Praying to Allah? No wait ... just push-ups

Yesterday, I watched Rai puzzled as he knelt down, bent his arms/touched his head to the ground, came back up, put his hands on his legs, and did this all over again. By the third time, I wondered if he had seen someone do this while we were out. I kept trying to recall any instances where he might even see this enough to try it himself. By the fourth or fifth time, he started speeding up and saying "oooooooooo-huh!" Ah! Push-ups! As soon as I joined him, he started to giggle and crawled under me to get squished. A bit overanalytical on my part, but it was pretty funny!

26 months?!
At the recommendation of all specialists with whom we've been in contact during this adoption process, we asked that ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) come out to the house and assess Rai, primarily to get an opinion on his possible speech delays. Yes, his communication was a bit behind even in Korea, so we fully expected a slightly younger age of development in this area. But what we weren't expecting was his physical development - a 26 month old! Wow! This 2-pound baby at birth with physical delays until January of this year is now assessed at the physical development (i.e. can hold a squatting position, climb up stairs with alternating legs, etc.) of a 26 month old! Go Rai!

We're not too awfully panicked about the communication delays. He understands a large amount of English, and the EIS (Early Intervention Specialist) will come out to the house starting later this month to play with Rai & work on his speech development - for free! It's certainly an opportunity we can't pass up. I'll be observing each session, so I look forward to the free training! And Rai had quite a bit of fun playing with her during the evaluation. In fact, he was so interested in the toys she brought that he had learned how to do two new things (and change his development scores) during her summary of his evaluation. :-)