Jetlag

 Our return home has left all of us exhausted.  Dealing with a jetlagged two year old is part of the adoption process that I underestimated and it has proved to be our biggest challenge thus far.  We’ve struggled to get Eli on a normal sleep schedule and he’s been regularly waking up at 3:00 am for the day.  This means by naptime he is ready to go down for the count and turns into a bear when we wake him up.  His frustration with communication isn’t helping matters any.  Poor Eli went from having everyone around him speaking Chinese to only hearing my crazy version of it.  He’s dealt with so many changes and it is only to be expected that his ability to handle it all would waver.

Luckily for all of us, when Eli is not throwing a tantrum or crying we see his loving spirit and hear his wonderful belly laughter.  He loves his new brothers and follows them around constantly.  Liam and Rowan have been so patient in dealing with all of the challenges over these past few days—I’m not surprised though, because I knew they would be great big brothers.  It is fun to watch how he imitates them and I am looking forward to the day this carries over to the dinner table.

Beside the sleeping issues, eating has been our next biggest obstacle.  Eli is not interested in trying any new foods… unless it is a snack.  So far his diet consists of eggs, rice (sometimes), cashews and flavored toddler milk.  But to be honest, it is mostly eggs.  Hardboiled.  He eats multiple eggs for every meal of the day and is always asking for more.   It is pretty disgusting, actually.  Apparently it is not uncommon for newly adopted children to fixate on one comfort food item.  Mike and I keep trying to introduce new foods and today we had some success with bologna.  Still gross, but at least his whole plate of foot wasn’t white.

As we’ve worked our way through these difficult days, we’ve managed to have some fun too.  Today it was a living room dance party that provided many giggles.  I have attached a couple videos of us in this exhaustion induced silliness.  It is worth watching just to see Mike’s unique interpretation of “the sprinkler”.   Rowan has some pretty sweet moves too.