Just Austin (aka Kitty Food)

Over the 4th we went down to Kerry's sister's house, and the kids LOVED playing with their friendly little kitten.  There were multiple times where I thought how nice it would be to have a cat, but then there's the perpetual dilemma Kerry and I have had about pets, which is whether the pets will indoor/outdoor or just outdoor.  Our yard is too small to have outdoor only pets with a good conscience, our backyard is not yet fenced, and I really don't want to have to deal with potty training an animal when I'm still working really hard to keep the house at housekeeping baseline.  So I dismissed the idea as something that might be great for an unspecified time in the future.

We got home late on the 4th, and we were trying to get all the sleeping kids in the house and into their beds without them waking up traumatized from all the fireworks (Kearns residents take their firework celebrations very seriously, and then with the arial fireworks legal this year it was like being in a war zone), when a stray cat who was also freaked out by all the noise ran in our open door, through the house, and went under our bed.  Kerry got the cat out, and after getting the kids all in bed, he sat outside with the poor cat and fed it tuna fish.

After asking around, we found out that the cat really is a stray, so we kept feeding it, and it's stuck around.  It's the best of all worlds: I don't have to worry about a litter box because as of right now the cat stays outside, but the kids LOVE having it (him? her? I should probably find out) around to play with and feed.  There aren't tons of people outside during the day in our little section of the neighborhood, so whenever we're outside playing or the kids are riding bikes, the cat comes to hang with us, and in the evening when I'm watering the garden or Kerry and I are relaxing on the porch it comes and sits with us.

We started calling the cat Just Austin from a Backyardigans episode, but he is also referred to by Tam as Kitty Food.  The funny things about learning a new language.  I think the ideas of animals and feeding them are too intertwined right now for him, but it cracks me up when he's chasing the long suffering cat around trying to give it some attention and yelling "Kitty Food!" at it.  Kate, meanwhile, just wants to have the cat sit on her lap for more than 2 seconds, which doesn't happen very often, and Yeb likes to watch it eat, but then gets sucked back to playing with something that has wheels.

We Survived Camp and All We Got Were These Orange Hats

I'm trying to catch up on the major things that have happened in the past month, so this is another that happened mid June.  Kerry runs a week long boy scout merit badge camp in Blanding, and I've always gone, too.  After Kate was born we brought her along while both of us staffed, but this year bringing the whole fam was out of the question.  The boys had only been home for 6 weeks, and kids being away from home for 10 days is rough even in the best of circumstances.  We decided for the survival of all family members that it would be best for Kerry to go alone and for me to stay with the kids.  Fortunately, my mom, sisters, and Kerry's sister Nancy all pitched in big time to ensure that survival.

Seriously, it was really rough, and by the end I couldn't believe that we made it, but I know that Heavenly Father cares a lot about the experiences that teenage boys have at that camp and that it was important for Kerry to go, and I know that He seriously helped me out to be able to deal with Kerry being gone for so long.

 Needless to say, we had a countdown calendar in the kitchen for when Kerry would be back, and by the end we were all SOOOOO excited to see him again!  The kids woke up Sunday morning to find him home and he gave them all this year's camp hats.  They were all pretty excited about them.  I was excited that Kerry took care of the kids that morning so I could sleep in (till 7:30, but hey, that IS sleeping in these days).  Lesson: Glad we made it, also glad that next year the circumstances will be vastly different so that hopefully the kids and I can come, too.

4 Teeth Pulled

Before the dentist...

This happened way back in June, but I just barely uploaded pictures from our camera, and wanted to make sure to mention this.  Tam had some major dental work done, including having his four top front teeth pulled, and did amazing with it all.  He was ridiculously excited that just he and I were going to the dentist since he already knew that the dentist's office is a magical place with nice people, stickers and prizes.  I felt guilty enough about it to try and prep him about what was really going to happen during the visit, including showing him his rotten teeth in the mirror and mimicking pulling them out, but even that didn't dampen his enthusiasm.  He started looking slightly nervous when we went into an individual exam room at the dentist's instead of the open group room used for regular cleanings and x-rays, but was still happy to be there.  It wasn't until the dentist numbed his whole mouth that he got really unhappy about the situation, but he still held really still and did what the dentist asked him to.  5 fillings later they were ready to pop those front teeth out, and it went surprisingly quickly.  I was planning on him taking it easy for the rest of the day, but 20 minutes after we got home he wanted to ride his bike, and then was ready for a popsicle.  After one lesson of how to use his back teeth to bite harder things, he hasn't had any problem eating, and his speech hasn't been affected, either.  Now he just has a mischievous smile to match his mischievous personality:

....After the dentist

Going to Church Together

We got to the point as a family where we felt brave enough to bring the boys to church!   For the past few weeks we've all gone together, which has been so wonderful after a couple months of having to switch off with Kerry depending on who was teaching what lesson or was in charge of something.  For now Kerry and I are going with the boys to their primary classes, and hopefully before too long the boys will be comfortable enough that they won't need us to stay with them the whole time.  We're just so glad that overall they're doing great with the church routine, and since there are so few kids in our ward (there were 4 total the first Sunday we brought them), they get to participate like crazy and get a lot more attention than in a bigger primary.  Besides a meltdown from Yeb the first week, lots of wiggles during 3rd hour sacrament meeting, and a potty accident on the upholstered bench today, things have gone remarkably well.  We figure those things are pretty much par for the parenting course for a family with 3 young kids.

Besides the excitement of going with the rest of the family to church, the boys are very motivated to be able to wear their church clothes on Sundays.  Tam acted like life couldn't get any better when I took him shopping and he got to try on clothes to see if they fit.  Fortunately, we had been given some church clothes that fit Yeb perfectly, but we still had to get shoes and socks for both boys, and clothes for Tam.  thanks Granna and Grandad for outfitting them with what they needed!

Language fun at 5 weeks all together

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.

Starting to find the new normal

So the past few weeks have been hard.  We knew that they would be, but no amount of preparation helps you become more ready for sheer exhaustion.  We're so grateful for all the support we've had this pat little bit.  Just knowing that people are out there praying for us has made a huge difference.

We survived the 15 hour flight from Hades where we were seriously very close to walking away from luggage and children at the endpoint, and either Heavenly Father took pity on us or the boys realized they were THIS CLOSE to making their parents truly snap, because they both slept during the last 2 flights home.  Looking back, I have no idea how we all made it home safely, and it reaffirmed our prior feeling that our family is now complete, because we are not going to repeat that experience any time soon.  

The current update is that both boys are doing really well.  We're still working hard on attachment, and on the boundaries in our home, and thinking back to two weeks ago just amazes me at how far we've already come.  The boys have made so much progress, and overall it's getting a little easier to manage life each day, which is definitely progress for Kerry and I compared to when we first got home.

Kerry and I are starting to experience moments where this parenting and family thing is actually fun again, which is weird, and gives us hope that those moments are the new normal that we're working toward.  Their personalities have been coming out full force this while time, but now we're starting to appreciate them more and more.

The part of this whole thing that has been the hardest has been watching Kate try to deal with all the changes and challenges that have been happening.  She really has done so amazingly, but it has been so hard for her.  The boys have required a lot of attention this first little bit, and learning to coexist with 2 new brothers has been difficult.  I've been so proud of how much she's been willing to share and help out.  Even with all the difficulty, there have been plenty of moments where she has a blast playing with the boys, and enjoys being silly with them.  We've been trying really hard to carve out some Kate time each day so that she gets some one-on-one with one of us.

The medical update is that the boys are both really healthy and within the normal ranges for growth and health.  Since there's no immunization record, they just have to start from scratch, and they've been champs with all the shots.  We're also having them tested for any other possible bugs, and Yeb is currently being treated for lice.  Yuck.  The boys also had their dental appointments today, where we found out that Yeb has wonderfully healthy teeth, and that Tam will have a premature pumpkin smile after having his top four front teeth removed soon.  It will be so nice to get all this initial dental/medical stuff out of the way!

We have hardly any pictures of the boys because any time the camera comes out there is an inevitable meltdown, so we've avoided bringing it out at all.  We need to get going, though, because I really do want pictures of this stage of our family.

Thanks again, everyone, for all the love and support!

Still At Extremes

After suffering from some over scheduling yesterday and the resulting meltdowns and other behavior, we decided to take it really easy today, and overdid it a tad. The only outing we had planned was to go to the airport right after breakfast to get the luggage, which left the ENTIRE rest of the day unplanned. Of course we had a few ideas of things we could do here at the guesthouse, but in reality we were sadly underprepared. The critical error is our reliance on parks and other outdoor spaces that we have such awesome access to at home, so killing an hour or two isn't that hard at home, but there just aren't places like that here. To try to keep ourselves from going insane, we ended up going for 3 walks to various destinations (or with no destination), colored with chalk, played with balloons, played in the hose that was running when we came home from one walk, played soccer, hide and seek, tinker toys, Legos. and Yeb got a good nap this afternoon. Despite all that, we still suffered the effect of some boredom.

The guesthouse is in a nice residential part of Addis, where the streets are cobblestone, the outside of people's gates has some trees or other foliage, and the people we met while walking around seemed more well to do than most of the city. Our 2nd walk of the day was to search for a little store that sold soccer balls. Our big mistake was to take the double umbrella stroller that we brought for the airports coming home, but we thought it would be fun to let the boys ride in it. As we were leaving the guesthouse I realized that I hadn't ever seen any strollers here in Ethiopia, and yep, as if we weren't already very visible, the stroller pretty much made us into a circus act. Both boys were really excited to ride in it, but as soon as we got outside the gate Tam was embarrassed and insisted on walking, and then commenced to make fun of Yeb for being in the stroller. Fortunately, Yeb was still waking up from a nap, and couldn't care less. After we found and bought a soccer ball, Tam decided he wanted to ride, too, until a passerby made a disparaging remark about strollers, and then Tam wanted nothing to do with it again.

After buying a ball we went down a quiet side street to kick it around, but after about 5 minutes the boys seemed ready to go, and as we started heading back to the guesthouse we realized that there was piece of wire wound in one of the stroller wheels. We stopped to try to get it put, and after about a minute a young teenage boy came up and asked if he could help. Pretty soon a whole bunch of his teenage friends were gathered around, with them and Kerry all trying to get the wire out, and a couple of them kicking the ball around with Tam. They were such good kids! They were able to fix it after about 15 minutes with the help of some pliers one of them borrowed from his house, and we were sad to say goodbye. The funny thing was the actual conversation I had with one of them where I had to explain the purpose of the stroller, and where he politely tried to hide that he was perplexed about why anyone would need such a thing.

The day ended with us walking to the little store to buy some snacks for the trip home, where we as ones that the price of snacks and juice was going to be a lot cheaper than mental health treatment if we stayed put all evening. After buying some cookies and mango juice awe sat on the ledge next to the sidewalk and ate them and watched cars go past. The highlight (for me at least) was watching the boys reactions when a man herded a cow down the sidewalk right in front of us. They seriously had no idea what to think, and we had to convince them they weren't in danger. The weather was beautiful, people were out and about, and he sun was starting to set, and it made me really sad that we're leaving tomorrow. On the other hand, living out of a hotel room long term isn't tempting, and we sure miss Kate and are excited to get home to her and family!