My Jealous Babes

I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the kids interact and get to know each other as brother and sister. They are loving towards each other, they have a blast playing with each other (today Michael was pulling Liliana around on a blanket), but most of all they are jealous of each other.

I never would have thought this would be a reaction they would have to each other. I am not sure why - I think it's probably a natural response between brother and sister. If I have Liliana Faye in my lap, Michael will whine on the floor or try and push her out of my lap so he can crawl in. If Michael is on my lap, Liliana is the one crying on the floor or trying to claw her way into my arms. I've imagined people fighting over me before - 2 guys in a parking lot throwing punches at each other to win my love - but not 2 kids throwing a hissy-fit on the floor because they don't get to sit in my lap. I wish I could say it's flattering, but really it's just kind of annoying.

Today the kids slept until 7:30, which was a pleasant treat. Liliana is on a food strike today. Food that she usually loves she refuses to eat. I checked out her mouth and it looks like another tooth is coming in. So she had her first bottle in quite a while. And some orajel. She usually hates when I give her the orajel, but she tolerated it today. Maybe she new how great it was going to make her feel!

Michael continues to be a challenge. I am beginning to realize that he probably doesn't understand as much as we think he does. However, he has learned a lot of the rules at home and the number of time outs seems to be decreasing every day. I am also making sure to give him some special mommy time each day. Liliana is taking a 2.5 hour nap and Michael will nap only 1.5 hours. That way we get 1 hour to play together without Liliana. He seems to respond very well to alone time and his behavior reflects that.

A random side note: Many of you have been asking about our meeting with the birth moms. I completely forgot in the midst of the craziness to share about what happened. The director of the agency was supposed to set up the meeting while we were in Ethiopia. She ended up spending most of her time helping another kids' birth mom come to meet the adoptive family and passed our case on to the director of the orphanage. While we were in Ethiopia, he went out of town and we were not able to get a hold of him the entire week. Therefore, we were not able to meet the birth moms. We were disappointed, but we knew that we did everything we could to meet them, so we have no regrets. The agency told us they have a video with an interview with each birth mom for us, but it's being edited right now. We are hoping to be able to get that soon.