Two Weeks!

We've been a family for two weeks! I'm starting to love Wednesdays. It feels like some sort of fun milestone! 

In the last few days we finally figured out SLEEP! WOOHOO!!! I reached a day of desperation and extreme exhaustion that prompted me to slam some caffeine and read (the important parts of) a sleep related book in order to figure some stuff out. It worked! 

We already thought that Alex might be overly tired, and this book confirmed it. We learned that we need to put Alex to bed BEFORE he crashes. In fact, we learned that we should start our bedtime routine at the very first sign of tiredness and put him to bed while he's still awake and in a good mood. If he's cranky and rubbing his eyes, it's too late! 

Believe it or not, he is now going to bed EARLIER and sleeping in LATER! YEAH!!! I was so over getting up for the day at 4am with two late night wake-ups in between. He still wakes up a couple times a night, but he goes back to sleep more easily and we're working on phasing out those wake-ups. 

Sleep has been one of our biggest challenges thus far, mostly because we all started out with jet-lag! Our first days home, we were literally sleeping during the day and awake all night. Not good. Also, it took us awhile to work out a bedtime routine (since who even knew when bedtime was). We were all exhausted and just slept when we were tired!

Ever since we got home, we've also been trying to teach Alex some baby sign language. We've been a bit inconsistent in our usage, but today he started using the sign for "more" out of no where! Other signs we are trying to teach him are: all done, water, and milk. When he gets those, we'll throw in some more! 

He also says at least one word in English already: hi! It started out sounding normal, like hi, but has recently turned into "hine," lol! He used to just say hi to us and the cats, but now he's saying hi to everything! And of course he adds a cute little wave with every "hine." Every once in awhile he'll say something that sounds like other English words, but we're not sure if it's meaningful language, imitation, or random babble. 

So that's what's happening! We are working on getting him out of the house more and starting to slowly introduce him to family and friends. He's quite shy and uncomfortable with strangers so it might take some time for him to come out of his shell with everyone, but we'll get there. Until then, we'll keep you updated here on what's happening in Alex's world! 

Here are some picture of our last few days together:

(pictures removed)

We love our little man!!!