Saturday

Yesterday and today have been good days. I guess I'm not as scarey as the dogs are. Amanda slept in my bed the first night and let me carry her to the bathroom when she needed to go. The next morning I let her know I was going to let the dogs outside and she hid on the other side of the bed. Later in the day, she was fine with me holding one dog at a time in the same room as her. She actually pet the cat in the evening. No tantrums. She started pointing to things so I could tell her what we call them and she was going through the stickers and the First Thousand Words book. She decided to sleep in the bedroom she shares with Anna last night. She's the first to adjust to local time. The rest of us are all off kilter.

This morning Anna claimed she hadn't slept most of the night and then fell asleep on my bed. Jessica felt warm yesterday and slept most of the day and was up way too late, so was also asleep. So I decided to see if Amanda would go to the post office and Target with me while sitting in the car seat. No problems on either front. She hopped right in the car seat and enjoyed her trip to Target with me talking the whole time. She didn't have any trouble putting everything she saw into the cart, but didn't protest at all when I took things back out.

I'm waiting for a call letting me know my tire is fixed - it went flat while we were gone. Then tonight another friend and her daughters are coming for a short visit to meet Amanda. We'll also color eggs later. I think we'll stay home tomorrow. I just talked to one of my brothers to let him know we're not ready to entertain anyone at our house yet and I'd rather not travel too far, so maybe we can get together next weekend after we're a little more settled. He traveled to the Ukraine last year so figured we'd need some time to get settled and back to normal or to our new normal. There is still dance tomorrow, so I'll try to bring the girls to that since they have a recital in a few weeks. There should be some Mandarin speaking parents and kids there and I hope they can see if Amanda has any questions now that she's home. Then we can have a nice family dinner at home and Jessica and Anna can get ready to return to school on Monday.