America

We arrived in Chicago at 6:40am on December 11th, and when we went through Immigration Ian became a US Citizen. We then went onto Tulsa and arrived a little bit before noon. Our Friday night flight from Guangzhou to Beijing was very eventful to say the least and because it was so hard I will spare you the details. We sat on the airplane for 3 hours before it took off for 3 hours so we arrived around 1am. We had about 2 hours of sleep before we headed back to the airport for our 7:55am flight to Chicago. Thankfully the kids slept a lot of the 12 hour flight and we only had a 2 hour layover in Chicago before flying to Tulsa.

Since being in America since Saturday we have been trying to get over jet lag, trying to get better from sickness and trying to keep the ones of us who are sick from the ones who are not!

We took Elijah to the doctor a few days ago and found out he had a double ear infection along with his cough, congestion and fever. When we were leaving Guangzhou we called our international doctor and he directed us to some antibiotic eye drops for Elijah's eyes since he needed that. A few days into being here Ev started having the problem with her eyes and this morning Todd woke up with his eye matted shut too. All of us have coughs now and I am just hoping we will be over the sickness and jet lag before Christmas!

Each day the kids are sleeping in a little later. The first morning Ev and Elijah woke up at 1:30am! We have spent our early mornings taking the whole family to Walmart, going to McDonald's for breakfast and baths all at 4am, 5am and 6am.

I haven't taken any pictures since Saturday so hopefully I will get to doing that again. Ian has continued to amaze us in every transition and experience. He has now eaten mac and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, roast, mashed potatoes, green beans, oranges, apples, donuts, cereal among other things. We began feeding him baby food but he has mastered feeding himself so well that we only give him table food now. Ian has watched the kids drink out of sippy cups so we bought him one and he has figured that out too. This morning Todd tried giving him real milk instead of formula and he wanted more. He is not a picky eater at all!

Yesterday Todd and I took him to his first US doctor's appointment. Our doctor was pleased with where he is at and thinks things are going well. She looked over all the medical records we were given and also is not worried about his heart condition. She isn't even suggesting we have it checked out further. Since he is developmentally delayed we will hopefully qualify for a free service that will come to our house and work with him on all the areas he is delayed in. We are excited for this opportunity to have these services while we are here in the States.