Thursday's update

Thursday was just one of those days where the reality of blending such a unique family together hit. I was met at the curb by Amsalu's teacher (never a good sign). He said Amsalu had had a bit of a meltdown earlier in the day. They called Mickey to the classroom, but Amsalu wouldn't tell him what was wrong. He seemed to recover after that. When talking about it once we got home, I asked Mickey to ask Amsalu if he just was frustrated because no one spoke Gumuz at school and he couldn't speak English. Amsalu nodded to this so I think it was just a normal frustration moment for him. When Amsalu is scared or feeling overwhelmed, he just starts crying giant tears. I talked to one of my clients this morning who lived in Thailand for 2 years and had 4 hours of language school a day (Hi, Kristy). She said grown men cried in her language school, so of course, its normal for a little boy to feel overwhelmed.

Once the girls came home, Essie was trying to let Caesar in off his chain and Mickey tried to help her by taking the chain out of her hands and letting the dog in. Essie just screamed "I don't need help!" and burst into tears. I took her immediately to a quiet place and basically got it out of her that she was frustrated. An hour later, we had another instance where the boys took a toy away from her and she just screamed bloody murder and burst into tears. Its very frustrating for the girls that their brothers don't know how to ask for toys and use good manners. (Somehow I can't convince them that it took mommy months and months to teach them to share and have good manners so they have to be patient.) They want to play with them so badly, but honestly, the boys don't know how to play. I ended up taking the girls on a car ride with me and when we got back, Matt was having very good conversations with the boys and the girls where herded off to bed. The girls are still fighting colds and trying to get on a good sleep routine for school so I know this all played into the events of the day. Plus Mommy drove over 200 miles yesterday to do 2 home visits while the kids were were in school so I know, I was tired and grumpy too.

All these are normal growing pains and honestly, we've been lucky things haven't been worse. Its just no fun to watch your kids struggle to learn their new roles in the family. I told my boss the other day that I am the agency's new expert on adopting older kids. I know God is smiling while He watches us go through all these experiences because in the end, it will help me be a better social worker for my families and a better advocate for adoption. Its just hard, but then again, parenting is hard. We just happened to be experiencing many things all at once due to the way we chose to grow our family. Which, btw, can the school system send any more papers home?!?!?! Each kid brings at least 4 papers home a day. I feel like I'm drowning in permission slips and classroom notes. Ok, that's a subject for another day. Enjoy your Friday!