He has a major shoe fetish. He HAS to have shoes on at all times, and is constantly changing between pairs throughout the day. Now, in addition to his, he has discovered mine, and loves to clomp through the kitchen as loudly as possible. After all, my shoes make a lot more noise than his do.
He imitates nearly everything we do - one of his new-found favorites is imitating me with the hiccups.
He's got some narcissistic tendencies, or at least a REALLY good self-image. He loves to walk through the house kissing every picture or reflection of himself. Along with that, he becomes excessively worried about any mark on his body. He has a nasty little sore on his arm that he's had since the first day that we met him. His pediatrician thinks it may be a reaction to one of the vaccines that he was given, and told me to just keep it covered with neosporin and a band-aid, which we've been changing every night. The other day, he was obsessing about a mole on his arm until I showed him that I had one too, and I didn't need a band-aid on mine. Then, yesterday, he was goofing around with the bedroom door, and opened it into his big toe. I could hardly even see the "wound" but he immediately brought me the box of band-aids and the tube of . . . toothpaste! LOL! I traded the toothpaste for neosporin and put his precious "Handy Manny" band-aid on his toe, after which he sat very still on the sofa for about a half hour (I kid you not) reclining against the cushions with his foot elevated on a pillow. Talk about drama!
We have one of those back massage cushions that sits on our basement sofa. Yikealo loves to turn it on and off, on and off to amuse himself while I am checking e-mail at the computer, which gets very annoying. This afternoon, while he wasn't looking, I unplugged it. The next time he tried to turn it on, it didn't work of course, so he looked at me a little worriedly, and held the controls out to me. I had to tease him a little bit, so I said in my best shocked tone, "Yikealo, did you break it?" He paused for a moment, then shook his head and said, "Frankie." (Our cat, who by the way, is never allowed into the basement.) I started laughing, but then asked again, "Frankie broke it?" He nodded, and said "Ow. (Yes) Frankie."
It is customary in Ethiopia to show affection by hand-feeding those you love. When Yikealo starts to eat something, he will almost always take one bite and then he has to feed both David and I a bite of it before he will eat any more. During the last couple of days, he has started "psyching" us out. He'll hold a piece of food out to me, and say, "Mama, Mama, Ahhh" (motioning for me to open my mouth.) If I tell him I don't want it (knowing what he's up to), he'll insist with a very serious look on his face, that I eat it. When I lean in to take the bite, he'll bring the food right up to my mouth, and then jerk it away, stuff it in his own mouth and start giggling uproariously.
Today, we visited the Rainbow Babies Adoption Health Clinic up in Cleveland. They gave him a very nice teddy bear (eh-shan-goo-leet) that he has named "Bereket." Bereket is a nine-year old boy that was adopted from Hannah's Hope at the same time as Yikealo. Maybe we'll just spell it "Bear-eket!"
Whenever we tell him that it's time to pray, he clasps his hands together, squeezes his eyes shut and then re-opens one so that he can see what we're doing, and as soon as either of us begins to pray out loud, he'll start saying "Amen!" in a stage whisper.
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