Stops along the Journey: How it's going...

We have been home nearly a week and people ask often: "So, how's it going?"

Here are my answers in no particular order:

I radically underestimated jet lag. It is a mean, deceietful, tricksy, invasive, systemic syndrome that without a tiny peeplette would be challenging. With a tiny peeplette it has been very challenging. We are finally not feeling like the walking dead all of the time.
Maddie and Jake are rockstars. The returned to school at 7:30am and 8:30am respectfully bright and early Monday morning and every day since. They head to bed earlier than BC (before China) but for the most part they are functioning very well.
Miss Grace is really doing wonderfully. Jetlag has not been kind to her but she too is coming out of the fog and all bodily systems (ahem) seem to be back in regular working order. She had been crashing hard between 7-8pm (which is pretty normal) and waking up between 1-3am and deciding naptime was over and it was play time. Not cool. Then she would go back to sleep until about 5 or 6 or 7. But last night was great - and we all slept mostly uninterrupted from 10-5. Glorious.
Doctor visits are a gazillion times better in America. No question. But, taking your tiny daughter who is too little to understand why the parents she just met and is just beginning to trust are letting people hold her down and stick her and look in every orifice of her body is brutal.
Cocooning isn't sooooo bad. We are too tired mostly to go anywhere we don't have to. Kind, generous, loving people bring us meals every day, and other than laundry, dishes, and basic tidying up - we have no place to be except school and doctor appointments. We play with Grace. We talk to her. We dance with her. We nap with her. We teach her about our world in english. After getting peeks into her world on facebook - it's indescribable to see her and love her in person.

The biggest challenge with cocooning is that she warmed up to us so fast that I suspect she will warm up with lots of friendly non-medical-ish people fast too. While we want her to be social, every expert on adoption will tell you that it's critically important that for the first few months home she not be comforted, fed, held, or have any other basic need met by anyone but our immediate family - preferably none other than Robert and I. So, once we are ready for brief visits, I predict after some time Grace will reach for visitors to be held or walked around or whatever, and they will have to "reject" her or at least distract her so she is interested in something else. It won't be for long but it's important to try and do what the experts say as best we can because it will help her be healthier emotionally in the future.

We've also been warned by our doctors to not have school-aged and younger children around her at all because it's crucial to try and keep her healthy so that if she is ready for surgery in the next few weeks they can proceed. We are doing the best we can with Maddie and Jake who are old enough to know to wash well when they come home, and can tell us if they don't feel well. Yet another bonus to having a 14 & 12 year old around to help with Grace.

Grace spent some time with me in our sunroom today. She has been very curious of the two steps down that it takes to get into the sunroom and after some play time and conquered fears...she has mastered the steps. She doesn't say much other than "mama, ya ya, ah-ma, dada" and a lot of babbling; but I'm sure the convo in her head wen't a little something like this...

I do not want help any more to get up those stairs. I know they think I can't do it on my own, but I just know I can.

See? First step no problem. Now this next one isn't fully carpeted and that shiny stuff might not be comfortable. I'll have to take it nice and easy...