Home!

I'm proud to say that we survived the flight home!  I was absolutely certain that we were going to die on an airplane at some point during this trip.  My brother promised me that we wouldn't... but said something worse would happen... that we would have a screaming child for 20 hours on a plane.  I'm happy to say neither happened.  Jada did great on the plane and it was a wonderful moment to see the boys running towards us in the airport.

We got home this past Thursday but have been suffering some terrible jet lag.  We were trying to not nap during the day but then we couldn't sleep at night.  So basically we were living off of 3-4 hours of sleep a day and of those 3-4 hours we were waking up nearly every hour.  Not to mention that Jada is terrified of the pack-and-play and I don't trust her on the floor in our room or in a bed in her room by herself.  So she's in our bed and she's kind of like sleeping with a floppy fish. 

Jada thinks her brothers are hilarious.  They think she's cute... but not when she's biting or pinching.  This is occurring pretty frequently because they think they always need to be touching her or about 2 inches from her face to talk to her.  The boys are having some behaviors, as we expected, but hopefully we'll have some sort of routine figured out soon and life will begin to feel a little more normal.

Miss J is showing more and more of her true self everyday.  She's a spunky little fireball. I took her shopping Monday to buy her some pants.  She insisted on walking beside me rather than riding in the cart.  She would flip through the racks of clothes like a pro and wanted to carry her own merchandise.  We'd better hide the credit cards because this one is starting early!  She got lots of comments in the stores and she would hide her face when people tried to talk to her but would then smile widely and wave (sometimes adding a "bye!") as they walked away. 

Watching her is like watching a mime.  It is amazing how she can make her point just with hand motions and facial expressions.  She is also the queen of imitation.  We have gotten quite a bit of insight into her early life by watching her.  She loves her baby dolls and goes through a whole routine when she rocks them, sings to them and puts them to bed.  She pretends to dip her fingers into containers and apply bin-dis to our foreheads.  She also has done bloodwork on me multiple times, using a sock as a tourniquet, a piece of paper to swab the area and a pen or other sharp object as the needle.  (At the end she always grabs and shoe and wacks my arm... not sure what that's all about!)

Food is getting easier.  She is more willing to try different foods and we're figuring out a few basic things that she will consistently eat.  Tomato-based foods appear to be a favorite and she's crazy for ketchup so she should fit right in!  We're still going through bananas like a family of monkeys but I've finally got her down to two a day!

Here's her first meal at home

So all in all, this transition is going better than we imagined.  In fact, going from 2-3 has thus far proven to be easier than 0-1 or 1-2.  It's funny because she has just jumped headfirst into the action and in some ways it feels like she has been with us for much longer than a few weeks. 

Over the weekend we went to the park and took some fall pictures and first group photos of our three amigos.