Friday, January 3, 2014

Coming home, Christmas and the New Year!

So, coming home was busy. Way busier than I thought it would be, and that's why I am just now getting to this.

Coming home from Serbia went so well. Stefan did amazing! He laughed the whole way, except when he was sleeping. We did get up and walk in the plane a little, but only when we just couldn't take it anymore. He loved it though. He blew kisses to everyone around us, and said hello to all the "Grandmas" he could see. Several passengers told us what a good job we did raising our son! I said "Thanks! We've only known him for 3 weeks!" They were all amazed that he wasn't our biological son. He impressed them even more with his very limited English. Everything was going perfectly until we landed in Chicago. 

Let me tell you. WE WILL NEVER COME HOME THROUGH CHICAGO O'HARE when adopting. NOT EVER EVER AGAIN! Customs was fine, they directed us to the wrong line, but that was an easy enough fix. The guy said here is your pink folder, let them know you adopted they will move you to the top of the pile. So that's what we did. There were probably 50 or 60 other people waiting in the immigration line, all with pink folders. For adoptive families, there was us, and a mother who was bringing home her little girl from China. Her family was on adoption number 8 and this was their first time through Chicago. We told them we had adopted and that we needed to get to our next flight asap. "Don't worry we're the best of the best" they said. 

Yeah... I get that it was busy. I get that technically you shouldn't cut the lines, but we were the only ones with little children... heck the only ones with kids at all, and both kids had been up for 24+ hours. Needless to say we missed our flight, thanks to "the best of the best". When they did finally call us Stefan finally had fallen asleep. Then they tell me they need another picture for his application, because the dumb @$$ was in such a hurry to open the documents he ripped the picture. "I don't know what you're going to do if you don't have another picture." he tells me. 

Well, luckily I had one, but I had to search through everything to find it, all while our plane was taking off with out us. I WAS FURIOUS. I was so angry when I found the picture I threw it at him and said "You're f***ing lucky I had this. I suggest next time you be more careful, especially since you had no intention to get us to our plane on time." 

Then the next guy says, "You're going to have to wake him up I need to see his face."

Wait. What? Wake him up? F*** that. "We're not waking him up." I informed the guy, "You're just going to have to look from there." So Eric turned enough so the guy could see part of Stefan's face. 
"Ok you're all set. Have a nice flight." They said with a smirk.

I glared back. "No, now I get to go find a new flight, or I have to drive 8 hours home (Eric tells me it's actually 6 but close enough) with a child I barely know, and who I am sure has had enough. If I thought I could have gotten away with punching them both, I might have done it, they both deserved it. 

So we go to see if there is another flight to Minneapolis that night. Nope, not on our airline, and we couldn't afford to switch. Ok, what to do? Take a bus? No that didn't sound appealing. So we asked for a list of rental car places. We could have spent the night and gone out in the morning, but it turns out they were cancelling flights the next morning.

We had every intention of driving the rest of the way. We got about an hour out of Chicago (after like 2 or 3 thanks to rush hour) and Eric had enough. We called his mom to see if she could call his uncle so we could crash at their place for a few hours. Took off around 4 the next morning and that was that. We had a few melt downs on the way home, but who could blame Stefan? Even Eric and I wanted to cry.

I will keep the rest of this short for now. Stefan should be waking from his nap soon so, I won't have time to finish anyway. 

CHRISTMAS!

We had a very nice Christmas until it was time for Stefan to have a moment to himself. Poor guy got overloaded with people and gifts. We tried to help him stay separate from the group, but he really wanted to play with the other kids, so we let him. (I know we are terrible for not isolating, but he loved it)

Christmas morning we opened presents just with our little family, and then the meltdown came. He cried ALL DAY after the gifts were done. He decided he hated Eric and anytime Eric looked at him he cried. So we let him cry. We tried to console him if we could, but the fact was, he just wanted to cry. The hatred for Eric continued for the next few days, despite our best attempts to get it to stop. Strangely enough, Eric decided to feel chocolate pudding to Stefan, and all was good after that. They have no problems any more, at least for now. 

New Years!

Eric went to bed at 8, Stefan stayed up until 10. Mama got insomnia and didn't sleep that night. We've been having mostly happy days. Stefan is starting to test us A LOT. He has also decided he doesn't have to listen to anyone unless he wants to. He is absolutely adorable when he does it, but we are working on it. My favorite is when you can see he is ready to drop over from being tired and says, "neću go to sleep Mama" (I will not go to sleep Mama) He is starting to tell me no a lot, but he is also learning that Mama is the Boss. I was very frustrated with him one day, so I put him in the corner and sat near him. He laughed into the corner, that of course made me more mad, but after a little bit of his laughter, I was laughing too. This boy will be a challenge, I can tell already! He is way too smart for his own good!

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