Casa Sweet Casa

Okay, that probably translates to "House, Sweet, House" instead of "home" but I tried!

We are home and very happy to be here. Our trip home went well. Aidan slept on both flights and Emmy was pretty agreeable most of the time. It was about a 12 hour travel day but when you compare that to the 28 hours of travel to get home from China it didn't seem too bad.

Our homecoming was wonderful. We had lots of family and friends at the airport to greet us. Aidan seemed a little overwelmed at first then before we knew it, he was waiving and smiling at his "fans". When we came home, my mom and sisters and a party ready for us with flowers, balloons and lots of yummy food. We had a steady stream of guests for about two days and we loved it.





Aidan is doing very well. He sleeps through the night (although he has gotten progressively more "lively" when we try to put him down). He is trying to stand on his own and loves crawling all over the house. He and Emmy seem to be attaching to each other and we heard them talking over the monitor a few days ago.

Aidan and I have made huge leaps in our bonding. He is starting to really dig his Mama and even looks for me when he feels out of sorts. His worship of Dada continues to thrive.

The dogs seem to have adjusted to having another crumb dropper in the house. And Aidan likes them very much and even ingested his first dog hairs yesterday.

I am certainly a different mother than I was with my first child. We have a coffee table that Emmy crawled under many times. I would form a protective barrier with my hands between her head and the table. Second child crawls under the table and almost bumps his head. I say, "Oh well, he has to learn sometime".

I took both kids out by myself for the first time a few days ago. Everything was fine till I had to go to the bathroom. I didn't know what to do with him so he got to sit on my lap! Then we got home and I didn't have my house key. Luckily we had a friend with a key nearby so we got in quick. Then when we got in, I saw that one of our dogs had eaten the little bit of formula I had left from Guatemala. I was going to use to transition Aidan over to the new formula. Plus, the boy won't take a nap without a bottle first. So back into the car and back to the store.

Aidan is a very happy baby. It is so evident how much love he received everyday of his first year. I remember that with Emmy the first few weeks home were relatively easy (kind of a grace period) then the you-know-what hit the fan. But the beauty of those first few weeks were that we got to deepen our love for her and learn about our strengths and weakness as parents. Well, our love of Aidan grows everyday and I feel confident that however he needs to express his grief or fears, we'll band together and give lots of support...he even gets Emmy to help him along.

Speaking of Emmy, she is doing well. There is some acting out, some potty accidents and some general cantankerousness. But over all she is learning to share Dave and me. I wish that I could spread the love out between two children with total equality but I have been informed that this is impossible. Whoever needs the most on a given day, gets the most.



Probably our biggest challenges right now are: Cleaning this house...what a pit, I haven't even unpacked yet! Remembering the diaper bag. Keeping enough Puffs in the house. Dave and I trying not to take out our fatigue and frustrations on each other. Remembering that I still have LOTS more paperwork to do! We still have to readopt Aidan and do follow-up reports for our agency.

But the biggest challenge: Not kissing the skin off these beautiful cheeks. All those months of pictures, that's what I wanted most - to kiss his cheeks. So I am doing it now about 800 times a day. Seriously, the boy's cheeks are chapped!