Catch Up

So here we are months and months after LEVI's adoption and I remember I have a blog. Things are good. Luke is doing wonderful......WONDERFUL! He is sleeping, he is laughing and running and he is happy. It has taken a lot of work and a lot of amazing people and doctors but he is finally getting the help he needs. He loves our new house and town but he still struggles with leaving our old house behind. It really bothers him that OTHERS live there. Luke is a wonderful big brother and he loves HIS brother.

Levi is doing well and we could not be more blessed. He is so quiet, content, happy, determined and healthy. Even with all of his struggles he is doing amazingly well. In part he has a big brother to mimic and he did not come from an orphanage setting as our first baby did. Once Levi started to progress we really saw what it was like to parent an attached child. Parenting an attached child is EASY!

Both boys bring so much joy to our home. And speaking of home Wes now works from home three days a week and that.... that has been a HUGE blessing to me! Actually its been a HUGE help to Luke and Levi. They love knowing that daddy is home and he will come out of the office at lunch time!

We are gearing up to plant our garden and get our chickens!

Things are good...... what now? More adoptions? More fosters? We don't know but we do know that God will lead.....

OURS!

In 14 days this sweet pink face will be ours FOREVER!

The New House

After the move and a lot of hard work we are almost settled. It took much longer than I thought! We had a lot more work than we thought but its looking good around here. Our land is beautiful and I feel like I am on vacation when I look outside. The kids love it and can run and run and run! Luke has had a very hard time adjusting as we suspected and even baby J has struggled but each day we move forward. The closest shopping is about 25 minuets from here so that has been my biggest adjustment but we do have a dollar general :o)We have found a nice church and met some great people. Small town living is definitely for us.

Baby J will be ours for good on August 20th!!! That is our most exciting news for now :o)

I am studying chickens, goats and donkeys for our future mini farm!I will post some pictures soon!!!

And so we begin!

We did it!! We sold our home and bought a house just outside the small town of Elsberry MO. We will have a larger house and 6.5 acres for our kids to run. I am going to get chickens!! We are very excited and overwhelmed. We are trying to prepare Luke for the upcoming changes to our lives. Best of all our debt has been decreased by over 85,000 and we have more bedrooms to help sweet foster children. God is so good!

Potty Training

It has been a long time in the making but two weeks ago ( after years of trying everything we knew) Luke got up and started using the potty. He had NEVER gone on the potty before because it was so scary. He has had one accident and he is so proud of himself.  It was all on his time and nothing we ever said or did had anything to do with this change?? Thank goodness that is DONE!

The good..

I always seem to post about the hard, the trauma and the not so great stuff however there is so much good.

Today has been one of those great days. Luke wanted to have a PJ day and since we home school we CAN and we did! He has been the perfect angel that lies beneath all his early childhood trauma. He has loved on his brother and best of all me... We have been reading, playing trains, cars and play dough. I love my Luke so much and I am so happy when he is who he is and nothing is in the way of that.

When I had a meeting with his play therapist she informed me how much everyone there has grown to love Luke and his funny, unique personality. She said they love how he hugs everyone and is such a caring little man.

This kid lights up my world!!!

Thanks Giving, Christmas and the New Year

We have been very busy around here, all is well and (accept for all that trauma stuff I told you about)
our holidays were wonderful.

In the New Year we plan to do three things:

1. MOVE!! About an hour from here to at least 4 acres so that our little boy can run and I can have chickens!

2. Homeschool. Yes I am going to spend every moment of every day with my son and I will teach him everything he needs to know. With the help of my Lord because he is the one that put it on my heart.

3. Adopt.... yep it looks like everything should be final by spring. Luv our baby J!!

Here are my catch up pictures!!!

So what is up with Luke

I so often refer to Luke's issues and I so often hear, "still?, you are still having issues he has been home three years!" The answer is yes..... yes we are still having a lot of issues and now we even have more.

Luke struggles with sensory processing which has lead to a lot of delays for him. Things like Speech and sentence structure, potty training, (ahhhhhhhhhhh holy nightmare!) fine and gross motor delay (so things like pulling up pants, riding a bike and putting on shoes and socks are hard if not impossible for him at this time.) and sensory processing also causes many, many meltdowns sometimes 20 a day over NOTHING or nothing that I can figure out anyway. He can't control his energy level or his emotions so that means lots of high energy and anger. Luke also has attachment issues and that is HARD, HARD stuff to deal with. Its has affected everyone in this house. I know, I know, he was just a baby when we brought him home..... that is what we thought. However orphanage life is devastating to the brain. There is more but too much for today.... lets just say that he now understands that he is different and had other parents but I will get to that later.

So what are we doing? Well we were doing special preschool with OT, speech and PT along with outside sensory work. Our latest attempt is psychotherapy and play therapy.  Our therapist had us pull Luke out of school and all other therapy for now. She has explained that sensory processing will get better with proper attachment?? Hmmm when I think about it I start to understand. He needs to go back to infancy and get all the nurture that he did not get, all the proper stimulation and touch. Until that happens how can his senses work out?? So we stopped fostering older kids as they provide a negative stimulation for him and he is back home with me on a day to day, hour to hour basis. AND ITS NOT EASY..... and its not always fun. As a matter of fact it super, super hard. But I love him and I am committed to my son so I will continue to do what it takes to get him to attach to me. If that means homeschool then I will do it and we think it will take that. So for now we play "school" we eat every two hours without fail sometimes more even in the car, we play attachment games, we co-sleep, we stay as calm as we can keeping our home dimly lit and clutter free. We do not let him see or play with very many toys at one time. We try to let him know what is going on before we do it and if we have to stop for gas and don't tell him he will let us know!!!!!!!!! We try to be on his level when speaking to him and look in his eyes. We rock and read as much as we can. We try not to yell and use time in and not time out or spankings....... most of these things I said I would never so as a parent! God uses these lessons to grow us. I have had to be the mom God wanted me to be for Luke and not the mom I planned to be. Once again it all points back to the one in control :o)

So now that I threw all that up I have to tell you that Luke is also so sweet and so fun and so loving he just can't control when it comes out :o) Oh and he is smart in super odd and amazing ways! He is also that most amazingly sweet and gentle foster brother ever. I can't figure out why because he is never gentle but with baby J he is amazing! Just look.

PS... Many adoptive families choose not to talk about all of the issues that their sweet
trauma kids have but if I can let even one mother know that she is not alone then I am happy to share!

Here I am....

Hello, its been soooo long!! Our sweet preemie is now 6 months old and doing well. It has been a long road but I think he is over the hump! Still super tiny and super sweet.  We are so in love with baby J and it looks like he just may stay. We go back to court in December and will know more then so I will keep you posted.

Our teens have  come and gone and there will be no more teens or kids older than Luke. Teens are way too hard on Luke, babies on the other hand seem to actually calm him and he LOVES them. Watching us care for the baby makes Luke want to be cared for..... so it has actually helped :O)

Then there is my sweet, loving, playful boy Luke. He is struggling.... so therefore I am struggling. I guess it will take years and years for the clam to set in. Laying in bed was a nightmare for his brain as was the starving and neglect. We just keep moving forward trying to find help and support. We just found a church that has 200 plus adoptive families and a support group for children from hard places :o) needless to say we will be attending there......

Here are some pic's from the last 6 months!

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Itty tiny foster baby

Hello!! On the 22nd of March I went down town St Louis to pick up our sweet tiny new foster baby. Little 10 week early baby boy or baby J as we call him weighed in at just over 3 lbs. He is the sweetest most adorable thing I have ever seen since our Luke came home. Caring for this little guy has only shown me just what our Luke never got as an infant and it can bring me to tears as I see reminders of it all the time. One week after he came I noticed a bulge in his groin and long story short we spent a week together in the hospital. He had a double hernia repair and that is and was a big set back for a preemie. He is now two months old and doing well his last weight was 5lb 10oz so I am excited to see what he gained this week.  This has been way too much fun!

Luke is in love with baby J and insist that he is from Ethiopia. We were reading a book the other night about adoption and when it got to the part that some babies come home from the hospital and some come on and air plane, I told Luke how he came on an air plane and J come from the hospital.  Luke said, "No baby J came on an airplane from Ethiopia and I am a super hero so I came home from Ethiopia in a rocket ship!" So there you have it.

Baby calls!!!! Oh I am so tired, teens, tots, and babies make life so eventful!