Our Little Man - Part II

Many people who have adopted from China say that the child you travel with in the country is not the same child you have once you are home for a little while. Jie-Jie seems to be an exception to this rule. I think I’ve been expecting him to change as he settles to his new life, but he just hasn’t. So, (people have been asking me) who is he?

Jie-Jie is a bright, joyous little man who loves a good laugh. He loves to make jokes and he has a wicked little twinkle in his eye when he does it. Some of his favourite jokes at the moment are
1. to say, ‘This is Mama’ (while pointing at Baba) and then ‘This is Baba’ (while pointing at Mama). That totally cracks him up. Another one he likes on the same theme is to say, ‘Jie-Jie de’ (Jie-Jie’s thing) while pointing to something that belongs to someone else. Then the person it really belongs to needs to get all upset and say that the thing is theirs. He loves that.

2. to say, ‘Mama/Baba dit, ‘non, non, non’ (Mama says, ‘no, no, no’). Then Mama/Baba is supposed to say, ‘Jie-Jie dit, ‘non, non, no’. Cracks him up to. He has other variations of this too: ‘Jie-Jie dit, boa-yao’ (Jie-Jie says, ‘no want’). Then we say, ‘No, no. Mama/Baba/Mei-Mei dit ‘boa-yao’. Gets him every time.

3. saying that his cup of milk is a cup of water. He says, ‘nioo-nia’ (milk) when it’s actually ‘sway’ water. Cracks him up every time.

Jie-Jie is loving and affectionate. He often takes our faces in his hands, looks into our eyes and then gives us a double cheek kiss (like a French greeting) or a kiss on the lips. He’s very ticklish, likes to cuddle and he loves to be carried especially by Baba (we may have encouraged that one). He’s so good to his sister that it makes my heart ache sometimes. He'll go all the way upstairs to bring her her milk or her toy phone, but he’s no push over. She’s learning to respect him.

There have been very few really negative behaviours. I have to say that I had braced myself for a whole lot of discipline issues. A three year old, from an orphanage…..I had all kinds of assumptions about how things were going to be and not one of them has been a reality. While Jie-Jie does love to ‘investigate’ the world around him and is especially curious about how things work, he usually understand that no means no. Now that we've got a good routine going so he's getting enough sleep and isn't pushed beyond his limits, the most discipline we’ve had to do so far is to remove him from a situation and most inappropriate behaviour ends. I mean the kid took to the stroller, the car seat and his booster seat at the table without batting an eye. He’s had 3 nights of nasty tantrums concerning falling asleep and there has been some sibling violence (not instigated by him) and that has really been it. Can we all say a Hallelujah?! Hallelujah.

O.K., what else? The kid loves to eat (very common in the first few months). He is definitely a carnivore with a very, very slight leaning toward omnivorism. Jie-Jie’s dream meal at this point would be a plate packed with: meat (the kid would eat just meat for each and every meal. Any kind of meat. Roast beef, chicken, deli turkey meat, you name it); bananas (we have to limit him to one or two a day or he would eat one at every meal and or snack) and he loves cherry tomatoes. He’ll eat spinach if it comes from my plate (I was getting desperate to get some kind of vegetable into him so I tried it and he ate it), but not a lot of other vegetables. He loves yogurt, yogurt covered raisons and yogurt covered pretzels as well as candy of all kinds. He also loves milk, which he calls ‘niu-nia’ (usually at the top of his lungs).

Jie-Jie loves music and he loves to dance. He makes a punching motion in the air as he dances and he sure can shake his bootie. He is game to try anything, but he's not foolhearty. For example he saw Eva jumping off the third step of our stairs, but he wasn't too sure about that height so he jumped off the second step and he made sure one of us was there to hold his hand. He loves the waterslide at the pool (maybe because we hold him all the way down), but he doesn't want to go down the slides at the park.

Jie-Jie says, 'Yipee' when he drops or spills something. We're assuming he means 'whoopsie', but he's got Eva saying it now too.

So, the truth is, the kid's adorable, he's great fun and he's easy to be with. Incredible.