We are home!!

Yes, we made it home! No problems with flights. Although we didn't get on the earlier flight in Amsterdam, the five hour layover passed amazingly quickly. It helped that the airport has a children's play area that the kids LOVED! We were so excited to see familiar restaurants - I had spaghetti for breakfast. :-)

Matthew did pretty well on the flights. He had a few difficult moments. We gave him some baby Benadryl at take off from Amsterdam and he slept for about 3 hours. We've tried it before with Maia and it only makes her cranky and doesn't help with sleep. She had several "episodes" and only slept for about 30 minutes. So by the time we landed in Minneapolis, it had been nearly 24 hours since we left our apartment in Kiev. My parents met us at the airport with our car (thanks mom and dad!). Maia didn't sleep on the way home. Matthew fell asleep about 45 minutes before we got there and didn't wake up when we arrived. Mark just carried him in and we put him to bed.

So his first view of "home" was this morning. He checked it all out, I think it was a little overwhelming for him. But there is no question what the BEST thing is - Mark took Matthew outside to show him around. When Matthew saw one of our 4-wheelers, he was in heaven!!! He ran over to it and immediately crawled up on it. Mark took him for a ride and we had one happy boy!! I wish that I'd had the camera for a picture. Mark was happy, too since he was pretty disappointed that Maia was and continues to be afraid of our ATVs.

We had a lazy day, did run a couple of errands. Because we were going to come home during the 10 day wait period, I had planned to buy Matthew some clothes once I knew what size he wore. The few things I did buy before are way too big for him. Poor kid - he only had what we bought in Ukraine (3 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts). So, we ran to the Goodwill to get him something to wear. And the refrigerator was empty so we needed to get some groceries.

Being out and about confirms my earlier feelings that we will have to keep things quieter with Matthew. We just packed Maia up and carried on with our usual routines. She was pretty mellow and tolerated this without much difficulty. Matthew is going to struggle more with the commotion and stimulus of being in busy places. I can tell it is a bit overwhelming and anxiety producing for him. So... if friends and family want to see us, they will probably need to come to our house or we will at least need to plan very low-key activities for a while.

That being said, we think he is doing well. He absolutely LOVES daddy. Mark ran to the hardware store this afternoon and Matthew was pretty upset when he left. Maia has a love-hate relationship with him.Yes, I know - typical sibling behavior! They were both wiped out by the end of the day. Maia was asleep by the time we finished our bedtime prayers and Matthew was asleep in less than five minutes. Hope that continues!!

There's more to share, but I'm ready to join them in dream land. More soon!