Memories

The kids and I dropped Kyle off at the airport a couple of days ago.  He is returning to China for the rest of the month.  It is his first trip back since we moved back to the States.  His trip triggered a lot of memories and emotions for the kids.  They all ended up in tears during dinner one night because they want to go back home.  This is a bit hard for Kyle and I to understand because as good as China was for us, we never felt like it was home.  It was more like survival most of the time.  It was good to talk about all the fun memories and some of the hard memories.  It is the first time we have really talked about it and I think that we have just started to realize what a big impact China had on our lives, besides the obvious!  We are just starting to realize how intense those two years where for our family.  How much we learned and grew and changed and how we will forever be affected by that experience.  I do not envy Kyle's experience of staying in our apartment without us there.  The kids pictures still hanging on the walls, but the closets standing empty.  Their bikes sitting in the entryway, the memories of their voices filling all the rooms...  just a bit too sad for me to handle.

Daylight savings stinks.  It reminds me of the horrors of going through jet lag with kids.  So, even though I'm feeling nostalgic about China and I hate it when Kyle has to travel for weeks at a time, I am grateful that I am just trying to adjust one hour, instead of 12.  But seriously.  Who thought up this daylight savings crap anyway?  Obviously they did NOT have small children!  Do I need an extra hour of daylight?  No, it just makes my kids want to stay up even LATER.  For the love. 

I've had several people ask me how the adjustment has been. Usually they are asking in the context of our adjustment back to America, but that is hard to answer specifically because there is also our adjustment to four kids (one being adopted and it was different, way different than our bio kids and maybe it isn't for everyone but for us it was quite an adjustment) and the adjustment to Kyle working from home and the adjustment to homeschooling, and the adjustment to a new house and a different state.  Too many adjustments going on at the same to to actually define one or the other.  Over all I would say things are going pretty good.  Not to say there hasn't been some significant lows, because there has, but I feel like we are finally starting to have more normal days than bad days so we are headed in the right direction at least.  I do love having an endless supply of brown sugar and an oven and working internet and phones.  I love going to bed every night on my super amazing mattress.  I love having screens over my windows.  And I adore doing laundry with a dryer.  It really is the little things!

Jaxon is doing well.  He is growing like a weed.  He is talking.  He is playing and fighting with his sisters.  All good normal things.  He has some serious ocd issues with food, open doors, his shoes, just to name a few, but I think that just makes him fit in with this family a little better!  He has seen the surgeon and we are hoping for surgery to fix his palate late this spring.

He really likes 'smiling' for pictures now

 wait... what are we doing now?

Ok, not sure about the tongue thing, but I can blow bubbles!