Whoever said that having four kids is the same as three was lying. In fact, it's exponentially harder. Just when you think you've got a conflict resolved between one pair, another pair has started bickering and so on. Tomorrow is suppose to be a proposed deadline to submit our adoption agreement to the facilitators in the Ukraine and it's sparked tons of adult discussion. The most important one being "how the heck are we going to raise four kids and keep everything else in tact...patience, sanity, health, marriage, to name a few?".
Since "B"'s arrival, we've been "on" the whole time. From the moment we wake up to when we go to sleep, we are translating, parenting, keeping house, working, playing and coordinating. There's no couple time and definitely no alone time. This past weekend, we received free tickets to see Hairspray at the Raleigh theatre. It was a pretty great show, but "B" was a little bored and chose instead to put on a temporary tatoo that he had received at lunch during the performance. He was more excited with the ice cream they served after the show. Later that night, we were slated to attend a Raleigh Railhawk soccer game, but we opted out. We simply did not have the energy to do anything else.
Sunday was a little calmer, but it ended with a community event of current and former orphans coming together. It was an opportunity to talk to other parents about their successes and their struggles. The kids were entertained by a makeup/balloon/clown lady and she did great. She made balloon swords for my four boys. I don't think I need to go into any details of what happened next. It was crazy wild and it was all boy! Check out the picture. I've accepted that I will never get a perfect pose ever again.
Despite our state of zombieism, having "B" here has forced us to rethink how we interact as a family. We eat dinner together every night at the kitchen table. This may not sound like anything earth shattering, but dinner in front of the TV or at varying times is often the norm during the school year. What with sports, work travel and outside commitments, we do what we have to do. Oh and the DVDs and video games, they are often our electronic babysitter so we can decompress and regenerate. There have only been limited screenings so the original 3 don't go into shock.
Enough about our struggles, because the compassion that we're feeling is absolutely amazing. We simply beleive that this is what we're meant to be doing. As "B" feels more at home around all of us, he's started to push the limits and tease the boys. The other day in the truck he actually turned around and shouted "stop it Alex" in perfect English. He must of learned that phrase from us. Oops. We find that he's often williing to help and actually enjoys it. The other day as I was unloading the table cloth from the dryer, he grabbed the placemats and put them on the table. I grabbed the now famous "doily" to put on the table, but he quickly took it from me, placed it in the center of the table and went searching for a vase filled with flowers. That coupled with other one off events started us wondering about his past. We discovered that "B" was living at home until March when he was put into the Orphanage. Although his upbringing was not ideal, we feel more comfortable that he was not physically abused at home. Of course, what we know is only what we've learned through a translator via the lips of an 8 year old. It's not easy to look at our little guy and not think the worst. "B" has a few visible scars including a couple on his head. During a translation session, he told us that he fell off the roof of his garage at his home and hit his head on the way down. When we asked about the other scar, he said he fell of the roof twice. He went on to show us other scars that we had not seen including one from a bike accident and another from climbing a tree. Hmmm...knowing "B" it's certainly plausible, because he's very curious and has explored everything in our home. All battery operated toys have been reactivated and we've purchased no less that 16 new AA batteries up to this point. Laugh all you want...it's pretty awesome to see him playing with an ABC game and hearing him repeat the letters and sounds. He even will sit through a story as it's read by the Leap Frog pointer.
I won't go into the process of Ukrainian adoption since I'm not that familiar with it yet, but we're told that until our dossier is submitted to the Ukrainian government we can not learn more about the history of our potential child. We'll simply have to go by what he tells us. Unfortunately, he doesn't always have all his facts straight. We asked him his birthday and he was convinced it was July 23rd. This was the date that they travelled to the US. His real birthday is March 27. Birthdays are not celebrated at the orphanage. We really don't care what the truth is and regardless of what the file shows, we can't wait to have "B" in our home safe and sound aggravating his brothers and making us exhausted.
No comments:
Post a Comment