We Love Our Adopted Son!
Maeven,
We would be more than happy to write something up for the ARK website.
Lukas is doing well. He has started pre-school and seems to enjoy it inspite of not knowing much English. Creative arts seem to be his favorite area for now. He is slowly starting to participate in the other learning stations. He really likes his teachers and the entire staff is quite fond of Lukas. One of the teachers in the next room over is from a Russian speaking country. Lukas has finally warmed up to her and she talks to him in Russian on occasion. It is actually quite interesting in the fact that when we leave he says "bye bye" to everyone else but says "Paka" to her.
He parrots back pretty much everything we say and is starting to put 2-3 English words together on his own. We took him to the IA Clinic at Johns Hopkins University last week and the IA doc was quite pleased with how Lukas was doing in the short time he has been in the US. She feels he is bonding quite well with us and that whatever we were doing to keep it up. Language wise she has him at about 21-24 months and cognitively around 30-36 months which is about 67% of where he should be. She said that is at the top end of where most IA kids are at when they arrive and that she anticipates he should be caught up for the most part within 1 year. We go back in Jan for a follow-up to see how he is progressing.
Discipline has gotten better. He still tests us alot but listens much better. 1-2-3 works most times and time-outs have been quite effective now. After about the 3rd time we could see that he understood what timeout was and it is not something he likes. He usually ends up there when he is tired and cranky. We find he falls asleep before his 3 mins is up alot of the time. He sleeps through the night 90% of the time and when he does get up he is good about going back to sleep.
He got quite picky about eating for a while but seems to be doing better now that he is in pre-school. I think eating with the other children and seeing them eat all their food has helped. We still have issues at dinner time from time to time but he is doing better. Cheerios, bananas and yogurt still seem to be his favorites that he will consistently eat. We are very lucky that he will try pretty much anything and will eat a wide variety of foods. I don't think his eating is much different than any other toddler/pre-schooler.
We are planning to start him in swimming lessons later this fall since he loves the water and has little fear of it. My parents have a pool and he was jumping off the diving board into the deep end with just a bubble pack float by the 2nd day we were there. He has gone in twice without anything and came up grinning and laughing so we figured we better get him swimming sooner than later. He loves helping around the house so it takes 2-3 times longer to get chores done but I don't want to discourage him from helping cook, feed the dogs and clean up so we just grin and bear it. He has also learned to ride his trike by himself now on level or slightly graded terrain. He is pretty proud of himself with that!
We have gone public with our blog and are trying to update it on a weekly basis. Please feel free to follow along. There are some great shots of him in the pool and at the county and state fairs.
www.oursilkroadjourney.blogspot.com
Lynda, Wayne and Luke Robey,
Eldersburg, MD