When Love Takes You In: Christmas is coming...so much to be thankful for!

It has been a while since we last blogged, and I have heard lots of requests to update how everybody is doing. I have not been blogging mostly because we have been trying to figure out how to make life work with three kids. When you add a newborn into your life, there seems to be a big transition as it was with Caedon and Norah. But when you add a 3 year-old to the mix, who doesn't speak English, that transition to another child is exponentially more difficult.

Our first few days home are a blur to me now. And the following days were a struggle. We were sleep deprived and jet lagged. I was so glad I decided to stayed home from work the first week we were home. I would have been worthless at work. Plus, we needed to be together as a family so we all could get readjusted to our new family. We had a difficult time trying to communicate with Hannah and we found our patience being tested daily with Hannah's aggression towards Norah. Her aggression was brought out when Norah picked up a toy Hannah recently played with; or when Norah had a puzzle piece she wanted. Hannah will raise her hand as if she is going to hit Norah. There are plenty of evil looks and screaming whenever Norah does something she doesn't like. All the aggression has been directed at Norah. We haven't seen any toward Caedon or us since we have been home.

The good news is that we have been seeing this behavior dwindling each day. The frequency of aggressive behavior has been going down, and the frequency of gentle touches and sharing have been increasing. Her receptive language is nearly fluent. She recognizes almost everything we are telling her, but she is a typical 3 year-old at times and displays selective hearing almost as good as her daddy. She is developing quite normally.

We visited Dr. Cynthia Howard at the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota. She is the director of the program and the sweetest, kindest doctor we have met. Our appointment was about 3 hours long total. We met with an occupational therapist as well, and she was completely impressed with Hannah development. She told us Hannah is tracking perfectly for her age. We are planning on seeing Dr. Sundberg at Gillette Children's to evaluate Hannah's legs. We feel there is a chance she may have hip dysplasia in her right hip so we want to get that looked at right away.

We had a quite Thanksgiving at our house this year. It was really nice to just relax at home. We celebrated my dad's 60th birthday the next day at our house. We ordered Chinese take out :0 Our first Chinese since leaving China. The kids loved it and they used chopsticks for the first time.

We also began decorating for Christmas last weekend. We bought our tree and got the lights up, and a few decorations. Most importantly, we got the M&M bowl out and filled up with mint and peanut M&M's. Somehow that bowl never stays filled, I've got to check the bottom for a hole or something.