Six Month Update!

Our little man Ryker has officially been in our family for six months now. I seriously can't even express how much love I have for this kid. He has changed my life in so many ways. Let's just recap here, if you don't know who Ryker is he's my daughter's biological younger brother, they share a dad, their dad wasn't able to have custody due to a personal issue and signed his rights over to us. This private adoption made it a lot quicker than normal adoptions, so we only had two months to prepare for him. All we knew was that we would be picking up a toddler who shared a birthday with me, we didn't even find out the gender until Christmas! It was a stressful time for sure but somehow we pulled it all together and got everything he needed. This adoption definitely showed me who my true friends are, I had friends dropping bags full of clothes and toys off on our door step and other friends who just decided not to talk to us anymore. It was fine though, we knew we wanted this boy in our lives. On the actual adoption day Ryker was nervous, I was nervous, Jason was nervous! We were all a mess! Little did I know the feeling of nervousness I had was a waste of time, I had nothing to be nervous about. This little man just needed some love and luckily he has a mom and dad now who adore him. So, let's just jump right into his six month adoption update. First of all, he is almost 18 months old now and still in the lower percentile for height and weight, but that's okay! He knows about fifty signs and can communicate with sign language, he is however starting to say words. His first clear word was "No!" and it has become his favorite word. He will say it for almost everything no matter what the question is or if there was even a question for that matter. He still has early intervention twice a week and they're working on everything they possibly can, right now their big thing is walking. When he walks his knees turn in, they think it's from not using them correctly when he was a baby but what do I know I didn't go to college! He is starting to be okay with putting weight on his legs and doesn't scream as much when we make him stand. He has even started walking if you hold his hands! Go Ryker! When we adopted him he was a super picky eater and only liked foods with bananas in them, while his favorite food is still bananas he has begun to like other foods as well. He is willing to try anything we feed him now and even reaches for other peoples' foods too! I love seeing him try to sneak food, he used to be afraid of interacting with his siblings so this is huge. Now the big update, I get crap from people all the time about this-no he is still not potty trained. Let's just take a moment here. You lived your whole life with a group of people and suddenly you were taken away from them and given to another family, you now call these two weirdos mom and dad?! What is this!? Now they want you to walk, talk, eat, and do all these other things?! So overwhelming let's not mention YOU AREN'T READY TO USE THE TOILET! Seriously. I'm so over people asking about potty training, so simply no he's not. I'm not sure when he will be, but as of right now he isn't and that's perfectly fine with me. The little boy I picked up six months ago with the shiny blue eyes and tears running down his face is now the little boy I pick up every morning with shiny blue eyes and a huge smile that looks just like his bio dad's. He's finally at ease and he's finally trusting us. This was really what I was aiming for all along. Thank you to everyone who was there for the whole journey of bringing my boy home.