Olympic Swim Clinic

The three older kids attended a swim clinic this past Sunday led by two Olympic swimmers.  Mark Gangloff and Kim Vanderburg led the clinic.  The kids loved it!!  They raced each of them, with a huge head start of course.  They spoke about nutrition and a life as a swimmer.  It was fun for them and gave them a new excitement for a different level of swimming.

 Alex and the swimmers.

 Morgan and the swimmers.

 Tucker and the swimmers.

All five kids with the swimmers.

While the older kids participated in the clinic, we took the twins shopping for some fall clothes.  It was a nice day for the four of us to spend together.

Control

I believe we are reaching a new phase in the adoption cycle.  It has been here a while, but it is becoming more and more apparent.  My husband and I talked about it today and agree that we are having control issues with the girls.  They are both trying to control us, me mostly, in different ways. 

We had a horrible start to the day today.  I won't go into details, but we have a rule in our family that no matter what time you get up, you must be finished at the breakfast table by 7:45 so you will be ready for school by 8:00.  If you get up late, you have less time for breakfast.  They are suppose to get up at 7 am.  This system has worked pretty well this year with most of the kids. 

Haylee is usually a problem.  This morning was horrible.  She sat and was basically was silently refusing to eat.  She knows that she must eat because once she takes her medicine she really will not feel like eating. She sat and wasn't eating.  I kept asking her why.  Anyway, I won't go into the details.  She was mad about what she was eating and the amount.  Instead of eating what she wanted of her cereal, she sat and pouted.  I was in and out of the kitchen.  Finally, my husband told her he was tired of this and she better be done before he leaves in 5 minutes.  AMAZING, she ate most of her cereal and drank her glass of milk.  I was not happy.  She ate everything in less than five minutes after sitting there pouting for 30 minutes.  Needless to say, I was not a happy Momma this morning. 

Later in the morning, Hannah was trying to telling me that I was adding some of the mental math problems wrong.  She kept saying the wrong answer and I quietly told her it wasn't correct.  Haylee was still trying to calculate the answer.  She got mad and basically told me I was wrong.  Well, once again, she won because I wasn't to happy about her telling me I was wrong about the answer.   

I think these are both ways of them controlling or feeling as they are in control.  What do you think?  Other things are happening, these are just two examples from today.  We are going to be on the lookout for other instances in the next few days. 

We are going to my parents lake house this weekend.  I am a little uneasy that we are going with these issues going on. My parents are very supportive and us and the girls.  I think things will be okay. 

Playing

Hannah struggles with just playing.  She skated with the other girls for a little while.  They changed to playing the Wii.  The kids are very limited on the amount of time they can play.  For some reason, it has become an exciting thing at our house again.  She doesn't know what to do because they don't want to skate with her anymore.  She quit because they did.  I don't care if she skates or not.  Now she doesn't know what to do with herself.  She didn't like that I told her she needed to go back outside and play.  They all will stay inside all day if I let them. 

How do you teach a child to play?  I don't have time to entertain her.  I have always told my children that I am not their entertainment.  They need figure out their own entertainment.  Suggestions?

Struggling...

Is it me or her? 

We have had a few difficult days around here.  Hannah is struggling and so am I .  I don't know if I am the problem or if I have a reason to be struggling.  She is holding her own in school.  She is doing well with old math concepts, but struggling with the new ones.  After about three days of reteaching, she usually gets the concept.  I am okay with that.  We have developed a pattern and it works.

We had a weird occurance a few days ago about a wash cloth.  I know that sounds really stupid.  I asked a simple question and it turned into something big.  Sometimes I wish I wasn't so in tune to what my kids are doing.  I wish I was just clueless at times.  She got really defensive about what she had been doing.  Anyway, what she finally told me she did was not very good hygiene.  The more I thought about it, I wondered if she was lying to cover something else.  I have thought about it for a few days.  I am not sure of the truth.  I questioned her again about the truth.  She begged me to believe her.  I want to trust her and believe her so bad.  I have an uneasy feeling about the situation.  The story she gave is so odd, I wonder if she is started lying to cover up what she really did and made a really weird story up as I questioned her. 

Her nightmares have become more frequent in the last few weeks.  Last night, the dream was pretty bad.  (What person allows their toddler to watch horror movies??)  I am trying to find a pattern to her dreams.  What is she feeling when she goes to bed?  How was her day?  Good or bad?  Did she get in trouble late in the afternoon or evening? 

I believe if you tell one lie, it gets easier and easier to tell more.  I wonder if she has started a snowball effect.  I wonder if she cracked the door for Satan and therefore the dreams are bad again.

She got really frustrated because she couldn't get the TV to turn on to watch a DVR'd show.  We have shown her and shown her.  She went to her bed when she gave up.  She has a strong attachment to TV.  It is really odd.  I don't see it in any of my other children.  They all enjoy TV, but her interest is different.  I went by her room and saw she was upset and told her to rest in her bed to calm down.  She of course didn't like this.  She historically makes poor choices when she gets in this mode, so I was giving her time to regulate herself. 

Many little things are happening.  She it testing the boundaries.  It isn't big things, but lots of little things.  I tell her not to do something and she goes and does it.  ie: Stay here until after finish our time together (our group time in the morning to start school) before you start the dishes.  She walks to the kitchen and puts a glass in the dishwasher.  What?  I asked her why she did that.  She said because she wanted to.  Ugh!!


Please pray for me to have a clear picture of what is going on.  She struggles with attachment to me.  She appears closer to my husband at times.  I wonder if it because I am with her all day long. 

We are struggling now.  Please pray.  I love all of my children.  I love Hannah.  I don't know what is going on with us.  Why am I struggling so?

A mix of things...

School is back in session now.  Everyone is doing well so far this year.  We started about two weeks ago and had the first crying episode today.  I have to make the twins take a break or we have problems.  Hannah didn't take a long enough break today and she ended up in tears before she finished.  Bless her heart...she gets to where she can't think at all.  She wants to be finished so bad, she just slaps whatever on the paper and gets to do it over and over until she thinks and completes the work correctly. However, the girls both had math and grammar tests today and made A's.  Yea!!

Tucker started his school year with a trip to Alaska for Survival Camp.  He had a wonderful experience.  It was a test for me also.  He flew with another young man in our homeschool group.  Thankfully, on the way back an adult friend and his daughter were on the plane with them.  He did great!!  He made new friends and survived!!  Listening to his stories makes me so happy and proud.  They had some intense training and trials.  I am so happy for him and hope that we will be able to send Alex in a few years. 

Haylee is adjusting on her medicine well.  She had a check-up for weight and height.  She has grown one inch and gained two pounds since April.  Yes, that is good news, but she was off of her medicine from early May until the middle of July.  She ate VERY well off the medicine.  We are going to try to not give her the medicine on the weekends.  I am not sure this is a good idea, but we may try.  Any suggestions for ways to keep the height and weight in check while on ADD medicine?

APAC Article

We were asked to write an article about our adoption for the APAC quarterly newsletter.  We have submitted it for review, but haven't heard anything back yet.  A friend of mine suggested I post it for others to read. 

Our family has lived in a small town in Alabama since I began my dental practice in 1993. As our family grew to five with three birth children, we made the decision to begin homeschooling in 2005. In April of 2010, our twin daughters were placed in our home; their new forever family. We love being together as a family and our favorite family activities center around one element: water! From tubing to fishing, swimming to water skiing, boogie boarding to water parks, our family is happiest when dripping wet!

Jenny and I have been involved working with children since our teenage years. When we got married adoption was never ruled out, but we were not planning on adopting either. After we got married, we had three birth children fairly close together and began praying about having a fourth child. Because of the demands of three young children, neither of us was very keen on the idea of having more children at the time. When Jenny began having problems that required a hysterectomy, we felt that God was answering our prayers by limiting the size of our family. Over the years as life became easier, with the children growing older and maturing, we began to prayerfully consider expanding our family through adoption. We began to seriously feel the Lord calling us to adopt, and so we decided together to take GPS classes to establish our eligibility for adoption. We decided to adopt through the State as opposed to private or foreign adoptions for several reasons. While we would have loved adopting a newborn or an infant, the age difference for the new baby and our birth children would have been 6-8 years, and we felt that we didn’t want to keep a baby from a couple who couldn’t conceive. With foreign adoption, extended out of the country visits would have been required, and the travel, coupled with the expense, helped solidify our decision to go with domestic adoption. The final question we faced with beginning our adoption process was single or sibling adoption; this was never an issue. Both Jenny and I were open to both, but ended up feeling most led to a sibling group because it gives your adopted child an invaluable connection to the past while allowing them a chance at a better future.

While the decision to begin the adoption process was mine and Jenny’s, we were very open and proactive in including our birth children in the entire process. As with anything foreign or unfamiliar, the children were naturally apprehensive, but were never against our decision. We made sure to include them in family prayer times concerning our adoption decisions throughout the whole process.

Prior to the placement, we received counseling through APAC as a family. We prayed, had open family discussions about the process, and had our church family pray with us.  When the twins first arrived, our new family definitely experienced a “honeymoon period” the first few months. As we all became more accustomed to our new family and routine, the challenges began for all of us, but especially for our birth daughter who is exactly nine months older than our twins. As a family, we received counseling from APAC in our home during the placement period prior to the official adoption. The counselor gave our family a wonderful outlet for voicing concerns, asking questions and seeking advice and encouragement. Our counselor was phenomenal at comforting and encouraging everyone, but she really connected well with our birth daughter and really helped her process. Now, the majority of our issues are simply normal sibling conflict.

With each of the twins we have dealt with separate issues during the time since the adoption. One of the twins has a personality that lends itself to easy adaptability and has been “all in” from the beginning. The other twin has struggled with having an older sister, and with identifying her new role as just a sibling and no longer as the protector of her twin. She has struggled with some jealousy towards her older sister which we believe stems from wishing she was born into our family. Both our birth daughter and this twin have strong giftings of leadership, and thus, at times, there is a struggle for control. The girls still have some adjusting to do, but things are much better now than a year ago.

Overall, the birth children have really embraced the twins as new siblings. The twins have really become engrafted more into the family, and have become less exclusive in their relationship with one another. The relationships and connections between our children are more fluid as time goes on; one day these two siblings are “joined at the hip” and the next day, “the deck” gets shuffled. Isolation, within our family, is now only by choice. We realized how well the twins were adjusting to the rest of the family, and how strong their connections were when they began making choices for the truth and for the betterment of the family, rather than to protect their twin.

The impact of adoption on our family has not been without its challenges, but life is certainly richer and fuller. Because with the adoption we are faced with new issues, adopting has strengthened our marriage with deeper lines of communication with one another. Our boys, who have always been great older brothers, have grown further into their roles as protectors now that they have been given more opportunities to care for their siblings. The twins have helped our oldest son to get out of his “box”, and our second born son, a natural manager, has enjoyed having more siblings to supervise. And while our oldest daughter has had the most adjusting to do, she has risen to the occasion and has developed into a much more mature young lady as a result. With a stable home environment, the twins have blossomed into beautiful little girls with more confidence in themselves, and in their identity as members of our family. In the sixteen months since their placement in our home, they have grown socially, emotionally and physically in leaps and bounds. Adoption has been a true blessing on our home.

State Swim Meet

I realized I never posted about the state swim meet.  The kids are did very well.  Haylee and Hannah finished the race.  We only ask that they do their best.  Hannah improved and Haylee struggled. Haylee had a difficult night in the hotel the night before her race.  I was up during the night with her a few times.  We still don't know exactly what was happening. 

Tucker swam well and maintained his best times. 

Morgan placed 4th, 5th and 8th in the state in her races!!  Go Morgan!!

Alex was the state champion in the 50 free!!! He was first!!!  I have never had a child take first before!!  We are so proud of him and his dedication and hard work.  He also placed 2nd and 4th in his other races!

The Friday night of the meet they opened the spring diving boards and the water slides.  For the first time, we let the girls go play without one of us.  They weren't allowed to leave the pool deck.  We could see them most of the time.  They both went off of the high dive!  I was very proud of them!  I am proud they did well on their own.  They really weren't alone because they had quite a few friends there and their other siblings.  They were always with someone they knew, even though, it may have been a different person every few minutes.