Monday, March 30, 2009

Understanding his story and his family

We were laying in bed the other night reading a book...the book was talking about all kinds of animals and asking the question "do you have a mommy"?.........somewhere in the midst of the book I asked Dakotah "how many mommies do you have Dakotah"..(I will often ask him this to gauge his understanding of our family structure)....he counts me ONE...Mima TWO.."I have 2 mommies"..he says with what seems like a sense of pride and as I always say..."yep, you have two mommies, arent' you lucky"..then I say "do you have a daddy" and he looks at me like "MOM!!!!!!!.....and says NOPE, I don't..." so I say "Do you have a birth daddy"? and he says "yep, I do"..I say "Oh, yeah, what is your birthdaddies name"? and Dakotah says "WESTON".... .......so I melt with pride that our son has been processing and listening when we tell the story of his family and where he came from. He can also identify the pictures we have of his birthparents and often will ask to look at them......my heart is holding onto hope that we will see them one day and that Dakotah will be honored and blessed to know his birth family...

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Empathy at it's best

I woke up yesterday morning feeling very ill. I told Dakotah that I felt sick and needed to lay down. He asked me "why you sick mama?" and was watching me very intently. He then went into the bathroom where Mima was getting ready for work and I heard him telling her "Mima, mama is sick, I need to get her some medicine"..he came out of the bathroom with a package that had a tooth cleaner in it and was trying very hard to open it and said "Mama I have some medicine for you, I need to open it" (as he was trying with all of his might to wrestle the package open)...A little later, he saw HIS medicine in the cabinet and said "OH, mama that is the medicine I was looking for, you need to take some of that medicine").

Later in the day I had the unfortunate blessing of throwing up..Dakotah was out in the living room and when I came out he told me he was drawing me a picture of me when I'm not sick. Then to top off his sweetness, he followed me into the bathroom later and sat on his little stool next to me as I was sitting on the stool by the toilet and he was patting my arm and my leg and he said " mama are you okay, do you need some water, I'm going to go get you my cup and give you some water"..he marched out in the living room where our 2 wonderful friends were who had stopped by to check on me and he told them "I'm getting mama some water", He marched back up to the bathroom and yelled down to the girls "don't come in here cuz mama is sick", he slammed the door and came over to me and put his sippy cup up to my mouth and said " I brought you some water.... and he said "DRINK" as he put the cup up to my mouth...)...I realized at that moment that he did every thing that I do for him when he is sick........I delighted in this small bit of evidence that everything we do as mothers really does matter.......My little 2 1/2 year old was showing empathy which is an amazing virture to be emerging at his young age!!!! I'm still smiling thinking about it!!!!