It's already Wed. Wow. We got about 2/3rds of the garden planted last night. J was really into planting a garden. Eating veggies? Not so much, but he really wanted to plant things. I picked up some flowers yesterday too so I may work on them with him after school.
Please remember my nephew in your prayers today. He's having surgery to remove a build up of scar tissue from the last kidney re-plumbing surgery.
It's TCAP (standardized testing) week at school. We weren't sure how J would do but he came home yesterday saying that he loves TCAP week and that TCAP week is awesome. I wonder what he'll think of it next year. For this year his ESL teacher is reading the tests to him and he does what he can. The rest of the time he gets to play games and watch movies. At school. What's not to like? I am not a fan of standardized testing but I am very interested to know how he scores on them.
I've had a few people ask me what I think of the lady who pinned a note on her kid and sent him back to Russia. It's a sad situation all the way around. Was she prepared to parent a possibly RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder) child? Did she even know that it could be a possibility? Honestly, we didn't know about RAD when we started the adoption process. Someone asked me how a child could "be that bad" and I said it's very possible for a RAD child to be "that bad". They are so broken and scared that they just don't know what to do with these feelings. They lie, scream, kick, bite, spit, rape, pee in inappropriate places, break things, threaten murder, etc. All those things at any age including at 7 years old (or younger). The counselors for these types of things are few and far between and have looooonnnnngggg waiting lists and it costs lots of money to get this kind of help. I honestly don't know that much about this particular situation so I don't know if she sought help or if she sought disruption here. To put a child on an airplane with a note pinned to him was wrong. What about the airline? Is it common practice to let 7 year olds on international flights by themselves? I don't know the answer to that.
All this to say, it's a sad situation no matter how you look at it. Parenting an older adopted child is not easy, and it's not at all like parenting a bio child. We feel very blessed that J seems to be able to attach, he has a conscience, he can maintain eye contact, he shows empathy. He's only been home for 7 months and Lord only knows what we'll go through in the future but we feel blessed right now that our biggest issues with him seem to be fear (which encompasses every part of his life including bedtime, showers, being alone, etc.), bed wetting and acting immature. Plus he's obsessive about time. Really obsessive about time. If those are the biggest problems we ever have with him, thank you, Jesus.
Please pray for our friends who are in S. Korea picking up their son. Their blog is linked on the right under "Blogs I read". They are the Brown's that we know from our adoption support group.
Lost in translation; J still continues using he, she, him and her interchangeably although not as often as he used to. "Did" still works for "do" ie; What did I did? or What she did? Broke instead of break, I didn't broke it. "Th" still always comes out as "d" or "t" or occasionally "f". Like "dey" instead of they, "tree" instead of three, "toof" instead of tooth and "tird" instead of "third" (which still cracks us up). Yesterday evening he informed us that he made champagne. Wow, that's impressive considering we've never had champagne in the house and there is no alcohol in the house. T told him that he was pretty sure that J was using the wrong word and that he didn't need to tell people we were giving him champagne (or making it for that matter) or someone might get the wrong idea. J insisted that he had made champagne so we told him to continue his story on how he made it so we could try to figure out the real word he was going for. He used ice and yogurt to make his champagne. I asked him if he meant milkshake and he said, "Yeah, milkshake. Dat what I mean." Champagne=milkshake. Who knew?
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