Hard to believe that a little over four years ago, Pa and I were in Ukraine, finding our son who we’ve come to now as Mr. Na. It feels like he’s has been here forever, and that he’s such an integral part of our lives. I honestly can’t remember what life was like before we brought him home.

Mr. Na will be six in June, another difficult thing to imagine. Where’d the time go? Seems like it was just yesterday that I was able to pick him up in one fell swoop. Now I can barely lift him with two hands.

People have asked me if I feel like I’ve missed out on the first 18 months of Mr. Na’s life; but to be honest with you, I feel like we adopted him at the perfect age. In fact, even though he was 19 months old when we first met him, he was developmentally delayed by six months, and as such, he still wasn’t walking or talking. He even wore 12 month old-sized clothing since he was so puny. But within six months of being home, he gained weight and grew, and not only was he walking, he was running–both with his feet and at the mouth! At first, I started writing down new words he learned, and then it became almost impossible to keep track. So, no, I really don’t feel like I’ve missed out on too much…and seeing his personality flourish has lead me to believe that I don’t think he’s missed out on too much either.

Mr. Na still hasn’t asked too many questions about his adoption, although I’m told that often begins when they’re seven. He knows he was living in an orphanage when we met him; he knows another lady gave birth to him and loved him enough to know that someone would provide a better life for him; and he seems very comfortable with his story, to the point where he takes bits and pieces of it and weaves it into his daily dialogs. For instance, he’ll say, “When I was a baby, I couldn’t wait to find a mama and papa who would take care of me. Now I have the bestest mama and papa ever!” (I swear to you I’m not bribing him!)

But I worry about the day when someone at school makes him feel “different” because he’s adopted. You know, the kid who says, “she’s not your REAL mom”. I know we can’t avoid that forever, and the best we can do is reinforce his self-esteem so that he feels good about who he is; but I’m still not looking forward to it.

We have a “lifebook” that I wrote for Mr. Na when he first came home. It’s a picture book that explains his adoption in great detail: from the time Mama and Papa board the plane to go to Kiev, to the time we meet him at the hospital, and the time we go to court and promise the judge we will take good care of him, to the day he arrives in his new home. One day, he wanted to bring that book with him to show-and-tell, but Pa and I talked him out of it. He’s only in Kindergarten and there are very few children his age who even heard of the word “adoption” much less know what it means. We’re not sure that Mr. Na knows entirely what that means, so we told him that lots of kids would ask a lot of questions in his class (and Pa and I came up with a few as examples like “what is an orphanage?” or “where is the lady who gave birth to you?”). Once Mr. Na realized that he couldn’t necessarily provide answers by himself, we told him it might be better to bring his life book to show-and-tell in first grade instead. And what really clenched it for Pa and me was that Mr. Na didn’t follow up by asking those questions. He hasn’t yet asked about his birthmother or about the orphanage even though we’ve told him that he could ask us anything he wanted to know about his adoption. That’s proof to me that he’s just not ready yet for the complicated stuff. And so, Pa and I will continue to follow Mr. Na’s cue.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about our journey to adopt Mr. Na.

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