Since we couldn't celebrate his third birthday with him, we compromised and celebrated a month later. It just so happens that our good friends stopped by yesterday to drop off some yummy homemade bugolgi and mandu. I whipped up some gimbap, fried up the mandu and cooked the bulgogi and then we sat down for a great Korean meal to celebrate our favorite 3 year old. I don't think Lillie totally understood what we were doing even though we tried to explain it to her a few times. Paul was just happy to get Korean food and cupcakes. The birthday boy was super excited for this meal. While we have eaten plenty of Korean food since taking custody, but we hadn't had mandu since we got home and when I mentioned it to him he wouldn't stop saying mandu over and over. He even sat at his seat at the table for a long time while I was making dinner - almost as if he didn't want to move and miss out. When it was finally time for dinner, we got several huge thumbs up when he saw his plate.
That kid ate everything on his plate plus two more pieces of mandu. For real. I thought he would pop! And then it was time for cupcakes....because we clearly hadn't eaten enough food. It was pretty clear that Peter has blown out a few candles in his time because as soon as we put that thing in front of him he knew just what to do. Ha! I can't tell you how much I love this sweet photo of my boy.
He clearly loved being sung to so thought we would share...don't mind OUR singing.
I think you could say he liked the cupcake.....a lot.....
He enjoyed opening a few gifts from friends and family.....
All in all, we made this a fun celebration. We certainly wish we could have spent his actual birthday with him but this was the next best thing. We continue to see improvement in some of his behavior. He seemed calmer today and more willing to sit and play with toys or at least stay in the same room for more than 2 minutes at a time. Still working on the hitting and screaming. Sleep continues to go pretty well and we are in a good routine at night.
This is certainly a week to be thankful. We are clearly thankful to be home with all three children. We are thankful for a safe flight - albeit annoying and delayed. And while things aren't easy yet, we are thankful that the transition is actually going well overall. Nights are still hard however I personally am thankful for a night in my own bed last night! Yes, that's right, Peter slept all night in his own room in his own bed without me on the air mattress. Yahoo! And so far he is doing it again tonight. We are hopeful this is a solid step in the right direction for everyone. We took the opportunity to get outside yesterday while the weather was decent. I was super mom and took all three kids to the park by myself. Jason deserved a little quiet time! We loaded Peter in the stroller and walked to the park - same place when Paul broke his elbow. Here's the crew heading out.
The kids wanted to push Peter in the swing. Paul went first....
....and then it was Lillie's turn.
I let Peter out of the swing and ushered him to the smaller kids playground area. I wasn't sure how well this would go since he is a runner and has a strong will. It started well....
He slid down the slide about 3 times......
.....and then wanted to go play in the super soggy wet sand to which I said no. He didn't like my answer so he proceeded to throw a huge fit.....which landed him back in the stroller while the kids finished up their play time. We walked home and called it a success. I didn't lose a kid. No one broke a bone. We all got some fresh air and exercise. One of our biggest struggles at this point is Peter's lack of personal control. He pushes and hits Paul and Lillie and not surprisingly they don't like it. Overall they have been pretty patient although there have been some tears. To give them a little positive reinforcement, I took them out for a special dinner and we left Jason and Peter at home. Of course they chose the diner as their dinner choice.
And they each got a kids sundae when they finished their meals.
Our Thanksgiving was very low key today. Lots of comfy clothes and spending time around the house. I had done some food prep over the last few days which made today a little easier. I did have a few helpers today.....a family tradition of helping make the cornbread stuffing. Peter crumbled the corn bread (and ate a bit too). Just a little mess to clean up on the floor - no big deal.
Lillie helped tear up the bread. She also helped with the corn casserole. She loves to help in the kitchen.
Not a bad spread considering we just got home from an international trip a few days ago and are adjusting to life as a family of five. Everyone ate pretty well tonight. Paul had 2 very full plates of food....I thought he might pop.
After dinner I took the littles in the car to drive around and look for Christmas lights....mostly to get out of the house and allow Jason to clean up in peace.
And then we ate pie. I couldn't have been happier to ORDER the pies from the grocery store since I cooked all of the rest of the food. The kids loved the french silk pie....what's not to love about chocolate pie.
This is evidently the Happy Happy Turkey Dance!
Finally a good picture of our THREE kids. So much to love about this.
We started to wind down for the night a little early...it has been a long day. Some snuggle on the couch are always nice.
And an oldie but goodie toy that Uncle Chris gave to either Paul or Lillie a while back. It's still around and very popular.
We had a full day today. Paul lost TWO teeth...including one of his top front teeth that has been moving around and loose for a few weeks. Kind of glad both of them came out today as that makes it easier on the tooth fairy. The second one didn't come out until after lights out so he came racing downstairs to show us. So proud. His mouth is in the very awkward stage right now. Glad we have a dentist appointment coming up soon to check it all out. Tomorrow brings Peter's first appointment with the pediatrician. I will take him and Jason is taking the bigs to a movie. Hoping things go smoothly and we both survive the visit! And just a few updates on the things Peter has learned in the last week since we took custody: - He has now said thank you, sorry (after he hits the kids), Paul, daddy, thumbs up. - He can high five, thumbs up and give knuckles. - He gives kisses willingly and sometimes unprompted. He is learning what "give me a hug" means. - He knows his seat at the table and goes there when we tell him it is time to eat. - He lies right down when it is time to change his diaper. - He can open doors so we now have door knob covers over certain doors to keep him safe. - He loves riding in the stroller or the car and doesn't fight the seat belts at all. I am sure there are more but those hit the highlights. He is working hard to settle right in.
I evidently forgot to post pictures of our pumpkin carving fun the night before Halloween....whoops! So here they are - better late than never. So happy to be wearing their fun shirts from Mimi.
First we scoop.....
Eeewww....what's IN THERE?
They drew on their pumpkins with markers and then Jason and I carved them up. Paul's is on the left and Lillie's on the right.
Goofball with his pumpkin.
She was so proud of her design.
I will admit that carving pumpkins is NOT my favorite activity but the kids enjoyed it and the finished products were cute.
As we wrap up our second day at home, I think I can say that things are actually going pretty well. There are times that are frustrating and hard for all of us but most of it is starting to feel more normal. Jason and I are just totally out of toddler mode so getting back into the mindset of changing diapers, constantly supervising activities and making sure no one gets hurts or causes major property damage takes some getting used to. So far, Paul and Lillie have been awesome. Lillie is trying to be the best helper and continues to tell us how helpful she is being. It is super cute. Paul is such a great big brother to Peter. He is clearly happy when he gets Peter to smile or laugh. Monday was a sleep late morning for me and Peter. Jason took Paul to school and then left shortly after Peter and I got up to take Lillie to speech therapy and to run to the airport to get our missing bags. Before the left, Peter and Lillie snuck in a little play time. There is a lot of hand holding that goes on around here and it is super cute!
After they left, I took Peter up to take a bath. It was far too late to get clean the night before so he soaked extra long in the bath today to get the travel germs off. Good thing he loves the tub so much. He even tips his head back to get his hair washed!
We got him dressed and then I headed down to start making lunch. He found a ba-ba (toddler slang for vehicle because ba-ba is the beep beep sound they make) and played in the kitchen very near where I was prepping food. He stayed pretty close that morning.
We ate our lunch together, just the two of us! We had gimbap (crab, avocado and pickled radish) along with cut bananas, sliced pickled radish and chunks of leftover avocado. Turns out that he isn't a fan of avocado but he ate the rest like a champ.
Thumbs up for a yummy lunch mommy!
When Lillie returned from speech therapy, they played together nicely for a while and then earned a little screen time. I think it is cute that they started off sitting next to each other.....
....and then assumed the horizontal position. Cute!
Paul was SO excited to get home to see Peter. They played together nicely while Lillie and I went to the grocery store. I planned the timing so that Paul had some alone time with Peter since I knew he was jealous that Lillie got to spend time alone with Peter already. We let the kids choose Peter's first meal at home. No surprise, they chose macaroni and cheese. So i picked some up at the store and that was the easy plan for dinner. Here we are all together for our first meal around the table.
It turns out that Peter seems to be more of a lunch guy. He didn't eat much dinner at all and didn't really touch his mac and cheese. Didn't phase Paul and Lillie as they inhaled their portions! Bed time continues to be a big grief trigger for Peter. He was NOT happy when it was time to get ready for bed. But he did what we asked and screamed while he did it. The time to get him settled was much less on Monday - maybe just 10 minutes or so? He let me put him in his bed once he settled down and I snuck downstairs to spend time with Jason - all the while I had my eyes on the video monitor. He woke up and freaked out because I wasn't there so I dashed back up there and spent the remainder of the evening on the air mattress in his room. At least he is a heavy sleeper so I can be typing and on the computer without bothering him. The jet lag caught up to me and I was still awake at 11pm so I took some melatonin and planned to get snuggled in by midnight. That little stinker woke up at midnight and wanted to play. We hadn't seen this happen from him before. So I had to convince him that it was time to sleep and definitely not time to play. He wouldn't go back in his bed this time so I ended up with him on the air mattress with me again. Ugh. I did not get much sleep last night! We slept until 9am and he woke up happy. Paul was at school so the four of us hung out for the rest of the morning before having a little lunch. He loved his hard boiled egg, rice and seaweed and ate all of it!
After lunch, Jason needed to run to Home Depot and HyVee so we decided to have him take Peter to get him out of the house for a little fresh air. The trip was a success! Peter was happy as a clam in the specialty car carts.
I did a bunch of Thanksgiving meal prep today as well as several loads of laundry. Trying to get things caught back up because that is good for my mental stability! Paul was pretty excited to get back home again and everyone played nicely together until dinner time. We had pasta tonight and Peter didn't eat much in keeping with the lunch guy theme. There was a super sweet moment of zerberts between Paul and Peter.
Another good solid day in the books. I write this from my air mattress in Peter's room. It only took him about 2 minutes to calm down to go to bed and so far he is happy in his own bed. I am hoping to sleep on my own on the air mattress tonight and tomorrow I might even try to sneak downstairs for a few hours to spend time with Jason.....we shall see....nothing like living on the edge! We have a few days of complete togetherness coming up and have to decide what to do with it. We are slightly limited due to our cocooning rules but it sounds like the weather might be a bit warmer tomorrow so we might try to hit a park. Or maybe we could at least take a walk. Or maybe back to Home Depot and HyVee. We shall see.
We started our day getting up around 5am to get ready for our long day of travel. We had to wake Peter up earlier than normal around 6:15 to allow him time to be ready for a 7:15 departure. He is a SLOOOOW waker and we wanted to get a little food in him before we left so we could medicate him in the room rather than at the airport. He was in a good mood and happily ate his Pororo flakes in the room. Our friends that arrived late on Saturday night stopped down quickly so we could see them in person and also to take the remainder of our food....no reason for it to go to waste. It was quick but nice to see them before we left. We jumped in the hotel van with our friends and the 6 of us started the hour long ride to the airport. Peter did great and we worked hard to keep both kids awake on the ride.
We got all of our luggage onto a cart and headed into the terminal to check in. Peter was super helpful in pushing the cart. He loves to wear a backpack so I think foster mom must have put him in one frequently.
Riding the escalator with daddy.
Hanging out at the gate checking out the pretty blue planes.
Everyone was happy before we took off on the 13 hour flight.
He can be so serious sometimes.
About an hour into the flight, I had him in the carrier and he fell asleep. We thought we were golden but he only stayed asleep for 30 minutes. Teaser.
There were certainly some happy moments on the flights but the majority was just really hard. He did not want to be on that plane for that long and who could blame him. He is LOUD and I am quite sure our neighbors on board didn't care much for that but we did our best. I got into an altercation with one woman on the plane - the details aren't important but just so you know, I totally could have taken her if I wanted. We pulled out all the stops to keep him entertained. From blue painters tape stuck to everything and everyone, to playdough to coloring to snacks. I even had glow sticks. We did have a bit of fun with the playdough and I just love his little laugh - he seems to crack himself up sometimes which is funny.
In the end, we were happy to have made it through and secured 3 or so hours of sleep at the end of the flight. So thumbs up for sleeping and thumbs down for the hard stuff.
We made it through immigration and customs fairly quickly and went out to the international terminal lobby to find Auntie Jen waiting for us.....she had planned to bring us breakfast food and hang out with us for a while during our 5 hour layover in Chicago.....well, that would be 5 scheduled hours but more on that later. Even though Jason was feeling better, he still loved drinking the elusive ginger ale that is not to be had in Korea.
And I loved my Diet Coke! They do not have Diet Coke in Korea - only this cruddy Coke Zero stuff that I can't stand. I drank it but I didn't like it. A nice bottled Diet Coke really hit the spot.
Peter ate some fruit and yogurt and then got to the good stuff.....a chocolate covered donut!
A stuffed dog from Uncle Dan who also came to spend time with us! Stuffies were a hit as Auntie Jen found a super cool stuffed dog that can be three different things.
Hanging with the coolest Aunt ever!
We spent about two hours with Jen and Dan and then made our way to the domestic American Airlines terminal. We made it through security again with only a minor stop regarding Peter's liquid medicine with wording that is all in Korean! They ultimately let us pass. We headed to our gate. Well, what ended up being our first gate of many. Getting wheeled around in a stroller is exhausting. Someone likes to sleep with his hands tucked in his pants (left hand) and sucking his thumb (right hand). Here's half of that pose.
The O'Hare airport had been closed on Saturday due to weather so it was chaos on Sunday. There were so many people everywhere. We changed gates no less than 8 times. Our flight kept getting delayed. No one knew anything. It was super annoying. I did so much walking with Peter in the carrier that I didn't think I could stand any longer. The whole situation was so frustrating because had they just told us the truth at the beginning then we might have made different choices. Finally at 5pm we boarded a plane. And then we waited and waited and waited. Peter was over it at this point and was making sure everyone knew. He was SO loud and SO unhappy and it really didn't matter what we had for him to do or eat, he was just done. Frankly we were too as we should have been HOME already at that point. Here is what he looked like BEFORE we waited 3 hours and 40 minutes on a small plane to be able to leave the gate. There are no after pictures for obvious reasons.
I truly thought I was going to lose it. Most of the passengers were very kind and some were extremely helpful. Others were annoyed by his crying and I can't blame them because I was annoyed too. Just keeping it real. Not that I blame him but at a certain point, you just can't hear the same scream over and over without going a little nutso. We finally got him to sleep as we were moving out of the gate.....at 8:40pm. Everyone clapped for the flight leaving the ground - or maybe because he was finally quiet - either way, I shushed them a little because we didn't need him waking up because of applause. It was a quick flight home and Diane was kind enough to pick us up from the airport. Two of our bags didn't make it. They were probably still sitting at the first gate and didn't make the 8 gate transfers that we did. All said, we were home and in bed around midnight which means we officially were up for 34 hours with just the 3 hours of sleep on the flight from Korea. Saying we were tired would be an understatement. I have never in my life experienced something that mentally and physically exhausting. We both agree that this was by far our worst travel experience coming home with a child. Peter had a tough time calming down to go to bed. I was planning to sleep in his room on an air mattress and him in his toddler bed. He was not having anything to do with his bed so we both slept together on the air mattress instead. I don't recommend that by the way - I had no room to move because he was smooshed right up next to me the whole time. He is a wiggly sleeper for sure. He and I slept until almost 10am on Monday. Jason got to sleep in our bed so he was up to take Paul to school. Nice daddy. So glad to start this new part of the journey on our home soil.
