Our Week - New Table in the Schoolroom

Back to the grindstone!  In a good way, of course!

See the completed, new table in the school room?

Our new system seems to be working for now.  Instead of the kids having piles of books sliding all over the table, each child now has a bin.  Jack's on the left, then the paint brush cup and pencil cup, then Katie's bin, then Hannah's bin.  (The only "problem" with this setup is that I lost my corner of the big table to pile things on, so I'm forced to be a little neater, too.)

Monday was a nice, normal day, and we got all our work done, and even had time for an art project.  They're drawing glass vases, er, what passed for vases because this was what I had on hand.

The project was Cubist Vases from our Home Art Studio DVD (affiliate link).  We've come to the end of this disc now, so I ordered the next one.  I'd eventually like to have the whole collection!

After drawing, they sliced them up visually and colored the sections with watercolor pencils.  I love watercolor pencils!  We're using these.  (affiliate link)

This was after coloring, before adding water.

If you're not familiar with watercolor pencils, you can brush water on them and it turns to paint!  Really fun to play with.

The finished projects.  Hannah colored darker than Jack did, and you can really see the difference after painting.

Tuesday, the girls had appointments at Shriners.  They'd both looked a little off in their gait lately, and Hannah has mentioned some soreness.  Hannah's leg got 3/4" longer, and Katie's leg got 1/2" longer, and we'll be going back soon for a casting appointment.  Both girls are ready for new legs!

I knew this shirt wouldn't make it here in time for Christmas, but since it was so perfect for Jack, I ordered it anyway.

Toddler Jack Jack double spooning the peanut butter.  He would slurp it down as fast as I could reload it.  

"What's THIS?!"  Brianna found the prism and was fascinated by it, sending little rainbows all over the school room.

Even though the weather was icky, I sent my students OUT TO PLAY on the trampoline to let a little energy out.  They had been cooped up long enough to start making me crazy.  I think Hannah's behind the post in this shot.

Eli had to borrow Dad's laptop for homework one night, since my computer doesn't have power point.  Is it me, or is he looking more grown up all the sudden?  He's gotten taller, too.

But, you know, not too old to play with his little sister's new toys, of course.

The teens like to hang out and chat with me in the school room, and will often explore whatever we've left out from our learning for the day.

We need to get this boy in to the DMV.  He's ready to get his license.  He chauffeurs me around quite a bit these days.  Which is handy, because my night vision is terrible.

And what has Katie been up to lately?  Cutting and gluing.

Drawing on the white boards while I read aloud.

And coloring in her ABC coloring book.

She had a haircut after baths one night this week, and then slept in braids.

Her hair was wild and wavy the next couple of days!

Even at play time, Katie is fascinated by letters.  She wrote "Katie Hannah Jack" on her easel.

While we didn't quite finish everything assigned for this week, it was a good week, and I'm glad to get back to our school routine.  I'm hoping we can get a project done over the weekend (I'm totally planning to rope one of the teens into helping!) and maybe have time for a trip to the library next week.  I got an email saying I hadn't checked anything out in a year, and I felt like the World's Worst Homeschooler.  So we'll have to see about infusing the household with some new (temporary) books to read.


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Getting To Know Me

Longtime readers can totally skip this post!  Last year, I participated in an Adoption Talk Linkup, and the first topic for the new year is Getting To Know You.  So here goes.

I'm Shecki.  My husband Paul and I have 7 biological children.  In 2008, we decided to adopt.  Our youngest child was 4, and our oldest child would soon be leaving the nest.

Thanksgiving 2008

We went through the licensing process and became foster parents in April of 2009.  Then we waited.  This was right about the time our county laid off hundreds of social workers due to budget cuts.  Kids were only coming into care through drug raids or emergency rooms, because there was not enough staff to supervise new cases.

During our long wait, I started cruising the Heart Gallery websites, looking at waiting children in our state and other states.  One day, I found a link from one of those sites to a site called Rainbow Kids, which listed both domestic and international kids.  I plugged in our search criteria:  0-4 years girl.  Several children popped up.  One of them was this one:

First picture we saw of Hannah

She was in China.  We'd have to re-do our homestudy, and come up with a huge amount of money.  She had special needs.  She spoke another language.  It was all a little scary.  But after talking it over with a few people, we decided to go for it.

Hannah Day, 2010

Hannah was 3 yrs 7 mos when we met her, and she is an amazing little girl.  The most resilient person I've ever met in my life.  She personifies "roll with it."

We arrived home in December 2010, and she had amputation surgery in February of 2011.

After surgery, she rocked the tiniest walker ever for 4 months until her new leg was finally ready.

This video was taken only 3 days after she got her prosthetic leg.  Once she got up and walking, nothing slowed her down.

Paul and I were starting to talk about another adoption, when someone from our agency emailed us out of the blue (we were not in process yet).  "I'm in China, and I think I just met your daughter.  Would you like to see a picture?"  That email was the start of our second adoption.

Luke Day, June 2013

Katie Day, June 2013

In hindsight, bringing home 2 non ambulatory children at once probably wasn't the greatest plan.  But what made things far more difficult was that Luke was profoundly delayed... and he wasn't catching up.

Katie went through serial casting to correct her club foot, and we had a prosthetic built for her other leg.  Soon, she, too, was up and walking like Hannah.

While Katie flourished, Luke continued to be a mystery.  He had more than 100 appointments with doctors, specialists, and therapists his first year home, but we didn't seem to be getting any closer to an answer.  And he had started having seizures.  Finally, after a year and a half of searching, we received a definitive genetic diagnosis.  It was devastating.  Luke will likely never walk or speak.  In addition to a serious form of epilepsy, he also has a degenerative condition.  In about a decade, he will begin to lose what few "skills" he has--eventually including the ability to swallow.

This was far more than the "simple outpatient procedure" we had expected him to need prior to the adoption.  This went miles beyond what we were approved for in our homestudy, or what we felt capable of taking on.  We made the painful decision to place Luke with a family better equipped to deal with his life-long challenges.  A family that would go into his adoption with full knowledge of his medical condition and prognosis.

We selected such a family for him, and after ICPC paperwork cleared, they came to get him in April of 2015.  4 months later, the attorney handling the adoption contacted me.  The other family did not want to complete the adoption.  The following week, Paul got on a plane and brought Luke back home.  I'd heard of failed adoptions (usually domestic newborn situations, or older kids from China that refused to leave their homeland), but I'd never heard of a "failed dissolution."  Yet here we were.

People have asked if I'm mad at China.  Not at all!  I love China, and had the honor of spending a week there in November, helping my agency advocate for kids who need families.  I still believe in adoption.  I'm grateful for my two beautiful, Chinese daughters, and I've learned a lot through our experiences with Luke.

In addition to being an adoptive mom...

My 4 teenagers still at home keep me laughing (and driving!) and it's amazing to watch them turning into young adults.  My eldest son is married with a family of his own now.  And my adult daughter is currently living in Australia, which is pretty cool.

This picture is my homeschool class this year!  8:30-11:30 will usually find the 4 of us in our school room, learning together.  I also like to read, and blog, and I'm trying to carve out some time in the sewing room, to exercise my creative side a little more.

We're not the perfect, Happily Ever After, poster family for adoption, but we're living out adoptive parenting and advocating for the kids who still wait.  I would like to foster little ones at some point in the future, but right now, our home is full.

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Our Last Week of 2015

Without doing school, I didn't think I'd be taking very many pictures, but I surprised myself.  Mostly the kids are playing with new toys from Christmas, and I'm in the sewing room.  It's been nice to have a break.

Hannah's hair had gotten super long, so I gave it a big trim.  It's much more manageable now.

The girls were having a tea party with their new tea set, and Lukey came over to check it out.  (You can see in this picture that Hannah's still got plenty of hair.)

All 3 students have gotten in some computer time this week.  I like that Reading Kingdom and XtraMath are so short that they don't quibble about "doing schoolwork" over Christmas break.

I've been doing some rearranging in the school room, and I left the button sorting activity out for Katie, knowing that she would enjoy it.  In the war on clutter, we said goodbye to the basket of board books that used to live in this corner where the globe is sitting now.  I kept about a dozen favorites, and the rest got donated.  Now that Katie is learning to read, I figured it was time.

Zach and Heather gave all the kids mugs with cocoa and candy canes for Christmas.  Brianna was feeling artsy as she enjoyed hers, and drew this.

Paul gave me a new table and chairs for the school room for Christmas.

The folding tables have worked, but this will be nicer.  Now the kids won't have to put something under their work when they color, to keep the table texture from showing through!  I never realized I took smooth tabletops for granted until we were working on a table that wasn't smooth.

And what have the teens been up to their last week off?  Eli has been getting in time on a favorite computer game.  Sam has had wrestling practice every day.  And Brianna is off at Winter Camp with friends.

I set out to do a "top ten posts of 2015" blog post to wrap up the year, but quickly realized most of my top 10 read posts were about Luke.  This has been a wild and crazy year for our family, starting the year with 8 kids at home, then 7, then 9, then 10, then 8 again.  Zach was deployed overseas for 6 months, and then he, Heather, and Brayden moved from the town we live in to an air base over an hour away.  The kids miss seeing Brayden regularly.  With Josiah and Sam both making plans to leave the nest in 2016, this year will also bring changes to our household dynamic.

Katie did one of her ABC book pages.

A huge box arrived this week, that I had no memory of ordering.  Turns out, it was a prize pack that I won from Mod Podge Rocks and Unfinished Wood Co.

What a huge haul of crafty goodness!  I have no idea what I'm going to make first!  I ended up using one of my Thirty One bags to hold all the Mod Podge stuff.  And I filled up the box that it all came in with things to get rid of, to offset new stuff coming in.

I finished the other two pairs of pants for Luke.  The inside of the cowboys is thin stripes, and the inside of the pandas is black Chinese characters on a charcoal background.  If the panda fabric looks familiar, it's because it's left over from Katie and Luke's nursery.

The size 4-5 fits him well, with plenty of growing room.  We actually met the mama behind the reversible pants pattern that I use when we were in China adopting Katie and Luke.  She has 4 Chinese daughters.  I'm a little sad that this is the last size of this pattern.  I used to use it for Eli and Jack when they were little. 

Jack & Eli, summer 2005

 I even made a couple pairs for Hannah's first winter with us.  Looking at old photos, I've used this pattern in every size to make literally dozens of pairs of pants, both for my kids and for others.  

Luke is not crazy about modeling, or standing in general.  He spends most of his time sitting, and cannot change positions on his own.  I have him stand holding onto his crib rails after I change his diaper, so I can pull up his pants.

We'll be back to our school routine starting Monday, but with appointments on Tuesday and Wednesday, I doubt we'll manage a full week's worth of school.  We'll be learning about King George the Third and then zooming over to Russia to learn about Catherine the Great.  It will be nice to get back to our normal schedule.


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