Back amongst the living

We have been home almost a week (today is Friday) and are finally getting back into a routine. My headcold on the plane turned out to be the flu (the "regular" kind) so I was out of commission for a couple of days.
Jet-lag on the way back is a killer! We were all so out of wack. Even Bennett (who we have a rule that he must wait until there is a seven on the clock to leave his room) has been sleeping until 10 or 11! Only Ms. April seems to be up and ready to go at 7am..

Due to my flu, I have been sleeping in April's bed and she and Mark have been sleeping in our bed. We know this will be a hard habit to break. Bedtime is really the only time where she is having some issues. She cries as soon as she realizes it is time for bed. We have gotten to the point where she will willingly get in the bed, but she is a restless sleeper and cries several times in the night. We want to be there to reassure her and help her through the tough times. Right now Bennett is sleeping with April and Mark. When I go up to bed (trying to beat the jetlag by staying up late), I'll move him back to his room and fight for my share of the bed. For a little girl, she sure takes up a lot of bed space!

April seems to understand most of what we tell her to the point where we almost forget that she doesn't speak English. We were at Target today and told her to "hold on" to the shopping cart as we went down a dip. Both Mark and I realized that she had no clue what we were telling her to do and were like "d'uh - how would she know?". She has been picking up words and phrases and uses them appropriately. She knows "daddy", "mommy", "Bennet", "kitty cat", "Murphy" (along with "Murphy sit" and "Murphy lie down", "grandma", 'grandpa" and how to say "please", "up please" (as in - pick me up), "Thank you", "more please" and "no thank you". The use of "no thank you" cracks us up. For example - the other day I took out some clothes for April. She took one look and said "no thank you" and walked over to her closet to take a look at what else was in there for herself.
She still uses a manderin phrase when she needs to go to the bathroom, but she has picked up the word "potty" for urgent situations. This evening I was taking her out of the bath and she seemed a bit distressed and said "potty, potty, potty" and pointed to the toilet. Yup - she had to go bad.

We have been out and about in our 'hood. Bennett beams when he introduces his new sister and explains that she speaks Chinese. April is fitting in and today joined some of the kids in running around like a bunch of crazies! A couple of the neighbors had on their Halloween costumes and Bennett changed into his. April started to get a bit whiney and we thought she might be getting tired. Bennett was walking around with another child's stuffed animal and I thought maybe she wanted it? I offered her a couple of her own stuffed animals and it was VERY obvious that was NOT what she wanted and she started to cry. She finally said "Bennett" and pointed to his costume.. AHHHH she wanted a costume too! I pulled out the princess dressup dress (thanks Lisa M!!!) and that did the trick. We put that right on her and she pranced around outside with the other kids. We may attempt a bit of Halloween after all! We have a bunch of pictures that are still on the camera. Once we download those - we will post them.

Thanks everyone for following along on our journey to bring April home. We will try to continue to post to this blog (though not every day like we did in China).