Super Quick Update

Okay Malakai is waking up so here goes...Malakai started to sit up all by himself yesterday and is already a pro at it. He has also started rice cereal and tired squash with little success. He is still having a hard time with the sleep thing and naps are completely unpredictable if they even happen. He has gotten much better with his eye-hand coordination is grabing for toys much more now. He has even started to grow a little patch of hair on the left side of his head. It cracks me up since all the other hair is still fuzz but he has one long curl lol! If I have time I'll try to post some pictures of these events later.

Saving Grace

Okay, the kids are sleeping...for now...type fast...very fast. I wanted to post a much overdue post about our first week home. We arrived home very late on a Friday and came home to a wonderful welcome (as I posted before). Our nights were upside down, we were tired, stressed and disoriented, but thank the Lord, Grandma was here. The first day home we were so tired that we ended up sleeping from 11-4pm during the day and poor Aspen had to wait for us to wake up, I don't now what we would have done if she wasn't here to watch her. We were so blessed by all her hard work she cleaned, did ALL of my laundry, mopped my floor twice, played with and spoiled Aspen, took me shopping and out to eat for my birthday, and best of all washed bottles for us several times a day so that we were never out of clean ones. As I'm sure you can see why I was very anxious about this week knowing that she was going home and Jared was going back to work. I didn't know if I could handle the house work, two kids and myself on little or no sleep. I've pulled through, and actually God has blessed me and given me a fairly easy week (daylight hours at least). We will be forever grateful for the time Grandma was here while in ET and home, yep that makes it almost 4 weeks! It is so great to have someone to help like this, she even did the same for us when we had Aspen 3 years ago. I bet she's hoping were done with kids now hehe just kidding I don't think she could ever have too many grand kids:)

King Size Bed

Last night I was thanking the Lord for our king size bed. We have never been the type to have kids or pets in the bed with us, but last night we broke all the rules and had the whole family sleeping in the same bed...including the cat. Malakai has been having a very hard time staying asleep he wakes up a lot and still wants to be awake for a while. It seemed like he was sleeping better when was held or laying with Jared so he just slept on Daddy's belly. Sometime in the middle of the night Aspen came up and was upset so she climbed in too. I fear this might become a habit because Aspen has been waking up every night one or two times for a few months now. Before she has always gone back to her room and we cuddle, she goes back to sleep and then I come back to bed...well, we'll see how long that lasts now that she's had a night in our bed. I don't know how long I can take the the tag-team-waking that the kids have been doing. Night before last I got 3 hours of sleep when I finally got to sleep from 4:30-7:30 and then had to get up for Malakai's doctor's appointment. All I can think is "this too shall pass"

On a happier note, at his doctor's appointment my doctor told me that our orphanage staff must have done a great job of picking him up and holding him because she was sup prised that his head was not flat. What a great compliment for Hannah's Hope! He was healthy and has good growth percentiles so that made me happy too.

Happy 1/2 Birthday Malakai!

So Malakai is now 6 months old. I've waited to do the classic blog thing of listing 6 things I love about him until I actually had him in my arms so here goes.

1. I love your beautiful huge dark eyes
2. I love that I got to hear your wonderful baby giggle for the first time two days ago
3. I love how smiley you are
4. I love your sweet personality
5. I love the way you kick like crazy in the bath
6. I love that you are HOME!

Our New Complete Family

Sleep Deprivation

Okay, I never expected jet lag and switching back to MT time to be SO hard and take SO long. We are still not there yet. I think we'd be okay if we didn't have to get Malakai switched over too. Our schedule for the past 5 days has looked something like this:

Bed at 8:00 or 9:00pm
Wake at 10pm for feeding
Wake between 12-2am for diaper, feeding, and several hours of loud awake time. Not crying but loud high pitched screeching excited sounds. Those of you who were in ET with us know what I mean.
half hour nap somewhere between 4am and 6am
Awake all day
Repeat

So basically we have been running on about 4 hours of sleep each day. The first day we were home he did sleep during the day so Jared and I took a nap with him. I thought we'd sleep for about 2 hours, but we laid down at 11am and woke up at 4pm. Poor Aspen had just gotten us home and then had to wait all day to see us. Grandma was great and kept her entertained while we rested. I really hope we can get this ironed out soon and get a schedule going before Jared has to go back to work.

Other than the sleeping everything has been great! He is such a sweet little boy and seems to be adjusting very well. He is so smiley and is working on learning to laugh. Bonding is going well, and we even noticed signs of this in Ethiopia. The first day when we went back to the orphanage he was jumping out of his skin excited and just talking up a storm when he saw the special mothers and other kids, but when we went back on the last day his attitude was so different. One of the special mothers came and kissed him and was trying to get his attention, but he just snuggled into my chest and was much calmer and quieter. He only cried once for about 1/2 an hour this first morning when he realized he had no idea where he was. He seems very content and happy now which is so nice. I had an exciting moment when I thought he might be showing signs of being attached to me when Jared said "he cried when you left for the store" but they were soon shattered when he said "but then he puked and seemed better" haha.

Aspen has been doing great with him and wants to take a bath with "brother Malakai" all the time (at least twice a day). She is her normal self though and is still very independent. Recently she has been getting a little sad because of the split attention, but other than that she's taking it all in stride.

This was the nice welcome table and cake we came home to on Friday night. The last picture is a sweet one of Daddy and his two kiddos reading a story.