Settling in emotionally

I've written about our "physical" move, but not a whole lot on the emotional. The drive up here was pretty stressful for Liana. She was on High Alert most of the way here. If I sounded like I was remotely unsafe, or lost (we were following John), she would try to fix it herself by telling me where to go, etc. We needed to have a talk about how it's the Mama's and Papa's job to take care of their kiddos, and that 7yos' jobs are to just be 7yos.

The first night home, though, Liana woke up crying her eyes out missing everyone and everything. She missed her grandparents, she said, and her friends. She wrote her best friend Rachel a letter yesterday.

But, really, though, she and Aleksa are doing fabulously. Adam is doing as well as we expected him to, but we *knew* that as soon as we started school again, he was going to be pulling those control strings again.

And, we were right. We started school as soon as we found the books - (which was Tuesday), and boy was I glad to have John home this week. As the days have gone by, though, he's gotten much better. Today's only "incident" was him telling us he didn't know how to say "Where am I going?" He would say, "Where is I going?," "Where are I going?," "Where I am going?" and alllllll kinds of variants. John and I have gotten good at standing firm emotionlessly. I often need to keep busy to quit "thinking about it" as it does get annoying after a while, but that has just helped me get my boxes unpacked faster! ;O) It didn't last as long as "usual" for this week, however, so I'm kinda wishing that tomorrow were Friday instead of Saturday, so we could have another day of "normal routine" instead of throwing another oddball day in the mix. I'm just hoping that we don't start all over next week.

I'm climbing out of the box jungle, but it's taking a while. A lot of it, I'm keeping in boxes since we're only here a year (although all of this unpacking and readjustment stuff is making me think TWO years here wouldn't be the end of the world!)

Nothing at all to report about Aleksa. She's just Leksa. Coloring, reading, writing, pretending Aleksa. She was just pretending that "Miss Peterson" was late for something or other, and she needed to go find her. Not sure if I've mentioned her skirt affinity, but Aleksa more often than not prefers to run around in a skirt. (Don't know where that came from, because I'm NOT that way at all!) So, she'll throw on a skirt, high heels, long necklaces, then pretend she's a lady and goes around talking like one. "At 5:30, Miss Peterson needed to be here, but I just can't seem to find her!" She says it nobody in particular, but as she passes through the room, we hear stuff like this allll the time. (I just plain can't type what her little authoritative voice sounds like, but it cracks me up.)

Well, anyhow, that's the deal around here. A few minor bumps in the road, but nothing terribly alarming.

Ya know, I was *JUST* about to hit "save" when Adam just came up to me with a colorbook page that he wrote, "Adam loves Mama." Then he gave me a hug and said, "Mama, I so happy you adopt me from that yucky orphanage. I would be stuck there forever." And then he fluttered away...

I guess in other words, we're all doing GREAT!