Days of play and exploration

The last five days have been an interesting progression of interaction between the three of us. We’ve come to understand a few things about Roman, some of his likes and dislikes, just how sharp he is, and how independent he’s grown in his current environment.

We discovered pretty quickly that he loves music.  If we hum a tune or make a sound, he’ll do his best to mimic it or he’ll start to dance. The room in which we’ve been spending time with him has an upright piano, and he will walk over to it, pull himself up on a chair, try to open the keys. We’ll help get it open and we will “play songs” together.

He enjoys physical play,when one of us is holding him and playing airplane or sitting together and playing the piano, or something like that. He’s starting to understand how to play together, but it’s difficult and he won’t do it for long.  We can take a ball and throw it between the three of us, for instance, but anything much more involved will come later. He won’t sit on a lap for a story yet, for instance.

It’s amazing how quickly a 2.5 year old will absorb things.  He’s already learned at least three words of English and has parroted many others. I would pick him up, and say “up!” and lift him over my head; the say “down!” and bring him down so we were face to face. This is the kind of physical play he’s enjoyed, but it didn’t take long and he pointed up, said “up!” and so forth. The real surprise came when I was wearing a sweater with a sipper front and holding him. He took the zipper in his had and was playing with it. I said ‘up” and he zipped the sweater up; I said “down” and he unzipped it. We all were stunned (and now understand completely how closely we will have to watch what we say).

For such a youngster, he’s incredibly independent.  Or maybe that’s not so odd for a slightly developmentally delayed 2.5 year old. As he grew more comfortable with us over the five days so far, he’s pushed the boundaries a little further each day. We’re finding it a challenge to enforce boundaries in his environment – we don’ t know what the boundaries are, and he appears to have no fear.  Many times he won’t take no for an answer (of course), but if he starts to get too rough, he does respond well when we ask him to be gentle.

We’ve looked at pictures of each of us with him and he recognizes himself and us.  He identifies us as mama and papa.  I am sure he can’t really knows what the words connote, but we are they.  He’s asked his caregivers if we are coming, so we’re pretty sure he’s at least enjoying the time with us.

Today there were two other prospective familes in the playroom with us for the last 30 minutes we were there. By that time he was getting pretty tired and the commotion was bothering him a bit. He was quite content to be held, as long as he could watch what was going on. He almost fell asleep as he was being held. It was _this_ close. In any case, when we returned him to his caregivers today at the end of our time, it was pretty clear he was a little upset about it.  We’re enjoying that while it lasts, because we know he’s going to be just, if not more, upset when he realizes he’s being taken from that environment.

It was confirmed to us today that our court hearing will be at aproximately 9:00am on Wednesday morning. By noon we should know the outcome and our parental status.