Oh Say Can You Seee

Happy 4th of July (a little late)!

I've been remembering back to last year, when we were sequestered in a hotel room in Moscow, waiting for our Embassy visit. On the 4th last year, Owen was still a few days away from officially being a US Citizen. He was in that strange limbo land of being our legal son and yet still a Russian citizen. Liam and Natalie went to see fireworks with Grandma and Grandpa and the neighbors back home, and we missed them terribly. Everyone was preparing for the big meeting of our new addition.

This year we were all five together. The weather was a little soggy, so the fireworks outing was shorter than usual - parked in the car, mostly (which is not nearly as peaceful as that sounded as I typed it), until the show started, and then we stood outside. Owen was up later than usual, and later than he should be, so needless to say he was very excited about the fireworks. He would shout "boom boom" and some other word that was supposed to be "fireworks" but sounded more like "gargurks." The entire time we watched, he jumped up and down and screamed "gargurks". Oh yes, except for the brief seconds he spent on Jim's shoulders and nearly climbed to the top of his head to give Daddy a new hairdo, never missing a bounce. I was able to get him to yell Go USA!

I laughed to myself a bit, thinking of the consternation it most likely would have caused his Russian caretakers to know how quickly the boy embraced the good old USA. Let's see...it took only days for him to be able to identify a Starbucks frappuccino cup and open and close his mouth like a baby bird to beg for the whipped cream from the top. It took only a matter of weeks before he could identify and get very excited by football and baseball (hockey too, but that could be the Russian or Canadian in him). Not long at all before he would yell Donalds!! whenever we pass the Golden Arches (to be fair, we had "Donald's in Moscow before we left, so we got an early start there). More recently, he's been yelling "Nurpees" whenever we pass a 7-Eleven, ever since Jim started the baseball post-game tradition of Slurpees. And if the Mall or Target are mentioned, he yells "Me too, me too!" Oh yes, the boy has embraced all of our American vices whole heartedly, bless his heart.

Go USA!! (and apologies to Russia...he does love hockey...and smoked salmon...sorry, I'm sure there's more, but that's all I've got right now. And don't tell me that your super secret super spies deep under cover in the suburbs weren't doing the exact same thing!)