A Day to Remember

Well, it finally happened.

After 38 long months of paper chasing, fingerprinting, and home study visits, it's official.   Theo is officially Theo and we are officially named as his parents.

It was a day to remember:

OT session and school first thing in the morning for Mr Theo.

A big big big lunch (I knew we'd have a hard time getting him to eat with everyone here, so we "front-loaded" everyone with Theo's favourite:  spaghetti)

A quick nap

Then a costume change and buckling into the car.

Unloaded at the courthouse, where we were met with many friends who took time out of their busy day to witness this event with us.

And then, this:

And some goofing off:

(he's actually signing "cow" here and mooing, because he's crazy goofy like that)

Celebrating the moment with friends that we love:

And then continuing to party at home with a few (*cough cough* thirty-something) of our closest friends.

I'm exhausted and emotional and so very very grateful for this day.   Thanks to all of you, there's a little boy sleeping a few feet away from me who calls me Mom and now shares my name.   I am so very grateful for the chance to love him and parent him, even as a part of me mourns the loss of his bio family.   His story is not mine to tell, but I know that they fought hard for him and tried so very hard to give him what he needed, and it just wasn't able to happen.  I'm humbled by their faith and their sacrificial love and determined to do everything I can to give this little boy all the love and care that I know they wish that they could.

There were times over the past three years when I doubted that God would ever bring this to a close - that we would ever hold Theo in our arms and rock him to sleep and hear his laugh and kiss his tears away.   Now he's here, and he's our son, and I am humbled by my lack of faith and God's generosity.

God is so good to us.   He is faithful, even when we struggle to be.

Thank you all for your prayers and support.

*******

A few pictures that we couldn't share with you until now:

7QT: Mr. Theo

Linking up with Kelly today!  

I thought it'd be fun to do a Theo-Rio update as a quick takes.   Wanna know what our little guy is doing now?   Let's find out!

1.

When Theo first came home, he was babbling and had a few signs ("more" and "eat" are the two that I clearly remember).   He's now signing up a storm and starting to string signs together into sentences.   Last night, after serving the boys a bit of ice cream for dessert, he came up to me and very clearly signed "I want more ice cream."   All four signs of it!

2.

He's been going to speech therapy about 3 times a week for the past couple of months, and we're seeing definite progress there, too.   He's starting to babble more and has some very clear words, especially "MOM!!"  haha

3.

When Theo first came home, he really struggled with the stairs in our house...and we have a lot of stairs.    He can now go up and down them all by himself (and don't even think about helping him, haha).  He holds onto the railing and does each stair with only one foot at a time, so not the step-feet-together movement that he was first doing.

4.

He's been in school now for approximately 3 months and is doing wonderfully.   He comes home exhausted from playing hard, and tells me all about his friends at school.   He gets so excited when we pull up to the building to drop him off.  I'm very happy that it is such a good atmosphere for him.

5.

To give you an example about how his food likes have changed, the other day I told the boys to go get ready because I was going to treat them to Chipotle for lunch.  All of a sudden, I heard a "YAYY!!!" and the thump-thump-thump of little feet running down the hallway.   He'd made a beeline for his room to get socks and shoes because he was so excited about getting burritos for lunch.  Considering this little boy wouldn't eat ANY Mexican spices when he first came home, he's definitely found a new favourite food. 

6.

He's definitely growing.  We've moved from 2T in clothing up to 3T on a regular basis, and even those are seeming a bit short on him.   His little pudge of a belly is slowly disappearing, too, as he gets taller.  He's looking more and more like a little boy and less like a pudgy toddler every day!

7.

He's running now.   Full-throttle running.   It's a little off-balanced still (we're working on that), but he's running.   A lot.   And keeping up with the older kiddos.  :)

*******

And an extra, for good measure!   He's turning into an awesome BIG brother to Baby Girl.  When he first came home, he wouldn't even go near her - it was almost like he was scared of her.   Now, though?   He wants to hold her, he plays with her  (when I can finally post pictures and video, I will totally share him playing peek-a-boo with her, because it's adorable!), and he's the first to go running to her in her crib when she starts to wake up after a nap.  He loves his baby sister!

*******

Have a great weekend!

We haven't fallen off of the face of the earth...

I promise!

We've been quite busy here at home, now that Theo is in his various therapies and preschool on a regular basis.  We increased both his time in the classroom and his number of therapy sessions per week in December, and that's kept me and the other rascals pretty busy.    Even though his school is only 9 minutes from the house (according to Mr Google), and all of his therapists are housed in the same building, our life often revolves around his schedule.    The older boys have gotten pretty good at packing up their schoolwork and hitting the road with me, and it's actually made for some fun schooling sessions in places like Starbucks.     Homeschooling-on-the-road leads to great discussions with random strangers for the kids, which is fun to see.

How about I try to get you guys all caught up on Theo and what's happened since the last post, eons ago?

He's still doing well, settling in, here at home.   He's definitely bonded with his siblings, especially Rascal #2.   The two of them have a pretty tight relationship, and it's fun to see.    I can tell that Theo's gotten more comfortable with us and feels more "at home" purely by his behaviour:  he's started testing limits and asserting his independence.    I'll admit, as trying as it can be to have a child hit the "I want to do everything by myself and my way and I want to tell you what to do, too" stage, it makes me smile to see Theo move into that behaviour.   There's definitely a new level of confidence in his surroundings, and his place in our family, appearing.

Therapy and school are going really well.  He's already made amazing strides, which I think also has to do with his newfound independence and opinions.   He's physically able to do more, and he's very aware of his new abilities and is pretty proud of himself, I think.     The biggest hurdle is going to be getting him to talk, verbally.   He's communicating really well using ASL (he's picked up SO much sign language!), but we're struggling with getting him to vocalize his wants.    We're making progress, but it's slow going.

We've now officially gotten through all of the doctor and specialists appointments for evaluations.  Basically, we wanted to make sure that everyone had a baseline relationship established with our little guy, and we also wanted to check that there were no long-term side effects from medical treatments he'd received in his home country.   He's managed to pass all of those with flying colours, so we're now just going to move into an annual visit treatment plan with most of those doctors.  

All of his finalization paperwork was finally (haha) turned into the local probate office this week, after a couple of false starts.  I'd gotten the paperwork way back at the 6 month home mark, but it'd taken me a month to fill it out.    It ended up being a pretty big file of homestudies and official documentation from his country and our country, as well as a lot of forms specific to our state and county.    We were sick for pretty much the entire month of January, which prevented me from dropping it off.  Silly little boy and a weak immune system and all new bugs from this side of the globe meant that Theo was most often lounging in my arms on the couch, or sleeping off viruses.  January was a tough month for his immune system, but I'm hoping that we're in the clear now - at least for a little while!    While we were dropping off the paperwork, the secretary mentioned that she was currently scheduling adoption court sessions for April.  While I don't think our processing will move that quickly for us (it hasn't yet, why start hoping now!!), I'm hopeful that we will be able to finalize the adoption in May or June of this year.   I'd love to show you guys our little guy's face and truly introduce him to you!

On that note, here's a glimpse that I caught back at the beginning of January.   This little guy is so loved!

Thank you...

.....for helping this to happen.

I love post-nap naps.

....so this happened today.

Yep.  More paperwork.   

But......it's exciting paperwork.   A new checklist, a new stack of forms to fill out....all to petition the court to finalize our adoption of Mr. Theo.

Here we go!