Random Bits

I'm a really sporadic blogger, so I apologize to those of you who regularly follow our adventures that there really isn't a regular schedule. This blog is supposed to be about my reflections on parenting and our adoption journeys, but it is usually just pictures of J!

So here are some reflections on parenting:

• Somedays I pray for patience, and some days J is an angel. It just comes with the territory of toddler-hood, but it sure is hard some times. He doesn't throw too many tantrums, though he has been known to do so in the past. Full out tantrums with laying on the floor, kicking and screaming involved. Mostly, J just whines when he doesn't get his way or when we say "no". We are using time-out for big protests or repeated offenses, but I don't know if he actually "gets" that yet.
• He is mostly doing one nap a day, usually only for about 1 1/2 hours. Occasionally slightly longer, sometimes slightly shorter. He still falls asleep during long car rides no matter what time of day it is though. The time of the nap is what I'm still experimenting with. Sometimes it is 10:30 in the morning, sometimes not until 1:30 or 2 in the afternoon. I haven't found the magic time for him to sleep the longest with yet, though he does go to sleep without protest as long as it is only one nap a day.
  
• J has all of his molars in and one more of the bottom front teeth, so is just missing the last of the bottom front 4 and all canines. I will be quite happy when the rest come in and he stops drooling and chewing on his hand!
• At his 18 month check-up, J was healthy and on-track developmentally. There are still a few small things he can't do for fine motor skills that the average child his age can, but in gross motor skills he is way ahead. He will average out eventually I'm sure.
  
• He is 22 lbs and 32.5 inches, wearing size 18 month shirts and 12-18 months pants/ shorts.
  
• He is starting to talk, just a few words here and there. Mostly still using sign language to communicate with us. I taught him "help" recently and he learned that one in a day because he uses it so frequently! He invented his own sign for "I want it", or that's what I'm interpreting it as. It is definitely a distinct sign, just not one I taught him or a "real" baby sign.
  
• J's newest fascinations are playing outside and playing with trains. Guess what he is getting for Christmas!
• Not about J, but tips about parenting in general for other mamas. If you have a consignment sale like Just Between Friends near you... you NEED to go shop at it and when you have stuff to sell, consign in it. Great deals on name brands! Seriously- 50% or more on gently used items. Our local one was just this weekend and I consigned some of J's old clothes that are not gender neutral or can be made frilly. Sold most of it, though I don't know if they were for full or half price yet, so I don't know how much money I made. I also spent more than the best case scenario of what I made, but J has his two big Christmas presents, so I don't have to worry about that! I was very good and did not buy him any clothes this time around either, unless you count snowboots and slippers! This child has WAY too many clothes up through size 24 months/ 2T, that I have refused to even look at anything else and have asked the grandmas to do the same at least until next year!

Reflections on our adoption journeys:

• After we finalized in May, there was still more paperwork things that needed to be completed for J. The only one that is completely neccessary was J's SS#, but the others are good to have things as well.
  
• The first thing we did was to get J a passport. This is the first legal documentation that actually says he is a US citizen. Although with the adoption finalized, he automatically is, the final decree doesn't actually say "US citizen" anywhere. We applied for that and got it 4 weeks or so later.
  

(What is really funny about this picture is that our friends K, C and B have one almost the same of B looking at her new passport and we took them without knowing the other also took a similar picture! She got her passport and SS#, etc at about the same time frames as us as they finalized close to the same time!)

• At the same time we applied for the passport, we also requested new birth certificates for J. They are prepared by the state and are actually "certificate of foreign birth" but yet it has J's legal American name and us listed as parents. (So very weird to me, because we were not actually in Korea or his parents at birth.)
  
• Once we had both of those, I took it to the SS office to apply for a number for him. We could have applied earlier, but we wanted his citizen status to absolutely reflect that he is a citizen, rather than having to go back and update it later. Apparently the SS office does not recognize adoption decrees as legal documentation of citizenship despite the Child Citizenship Act. It has to be the passport or Certificate of Citizenship. Funny story about that- my youngest brother, M, was born in Korea as well and adopted as an infant. 20 or so years ago, he actually had to go "become" a citizen separate from his adoption being finalized. Mom had gotten his SS# prior to that and didn't know she had to go back to the SS office and update his status. When he was applying for colleges and financial aid a few years ago, somebody came back and said, "Well you aren't a US citizen, only a legal resident alien according to your SS# status, so we can't do anything for you." (Or something like that!) He really was though, it had just never been updated!
• The only thing left for us to do is to get a Certificate of Citizenship, which is another chunk of change. This is really not necessary, since we have all the other documentation that states J is truly a citizen, but most of the adoptive parents I know go ahead and get it or are planning to, just to be on the safe side. We will apply for that sometime this fall.
  
• After we get that, that is absolutely everything to complete J's adoption and the legal paperwork. The only other thing I will do throughout the coming years will be to occasionally send updates to our agency to forward to Korea to be placed in his file. I will send letters to his birthmom and pictures and then forward sets of pictures to his two foster moms.
• So, if you got through this whole big long post, you deserve to know that with the close of J's adoption stuff, it brings us to the "s" part of our adoption journeys...

Stay tuned!!!!