Since we have been home

We are so happy to be home and be reunited with our children.  It has been wonderful to see our kids interact with Crew and fully enjoy their little brother.  Crew has done amazingly well.  He has smiled a lot and enjoyed playing with new toys.  He has not acted over stimulated but we have tried to keep him in the house with just us as much as possible.  Sleeping has been our only struggle.  Crew sleeps well during the day but wants to be awake all night.  We think he has his days and nights confused since Ethiopia is eight hours ahead of us.  He will sleep from 8 to 11 p.m. and then be up every hour or more after this until he gets up for the day around 4 to 5 a.m.  We have also been struggling with rocking him to sleep.  We have been big proponents of letting our children cry themselves to sleep at nap and nighttime but have been told his isn't good for attachment.  So we a rocking Crew to sleep and then transferring him to his crib.  Well he is really good at going to sleep but then waking immediately up when we put him in the crib.  This leaves me feeling frustrated and it has taken me an hour at bad times to put him to sleep.  This is fine with Justin home but when he goes back to work next week and I have two other children to care for I'm going to have to decide what to do.  I know we will just have to figure each other out and decide what is best for attachment and my sanity so until then I guess I will be rocking and praying he stays asleep when I put him in the crib. 

Yesterday I took Crew to the doctor for a check up.  He looked at Crew and did not say a whole lot expect that he was impressed at how he was standing up and moving around.  He saw fluid behind his ears and a lot of stuff in his nose but thought his chest sounded okay.  We have a follow up visits in two weeks to see if it clears up by itself without the help of antibiotics.  We were sent home with a kit to collect Crew's stool to see if he has parasites which is very common for children over there.  We will also be doing a lot of blood work soon to look at HIV, Hepatitis, and TB.  What fun things Crew gets to look forward to.  I asked our doctor about giving Crew Melatonin to help him get his days and nights straight.  He said we could so I ran out and got him liquid Melatonin and I am happy to report that Crew slept from 8:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. with just getting up at 11 p.m. and then again at 11:30 p.m. for a short while.  Justin and I feel much better. 

Thanks for following along on our adoption adventure with us.  We were told this is the end of the beginning of the adoption process as our paperwork is finally done but now we are starting our adventure as a family of five.  I can't wait to report all the fun things we do together and how Crew grows and changes.