Happy Family Day Alexander!

Four, yes FOUR, years ago today, Paul and I stood in a courtroom in Ekaterinburg, Russia, prepared for almost anything. You see, we had just gone through a very brutal 8+ months of paperwork, 8 doctor's visits, redo's of expired paperwork, new judge, new requirements, back to the original judge, more expired paperwork, more 8 panel medicals (ended up doing this a total of 3 times!!) and thinking we just might not see again the sweet, blond, blue-eyed little boy we met almost 9 months earlier. We met Alexander in September 2005 when he was just 13 months old, drooling profusely and walking only with assistance. We had hoped to be back in 3 months but knowing what we know now, we are LUCKY to have made it back in under a year. This was, and still is, a very difficult region to adopt from, but although it was very challenging we would not change a thing.

We were in court for over 2 hours answering questions (compare that to the 15 minutes for Lucas) but, ultimately, the Judge (whose name we will never forget) declared us to be Alexander's parents. I remember crying tears of joy through her final declaration - Alexander was finally our son. We had had a big scare, while in Russia, a couple days before court about whether things would go forward, so hearing those words was such an immense relief. We spent nearly a month in Russia and unexpectedly got custody of Alexander just 2 days after court. We spent the next few weeks getting to know this now 22-month walking toddler before making the long-awaited trek home.

Life has never been the same! Alexander was a very anxious child for quite some time; freaking out if I left his sight. He would cry if strange women would come into our house and was extremely shy for a very long time. He would cry for the longest time when we started him in daycare after my leave was up. He would have nightmares at night and would cry out during naps for months. But after a couple years of attachment parenting, sometime around age 3.5 or 4, he finally felt secure and his real personality was able to come out. Since then there has been no looking back and he has been this friendly (overly at times), chatty, goofy, and happy kid! We've had our struggles (most notably due to the arrival of you-know-who) but Alexander has proved to be a very resilient, sweet and extremely caring and sensitive kid throughout. The latter is the one personality trait that his caregivers at the orphanage relayed to us when we met him at 13 mo - that he exhibited strong empathy towards the other babies and would go stand in a corner if other kids were being disciplined. He is very emotionally aware and honest and has explicitly stated several times that his less than satisfactory behavior is due to his tiredness, boredom or merely wanting attention - ha!

Today, at "5 and 3/4", he is 3 weeks away from finishing Kindergarten, loves books, is reading better and better everyday, loves playing T-ball in Little League (especially as Paul is a co-coach), still sucks his thumb at night, likes to collect flowers, feathers and rocks for me (I'm glad he's not yet into insects and frogs), smiles constantly, asks a million and one questions (mostly about bees right now), can sit and attend to something for hours if he's really into it, wants to have 845, 633 kids when he grows up, eggs his brother on constantly, is a perfectionist (uh-oh, I hope that didn't come from me), still wants one of us to play with him, turns into a zombie in the vicinity of any television, has a frighteningly accurate radar for any food substance containing sugar, and exhibits a maturity at times that stuns me. I just can't imagine our lives without this sweet little guy or imagine him in any other family - crazy how this all works out huh?

We celebrate Family Day as the day Russia officially blessed us with the immense gift of being their parents (aka their court dates). For Lucas this was May 18th and Alexander's was today, May 31st. Since the dates are so close, to avoid sibling rivalry with Lucas going "first", and more importantly to accurately reflect our 'family', we are celebrating on one day but acknowledging each day in a small way. In the future the combined family day will be somewhere in between their two days, but this year we celebrated today on Alexander's since we just had too much going on the past week. We had a little cake with a '1' candle for Lucas and a '4' for Alexander and we gave them each a teddy bear made by a friend - the same size of course, but one blue and one brown to match their eye color (A and L, respectively). We also retell their stories and review pictures. Alexander has an early years lifebook that I made that tells his adoption story that we frequently pull from the shelves...I need to work on Lucas' asap. But in all honesty, I didn't make Alexander's book until he was almost 3, so I have a little time before Lucas suffers from 2nd child syndrome!

Happy Family Day Alexander and Lucas! We love you!

Meeting Alexander 13mo - Trip 1, Day 1 - 9/27/2005

Meeting Alexander again 22mo - Trip 2, Day 1 - 5/28/2006

Alexander's first day at 'home' - 6/21/2006

And today - 5/31/2010

Has it really been a YEAR?

Visiting Lucas after Court - 5/18/09
Visiting Lucas after Court - 5/18/09
and today....
NE Aquarium - 3/10
Being silly...
Being sweet...

Is it really possible that it's been over 2 months since I've posted to the blog? Yikes. But more astounding is that one year ago today, in a Moscow courtroom, after a short and painless Q&A, we were declared to be the parents of one Lucas Dmitry Knight (also known at the time as "Dima the Mouse"). I can't believe we've been his parents for a YEAR. Although he didn't come home until June 6, he was legally our son and it felt like abandonment to leave him as we returned to the US. We really wish we could have stayed in Russia for the 10-day wait, but Alexander was waiting for us at home, we wouldn't have been able to get custody of Lucas until the wait was over anyway and we wanted to save our vacation time for when he did come home. Regardless of these reasons, it was still very difficult to leave.

So what is Lucas up to these days? Well, for sure, he's no longer a mouse. More like a lion. The kid who wasn't on the growth charts upon coming home is now 40% height and 50% weight. His vocabulary is amazing...he's been speaking in full sentences for months. He repeats anything and everything and with the best inflection and imitation. He yelled up the stairs to me this morning as I got out of the shower: "Mama, are you OK?" in my exact tone of voice as I must frequently yell this up the stairs upon hearing unidentified thuds and yelps. And my little mouse has found his lionly roar. His favorite word these days is 'no'. At first though he wasn't sure about how to say 'no'. His previous favorite words were 'I want' and thus his first utterance of dislike resulted in 'I want no'. But he quickly realized he could cut right to the chase and this is where we are. It is so beloved a word that it is the de facto answer for everything...regardless of whether he really means no. 'Lucas, would you like some blueberries?' 'No. I mean yes'.

His lionly roar at times is a scream. He seems to have only one volume these days: loud. He gets so excited playing certain games or telling you about some aspect of his day that I think he feels he needs to match his excitement with sound. We've been holding our hands over our ears a lot lately. Lucas has also learned to make the most amazing facial expressions. It all started with 'Good Night Gorilla' and the page where the zookeeper's wife realizes she's not alone in her room and turns on her light. Her face on that page is basically Lucas' face these days for any new or surprising situation. It is beyond fabulous. He has a few others too but that's my fav.

He continues to be very vocal and clear about his fears. After MONTHS he finally went down into the basement again and seemed OK but then something spooked him again. Today he came down 3 steps with me and then said "No, the basement is too scary". We've had the city tearing up our street to put in new water lines using all sorts of cool diggers and trucks. We got a little too close to one the other day and he tensed up and said it was too scary for him.

He is fearless with his body...leaping off any stool, chair, or lego table that he can find. We took the gates off the stairs this weekend when we realized we were using them more for crowd control than for safety as Lucas hasn't tripped or fallen yet on the stairs. What else? Oh yes, the nap. Lucas is in that oh-so-pleasant stage of maybe, kinda not needing a nap. On the days he does take a nap (aka in school), he takes forever to go to sleep at night. If we weren't tied to schedules and him needing to get up at a regular time for school a few days a week, this would be fine. So it sets up a bad cycle. He goes to bed later, has a harder time getting up, is cranky, etc. However on the days he doesn't go to school and w/e, we let him sleep in, he won't usually nap, is somewhat Mr. Cranky pants after 5p and then crashes around 7p.

And one last Lucas tidbit for now (maybe if I didn't wait so long between posts I wouldn't have to write so much at once eh?). Now that the weather has warmed up, he LOVES being outside. I think this is his 2nd favorite word after 'no'. We had a problem for a while when he learned how to open the lock on the screen door and get out. But I think we (I) sufficiently freaked out enough that he learned quickly to wait for one of us. His current fascinations 'outside' are the water table where he proceeds to get completely soaked each and every time, puddles, or the drains in the park where he drops mulch, sticks or other misc items into the water to see what happens. Picking up on the theme here? I guess those astrological signs might actually have some merit to them.

All these little glimpses are just pieces of his amazing little personality. The most important ones to me are his sweet and happy laugh, his determination, his exhuberance for life, and the fact that he now seems to trust and love us heart and soul. He feels like he has always been here and I'm so thankful that those initial months of figuring each other out are over. We are just a family now and I love it.