Kieran's settling in

Three of the four babies in our group are pretty easy going. Guess which of the four babies we have? Was it Sesame Street that had the four photos on the screen that read, "Which one of these is not like the others?" Well for us, that would have three babies laughing and calmly sitting on their parent's lap and Kieran would be the fourth child banging on whatever is in front of him.

Well, each day is so different from the one before. Kieran is learning so much (and I guess we are learning a lot about him too.) We are so in love with this little guy and are amazed at how perfect he is for us (he is a head strong kid just like his mom and dad.)

His teething issues and heat rash are subsiding so we are seeing so many more smiles now. He is obsessed with pulling himself up and if we grab his hands - he pulls himself up to sit and then stands - with very little help. He is a handful to say the least - we are shocked by how strong he is. We feel so lucky that he is doing so well developmentally. We never thought he'd be crawling and standing up already. The orphanage definitely gave him a lot of attention. That said, he's a very in your face kind of kid. He will NOT be ignored and he will NOT be still if he is awake. If the waitresses here didn't offer to carry him when we eat, it would be nearly impossible to eat anything at all. He is getting slightly better about us sitting down once in a while.

He still doesn't sleep through the night so we are very sleep deprived. We also don't have internet access regularly so posting to the blog is tough at times.

Tonight all the families (except for Molly who is very sick) went to Brenda's daughter's birthday party. Raven was five years old today and we had ice cream and cake after dinner which was really nice. During the day, Santosh, Kieran and I went to see the Cu Chi tunnels today with Brenda's husband Jeff and son Ryker. Her kids are doing really well on the trip and so are Molly's. I'm amazed at how patient and mature they all are - there is a lot of waiting around and they handle it so well.

After the party, we went to the store buy yet another 5 liter bottle of water for Kieran - yes he went through 5 liters in just under 3 days - you can figure out how many diapers we have gone through if he's drinking so much. It was pouring as usual so we had the very large gold umbrella that the hotel lent us on our way out. Santosh was holding Kieran in the Baby Bjorn and Kieran was holding the umbrella with both hands as they walked - he always has to do what we do.

When we got to the store, Santosh closed up the umbrella and Kieran grabbed it. Santosh must have lost track of what had happened and a few minutes later, we realized that Kieran had been carrying this huge umbrella for quite a long time in the store. This little guy is very strong for a 7 month old - that umbrella was very big and bulky - about 36 inches long and it was no problem for him. Of course when we saw this and thought it was so cute - we tried to get him to do it again. He refused to do it again and I'm sure everyone around us thought we were nuts for trying to get this infant to carry a family size umbrella for us.

Well, I'm far behind on the blog - lots of stories to catch up on but when Kieran falls asleep - we hit the deck. We fall asleep immediately knowing it will be a very short time until he's up again and running around.

More info to follow tomorrow.

Jen