I just received this info from our adoption agency. Please take the time to review the summary and sign the petition to ensure permanent families for all children without parental care in the US.
Families for Orphans Act petition
Here is a one page summary for more information:
Summary of Families for Orphans Act
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Yesterday was Jaden’s first day at day care. We call it school, because the facility is set up like what I remember kindergarten to be like (from ‘oh so many years ago’). I also like to call it school so I can tell Jaden “You’re going to have so much fun at school today!” with a giant smile on my face, intensely trying to hide the angst I am feeling within myself over being without him for the day.
I find this feeling quite ironic, considering most days when he’s home, by 4:00 I’m about ready to pull my hair out. As all you mom’s out there know, it is difficult if not impossible to get much done with a toddler at home. There’s the play dates, and the library visits, the books to read and toys to play with, the ‘pick me up mommy’ whines, and all the other fun stuff like feedings, walks and naps that take away the entire day. Nowadays our little angel has added a new trick to his repertoire: he can cling like a monkey to you when you try to put him down, making it all the more difficult to do things like use the bathroom.
So when I dropped him off yesterday at 8:00 a.m. I had mixed feelings. I could go home and actually get work done for 8 hours – YAY! – but I didn’t want to leave him. 
So how did it go??? His teacher said he cried for a while after I left, didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to take a nap, didn’t want to drink his milk, and walked around most of the morning with his giraffe (favorite stuffed toy) in his mouth.
UGH
But then she said he warmed up to the other kids in the afternoon and was running all over the place, playing with everyone and everything…
Until his teacher had to leave at 3:00 and they sent in the afternoon sub. Then he cried until I got there, which was around 4:10. He must have cried so hard for that hour because he was doing that thing that kids do after they cry that’s almost like a hiccup but not quite. It took a little over an hour for those post-crying hiccups to go away. *sigh* I felt awful.
Jaden is very adaptable. He usually warms up to other people quickly. It’s just the change that throws him. I guess he had gotten used to Miss Christine, and felt safe with her, and then when she left it was like “first Mommy, now Miss Christine?” Ah well. I was worried that this morning would be awful. But it wasn’t too bad. After a little coaxing I pried his monkey-like claws and legs off of me and handed him to Miss Christine who took him over to read a book. He was fine until I started to say goodbye, and then he got a look of panic on his face. Miss Christine is terrific though, and she walked him over to the window and told him he can watch me go to the car and wave. I guess he did okay because by the time I drove past his classroom window he was already out of her arms, so I assume he was no longer crying, and probably running around trying to steal one of the other kids’ toys.
What a crazy few weeks. First, vacation in upstate NY had me in a tizzy trying to get packed and ready to go. Packing for a toddler, even for a weekend, makes me feel like I’m packing to leave home permanently. Make it a week and I end up needing a massage to get over the physical and mental stress of it all. Yes, vacations should be fun – and it was. The packing, however, was a nightmare.
THEN Jaden had that horrible coxsackie virus. We think he got it from the pool at the resort, which didn’t smell too fresh toward the end of the week. The blisters were all in Jaden’s mouth, so he hardly ate or drank anything. We were worried for a while that he’d end up in the hospital from dehydration, but we finally figured out that he’d drink Yoohoo if it was room temperature. It was one of those “Aha!” moments of the summer.
Jaden’s doing fine now, and has already started to gain back some of the weight he lost during his illness. It’s amazing how quickly his belly and cheeks puffed up once he started eating again. Here’s a picture or two of him helping me water the plants in our front yard — as you might deduce from the photos ‘water the PLANTS’ was not getting through too well.
Watering 'the plants'
Watering myself
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About a week or two before Jaden started saying “Dada” he had walked around saying “baba…baba….baba” almost constantly. Well, it wasn’t constant, but it was so frequent that I could not for the life of me decipher what “baba” meant.
At first I thought he was referring to his bottle. I’d ask if he wanted milk. He’d flash me the ASL (American Sign Language) sign for “all done,” which is Jaden’s way of saying NO, usually vehemently. I thought, ‘maybe he doesn’t understand that I am offering him a bottle’? So I’d pull the bottle out of the refrigerator and show it to him – again I’d get the sign for “no” – this time with a furious look on his face as if wondering “what is wrong with you- didn’t I just tell you NO?!”
We had an idea that we might know what he was saying with ‘baba’ but we didn’t have it confirmed until tonight. Rick figured it out for sure. It seems that all this time Jaden was saying Mama. Yes, baba==Mama in Jaden speak. Evidently we must talk with a very nasal tone (haha – no one from LI is nasal, right?), or maybe the ‘b’ sound is just a common first attempt at the ‘m’ sound.
The thing that threw us off for so long is that there was one afternoon we had popped in the “Baby Signing Time” DVD #2 and they sign “mom”. Every time the woman on the DVD said “mom” Jaden repeated it. I guess it was just pure mimicking rather than actually knowing he was saying mom since he hasn’t done it since then, and when Neville points to me and says “who is that?” he says “Baba baba baba….” So there you have it. Baba and Dada are SO proud of their angel. First words are beautiful.
It’s official. Jaden is saying “dada.” He actually said “mom” first (spoken like a true mother) but then I guess he decided it was too difficult to reconcile with ‘more’ so he started saying “dada.” Now that he knows he can say it, he walks around repeating it over and over again. I’m just glad his first word wasn’t $h!t. LOL
Seriously, has it been 3 weeks since I last posted? Where does the time go????
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