Our Book of Faces: K for Korea

The other day during breakfast I hear Archer yelling "K for Korea! K for Korea!" and I thought....is he really looking at a K somewhere? Sure enough he found a K on his milk! I had just tried teaching him "K" by mentioning K for Korea a couple times so I was excited to see he had picked it up. He is into letters and seems to quickly learn them, we hear a lot of "M for Mommy!" "D for Daddy!" " A for Archer!" and "S for Simon!" during the day. His counting is another story :) Counting is usually a really enthusiastic "1, 2, 7, 13!"

A lot has changed in Archer since I last wrote about him. He is really talkative and often string 5 plus words together. His sentence structure is a little confusing so you usually need to be prepared to fill in the "extra" words like: the, and, on, said. Those kinds of things. But after school he may tell me something like "Mommy! Archer, gym, ball, kick!" so it's nice that I can get a little glimpse into his day. He also likes to report what he ate, which seems to be a lot of chicken, pizza and carrots. He seems to be doing really well at school and although is not always thrilled at drop off (although getting better) and is happy to confirm with us days that he is not going to school, he is always having a blast when I pick up. One day he didn't even want to leave...

This week we received this nice report on his daily sheet-

So cute! They had a new boy in their class and evidently Archer remembered what it was like to be the new kid and was ready to help the little guy get comfy. He was even able to tell me the new kid's name when I asked.

Speaking of answering questions- just this week he seems to be consistently answering questions about his age and name. In the past he seemed to know what type of response we wanted but either said name when we asked age or age when we asked name or something like that. But now he is pretty confidently saying Archer Rambeck and knowing he is 3, including holding up his fingers. He is also really good with the majority of the basic colors now and is all about the color GREEN. He also sings the ABC's, twinkle twinkle and is still into "Santa Clause is Coming To Town".

Mostly I just think he is a goofball. He may be a comedian, he REALLY makes us laugh. He does funny marches, faces and puts clothing on wrong (that's a fave). Simon has told me one thing he likes about his brother is that he makes him laugh in the bathroom. Interesting. Upon further inquiry, I found out that Archer marches back and forth past the bathroom door doing silly things while Simon is in the bathroom. Good times.

He's a bit of a threenager lately. Has some really strong feelings about his clothes suddenly and managed to trick us into sending him to school two days in a row in the same shirt. BIG FAN of his robot shirt right now. So he had been putting it right back into his drawer instead of the laundry. I thought when I picked him up that he had just worn that shirt, but then didn't think too much about it. Then at bath time I saw him trying to sneak the shirt away from the dirty clothes and it occurred to me that he had totally worn that shirt 2 days in a row and was going for a 3rd. He also really wants to do everything for himself, always. He continues to be easy going overall and even when he does get mad he gets over it quickly. He likes to do this dramatic stomp away or hide thing. But you pretty much have to smile or tickle him and he's a pile of giggles.

Something new that he's started is saying "Oh yeah" in this hardcore Minnesotan accent. I'm pretty sure he's mocking me. The first time he said it I whipped around because I heard myself and the voice didn't even sound like him. He also likes to announce when someone is funny so we hear a lot of "Archer funny" after he blesses us with his physical comedy (Or locks his door so I can't get him out of the car). It's also struck me lately how many things he doesn't do that he used to. I can't think of the last time I saw him wink, and he no longer winks and laughs likes he has an inside joke with us when he's done something he's not supposed to. There are others that just aren't coming to mind right now. We rarely hear any Korean words, although he's holding strong on calling Simon "big brother" in Korean. He hadn't talked about his foster family members in a long time, but we took out his photo albums and now in the past couple weeks he has asked about them a few times. I was also surprised when we were looking at the pictures for the first time in a couple months that he studies them for a second, then pointed and said "Mommy" "Daddy". Surprised me that he got it and was describing them by their relationship in English rather than what he actually called them. But now again when he asks about them he uses their Korean title.

Can't believe he's been home 5 months and can't believe it's only been 5 months all at the same time. Archer we are so thankful for you and how you've completed our family. I hope you'll always want to make us laugh!