Our Adoption Journey: Boys' Room

A couple of weeks ago, we made a bedroom change in our house - we moved Kellin in with his two brothers! It was actually kind of a complicated process because in our house, we have just two bedrooms upstairs - one huge one (I think it's around 23'x12' plus an alcove which is maybe 9'x6') and one tiny one (about 10'x10'). As long as we've lived in this house, Eric and I have used the big room and the kids have used the little one (except for Rabbit who gained the privilege of her very own room on the main level of the house a few years ago). All of the kids slept in our room as babies and then moved into the other room as they got a little older. Well, this time, we decided to let the three boys take the big room and we moved into the little one. Moving all that furniture, including dismantling bunk beds, was a full-day job, but the result has been fantastic!

The boys' room looks SO CUTE:

The view from the middle of the room looking right - Pooh's bed

The view looking left from the doorway - Tigger's bed

Kellin's crib (you can see Pooh's bed there on the left and the doorway just beside the crib)

And the alcove - the amazing Lego area!

The other great thing about the room switch is that it is really working well! All three boys seem to be sleeping just fine, and I am sleeping better because I don't wake up every time Kellin moves. The boys are sleeping through each others' noise and are learning not to wake each other up in the morning.

I've seen a lot of progress with Kellin in the last couple weeks and so I thought I'd do an update. Some of his progress is "little things," but still significant:

Kellin crawls up and down the stairs all by himself. For some reason, he still prefers that I am touching him (sometimes just one finger on his back is all he needs) but he does it all by himself. Slowly, and sometimes he fusses a little, but he can do it! Our stairs have a landing, so you go up three stairs and then turn to go up the rest. In the last couple days, I've noticed that Kellin remembers the turn when going up and will turn his body without needing me to remind him.

You all know that Kellin loves to play with water, but he really has no interest in using toys in the water. I've been putting a set of nesting cups in his water table, and the other day, he picked one up and pretended to drink from it. I'm not sure if this was truly pretending or if he expected to get a drink from it, but that kind of "play" is pretty rare with Kellin.

When Kellin picks up toys, he generally licks them, sucks them, bangs on them, bangs them together, or lays his head down on them. Recently he has started shaking toys (like rattles) to make a noise. Yet another way to explore!

Kellin walks across the room to get toys, his blankie, and people like Mommy, Daddy, and Rabbit! Sometimes all I have to do is encourage him to walk to me, and he will! And a few times, he has decided to walk a bit on his own, without being told.

In general, Kellin is much more willing to walk. The other day we were walking across a parking lot to a playground, and he chose to walk the whole way (holding my hand, of course). It took quite a while, but he made it!

He is learning more signs to communicate. He has recently started signing "cube" and "on." He also has put two signs together a couple times. One of the games we are starting to play is that I turn on his cube and "hide" it and then he has to walk and "find" it. I tried "hiding" it on my head while I was sitting on the floor. Kellin walked to me but couldn't figure out where the cube was. So he signed "cube" and then "please." With NO prompting! It was pretty amazing!

When he's motivated enough (meaning when I sing one verse of a song and then won't sing any more until he does it), he can point to his head, ears, mouth, nose, eyes, and toes. For some reason, I just can't get him to point to his tummy.

I am trying hard to find ways to incorporate learning into our routines as much as possible. Kellin has so much to learn but I don't often have long stretches of time to just sit and work with him. Some of the things I am doing:

We sing about going "up" and "down" when climbing the stairs.

I try to make him move his body most of the time instead of me doing it for him. For example, I ask him to lay down when it's time to change his diaper (he understands this!). I tell him to sit down when it's time to change his shirt. When he needs to stand up, I will give him my hand for balance but I don't support him, so he has to use his own strength. I have him walk around as much as he will tolerate (he's getting pretty good at this, unless he's very tired).

I have him try to feed himself some bites of food from a spoon at breakfast and lunch. Supper is his "time off," when I feed him the whole meal. By that time of day, I'm usually too tired to take the extra effort and time to have him feed himself, anyway. And he eats more cooperatively when I feed him.

When he finishes eating, he gets time to play with one of his favorite toys while I clean up. I "hide" a musical toy (under his blankie, under a table, or somewhere on me) and he walks to find it before he gets to play. He's still trying to figure out this whole "hiding" thing and it tends to confuse him, but he doesn't seem to get frustrated.

We talk and sing all the time. Kellin continues to show understanding of more words and phrases all the time. I don't think I could even attempt to make a list of all the words he understands now - it would be too many to remember and list.

Kellin doesn't really like books, but I have found that if I give him one of his books (with textures and/or Braille) and hold him on my lap while I read to Pooh, he sits nicely and will touch and chew on his book. Not exactly reading, but I hope he is starting to understand a little bit about books and stories.

We play turn-taking games with his toys. Rabbit is especially good at doing this. She will ask him for a turn with his toy, and then he has to sign "please" to get it back.

I'm sure there's more, and I'm sure this isn't particularly interesting to many of our readers, but one of the functions of this blog is so I have a record of our journey and Kellin's progress for myself.

And . . . pictures!