Fish

I swear my kids have grown gills this summer! The ET kiddos all can swim now and swim quite well too! Becca came home swimming but this is the first year we have allowed her not to use floaties - seriosly folks she is only 2 inches over 3 feet tall and the shallow end of our pool is 3 feet! Alem and Estifanos had never been in the water before coming home but boy do they love it now!The kids buried Luke in the sand at the volleyball court - very little volleyball ever gets played but it is the best sand box in town.

The hard stuff

So this past week we had a visit to Children's to see our infections disease docs. The kids are doing pretty well on their meds - which is great and hopefully, pending results from the lab we won't be going back until Oct!! Which would be awesome.

Our amazing nurse practitioner there is an adoptive mom of 2 ET kiddos and really knows what is what when it comes to adoption, and the hard stuff... I filter some of what I say to the team we see because Alem is in the room with us, but I try to be as real as possible. This week the social work team asked if I'd speak to them in the hall - I sure did. And I know I gave them a fright as I shared more than usual about our challenges, but seriously how in the world are they going to help people if everyone sugar coats things? Any way at a social event later in the week our NP thanked me for being real with them... I about cracked up - because seriously how can I be totally real when I am talking to 2 young gals who have -0- kids between them? LOL - and one gal is just out of school. Anyway I guess I gave them things to talk about at the team meeting - and since more and more folks are adopting older kiddos - well maybe they will be able to put together some things that actually help.

As for our control issues - ugh. Really there is no other word for how the last weeks have been - if you pray we sure could use it.

Life is...

CRAZY BUSY! I never really imagined that I would never have a moment to myself this summer - but boy oh boy I sure don't! I have tons on my mind that I'd love to get out... but I think it is going to have to wait a bit longer.... hope my brain doesn't explode.

Counseling part 2

Weeelllll - it has been several weeks and 2 more counseling visits since I last posted. All I can say is that if you are thinking counseling might be helpful - then go and commit to going for at least a month. These last 2 visits have really opened my eyes and been totally enlightening to some of the things going on with miss Alem. In fact both times our counselor has been able to get to the heart of our struggles in just a few minutes and give me pratical tips for overcoming and moving forward. The really hard part is that she has some seriously deep control issues and it is going to be challenging to overcome them. The other thing that was hard to hear is that she really isn't able to relate to people - she simply doesn't have the skills. Now those are things she can learn, and it explains why she can't really play with other kids yet - but it was hard for her to hear that she wasn't the same as the other kids in the neighborhood - but it motivates her to change and that is good.

Hang on for what promises to be a bumpy ride - we currently have to take all control away from her... ugh, not totally sure what that is going to look like, but I know she isn't going to like it....