Viruses and Blizzards and Tantrums, Oh My!

Sorry for the lack of posts and photos. Some photos are trapped in our phones. And then there is the matter of time. Mommy spent at least three hours rubbing Jiejie's tummy today before she spewed the prunes we had fed her. She got the tummy thing a day after TJ and Meimei did. TJ is taking his antibiotics for his sinus infection, but Mommy and Daddy haven't been to the doctor yet for their own sniffles. There are Bendaroos underfoot and heaps of tiny parts to various toys that have migrated around the house since Christmas morning. There is little chance of escaping, however, as the snow is piling up outside, and the wind is roaring around the house and whooshing down the flue.

This was TJ's first snow. We managed to get him bundled up and let the kids go out for a few minutes (before Clare got sick). He stood at the door repeating "Wow! Wow!" He told us that snow tastes like ice cream (he had already seen "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" at the hotel in China). He really enjoyed those few icy minutes, but the rest of the day was not such fun for him. He did not want to brush his teeth, and spent a long time crying and arguing about it in Chinese. He did not like the noodles I made him because they had eggs in them (he always eats noodles with eggs in them), because I did not drain the soup out and because they were a different color than Meimei's. (She likes hers with "panda sauce," which  think is actually oyster sauce with a panda on the label.)  He doesn't want to sleep in his room. The girls don't want to sleep in their rooms. Five people is too many for our bed, and we promised the social worker we would end the co-sleeping before TJ came. We had made great strides toward ending it, but two weeks in China with a choice of a king bed or two twins reinforced old habits, and now we are fighting the battle of the beds again with a bunch of jet-lagged, tummy-troubled kids. Daddy picked up TJ and carried him to his bed after he fell asleep, but TJ awoke and began a tearful debate on the floor of the upstairs hall. He said he is afraid to sleep in his room, he wants to sleep with the mom and dad he turns his back to when he deigns to address them. We know that none of this is unusual for a child adopted at TJ's age, and that he will test us and challenge us and try to keep us from loving him. He's working very hard at it. We have to work just as hard to convince him that we will keep loving him no matter what.