One week home

I cannot believe we have already been home a week!  It has been hard, trying, stressful, fun, lively, loud, and such a blessing for all five of us to be under the same roof!  Overall, it has been a million times better than I ever imagined it would be.  We had pretty much prepared ourselves for the very worst case scenario and it has not fulfilled itself (praise the Lord!).  I know this has been the case because of all of the prayer that has surrounded our family in the last two years and specifically the last couple of months.  Thank you so much if you are one of those people that has earnestly gone before the Father for our sake!  We selfishly ask that you continue to pray for us as we continue to trudge through the transition that includes a language barrier.  About the language barrier- there is an app for that!  Google translate has been a life saver for us.  We did learn a few important words, but this boy is a talker!  He has a very large Korean vocabulary and constantly uses it!  It has been lots of guessing, pointing, a few signs, and some frustration but we are making it!  He also is a little parrot and will repeat just about anything in English that we say. He says 'I love you', 'bye bye', calls each of us by our 'name', and many others. Besides the 'I love you', one of my favorites is 'ok'. It is the cutest thing because he doesn't have the texas accent to it so it provinces very crisply each sound/syllable.

After our initial 15 hours of sleep- nights were rough. It was really hard to tell how much of it was jet lag related and how much was grief related, but I feel like it was mostly jet lag as the other two were affected also. The first night we were up until 4 and the next night we were up until 2. We did get Ian around to go to school on Tuesday. He was the only one sleeping decent, he was ready to go back, and we knew that was gonna be the only way we were gonna be able to get back into a routine. He went to school all day every day and did great. On Tuesday he got to tell his class about the trip. His teacher sent us a video of part of it- I was so proud of him!  On Friday in SK, he came up and asked if I thought we could find 18 of something little that he could take back to his class and he finally picked out some little Korean flags. He was so proud to be able to give everyone in his class one!  

The week has really been a blur of sleep, eat, clean, play. Speaking of eat, this child will eat just about anything I put in front of him!  It is a learning curve for me to feed a child that will eat anything!  He even had his first trip to Rosas and loved it!

We took him for his doctors appointment just for a check up on return home. He checked out healthy and perfect with no concerns! We only have one vaccination to make up in about a month. 

Overall it has been a week of staying at home and learning each other. He is coming from a place where discipline is redirection and 'no' isn't used a whole lot. Balancing between bonding and setting some general limits is hard. Trying to help Ian and Kinzlee understand that we don't approve of some behaviors and also them to understand that he can't learn overnight (he doesn't understand what we say!) is hard. We are learning and we are slowly progressing.

Kendon went back to work Monday. With my first two- It didn't really bother me for Kendon to go back to work. This time- I dreaded it for two days!  Ian is on spring break this week- so it is me and all three kids. There were honest doubts that I could do it by myself!  Of course I have some mommas just a phone call away- but that isn't the point!  I'm supposed to be able to handle it- and I was scared and nervous and a few tears were shed. We are managing fine in a crazy messy house, but we are fine. 

Here is Parker saying I Love You March 10th