Has It Really Been Two Years?

Wow, I can't believe I won an animal playing a fishing game at Sea World!! It was the best thing I'd ever seen...until a boy walked by with a larger one.
And here I am getting ready to go on my first roller coaster! Yee- ha! It was fun.

Two years have come and gone since we arrived home with Owen in tow. How is that possible? I tried to talk to him tonight about it. I asked him if he remembered it. He said yes, but I think his memories probably all slide into one another in a jumbled way. I asked if he remembered the first time he met me, and he said yes, and he said I scared him. I'm sure that was true. I told him I was sorry that I ever scared him, and I gave him a hug. Then he kind of glommed onto the whole idea of being scared, and he whimpered and told me all kinds of things that scared him, including his friends from school. He even went on to say that he didn't want to have a playdate that we have scheduled for next week because he is scared of his friend, and then he told me that I needed to get back on that plane and fly back by myself (to Russia?). So...I think there are some real emotions there, but I think they are all mixed up in that way that memories do when they have started to fade. I'm not sure what to think about him saying (and he said it more than once) that he wanted me to fly back alone. I told him we could fly back to Russia some day together and visit, but that didn't seem to be what he wanted.

Two years, and the boy's English is so good. He is such an exact mimic of language and sounds. On our recent vacation he was making the sound of the mourning (is it morning or mourning? I've always wondered...) doves that could be heard all around the hotel. I tried, and I could not do a dove sound nearly as well as him. He sounded exactly like a dove. It made me remember when he was first home, and he would mimic all the street sounds while I rocked him to sleep...the barking dogs, car engines, honking, any sound at all.

I swear that his English is more grammatically correct than his siblings, at least Natalie. Nat still gets her past tenses wrong quite a bit (something like "I seed" instead of a "I saw"), and I know that when she was Owen's age she also mixed up pronouns (he/she) quite a bit. Owen will start to make a mistake with tense or pronoun, but then he will correct himself and say it over. In fact if anyone mistakenly calls a boy a she or a girl a he, he will be upset by that and correct it. Makes me laugh a little as I remember visiting him on Trip 2, and I tried out my VERY rough Russian memorized from a little phrase book. I thought I remembered how to say something like "You are a very smart boy" but when I said that to him, he gave one of his only reactions to me during our visits. He shook his head vigorously "NO," and acted upset. Later when I looked at the phrase book I realized that I had said the female version, so I was telling him he was a very smart girl. ha ha I think even back then he was a stickler for saying the correct gender. Why is this scary, crazy lady calling me a girl?!

Two years, and he is sleeping in a big boy bed now, wearing underwear instead of diapers, no more sippy cups or plastic cups/plates. He is learning how to swim, and has a season of soccer under his belt. He can belt out songs like an American Idol contestant. He knows the alphabet and can count pretty high, though he gets stuck on 13. He will count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20. Oddly enough, when he sings the alphabet he will say "ABCDEFGHIJKLMMMMMMMMP..." And M is...the 13th letter of the alphabet! ha ha Not sure what to say about that, except that his record player is skipping at 13.

Owen still has an abundance of joy and enthusiasm, and I love to hear him confirm to himself (and us) the members of his family and friends. He will count them on his fingers, and repeat "Liam is my brother. Natalie is my sister..." He is such a social person, and talks all the time about his friends from preschool. He is still super friendly to most people, but I truly believe that he knows that family is something special.

Two years, my sweet boy, and I wouldn't trade a minute.