The Gates Family Way

Time for Post #500...

The weekend has passed, I'm back to work, and Jenn is as busy as ever keeping up with now three kids. Henry is definitely in the process of getting used to the Gates Family way of doing things. In some aspects he's regressed from the progress that seemed to be occurring in our second week with him, but that's what happens when you move from hotel living to a house with other kids and lots of space. It makes sense when one thinks about the fact that he spent months in a room of an orphanage and then when things did get mixed up, he moved to another small room with two people that gave him constant attention (and food!). Things are different now.
Henry's making progress in the food/eating department, and he's sleeping quite well. He's irrationally fearful of the dogs, and that is something that we'll have to keep working on. This afternoon is the first time we've seen him start to come out of his shell since we've been home. This evening, when I was wrestling with Lincoln and Lydia, he came over to us and did his version of playing with us. I was encouraged to see him plug himself into the action a bit.

That didn't take long.

Jenn and I feel like our expectations for this stage of the adoption weren't unrealistic, but rather we didn't have much expectations for this stage. There's certainly not much said that we've heard from others in the adoption community about these initial days and weeks following the adoption other than, "Life is great, things are wonderful." It may be because most families are so busy with getting things back on track to even have time to comment and share their feelings and experiences. As Jenn and I have come to learn about most stages of life, no matter the stage or the surrounding events, reality is often different than that which many like to project. So we're working through what needs to be worked through, and we're keeping a big-picture attitude about all of it.

Today while Jenn was out pulling the kids in the wagon, she and Lincoln noticed a lot of chirping. It was Lincoln that spotted this robin's nest very quickly in the tree beside our driveway, and it's the mother that causes a big to-do when we get too close to the nest.
Yesterday we enjoyed a fun dinner with the entire Hopwood crew. We got to see Ella for the first time, and the Hopwoods got to catch Henry for the first time.