Thursday, June 30, 2011

One Month Home

It is hard to believe a month has already gone by since we came home from China. It has been a busy month with lots of new things for our boys to experience. They are easy to please boys who love to go places. In the last two weeks, they have gone to their cousin's birthday party, an educational wildlife program, a local state park beach and playground, the library, church, and our good friends' wedding. Levi had his visit to the pediatric endocrinologist as well and got lots of blood tests. He liked the doctor who was very kind and funny but he was not happy at all about the blood tests. We are waiting on results and our MRI.

This past week things really started to feel more normal. We are getting into some good routines, the boys are learning English, and Jacob is learning to do what we ask most of the time. The house is now all set up like we want it to be accessibility wise and we got a handicap placard for our car so we can use handicap parking spaces which is a huge help. Levi received his certificate of citizenship today and I was thinking how blessed the boys are to be Americans where people with special needs have rights and access to so much compared to people in other countries.

Levi now knows about 150 to 200 English words and communication with him gets easier every day. Jacob understands so much more English too and he is starting to speak many English words regularly. Aaron, Isaiah, Susu, and I now know a lot more Mandarin as well which is very cool. Having the boys has produced an unexpected positive side effect for me. I am getting some decent looking bicep muscles. I hate exercise that is just for the sake of exercise. Yes, I know it is good for a person's health but it is just so boring to me. God knew I needed two very good reasons to do some weight bearing exercise and it is fun to have some arm muscles for once in my life. My new exercise regime is called a365xx2. The very popular p90x exercise program stands for power, 90 days, extreme. My exercise program stands for adoption, 365 days/year, extreme, times two. I find my exercise program to be very emotionally rewarding especially when I get hugs and kisses during and after a work out.

This weekend we are having a family birthday party for Levi. He doesn't turn 14 until the 10th but this Saturday was the day that worked best for all the cousins to come. He has never had a birthday party before and he is excited! I really can't wait to see him enjoy his party. There is really nothing quite like experiencing firsts with an enthusiastic 13-14 year old. An example of this happened at the state park playground today. Levi has tried out swings a couple of times since coming home and he has been afraid of them. It was pretty obvious he had little to no experience with a swing prior to being adopted. Well today he decided to try swinging again and this time he was more adventurous and let me push him a bit higher. He realized that swinging can be very fun and he was happily yelling as he swung back and forth like he was on some really exciting amusement park ride. He kept talking about how much he liked the swings as we were heading back to our car. Who needs Disney when a regular play ground is thrilling!

I will close this post with pictures from some of our latest outings.





No comments:

Post a Comment