Settling In

So, we've been home three days now. Overall, I would say that things are going pretty well. Maia and Matthew are acting like typical siblings - love each other one minute and are beating on each other the next. Well, it's probably not quite that bad. Most of the time, they don't pay much attention to each other. But if one of them is getting attention from me, the other immediately has to get in on it. Matthew will be minding his own business and Maia will push or hit him for no reason. We have not seen him retaliate, although we did find healing bite marks on Maia before coming home. It's possible that it came from one of the other kids at the orphanage, but we just don't know. We're keeping a close eye on both of their behavior. Biggest concern at this point is that Matthew seems to have very little awareness of  her when he's running around, jumping, crawling. He will often crawl right on top of her, step on her -  we are working on building awareness of this. It isn't limited to her, yesterday he ran out the front door not paying any attention to the steps and fell down skinning his arm and forehead pretty good. That type of behavior could be related to his traumatic brain injury, but it could just be that he has never been taught the need for that awareness. I'm not ready to jump to any conclusions at this point. It does put him at increased risk for injuring himself, though.

As I shared before, Matthew is loving his daddy!! When Mark goes outside, Matthew will run to the window to watch him and call to him. Mark has started working on Matthew's bedroom (he is splitting our family room into two smaller rooms - bedroom and office/den) so he is often busy downstairs. Matthew wants to be with his daddy instead of upstairs with Maia and me.

Yes... there are some challenging moments. Learning that mom/dad are the ones in charge and that some behaviors are not acceptable is hard. Matthew's got a good set of lungs and he exercises them several times a day - lol! But, I can see him starting to understand that even after he has "consequences," we talk with him, reassure and love on him. I have no doubt that he will respond positively as this continues.

Sleep is proving to be a little bit of a challenge. The kids are sharing a bedroom right now and Matthew usually wakes up around 4am crying because he has to go to the bathroom. That wakes Maia up and Mark and I are up for the day. Not sure if we should wake him up during the night (around 2am) and take him to the bathroom, then put him back in bed - anyone have any thoughts?

But, all in all - things are as good as we expected. The kids are screaming at each other right now, so I better run and find out what they are up to. ;-)