Normal?

12 days in, things are starting to feel like we are getting back to a new normal. We all slept through the night, we haven’t hit in days, our melt downs aren’t occurring on a daily basis, we are learning new English words daily, we aren’t trying to push all the dvd buttons as often, we are healthy, and most of all we seem happy. 
 

Before we brought our boys home we read great books about adoption and participated in some on-line adoption training classes. Somewhere along the way we learned that we should plan on sleeping in S’s room for a few months until he was comfortable sleeping on his own. We had the best intentions and talked about taking turns sleeping on his floor. Of course when we got home and were dog tired, the idea seemed absurd. Give up our comfy mattress for a spot on the floor next to a toddler bed? No thanks. Well, it seemed the adoption experts knew what would happen. S has gotten up between 3 and 6 (maybe 7??) times a night to check on us. He hasn’t really cried or had a hard time falling back asleep, it’s just like he is checking to make sure we’re still there. Obviously, this led to a really tired kid and really tired parents. We decided to move a little toddler bed mattress into our room on the floor with a night light nearby. Last night was our trial run, and S did great! I could hear him wake up in the night, but he DID NOT WAKE US UP!! I think seeing us sleeping was all he needed, and then could fall back asleep. We, of course, were sooo happy about this!  We are looking forward to many more peaceful nights ahead of us!

Jen Hatmaker has an excellent post on her blog about the crazy transition time of the first few months. As our boys are younger than her kids, I think they may have had a little easier of a time transitioning (so far), but there are parts to which we can totally relate. I actually read this blog everyday for a week before we went to pick up our boys as a kind of mental  gearing up.