Our little lad has become an almost teenager!

     For any new readers, our story makes a lot more sense if you go back and read our previous blogs starting as far back as you can go so that you would then read it in order.  But either way, welcome to our blog.  Enjoy!
      It is so amazing to realize that this is the fourth anniversary of the month of Maxim's adoption becoming official in Kentucky and America. Yes, although we landed in The States with him on March 13, 2009, it took almost seven months to get that to be totally official here. Such changes have taken place in young Max.  One is the name itself.  He mostly prefers to be called Max though he never objects if someone calls him my his full moniker.  Max is a little bit tall for his age and very thin.  He is almost 100 pounds and about 5'4" tall.  Max loves playing sports so height is very important to him.

     Max is now in sixth grade and doing well.  He was exited last year from the ESL program at school which means he's proficient enough in English to get by. Does he still get words mixed up?  You betcha!  Same for grammar.  His math skills have been strong all along and continue to be so. And he reads well above grade level which is truly remarkable given that for his first eight years of life, he heard not one word in English. 

     Soccer and basketball are the two sports Maxim plays.  He would like to play them all, but there are only so many hours in the day!   On his soccer teams, Max plays mostly defense and is very tenacious in his position. He enjoys preventing an opponent from scoring; his favorite soccer move is a headball!  -- It about gives me a heart attack just watching all those headers!

     When we say Max has adjusted her well to life in America, we truly mean that.  He's a sweet, smart young man who we are very blessed to have had come into our lives.  Still, Is he a rascal at times?  Of course!  But aren't all 12 year olds?  ;)  Maxim is very much a typical American boy full of energy and a verve for life and for learning.  He loves reading every book he can get his hands on that are about history and geography and the planets, etc.  Fact books really give him pleasure, but he also is big into Fiction books too -- the kind one would see in a middle school library.  It was only about a year ago that he shocked me by not only checking out thick chapter books. It by actually reading and understanding them!   Sadly, I didn't believe he could really read English that well and almost didn't let him checkout the first book like that--I think it was called Conspiracy 365.   So I read it too so I could quiz him on it to see if he really could comprehend it. And he did!  That was probably near a hundred middle school level books ago.  Are we proud parents?  You betcha!  If you all only knew the hardships he had to overcome, you would be too. 

      Thank you all for reading our blog over the years and being such supports for us as we journeyed along.  As Max has gotten older, much of his story is his to choose to tell or not. To be such an outgoing young fellow, Max doesn't always want info about him shared or even sometime pictures out on facebook.  Still, we will try to update this blog a little quicker than the last couple of years.
      Good luck to any of you reading this who are pursuing adoption.  And if you're reading this wondering if you should pursue adoption, we would say a resounding yes even though we had such hassles as we tried to find out forever child in Ukraine what seems like such a long time ago now.