It's hard to believe that one month has already passed since we boarded that obnoxious military flight out of Port Au Prince with Morelson and headed home. A lot can happen in a month and it has! I will always strive to protect Morelson's privacy and personal story as much as possible, but with that said there are many things that I believe are appropriate to share here as a record of "our" story. Right now "our" story holds Morelson as the main character and what a character he is!
I will start by saying this little boy has brought some serious fun into our lives! No I'm not going to try and tell you all that it's been a total cake walk as that would be a flat out lie. I will say with total honesty that at least 85% of every day is going extremely well! Bedtime as of today is still pretty U-G-L-Y! We also struggle some with those oh so dreaded letters of N-O!
We can see Morelson becoming more and more comfortable every day. Rob and I had an established relationship w/ Morelson through our many visits and I believe that we would not being seeing the success that we are if we hadn't had that bond.
ONE MONTH HIGHLIGHTS:
1. When we don't understand what he is telling us in Creole or very broken English we get this "oh- my- goodness- Mama/Papa! In his VERY dramatic voice!
2. His new favorite food is bread. Not just any bread though. At first this bread had to be hot dog buns, we have now moved away from hot dog buns to Challah rolls from "Papa's Market" (Whole Foods.)
3. We still really like figs (bananas) but are down from a high of 9 to about 2 a day.
4. School is bon (good!) He just this week began really talking to the other kids and since they get a chuckle out of the accent I'm thinking we are going to hear a lot from him! He already knows every child's name and tells me multiple times daily... "Mama, T-T-T for Tanner, and K-K-K for Kyla, etc. etc. He LOVES sharing the beginning sound of words.
5. Play Planning ROCKS! It is simply an amazing way to teach children to read and write. This morning when he discovered that his remote control cars needed new batteries he took a play plan from the stack I have handy and began "planning" our trip to the store. He drew a picture of himself playing w/ the cars, and then said "I am going to buy batteries," while drawing a line for each word. When I said "you'll need to read your plan back to me so I can write your letters, he again says "I am going to buy batteries," as he points to each line and says the corresponding word. I am truly impressed with this after only attending school for a meager 10 days!
6. Morelson is writing both his first and last names w/o a model!
7. He still loves his "musica!" Our favorite right now is both Classic Rock and Blues, and this boy can both dance and carry a tune!
8. Morelson LOVES to help Papa cook and he is the best cleaner-uper!
9. We are discovering that Morelson is ultra competitive! I'm hoping we can find a way to properly channel this, he wants to play "football" aka soccer.
10. Morelson lights up the room when he walks in, he has made MANY friends already! We've got ourselves a little guy with a REALLY big personality!
