Three Years Home

Three Years Home. Unbelievable.

I feel horrible that it has taken me so long AFTER "The 17th" to write this up, and truthfully, I'm not even sure if I'll finish it before the troops start requiring my full attention for the morning, but my conscience is bothering me, and I've gotta take a stab at it!

Three big years for these guys. They are completely different kids now than who we brought home. Well, same kids, just not such "exaggerated" personalities anymore. Older, wiser, more settled, calm, and attached than ever before.

Adam. Well, aside from the fact that the boy is towering me now, and has a foot bigger (and smellier! Uff!) than John's... he has really grown in other areas too. He no longer breaks Everything he owns. Well, he still loves to dismantle things, don't get me wrong, but it used to be that we couldn't give him ANYTHING without it being broken five minutes later. And that really isn't too bad of an exaggeration. I remember handing Adam a toy and as I was still standing there, he'd proceed to try to break it. First reflex was to break and destroy. Not so any longer, thankfully.

I've already shared his bike story this summer, how he worked so hard to earn the money for one, and wow, if that doesn't speak volumes of how much Adam has changed!!! He would never have had the stick-to-it-iveness necessary for such an endeavor even last summer. He would have just gone without a bike.

He still has very impulsive hands, especially when he is wound up. I still cringe when I see him getting wound up because *anything* can happen when he does. I still think of when my brother was visiting this summer and he was "way excited" over the visit. I stepped into the livingroom in time to see Adam yanking on my brother's leg... who wasn't playing with him, or even standing. But, Adam got excited, and just started acting on impulse. His hands have also gotten him in other kinds of trouble, and while he isn't malicious about what happens with them, he does find himself in alllll kinds of hot water over them. We're really praying that he'll outgrow a lot of that, but I know that his disabilities have a lot to do with his impulsiveness, and that worries this Mama.

School has gotten a lot easier for Adam, and I have no reason for it other than he is emotionally settling enough that his brain isn't fighting emotional stress on top of just trying to absorb new material. He occasionally has a hard time concentrating though, and when he does, he might as well throw in the towel for the day. Yesterday, for example, he had to write words that rhyme with knight. He came up with the word kite, though he spelled it wrong. The "ight" was throwing him. I told him how to spell it. He sat down, and promptly forgot what I'd said. I spelled it again. He got the "k" on the paper and forgot again. I spelled it one more time. He still couldn't get it. Then I told him he needed to figure it out himself because it was an easy word, I'd already told him three times, and he needed to remember to TRY to remember what people tell him when they tell him things. The boy sat there a half hour. He spaced off and threw up a wall in front of him.

Math, however, is coming a lot easier for him than ever before. He is still way behind his peers in math (hence the year-round math regime!), but thankfully, it is sinking in faster than ever, and better than ever. Big relief to not have to fight for every mastered concept anymore.

Food is still big to him, though in a different way maybe. In the morning, Adam will be the one to set the breakfast table -without being asked... He'll also wash up any dishes left from the day before without being asked. He loves to help bake... he'll help cook too, but he loves baking treats. He can make a mean carrot cake, brownies, muffins, bars, you name it. I'm lucky to have so many extra hands around. For some reason, my incredible NEEEED to snack and snack and snack ended with my first trimester, and while I do have "regular" snacktimes with everyone else, my constant grazing isn't grating Adam anymore. He will often still ask for seconds, thirds, etc. until he doesn't see anymore food left, but frankly, he's been growing so much, that I'm sure he needs it! It still means a LOT to him to see me in that kitchen cookin' and bakin' things up for everyone. Even if I have some major flops in there, it means a lot to his security that I'm trying to fill his belly somehow.

Liana is really getting to be the right age to be super-helpful without me having to watch her like a hawk. She's been enjoying helping out in the kitchen quite a bit, and I'm so thankful that this stuff is fun to her, instead of a drudgery. She loves it when I hand her a recipe and she gets to decipher it. She has her own set of measuring cups and spoons and you'd think I'd given her the Keys to the Kitchen! lol! Liana is a baby magnet... She loves them to pieces and is willing to mother anyones' baby who will let her. She loves to hang out outside the nursery at church, and it isn't uncommon to see her lugging around one of them, or feeding them. She has always been a little mama. She'll be really handy to have around this November, let me just say!

She's doing great in school too... She is finishing up the Little House on the Prairie series this summer. I think she's on the last book right now, just in time to start the new school year. I'm so proud of her efforts! She has really taken off. She has also been enjoying American Girl books that she got for her birthday from Uncle Jared. She loved the Addy books especially.

Aleksa. She's really shot up this year too. She's quite the little reader also, and is only five units away from finishing the math book she started late this spring. (That's a whole year's worth of math!)

Leks still has a hard time staying on task though. We'll ask her to do something, and she still gets side-tracked and finds herself playing instead of finishing what we asked her. She enjoys her own little world too much at times! She loves pretending she's on that Magic Carpet, or that she's a princess, a horse, or whatever. She can just flip off the real world and go visit these wonderful places too easily! She'll be making her bed in the morning, and find herself sidetracked by having to fold a blanket- it becomes a picnic spread with royal guests seated all around. She needs constant reminding of what "her job" is. Love that imagination though - there is no doubt she'll excell in writing, acting, speech-giving, etc. She also loves to sing made-up songs at the top of her lungs. John likes to joke that she needs to write an opera!

She is also really spreading her wings in regard to her older siblings. She is a smart girl, and she doesn't mind correcting her brother and sister if they say or read something not the "right way." She'll also scold them for doing something wrong. They tend to get rather annoyed over Baby Sis trying to be their teacher/mother!

She's still the happy-go-lucky one though. She has the most consistant demeanor, and it is usually very sunny and happy. She just has a way of making everyone feel like every day is the best day of the year. Wish I were more like that!

The thing I admire most about all three kids, though, is their ability to make friends so easily. They see someone new, and they bee-line right over to them to talk to and play with them. They've never felt an ounce of fear, hesitancy, etc., over meeting anyone new. They are all three very naturally hospitable. I love that. I wish I were more like that. I'm such an introvert at times! It makes me CRAZY how scared I am of new faces. I'm working on it. And I'm learning a lot from my kids. They just so easily think of the OTHER person and how to make them feel loved and liked and wanted, and my own default is to think of MY discomfort. I'm really wondering how Little Fish will wind up. John and I are both introverts, but if he/she (thought I was gonna slip there, didn't ya?!) is hanging around his/her siblings all the time, won't some of that extrovertedness rub off? I sure hope so. It is so much nicer to be a people person than a self-person. (Read: selfish).

It will be very interesting to see what the changes in our household this year will "do" to and for the children. Little Fish is going to be a lot of fun, but I'm hoping that my energy stays steady so I can still be the mom to my older crew that I need to be. But looking back instead of ahead, this has been a really good year!