Rules

Why is it that rules still after 7 months don't seem to mean a thing to my newbees? Jaryd just seems to think that the rules still apply to everyone else but him. We have repeatedly told him he cannot put things in his backpack from home to take to school. No toys, no food, no nothing. But, like any other 9 year old boy he still pushes that limit. This morning his backpack was filled with food and colored pencils that he knew he was not allowed to take to school. He sneaked them in there this morning while I was finishing getting ready. I noticed that his backpack was making a funny noise. I checked and sure enough there it was. I know this does not necessarily have any thing to do with being adopted or maybe it does. I know this is just 9 year old boy behavior. But, it is so frustrating. Of course, I was the bad guy because he got caught. I tried to explain to him once again that it was his behavior that caused him to loose privileges not just the fact that I caught him. I am only the enforcer of the rules. I explained to him also that parents have rules to follow too. If we didn't follow the rules of the God and of the world, what a terrible mixed up place this world would be.

I just pray daily that God will give me wisdom in my discipline. I do hope that in the next few months life will begin to settle in. I keep thinking it will but so far no such luck. Well, with four kids in the house it is a little hard to have complete quietness.

Jacob seems to be an arguer. He always has a come back for everything that you say. We are working very hard on talking back. He thinks he should have the last word. This is definitely a challenge.

I will say that yesterday afternoon was my dream time of being a mother of four small children. Jaryd and Jacob were in their room playing cars so quietly you would barely know they were there. Alyssa was sitting at the play desk coloring and cuting and pasting. She enjoys making projects so much. Kailyn was playing in the play area in the den. I am not sure what she was playing, but all was quiet. It allowed me to get dinner ready. So see there are some good times. They are not all bad. I sound a little negative in the beginning, but just to let you know things are not always bad.

Nana is going to start having school with Alyssa one day a week until school is out for the others. She is missing a little of her alone time with Nana. So Nana decided to have one morning a week with her just for her special time.

I have become another mini-van mom. We had a Tahoe with three seats that sat everyone comfortably, but it did not allow for groceries, stroller or lawn chairs for soccer games. I could have one on the list but not two. We looked and looked for a new vehicle and the only thing that I could find that would fit everything in was a Town and Country mini-van. So I have joined the ranks for the mini-van moms again. I swore I would never own another, but I guess God has a wonderful sense of humor. Never say never right. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with owning a mini-van, I just thought I had moved on to the SUV land. Wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a great week in the Lord.
Tammy

Easter Picture

Here is our Easter Picture. What a great looking bunch. Sure does make a mom proud.

Tammy

Six months home a little late.

Lots to talk about. I haven't posted in a while so I will try to catch up a few things. The first picture is of Alyssa, Jacob, and Kailyn. Jacob was in timeout for talking back and Alyssa decided that she and Kailyn were in trouble and decided to join him in time-out. Of course, they had done nothing to warrant time out. What sibling love we have.

The next four pictures are four apple trees that we planted this spring. We had some trees that we had planted last year that died. We returned those to Lowe's and purchased these apple trees. We are going to even have fruit this year. Each one of the kids has claimed a tree. We will follow their progress over the next few years to see how the kids and the trees grow. Hopefully these trees will stay alive.

We have some pictures of the Easter Egg Hunt at church. This was a lot of fun for all the kids. The new kids all got a taste of it at school the day before. The Early Childhood class had a hunt for all the kids in Kailyn and Jacob's class.

Here is a picture of the kids in their Easter finery. The camera got moved to a setting that made horrible pictures. This is the best that I have. Sorry. One of the ladies at church took all our picture and I will try to post that one when we get it.

The second picture is the night before Easter. We were cutting fingernails and putting rollers in Alyssa's hair so she could have "curlies."

Update on all the kiddos:

Jaryd

Jaryd is our lover of responsiblity. He functions best when given responsiblity. He is doing very well in school. The medication has changed his life. He has not had anything but a green face since we started the medicine. We have moved up to a few more milligrams. He seems to be handling the medication beautifully. He is speaking English beautifully. He still has some problems, but has a great command of his new language. His teacher tested his reading level last week and he is only one level away from where he should be by the end of the school year. We expect that he will be right on target for the end of the year. Why is it that a child from Ukraine can come to this country and learn the language in just six short months and we have students here who have lived here all their life and still do not speak the English. He is excelling far beyond his age in Math and Science. There is a school year in El Paso that is for the gifted and talented in Math and Science. We are going to look in to this for him when he is ready to go into Junior High. He is playing soccer. He is a natural. There are two boys on his team named Jaryd. What is the chances? Jaryd still has his moments where he wants to be rebellious. But, most of the time with a little discussion and explanation he comes to understand why we are enforcing rules. He and Kevin built a kite on Easter afternoon that was five foot tall. It was broken, after just a little while, but they are trying to rebuilt it and put it back together. I will try to get some pictures for you to see. It was pretty impressive.

Jacob

Jacob is our thinker and quiet schemer. Jacob has also been on meds. He is about the same. The meds have seemed to help with some of his day dreaming. He is not doing as well in school as I would like for him to. They are going to meet on the 12th of May to discuss him going to summer school. They want him to be really prepared to go to Kindergarten. We will see what their recommendation is. He is learning English well and still has a little hesitation when speaking. We have to make him speak up. Jacob went to a birthday party for one of his classmates this weekend. He played by himself instead of with the group. That seems to be his biggest problem. He has a hard time playing with a group of other children. He is such a loner. He is also playing soccer. We are in hopes that this will help him mature. He is still very immature for his age. He has made great progress, but we have a long way to go.

Alyssa

Just our little ball of sunshine. Alyssa is going to go to a Pre-k program next year. She really wants to get to go to school. I hope she is as excited when it truly happens. Alyssa is playing indoor soccer. Her league plays on the basketball court. She is a little shy, but is getting more aggressive. She loves to play. It is very comical to watch them play.

Kailyn

Still our little ball of energy. Kailyn has also moved up on her new medication. She takes it in the morning before school and again at 3 in the afternoon. She doesn't seem to have any side effects from taking the meds. Kailyn's biggest problem is learning to control her tongue. She chews her food with her tongue and not her teeth. She has the strongest tongue I have ever seen. When talking with the social worker she says this is common in children when they miss being fed with a spoon. She also has a bad lisp. I spoke with her Speech Therapist this morning and we are going to work together to get this tongue under control. If anyone has any suggestions, all comments would be appreciated. Kailyn still has a hard time accepting parental control. She still wants to be in control. We are working on that also. Kailyn is doing well in school and moving right up towards her age level. She has not gained any weight just inches. She has grown almost three inches now. Here is a picture of her swining on the swing. Actually it is picture of her sleeping on the swing. She swings for hours. Sometimes she swings herself to sleep. We have to watch her closely, because we don't want her to fall off. You can barely see the Great Dane's nose in the picture. She was watching over her to make sure she didn't fall.

That's about all for now. Let's call this the six month home post. Even though it is a little late. It is almost 7 months now.

Back to School

We are settling back in to our routine with school and all that we do. I have practice two nights a week for our easter presentation at church. Dad has been helping cook on those nights. Or, usually Tuesday night is Taco Cabana night.

Friday we went to the doctor for the recheck on the kids medicine. The doctor felt that Jaryd needed to be moved up to 10mg. He seems to have become comfortable with the 5mg. So we changed the dosage and he is doing beautifully. No side effects at all. There was also a new medicine available for Kailyn. We were having a hard time with the dosage of Kailyn's med. The new one started today and we will see how it works. It is liquid and I can control the dosage a lot easier. The only bad thing is that it is not time released. So I will have to give her a dose at noon each day. For now that is not a problem because she is with me at that time every day. And as she grows we can go back to a time released medicine. Jacob stayed the same on his dosage. The med seems to help him to focus better.

Here are a few pictures of the kids cleaning up grass in the yard on Saturday. We had a nice day on Saturday.

We heated the pool at our other house last week and went swimming on Sunday. The kids had a great time. Hopefully we will get to swim in it a few more times before it is rented.

Enjoy the pictures and have a great week.

God Bless

Tammy

Train ride

We left Sunday afternoon and drove to Belen, NM. They have a new train that is called the Railrunner Express. This train runs between Belen and Santa Fe. We spent the night in Belen in the motorhome and left early Monday morning to travel on the train to Santa Fe. We had a two hour lay over in Albuquerque so we walked around downtown and ate some breakfast at a great cafe. After breakfast we returned to the train station and prepared to load the train again to go on to Santa Fe. All of the kids were very excited over the train ride. We got to Santa Fe around 12:00.

We started walking and Kailyn was cold. Everyone had a hood except her. We stopped at a store and bought her a little hat. The lady said 1.08. I nearly fainted. Wow just one dollar and she was a happy camper. It looked pretty cute too. It even matched the outfit. It was definately worth the money for my sanity.

We went on to the plaza downtown. We saw the indians selling their jewelry around the square. We did a little more shopping and then went to lunch. Kevin and I had an awesome green chile cheeseburger at the Plaza cafe. Jaryd had nachos and the little ones had chicken. They were all happy. We returned to the street vendors and purchased some bracelets for all us girls. Jacob had found an astronaut toy that he wanted and we were still in search of Jaryd's big prize.

Jaryd finally found a kit at Border books that makes all kinds of flying airplanes and rockets. Now they are all happy we caught the train and headed back to Belen. Jaryd told me he wanted to live in Santa Fe. He loved the town. Kevin bought a huge dinosaur book and they all spent the train ride back to Belen reading and looking at the dinosuars. All except for Kailyn. She was busy playing with animals that we brought with us.

The picture of Alyssa sleeping is while we were shopping. Someone walked past us and said look at the flowers in her hand while she is sound asleep. We didn't know she had gone to sleep.

This was a great trip. We had a wonderful time with all the kids.

Tammy

What a week

Well let's see Monday morning started out with Kailyn throwing up and a fever. By, noon you would never know that she was sick.

Tuesday, Alysa throwing up and a fever. Tuesday night Alyssa's fever is so high she is delirious. I gave Tylenol and Motrin just to get it broken. Wednesday off and on she ran fever. Wednesday night she is delirious again. More meds. Thursday morning off to the doctor. She had a little sore throat but nothing else. They said it is just a flu bug that is going around. They did give her an antibiotic.

Friday, everyone seems okay. We are waiting to go eat lunch and in comes Kailyn holding her head and crying. Alyssa said she ran into the end of the piano. They were running through the house of course. I grab her and rush her to the sink to see how bad it is. We are off to the emergency room. Two hours later we have two interior stitches and six exterior ones. She took it well. They used lidocaine gel and no shots. That was her biggest worry the shot. This all happened about noon so we finish up at two just in time to pick the boys up at 2:25. We pick them up and Jaryd says he got a green face, but ummm he had detention. After a long discussion we discovered he didn't have detention, he as STUDENT OF THE WEEK. Wow from 9 out of 12 days disciplinary action to student of the week. Praise God for the medicine. We are very proud of him. He has shown remarkable progress this week. All of the kids have. Jacob is so much more focused and Kailyn has not been out of control at all. She takes life so much more calmly now.

This is the beginning of our spring break and we have a few things planned. I will show you pictures as we go along.

Have a blessed week.

Tammy

We have been growing caterpillars I guess you would say. We have nine cocoons. Here is a picture of the cocoons and then one of the butterflies that has already hatched

The swimming picture is Jaryd. He kept being gone when I was taking the pictures at swimming lessons. He always had a dentist appointment.

Then there is a picture of shirts that Nana brought all the kids from Cancun. I took them before school this morning so that they would still be white when I got a picture.

Tammy