The week in review

It's been a pretty good week this week. Josiah is being introduced to more rules, and he is starting to learn that he is NOT in charge. He has been fighting sleep more. Staying up to as late as midnight. We are starting to implement a more regular schedule, so he'll head to bed at the times when we have to be up early the next morning.

On Tuesday, we headed up to the airport. We were so happy to celebrate another family's homecoming!!! They just adopted a beautiful 12 year old daughter from China! And watching their story unfold, there can be no question that God is involved with the timing...even of the little things! A few of us were reflecting on how this is the last family in church in the adoption process. But I'm VERY sure that it will not be too long before another family begins.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday David worked full days for the first time since before we left. Mommy stayed home and kept the peace. It helped that Wednesday Elizabeth was at preschool for a few hours.

Friday, we all headed to MOPS. David was a draftee replacement to assist with M.I.A. volunteers. It just so happened that David was needed in the room where Josiah was, so that helped out alot. Otherwise Josiah would have stayed with Mommy, as we are not quite ready to leave him.

Tomorrow is Maryland football and the delivery of Josiah's new bed. We opted to skip the toddler bed and go straight to a set of bunk beds. We'll be leaving off the top bunk for a while still, though. And on Sunday he'll be subjected to a welcome home shower. Daddy's looking to run somewhere else during that time. (Can you tell Daddy wrote this part? He may try, but he WILL NOT succeed!!!! Mwaahaaahaaa :-))

Josiah's vocabulary continues to expand. He talks constantly, but some of the words we are understanding pretty clearly are dog, cat, car, up, no, all done, uh-oh, uh-uh, uh-huh, and water. Of course he says mommy and daddy. He's also using a few Amharic words with us that we didn't hear before: Nah--come, woosha--dog, demet(sp?)--cat.

Josiah's had several successful events this week. For the first time he successfully wore normal (non-sandal/non-croc) shoes. He also took a bath, fully sitting down and getting hair washed, without fighting (a couple of whimpers, but no hindering actions). He even hungrily downed our attempt at Doro Wat with dried out Injera. Though, he was very frustrated by the breaking injera.

We've been amazed at how "easy" things have been so far. We really haven't seen any behavior that is anything more than what can be expected from a two year old, and we've definitely be watching. We know that it is ONLY by the grace of GOD that the transistion has been going so smoothly. And we fully understand that it may be a while before he really grieves. He has had a lot of loss in a very short amount of time. We also are pretty certain that with the two strong personalities granted our children, there will be a "Clash of the Titans," as David puts it. I'm so glad we have had the chance to bond and grow in love with our son first.