I’ve stopped formally enumerating Little Boy’s monthly milestones, probably because every new ‘thing’ no longer seems like a minor miracle, but rather just the natural development of a little boy. He usually speaks in complete sentences and half of the time they are grammatically correct (“I don’t want to wear those pants. Those pants are cold,” he told me yesterday, viewing my proposed outfit as I changed him out of his jammies.) On Friday, he ate raw spinach with only a little suspicion (a few leaves, sandwiched with cream cheese and smoked salmon) and then at Saturday lunch, he enjoyed chunks of sauteed zucchini and onions with ground veal — and asked for more. The ability to express his wants, needs, and dislikes has improved all our lives immeasurably. He can now tell me about the events of his day in preschool: who he played with, what he ate, how him and a friend got reprimanded by the teacher for running indoors and made to sit down, how another little girl was talking during circle time “and the teacher said ‘Too loud, be quiet!'” He reports all of this with great gusto.
At the Playground on a balmy January Sunday
Yesterday, I re-read a magazine article with tips on parenting young adopted children in the first year. I first read the article in between my two trips to Ethiopia, when I would wake early in the morning clenched with anxiety and go online to “cram” for parenthood. Of course, everything in the article flew out of my head the moment I took custody of Little Boy and had to manage a child in real-time, but re-reading the article, I realized we were innately doing everything it recommended — playing with him, lavishing him with abundant affection, giving him routine and predictability and the sense that our family is forever, allowing him to sit on our laps while he eats if he wants, yet drawing boundaries. Pat myself on the back, but more important, according to the article Little Boy is also doing everything right: Lots of eye contact with us, seeking us out in unfamiliar or scary situations, preferring to be with us than at preschool, and having less and less tantrums, dissociative “freeze” moments, and random crying. Don’t give Mr. P and myself any credit, because this resilient Little Boy deserves it all.
Smiling on Demand
In the aftermath of our big skiing vacation to France, Little Boy seems happier than ever. Although the trip totally upended his routine and introduced dozens of entries into his mental lexicon, we were constants. And he is a constant for us: a constant source of joy, love, and wonder. And that’s why, when he points to helicopter in the sky and says “helicopter” instead of airplane, when he correctly identifies the color blue, when he sweetly expresses the desire to “carry a little baby,” when he looks at a library book about a moose and says “moose’s button eyes are scary,” when he randomly says “I love Mommy and Daddy,” I no longer feel profound amazement and the need to memorialize the moment for posterity, because that’s just what happens.
Returning Home from France
