Happy Thanksgiving and Five Months Home!

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a fun time going to the local parade with some friends and then eating lots of turkey for Tut's first Thanksgiving! He enjoyed the food and parade, but it is hard to explain what Thanksgiving is all about to a three year old still learning English. If anyone has suggestions for a good children's book about Thanksgiving, I would love to hear them! :) Then we could talk about it during the year too.

This was our table. Tut tried a little bit of everything. :)

He tried apple pie and pumpkin and he definitely likes the pumpkin best.

We have been home for five months, but in many ways it seems longer. Tut has made a lot of progress and it seems like it should have taken more than five months for him to get here. He is definitely taller than when we first met him even though he hasn't gained much weight. Some of the clothes from Thailand that were a bit big fit him much better now. 

His English vocabulary has really grown. Yesterday when I put his coat on he said "zip it up." :) His ABCs are getting much better and he almost has counting to 10 down. He tends to skip 7 and 8. :) When he first came home he could barely jump with two feet over a 2 inch block, yesterday he jumped over a shirt on the floor several times which was at least a foot long jump. His scribbling is getting more purposeful and he has started explaining drawings to us. He does really well playing with his toys and entertaining himself, he just prefers to do it in the room we are in. :) We've gotten pretty good at stepping over him in the kitchen. He likes to look at the calendar and have us explain what is happening in the next few days. He definitely does better when he knows what is going on. When Robby comes home he runs over to greet him. He also runs over to me when I pick him up from school. He is doing so well!

He had cycled through some names for us and now seems to use a combination of them. He calls Robby "Pa" most of the time, but sometimes he uses dad and daddy. The cutest one is when he hears Robby at the door and shouts "my Pader!" I don't know where that came from, but I like it. :) He usually calls me mum, like the British do, or mommy or mom. I don't know where mum came from either. 

Sleeping has had some ups and downs in the past month. He was doing really well falling asleep by himself and falling asleep very quickly when he woke up in the night, but then he got a bad cough that woke him up more and then we took away the bottle completely. He hasn't asked for it since the first night, but he has regressed and needs me in the room to fall asleep again. He also got worse during the night so I've gone back to sleeping part of the night in his room again. Otherwise neither of us were getting any sleep and he was becoming hyper vigilant and starting to wake up every 10 minutes to make sure I was there. I figured there would be some setbacks when the bottle was gone and I actually expected him to ask for it more.

We put up the Christmas tree today and he liked getting it out. He didn't want to put the ornaments on the tree though, he preferred to play with them and claim all of them as his. :) He has been going through the toddler "no" phase recently. I don't know if he went through it before in Thailand or if this is the first time, but the answer to everything is no and then sometimes it is followed by yes. Or sometimes it is no, yes, no. :) In the last couple of days he has started using mine a lot and asking if everything (the pie, the pancakes, the new shirt) is his. I guess this means his attachment is strong enough that he can feel safe pushing his independence and testing boundaries?

Here are some photos from the last month. :)

Wearing Pa's headphones.

Playing in the kitchen, his favorite spot when I am making dinner.

We didn't feel like doing anything on Halloween. We were tired, Tut didn't want to dress up and he already had a bag of candy from the party at school. So, we carved our pumpkin. :)

Tut made his pumpkin at school.

Tut has really attached to this leopard and was pretending it was a baby that he was putting to sleep, in his truck storage compartment. :)

Mom, take it, I don't want it.

Playing with the parachute men a co-worker gave me for Tut.

Learning about Thanksgiving.

Watching the Thanksgiving Day parade.

Tut's fashion statement after he spilled water all over the outfit I picked out for him. :)