Our Family Christmas Card

Well this year was eventful to say the least! Greetings to all who received our Christmas card or are just stopping by for an update.

This year (like in past years here, here, here, here, and here) we decided to give you the scoop on each other, but we also let the kids fill you in on what they thought you should know. We asked them each what they wanted people to know about their past year:

Baby Girl (4 1/2)
"I love Bubba and Mimi and I am excited about Christmas." She also says she misses the white house (see move details below:) but she likes the "hope street house". "I also like cupcakes, dancing, ornaments, and presents under the tree, and counting" (she could not count or know to start with "1" when she first came)...we love and are proud of her sweet counting too :).

Mimi (2 1/2)
Eryn: "Do you want to talk about what you have liked this year?"
Mimi: "Ummm..... Yeah!" Then she waddles/runs into the living room and says the following things she likes. "Dance"- we dance alot after dinner time in the living room. Occasionally we will also partake of a ring-a-round-the-rosey and then all fall down, otherwise referred to as "ring roun". She also mentions "kikecream" (ice cream), "pee party" (having tea parties with mommy and baby girl in which she usually spills more of her thimble size tea cup than drinks it).
Then I thought she was done; however, she came back in for a second round.
Mimi: "Eat, eat".
Eryn: "Oh, yes I know you like to eat eat a lot! I will let them know".
Mimi: "And Daddy, Mommy, Bubb Bubbee, Awisha (baby girl)....bye bye Mommy"
Still not done, she came back in about 40 more times of making sure I knew she liked to "eat eat" :)

Bubee
Eryn: "Bubba, what did you like about this year?"
Bubee: "Ehh, ehh (which means yes and no, probably no in this case), and then he said "bideo peeese" (translation: video please because I see you are near the TV :). That boy loves his Baby Einstein videos!

Eryn (written by David)
Eryn has had a great year. She has continued to counsel clients and her practice has grown (at least up until the time we got the kids). She is a great mom- Eryn is very patient and loving, but also firm when she needs to be. She is really able to get to the root of what is going on with the children. Here is an example of a conversation we might have: "Well David, Baby Girl is probably feeling sad that she cannot be with her mom (bio-mother), happy that she is with us, mad that she cannot control her situation, worried because she doesn't know what will happen next, responsible for her brother and sister, apprehensive about her life in general, and worried that we will not be pleased with her." To which I reply, "Hmm, I just thought she was being ornery"! The kids are all pretty good eaters, mostly thanks to Eryn's creative and healthy cooking. She is very ambitious and brave (as far as I'm concerned) when it comes to taking on tasks with the three little ones. Example: "David, I think I'm going to take all three of the kids to a birthday party an hour away at which they can eat nothing because of their allergies and which would fall squarely during their nap time." That's the kind of thing she does regularly because it's good for the kids, but for which I would rather go grocery shopping than undertake (that's saying a lot for me!).

David (written by Eryn)
After 6 Christmases, I am still so happy to be married to this guy! David is a wonderful, loving, firm, playful father and the kids really love him. It has been kind of a bummer, but lately Bubee has been saying, "Dadddeeeee" more- which means he wants the ole Dad more than Mom sometimes. Maybe it's because he knows that Dad will wrestle with him and Mom is quite frankly just not very good at it :) David is very creative with his parenting and it has really benefited all of them, especially Baby Girl. She didn't seem to have a concept of what a father figure was at first so David began playing Ariel/ the Little Mermaid with her where he would be King Triton and she would be Ariel. She really responded well to that and began to work out the role of a "dad" through her play with him. She adores him!
David continues to excel in school and he will start adjusting folks in the student clinic really soon. I'm excited to have my own personal chiropractor :)

On Everything Else
The kids are doing great. We are so proud of the improvements they have made over the past couple of months. Although most of those improvements are to the Lord's credit and not ours, we are very proud of them. Baby Girl (4) has both grown up and grown "down" so much since we first got her. She has grown up in that she is more settled, more helpful, has learned a years worth of information in the last two months, and can regulate her emotions better. She is flying through the phases that she missed in her earlier years. She is growing down in that she is less "hard" and visibly feels less responsible for her brother and sister. Mimi has perhaps changed the most, which is saying a lot. She is a much happier little girl and although she has her two year old moments, she is very pleasant to be around. We would now classify her as "well-adjusted" little girl who instead of throwing a fit and pulling out her hair will give a typical two-year-old response of "Duhdee, I'ont want too" :) Bubee is perhaps the happiest kid that we have encountered. He seems to weather things well. He is active and loves (LOVES) to sing! He is much more active (and interactive) since we took him a couple of times to a great Pediatric Chiropractor who helped him with a neck issue. (Had to throw in a plug for the chiropractic profession :) He has learned the word "Mommeeee" and "Dadeeeee" and will say it 100 times as long as we respond with some form of "Yes". Sometimes it's a game we play to see how long he will say it.

Everything else is also going well. Not only did we take in three kids in September, we also moved a couple weeks later in October. Many thanks to Eryn's family for helping out with the massive undertaking of moving with three kids. The kids also loved the garden at "the white house" (old house) which we did again this year (like last) for which I will spare you the numbers, but our crop produced more yield than last. We were sad to leave that behind at our new house. We hope to start one here in our new home this Spring. We love our neighborhood and the kids have other children around to play with. We have had a rough year, but in a good way. The transition from zero to three children has been tough to say the least, but we have not regretted a single minute of having these babies in our home. We cannot imagine ever loving any children more than we love them, nor did we know we were capable of loving little people who we hardly know this much. We are getting to know them better and know more of what they need each day and God has given us a ton of grace through the whole year from before we had them to now as we are parenting.

Hope you all are well and have a wonderful Christmas season!
Love, David, Eryn, Baby Girl, Mimi, and Bubee

If you want updates on our adoption/ foster care timeline or other stories here are some more links to other blog posts:
Why we chose to adopt through the foster system
Our Adoption Decision Journey
The first Two Months
Funny Things about the Kids

Funny Things

At Thanksgiving with David's family we were all watching the Alabama/ Auburn Football game on Saturday. So Baby Girl heard a lot of "Roll Tides". We had rolls for dinner that night and after dinner Baby Girl asked me if she could have another "roll tide" :) It took me a while to figure out she wanted an actual roll. I think she might have thought we were all screaming "Roll Tide" because we were really, really excited about the dinner rolls :)

When we put the kids to timeout we usually give them 5 seconds to change their behavior. We say, "1..2..3..4..5, OK timeout" or if they actually change, we just stop counting. Well the other day Mimi was playing with BeekBock in the hall and she was saying something that I couldn't make out. Then I heard her say to him, "3...4...8..9....OK, PIMOUT", which is what she calls timeout. I don't think she enforced it very well though!

Bubee is very compliant; although, I'm not sure he always knows what he is agreeing to. If you tell him something and ask him if he understands he always nods very slow and seriously up and down for yes. The other day I was testing him out to see if he knew what he was agreeing to:

• "Bubee all done with his dinner?"
• Nod for yes
• "Bubee want to get down?"
• Nod for yes
• "Bubee want to try and discover some unknown element so that he can win a Nobel prize for it?"
• Pause, then nod for yes!

Both him and Mimi always say, "K" for "OK" whenever we ask them to do something/ remember something that we just taught them that most likely resulted in a timeout. They also are not sure about exactly what "K" means:

• "Mimi share your toy with Bubee. You have had it for a long time."
• "K" and then we give the toy to Bub.
• Pause.
• Scream and crying.
• "But Mimi you said OK to sharing your toy."
• "K"
• Pause.
• More crying.

David's parents are called Mimomo and B-Pops by all the other grand kids. The other night during prayers (they usually repeats after us) Mimi was praying and said "Thank you for Mimomo and P-Pots". So poor Buddy is now P-Pots until Mimi can talk a bit better :)

Mimi is a do-er. She loves working at her play. She also loves taking everything apart and putting things back together. The other day when they came home from school I noticed she took all of her big sister's clothes out of her back pack (which Mimi calls a pack-pack). I know Baby Girl will need those clothes for school tomorrow so I told Mimi to "put all of sister's clothes back in her pack pack". I didn't realize how literally she would take that! I came back about ten minutes later to find Mimi lugging a hugely stuffed Hello Kitty back pack full of all of her sister's closet contents. Underwear, shoes, socks, scarves, ,etc. I couldn't be upset because I was laughing so much. I mean I did tell her to put "all of sister's clothes back in her pack pack"!

Baby Girl kind of has a speech delay. It has gotten TONS better since her surgery and she has been able to hear better. But she still speaks with kind of an Ebonics type country accent sometimes. I know that seems hard to picture, but she will say "oooohh (ten syllables for the "oh") lerrrrk (look) at my berrrk (book)". It's hilarious to us even though were are working on the correct way to pronounce the "OO" sound.

Bubee is called "Beek Bock" because he has been talking a lot more lately. But for the last two months any time you ask him to say two or more words, your reply was always "beek bock".

• Bubee say "Drink, please"
• "Beek Bock"
• Bubee say "I want to get down"
• "Beek Bock"
• Bubee say "Supercalafragelisticexpialidocious"
• Pause. "Beek Bock"
  

He is so cute saying please for everything. Well, it mostly sounds like "peeeee", but we take it :) And he is a really good singer. He loves to sing and dance around the house. The other day I gave him chocolate for the first time (a brownie), and his singing and dancing around went into overdrive. He was a dance machine! I don't think I will try that again anytime soon:)

I'm finally ready to blog again/ have the time to do so :)

Well, it's right around the two month mark that we have had the kiddos. Man, to say we have been "adjusting" feels like the worlds biggest understatement. Sometimes it has felt like surviving the hardest thing anyone could ever experience in an entire lifetime (no, I'm not being dramatic :). And other times it has felt like we were the luckiest people in the whole world and this whole parenting thing is a piece of cake. Now, I will admit that it was more of the former statement than the latter!

Here is what we have been dealing with over the last two months (side note- this is not intended to be a "complaining blog"- I just wanted to be able to look back and remember what all the craziness was like of the first couple of months):

• We took in three kids. A (from here on out referred to as "Baby Girl"-4 yrs. 6 mos.), M (who I call "Mimi" -2 yrs. 5 mos.), and B (who we call BeekBock or Bubba or Bubee- 19 mos) on Sept 23, 2011**
• We began to notice that Baby Girl couldn't hear very well. She would only look at our mouths when we talked so we made her an appt. with a pediatrician to get a physical and a referral to an ENT. She had a great doctor (who thankfully was also hearing impaired!) who said she definitely needed to see someone. We got her hearing checked and she had significant hearing loss. Thankfully the ENT performed surgery- basically tubes and fluid removal, and he said he was surprised that her speech was as good as it was with how much junk he pulled off her ears. Sweet baby girl went home and watched Bolt and noticed that puppies whimper for the first time. She also said I can hear y'all when you say "cockadoodledoo" now (Mimi and Bubba have a favorite book with that sound in it :) This whole process took about a month with about 4 appointments, 1 surgery, and several follow ups for the surgery and more hearing tests.
  
• All three kids came with lice. I think I would rather handle vomit than lice. Apparently they had had it so long that their little heads were breathing Super Lice, a genetically enhanced breed of lice that could withstand any pesticide or treatment. I still don't think I'm rid of them. It's also hard to get a 2 1/2 year old to sit still for an hour so I can pick out the nits. We are thinking of cutting hair soon, but I really really don't want to cut their pretty hair. Bubee's hair got buzzed, along with Daddy's, the fist week we had them :)
• Pinworms. Not gonna say much more about that. But thankfully they are gone and that wasn't a huge ordeal.
• Bubee was sick most of the first month he was with us. He came with a nasty ear infection, got the flu, then got the stomach flu. Sickness has been rampant in our home. I think we all five had upper respiratory infections for about three weeks. Then David got some kind of eye issue- conjunctivitis? and I got the stomach flu. Also had two ruptured cysts happen. At one point I was just laying on the living room floor and Baby Girl was rubbing my head asking me if I felt better. Sweet girl should not have to take care of her mama so early! Then David let them go to the store in these outfits to get them out of the house for a while (proof that there is more than one reason why mama's can't get sick:) -
• We noticed one day at dinner when Baby Girl complained that her teeth were "itching" that she had several brown spots/ gaping holes in her teeth. A dental appointment was for sure needed. We thought that her dental appointments were up to date because she was already in foster care, but that was clearly not the case. We took her to a "family dentist" who cleaned her teeth and said that she needed "too much work for him". So we took her to Children's Dental of Atlanta and there we found out she had 12 affected teeth. "Affected" meant everything from a cavity to being too far gone. On Nov 10th, Maurine/ David's mom came down to help take her to a sedation dental appointment so they could just do the bottom teeth, which was pulling the middle two, two crowns and some fillings. She has her appointment for her top teeth next week. She will have 5 crowns before it's all over, and we hope she doesn't look like 50 cent! Thank goodness all of this happened to her baby teeth. Everyday she talks about her new "big girl teeth" coming in.
• WIC appointments. Let me begin by saying that I am grateful to the government for the services my kids receive. Thank you. Now let me complain about budget cuts and how they affect my week: Last week I spent a total of 9 hours at the WIC office- yes that's correct, 9 whole hours. 4 1/2 of which were with a 21 month old who did not like the WIC office after about 30 minutes. It was, however, a neat experience because all the moms are there with their kids who are hating life and wanting to eat (thankfully I packed enough for a small army to eat not knowing how long it would take) and there is kind of a camaraderie with everyone. Like we're all miserable together why don't we try to talk to each other and hang out even though you speak English and I only speak Spanish! That did happen to me because Bubee's new best friend was a little boy who's mama only spoke Spanish. I got her name and that her son was 18 months old out of her and that was about it :) For us, we don't depend on WIC like others so at one point I was wondering if this was even worth it. Especially since I have to do it all again in a month to re-up the girls. But I'm glad I did it and I'm can block most of the stressful parts out!
• We moved! Why did we decide to move two weeks after the kids came home? Great question. I'm still not sure we knew exactly what we were doing, but after seeing Mimi put some cards in the radiator (no it wasn't yet on) we felt like we needed to get the fam to a place with central heat and air before the cold weather set in. Our story about how God got us a house is sure to be a post of it's own soon. Thankfully my Mom/ Rhonda and my Grandma and Grandpa (who the kids call Mamaw and Papaw- I'm not sure why they came up with those names but I think it was Mimi or Baby Girl. That is exactly what I called my Grandpa's parents so I guess it fits! Mimi actually called them Mamaw and Mamaw for a while- sorry Grandpa :) came (well Mom actually had been there a week to try and keep us sane!) and helped us pack up while the kids were in daycare on Friday October 7th and we moved the following day with the help of my Uncle Bryan too on October 8th. We love our house and the kids have much more space to run around and play.
• Allergies! If you know us well you know that we don't "eat like normal people" because we have some abnormal allergies. David is allergic to salmon, eggs, dairy, and mustard. I also cannot have dairy. So the allergy adjustment with the kids was not as bad as it could have been. When Mimi and Bubee came to our house their digestion was pretty bad. We're talking sometimes 7-8 Bms per day. The diaper adjustment, meaning how often we would have to buy them!, was huge for us. Mimi had been tested sometime before- like when she was a baby- that she was allergic to milk. Great, we already eat that way so not a big deal right? Well after Bub's 3rd doctor appt in a month his pediatrician suggested he may be intolerant (not the same thing as an allergy but just as inconvenient if you eat it) to wheat or dairy so she said to take him off both. Then Mimi's doctor and chiropractor suggested taking her off gluten as well because she had a lot of edema- basically she was a squishy 2 year old. I'm all for kids being on a gluten and casein free diet, and I think it has helped a ton of kids with variety of symptoms from exema to autistic features. HOWEVER, I did not want to be one of those mom's who has to always read every tiny label and tell their kid, "No, you can't have that!" when other kids are eating this awesome thing right in front of them. Now, I guess that is good for character development. But sometimes I wonder if people think I am depriving my kids. I even make their lunches for daycare, who actually provide meals for them already. I also have to educate so many people like their daycare workers, case managers, their parents, anyone who could possibly feed them anything- because wheat and milk are pretty much in everything sold in stores today! So there you have it. I am not a high maintenance mom with kids who have food allergies/ sensitivities. I am dealing with it. I will say that when they have a good week where they have not been exposed to one of those things, their diapers are fantastic! Only one normal poopie per day :) No weird rashes or throwing up either- all is well with the world. So I guess it's worth it.
• Parent visits. Our kids still see their biological parents once a week. I'm not going to say much other than it's hard on Baby Girl. And the other two really don't seem too affected by it. But it's hard. It's really hard on us to see regression once a week. But even though there is that little aggression, there is still so much progress that has been made since two months ago that it's all worth it in the end.
  

Even though all of these things have happened/ we have had to deal with them we don't regret a single moment of becoming "Mommy/ Mom/ Mother and Daddy/ Dad/ Father" to these three precious kids. We love them with our whole hearts and we are so proud to be their parents.

**Note: since we cannot use their names on the internet, I will be blogging about them with these names. It's a privacy issue with the state since they are still on foster status. I'm also probably fudging a bit with the new blog banner pic, but you can't see faces so it "should be just fine", as Baby Girl would say.

Our Adoption Decision Journey

So for posterity, I am going to share our journey over a few blog posts so that I will remember this whole crazy journey we have been on. Today, I'm posting about our decision to adopt through the foster system.

A couple months ago, I posted this. Something I had written back in 2008, around the time I felt like God was saying that adoption is something I should do. Notice I didn't say "we"...not yet anyways. I love how the Lord took us on our own journeys to get to the same decision. I have laid out a timeline and overlaid what details we now know of the kids' lives as well.

Summer 2008- Eryn wrote this and felt the Lord calling her to adopt through the foster system. Our lives were hectic. David was working 55-60 hrs a week and was also getting sick with an illness that would plague him for the better part of a year and a half. (At this point our oldest girl, A, is 1 year old.)

October 2008- Eryn feels called to go back to school for a MS in Counseling Psychology and enrolls in a school in Colorado for a quarter.

End of 2008- We decide to move back to Tennessee from Colorado so that Eryn can go to a good school for my MS in counseling and we can be closer to family after David decides to quit his PhD program to focus on his health. Clearly, it wasn't the time to adopt or foster for that matter, and moving states would have negated that even if we had of begun the process in Colorado.

2009- David struggles with the decision to go back to school to finish his PhD. He has been teaching as an adjunct professor up until this point while Eryn goes to school and nanny part time. He decides after much trial and prayer that he wants to pursue a Doctorate of Chiropractic instead and he chooses Life University. Eryn has two more semesters to finish school at this point. (M, our second girl, was born in April '09.)

January 2010- David begins Life University in Marietta, GA while Eryn finishes up school and works on her internship at Agape Nashville (who incidentally also does foster to adopt through the state of TN, but obviously this was not a good time since we lived apart for 4 months, seeing each other on weekends, and were about to move to another state!). (February 2010 is when B, our youngest, a boy, is born.)

May 2010- We find a home in Marietta, Georgia (two counties over from the county the children we hope to adopt, but they aren't placed in the state's care just yet). Eryn continues to travel to school in Nashville for one night a week while David is in the throws of Chiropractic School. Eryn also works at an internship at an Atlanta counseling center.

August 2010- Eryn graduates and stays on as a newbie counselor at the center she did her internship at. We also decide to check out a local private agency that specializes in foster-to-adopt programs with the state. We feel good about what we learned and decided to sit on things for a while.

October 2010- Eryn gets an admin position at her job site and earns extra money while she decides to build her clientele. David also has a vision of two little girls running around our home and feels like it's time to pursue adopting, feeling very strongly that with the Lord all things (no matter how overwhelming!) are possible.

January 2011- We attend a three day training, right on our 5 year anniversary weekend no less! Also, our children are put into foster care at the very same time. We also get checked out by a clinical nutritionist to help us with some health issues (David really hasn't felt back to 100% by this point and would like to be by the time he becomes a dad!). We also have our first adoption homestudy with a wonderful contract social worker.

February-May, 2011- We complete a vast amount of paperwork, gather records, get tested for various things, get fingerprinted, etc. for our homestudy to be complete. We didn't particularly feel a rush during this time, but we felt like we had a bit more time before we needed to be approved. We get the official word that we are approved just for adoption at the beginning of May.

May 2011- The referrals start pouring in for children who are free to adopt. We don't feel led to pursue any particular referral. We begin to be more open to sibling groups of TWO. In fact our adoption agent said that she thought of us for a couple sibling groups of THREE, but we weren't approved yet at the time. We were like, "Three? Yeah right!"....

June 2011- We receive a referral for three precious children who Eryn, immediately feels a connection with. We just have an email with a small blurb about a paragraph long and no pictures. Eryn calls David and says well it looks like we have a referral we need to talk about. David excitedly listens. Eryn says, "Well it's for a sibling group of two sisters 4 and 2.....and their 1 year old baby brother!" To Eryn's surprise, David laughs and says, "OK, let's find out more about them!". We both felt a connection with these kids that we can't explain. But we still aren't approved for foster care yet, and we have been trying to get approved for a while!

This is where I leave you till next time for a posting on all the obstacles!

Some News and Kid's Room

This is it...This is not a drill people....

That has been the phrase running through my mind this weekend. We received some "positive news" this week, which is what we are calling it because things can always change! And all weekend long we have been getting ready for our final homestudy visit on Monday. (Yes, we are already approved to adopt, but we have not yet been approved to foster- just a couple more technical things and paperwork that has to be finalized before we can have foster children in our home that might be ready to adopt soon.)

So all weekend we have been shopping/ looking on Craigslist/ having minor freak-outs about what a __ year old might eat? what kind of bed do they need?/ getting really excited/ freaking out. again/ trying to make our home look like it did in April when we had our last homestudy (which we thought was our last one so we let our house go to pot...j/k...sort of :).

We have felt so blessed by many of you with your thoughts, prayers, checking ins, and donations (THANKS HURTUBISE FAMILY!!!). Huge shout out to Maurine and Mom for their contributions- Maurine got us the adorable curtains and Mom donated my childhood armoire and cute laundry basket for them to put their dirty clothes in. And we also feel blessed by Craig and his list!

Here are some pics of the kiddos room we just finished today. Also, we just kindof got a lot of things because they will be checking to see how many beds we own on Mon. We may have gone overboard with the beds in the room but this is just so our social worker can see that we have plenty of space- we can always rearrange :)