Settling into Life at Home in America, midnight door drilling and more...

I can't say that we were bright eyed and bushy tailed on our first day home (I think that was the day of Tuesday, after getting home around 2 in the morning).  However, it was wonderful to have my mom here and my sister and baby Sage.  Indigo loved playing with Sage and treating her like her little baby. 

Isaac seemed fairly happy in his new environment.  My ability to be able to do much of anything was pretty much non-existent.  Fortunately, Pam had left us with a big bowl of a hearty soup and it seems we existed on that for a few days.  It was exciting to distribute the family gifts we had bought and I think we looked at our video we had taken in China.  My memory of this time is very foggy and things got worse before they got better.  Indigo was sleeping in the single bed in Isaac's room and Isaac was in the crib.  This was both because Clare and Sage were in Indigo's room and also to make Isaac feel comfortable by having his sister with him.  So, Granny and Granddad head off to bed.  We got Isaac to bed and Indigo down as well (we thought) and were up with Clare and Sage a bit.  I can't remember exactly what happened but I think we were off to bed and Clare and Sage were in their room when Clare heard Indigo through the wall, either calling for us or trying to get out the door.   Clare gets us and Indigo is on the other side of the door telling us she can't get out!  Isaac is sleeping.   So, we figure that Indigo has locked the door on the other side and we get the little key to unlock from our side and it does not work!  We start to get tools out and are trying to get the plate off so that we can unscrew the door knob.  Well, our house is from 1959 with some old hardware and nothing was working.   Now, Isaac has woken and is screaming his head off and we can't get to him or Indigo  (she was staying pretty calm, but we wanted her to stay away from the door in case it suddenly flew open).  Things are not going well - nor is our very newly painted door doing very well...  We decide that we're going to have to saw the door knob out.  We wake up poor Granddad who comes up with Granny, both of them in their jammies and we have the reciprocal saw out and the hacksaw - we first wanted to try to hacksaw off the handle to save the door but that was not going to work.   So, ultimately, we sawed the whole door knob out! 

I must admit that there was a fair bit of laughing and giggling about the craziness of the situation.   I can't imagine what Isaac thinks of his new crazy family and this can't have done much to make him feel safe and secure in his bedroom!  A new doorknob has been put in although part of the door is still cut away, needless to say it has no lock!   Indigo was up at the crack of dawn on Wednesday so we took her to school and the rest of that day is a blur too - apart from the doorknob being replaced and enjoying being with our family.  The family left on Thursday and we had our doctor appointment with Isaac.   He screamed and cried the whole way through while they took his weight, height etc.  We said that he had been sick with a cold for about 3 weeks and that he had yucky stuff from the nose, but of course, the day we went, everything was clear.  The doctor checked his ears and said his eardrums looked good and had no scar tissue.  Well, that I think around that night things started to go terribly with bedtime and waking up in the night and we were to find that things with his ears were not so rosy afterall.  

We received this fabulous gift of a fruit bouquet from the aunties at the office - we devoured it like a pack of wolves.  We discovered that Isaac loves grapes!  Thanks girls!
Indigo went to school again on Friday and David went to work for part of the day and I just functioned enough to feed and care for Isaac - I felt shockingly jet lagged and out of it.  Indigo went to Jessie after school as Ava was dying to see her and play with her.  David, me and Isaac picked her up from there and saw Ava's family - they sent us home with some chicken lentil stew which was another life saving event.   I recommend to anyone taking a trip like this - when people ask if they can help, or even if they don't, tell them you need to have some food in your freezer/refrigerator as coping with such things as fixing a meal can seem entirely overwhelming especially when one kid is not going to sleep and waking up screaming in the night and the other one is waking at the crack of dawn.