First Week Is In the Books

Well, it’s been a little over a week now since Justice has been home with us! It seems like he has always been with us though….I am amazed at the way he has adjusted and transitioned to his new life and new family, even though it’s only been a few days. He has breezed through the time change like it ain’t no thang. He is eating and trying everything! I am so surprised with this. In Ghana he would always order fried chicken and rice. For every meal. For breakfast he would eat rice and beans. For lunch he would eat chicken and rice. And the dinner request was again chicken and rice. So far out of the 9 days he has been here I have only made him chicken and rice once. Other than that he’s eaten beef roast, pizza, scalloped potatoes and ham, spaghetti, beef and noodles, taco pie, rice-a-roni, McDonalds and Hickory Park. For the meals at home he is averaging about 3 plates/servings and he says everything is ‘very good’. This past weekend we were at a tournament in Chicago so we ate at restaurants mostly and he prefers to order spaghetti! That seems to be his favorite so far. At Sam’s Club a few weeks ago they had samples of parmesan encrusted tilapia and I ended up buying a huge package of it because they eat a ton of tilapia in Ghana. Of course Justice loved it, and Peprah also raved and raved over it for a few days! For drinks Justice is enjoying Sunny Delight, Sprite, chocolate milk, grape juice, and strawberry lemonade. He likes them all!

Somebody asked me the other day if Justice was fascinated with discovering light switches, flushing the toilets, water from a faucet, etc. He didn’t have any of these things in the village where he was growing up, however Esi’s home (where he had been staying since June) does have all of the things so he made the transition into all of that during his time with her. There are a couple of things that he is fascinated with though. My hairstylist had mentioned that she guessed Justice would at some point become interested in my hair and want to touch it - because the texture is so different than what he has ever seen before. That started this weekend. While in the car on our road trip he started running his fingers through my hair and sort of inspected my hair for about 5 minutes. He did this on and off the entire weekend and is still investigating it every so often. Justice is also fascinated when I blow dry my hair! Whenever I turn on the hair dryer (almost every morning) he usually comes running in to watch. He stands there with a smile and just watches. I am sure he has never seen anything like it before. This weekend was also the first time I’ve cleaned since he has been home with us and he thought the vacuum was hilarious and a little scary at the same time. I had gotten the whole house cleaned except for 1 room while Jake had taken everyone out of the house for the afternoon. So when they got home I had just started vacuuming the last room and Justice hopped up on the bed and watched, although he would yell out (with a smile) if the vacuum came close to him.

Justice is very intuitive. If he has a question, he will ask it. This weekend at the tournament I could tell he was really taking in the atmosphere. Jake was coaching his high school girls team this weekend and I sat on the sideline with my munchkins. Some of Justice’s questions were Why does Daddy coach girls? You are a girl, you are supposed to coach girls. He also was struck by the emotion that the coaches displayed during the games. At one point he thought that one coach was crying, and at another point he asked Why doesn’t Daddy sit down? Isn’t he tired? And after watching Jake coach a few games he said Why does he put his hands on his head like that? Why is he yelling? Daddy is crazy! He also was watching the electronic score board for awhile and asked me who was keeping score….he’s used to seeing a chalk board type score board in which a person physically stands next to the board and marks the points. After the tournament we had stopped at Baskin Robbins to grab some ice cream for the ride home. Apparently this was the first time that Justice had watched us pay for something because he could not figure out the debit card and how that worked. In Ghana almost every transaction is done with cash. So we had about a 5 minute conversation about bank accounts and cards with cash on them.

Justice is still LOVING his bike. Every day he wants to go to the park and he wants to ride his bike. That’s all that he wants to do. He DOES NOT like going to the gym which is interesting! I don’t know if there are just too many people there for him, or if he just likes the comfort of being at home, but whenever we mention going to the gym he always says that he does not want to go! Anyways, if you were to watch him ride his bike now, you would think that he has done it for years. He’s a pro. The next skills that we need to work on are tying shoelaces, swimming, and putting together puzzles! The other afternoon JJ and I sat down to help Justice do a puzzle and it was so interesting because he had no idea how to even attempt it. I showed him how to start, then I let him try on his own for about 5 minutes and he wasn’t able to match up any pieces. Then JJ and I sat down and physically helped him and eventually he started to figure it out. But it’s going to take some more practice….I am sure he had never even seen a puzzle before until that day.

Justice loves to help. Anything and everything. He likes to load up the groceries into the trunk and unload them when we get home. He rinses off his dishes and puts them into the dishwasher. He helps Jayla get her shoes on when we are getting ready to head out the door. He puts all the outside toys away into their proper places after we are done playing. And he will make sure that I always have everything I need when we head out the door like my purse, phone, sweater, etc. He and JJ are also very similar in one area….and it is that they both always want to know the order of events for the day! Justice wants to know where we are going, what we are doing after that, and what we are doing after that! He likes to have the whole day’s plans mapped out in the morning so he has an idea of what to expect. JJ is the exact same with this! It is so funny!

To end, the other night I asked Justice if he missed Ghana. He said “No.” with a big smile. Then I asked him if he missed Ghana food and again he said “No.” So, I guess week 1 has proved to be a good transition so far. Here are a few pictures from the past couple of days:


Trying to go under........

Justice has been teaching us a thing or two about soccer!

Bubbles with JJ and Jayla at the park!