Photo & Update Interlude…

Are these not the cutest, funniest pictures of Shanie?!  Although he’s really challenging to capture in pictures, one thing definitely comes through and that’ how expressive his eyebrows are.  It’s the most hysterical, adorable thing.  Whether he’s pissed, grumpy, happy, coy, curious, or whatever, his eyebrows always say it all.

{As a funny eyebrow aside, we were at a Mexican restaurant yesterday having drinks and a 5pm dinner…it was us and the over 80 crowd…and Jack picked up his fish stick and held it up to his forehead and said “look, I have 1 eyebrow!”  I felt it was an appropriate time he learned the term “unibrow,” and now he’s all about pointing them out.  Oops!}

Anyway, tell me Shane doesn’t look like the cutest old man trapped in an almost 2 year old’s body.  While he has the power to push all my buttons (he knows I have to fight myself to ignore that whining sound he enjoys making), he is such a little cutie.  And even the old man grouchiness is sometimes just irresistibly cute.

Can’t you just imagine what he’ll look like as an 80 year old man?  I can TOTALLY see it!  Shanie cracks me up.

Shane is doing really well, though he still does not have any real words.  He seems to be making a much bigger effort during speech therapy though, which is really reassuring to see, and has been vocalizing more lately.  He does have enough signs to get his needs across most of the time, and he continues to take a lot of his cues from Finley, so she is a pretty good motivator for him.  This week he’s started saying “uh oh,” which is awesome, and he’s been really good about signing “help,” “please,” and other request type signs instead of just whining or throwing a tantrum.  I’m really proud of him for making these efforts!!  He continues to be a very inspired dancer, jumper, and climber, and is quite the shoe and hair bow aficionado!  He’s something of a Renaissance Man!

Fin, on the other hand, has gone from biting, to pinching, to slapping, back to biting, and now onto slapping again.  So I think we’re making progress…she has at least been giving kisses and hugs to her brothers intermittently.  I think they’ve realized her emotional lability, so Shane sees her coming with an open mouth and immediately goes into the Heisman pose to keep her back, even if her intentions were to smooch him!  Can’t blame the guy!

Finley has some funny new antics this week.  Our favorite is hearing her say “hi guys.” Or “bye guys.”  It’s just really funny how it comes out.  Everything she says ends in an “s,” even just her “buh-byes.”  She also likes to tell people to hush by putting her finger to her mouth and saying “shhh!”  And in true toddler fashion, she’s also been wagging her finger at people when they do something she doesn’t want them to, an imitation of me saying “no, no.”  She has a crap ton of new signs and words and is picking up language at warped speed right now.  I think she has over 45 signs and probably 25+ words.  She’s also learned to go down steps…and no, I don’t mean backwards.  She’s WAY too big for that of course.  It’s scary as HELL!  Hence, the baby gates EVERYWHERE.

Jack is just awesome.  I have been meaning to write about this for MONTHS, but haven’t.  Somewhere along the way, he went from being this wild, assertive, dominant big brother to my ridiculously sweet, loving, inclusive oldest child.  He is ALWAYS making sure Shane and Fin are taken care of and is constantly telling me “Shane’s awake, let’s go get him.”  Or, “I think Finley is fussing because she’s hungry, maybe she needs your milk.”  He’s always sharing (food and toys!), and he NEVER retaliates physically, even when Finley wrecks his towers or has hit / bitten him.  He’ll just tell her “you just made me really sad because I worked really hard on that.”  Or “that really hurt me Finley and I DIDN’T LIKE IT!!!”  I am just in awe of what a sweetheart Jack is turning into.

He still struggles socially, and lately we’ve had some growing pains with some of his friends.  Their moms are really close friends of mine, so we are trying to come up with thoughtful ways to make sure his self-esteem isn’t damaged when he’s left out or kids decide they don’t want to be his friend and they tell him that.  He’s been really good about sharing his feelings with me, and it totally breaks my heart to see him emotionally wounded by his peers.  He’ll use his cars to play out scenarios that happened to him at the park or at a friend’s house, and then I’ll talk to him about it. His self-esteem is something I feel hugely protective over, and thank God I have incredible friends who are really sensitive to that.  It’s one of those things that would be an issue no matter what, but to me, any form of social rejection just really worries me during these early years as he’s developing his sense of self.  While I try not to make everything about adoption or have that aspect of him be overrepresented, I do think adoption warrants a higher level of parental sensitivity to some things.  It’s not shocking that studies have shown self-esteem is often lower in adopted children, and I just want to make sure I do everything I can to help him develop a healthy self-image at this age.

Jack is all about the arts lately.  He LOVES to draw and is an amazing artist.  Just recently, he was drawing a picture of something that was sort of triangular in shape, then had a row of rectangles across the center, lines coming out of the bottom, and a few other intricate details.  When we asked him what it was, he told us “a rocket ship,” and sure as shit, he’d drawn almost an exact replica of the rocket ship that was on Shane’s Baby G@p pj’s from the night before!  Travis dug them out of the laundry to compare and it gave us shivers how closely his drawing resembled the graphic.  He’s also still really into writing his letters and can write most of his alphabet.  While he’s still really interested in reading and is able to sound out 3 letter words, math is his newest passion.  I posted that video a week or so ago, but he’s all about subtraction lately.  In a few weeks, his math skills will surpass mine…not that that’s much of an accomplishment, even for a not-yet-3-year-old!  He loves music and memorizes the words to songs after hearing them once or twice, and really enjoys acting out books while Travis or I narrate them.  His favorite game is to come up with outrageous rhymes while singing the song, “Down By the Bay.”  He’s always saying the cutest stuff, like whispering that he loves me first thing in the morning, or telling Travis “you’re my best friend in the whole world,” and things that just CRACK us up too.  The most recent thing that comes to mind was when our neighbor was outside fixing something on his house and Jack reminded him “right tighty, dude!”

As for Travis, I am so proud of how hard he’s been studying!  He is NOT a studier, and never really has been.  He tests well and things come very easily to him.  He’s also a master at knowing the system, and has ALWAYS charmed people to death so that he didn’t really even need to study for his grades if there was the slightest bit of subjectivity to them!  But right now, he’s working his butt off and truly studying for his boards.  I’ve been really impressed with his diligence and I’m really hoping it pays off for him.  {good thing he doesn’t read my blog…he’d kill me for posting this picture!}

As for me, I’m bracing myself and getting ready to start my research position the 2nd week of June.  I have no idea what that will be like, but I really hope I can perform and I also really hope I can stand leaving my kids to do it.  I think the nursing thing will be really hard, since I won’t be able to nurse Finley during my working hours, obviously, (though I do plan on continuing to breastfeed her…she’s only 13 months;) and I think it’ll be an adjustment for all of us to have Travis manning the home front this year.  I know he’ll be great, and it should be interesting!