Sealing Day: Glad we didn't hire a photographer

So about a month ago Kerry and I looked at each other and both realized that the boys were probably ready for us to go to the temple and have them sealed to us.  For anyone who isn't LDS, we believe that families can be together forever.  Marriages (sealings) performed in the temple will continue on after death, and any children born before that sealing or who are adopted after are sealed to their parents.  Kate was sealed to us after her adoption was finalized as a baby, and although the boys adoptions were finalized the minute we entered the US, they just weren't ready for us to take them to the temple right off.  Heck, we couldn't even take them to the park without serious advance planning, 2 parents and unavoidable meltdowns.

So we were super excited at the idea of finally having them sealed to us.  We thought out what we could to do increase our chances that everything would go smoothly that day.  We arranged with the temple for my mom to stay with the kids during the time before and after the actual sealing ceremony so that there would be an adult they would know with them, we tried to prep them as best as possible during the couple weeks leading up to it, and we planned a very relaxed get together for afterward for all the family members who were coming (at my parents' house so we could escape if needed).

The best laid plans.... let's just say that the sealing was probably one of the loudest and most exciting the Jordan River Temple has seen in a long time.  Yeb had a meltdown, poor kid.  We were planning to take pictures afterward, and got one shot of the whole group, and one shot of just the kids, and then called it a day.  On our way to the temple that morning we realized that we should have arranged to have a photographer to take pictures afterward, but with how it played out it would have been wasted money.

Here is the photographic evidence of our happy eternal family:

I'm trying to look all "happy calm mother" while dealing with a tantruming 3 year old, everyone else looks nice, and my grandpa's face tells the whole story: this family is crazy.


This is both of our families.  Notice the look of death on Yeb's face.

And here are the children who were excited to smile for pictures.

For about a week after this whole thing, I was half expecting to get a phone call notifying me that the sealing wasn't valid due to one of the members of the whole thing not actually wanting to become part of our eternal family.  Now that it's been a couple weeks, we're starting to be able to laugh about it more, and we're still really glad that we did it when we did.  Looking back there are a few things I wish we had done differently leading up to the actual day that might have upped our chances of success, but we did our best with what we knew.  And after a couple weeks of thinking about it, I really don't think that another month or 2 would have made a big difference in how the day turned out.

Even though it was more exciting that we meant for it to be, being sealed was a really good thing for our family to have happen. A lot of progress has been made overall with attachment, bonding, and adjustment, and we didn't want to put off something this important any longer than we needed to.

And now we have a VERY eventful day to remember as a family.

Becoming Friends

One of the best things in the past month or so has been seeing Kate and Yeb become friends.  Kate's only 7 months older than Yeb, but when the boys first came home they didn't connect right off.  Not surprising, between the language barrier and the huge overall adjustment for both of them.  But now they've slowly become each other's preferred playmate.  They both really enjoy pretending and are able to play independently for a sizable amount of time, and both of them kind of need downtime to play each day.  I know most kids do, but it's like they NEED that downtime, because if they don't get it we have stress.  It's kind of convenient that the two of them need playtime to unwind, and Hey!, there's another kid right here who also wants to play!

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.