A visit from Anna & a boy and his dog

Our Anna from Khabarovsk is here for a visit.  Our Anna who made our trip wonderful, meaningful and most importantly sane is here in Canada.  Having Anna here has been an opportunity for me to give back to someone who really was the high point in my time on trip two.  We've spent time visiting and sight seeing and while that's been fun for Mama, it's brought up some hiccups for my little man.  Thankfully it didn't take long for me to recognize subtle and eventually not so subtle changes in my boy for what they were.  It started out with what I would call "bratty" outbursts or not listening, or just repetitive things (requests, demands, "in my face" behavior) that I just brushed off as a bad day... then it was 2 days... It grated on me something fierce - not because it was awful, but because it was out of character for Corbin.  After a particularly trying series of demands which made me want to invoke the we both need a time out clause, I stopped... and simply asked him if he needed a hug... (because I did) and he burst into tears and said Yes... I need cuddles.  In a moment where I wanted to push him away... it turned out that was exactly NOT what he needed.  As the house of cards began to fall, I learned that my boy was likely overwhelmed, confused, scared and insecure about the arrival of our Anna. There had been much Russian spoken to and around him and compounding that is the fact that we had started to talk about our vacation where we would be flying on an airplane.  1 + 1 = a little boy who possibly wondered if the Russian speaking lady from when Mama came was here to put him on the plane.  Since I recognized this for what it most likely is there has been dedicated cuddle time, reinforcing conversations that I am his forever Mama (he has asked probably 75x "Corbin's Mama?") and random snuggles just to put him at ease.  He's even been more territorial with Lyric and is back to himself.  All in all I think that this is good for us - he has learned that I'm not going anywhere and that he can trust me when he is afraid.  Perhaps stresses like this help to solidify that this is permanent... you're stuck with me kid! So, tomorrow we're off to Banff with Anna - I can't wait to see her face when she sees the mountains close up.  And in other random "we've been busy" news, Corbin attended 2 birthdays in one day - one for a little friend at gymnastics (read: MAMA JUMPING!!!) and one for Uncle Jeremy and all in the same day, Corbin also got to meet some very special men in Mamas life - my old soccer coaches.  I love that they still love me and couldn't wait to meet my boy :)