Cocoon Stage

We are home! I will post more about our second trip (which was amazing!) later. Above is one of my favorite pictures from this trip though. For now we are calling our daughter Mezi, which is an abbreviation of her nick name Meseret, because that is what she knows and responds to. She loves bracelets so we bought her a few on our shopping trip the last day as well as the hat she is wearing.

Mezi did great on the flight but it was still oh so looong. 18 hours flying time plus a five hour layover in Frankfurt makes for a very tired travel group. Our dear friend Kate was so kind to take time out from a get together at her home to come pick us up at the airport.


This was the first morning home and the boys were arguing over who got to have Mezi on their lap. She took to the boys right away and follows them all over the house. I think having older kids is really helping her transition because after all, she is used to having lots of other children around all the time. Our goal was to just keep Mezi at home this week while the boys stay in their normal routine. However, this morning it was obvious that she wanted to go with them when they left for school as she put her shoes on while they put on theirs so she may start going with them for drop offs and pick ups sooner than we anticipated.

It amazes us with how quickly she is adapting, it's hard to believe we've only been home a few days! However, for every typical toddler moment like this we have, she also has times were she is obviously scared or confused. She likes Pete and is getting more comfortable with him but when she is really tired or scared she wants me.



She also very quickly learned the game of dropping things for mom and dad to pick up. Right now we are doing our very best to spoil her. A big part of this is establishing trust that we will meet her needs. Nick really seems to get this and tries to find toys to play with her and ways to make her smile. Noah is taking a little longer to adjust to his new big brother role which is understandable since he is no longer the youngest. For now we are just so thankful to be home and how well our daughter is adjusting to her family and home. If you had told us this summer that we would have her home before Thanksgiving we wouldn't have believed it. It's not hard to guess what we are thankful for this year :)