Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from the Curran Family! Hope everyone ate too much and spent time thinking about what you are thankful for! We definitely did both here!

Let me lead off by saying Michelle's cooking was fantastic! The "practice" Thanksgiving she made a week ago (see prior blog entries) really paid off. Michelle made a ton of great food, and my sister Carolyn chipped in some tasty dishes as well. We ate a ton and have a ton of leftovers, so that is win-win! My job in all of this was to do the dishes. Now I am not intimidated by much, only by stuff like; small snakes, clowns, crowds, medium sized snakes, Russian airports, hairless cats, Russian bank transactions, large snakes, etc. Okay, maybe I am intimidated by a bunch of stuff, but the mountain of dishes after a Thanksgiving meal is a new phobia of mine as of today! Wow, that was a job! I would do it all over again for the meal we had today though!

Okay, now onto the real update... This weekend is a good test for Jack (and us) as it's the first time since we have been home (4 weeks as of tonight) that we have had anyone over to the house. My sister and Brother-in-Law and beautiful niece are down from Baltimore. We were looking at using this weekend as a yardstick to gauge where Jack was with his attachment to us, as well as see how he interacts with Emily, our 2 1/2 year old niece. Jack has done really well with Emily. There are some issues with sharing of toys, so we need to work with him in this area. Jack tried to take some of Emily's toys away from her, or if she was playing with his toys, he would take them back from her. As the day went on he seemed to make some progress in this area, and Emily is patient with him as well. We knew we would have some work to do in the sharing department as sharing is not something learned in an orphanage. It's survival of the fittest for the most part, and if one kid wants a toy that another kid has, he is going to go take it without any consequences.

The real area we were anxious to see how Jack was doing in was with his attachment to us. We wanted to see if Jack understood that Michelle and I were "Mom and Dad" and that he needed to come to us if he needed things. Unfortunately he really didn't differentiate between the 4 adults in the room today. He came to Michelle and I for most things, but he went to his Aunt and Uncle for some things too, and followed my Brother-in-Law into a different room only minutes after meeting him. Obviously we have some work to do, and we didn't expect things to perfect from the start. At least now we know a few areas we ave to work on before the next round of visitors show up! We are really happy to see Jack playing with one of his cousins, and his Aunt and Uncle are doing a great job of redirecting Jack to us when he comes to them. We appreciate their understanding of the situation.

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We are definitely thankful for Jack and all of the blessings that our family has received over the last year. We wish we could have spent the day with everyone that is special to us, but whether you ate your turkey in Missouri, Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, or any place else tonight, please know that you were all with us here today as you have been all through our journey!