"Gotcha" Anniversary

Today is our one month anniversary of "Gotcha Day." But man, why does it feel like it's been so much longer?!! Most adoptive parents' blogs don't tell you how challenging it is. Well, some stop blogging altogether, so maybe that says something? ;o) I've been asked a few times if parenting is fun. Umm… no, not really. I never expected it to be fun. I knew it was hard work, much harder than it looks. There might be fun moments (which we don't seem to have seen much of yet, but it's early days), but it's mostly just hard work. I've been asking people, "when do they become more human?" Some ladies I know have told me it's when the kids are in their 30's when they finally start to appreciate you. Gee, we have a long way to go.

Evan had a great Easter! Grandma got him this debonaire outfit. He was grumpy when we were putting it on him, but once he saw himself in the mirror, there was a huge smile! He got to do his very first egg hunt. It took a little bit of prompting but he got the hang of it after a while and wanted more. We had to distract him and re-hide a couple. He had a lot of fun and a wonderful meal at Grandma's house. Thank you, Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Robert!!

We've taken Evan to a few tumbling classes. I think he enjoys them, although he doesn't really follow the teacher's instructions to get the most out of the classes. He kind of likes to do his own thing most of the time. Sometimes he hams it up and likes to show off a bit. And sometimes he feels crabby and just doesn't want to do anything but be a little PITA. Hubby and I don't deal well with this sort of behavior and I'm sure we'll need to have our blood pressure checked regularly now. At the very least, it's burning off some of his energy, so that's good. The other day, our little tasmanian devil was doing his own thing of running laps in the room and "met" the ballet bar mounted in the wall. I happened to have caught it on video. Poor guy cried and got a little bit of a fat lip from this. Hubby and I couldn't help but laugh (ok, we laughed our heads off!) when we saw the video. Evan laughed too when he saw it. It's a good sign he doesn't mind laughing at himself. :o)

Last Tuesday, we took him to a trial half day at the preschool where we're going to enroll him. He did very well. We stuck around for about an hour then snuck away when they went to play outside. We were told that he was just fine. When he first saw us when we came back to pick him up, he gave us a slow smile, like "Hey, I know you."

The language will probably still be a bit of a problem at school, at least for a little while. Evan is a bit behind verbally, which we were told from the beginning. He's still sort of at the babbling stages, doing a lot of baby talk, although he seems to understand a lot when I talk to him in Chinese. I think he's starting to understand some phrases in English, but still not speaking many words except for "please" and "train." We're trying to have him say "banana," but multisyllabic words are a little tough right now. We're working on it slowly. Hopefully, being in school will help. 

We're also hopeful that the preschool teacher would be able to help us potty train him. Their method is to put them right into regular underwear. Talk about jumping in with both feet. We'll have to use the same method with him at home also. Wow. Good thing we have mostly laminate wood floors now. I'll be wearing my watch to send him to the potty regularly.

Bagheera went hunting for wabbits! Dragged this big singing bunny from a chair to the rug and had her way with it.