13 October 2005 - Keeping Busy

On Sunday morning, as I was preparing waffles for the boys, Nicky asked if we could destroy the orphanage.

“Hmmn?”

“Bomb. From airplane. We going to destroy detsky dom with bombs?”

Zack started making whistling noises and doing hand motions representing a dive-bomber run. I gave him some juice, told him to drink it, and turned back to Nicky. We talk about the orphanage regularly, usually when reading the Life Books, or when some food reminds the boys of something they’ve eaten before. I’ve always been scrupulously careful to keep my comments, face, body posture, and tone of voice neutral when discussing their life before adoption. Nicky came up with the negativity all by himself (not very surprisingly, after all), but the strength of it still surprises me occasionally.

“Um, I don’t think so, Nicks,” I said casually. “Why would we do that?”

He wrinkled his nose. “Bad people, bad place.”

Zack said, “Detsky dom bombs! Whee!”

Nicky repeated himself: “Bad place, Daddy.”

“Yeah, but Nicks, think about it. If bombs had fallen on the orphanage when you were still there, I never would have found you. You’d be dead from the bombs, and I’d have no boys.”

That set him back a bit. He abandoned the bomb idea, and fastened onto the part about finding each other. “Why you go there, Daddy?”

“To the orphanage? You know the answer to that. To find you.”

“No, not why. How. How you go there?”

“You know that, too. I took a plane from Dallas to Chicago, then from Chicago to Warsaw, then from Warsaw to Kyiv. I took a car from Kyiv to the orphanage.”

“Toy car?” asked Zack.

“No, a real car. Eat your waffles, Zackers.” I pushed plates at both of them. “Eat, guys.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes, Nick?”

“Why you ’dopt us?”

I began to wish I’d made the coffee before starting the waffles. Was this leading somewhere? Was he looking for reassurance that I loved him, looking for an opportunity to express anger at the orphanage, wondering about how families are formed, or just making conversation? I decided that it didn’t really matter. Concrete question, meet concrete answer: “Because you’re the most wonderful boys in the world. I went to the orphanage, met you, and knew I had to adopt you.”

I opened the cupboard, pulled down a mug with a photo taken on July 1st , 2004. The photo is of the boys playing on a swing set at the orphanage, and the caption reads “The Day We Met.”

“Look, Nicky,” I said, showing him the mug. “This is you and Zack, the day I met you. Do you remember that day?”

“Toy cars!” said Zack around a mouthful of waffle.

This time he wasn’t asking about toy cars, but remembering. “That’s right, Zack,” I said. “In the director’s office at the orphanage when we first met each other. The director gave you toy cars to play with while the adults talked.”

“Nicky my brother,” said Zack, thrusting his chest out.

“Yes, you and Nicky together.”

I turned back to Nicky. “Do you remember, Nicks?”

“I ’member.”

“Good. Eat your waffles before they get cold.”

“Then we never going to destroy orphanage?”

“Probably not, Nickers. Do you want some juice?”

“When I growed up,” he said thoughtfully, “I going to have kids.”

“Yes, you probably will. Juice, yes or no?”

“I be nice to they, like Daddy nice to boys.”

“I know you will, Nicky. I think you’ll be a wonderful daddy, just like you’re a wonderful boy. Last chance for juice.”

“Milk, please.”

“Right.” I put the juice in the fridge and got out the milk. I poured him a glass, then got out another glass for Zack and started pouring.

“Milk, please,” said Zack, just as I finished filling his glass.

“Right. Here you go. May I have my coffee now?”

“I get it for you, Daddy,” said Nicky.

“No, me!” said Zack.

To forestall an argument, I got my own coffee, then reminded the boys they needed to play quietly in the morning.

I’d acquired another kid on Thursday, October 6th, and he was sleeping upstairs. Len is an exchange student from the Netherlands whose host family couldn’t keep him. He needed a place to stay while AFS Intercultural Programs was finding him a new host family. Since we had room, I volunteered our house as a temporary shelter. Len is seventeen years old, speaks excellent English, and seems like a nice kid.

At first I was worried that the boys might think I was adopting Len, so I made a big deal out of explaining his situation, and making sure they understood Len would only be staying with us for a couple of weeks. It turned out that the only thing that bothered the boys was having to play quietly in the mornings.

I’ve been working eighteen-hour days for the past month, usually seven days a week, with an occasional all-nighter thrown in just for fun. I have a large project going, and except for breaks for meals, shopping, cooking, visits from family, play dates, and acquiring exchange students in my spare time, have been too busy (or too exhausted) to do much with the boys. On Sunday afternoon, however, we were going to see Charlotte’s Web at the Dallas Children’s Theater. If I had any chance of staying awake through the performance, I needed to grab a few hours of sleep first. So I had two reasons for wanting the boys to play quietly – Len was sleeping, and I wanted to sleep.

“Go wake up Uncle Dan,” I told them. “Tell him I’m going back to bed.”

“Daddy, you want play swords with us?” asked Nicky.

“Yes, but I’m going to go to sleep instead.”

“Daddy?”

“What, Nick?”

“I love you.”

“Aw, you got me. I love you, too.”

“Daddy?” said Zack.

“I love you, too, Zack.”

“Aw, I want it to get you.” (That’s how he says it; “want it” is all one word to him.)

“You have to surprise me. That’s how the game works. You call me, and if I say ‘What?’ instead of ‘I love you, too,’ then you’ve got me. But it won’t work if you try right after Nicky does it.”

“Daddy?”

I had to smile. “What, Zack?”

“I love you!”

“I love you, too, Zack.”

Still smiling, I went to bed and slept for three hours. When I woke up, I got everyone dressed and into the van, and we headed off to meet the Clark family and see Charlotte’s Web. The boys played at the Clark’s after the performance, and I got some work done. Then it was time for baths and bed for the boys, and I worked until 8:00 a.m. Monday morning.

My dreams, after working all night, were a mixture of programming the problem I’m working on, and of bombing the orphanage. What was kind of crazy is that, in my dreams, I was doing both at once. I was remote-controlling the bomber airplane from my computer on one screen while programming on another.

Thank you, Nicky.

After being with us almost a week, Len is really starting to feel and act like part of the family. He surprised me the other day by emptying the garbage without being asked, and he’s volunteered to help with other things, too. Nicky is so open and affectionate that he decided immediately that he needed to give Len a hug at bedtime. The first couple of times, it was painful to watch. Len rather stiffly patted Nicky’s back and looked confused. Nicky asked me afterward, “Why Len no like hugs, Daddy?”

“Because he barely knows you, Nickers. Give him some time.”

Now the boys hang all over Len, involve him in their games, show him how to do chores, and make him feel welcome. In return, Len smiles all the time, talks freely, and helps the kids with their homework. He even asked if he could volunteer at the grade school Movie Night this Friday.

Zack surprised everyone by how well he’s taking care of his glasses. We had a pool running, with bets on how long it would take before his new glasses were destroyed. I’m proud to say that, as his father, I gave him the most benefit of the doubt: I gave him five days until total destruction. The least-charitable bet was 24 hours. As of today, it’s been fifteen days, and the frames aren’t even loose! He remembers to take them off at night, or when swimming, and keeps them carefully in his glasses case when he’s not wearing them.

Is this the same kid who destroyed five pairs of sunglasses in ten days last year? Way to go, Zacky-boy! Daddy’s proud of you.

I’m also proud of how well Zack is doing with his speech therapy. Whether he knows it or not, he’s making incredible progress. His S sound has softened from CH or ZCH to something near a real S most of the time, and every now and then he does it perfectly. People outside the family have far less trouble understanding him than they used to, and he’s slowly losing his shyness about talking to strangers. He’s also gaining ground with English grammar, and often speaks in complex sentences. Just yesterday, he expressed a subjunctive thought with correct syntax.

I wonder, sometimes, at how extraordinary these boys are, and how little they realize it. They don’t seem to have any idea that things have been easier for their friends, or that they’re lacking the rich mosaic background that comes from being raised with stimulation and exposure. Instead, they just learn at an astounding pace, and with astoundingly good cheer.

It’s not all rosy, of course. Nicky is discovering that school work is challenging this year. Unlike kindergarten, where participating is the chief goal, first grade expects him to get correct answers on tests. He’s convinced, on alternate days, that he can’t read, will never read, and doesn’t want to read.

I wrote “Nicky can read!” on the whiteboard, and told him that if he could read it without any help, he could have some ice cream. He puzzled it out in about five seconds, then crowed it at the top of his lungs.

Two days later, he still points at the board with a dazzling smile on his face, and claims it for his own every time reading comes up in conversation. I’ll take my Daddy points and treasure them, but I also know that it’s just a band-aid. He needs to learn that hard work can pay off, and can make one feel good about himself. Nothing in his life before being adopted taught him that lesson; in fact, pretty much everything taught him the opposite. My challenge is to arrange circumstances for him so that he can see the benefit of trying hard enough to succeed. And I have to do that without cheating on his behalf. In order for the lesson to do him any good, he really has to master things he believes are beyond him. It’s hard to find things he can’t do, but is willing to try.

Zack, too, has some sticking points with school work. While other kids in his class can spell dozens of words, count reliably to 25 or 50, and recite the days of the week or months of the year, Zack makes mistakes counting more than five physical objects he can touch while counting, and is still struggling to recognize all 26 letters of the alphabet. He’s improved from only knowing a handful of letters to knowing perhaps 20 of them, and seems proud of his progress, but is woefully behind his age-peers.

Both boys are receiving ESoL at school, and Zack will soon start receiving speech therapy from the school district, too. The therapy he gets now is private (and private pay, which is killing me), and it’s helping, but he needs more support. The current theory is that bombardment with linguistic and phonetic exposure will help him “catch on” to how English works, so the more the merrier.

Nicky and I have started taking walks together at night. Zack still needs a good ten hours of sleep if he’s going to avoid meltdowns in the afternoons, but Nicky doesn’t need that much sleep. So I moved Nicky’s bedtime ahead a bit, with the proviso that if he starts having trouble waking up in the mornings, we’ll move it right back. So far (almost a week now), it’s going fine. While it’s hard on Zack to have to go to bed alone, it’s something he needs to learn eventually. Zack is supposed to doss down at 7:30, which of course means 8:00 most nights (he’s Zack). Nicky’s bedtime moved from 8:00 to 8:30, which of course means 8:30 most nights (he’s Nicky).

I’ve told Zack he should try to sleep, but I don’t care if he lies awake waiting for Nicky. Some nights, Zack is still awake when Nicky comes in, but more often than not, he falls asleep.

The upshot of all this is that, on a good night, Nicky has up to an hour to do non-Zack things. You need to understand that these kids do everything together most of the time. They watch the same movies, read the same books, brush their teeth together, bathe together, play with the same toys, and so forth. Unless they’re at school, doing homework after school, or otherwise forcibly separated, they’re together. While this is wonderful (for them and for me), it’s also limiting for Nicky. Because Zack is younger and also less caught up, he’s the lowest common denominator. Games, conversations, movies, and so forth, are geared to what Zack likes and understands. This is perfectly reasonable and understandable, but it keeps Nicky from expanding his horizons to include things that he can do but Zack can’t.

So we go for walks together.

It gives Nick a chance to talk about things, ask questions, and just be with Daddy. I’ve already seen changes in him because of it. He brings up topics that he usually avoids, and expresses opinions he would normally refrain from expressing in front of Zack. He’s curious about relationships, about friends, about nature, and about science. He talks about how hard school is, then cautions me not to repeat it to Zack to avoid discouraging him. “Zack still a little boy,” he told me. “He not know how hard first grade will be. We not say to him, okay, Daddy?”

Okay, Nicks. We not say to him.

The boys have a full social life these days. Uncle Ken and Aunt Liz visited for four days at the beginning of October, and they spent almost every minute of the time with the kids. Zack knows the names of several children in his class (a real sign of interest from him), and his special friend is Nico. We’ve sort of become friends with Nico’s entire family. Although Nico’s two brothers are quite a bit older (third and fifth grades), they’re really great kids who play very nicely with my boys. Nico’s mom and dad have been very helpful with advice about the school district, alternate educational options, and general parenting concerns, and they’ve been incredibly kind to our family.

The boys have other friends from school, too, including “two girls and a boy” from down the block. Seth comes over all the time, and joins us for dinner many nights. We see Nicky’s friends Michael and Cass from time to time, although since they’re not in the same class with Nicky this year, we don’t see them as frequently as we used to. I need to work harder on keeping in touch with other families. These days, with kids being scheduled out the wazoo, friendships don’t develop and grow unless the parents work to make opportunities for the kids.

Just in case I might get bored sitting around eating bon-bons, I signed up to help tutor kids at school. The school tries to identify kids who are at risk for falling behind and give them extra help before a crisis arises in later grades. One of the ways they do this is by recruiting volunteers to come in during school hours and read with the students who need extra help. Nicky is one of the recipients of this program (his first session with a volunteer is tomorrow), and I’m helping a little girl in a different first-grade class. I had my first session with her yesterday, and it went very well. She’s sweet, and she already reads far better than Nicky does, which makes me wonder if Nicky is further behind than I believed.

Nicky signed up for the Young Rembrandts program again this year. This is an after-school program for those with an interest in art. The kids learn some basic principles of drawing figures and faces, and do fun projects.

This weekend, we’re heading down to Glen Rose, Texas, to see Dinosaur National Park. I hope to get the boys interested in fossils and geology, but no matter how I explain what we’re going to see and do, they keep asking if they’re going to see dinosaurs. Some things just have to be lived through, I guess. I hope it’s not a disappointment to them.

We went to the Texas State Fair today after school, and spent several hours strolling about gawking at stuff. The boys enjoyed the Ferris wheel and other rides, and got to eat cotton candy. Nicky had a slight meltdown because I wouldn’t buy him all the toys on display at the stands (those are the ones he wanted -- all of them) but recovered nicely by the time we got back home. I haven’t seem him whine over junk for a long time, and it reminded me how easy it still is for the boys to become over-stimulated.

As I was putting the boys to bed tonight, Nicky grabbed my hand and pulled me close for a long hug. He whispered, “I sorry, Daddy.”

I’d already forgotten about the meltdown, so I said, “Why, sweetie?”

“I sorry I disappoint you today.”

Oh. Right. “You mean at the fair? That’s okay, honey. I’m not angry.”

“I sorry I cried.”

“It’s okay to cry. But where did you learn the word ‘disappoint’?”

“You say that.”

I did? Oh, boy. Yeah, come to think of it, I did. I told him I was disappointed in him for his tantrum. You mean he was listening? Why do kids always listen when you wish they didn’t, and never listen when you tell them to?

“Don’t worry about it, sweetie. I was disappointed you didn’t act better, but that’s how you learn. It’s over.”

“I always you son?”

“Always! There’s nothing you could ever do to make me stop loving you. I will correct you when you’re wrong, because that’s my job. But I will always love you, and you will always be my son.”

“Wonderful daddy!”

“Wonderful boy. Go to sleep, Nicks.”

Two minutes later, he was sound asleep. Can anyone blame me for sitting quietly in their room for a half-hour, watching them sleep?