Week One - Our Many Moods

How to describe our first week home? First, a story. When Sam was three-and-a-half, we moved, which meant I had to leave a wonderful part-time job but in return got to stay home full time with Sam. I wanted to cherish this time. After all, SO MANY older, wiser moms told me (again and again) how FAST this time would go. So Sam and I enjoyed lots of quality and quantity time together. I'd call Trent with an update: "We walked the dog and fed the ducks and watched ants and sang the alphabet song and read a story and built a fort and made shadow puppets with the flashlight in the fort and had a tickle fight. It was a wonderful day! When do you think you'll be home?"

Trent: "It's only ten o'clock in the morning."

Me: "Oh." Pause. "When does she start school?"

The years fly fast but the minutes are long. Our first week home feels a bit like that. We have had so many fun, fabulous memories with Paul - walking the dogs and hitting the whiffle ball and riding the big wheel and shooting the basketball and having a water balloon fight and playing in the pool and cuddling on the couch and eating meals together and exploring the house. But it's also exhausting! I'm not used to being this needed ALL THE TIME! Don't get me wrong - I'm GLAD he needs me and calls for me and wants me to watch him and wants me to hug him and wants to kiss me and wants me to carry him (OK, the carrying is getting a bit tiresome, but this is declining since he got the big wheel) - but WHEW! He DOES respect my privacy in the toilet, so that is now my only quiet time. Probably too much information, but whatever.

Paul seems to be thriving with the attention and the love and the food. He no longer eats whatever I put in front of him, more's the pity, and tonight he turned his nose up at the canned green beans. I swear he's put on five pounds since Johannesburg. (And since I carry him a LOT, I should know.) He can also handle it (albeit with a sad, whiny face) when I tell him to wait until AFTER dinner for more grapes. Huge.

He went to Sam's softball scrimmage and, while he needed to be in constant proximity to me or Trent, he didn't shut down at all and even gave Leah's dad a high five. Huge.

He hasn't refused the seatbelt since our Wednesday night blow out. While he whines and makes a face, he'll even buckle it himself. Huge.

He's talking. A lot. And loudly! The little guy who spoke only in whispers and head nods our first two weeks in Lesotho now speaks a wide variety of Sesoglish. "Mum! Bapala (play) cars, pease, Mum!" "Mum! Ja (eat) banana, pease, Mum!" "Mum! Spin motorcycle (ride bike - not sure how or why this translated), one time!" "Mum! Mum! Mum!" "Rata (love), Mum, rata!" Huge.

But we still have a lot of healing and adjusting and attaching to do. An outing (to the store, the softball game, the playground) takes a lot of emotional energy out of him, and often results in post-trip overstimulation and/or hyper anxiety. On Friday I told Sam I'd give her $20 if she went to Kroger to buy eggs (we now go through a LOT of eggs.) Sam: "I can't drive." Me: "Don't be such a defeatist. You could at least TRY."

Learning boundaries and obeying Mom and Dad is tricky, tricky, tricky. We're working time-ins (five minutes on Mom or Dad's lap) and logical consequences (cleaning Mom's car (with Mom) after spitting in Mom's car), but it's HARD. Hard, hard, hard. Language barriers and trust issues and attachment needs and developmental age versus chronological age add to the maelstrom of discipline difficulty. Sometimes he seems older than six (carrying in groceries (on his head!), whacking the whiffle ball, drumming a complicated beat on a drum he made out of cardboard) and other times he seems closer to age three ("No! No bath! No! Stop it!", "Mum! Pease up!"). Epic tantrums. Epic, rage-filled tantrums.

Hard. But worth it.