One week home

We've been home for 9 days now, and Benjamin has been part of our family for just over 3 weeks now.  So much has changed in that time, that it's almost hard to believe it's only been 3 weeks.  Benjamin is settling in pretty well, and Christopher is generally doing well with being a big brother.  We've been fairly busy since we got home with various doctor's appointments and such, as well as just trying to get over the jet lag.  Everyones' sleep schedules finally seem to be getting straightened out - this week was the first time Christopher managed to sleep beyond 6:00 :)  Benjamin has gotten better about going to bed, and tonight finally went to bed with me and not Brian!  Kind of a relief for Brian.......

We've had a horrible time with getting him to eat.  Not so much eating, as eating anything relatively nutritious.  He'd eat snack 24/7 if we let him.  He loves noodles and rice, crackers and bread, and most meat.  Fruit can be tolerated, but only certain ones.  Vegetables, in his mind, are roughly akin to rat poison and must be avoided at all costs.  We hid shredded carrots on the pizza we made last night, and can occasionally hide some small amount of corn into fried rice, but otherwise, no luck.  Funny how we've changed from Christopher, who thinks green beans are the best snack ever, to Benjamin, who thinks they might be fatal.

Tomorrow is our first visit with the social worker.  China requires we submit reports to them about Benjamin for the next 5 years, so we'll be good friends with the social worker by the end of this.  They also require we send a boatload of photos, so I'm printing off pictures to send over to them.  Nothing of the past 24 hours, as both boys have managed to fall and clobber their heads.  They have almost matching bruises now.  Benjamin does love to copy Christopher, so I suppose this should come as no surprise!

Benjamin is picking up so many new words now.  I would guess he knows 30 or so words.  The pronunciation can be a bit weird, but he's definitely trying.  Dada and water sound somewhat alike - he might be asking for Brian to pick him up, and he gets a sippy cup instead.  I can only imagine what he must be thinking about this whole thing. 

He's also getting around really well.  He can walk without either of us holding his hands now.  He really wants to run, but his balance isn't quite good enough for that.  He has figured out how to get up and down a stair, so there is no stopping him around the house now.  The bad part is, he's absolutely fearless.  He has no concept of falling and getting hurt (so says the bump on his head....).

He loves the cats, and is warming up to JackJack.  He is OK with Jack being in the room, or near him now.  He hasn't figured out that one way to get rid of food on his plate is to hand it to Jack - I'm sure that's coming soon.  He also loves to have a bunch of toys around.  Legos are quite the hit, as is Christopher's train table.  You can only imagine how Christopher feels about this......  He's generally OK with it, but if Benjamin starts taking the tracks apart, Christopher is all done with sharing. 

The interesting part of the adjustment to being home is trying to explain all of it to Christopher.  Today he wanted to know where we went to bring him home from.  Concord was not an exotic enough answer for him, and I think we're going to spend a lot of time explaining that he was born here, and Benjamin was born in China but his mother couldn't take care of him.  He seemed to get the idea before we went to China, but the reality seems to be a bit confusing for him.

Anyways, I've rambled on for ages here and probably bored most everyone to tears.  Just to leave you all with a cute picture.....