Jaden and Katie are doing well. Jaden has officially been ours for 2 years now. Weird to think that just two years ago, he didn't know we existed, had never heard English and was an orphan. He loves, plays, writes and enjoys life so much. And he never stops talking. He is Mr. Social. He hates when the waitress has to leave to put in our order. He wants to talk and visit with them and get to know them better. We went to the Aquarium and one of the docents was trying to talk to a group of kids. If she asked for a question, his hand was up in a flash. Unfortunately, the questions didn't always pertain to the fish. :) He was more interested in her and her opinions than the fish. I think after having such a limited pool of people to talk to, he is taking full advantage of the people he is exposed to.
He is still struggling with his sensory processing issues in school. Academically he is fine but he has a very hard time with physical boundaries. We are working on it. Tonight at dinner, out of the blue, he reminded us that he used to live in China "where we didn't have any food." Then he asked if he could go to his favorite Chinese restaurant tomorrow. Yes, little man, you may. (Tim and I both felt that like a kick to the gut. It is so hard to know that there is nothing you can do to change the neglect of your child's past. Sometimes I forget that there is a very good reason that he has the struggles he does. Three years of neglect and hunger will do that to you.)
Katie is growing, growing. She can count to 20 (mostly) and recognizes most of the alphabet and so wants to be able to read. I expect that she may be an early reader as she always wants to know what things say. She has started into the "WHY???" phase. It officially started at 2:19 PM on 2-3-15. We are at 2314 times so far. She has also begun noticing her differences a little more. She periodically will count her fingers and then hold up her 4-fingered hand and say "Four?" and then the other, "Five?" back and forth several times. (Jay is so sweet, he often grabs her hands and kisses them and tells her how much he loves her hands.) She also looks at her scar on her leg and studies it. Perhaps it will help her one day that she has a hand-twin in my grand-niece and that I have scars very similar to hers on my leg. We think she is perfectly and beautifully made and I hope she will feel that way too.
I'm a little late posting this exciting news but we are DOSSIER TO CHINA! For those of you that don't eat, sleep and breath adoption, that means that all of our paperwork, all 3-4 inches of it, is on its way to China. At this point, we wait. We wait for them to acknowledge our paperwork and log us in to their system (which will be our log-in date or LID), we wait for our letter seeking confirmation of intention to adopt (our LOA), we wait for the US to say that Ian is ok to come in to our country (I800), we wait for China to issue an invitation for us to travel. During all of this, there is very little that we can do that will affect the time until Ian comes home. There are parts of the process that can be shortened by sending things overnight and doing papers the moment they are received, but for now, we wait. 