Spring Break

This week was filled with fun and excitement as I had the week off for Spring Break. Friday of last week was our only real day all to ourselves though, as Monday, Wednesday, and Friday Bo went to daycare, Tuesday the three of us went to the dietician and I received training to give Bo insulin shots, and Thursday we went on another dental visit - this time to New Orleans for an oral surgeon that was recommended by the Children's Hospital. This dental visit was well worth it as the surgeon was much more friendly and understanding (though he also made a point to tell us on at least 3 or 4 occasions that Bo is not 4 1/2 because he has at least a few permanent six-year molars in place. The oral surgeon intends to pull 4 teeth in his office instead of the initially suggested 8 at the hospital.

This age discrepancy situation is making us feel better about our consideration to enroll Bo in kindergarten in the fall rather than daycare for another year.

Every morning at 6:50, like clockwork, Bo wakes up and wants to play Kung Fu Panda video game, or now a Buzz Lightyear game that we happened upon on the Mac when we were looking for pictures of Toy Story. He now sees the laptop as nothing more than a toy, fun fun fun!

We have watched Toy Story and/or Toy Story 2 nightly (he can't seem to get enough of them), and he is enjoying the Ultraman Season 1 dvd set that we found courtesy of Amazon. Though these are dubbed in English, Bo really enjoys them as they seem to comfort him and bring him back to China. Bo did have the crazy idea that Toys-R-Us would have aisles full of Buzz Lightyear action figures just like Al's Toy Barn on Toy Story 2 - but it was not to be. I guess they are waiting for the film to be re-released in 3d in the fall to stock up on Buzz action figures once again (or when Toy Story 3 comes out next June).

Yesterday was a rainy and dreary day in Baton Rouge, so we headed towards the local Children's Museum and caught an IMAX movie about Sea Monsters, and Bo got to see some fighter planes. We were surprised about Bo's reaction as we left around 4:30 (the museum was closing and it was about time to get home to cook dinner, etc), but Bo threw a major tantrum the whole drive home (which included a nice 20 minute traffic delay because we chose to drive by the football stadium right before the spring game).

***(This is Alison now: this was the worst Bo tantrum yet, and really surprised us because he has been going days without one and we were having such a good time before it happened. Usually Bo is dragging us out of places early but it was the opposite at the museum. I've noticed a few signs over the past few days that pointed me to the fact that Bo is finally starting to grieve over the loss of his old life in China. He has the spaced out look on his face more often and he has been especially clingy to me. I expected this and it's probably healthy to go through this stage but it's also rather sad to see him so easily distraught. When we got home from the museum he was still crying and going on 30 minutes so I took him into his bathroom and stripped him out of his dirty clothes, used a cold washcloth on his forehead to cool him down, then we went into his room and I offered him some of his China clothes. He chose to wear the peach quilted pants that he was wearing as one of his layers the day we met. He immediately calmed down and went straight to playing with Legos. Today we went to the neighborhood pool and afterwards Bo again chose to wear China clothes, this time his camo pants. I try to get him to wear them all the time and he refuses so this was definitely another sign that he is struggling with choosing between his two worlds. In my international adoption "bible" it says to put a book together with photos from the child's earlier life and them meeting you and then some photos from their new life so you can talk about it and show that you understand what a big change they have been through. Now with the added reality that Bo may be closer to 6 than 4.5 that puts his age at separation from his birth parents at around 4 instead of not quite 3, so I think his memories of them might be quite strong even though it has been 2 years since he has seen them. I'm sure we will learn more once his English improves and I can't wait until then.)***

Today our community pool opened and Bo and Alison stopped by for a while after we attended the first 4 innings of an LSU Baseball blowout loss (ranked the #1 college team in the nation, yet we have not witnessed them scoring a run in either of the two games that we have gone to). I have no doubt that Bo will want to attend frequently as the weather warms up.

Sorry, no pictures to include during this post, but the good news is that Olympus is currently fixing both of our broken cameras, and we should have them back within the next week or so.