Adjusting

I had really planned on posting here more often...but for some reason I forget what it is like adding a new child to the family!  However, as much work as it has been, and as tired as we have been, this has been an amazing first month home with Hannah.  She shows us more and more of her personality all the time and we are constantly amazed at just how perfect she is for our family!  Here are some highlights:

1. Hannah was not sleeping well when we first got home.  Not only was she in a whole new place with new people, new sights, new smells, new language...she had never slept in a room alone before.  We spent many hours in her room at night sitting next to her crib so she could calm down.  Now, we put her down for bed after a night bottle, and she sleeps for 10 hours! She still is a bit frantic when she is up for the morning and doesn't calm down until we come get her, but she is feeling more and more secure!

Her first week home - enjoying all the new toys!

2. Regardless of all we heard about kids who have been in an orphanage, Hannah is the most picky eater! This is actually the area in which we battle most.  She likes all carbs, especially sweets, but will not eat meat or many veggies.  She also was not introduced to many textures, so if it isn't pureed or really soft, she is not a fan. When she came home, she was still on 4 bottles of formula a day! We have her down to 3 and have switched her to whole milk, but I think it is going to take a while to get her off of those completely.

Hannah is also a very messy eater...  After this snack, she fell fast asleep in her chair!

Aaron and Hannah have a special bond.

3. This child is super smart!  Hannah already understands so much English it is scary! We have also been able to teach her to make different, distinguishable sounds for Mama, Aaron, brother, Grandma, and up.  None of it (except for Mama) sounds like you might think because of her cleft, but she is trying like crazy! She also has signs for ceiling fan, please, thank you, more, eat, milk, and all done.

Playing with fridge magnets.

Pointing to the ceiling fan.  Hannah *loves* fans!

4. Hannah has always wanted to be held and carried, but she struggled to be truly affectionate or completely relax in our arms or during a bottle feeding.  This is rapidly changing! She seeks out affection from all of us, gives kisses and hugs, and snuggles like nobody's business! The first time she truly relaxed and let herself fall fully asleep curled up in my arms with her head on my chest was magical.  When she also then trusted me enough to transition to her crib without jerking herself awake with fright was also amazing.

Ethan, making Hannah giggle with tummy rubs!

Watching Dora with Andrew!

5. Hannah *loves* her brothers! Andrew is a great playmate and is always bringing her toys.  Ethan is so goofy with her and always trying to make her laugh or imitate him! Aaron is absolutely wonderful with Hannah.  He comforts her when she is upset, carries her around, wrestles with her, and can make her laugh and laugh!

6.  Hannah is a girly-girl.  She loves dresses, shoes (even has favorites), bows in her hair, and dolls.  Even so, she is a daddy's girl BIG TIME and loves to wrestle, climb, spin, be upside-down and anything else she can convince her daddy to do with her! What a great combo!

Clinging to Daddy!

As you can tell, we are smitten!  As for Hannah's future health-wise, we have taken her to see a doctor in the cleft palate team and although her palate repair was done very well, it didn't close completely (something that is expected with the type she had) and her lip repair was cosmetic only so the muscles in her upper lip are not attached. This causes a lot of problems, especially with speech development since she cannot move her upper lip to make certain noises.  She is scheduled for surgery in January to re-do her lip repair, and then in December of 2013 to finish closing her palate and lengthen part of her nose to give her better ability to breathe.  She also has to have ear tubes replaced this month and we are seeing a pediatric dentist next month to deal with several rotten teeth.  I hate that she has to go through these things, but she handles them all like a trooper!

Family of 6. Love.

We're Leaving On a Jet Plane

In just a few hours, we will be leaving on one of these to begin the actual journey to get to Hannah! Hopefully, ours won't be made out of Lego bricks, though. :)

Dropping the kids of for 18 days apart was very hard.  There were tears and lots of hugs, but it was sad. However, I have to brag on God in a major way! We were so concerned about Andrew, but he did so well! He did tell me twice that he was ready to go home now, once while I was giving him his bath and once before we tucked them into bed, but he accepted it when I told him that we couldn't do that.  The family they are staying with built a big blanket tent for them to sleep in, and they were so excited!  I know they are going to do so well.

Even more bragging on God: Jerry got a solution to the computer network meltdown at work.  I was so thankful that he could come home from work yesterday without that hanging over his head!

My shoulder is painful, but okay.  I haven't been able to do some of the cleaning I like to do before I leave on a trip, but my wonderful mom said she would fill in for me on what my shoulder couldn't take - thanks Mom! That is such a relief.

We did realize last night that we have to have 2 passport sized photos of each of us for our consulate appointment, so we are heading out to do that this morning.  Otherwise, we are completely packed, the boys are taken care of, we have people scheduled to be in and out of the house while we are gone, we are getting the last of the laundry done now, and in just a few hours we head off to the airport!

The next post will be made from China! Woo-Hoo!

Setbacks

This post could also be titled, "Nothing's Gonna Hold Me Down." Yesterday was perhaps one of the worst days we've had in a long time.

Jerry got to work to discover that the server controlling the company's network is down.  Completely toast.  He spent all day working on solutions and got nowhere. Until it is fixed, our company has no internet, e-mail, or access to their production software.

I completely aggravated an injury to my shoulder and found out that I sprained the tendon connecting my clavicle and shoulder - also called a separated shoulder.  I saw a chiropractor who specializes in sports injury (this was originally an injury from lifting weights) and he adjusted it and taped it and gave me a pain relief regimen to follow.  This morning I started having an allergic reaction to the tape.

The kids are emotionally struggling as our departure approaches.  Jerry and I are, too.  There were many tears in this house yesterday, and Andrew is throwing a fit about every. single. thing.

But you know what? Setbacks, or no, I know for sure that we are supposed to be doing exactly what we are doing.  I feel a peace that whether it is all sorted out before we leave tomorrow, it will all work out.  This morning when I was taking my kids to VBS, we were listening to a CD that we got from Children of the World, a division of World Help that we have supported.  The CD has kids - orphans - from Uganda, the Philippines, and Nepal singing amazing songs of worship.  On the way home, the 4th song on the CD started and a huge smile spread across my face. It is one of my favorite songs from the CD and just what I needed to hear.  If you ever have a bad day, you need this song.  Watch it.  Giggle at how precious these children are, and remember that they are orphans who have had days so bad that I don't even want to imagine.  Even so, watch the joy they have and let it seep into your soul, too.

Family Time

We have been focused on doing a few special things with our boys before leaving for China, and today we surprised them by going to the Legoland Discovery Center! They were ecstatic! All week they knew that as soon as Jerry got home from his business trip, we were leaving for a surprise, but we wouldn't give them any hints or details.  It drove them INSANE. :)  As we pulled into the parking lot at Grapevine Mills, Aaron spotted the sign first and about lost it he was so excited!

Life-sized Dirk!

In front of the Lego version of Texas Stadium.  This other boy and his father both saw me trying to take their picture, but didn't bother to get out of it...

Andrew had the most fun building towers with these giant blocks and going down that slide in the background about 74 times!

When Jerry's parents heard we were taking the boys here, they gave Jerry some money for the gift shop.  We let Andrew pick something out (knowing he would choose something small) and let the other two split the remaining funds.  They got a nice pile of loot - Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!!

The bag from the gift shop was bigger than Aaron! 

For lunch, we hit the food court so we could all be happy with our food.  I decided to get in the swing of things and go with Asian food - Mmmm.  Okay, so it is Japanese, not Chinese - but it was so yummy.

I also found something I *love* in the gift shop.  Last month, I resorted to buying the ugly white and black salt and pepper shakers that are in every greasy spoon restaurant in the South because my children have broken multiple salt or pepper shakers and I was tired of replacing nice, expensive shakers.  When I saw these, I knew the solution had been found.  Aren't they awesome??

Ethan is 7!

An alternate title for this post could be, "Wow! Time sure flies..."

Ethan posing with his Lego cake! He really liked his cake this year!

Ethan and Aaron alternate years having a birthday party with friends over, and this year was Ethan's turn.  (Andrew and Hannah will alternate, too.  This cuts way down on my party bill...)  He really, really wanted to have his party at the park this year, so that is what we planned to do.  When we sent out the invitations, the forecast was for a high of 70 and sunshine all day.  With 3 days until party day, the forecast was for a high in the 50's with 100% chance of rain. :( I made an executive decision to move the party to our house.  The problem with that being that I hadn't planned for any activities or things to occupy the kids during the party since we would be at the park! What on earth was I going to do with 10 children for 2 hours???  Thanks to Pinterest, I knew we would do a Lego Party.  (Yea for Pinterest to the rescue!!)

I downloaded a Lego font to print up the decorations and prizes.  It was so cute!

We ended up with a Lego cake, that was pretty awesome, Lego games, and Lego prize bags!

Lego Bunting  for decorations!  Ethan thought this was the best - it is still up! :)

Lego toss...

This game was hilarious to watch! The kids had to suck Legos to the end of their straw and drop them in their bowls - no hands allowed!  The poor, two girls - they weren't bold enough to shove their way in between the boys to get more Legos and lost. :(

A row of mom's watching the fun.  I am so blessed to have good friends with children the same age as mine!!

Blowing out the candles!

Overall, the party was a success, but I didn't have enough planned to fill the time.  There was some wild play in the un-filled time, but no one got hurt, thank goodness.

The Ones I Actually Made!

So I didn't actually kill, clean, and prepare my own turkey this Thanksgiving.  In fact, the picture of the live turkey was taken the day after Thanksgiving.  However, I did make quite a few turkeys on Thanksgiving day!  This kind:

 Isn't that cute?  I got everyone in on the fun of making these cookies - whether they wanted to participate or not! :)

Ethan with his first completed turkey!

Aaron with a turkey.

Elise had more patience to keep working on these than any other child.

Ian was very proud of his turkey!

I even got my mom to make one...

"Do you think we escaped the Thanksgiving slaughter?"

Aaron quickly got goofy with his creations...

I had to force Stephanie to participate.  I even had to resort to using her daughter to guilt her into it! But I think she made a mighty fine turkey, don't you?

Women's Work

I bet some of you just cringed when you saw the title of this post! Truth be told, I grew up in a home where the division of labor fit right in with "traditional roles." Because of this, I learned to cook, clean, and babysit, and my brother learned to fix things, mow the lawn, and set up a business.  I don't ever remember my brother cooking something in the kitchen, and to this day I have never started a lawn mower.  The cooking and cleaning were never referred to as "women's work" in my house - in fact, my father is just as good a cook as my mother! Regardless, the words weren't needed to express the general idea.  I don't disagree with that idea completely, either.  I have grown to love domestic duties, and am happy to leave the fixing and outdoor work to my husband.  He equally loves the outdoor "man's work" and is happy to leave the cooking and cleaning to me.  Even so, I really want my boys to be comfortable in a kitchen and taking care of domestic duties.  It is my belief that early marriage is beneficial, and hope my children will seek God for a quality spouse sooner than later in their adult lives.  But the reality is that people are waiting longer and longer in our culture to marry, and my children will no doubt be influenced by our culture.  I want them to be able to take care of themselves if they should find themselves living on their own.  Even if they do marry young, I would love for their wives to be surprised by a meal cooked by their husbands that isn't a chore to choke down.  To that end, we have started cooking lessons.  My boys love watching me in the kitchen and are quite excited to be learning a few skills.

Today we made banana bread! Aaron, my pickiest eater by far, wasn't super thrilled with the end result, but he was nearly giddy to be able to make it!  I am still holding out hope that he will outgrow his picky eating...

The bread is made with whole wheat flour and sweetened with honey, so our baking lesson also included health lessons about fiber, whole grains, processed vs. unprocessed food, and God made vs. man made sweeteners.  I am so proud of my boys for all they are learning!

Banana Bread
1. Place butter in large mixing bowl.  With a wire whist blend in remaining liquid ingredients one at a time:

1/4 c soft butter
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
3 medium bananas, very ripe
3/4 c buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla

2. Place flour and nuts in medium mixing bowl.  Thoroughly blend in remaining ingredients with a mixing spoon:

3 c whole wheat pastry flour
3/4 c chopped walnuts, optional (we used them)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 TB baking powder
1 tsp salt

3. Blend dry ingredients into liquid ingredients until just mixed.

4. Scrape batter into greased loaf pan and set pan in center of a 325 degree oven.

5. Bake for 70 minutes, and cool in pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a clean surface to cool.

Say What?

Aaron and Ethan decided about 2 weeks ago that it was time to start writing their Christmas lists.  The lists have gotten quite long already and are filled with so many Lego sets that Jerry and I would have to take out a second mortgage to get them all.  For some reason, Ethan has changed his mind on it all.  He came up to me tonight and said,

"Mom, I'm not going to do a Christmas list any more.  It will be more fun that way.  I mean, I liked the gifts you chose for me last year that weren't on my list...like my Bible.  It's a good Bible, except when I get old I'm gonna need glasses to read it because the words are really small."

Man, I love that kid.

Don't you just love...

...a man in uniform?

After much debating, Ethan decided to join Cub Scouts this year.  Now that he has had a chance to do a few outings and activities, he is very glad he did! Isn't he such a cute Tiger Scout?

Rock Candy

When we were at the National Scouting Museum a couple weeks ago, Ethan bought a kitchen science kit.  One of the projects was making rock candy, and of course - that was the first one he wanted to do! So we boiled the water and sugar, added coloring and flavoring, and dropped the string with a paperclip attached to the end into the solution.  And we have waited, and waited, and waited.  It has been almost a week now, and although the solution is crystalizing, the sugar crystals are not just clinging to the string and clip, but rather forming a crust of crystals across the top of the solution and sticking to the sides of the glass.  Is this normal?

This picture was taken after 3 days of letting the solution sit out to form sugar crystals...

If you have ever made rock candy this way before, I'd love to hear your insight.  I'm going to have quite a time getting these glasses clean...

School Check-Up

Today we finished 8 weeks of our planned school year! It has gone by very quickly, and I thought it might be a good time to review what we are doing to make sure we have the best year possible! I thought I'd just go down the list of my final curriculum choices that I posted a while back.

• Homeschool Co-Op: We LOVE our co-op! The boys look forward to Thursdays because they cannot wait to go to their co-op classes.  I think they have really enjoyed being with other home-schooled children and have also enjoyed getting some things that they just don't get at home! (It is hard to play dodge ball with just the 3 of us...) Andrew is in Mother's Day Out at our church on Thursdays, so not only do the big boys get some fun classes, we get to work on school for a few hours together with absolutely no interruptions, and I get to go grocery shopping by myself.  Yesterday, Jerry and I even met for a lunch date out!

A & E show off their Folk Art paintings - the first project they did in their art class! Who knew they had such talent? It sure isn't from me!!

• Sonlight Core B+C: This is turning out to be a good history and read aloud core for us.  We started reading Gladys Aylward yesterday, and I must admit that I'm a bit bummed that we have to wait until Monday to hear more of her story! My boys are also loving learning so much about world history.  The have gotten into coloring a flag for each country we talk about and taping it to the wall around our world map. I love that they took the initiative to do this themselves! 

E chilling in the recliner I sit in to do read alouds.  This chair has become a favorite "chill out" spot for the whole family.
• Rod & Staff Miller Series: I am enjoying using these books to supplement our Bible readings, and my boys really like the character quality workbook we are going through this year.  They look forward to starting a new page and I am enjoying the way they are searching through the Bible to find answers. 


Ethan *loves* Rod & Staff workbooks!
• Language Arts: I still love the Rod & Staff English curriculum.  This is my first year to use their grade 1 curriculum (I didn't start Aaron in it until grade 2) and Ethan is enjoying it.  He is getting a great foundation on how words are put together, and he loves the craft worksheets that go with each lesson.  I also still love the way Bible lessons are woven into each grammar and reading lesson.  I am glad we switched to Spelling Power, too.  Aaron's book is teaching him much more than what we used last year. 

Some cut-out people from one of Ethan's craft worksheets that go along with his reading.
• Apologia Human Anatomy and Physiology: I cannot say enough about this curriculum!!! We are absolutely *loving* science this year, and we have loathed it until now.  The workbooks that go with this are amazing and the reading keeps the kids' attention! I highly recommend this series! 

After each system we study, we add a layer to our "person" in the workbook.  We just finished muscles!

Mummifying an apple...

Making an edible cell.  It's hard to go wrong with a science activity involving large quantities of candy!
• Math: Aaron is really coming along with math now that he is using Abeka.  He is also understanding the concepts in RightStart's level B that he did last year much better hearing it with Ethan again this year.  I was concerned that he would resent having to do it with Ethan since he already did it once, but he is enjoying how quickly it makes sense now that he is seeing it for the second time.  I will keep him in Abeka, though, because it is taught in a way that simply clicks for him.  However, Ethan is doing perfectly in RightStart, so it looks like we will be a "two math curriculum" family.  It's only money, right??

Andrew has been much easier to deal with this school year.  He still wants to get in the middle of what we're doing, but hey! I just look at that as him getting some of his learning done early!

Finally, I was told by many that having a dedicated school room was a nice idea in theory, but that we would abandon it within a few weeks.  I don't know why we are the major exception to this statement, but we are still using and enjoying our school room. Other than Aaron escaping to a quiet spot to do his math work while I do reading with Ethan, we do all of our school in there every day.  My boys are able to understand that once we move to that room, we are there to learn.  They go to their seats at the table many  mornings without me asking and wait for me once they see I am headed that direction.  They have personalized their end of the table with a few items they enjoy and are staying much more focused when I am reading to them than they used to when we were sitting where ever we happened to be.  Jerry is also very grateful that the piles of books stay in there and not all over the living room! A nice plus has been that we have made a habit of deep cleaning the school room every Friday together, so the boys are taking some responsibility for keeping their learning environment neat and clean.  I don't think we'll be abandoning the "school room" idea any time soon!

Aaron hiding on my bed with his math work.  When I walked in the room, the cat was curled up at his side!