First day home

Our first day home

Today was our first full day as a family. God smiled on us, and the schools all declared a snow day (although the weather wasn’t really that bad at all!). We live in Upstate NY, close to Canada. Usually, we regard 2 feet of a minor inconvenience, and school is only cancelled when there is a major, major blizzard. Our town even boasts a local road-salt mine. So, because God is good, we had an unexpected day together, with all six boys together! Really, it was just Manna from Heaven. Of course, all the kids were wide awake by 4am this morning. The time-zone thing will be the death of me, I swear. David decided to go grocery shopping in the wee hours of the morning, to save me a trip. We’ve been gone almost 3 weeks, our fridge was bare, and he was wide awake at 4am!  Whoo hooo! By 6am, Dad was back from the store, and we were ready for a full breakfast feast. Too bad our new little guys will only eat rice, fruit and congee (rice soup). Really, by the time a snow day was declared this morning, our household had already been awake for 3-4 hours!! But overall, it worked out great.I was able to get an eye Dr. appointment for Sam today, and the Dr. confirmed what we suspected; Sam does have something going on with his eyes; it's called nystagmus. We received a referral to another Dr. and we'll roll with it. The eye doctor appointment took almost 3 hours, and we're lucky we had John to translate and help the boys' get examined. Otherwise, it might have been another few months before we received a diagnosis for Sam. Leo's eyes are perfect. Yippee.
  Connor got to spend a whole lot of time with Leo (DangTong) today. I explained to Connor that Sam has already bonded with John, and Ben and Austin are already tight, so I asked Connor to spend his time today playing with Leo . Or, alternatively, he could help me do all the laundry! Every little boy needs a big boy to show him how to play and be nice, in my humble opinion. By dinnertime, Connor was saying, “Why are you all thinking that Leo is difficult? He just loves me, and does whatever I ask. And he can catch a ball better than Ben!”  PLT.

We ate lunch (If you know me at all, you won’t believe it, but I let the kids eat Ramen noodles. I’m really that exhausted!) and I put everyone down for a nap. We all slept 2 ½ hours. We would have slept longer, but I set an alarm and woke us all up. We have to work hard to get back on East Coast time. I took the kids (4 of them) to taekwondo at 5:30pm. David was asleep on the coach (he left work at 3), and Sam and Leo watched the taekwondo class. Or maybe Sam just lectured Leo the entire time. I’m not really sure what happened, since I was half sleeping. I only know that I MUST intervene whenever there is hitting, pinching etc. The rest, really, I’m just so exhausted at the moment. I’ll get right on that, I promise, if only I could catch up on my sleep. Leo slept with me last night.; which means I haven’t slept in four days.