Button's Family Day!!!

December 31, 2007, was the day Button joined our family. It has been a year filled with learning, laughter, and love. From not wanting to spend much time with me he has turned into a little boy who loves his Mommy very much, likes to hug and snuggle me, and wants Mommy to be around as much as possible.

Button then:

... and now...

We celebrated on Monday night (the last night Laolao and Laoye were with us) but going out for Chinese food.


Yep, Chinese. We’ve had Ethiopian a few times recently and Laoye didn’t want to eat injera again (tsk, tsk, Laoye!). But it’s been some time since we’ve gone out for Chinese, and Button likes it, too, so that’s where we went. We discovered that our favourite Chinese restaurant is closed on Mondays (I think we’ve discovered that before, but it doesn’t seem to stick!) so we went across the street to a Vietnamese fusion restaurant and very much enjoyed it. Then drove downtown, parked, and walked around to see the Christmas lights.




Here is a bit of a look back. I started writing the following lists in January 2008. I had originally meant it to be a post on the first two weeks. Then three. Then four. Then one month back in Canada (Feb 16, 2008). Then two months. Then three… Well, here it is, one year later… Two kids keep you busy!

A little bit of the “Me-me” game, for the three of us.

Button (since he’s the newest)

1. His favourite colour is yellow. Pink, red, and orange are close seconds.
2. He is stubborn.
3. He has perseverance - sometimes. When learning to skate (Jan 2008), he didn’t let the falling stop him. He would get up again and again and again and keep doggedly trying. He saw the other boys - some about his own age - skating effortlessly, handling their sticks and shooting the puck, and he wanted to do it to. Our friends gave him a little stick and he would shoot his own puck, shuffle across the ice to it, and shoot it again. He found his balance fairly easily (using his sister’s out-grown pink figure skates) but has yet to figure out the push and glide part. But when we tried him with some friends’ out-grown hockey skates, he didn’t like them – harder to balance on.
4. He knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to say it. Okay. But when he doesn’t get his own way, he tends to sulk. Or scream. [Dec 2008: The screaming is now rare. The sulking has improved a lot, too.]
5. He is very into things with buttons, switches, dials, knobs… He has to press them, turn them, click them… He wants to figure out how things work – and generally can, fairly quickly (as long as the machine being operated is not so complex as to be beyond his cognitive capacity as a four-year-old!). Yesterday in the car, I drew his attention to the windshield wipers and fluid on the back window. His question: “Ma, window wash, which one button? (i.e. which button do you press to clean the window?)
6. He is half vegetarian. Or at least not a fan of most kinds of meat. But a great lover of fruit and most vegetables, dry cereals, potatoes, rice and noodles. Oh, and injera. He will call pancakes injera, though they’re not quite the same!
7. He has an Ethiopian accent. (For now.) We noticed, when there, that people usually would add an extra vowel between certain consonant groups, and before the plural s after a consonant at the end of a word. So “six” is pronounced “sickis” and “chips” would be “chipis.” He also pronounces “this” and “that” as “zis” and ‘zatSeeing as his first English teaches were fellow Ethiopians, it makes sense, but he’ll have to unlearn that! I took him to McDonalds one day for lunch. He’d already been with Laolao and Laoye, and he asked me for “chiss.” I took this to mean “cheese,” so I asked him “cheeseburger?” and he said yes. Given #6 above, I couldn’t really see him eating a cheeseburger, so I ordered French fries, chicken nuggets, and apple slices, despite his saying “chicken yucky, French fries yucky.” When he saw the fries, he said “yum, chiss!” Oh, you mean “chips!” So we spent a few minutes practicing the word “chips.” I have also had him practice “coat” and “cat” which sounded very similar when he said them. And we’re working on the proper “th” sounds for “this,” “that” and “mouth” (rather than “zis,” “zat” and “mouse”). His latest phrase, picked up from his sister and practiced extensively a few days ago: “What the heck!” [Dec ’08: His speech is, of course, much, much improved. Gone is the extra vowel as in “chipis” and “sickis.” But he still does tend to miss the “th” sometimes, though it’s now usually “dis” and “dat.”]
8. He loves cars, trucks, airplanes, and any kind of toy vehicle. And he can really kick a ball!
9. He also wants to play with his sister’s My Little Ponies. But she says they’re “mine!” and he is not to touch, so she’s had me put them in inaccessible locations where he can’t get at them. When he got a new big truck on Friday, he had me do the same with it. Hmmm, how can we get over the “mine, mine” syndrome? [Dec ’08: The My Little Ponies came out of hiding a few months ago, and there isn’t too too much of the “mine” – on either side. Thank goodness!]
10. He can recite the alphabet and count fairly accurately from 1 to 20. But present him with a letter or number in isolation and he can’t always recognize it. Though he does know M (his letter), T (his sister’s), R (mine), as well as A, B and C, and he’s learned S (for snake). Like many kids, he hasn’t yet figured out the difference between M and W. [Dec ’08: Significant improvement here. He knows all the letters, pretty much, and numbers, too, though generally skips 15 when counting from 1 to 20! He can write most letters, though some are not as neat as others, and can do simple math. His kindergarten teacher says he’ll be ready for Grade 1 for sure. I think he’s generally more academically inclined than Mustang.]

Mustang

1. Her favourite colours are purple, blue, and pink. Followed by white and red. Oh, and yellow, green and orange.
2. She is stubborn.
3. She is creative. She likes drawing, colouring, painting, and most anything artsy. (When reading through the Grade 1 curriculum documents last year, I thought the only subjects she was likely to get an A in were the arts. I was right.) She’s come up with some very interesting Lego creations – yesterday she built a “model” of my office building, complete with tall tower, park benches, flower garden, and pathways. She’s built lots of little Lego animals. On the beach, she’s a paragon of sand-castle building industry.
4. She likes to be in control. More than she is capable of being, as a 7-year-old. The end result is often a loss of temper. (Hers, mine, or both.) [Dec ’08: Some progress here, thank goodness.]
5. She LOVES horses. She has a half dozen horse stuffies, about 50 or 60 plastic horses of varying sizes, multiple horse books, horse pictures. All that’s lacking is the real thing. A friend did take her for a pony ride once, and she was in seventh heaven. Last year she attended the rodeo in western Canada with Laolao and Laoye, and they were camped right next to the horse pasture. She would go over and feed the horses (grasses she picked) as often as she could. Last summer, Laolao found a set of matched mother and baby horses at Value Village. She had to read one book to earn a mother and baby. She tore through the books like nobody’s business, she wanted those little horses so bad! She now keeps them in a little music box decorated with horses, given to her by an observant friend for her 7th birthday. [Dec ’08: In spring she started Horsemanship lessons and did a second round in fall. This involves learning about tack, grooming the horses, and learning to saddle and bridle a horse. In Nov-Dec she did a first round of horse riding lessons and very much enjoyed it. We’ll take a break over winter and she’ll start again in spring.]
6. She loves animals of all kinds. At the library, in addition to the usual storybooks, she likes to take out books about different kinds of animals and have me read them to her. She knows the names of many different breeds of dogs and their characteristics, different kinds of horses and what they do. She is an expert butterfly catcher, and last summer caught a dragonfly and a praying mantis. She has caught multiple frogs, and found a rabbit nest (with eight very young baby bunnies) in a neighbour’s yard last spring. When she grows up, she wants to be a Wild Girl in western Canada and help look after hurt animals.
7. She has an excellent memory for things that interest her. She remembers the details about the animal books we’ve read, places she’s been and things she’s seen.
8. She has a keen interest in the natural world. Animals in particular, but also bugs, plants, flowers, and more recently planets, stars and space. I try to feed this interest and keep alive her love of learning.
9. She is NOT into academics. The “core subjects” – reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic – are not her forte. Where she does much better is in the “applied” subjects – social studies, science, health, gym, and of course the arts. (I call them “applied” because that’s where the core skills are applied in a way that results in learning things of substance.) Of course, in order to continue to make progress in the “applied” subjects she will need to attain a certain mastery of the core subjects. I just hope that school doesn’t kill her love of learning before she gets there. [Dec ’08: She has made great strides in reading. Still stumbles and requires assistance; still somewhat below expected grade level, but much, much better. She read 26 chapter books over the summer!!! (with Mommy’s assistance and pushing) and has continued with more in the fall. Now we need to work more on math, too.]
10. She loves stories. When we’re in the car travelling somewhere or sitting at the dinner table starting dessert, her opening line often is “Mommy, tell me a story.” She then proceeds to tell me which characters should be in it (usually animals), how they should interact, and the main plotline. I am to furnish the details, the drama, and the descriptive language. As the story progresses, she furnishes further plot. But I have to retell what she’s told me to say, preferably adding description and drama - if I simply take what she’s said as part of the story and try to move on, she will often get upset. To date, the most common story theme has been animals meeting, mating, and producing babies. (It is of little import whether this involves two dogs or, say, a cat and an elephant…) I sometimes try to get her to tell me a story but she usually resists. Though I’ve had some success at doing a rotating story (i.e. we take turns adding a sentence). But she can tell a pretty good story herself. On Christmas Eve (2007), we has Christmas story time. I read the Bible account from Mark 2, Laolao read an Ethiopian Christmas story, and Mustang told the Biblical Christmas story in great detail and with expression (and without any prompting), all the way from the angel’s announcement to Mary to the family’s flight to Egypt.

Mama

1. My favourite colour is green. Followed by orange and yellow. The more smashing, the better.
2. I am stubborn.
3. Language and writing are my things. (In case you hadn’t noticed, all you eye-candy-hungry blog readers out there…) I have had several short stories and some poems published in various Canadian literary magazines. But nothing in the last ten years or so. Got too busy at work, and lately with adoptions and parenting. This skill has, however, proven useful in responding to Giggles’ story requests, though my strength is in story-writing not telling. Given her penchant for ordering the story and the single-theme focus, the story-telling results are not stellar literary accomplishments. In three years of story-telling, I have come up with two stories that I have thought could actually be good ones if written down. But I didn’t do so. One (about cats, aliens, and rubber bands) I might be able to recreate, the other (about camels, a crocodile, and an oasis) is so far past it’s mostly lost in the depths of memory. You will note that neither story involves meeting, mating, and producing babies. I think she gave me more free reign with these two…
4. I enjoy photography and in my early teens even toyed with the idea of becoming a photographer. (Something you eye-candy-hungry blog readers may find hard to believe!!! But the shortage of photos has more to do with the fact I still use ancient technology that require filling a film and taking it to a store for processing, and the fact that we spent a month in Ethiopia, where they gave me a CD with upside-down photos on it, than anything else.) I have produced a few decent photos in my time, and still enjoy trying to get an artistic shot. Though most of the photography these days is to record the lives, antics and accomplishments of two little munchkins. [Dec ’08: As you have seen recently, the newly acquired digital camera has resulted in a great proliferation of eye-candy. Hope you like some of my attempts at artistic shots, too.]
5. I have generally thought I had a great deal of patience with people (if not with things). Life with two munchkins is testing that. I find I have less patience than I thought I did (though still a pretty reasonable amount, I hope) and get angry faster than I thought I did. But the big thing – and it is the BIG thing – is controlling one’s anger, not doing anything rash, and NOT staying angry. At one of the adoption parenting seminars I attended, the mantra the speaker gave us was “Stay connected to your child.” That has stuck in my mind and it is my touchstone. I am still building connections to Button, but Mustang and I are well connected and any occasions where temper arises end quickly and with hugs and kisses. [Dec ’08: I still find it somewhat easier to connect to Mustang, likely because Button tends to shut down when upset, whereas Mustang is a talker. But the Button connections are real and continuing to deepen.]
   
   [The following points were added in Dec ’08, as this is the point where I ran out of steam last winter.]
6. I love to travel. I wish I didn’t have to work but could take my kids all over the place – Canada, the world! Our western vacation was a testament to that. Next summer will be more local holidays, since I hope to take them to China in 2010.
7. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It is in many ways not a huge factor in parenting, though in others it is. I don’t participate in athletics, so my kids take skating and skiing lessons rather than have me teach them. When we go sledding I stand and watch and cheer them on. I don’t even ride bike – I used to, but my knees don’t bend enough (haven’t for the past 25 years) so I count on friends to take the kids for bike rides. Mustang, when we’re out walking on icy streets or on forest paths, is very good at taking care of her Mommy and giving me a hand.
8. I have no siblings, so – since they don’t have a dad – my kids don’t have any aunts, uncles, or cousins. I’m trying to give my kids a sense of the larger extended family (seeing as I have about 25 uncles and aunts and close to 40 cousins) but it’s hard for them to really get to know the family since we live so far away and rarely see them. Members of our church have become our extended family.
9. I’m very organized and a bit of a neat-freak. Not clean – things can get dirty and it doesn’t bother me – but I like things neat. (Button is fairly tidy and organized by nature, too, though not Mustang, at least not regularly. Her teachers say she keeps her desk tidy and well-organized. Huh? Is that my kid you’re talking about?!!?)
10. I love being a mom.