So it's officially been 5 weeks since the boys have been home, and even though life is still definitely stressful and hard, each week has gotten a little easier, the boys have continued to settle in, things have settled down a bit, and Kate and the boys are starting to show signs of liking each other. :)
It's been really fun to see the boys learn English, and right now they are able to understand a lot of what we say. The day to day phrases and words are very familiar to them now, and they're saying all those in English. When there's something out of the ordinary we're able to get the point across with our limited Amharic, basic English words that they know, and gestures.
Here are a couple specific language things I don't want to forget:
- We sing "I Love to See the Temple" with the kids each night, and Tam and Yeb have learned it, with it slowly morphing into more English and less Amharic sound-alike words. Their current version includes "I love you too ah tampo", and "to listen and to play". We did a lesson about temples last Sunday with them where we showed them pictures of temples and our wedding pictures, and Tam especially got really excited about it.
- Both boys like to pray before meals. Yeb's prayer has degenerated into a yelled "Amen!!", and Tam says a memorized prayer in Amharic that makes me smile.
- Kate has gotten into learning Amharic words that the boys use all the time. She now refers to bread as dabo, calls cars makinas, and will use the Amharic words for shoes, socks, ball, and hat. However, the one word she learned first was Ababi, which is Daddy, but still pronounces it "O Poppy". It cracks me up!
- The Amharic words for hat and open are very similar (gofeta and gofia). When I was outside with the kids and the boys were riding bikes for the first few times, I had to really stress that if they wanted to ride a bike they had to wear a helmet. But I used the wrong word, and I think that's part of why there were so many meltdowns about having to wear helmets. Poor kids. Looking back I can now recognize that the confused looks they gave me at first were the language gears in the brain going into overdrive trying to reorganize the meanings of those words. Yeb still refers to his helmet as "open".
Something super fun right now is watching the kids start to enjoy being together. Kate and Yeb are starting to hit it off, where they will play together and think the same things are interesting and funny. They have such different personalities, but somehow they've started to click. They'll chase each other around, have picnics with blankets and play food, and yell simultaneously for fun. Tam's sense of humor and fun is a little older than Kate and Yeb, so a lot of the time he kind of is doing his own thing. I've gotten a lot better this past week at keeping him busy helping with things around the house so that he doesn't get bored and into trouble. He is such a helper! I feel like maybe I should feel a little guilty about having help out as much as he does, but I don't. It sure beats constant negativity from both of us when he gets bored, and instead he gets praise for all the work he puts in. What I really need to do is make a picture list of tasks that he can do so that self start on them if he wants. Which probably won't happen anytime soon because life is still too busy and a little too crazy.
I feel like we're inching toward normal a bit more each week. From day to day it doesn't feel much different, but there really has been a ton of progress.
