Tate has been home for six days already! It has just been a blur!

We are doing well….but we are all exhausted, and we are in survival mode! Jet lag still has the best of Grant, poor guy!

Tate is one happy little guy! He is very social, does not have fear of things, does not seem to have sensory issues, and is super smart. He is also super, duper busy, and has not learned boundaries or safety yet. He is eating as well as can be expected, and will eat better for me if I let him dip everything in ketchup! He has been sleeping well in a crib in Blake and my room. Although his happy-go-lucky joyful spirit is a wonderful thing, we have been trained to know that he is not dealing with all of this change.

Monday night in the middle of the night, Tate grieved for several hours. It was very hard, and woke up most of the other children, but Blake and I were both very thankful that Tate started working through a very important part of this process.

Tate has not even asked for Blake once since he went back to work on Monday afternoon, and also holds his arms up to the girls and calls them Mama. We are working hard to have Tate bond to Blake and I first, by having the two of us be the only ones to care for Tate and to meet his needs. I am also playing with Tate very specifically to make eye contact with him, to hold him, and give his adorable dimples lots of kisses!

Even though he seems to not miss his Baba during the day, when Blake returns home Tate goes running for him….which causes a chain reaction!

Monday and Tuesday we had doctor’s appointments, and Tate did so well! He did not even mind riding in the car seat. He is not afraid of the doctors or anything they do to check him over. They had an interpreter meet with us and the neurosurgeon in Madison on Monday, and it was SO sweet to see Tate communicate with her! He misses being able to communicate so much. The doctor was able to ask specific questions of Tate, and then the interpreter stayed with us and we were able to ask questions too. Tate told her that his favorite foods at his new home are eggs and cake!

The name of the game here at home is to try to keep Tate from knocking the whole house down, while keeping him safe and trying to play bonding games with him. Oh my goodness, good thing he is SO irresistible!!!

Did I mention he likes eggs? I can make them anyway I can think of, and he loves them!

He really did not like the big pool though. We took him swimming in it on Sunday.

Since I knew today we would be home all day and I would need something that would keep him in one spot for at least an hour, I got out the wading pool and water table. Tate loved this! And played for well over an hour!

One way to keep Tate’s focus is to have him help with things. Harvesting in the garden is by far his favorite job! He and Eliza both are a huge help in the gardens!

Eliza has always thrived with directed activities. She will come to me all day long and say “Mommy, what do? What do?” She never has really just “played” on her own. We try to engage Tate in directed activities as well, and he does enjoy them – just not for very long!

There is still a farm and a house to run, and some other amazing kiddos to attend to. We have been doing our best to keep up with everything! Our last batch of chickens met their fate yesterday. After getting them all processed, we celebrated the end of chickens for this year with huge bowls of ice cream!

Communicating with Tate is going very well. He knows many signs and he uses them easily. He is also learning words very quickly! Besides good morning and all of our names, he is already saying happy birthday, banana, love you, water, eat, and night night. Today he starting grabbing my hand and taking me to show me what it was he was trying to say. Eliza did this too – and would say “show you, show you!” Tate took me to some photos on the wall of the kids from 2001 and wanted to know who they were. It was SO cute when I had the kids come in the room so I could point to the photo and then the child the photo was of. You could just see Tate’s little mind taking it all in as he said “wooowww!”

We are thrilled with how Tate is doing so far. We are very careful to not have expectations. And we were reminded today by our post-placement caseworker, that we are probably still in that honeymoon period. Honeymoon period or not, we are just SO HAPPY that our sweet Mr. Tate is HOME!!

Tate has another big doctor’s appointment most of Friday morning and we would covet any and all prayers on his behalf!!

*Thank you all so much for your comments, texts, and e-mails! I am reading each and every one of them, I promise! I am sorry I haven’t been able to respond.