Jason Alexei the Only Bear

About a year ago or so we got a great children's book about Russian adoption from our friends Matt and Amy Smith. It was called Nikolai the Only Bear. It was about a boy in a Russian orphanage who no one could understand. He only spoke bear and no one else knew how to speak it. He would growl and growl to his friends but everyone ran away scared. No one understood poor Nikolai.

One day a couple from America came and the father knew how to speak bear to Nikolai. The father even had a scratchy face like Nikolai. Nikolai went to America to live with his new parents and everything was wonderful. It's a really nice book. We bought it for some friends who adopted around this time last year. Here's a link that shows some of the pictures from the book:

Link_to_Nikolai

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago. I was playing with Jason Alexei and our translator Violetta asked how he was doing. I said that he was stronger than he was on our first trip two months before and I thought he was a strong Russian boy. She corrected me and said, "He's a strong Russian BEAR." Hmmm... All of a sudden my mind went back to the book.

I didn't think much more of it for the next few minutes until Jason Alexei growled at me. I immediately recognized the language. My son was speaking bear to me! I growled back to him to say Hi and for the next several minutes we were growling back and forth at each other.

It was really odd that he began the growling just a few minutes after Violetta identified him as a bear. He had never done that before. It fit the pattern of the book so well, too. Probably the funnest and most engaging interactions I had with him during the five visits we had with him were when he spoke bear to me. I didn't need any more convincing that Jason Alexei was truly our son, but the growling bear noises certainly iced the cake.

Hopefully he has not forgotten how to speak bear in the last week or so. In addition to English, we'll have to work on that when he gets home. If he makes growling noises at you, keep in mind he's just saying hi, so growl back!!!!