The pincushion peanut and his pink-eyed pal

Not even two weeks home yet, and our littlest guy has already seen both our pediatrician and a neurologist, with an appointment to see the physical therapist.  He has handled very bravely being a pincushion as he has had to have immunizations and blood drawn for a battery of tests (our pediatrician, Dr. Ng, who by the way is the best in the world, is very thorough).  We found out that our little peanut is indeed little, barely making it onto the growth charts.  He is 3 inches shorter and 7 pounds lighter than M (who supposedly is three months older).

He also has to have some other tests that require a stool sample.  Because it can't be mixed with any other "liquids," this proved to be an interesting task.  We were given a "specimen collection" bowl which you place under the toilet seat.  Since L.B. has become unpotty trained for the most part (we think largely due to the language barrier), we had to just keep trying to get the specimen "alone."  One day I finally had success and had the wonderful privilege of totally grossing out my kids in the process of placing said specimen in the vials.  I got out a plastic spoon and assured them that I would wash it before they used it again.  Yes, that did give me the desired response.

In other medical news, the male wonder twin has had the worst case of pink eye we have ever seen.  He was really bummed out (as was I) that he couldn't go to church (so I couldn't go).  He cried, "But I don't want the pink eye!"  To which K asked, "You have green eye? You have red eye? What you have?" In addition to pink eye, he had a high fever which made him want to cuddle with mama.  Yeah, that's all sweet and stuff, except for the eye goop on the front of my shirts, and worse than that, M had the worst case of halitosis I have encountered (except maybe with the last dog I had).

Here is the normal monkey boy:

 and here he is with the dreaded pink eye

Here is most of the family off to L.B.'s first day at church

This is a friend who is from China.  He took to her right away, and we were glad he didn't want to go home with her!

He clearly felt at home at our second home

Something about our China kids and Mr. P.  K has a bond with him as well.  He has six kids too, so that might have something to do with it.

This is L.B. with his twin brother from another mother.  When we received updated pictures of L.B. about six months ago, we were amazed at how much he looked like Daniel's buddy.  Only one of the two of them is Chinese, the other being half Japanese, but you know, we all look alike.

So how is L.B. bonding? I think these pictures tell you how he feels about his older sibs (the OS).  The verdict is still out on the WTs.  They tend to dominate so I think he steers clear of them for the most part.

L.B. still waits to have things done for him.  Yesterday he fell over and I could tell that he was fine.  He was laying on his stomach making the familiar "We have fallen over and even though we can get up on our own, we are waiting for someone to upright our person" noise.  I smiled at him and said, "You can get up.  You're fine." and gestured for him to get up.  Not more than a few minutes passed and I see him walk by me as if nothing had happened.  M had walked over to him and I thought he might have helped him up, which he denied when I asked.  What I think transpired is that M whispered in his ear, "Dude, our mom is hard core.  If you don't get up on your own, you'll be here until dinner time." Good advice that will make us all happy.

Thick as thieves and...SUCCESS!

L.B. is still doing well almost a week after being home.  He has always seemed pretty comfortable in our house, so hopefully it is seeming like home.  He is definitely quieter than he was in China, though we are starting to see a bit more of those tantrums James talked about.  The area in which we see it the most is naptime/bedtime.  He can drum up quite a dramatic performance when put into his bed.  Bed  to him is what toothbrushing was to K.  If you don't know that story, K had really yellow teeth when we got her.  Clearly her teeth had not been brushed.  When we would brush them, she would act as though the toothbrush was some medieval torture device and scream like a banshee.  Perseverance and smoker's toothpaste solved that issue.

We had a major success today when Momma got her first kiss! Hurray, huzzah, and all that jazz! When the day was over, I could count a total of three kisses from my littlest man. That there is victory, my friends.

In addtion to getting my first kiss, we saw our first act of aggression on L.B.'s part.  James was playing with the trio as in this picture:

L.B. was having a great time when it was his turn to be turned upside down and tickled by Baba.  When it was M's turn, L.B. got mad and took the part of Little Bunny Foo foo and bopped M on the head.  M did not do anything, but L.B. got a "Noooooo" from his momma and baba.  That made him cry, and when he saw that that would not have the desired effect (namely sympathy), he did his own thing.

The trio does like doing the same things, though not always together.  They all very much like getting rides from the big boys:

But coalescing as a trio will take some time.  The WTs are going strong these days and are thick as thieves:

It'll be pretty hard to get between these two...

 Would you want to try???

Fun in the sun...for some

It's been warm here, so we thought we'd let L.B. enjoy a typical childhood activity, playing in the sprinklers.  Now we know better than to think he'd jump right in, so we were not disappointed with the results.

M was ready to jump right in, of course

The older boys thought they would "toughen" themselves up by doing push-ups in the cold water

K was a bit hesitant at first, but then joined in with gusto

C paused briefly from her jumping up and down to let me take this picture

We took out a water toy that shoots out water in various amounts of pressure when you turn the top.  M is slightly excited about it...

Take note of where our youngest is in this picture

You can see he is keeping a good distance away from the festivities

You can see the skepticism on his face, "This is supposed to be fun?"

Baba is trying to coax him into at least touching the water

 This is how L.B. decided to "enjoy" the water.  He was recovering after this tragic event...

A mist coming off the sprinklers touched his person...without permission!

I guess this time honored tradition will have to wait to be enjoyed...

No good very bad morning

Our poor little guy was running a fever this morning and thus could not go to church to meet his "other family."  He was not feeling well and he let the rest of us know it.  I took the remaining five with me to church while Baba stayed home with Mr. Crankster.

We love being at church, and so we don't get distracted, we tend to sit up toward the front.  This morning we were sitting in the third row, which would be fine if you did not have WTs who were doing their utmost best to win the "naughtiest kids at church" award.  M was being goofy, flirting with a girl several rows behind.  At one point he said, rather loudly, "Why are there SO many songs?" K decided that she would decide to play the part of the Wicked Witch of the West and start melting there in the third row, close to the front, being an elder's kid, with lots of people in back of us to witness the event.  I had to finally take her out so we could have a "discussion" in the bathroom.

We returned just in time to hear the recognition of L.B. coming into our family.  It is the custom in our church that when a new baby is born into the church family, a rose is placed on the piano and the baby's arrival is announced.  I thought it was so very thoughtful that L.B. was being recognized the same way.  That made up for the rest of the morning in which I could not finish a conversation because the WTs were again working on their award.  At one point one of my kids' friends said, "Uh, M is taking his pants off right by the door."  Apparently, M had his pants on backward and decided to rectify the situation right there in the narthex by the door people use to come in and out.  I said, "Uh, maybe he's just trying to tell visitors that we preach nothing by the naked truth here?"

When we returned home, L.B. was still feverish and lathargic.  We gave him some medicine which helped him to perk up a wee bit.  A wee bit that is.

Here he is watching the WTs being themselves.

We've noted that he has a little emperor-ness in him.  If he drops something, he will look at you as if to say, "Hello! Did you see that I dropped that? Pick it up, minion." We can tell that he is quite accustomed to others doing things for him, things that the WTs do for themselves.  Ah well, he is the youngest of six, he'll learn soon enough that he has entered the school of hard knocks (also known as "reality central").

He actually sat for a little while to watch "Cars" with the WTs.  He wasn't interested for too long and surprised us by striking out on his own (the medicine did wonders).  Unfortunately for us, that meant finding and climbing the stairs.  He discovered that it is much easier to climb up than to come down.  Sigh, back to baby gates on the stairs.  Momma, welcome to reality central yourself.

I leave you with a few triplet photos:

 Rub a dub dub, three tots in a tub

 Here are our bambino burritos

Don't let those angelic faces fool you...



Home at last, home at last, thank God Almighty, they're home at last

Oh glorious day,  this was our first full day home as a family of eight.

The guys came in Thursday night at 6:00pm and C and I met them at the airport.  The WTs stayed with my parents.  C and I were almost beyond ourselves as we watched for our fellas.  A seismograph could have measured our nervous energy as we vibrated with excitement.  Finally we spotted them and I did my best to take pictures of them, but it's really hard for a camera to focus when its user is jumping up and down like a crazy person.  Then I lost it.  Yep, I had more blubber than a humpback whale.  It's no wonder that L.B. wanted nothing to do with me.  Here was this sobbing mess of a woman blathering on about "mama,"and pointing to herself! He had this look on his face that said, "I have a momma, and you ain't my momma, lady.  And by the way, let go of my Baba (Daddy)."

I was not in the least offended by his less than enthusiastic response to me.  He had had a foster  momma in China who undoubtedly cared for him very well.  I was a total stranger who was intruding on him and his people.

The response of the WTs to L.B. was priceless.  They both seemed to instantly grow about a foot, and they seemed to suddenly mature.  Here were two older siblings who acted the part. 

 Not super impressed by his closest older sister, who calls him yet another name,  "L.B."

 We were very shocked by the size difference between the boys, who supposedly are only three months apart in age.  In fact, L.B. is so much smaller than we imagined, we are going to have to buy some new clothes.  I donated almost all the size 2 clothes to the orphange James visited in Beijing! 

 There's L.B. with mister "Heart Breaker" himself

 Here's M being goofy as usual, doing some kind of ritualistic "welcome home" dance

 He allowed C to get closer...

...and warms up to M

 Daddy's home!!!!!

 Our first dinner as a family, a brief stop at my parents' before heading home

Once we got home, we put C and the WTs to bed.  The boys were not quite ready to go to bed, and L.B. was wide awake.  There were places to explore and toys with which to play.  There was also this very interesting machine...

 We should have given him some popcorn to go with his show.

 We discoved that he loves cars, of which we have plenty.  He played until we finally pulled the plug on the festivities at 1:00am.  He was not ready to go to bed, but we were.  This did not make him happy.  This guy loves to sleep, but does not like going to sleep.  He staged a protest, but Baba prevailed.  I wasn't about to force him to go to bed, I'm already on the "do not give any physical attention to" list.  He gave everyone a goodnight kiss but me.  All in good time.  Right now he tolerates me, which is better than outright rejecting me, right? I said, right????

The next day,  we had a great time catching up.  Here is K showing her big brother how much she missed him.  It's hard to believe we brought her home almost two years ago and went through this same adjustment process.  We have since learned that the process does take a lot of time, even when it's going well (which it wasn't as much when she first came home and M was her chew toy, she'd bite him about 6-7 times per day..it was rough).  It probably took a full year before we really felt that we had overcome the effects of institutionalization.

 I'm not sure what Mr. Bear has just said to G, but clearly he now needs the protection of Hello Kitty

 Dogpile on D

 Add another...

 This is either the "icing on the top," or "the straw that broke the camel's back"

You'll notice that L.B. is nowhere to be found.  When there's mayhem to be had, he steers clear.  So yes, he steers clear a lot.

The three of them played really well together, sometimes it was the WTs together without L.B., sometimes it was one of the WTs with L.B., sometimes they were all together.  They definitely treat him as the younger sib, and not an equal.  He's not a threat yet, but give him time.

There they are, either the triple trouble or the tremendous triplets.  Either way, their designation will be "the T2."  I will still refer to M and K as the WTs, because, well, some things are just meant to endure.

Today, the second full day of being home, we discovered what a parrot our little guy can be.  I was on the phone with a friend when I said, "Oh right...." I then hear L.B., who is playing with his Baba, start saying "Oh right, oh right."  He is very quick to copy what he hears, which is both good and bad.  I've already heard him tell C to "go away," which is a line straight out of the WTs lexicon (and which they are not supposed to say). 

We did get some sad news (for us) today when we found out that the little girl we were hoping to adopt was matched with another family.  It is bittersweet news as, as disappointed as we are, we are very happy that another family will be blessed by her.  It also means that God has someone else in mind, we just have to wait and see who it is. Now, judging by the two kids given to us via adoption, I'd say the wait will be worth it.  Kind of like the kiss that has still eluded me from my newest son.  No kisses for the momma, day 3.  Stay tuned.