A Wild thing happened on the way to Africa!

I consider myself an pretty optimistic gal, a "look at the cup half full" kind of babe. However, I have bad days. Sometimes, a bad day may turn into two. More so now then when my life my life seemed more calm. My days all seem to blend into one giant never ending, labor intensive existence. I'm tired, I'm worried, I'm overwhelmed and overworked. I wake up after a less then peaceful night, dress 7 kids, make lunches, deal with the on going drama of bodily fluids, get them out the door, hopefully shower, then either run errands before the K-twins (that's Little Man and Lil' Diva) get home or drop the Studman off at preschool and go to the school to work with the boys. Home at 11:30 with extra kids in tow because I watch a few for a little bit. Then its homework, cleaning, projects, etc. The other 4 kids show up between 3:00 and 4:00 and then I have to keep time with soccer, music lesson, dance, scouts, activity days, YW, throw a healthy nutritious meal in there somewhere and then bedtime. Its like ground hog day. You know the movie. (I'm not a fan of Bill Murry, FYI).

So I had a bad 36 hours. I just gave you my weekday routine but my Sunday routine is just as hard. We have church at 9 and Ryan is in the Stake Pres.(sec.) so he is gone all morning. It's stressful, to say the least. Even though it was regional conference and we did not need to be there till 10am, I slept in. It was a joke trying to catch up and get ready. So it set me off. I had a melt down. Not pretty!

Add to that my clothes are getting tighter, I am eating like crap and not sleeping well (it's like I have 3 newborns all waking me up at various times at night). I need to figure out when I can start running again but it seems impossible right now.

Do you get my drift. I'M JUST SPENT!

So I did a little soul searching last night and I prayed for some answers. I was lead to couple of talks by church leaders and then I wondered about my journal. For the past couple years my journal has become my blog, for the more secret affairs of heart I have taken to a journal that is saved on my computer but my actually hand written journal... when was the last time I wrote it that? So I got it out thinking I would write a little. I ended up reading past passages that touched my heart. My mind and heart started to see clearer then to my shock and awe I read the last two entries. They were from more then 2 years ago. Yes, my first trip to Africa. Here is what I wrote...

April 16, 2009

"...A little boy, about 2 years old would not let go of me. We walked up the stairs (which had NO rails by the way) and then came back down when it was decided I should teach the 2nd grade class...
...The same little boy who shadowed me all morning played next to the car with another boy that had the same face (this was while I was eating lunch). Tammy said they must be orphans because the younger brother was too young to be going to school..."

There is a lot more but some of it seems to personal to share.

And then the next entry was written at the JFK airport a few days later. This is what put me back on my feet again (buckle up).

"I'm sitting at the JFK airport. Africa was such an amazing place but I miss my babies so much! I felt so torn as I left early this morning. And how I wish I could have those two boys from the orphanage."

Just as I read this those two boys were upstairs sleeping in their soft warm bed. IS THIS NOT AMAZING?

This picture is the only one I ended up with from my time at LH that had my boys in it. (Green bowls on the left hand side). I am amazed that God heard the pray of my heart. He gave me exactly what I wanted. It is hard work to raise these 2 beautiful boys who have seen and experienced so much hurt and loss. But I LOVE them! I have from the very beginning.

Do you believe in miracles?

Pee, Tears and Hard Times

I am sure Big Man and Little Man never thought life in America could be so hard! One would think it would feel opposite coming from a life of hardship in the dirt of Africa. The problem is that no one expected them to be anything, achieve anything or do anything for such a long time. So all they really had to worry about was if they were getting food anytime soon and not getting in trouble enough too get beat to hard. Don't get me wrong, I am not naive. My expectation are low right now. However, I do expect one thing from all my kids. Just a little thing I like to call EFFORT...That's all I'm asking!

So as I was laying in bed at 1:30 last night, I was thinking about all the issues we are having and I realized they had a common theme. It's called, GIVING UP! It seems that when I put a new challenge or idea in front of them, there is sense of "novelty" at the idea at first. For a few days or weeks it gets met with excitement. But then the novelty wears off and it becomes a little hard, so they quit!

Staying dry at night is good example of this cycle that we are seeing. When Big Man got here we encouraged him to try to stay dry and he wanted to please us, impress us. Plus, I think he truly felt happy and comfortable at home, so after about a month of repeated accidents, it clicked and he stayed dry for about a month. He got his reward (a remote control car) and then he quit. I took the car away and told him he had to earn it again. He did. I gave the car back. Then he quit. After several weeks I decided a new approach was needed. My kind cousin gave me her old bed wetting alarm. (Now, disclaimer here... I know that bed wetting is normal for kids who come out of situations like Big Mans. The thing is...he is a big kid and growing by the second. That means large amounts of urine. And if you have big kids you know that big kid pee is WAY more rancid then little kid pee. It smells 100 times worse! This is why we decided we really needed to focus on this issue.) So, like a charm, Big Man loved the idea of his new alarm to help him. The first night went well. It went off twice, we took care of business. Good night. The second night it never went off so I went up at 6am to find him soaked (as well as his bed and his poor little brother, nasty!) and the alarm unplugged. Frustrated, I asked him why he unplugged it and he said "Because its too loud and I can't sleep!"
"Guess what, son, That is the point!"
After that we talked about getting his car back again and he tried super hard for about a week, got it back and then quit. For the past two weeks we have gone from needing to pee once a night to that dang alarm going off every 2 to 4 hours. He does not even wake up to it. He puts his fingers in his ears, goes back to sleep and lets it go off until everyone in the house is awake.

We are also seeing the same cycle at school. It was all very exciting at first and Big Man loves the social aspect of it but after the first few weeks, it got hard and he quit. We see no effort in his school work now. The principle was kind enough to get him his own laptop to work on. He is supposed to play phonics games while everyone is doing silent reading but even that has worn off and he has figured out how to navigate to the silly stuff when no one is looking. He just does not care because its too hard.

Add to this that we did not qualify for ESL or resource (which I'm down right ticked off at and planning on throwing my weight around this school district, but this is another blog entry, all together.) So school is frustrating. Needless to say, we feel that school is more important then our wetting issues right now, so we are ditching the alarm for a little while and hitting the school stuff. One thing at a time. Mercy me?

Oh, and the tears...they are mostly mine. Sad tears, mad tears, frustrated tears, "what the heck am I doing" tears, and also happy tears, I am blessed tears and they make me laugh so hard I can't hold them back tears.


P. S. I honesty thought that no one read this because I really don't have any followers but after I did not post for a while I started getting FB messages and emails. Thanks Everyone! I will try to post more but if you really follow my blog you know my life is pretty hectic and sometimes the blog falls to the bottom of the heap, along with the laundry.