We have an addition on our home where lots of "extras" get put throughout the wintertime when I get in a cleaning frenzy and don't have anywhere else to put things. Yesterday my husband and I got it cleaned out and filled our big van with things to take to the Rescue Mission. My husband look 3 kids fishing today and dropped off those items. He then went to Menards and Walmart...so we will now have more projects to get completed:) We are getting a new driveway, so my husband removed some pavement block we had in the way and moved them to our backyard where he is creating a bit of a secluded patio quiet space. He is a gem:)
Our gardens are planted. We have the usual space and then Buddy built us 2 garden boxes. Beautiful and Buddy each have one to take care of for the summer...planting to harvest. With only 8 plants each I hope they stay on top of it well. They already help with all of the canning at harvest time so that will not be new to them.
Beautiful started her job as a lifeguard last weekend. It has been cool and rainy so today is her first full day of work. She really enjoys being a lifeguard...it brings out her natural enjoyment of being in authority over others;) We are entering the conversations on her buying a car. Yikes!!
Superman has been reading like no other. I can't keep ahead of him lol! We have all of the YWAM books on missionaries/inventors/political persons (like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln). He reads a book in 2 - 3 days. He is a boy after my own heart! He also really enjoys basketball and can be found outside shooting hoops frequently:)
Faith continues to work hard with her studies. She is a stellar student. The girls are in an interesting place right now relationally and I think that Faith is trying to find the new normal with some changes that have taken place. She also continues to grieve the loss of her 1/2 sister (as do we all) and it has brought up many tough conversations. The other night the kids initiated a very difficult conversation on prenatal drug/alcohol exposure and how it affects the child, how it impacts HHS involvement, how it affects the capacity for relationships/learning/etc later in life. My husband and I believe that our children should not have information kept from them, even on hard topic, but that we should use discretion on how it is discussed or what age needs what information. Faith is the one who asks the hardest and most pointed questions, reading "between the lines" of what my husband and I are not saying forcing the topics to be discussed. We very much do not want our kids to think ill of their biological parents, but we also want them to think realistically. That line is not clean or easy.
JJ loves to play outside. We have noticed that in the last two days he is getting darker and darker. We wondered if it was sun exposure. Superman and Faith are already so dark that they don't get darker in the sun. But then I gave JJ a bath and he was back to his normal color;)
Grace...I find that there is a place in Grace's behavior when she is difficult that I can make jokes and comments about it trying to find the humor in it and we can move forward. However, there is then the place where her behavior is so...difficult...that I can't even wrap my head around it and just isolate. That is where we have been as of late. We have had to make major, major changes to the structure of our home lately and it has created significant upheaval for several family members. We finally had to move kids around so she is in a room by herself. That means that the boys were uprooted from their room. That means that JJ wakes up every night and seeks us out because he is not in "his" bed and he fights naps because it is not "his" bed. That also means I am getting less sleep. I can tell:( We also had to structure the dynamics of child interactions in a way that the kids are having to get used to new increased boundaries and rules. That is keeping us all a little "off" until we can get used to this new normal. Finally, I marched Grace back to the physician and we added another medication. It is so ironic to me that we tried for years to do this without meds and now I am realizing that it is a necessary part of life. Anyway, yesterday was the first day in MANY months that at the end of the day I actually felt a lightness on my chest and thought "this is a good day." Not a terrible day. Not even a day that I was able to endure. But is was a good day. I am not so naive as to think it is the new normal but we will keep adjusting. We are wishing we would understand what THE issue was that made her behavior so much calmer yesterday so we can replicate it. We will figure it out:)
We are realizing that JJ will be 3 soon. He will start asking questions about his birth family. He already loves to look at the pictures of his birth mom, but obviously doesn't really understand who she is. We are trying to prepare for that conversation whether it be in a year or whenever he asks the first time "who is my birth mom" and then the tough one "who is my birth dad?" We have written to his birth mom to see her thoughts on us contacting the birth dad. She responded to another portion of my email but did not answer that question...so we will wait to see what we do. We know how to contact him. But we want to honor his birth mom and know she has continued contact with him due to visitation with JJ's older sister and him. So...we will pray that God makes it clear what we are to do about this so we can best help JJ know who he is (aside from being our adorable, precious, silly, loud, won't allow himself to be forgotten little sweetness:). We kind of take our cues from the other 3 kids on the questions they ask to see how we can prepare for the conversations with him.
Finally, with all of these things going on and the learning curves of life we...bought a new computer...and it has Windows 8. Ugg. What in the world was I thinking!!!!!
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