James Breyner Rafael Kozaczuk

Lidia, Carina, Victor, Sam, himself, Jose

Blessed relief!

In the past few days, we’ve received more information about our new son’s preparation for our arrival. For example, we’ve seen a drawing he made of our family and him together.  Lidia is pictured with one arm and Sam Sam with one foot, and little guy’s legs are of different lengths.  For reasons unknown, Carina has giant pigtails, and his buddy Jose somehow made it into the picture. Except for the presence of Jose, it looks like he’d been thinking about living with us, prior to our arrival. You may recall that we were able to skype with his foster mom prior to travelling here.  Now we have learned that she really likes us, and in spite of feeling sad over losing this boy, she is super happy about our adopting him.  Last June we sent a photo album and video introducing our family. His substitute mom had him take it to school, so he could show his classmates that he would soon be leaving to join a family in the US.  

All this info reassures us in this adoption. 

We know now that our new son reacted quite reasonably one week ago when confronted with the immediate reality of having a brand new family.  He was just expressing his pain at losing his home and his fear of going to a new one.

Since we brought our new boy into our family a week ago, our relationship with him has been steadily improving. We are getting acquainted.  So far, on a practical level, living with him is actually… quite easy. He is obedient, has fun, is excited about doing stuff, and has the capacity to sit quietly when need be.  It feels like he is accepting and getting accustomed to being part of our family. We don’t think he resents us for taking him from his family! In fact, we think he’s starting to like being with us. We’ve had an issue due to him having been an only child: (ie: touching Lidia’s stuff) but it’s minor. He and SamSam have bonded the best.  Actually, at this point, we are feeling that with time, everything is going to be just fine…. (cue the Doxology ….) 

Playing Legos

It feels strange to say that we now have three kids, but it also feels right.  We now have three kids. 

After dinner tonight, we all played a rousing, loud bilingual game of “Go Fish.” When our little guy’s turn would come around, he, matter-of-factly, addressed Carina as ‘mama’ and Victor as ‘papa’. We’ve been looking forward to that. He is laughing more at Victor’s frequent joking. At bedtime tonight, he brought story books to Carina to read to him and reminded her to read one in particular. He doesn’t object to Carina snuggling with him and kissing him good night. He likes being picked up and carried by us. Waiting for a taxi today, he sat on Victor’s lap contentedly for 10 minutes (he’s 6 years old).

Now, for some important news….the naming of our new son.

Some official, at the hospital where our new son was born gave our boy the name “Breyner Rafael”. ‘Breyner’ is a newer, trendy name in Colombia - and has no other significance. From what we understand, ‘Rafael’ is his birth-father’s name. We will be modifying his name for several reasons. One reason is the existence of the English phrase, ‘no-brainer.’

We have spent months discussing names for him, and a while back we had settled on Tito as a first name (Titus in English). Carina really likes that name and had her heart set on it, but it is not to be.  

After a few days of calling him Tito, we explained to him that we wanted it to be his new name.  His response was stupendous.  

James Rodriguez

He smiled playfully and said,   “No. My name is NOT Tito.  It is James.”

As in, James Rodriguez, Colombia’s most famous soccer player… and pronounced phonetically as “Hah-Mace.”   

We have decided to go with it.  This little boy has lost so much, but he is happy about choosing his own name.  It is a Biblical name, which we like. And we know a lot of great people named James….(If your name is James, we are thinking of you now.)

Now, Victor needs to start trying out nicknames for him… JimBob, Jimboy, Jimmy….

Then there is also the Colombian slang word chévere which is the equivalent for the English slang word ‘cool’. Which Victor think sounds cool just saying it…. So, that opens up nick-names like, Chevere-Jim, CheJimmy, Che, Che-ster, Che-Bob…. Hmm… ‘Che Bob’… sounds good, but it makes me think of Lebanese BBQ on a stick…

Our Integration period ended today, and our case is now being sent on to a judge who can set the date for our new boy to officially become:  James Breyner Rafael Kozaczuk.