Loving Life

The past 24 hours have just been awesome. All of the stresses have disappeared watching this little boy explore his home, learn to love his animals and being the center of attention. He has been so good, better then I EVER expected and just has such an awesome personality. Instead of rattling on in super long paragraphs, I've summarized our past 24 hours below (in super long paragraphs that were supposed to be quick bullet points!).

The flight - The flight went so well as I mentioned earlier! How did that happen? Well, if I have any tips to give parents of toddlers it is to save toys for the flight that your child has never seen. I packed a backpack for him that I didn't let him see until we got on the flight. Some things that were a HUGE hit for us: Magna Doodle (Andrew loved watching his drawing disappear), a sticker book and a bunch of individual packs of stickers (I brought the sticker book with me and then went to the baby store in Moscow and bought individual packs of stickers of his favorite things - birds, dogs, cars. We stuck stickers on dad's face, on the tray table, in the sticker book - you name it), the fisher price (I think) kids ipod and headphones that Carey and Norman gave us (which was a LIFESAVER - the child can operate it himself/herself and it was good entertainment), a coloring book and crayons, lots and lots of food (we bought crackers at the grocery story and broke the bag up into 5 individual servings so that we didn't have any meltdowns when we said he could have any more, cheerios, gerber graduate cereal bars, etc... We made sure there was very little sugar. Same with drinks - we did 3 parts water, one part juice instead of giving him all juice) All in all he was a good kiddo! I was so impressed! Granted, more than 2 hours sleep would be nice but you take what you can get, right??

The animules - This was my biggest, biggest fear. 1 hour in the car on the way to the airport, 3 hours in the airport, 11 hours on a plane, 2 hours in the airport, an hour in the car on the way home and I expected Andrew to just freak when he saw our dogs and cats (our dogs are big). He walked in, saw the cats and immediately tried to play with them. He saw the dogs outside and came running into the kitchen "BAKA! BAKA" (toddler for sabaka, sabaka - Russian for dog, dog). He was SO excited. One thing that I think helped were the little video clips I showed him of the dogs in Moscow. They weren't strangers to him. He wasn't a fan of them licking him but by this evening he got much better! He's learned to pet the cats nicely (we had a nice chat after he took his kid cellphone by the string and hit the cat) and is getting tolerant of the dogs licks.

Sleep - The boy has been been SO tired but he refuses to go to sleep for fear of missing something. He went down pretty easy last night around 10 and slept until 7 this morning. Skipped his nap and then crashed at about 9 tonight.

Carseat - He's done great in the carseat. He was in one and Moscow and we have to assume his foster parents used one because he was all about it. He LOVES the machinas and trucks.

Toddler proofing -Uhhh yeah. Kinda need to do that a bit better. :-)

Talking and Understanding - The kid is a SPONGE! He is speaking so much and understands even more then he talks. He know's the animals names, he is constantly asking "Eee Etta" (I think it's sort of like "What is this?") and he repeats everything we say! A sponge I tell you!

So what have we done since we've been home? We were on our way to the chiro this morning when I checked voicemail and found out they needed to reschedule. We went on a quick trip to Target to get somethings (nightlights so we can find our way around when he's sleeping, for one!), stopped at the Chattahoochee on the way back so he could touch the water and walk on the rocks, swam in the kiddie pool, went with Alex to get his haircut, stopped at Grandpa and Nana's for some more pool time, had a nice dinner and then crash, bang, boom! He was out cold!

We're exhausted (well, I am!) and so it's time for bed! It's definitely much harder to get things done with a little one around. Hopefully, starting tomorrow, we can start getting a schedule down pat. That will be a challenge for me because I'm not a good schedule type person but I know it's so important for him.

Here are some pictures from the past 24 hours! Enjoy!