The rest of the kids...

I suppose you are wondering what is going on with the other children? It seems like there are two that get most of the blogging attention:)

Beloved had a great year on a home school basketball team. She won the All Star award for getting the most tally points out of 7 categories. Things like blocks, rebounds, defensive rebounds, etc. She was not the highest points scorer, but I think was 2nd or 3rd. She is such a joy to watch and they won every game she was there to play (except at the tournament where we had some emotional losses).

Beloved is going to be a life guard this summer and has her drivers permit! She is growing up (is very tall!!) and as we navigate the teenage girl stage her father and I are learning to lean on the Truth of God's promises and work in her life.

Buddy and Beloved have the tough jobs of having been "ousted" from their comfortable role as the only two children and being the oldest children on whom much responsibility has fallen. I would be deceiving you to say the transition from 2 to 6 has been easy, but we try to remind them (and ourselves) that God has not called us to a comfortable life.

Buddy, through this transition, has also entered into the pre-teen years and is dealing with "stuff" that we had previously thought was just Buddy's "quirkiness." He is a very, very loveable and precious child that we adore. However, he has many sensitivities to sound, food texture, people, etc that result in over stimulation so we have had to learn to navigate these issues. While Beautiful is our social butterfly, Buddy is our hermit:)

Superman has grown into a very loving and protective child. He is so caring and thoughtful about others. He desires for everyone to like him and really wants to be a policeman to help others. I worry about the horrible things that he would see as a policeman:( He receives speech/language intervention at the public school one afternoon a week. I am thankful that the school psychologist was willing to hear our concerns and took time for extra testing and diagnostics so we could see what was hindering Superman. What we discovered was a severe difficulty with processing auditory information and cannot hold 2 pieces of information at the same time well, especially if there is distraction (What! Distraction in our house?? Never lol!). Since most information is taught auditorily this has been hard for me to compensate for in home school. However, he is making significant progress from a year ago and is actually reading pretty on track for kindergarten as long as we use the techniques we have developed. The biggest problem continues to be in public as he has such high fear reactions in public and where there is so much information coming at him that he cannot process what is being said to him (e.g. stay by us, don't wonder off, make sure that we can see you, etc). We know that he carries many hurts from his past, but he has not yet allowed himself the vulnerability of opening that part of himself to us. He perceives many things as rejection and we struggle with bridging that gap to feelings of safety.

Faith is our compliant and easy child (yes!!! we have ONE!!!!) She is very bright and is learning with leaps and bounds. She is learning very well from the apps on the ipad and she is an intuitive reader and math student. I am so thrilled with how easy she is to teach and how quickly she catches on. I have to be sure to not let her fall into the shadows since she is not a "squeaky wheel." However, out of all of the children she is the most sensitive and emotional. She is a true "princess!!" She needs lot of reassurance, smiling eyes, encouragement, and reminders that she doesn't have to know everything the very first time she is exposed to it. The down side to this is that she thinks a lot about being adopted, about missing her birth mom, about "forever," and deals with abandonment and hurt at a deep level.

There you go, updates in as small of a nutshell as I can get it:)

Buddy

Yes, as long as the other kids are all needing changes in their diets/lives...why should we leave out Buddy lol! The long of it in short story form: When we went to the dentist last time we found out that Buddy has "tongue thrust" problem. We were recommended to put him in Myofunctional Therapy. After pondering that for 2 months we have decided to get him started on that today. We had a 1 hour initial assessment. Wow, I had no idea about speech/language issues or swallowing issues, etc. Buddy met the classic symptoms for "tongue thrust" problems. Since I had no idea about these things and am finding they are pretty common, I thought I would attempt to share this with you, without embarrassing my son in the mean time.

Before you read on, swallow. Notice where your tongue goes. It is supposed to press against the top of your mouth and not against your teeth. Well, Buddy's tongue doesn't even TOUCH the top of his mouth when he swallows, it only pushes forward against his teeth. That is leading to spaces between his teeth and a deformity with the roof of his mouth that is affecting his breathing and will only increase if not corrected. When a person swallows the food is supposed to go over the tongue, the soft palate at the back of the roof of the mouth is supposed to raise up and the uvala (whatever that sticky down thing is at the back of your throat ) is supposed to move backwards to close off the nasal passage while eating/drinking. Buddy's doesn't even move. That makes is much harder to swallow. In fact, he just puts food in and it goes right down his throat - especially liquids.

Here is the kicker...Buddy is an EXTREMELY picky eater. We found out today that kids with this problem are picky eaters because they simply cannot swallow many textures of food due to the way their mouth is not working properly. We had decided early on that the battle to get him to eat was not worth it. I am now VERY glad that we did not make that a battle because it was far more than a strong will...it is actually a structural problem with swallowing. He has taken a lot of grief over this for the years (and won't even go to camp in the summer due to food issues). We (and amazingly he is too) are very excited that he supposedly will be able to eat more foods soon!

Finally, when one's tongue and mouth is not working properly one does not enunciate as well as one should. We have always complained to Buddy that he is a mumbler. Soon, he should not be mumbling:)

So, for the next 14 - 18 weeks we get to drive to the next down over every week and have him do 30 minutes of swallowing (and other things) therapy. After that will be every 3 weeks, 6 weeks, etc until at the end of a year he will hopefully be cured.

Because life ALWAYS throws us curve balls and every time we think we are treading water something else happens to dunk us again:) It is all good, and it makes me trust and totally rely on God because I certainly can't do any of this in my own power.

Buddy

Update on Buddy. Not much is new with him. He and his dad have been busy fishing and planning fishing trips. They enjoy that sport even in the cold...I'd rather be home lol! He has fun wrestling with Superman and I am so glad they have each other. Our boys are all 5 years apart so they don't have a male sibling right near their age to play with - therefore I'm glad they play together so well. Buddy is gearing up for the fair again and will mount some kind of animal:) He continues his love of cooking/baking - partly in response to being one of the pickiest eaters ever lol! I won't cook a separate meal for him so he has learned to fend for himself. He actually is a pretty good cook - hopefully his future wife will appreciate that since he probably won't eat what she cooks lol! Air soft has already begun and he is ready for spring and summer for that "sport." He is our "techie" who knows all about computers and can run my itouch better than I can:) He has a special place in his heart for JJ and is great with him:) He is our child with the personality most like me so we understand each other pretty well...He is a joy and a delight to me and I am blessed that he is my son:)