Noah Angel Anderson!
I realized today that I could go ahead and document his name on this blog now, since I won't be publishing it until I am at home. So, yay! That is his name! Isn't it a wonderful name?
Some background: we actually are keeping his birth name, only we are switching around the first name and the middle name. When we received his referral, we were told that his name was Angel Noe. I loved it right from the start, and I thought it was a great little God incident since his name is so close to my name Angela and our birthdays are just one day apart. I didn't even pay attention to his middle name "Noe" and didn't give any thought to what it might mean. Since his birthday is so close to Christmas, my brain just saw "Noel." No thought at all. A couple days later Jerry said that he had concerns about the name, such as rough first days of school every year when teachers would assume it was a girl's name, that he would get teasing from other kids, etc. I am aware of several Hispanic boys or men that are named "Angel," but Jerry thought there might be trouble, and didn't want him teased. Well, even though I personally love the name Angel, I thought Jerry probably had a point. But then it was like, well what now? What do we name him now? With all our boys, we have wanted to preserve their birth name, and had said that we would do so unless there was a particular reason why we thought we should change it. We know of many adoptive parents that want to give a name to their child, and of course that is their right, but for us, we wanted to preserve that tie to their birth family and their birth country. So it's not like we have had a name selected for a boy and a name selected for a girl, and when we learned our referral we just use that name. Here we were, without a name selected, and a given name that we thought we wouldn't use. So what do we do? We were in name limbo for a couple days, then one morning I was in the shower (I kid you not), and I had this thought come into my mind, fully formed: "Noe" is "Noah" in Spanish. Huh? What? I just knew that Noe was Noah. I literally almost jumped out of the shower to go to an online English-Spanish dictionary to confirm it, but luckily I waited until I was soap-free before getting out. I know, TMI. So as soon as I had towelled off, I looked it up, and sure enough: "Noe" is "Noah" in Spanish!! I called Jerry at work and told him. He was like "Yeah!" So, our new son had his name: Noah Angel Anderson!
Well, let me tell you something new about Noah Angel Anderson: this morning he nodded "yes" for the first time! Well, the first time to us, at least. As a two-year-old, he came to us able to shake his head "no." No big surprise there. But today was the first "yes" that we had, and we actually got several throughout the day. We were thrilled!
Other than the nodding thing, today was much the same: Jerry woke up early to get a few hours of work in before the rest of us got up. Then we got up and dressed, went downstairs for breakfast, came back up, Jerry played with Noah while I did school work with Mario and Erik, then we stopped mid-morning for a little snack. Then we all played together for a while, then had lunch. Jerry got Noah down for a nap, and I did some more school work with the older two boys while he was napping. Jerry worked. Yesterday and today Noah only napped about 45 min and then woke up crying. Jerry tried to get him back to sleep, but every time he tried to leave the room, the little one would wake up, so he eventually gave up. We were able to do a little more school work, but not much, then all played again until dinner time. By this time, the two year old was getting crabby, so soon after dinner, he was ready for bed. Jerry got him into bed and asleep very easily, while the other two stayed up a little longer for stories and prayers. Then it was time for them to go to sleep. And that was today.
I am still not Noah's favorite parent. No contest at all. But he is letting me in more and more every day, most definitely. I know it is hard work for Jerry, and I remind myself not to take it personally, and that it is only a matter of time. I do wonder how long I will have to keep reminding myself. How long this will be an issue. We take it one day at a time.
The strike is still ongoing with the national registry. I have no idea how much longer it will be.