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Sunday, May 15, 2011

Update ...9 months later

Its been awhile since I have been on here to update everyone on Mateo's progress. He has more than adjusted, and has found his own little personality & style. Mateo will be finishing his first year of preschool in about a week and 1/2. He loves going and has his cousin Max in the same class as he is. Everyday before we even get out of the car, if he doesnt see my sisters car there he says "Oh no, Max isnt here today." He has a little girl in his preschool class that he says is his girlfriend because she is "bootiful." He has been working with a speech pathologist for the last few months to help with some of his enunciations. She said that he has to learn how to move his mouth and his tongue when saying words with multiple syllables. Unless prompted to say it correctly, he will leave off the "s" sound when saying something that should be a plural. He also was leaving the "s" sound off when saying words that started with an s, like school or smile. So everytime he says "cool" for school, we stop him and say "you mean sckoool". So we are trying to really spend sometime with him to sound the words out so he understands the right way to say it. His speech pathologist says that his brain is working faster than his mouth can say it, so he talks so fast and leaves off some of the sounds that he needs to say the words clearly. My hopes are that he will get this all down before he will start kindergarden in August of 2012.

He has been talking in full sentences for probably about 5 months. It really does amaze me that he was only speaking Spanish when he got here at 3 1/2, just 9 months ago and now he is speaking all English. We did put him in an 8 week session Spanish class. One of the parents that was taking the same adoption class that Doug & I did at the beginning of the process has a daughter just a little older than Mateo. She is also in his Spanish class. She was also adopted from Guatemala, and just happened to get her home in 2007 before the Guatemalan shut down. There is actually another little boy also from Guatemala in his class as well. He would always want me to go in the room with him, and I did for about 2 classes. Although I finally told him that he needed to go in by himself and I would be sitting out in the lobby with all of the other mommys and daddys. He is always worried that I would leave. That is one thing that I have found to be hard. I think he remembers the times that I would visit him in Guatemala and then leave after visiting him for a week. I guess when I was there I was more in the moment of being so happy to see him that I really didnt understand the full experience from his perspective. Whenever I leave to go somewhere he always ask where I am going. He wants to know am I going on a train, a plane, is Mateo going too? He is attached at my hip. Very sweet though.

In the mornings, when he isnt going to preschool or his Spanish class, he goes with his daddy to feed the cows. He really likes going to the farm and he brushes the cows, and plays around. He has his little cowboy boots that he wears and he thinks he is pretty cool. He played soccer for the first time. His Aunt Cherie was his soccer coach and he loved it. He was on the same team as his cousins; Max & Hayden. Its funny because Hayden is older than Max, but he always refers to them as Max & Hayden. Whenever we go somewhere he always wants to know if Max & Hayden will be going too. When we pray at night, he always is sure to pray for Max & Hayden. His first soccer game was cute, he is about a head shorter than everyone else on his team. He is the youngest on his team. He is pretty fast though and got exposed to soccer from his first week home when he attended multiple soccer games with Rylie & Adyson. He would kinda just push his way into "the pack" and maybe get a kick here and there. By his 2nd game he was doing much better and really would go for the ball. He scored 3 goals at his 2nd game. Although the 3rd goal would have happened naturally, he just picked the ball up right before it went into the goal, and positioned it in front of the goal so he could get a straight shot in! lol

He loves to read and to be read to. We typically read before his naps. Everyday when we get ready to go to nap, without fail he asks " I just take a pequeñito ( meaning small) nap?" I always say "no Mateo, you need to take about an hour and 1/2 nap." He literally would let me read to him all day. He loves the book "No David" and has it memorized and will just read it to himself.

He loves Thomas the Tank Engine and plays with his trains everyday. His 4th birthday party was the Thomas the Tank Engine theme. His Uncle Greg made him an amazing Thomas the Tank Engine cake and when Mateo saw it, he wanted to take it outside to play. He had a family birthday party and a friend birthday party. I think the two parties were a bit much, although we have a big family and I knew there was no way I could try to combine the two. By the 2nd party he was exhausted and partied out.

I have taken him with me on two business trips, so he has been on an Amtrak and also on a plane. He loves going with me. Obviously, everyone loves seeing him too. We will be going to Disneyworld in a few weeks and he is so excited. This will be our families first vacation there, so we are actually all very excited.

There are still so many children still in Guatemala waiting to come home. I think that is the hard part about experiencing so much happiness myself. I have met so many other familes that have become friends and even though we are elated that he is home and we realize how lucky we were to get him out even after 3 1/2 years of waiting, you still feel this anxiety over the other families. Its hard to totally breathe a sigh of relief because I know that there are so many other families that are not able to experience all of these things. I also know that their children are about Mateo's age and I know how much we have had to catch up with him being 3 1/2 when he got here, I cannot imagine bringing home a 4 or 5 year old. Who knows what the outcome will be, but I do pray for the children and families waiting for them to come home forever.

I will try to do a better job on keeping this updated with all of the milestones and with some newer pictures of him.

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