thoughts about home

We have now been home with Brennan for a little over a week.  We are very thankful that he seems to be fitting in so very well to our family.  He really likes Marleigh a lot, and he does well with Ben and Madelyn.  I think they pose a little more of a "threat" to him because he has to share toys/attention etc. with them more than with Marleigh.  He also seems to be bonding very well so far with Scott and me.  He seems to prefer me, but we expected that based upon the fact that he had only ever known female caregivers at the orphanage.
Brennan has learned very quickly to LOVE playing with toy trains.  He hooks them all together and sends them chugging around all over the house.  He will keep them on the track sometimes, but he really just likes to watch them chug along and then crash into our feet, the cabinets, other toys.  When we first arrived home he was hoarding the toys that he liked.  He would fill up my plastic laundry basket with toys and push it along with him wherever he was going in the house.  He also would fill plastic buckets with some of the smaller toys to carry around.  Thankfully, as he saw that the toys weren't going to disappear that behavior has pretty much stopped.  The other lesson he is learning is to share and not to scream in Cantonese at your brother/sister when they are playing near your toys.  The sharing has been difficult and has elicited a few tears.  I know those are hard lessons for little people to learn...especially little people who have most likely always had to fight for their toys.

Oh for the love of toy trains!

We have decided it is more fun to use the basket as a toy than for hoarding toys!

We are also very thankful that Brennan is a seemingly good eater.  He will at least try whatever I have prepared for a meal.  Yesterday he liked the idea of pumpkin white bean chili, but in reality two bites was enough for him.  A few things I have learned very quickly:  I must always have boiled eggs available, he loves corn on the cob, and he isn't too keen on the milk here in the States.  Brennan is eating at least one hard boiled egg a day...and some days he will eat three!  He knows I am keeping them in the fridge for him, so he will get my hand, pull me to the fridge, reach up for me to hold him and reach in the bowl to get the egg.  He even has gotten the hang of peeling the shell off!  As I said, our biggest food "issue" at this point is milk.  He loved these little milk boxes while we were in Ch*na, but I obviously can't find them here.  I have tried regular milk from the carton poured into a cup, regular milk in a "juice box" type container, Horizon vanilla milk in the "milk box", and Gerber graduates strawberry milk boxes.  So far we've had the most success with the vanilla milk but even that wasn't overwhelming success.  If milk is our only food issue, though, I'll take it because I can get him to eat yogurt for some calcium consumption.  He truly has been so good to eat most everything offered from oatmeal pancakes to blueberry waffles to cheese quesadillas to ravioli; all things that must seem a bit odd to his Chinese taste buds.
I have also learned that with 3 kids ages 4.5, 3.5, and 20 months everything is an event!  We have been trying to get outside as much as possible partly because the kids love to be outside and partly because they get into mischief if we stay inside too long.  Getting the three of them dressed to get out of the house has now become seemingly an Olympic sport.  Yesterday morning it only took 30 minutes and I wasn't sweating by the time they were all dressed, so I declared that success at this point!  We have been checking out all the different playgrounds around our side of town too.  Brennan loves the slide; that is for sure his favorite.  The swings not so much.  We have made progress from the first time he was screaming and crying bloody murder on our back yard swing, but we have to take it very slow and his tolerance level is at about 2 minutes and done.  It has been very interesting for me to see the difference in muscle control/coordination between the 3 little kids as well.  Madelyn and Ben are both "like a little muscle" compared to Brennan.  They can pull/push themselves on the different playground equipment.  They also have fairly coordinated steps around on the different equipment.  Brennan is unsurprisingly not at the same level with his muscle tone and coordination.  For example, we have a swinging bridge on our neighborhood playground.  When Brennan approached the bridge to cross it to get to the slides, he sat down on the edge to slide his bottom over and stand up on the bridge (as opposed to stepping down like the other kids do), and when he stood up and realized the bridge moved, the look on his face was total fear!  I quickly grabbed his hand, but it was obvious he didn't have experience being on something like that little "swinging bridge".  I just am so happy and thankful, though, that God has placed Brennan into our family for us to share these types of experiences whereby his muscle tone/coordination/spatial awareness will certainly grow and develop in time.

Learning to drive the Mustang.

All in all, I would say yes we have some orphanage related issues with Brennan.  There is self-soothing behavior, there is a little "self-destructive" behavior when he gets angry/frustrated, and he certainly is not on the developmental level of a typical 4.5 year old.  I think given time these things will improve, though.  From all accounts I think what we are dealing with is mild in the grand scheme of things.  The orphanage Brennan was at did a good job with the resources they had of helping him learn to use his little hand and of giving him some basic educational foundations in his preschool.  For that we are extremely grateful.  And by God's grace, we can build and grow upon the foundations we have.  I am so excited and humbled to be witness to the "growth harvest" God brings forth in Brennan's life!    

We have discovered the Spinbrush...and regular oral hygiene.