3.5 Weeks In

Our "borrowed babies," or our Safe Families kids, have been here three and a half weeks. We're settling in to our new routine.

It's a bummer to have chosen their pseudonyms so early on, before we "knew" them as well as we do now. I would absolutely change Miss No to something a little less negative. She's a sweetheart, with a good spark inside of her. There's still a lot of "NO!" from her, but there's a lot of compliance now, too.

Big Sis is making progress. It's neat to see and hear new things from her. I still feel strongly that she needs services and she's still a seriously delayed little girl, but she's teachable to some extent, which is encouraging. She's getting better at dressing and undressing herself. She takes her bowl & spoon to the sink. She puts her dirty laundry where it goes. We're working on putting 2 words together now. (Yes, she's 3.5 years old.) We've done, "Night night, [sister's name]!" the past couple of nights. She willingly repeats the Night Night part, and has to make several tries to get sister's name on there at the end. Tonight we tried, "Night night, Ese!" as we passed Annaliese on the way to bed. It took a few tries, but she got it! I still can't get her to say Auntie.

I'm seeing a lot more smiles from Miss No. She likes me. And she's a snuggle bug, which is fun. Baby Gogo is a snuggle bug, too. In fact, one day I was holding Big Sis through a raging tantrum, and both Miss No and Baby Gogo climbed up on either side of me on the couch and leaned on me.

Still working on some food issues these guys have. Gogo wakes up cranky and wants food instantly. I have a feeling he may have been used to getting a bottle first thing in the morning. They want to eat All.The.Time. I'm not sure how much of it is boredom and how much of it is insecurity about food availability, but we're working on it.

Speaking of boredom, these guys don't know how to play! Ack! It's getting better, but they seem to think PLAY is a 4 letter word because if I tell them, "Let's go in the playroom," or "Go play," they often just stand there and cry. Now that the weather is getting nice, we're playing outside a bit more, but the first couple times I took them out, they just stood on the patio like, now what?

Logistically, it's a whole lot of "Just do the next thing." Big Sis's clothes are in 2 little cube drawers and a shelf, and Gogo has a drawer and Miss No has a drawer in what was set up to be Katie's dresser. Socks and shoes are kept in the changing table. The girls came with velcro tennies, and I got them each a pair of white dress shoes for Sundays. Gogo had a bad owie on the back of his foot when we got him, and by the time it healed up, he'd outgrown the shoes he came with, so he's been wearing booties that I bought for our China babies.

Actually, being in preparation for Katie and Luke has been a big help to us with this hosting. We already had much of what we needed, and it has been a real eye opener to see what the logistical challenges may be after they come home.

Like homeschooling. Just. Not. Happening. At least not all of it, and not regularly. Brianna and Eli are keeping up with math on the computer, and both boys are sorta kinda keeping up with handwriting. I need to figure out a way to make this all work. Maybe as the weather gets nicer, we can do more downstairs in the playroom and outside.  Need to get to the library to stock the older kids up on fresh books, too.

Mostly, we're just taking one day (sometimes one hour) at a time.  It's a lot of work, but it's rewarding work.  Still no idea how long they'll be here.  And that's okay.  We'll just worry about today, and see what happens with tomorrow when it gets here.  

  Your one click on this box (which opens a new window, but you don't have to do anything there) helps drive more traffic to this blog.  More traffic means more people following our adoption journey, potentially praying for us, or even donating to our fundraisers.  Thanks for clicking!