide:




Playing in his fort:


Artem and Bella, they are joined at the hip lately:


Artem LOVES to swing:


Not too sure about his landing:

Some people have accused me of only posting happy, fluffy stuff. Here's Artem's reaction to not letting him play with the poop-scooping shovel. It's not all rainbows and sunshine! :-)

I also wanted to share a video of Artem in the mornings but blogger won't let me upload videos for the past four days that I have been trying. I don't know what the problem is. But I'll keep trying.