Monday

I made it!!! Through a whole entire day without a Daddy net! On Friday I was dreading this day; Jonah wouldn't let me hold him the whole flight home, Daddy was the only one for him. How on earth was I going to handle all three boys on my own, if Jonah wanted nothing to do with me?!?! As it was, though, by last night things were getting much better. In fact, yesterday me and my three had a great game of run-across-the-kitchen-floor-and-fall-into-mommy's-arms. Joshua and Noah were loving it so much that Jonah actually wanted in on the game, too. He can't quite run (but he sure wants to) but boy was he all smiles and giggles as he toddled over to me and fell into my arms. What a moment :) I even managed to get Daddy to fetch a camera and take pictures of this historical event (although, guy that he is, he had absolutely no clue what was the big deal...!?!)






Yesterday was really two days for me. Saturday morning everyone woke up at about 3AM and I gave Joshua and Noah some benedryl to help them back to sleep and had some myself. Well, then we all slept in until 11AM. Which was fine for everyone else, but not me. My body completely switched to being 12 hours off. I was tired all day but then by bedtime I was wide awake. About 4AM I was starting to feel a little tired but at that point I realized the opportunity for a night's sleep really had passed, and so I decided to stay up and take the early shift at Mass (we really didn't want to try all five of us at Mass this soon). And I just stayed up the rest of the day. So by bedtime I'd been up for a straight 34 hours. I took an Ambien and hit the sack. Tom ended up sleeping downstairs because I was snoring within 2 minutes of my head hitting the pillow (I always snore horifically when I have a cold!). BUT... I think it worked!! I woke up at 7:30 today (although I hit the snooze button until 9) and felt in-synch with the day all day long. And now I'm starting to feel tired like I should.

I remembered in my haze yesterday that this same thing happened after getting back from Noah's adoption trip. I think the key to jetlag is to not let yourself sleep when you shouldn't be sleeping, no matter if you end up getting a night's sleep or not. It is easier for me on the to-China leg, because that entails trying to stay awake until bedtime. On the return, we landed in the morning, and stayed up until bedtime... but then both times I ended up sleeping far into the next day and getting all backwards. I know it's probably extra hard for me because I really don't nap well... when I sleep, my body expects a full night's sleep. But thank goodness, I seem to be back on schedule today!

It was great that I had a good night's sleep my first day flying solo with the boys. I don't know what I was nervous about. Jonah is so easy, and things really are almost easier around here right now, as Joshua and Noah both love to play with him (well, Joshua more than Noah at the moment). Jonah has the biggest smile and the sunniest personality. The only thing I was worried about is he slipped and fell on the tile kitchen floor yesterday and got THE BIGGEST goose-egg on his forehead. It was kind of scary, but he really didn't hit that hard and didn't seem to act funny or different at all. But boy, that lump really blew up fast. It was a nice deep purple shade, so obviously he broke a vein. I had forgotten about it last night, but then I went in to get him and Noah this morning, and he was still sleeping and there was some BLOOD on his sheet!! My heart lept into my throat and I thought the worst but then he started to wake up. He's like that with naps, too... he's used to just staying asleep until someone wakes him up, apparently. But then he seemed fine. I couldn't figure out what the blood was all about, until after breakfast and apparently getting some milk up into his sinuses and loosening things up, he had some really gross gobs of blood-tinged snot come out. I guess he has the cold I got, too, although you'd never know it from his behavior. Anyway, there wasn't anything after that and he just has a little purplish area where the lump was.

I am still trying to figure out what Jonah's deal is... is he just this naturally tiny or did the orphanage basically not feed him enough to grow? He's the same weight Joshua was at 4 months old (albeit Joshua was a REALLY big baby). He's the same size almost exactly that Noah was at 15 months old - 7 months younger! I took out Jonah's baby book today and was searching for clues (although it's in Chinese so I wasn't going to be that successful but the dates are recognizeable and I was hoping to see something that looked like measurements). He didn't start with the Half the Sky program until April of last year - 3 months old - so they don't have anything written from those first three months. BUT I did find his footprints from when he'd been in the orphanage about 5 weeks. His foot length at approximately 7 weeks was 8cm. I found some gestational charts for premature babies, and that puts him at about a 38-39 week premie - at 7 weeks old! So he was really really small to start with. I wish there was some way to find out if he seemed to be premature when he arrived at the orphanage. But his orphanage really is not that open and it has been hard to get any sort of information from them. I wonder if my friend Ann would be able to find out for me? As it is, I found an algorithm for relating foot length to height that says that for 95% of children, length = 6.5*height +/- 2cm (all in cm). That put Jonah's length at 7 weeks at somewhere between 19.5 and 21.5 inches long. Still very tiny but on the charts, so who knows. His height and weight seems to have followed its own curve pretty much the whole time, although it did drop down over the summer (probably due to recovery from his palate surgery in May). But as of last time, it bumped back up. So who knows, really, what he'll do with proper nutrition. Since his growth dropped even more from the palate surgery, then maybe it will do even better since he's been eating like there's no tomorrow!!

He's actually getting better about food. At first, little Jonah wasn't happy unless he had some food "reserves" in each hand. No matter what he was eating, if he didn't have food in one hand while he was feeding himself with the other, he wasn't very happy. But now he's getting better about that, and is even being happy to let me feed him without his hands having to be involved at all. I know many parents would be thrilled that their 22 month old could completely feed himself, but I want him to trust ME to do that. And he is! Today at lunch we even started preliminary speech therapy, and I was getting him to open his mouth wide and say "Ma" to get a spoonful of Mac & Cheese. He thought it was a fantastic game and was so full of pride and giggles and being able to "get" me to feed him :)

Here are some other pictures from our weekend.

Playing at the Mall Play Area:




Jonah's first Stateside Starbucks:



Bedtime story with Daddy: