The Smith Family Rocks Blog: Update: Our First Week Home

Sorry, we've been bad bloggers since getting home. As you can imagine, we've been a little preoccupied since we got back.

We've now had a full week home with Aubrey and what a difference a week has made. The first half of the week was really tough. Aubrey's temper seemed to be getting more and more volatile as the week progressed, but the second half of the week has been signifigantly better.

We also had a lot of fun this week as Aubrey has been meeting lots of new people. She seems to do better in small groups at home rather than out in public with lots of people.

Aubrey meets her snowsuit

Last Sunday, we took Aubrey to Church for the first time. She did extremely well, making it through the entire service, playing quietly with a few books and doodling on the program. Everyone at Church was excited to meet her we were beaming with pride to introduce her.

Becci had been considering asking someone from the hospital, maybe a resident doctor, who spoke Mandarin to accompany us to Aubrey's first doctor appointment. She didn't know who to ask, but we really wanted someone to help interperit for Aubrey what was happening. Can you believe that at Church, the Pastors wife came up to us and said, "I'd like to introduce someone to you. This is May Ti." It turns out that May Ti just arrived in town the day before to do an affiliation at the Robert Packer Hospital, in Physical Therapy, part of Becci's Dept, and will be here for about 10 weeks. Though she's from Malaysia, she speaks Mandarin and was willing to go along to Aubrey's appointment. Divine intervention was in full effect that day.

Even with May's help, for which we can't thank her enough, Aubrey's appointment was rough. She did alright until we had to lay her down on the table for Dr. Ahmed to examine her. That's when she went into full defense mode and flipped out. Dr. Ahmed did his best to examine her, but we eventually had to take her to a different exam room to calm her down. The good news is she is very healthy, and the Dr. has determined that "She's a fighter!"

Aaron returned to school on Monday and was treated to some wonderful surprises. His class threw a party to celebrate his return and there were cards and presents for both him and Aubrey. We all walked over to the school to pick Aaron up on Monday and when the kids saw Aubrey it was mass chaos. She handled all the attention pretty well, but had a meltdown after a few minutes. She's weirded out on us at the school pretty much everyday, but Becci is timing it so she gets there just in time to meet Aaron then scoots right out and she seems to be doing better with it.

Score! leftover cupcakes from Aaron's party

Her pretty dress from Sister Anne and Aaron's class that she had to try on immediately

By midweek though, Aubrey started to level out some. She's had good days all along, but her breakdowns were more frequent and severe earlier. Now she seems much more willing to let things go without a fight and is exhibiting more typical levels of toddler disagreeability (my word). She will still throw knock down tantrums, but further between incidents, Thursday was completely tantrum free, and seems to recover much quicker.

Her vocabulary is growing, too. She's been starting to call me Daddy occassionally, we're getting sporadic Thank you's and Your Welcomes, she's working on ABC and 123. Every now and then she'll pick up a word that she seems to like and use it a lot for a while, like "later" or "No, no, no", today I got a super clear "stop it" and after playing a DVD bingo game, she said Bingo a bunch of times. We are also hearing "Apple", "up", "down", "Grandpa" and "Dow Jones Industrial Average" (not really)

Becci has been very busy altering Aubrey's clothes, and has developed the technique for shortening her left sleeve. Most mornings, Becci will dress her, then take out a pair of scissors and cut the left sleeve off of her shirt, which Aubrey thinks is the funniest thing ever. She seems to really enjoy watching Becci sew and seems very happy to have shirts that don't impede her arm from being out. She's also discovered that she loves pigtails. We had a few nice visits this week. Our good friends Jodi and Tom stopped by. Wendy and Tammy from the studio and Tammy's son Chris came over for a while last weekend and got the full debriefing on our trip. We also received a wonderful visit from my Grandfather, Pop Pop as Aaron and Aubrey know him, and my Aunt Joan. They brought some great presents for the kids, including a handmade doll crib along with the doll and some beautiful hand made outfits for the doll that Joan crocheted herself. Aubrey is smitten with the doll and squeals everytime the doll opens it's eyes.

Her favorite activities at home so far are swinging on the swingset, but it puts her to sleep everytime..., playing in the toy kitchen and the real kitchen. She loves to help set and clear the table, and will spend an hour washing 3 or 4 dishes in the sink. She also likes to help cook and helped make brownies yesterday.