Interesting Twist…

This post is going to be a bit involved so you may want bail now before you commit a lot of your time. Let me begin by giving God the glory…ALL the glory. We have been blessed to see his hand of provision faithfully guiding us through to a new level with Yaya. I will have to start back on July 26th.  We had some of our dear friends stay over at our home. They are big advocates in the world of Autism and Asperger's. They spent all day Friday with us, stayed the night, and then left Saturday morning. I was fortunate enough to engage in a conversation with my friends about some concerns that have been growing in the back of my mind for several months. They were concerns that I had not actually shared with anyone because I didn’t know how to frame them and to be honest, I thought people would think I was crazy. While talking to my friends I made the statement that I sometimes wonder if Yaya is not on the spectrum. My friends eyes shot open wide and she gently said that after spending a 24 hour period with Yaya they too shared the same concern. We all agreed, something was off about Yaya and we weren’t sure that being an international adoptee could explain it all away.

At this point I’m sure many of you are thinking….did you just suggest that Yaya is in some way, shape or form autistic?!  The answer is, no, not really. Although it would have been foolish to totally rule it out. From all my research in preparing to adopt I had read that often institutionalized children can have very bizarre behavior and exhibit semi-autistic behavior even though they are NOT autistic. Yaya had been exhibiting very strange behavior over the past several months that we tried to keep pinning on “attachment issues”. But for me that was starting to lose its sticking power. There was SOMETHING wrong with my daughter. After speaking with my dear friends and being validated that I was NOT losing my mind, Yaya did indeed have some strange behavior, I crafted an email. This email I sent to 9 different people in 3 different organizations and within 24 hours I had heard from someone from each organization. I LOVE the team God has assembled to care for Yaya. Within 72 hours I had met with the two key professionals in Yaya’s life…her attachment therapist and her speech therapist. What I discovered shocked me. After meeting with the attachment therapist, I was still hanging on to the idea that Yaya’s behavior was attachment/adoption/anxiety related. It didn’t really resonate. Even my therapist said… “I’ll be curious to see what your speech therapist says.”

Here where it gets interesting folks. The week this happened was to be our last week working with this specific speech therapist, something that made me so sad. I went to our last speech session with Yaya and the last half of the session our therapist took Yaya out to play on the playground with a class that was out there. (This comes into play the next day.) We didn’t talk about the email I sent because I had an appoint to discuss it the following day.  But I did throw out the possibility of keeping her on as our private speech therapist in addition to what the state provides. At this suggestion her eyes lit up and she said that Yaya was going to need more than just two days of speech a week. If we could afford to still keep coming that she would keep Yaya as a client. Praise the Lord! So that brings us to Friday’s appointment with our speech girl. We got settled in our room and she opened up with… “I am by far the best person to address your concerns about Yaya. Before I did speech therapy I was a diagnostician for children with autism. I worked exclusively with autistic children.”

Let’s all just pause a moment to let that sink in, shall we?

Do I need to ask the question, “What are the chances of that?”

Does our Lord supply all our needs or what?!

She followed up that statement with, “I worked with autistic kids and there is no way this child has any form of autism. She couldn’t do the things she does with me if she did.” She brought out the criteria for diagnosing autism and was prepared to walk me through every step to reassure me that this was not Yaya. But I didn’t need her to do that since I didn’t think Yaya was autistic. I just didn’t understand what was going on with her and I knew something was wrong.

She then began to tell me that about 80% of the behaviors we are seeing are speech related. She also suggested that I get rid of the idea that Yaya has “attachment” issues. She told me that all of the people I contacted agreed that Yaya is attached. But Yaya is “anxious”. The two words are NOT synonymous, but several of my professional peeps use them that way. Then she told me about two other families she wants to introduce me to that have kids who had clefts. Their kids are biological, NOT adopted, but they are experiencing the same things we are.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! How can that be? Well for starters she is an extremely bright child as we all know, and she gets that she should be speaking like Eden and Noah but isn’t. I have two hyper verbal biological children and Eric and I are very loquacious ourselves so being in our family and NOT being able to verbalize is very stressful. Also, she KNOWS she isn’t our biological child and that Noah and Eden are…and they can talk. But the real kicker is this…she is cognitively at a 4-year-old level but has the speech abilities of a 12 month old.

Again…let that one sink in…

Upon hearing this comparison…I just wept. I looked at my speech girl and said, “It’s like being locked in.” Her eyes widened and she affirmed to me that this is very much how Yaya experiences life right now. Yaya knows all the words she wants to communicate, full and complicated thoughts and ideas, but she has no way to communicate them. Ugh. Can you imagine? I know this is a temporary situation. Intelligible speech is going to come, but I was informed it is going to come extremely slowly for Yaya. The road before Yaya is still a long and arduous one indeed. <Big sigh> However, this is the road that God has set before her and it is one he will lead her safely down. (As a side note, I am praying against the idea that it will take an extremely long time for her to master speech. I am praying for a miraculous, supernatural intervention on God’s part that will allow Yaya’s mouth to do what it needs to do, what it should have done naturally were it not for her cleft. Please join me in that prayer.)

Remember when I said, we went out to the playground for half of Yaya’s last speech appointment? That was so our therapist could observe how Yaya interacted with other children (unbeknownst to me). I remember Yaya being introduced to a few kids. Things always start off good with Yaya and new kids but usually end badly. What our therapist observed was that Yaya does NOT interact “atypical” with other kids. Yaya actually does great…right up to the point that dialogue is required; then Yaya shuts down the interaction because she knows she can’t be understood. Stab me in the heart, will ya? Please pray that Yaya’s preschool class is loving and will work with Yaya to include her and befriend her.

So where does that leave us now? What do we do? Well we are to do several things:

1. Give her more control in her life. There are all kinds of things we need to let Yaya be trying on her own, instead of doing for her…i.e.. picking out her clothes, putting on her clothes, doing all parts of the process of teeth brushing and washing her hands etc. She needs to be able to assert herself more in her own environment to feel more comfortable in the environment and to feel good about herself.

2. Get a workable daily schedule in place.  Yaya NEEDS to know what is going to happen ‘next’. In the orphanages they had very rigid schedules and things were predictable. To help address Yaya’s anxiety level we need to have a functional daily schedule that she participates in creating. Our speech therapist has made one for us to use and it is wonderful!

3. I am to stop correcting and working on speech in the home right now. Constantly correcting Yaya’s speech and continuing to connect with her at the same time equals impossible. She is stressed enough as it is to communicate with me and correcting her all the time is making her anxiety worse.

4. Increase Yaya’s sign vocabulary to that of a 4-year-old.  This is just good sense. She can communicate with someone on her cognitive level if she has the signs she needs. Therefore I will be signing all the time with her.

We have instituted these changes and have seen a dramatic decrease in her rages and other strange behavior. We are also speaking to her about how frustrating it must be for her right now and reassuring her that speech is going to come. We are praising all her efforts and tell her how proud we are of her (she has mastered the sign for proud by the way.) Since I started signing to her all the time, she is attempting to respond in full spoken sentences. I have no idea why that is happening, but it is, and we are thrilled. We are still having hard days but we don’t seem to be escalating anymore. It has been remarkable to watch. And amazingly her speech is actually getting clearer! We are able to understand more of what she says. We weren’t supposed to see our speech girl until September but she had an opening last week and even she noticed that Yaya was sounding more articulate.

All this is amazing, but what is helps ME the most is knowing that this behavior isn’t all coming from the trauma of her past. Her past still haunts her that is for certain, but it isn’t what is driving the majority of her anger or anxiety. She may always be an anxious child and she may be a little quirky, but who knows? What I do know is this: our attachment is there and it is growing. As it grows it will help decrease the anxiety. Speech is coming and as her speech grows it will greatly reduce her anxiety. God is faithful and he desperately loves this child of his and as his presence in her life grows…He can eradicate her anxiety. This is my prayer. I pray that God eradicates anxiety in Yaya’s life, that it is not something that she will wrestle with her whole life.

So there you have it. How amazing is our God to orchestrate all of this? Can you see his hand in all of it? I mean how bizarre freaking awesome is all of this? If my friend hadn’t shown up, if I hadn’t of emailed all my therapists, then my speech girl would have never know what was happening. And it was our LAST WEEK WITH HER! And how is it that she just so happened to be diagnostician for autism but now is MY child’s speech therapist? Seriously?!! God is Glorious!!! It blows me away. Pray for speech, friends. Pray.

Mommy and Eden Date

It really takes so little. It almost hurts my heart how little it takes to refill my sweet girl’s love tank. I am on a mission to make sure that little tank never runs dry again. We have gone through too much to let her slip back into the dark place she was in a year ago. Part of filling up her tank is time alone with Mommy! So we had a GREAT date night last Sunday! We bolted out of church before it was even over and made straight for the McWane Science Center, a children’s hands on learning center downtown. We started at the bottom floor with the fishes…we looked at the stingrays and sharks but didn’t venture to pet them. We gazed, ooh’ed and ahh’ed over the tropical fish tanks and spotted several tiny seahorses. Contentedly we sighed over the jellyfish tank that would turn those translucent wonders into lovely hues of pink, green, blue and yellow. Then we were took the stairs to the play floor.

First stop, indoor playground! The flash was bright in the dark play tunnels.

Second, puzzles.

Third, water table!!!

She is so dadgum cute! Here are some random shots from the first floor…

Then we meandered to the bubble making area which was somewhat disappointing but the lazer harp saved the day. Lunch beckoned and we gobbled up pizzas, chips and sodas.  Off to the second floor…home of the crazy dinosaur machine that makes a terrifying growl that Eden still talks about, random fossils and woodsy stuff and the peg board! Let’s hear it for the peg boards. This child loves to make an impression of her face and hands…she did it “ump-teen” times!

Last stop…third floor! By far this was the floor we had the most fun on. She continues to talk about the giant piano that we could walk on but sadly I didn’t get any shots of it. The funny this is that we didn’t really play on it all that much since she was too light to trigger the sensors under the keys unless she jumped. But she loved the light up acrylic peg board the most. We were here for quite some time making different patterns.

We ended our day with the giant foam building blocks. She helped two tween-agers build a fort and was so excited to be included. These were really cool blocks.

However, it would not be a real trip with a quick visit to the gift shop. I had to say only one word…rocks. This girl knew exactly what I was talking about.  We headed straight for the polished rocks she picked out 8 purple rocks, one blue for Eric, one green for Yaya and a green for Daddy. The great thing about this amazing day is that she continues to tell me, “Mommy, I had a great time with you the other day.” She has told my Mom about it 3 times and she has mentioned it to Eric and Noah.  It was a huge success! I can’t wait to get our “me and you” time with her again this week! She is such a joy!

Fourth Grade

First week of Homeschool completed…check!

For those of you who do not know yet, I am homeschooling Noah and hope to do so until he graduates high school. I am currently sold on the concept and I have an incredible co-op that I am involved with called Classical Conversations. A-MAZING! We start C. C. on Wednesday the 21st. It is a one day a week co-op that Noah and I attend and we get to learn together! But this week we started what I like to call Homeschool Lite. It was a week where I got to test out what we were gonna do and see if it would work. Monday was disastrous. Plus, the girls are here with us and it makes it almost impossible to teach Noah with the girls around. The problem with Monday…no schedule. My son has been working independently for several years from a schedule in his Montessori experiences. So Monday night, I sat down with all our curriculum and figured out what we really were going to use. I was focused on making a workable schedule for our day. What ended up transpiring was that I boxed up $300.00 worth of curriculum and sent it back for a refund! Once I let go of the stuff I really didn’t need or want, and decided to trash the schedule that came with that curriculum I was able to make our schedule for the entire week in about 20 minutes! So freeing! We will spend about 1.5 hours on things like faith building, math, reading, science, handwriting, art, read-alouds, and about another 1.5 hours with our C.C. curriculum making a 3 hour day for us. Perfection. Preschool will enrapture Eden and Yaya for 4 hours each day so with travel time removed it leaves Noah and I, 3 hours to work alone. I love it when a plan comes together! As for the rest of our week it was GREAT! Noah’s response, ‘I LOVE IT! I mean, I miss my Montessori friends and all, but I’m making new ones in C.C. I loved C.C.!”

(Working on Math, Teaching Textbooks) 

(Check out Noah’s back to school clothes…yep…new pj’s!)

We had student/parent orientation tonight…he got to meet the other kids in his class and his tutor. The tutor is another Mom with a child in the program who was trained to present the information that Noah and I will be working on at home together. He is really excited. He will be in a class of 8 kids from 9:30 –12. Then we break for lunch and recess. After this, he and I will attend a grammar, math skills, and writing class from 1-3 pm. It is all very fun and engaging and we are both looking forward to being in the classroom learning together!

My Mom is here helping me out with the girls this week and the times Noah and I have gotten to be alone together to learn have been wonderful. Thrilled to be doing this with him, I am! Preschool will start on the 28th so we will have to figure out how to work around the girls for a week and a half but we will manage. Things will get a little hairier with the onset of preschool as we will all have to be back on a morning routine in order to get the girls to school on time. However, I wait with great expectation for the 28th to see how things will really play out in our home. It’s gonna be a wild ride this fall! So pumped!

An Answered Prayer

Since August of last year 2012, I have been praying for someone to enter into our lives and come alongside us with our children. I have been praying for that one person who would want to love and know my children. I have been praying for that source of local help that seemed so evasive. We just didn’t have anyone in our lives ready or willing to make that commitment. I prayed for this person so that one day I could date my spouse again and confidently leave my children with a person I trusted, a person my kids trusted…let’s get real here…a person Yaya trusted. I prayed for this person so my kids could get a break from me. I prayed for this person because I so desperately was in need of a friend. I prayed for this person for so many reasons. And I doubted my God heard me…

When will I learn? Oh my Lord loves me so much. So much in fact, that instead of  sending me one person…he sent TWO!!  Isn’t that just like God?  To lavish his love on his children and exceed their expectations. Yep, it’s just like him. I sit in awe of what he is doing in the lives of the Williamsons.

Enter Jennifer and Harold. My answer to prayer. The hands and feet of Jesus to the Williamsons. There really aren’t words to describe my heart for them. There is so much to say about them, I don’t know where I would begin.

Last night, Eric and I went on a date. We went to California Pizza Kitchen and then to the movies. We saw the movie called, The Heat. We laughed in that movie for an hour and a half, we laughed so hard in fact we cried several times and I couldn’t breathe at several points. (As an aside, there is so much profanity in this film it is ridiculous…literally. But I wouldn’t change a single word.)

Friends there is something so healing and good about laughter. I have had one of the best days I’ve had in a year and in part, I believe it is because I laughed for 1.5 hours last night.  And it was all made possible because of Jennifer and Harold. Now a small part of me sorta hates them because they got the girls to go to bed in less than 20 minutes. So quickly did they get the girls down that even Noah remarked, “No one has ever gotten them to sleep so quickly.” And of course, while they were here there was no screaming or gnashing of teeth, which is what I got all day long before they arrived. But I digress.

Oh and let me say a word about sleep lest any of you have forgotten. For Yaya (and any kid really, but especially adopted kids) going to sleep is a supreme act of trust. For Yaya to go to sleep and so quickly shows her strong attachment to us and her confident level of trust with Jennifer and Harold. This is huge. We didn’t leave the kids in the middle of the day and come back before bedtime…we left at dinner and let our friends attempt bedtime. HUGE DEAL.

Can I just tell you how wonderful and glorious it was to go out and NOT WORRY about my kids?! I mean I didn’t check in once. I knew without a doubt they would contact me if there were trouble. When we got home the girls were down and Jennifer and Harold were playing video games with Noah. Jennifer’s first response to seeing us in the foyer at 9 pm was, “What are you doing here?! Why are you home so soon? Do you want the keys to our house?” I. Love. This. Woman. Sadly, we confessed that we didn’t really know how to “go out” anymore and didn’t know what else to do after the movie so we came home. We got a quick run down on the night and Jennifer even remembered to wash Yaya’s hair with the appropriate day’s medicated shampoo! She had remembered we had 4 different kinds and of course I have the bottles labeled so there you have it. It was so amazing. The only other person to keep my kids has been my Mom and she has only done that twice. So in 14 months Eric and I have had 3 dates. All that is about to change. We are moving Jennifer and Harold in…no, just kidding. But they said they would love to watch our kids for us again, praise the Lord.

Thank you Jesus for hearing my hearts cry and sending us these incredible people who have become so dear to us in such a short amount of time. It clearly was your divine pleasure to introduce us. How we love this couple.

Potty Language…

Glory! Hallelujah! Yaya is potty trained! Can I get a, “Woot! Woot!” A game changer this is! Preschool here we come!!!!!! It is sad when  bowel control merits a blog post on my part, causes much rejoicing and well is the high point of my day and…. it isn’t even my bowels. I need life. I really, really need a life.

But HOORAY!!! I know many of you have been praying us up in the potty training department since I have had to train two girls over this summer and frankly, I was unsure Yaya was gonna cooperate. But dare I say she has been the easiest of my three to train?! For those of you that don’t know, both girls have to be potty trained to be accepted into preschool, and that is just about any preschool. The reason why preschool is so important to me is because I am homeschooling Noah this year and it would be impossible with the girls here to do that. AND Yaya really needs to go to preschool for several reasons, but I digress. Back to the potty language!

Today was the first day she took herself to the potty. The past week she has been going in the potty only when we take her or suggest that she go. But today was different. Early this morning out of the blue I hear Yaya say, “Mama, pee pee in the potty!” She had wide eyes and then ran off. I chased her yelling words of encouragement and before her little bootie even sat down on the potty, the potty was singing it’s song. (It plays encouraging triumphant music and yells Yay! Do we live in a first world country or what?) She barely made it but she did it! Wash and repeat 2 times with a poo-poo thrown in! At one point I  didn’t know she had gone to the potty until I heard her yell, “Mama ! I did it! I need toilet paper!” May I just say how proud I was of her on so many levels. Let’s just table the fact that she was using the potty. The child used WORDS!!!! She spoke out a full sentence to me that I could decipher! Glory to God, to him be ALL the glory!

We took a long car ride to pick up Noah from gymnastics…she got out of the car, climbed the stairs into the house and went straight to the potty!! Are you kidding me! You go girl! Literally!!!

AND she got out of her bath tonight in order to pee pee in the potty! I. COULD. NOT. BE. PROUDER.  It’s like she just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Y’all just don’t understand the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders. Yaya had to accomplish this before August 28th or school was a no-go. I’m pretty sure 10 years from now if she reads this post she will die of embarrassment and need therapy. But come on folks, a little levity is good. My mother still tells of my potty training woes and I’m 41. Forgetaboutit.

So thrilled I could shout it from the mountain tops!!!!!!

(No pictures to post. )

Me & My Julie…

Okay so I am starting to get with my “Me Program.” One big installment of that happened last weekend Aug 3-4. I met my friend Julie (Ella’s Mom) in Ft. Payne, AL at a Hampton Inn. It was the mid way point between us. We met for one reason…well two actually…1. Sanity 2. Digital Scrapbooking. Oh yeah baby, bring it on! We had a delightfully quiet time. We arrived at the Hampton at around 11:45 and went in to see if a room was ready early. There were exactly 3 other cars in the lot. The sweet little old lady behind the desk, kindly, in a gentile voice, informed us that no rooms were available. I asked if we could sit in the lobby and wait and hang out…she informed me in her southern belle voice that the lobby was also unavailable. I looked at her quizzically and said, “Really? The lobby is unavailable?” It was deserted. So she pressed on and told me that they were sold out the night before and nothing was clean including the lobby. Yeeahhhhh riiiiiiiighhhtttt. So I said in my best funny voice, “Sold out? The parking lot is empty, where are you hiding all the people?” This was met with silence. Okay then. She smiled sweetly and suggested that we go get some lunch and try back later.  Alrighty then. So we headed to the the Ruby Tuesdays. We walked in to blaring loud music that made the restaurant feel more like a night club. An 80’s night club mind you, which is great, but still.  I am getting old people…it’s sad. I started dancing in my seat and when the waitress arrived I asked if we were in a club. Again, nervous silence. Yeaahhhhh, so our Ft. Payne brothers and sisters working the Hampton and Ruby T’s lack a sense of humor and sarcasm seems to confuse them. So we ate a good meal (while our ears bled) and then geared up to try the old lady back at the front desk again. It occurred to me I should have asked for the manager the first time, check, keep that idea close at hand. We walked back in and our sweet, and now slightly creepy, old lady greeted us with her poised smile. She let us know that a room was indeed ready now. I was so thankful. I inquired about her name. She pointed slowly to her right, arm fully extended with her pointer finger moving slowly from up to down like a plane landing, to point at the plaque on the wall that bore her name, Janice, with the words Acting Manager under it. Hmmmm, glad I didn’t pull the “what’s your name who’s your boss” card.  And I was pretty sure Janice is going to sneak into our room that night and kill us with a butcher knife. Bates Motel anyone?

So we brought all our gear in and just had gotten settled when there was a knock at the door.  It was housekeeping, she didn’t realize we had checked into our room early and it freaked her out to hear voices on the floor she was cleaning. She was very sweet and asked us if we needed anything. I inquired about toothpaste and she said she didn’t think they had that. Oh well, I’ll just raid Julie’s. Anyhoo, after that interruption we got right down to work. Julie fired up Pandora and we rocked out to Third Day, Tenth Ave. North, Toby Mac and many other good tunes. We both were making pages for our blogs of our trips to China. We churned out pages left and right…but mostly right. Then knock…knock…knock. Really?! So I go answer the door again…it was the same sweet housekeeping girl. She had gone down to the front desk to ask about toothpaste for me and informed me that they do have it, if I need it. So nice. Love that southern hospitality.  Eventually we figured we had to eat and ordered enough Pizza, cheese sticks and pasta to feed a small village, and it was delivered straight to our door! After gorging ourselves on pizza we were back to work. We had to dip into some good ole’ Michael Jackson and then we rounded out our night with Madonna. Ahhhhh, children of the 80’s.

My favorite quote of the evening was when I asked Julie about a page I had been working on, that admittedly I had been struggling with but thought I’d landed somewhere safe with it. When I showed Julie her response was this, “Well I it isn’t horrible. (my mouth fell open) I mean I don’t hate it. (slight choking sound in my throat) But I don’t love it either…” WHAT?!! Oh my word! I then laughed so hard! Can I tell you how much I love this woman?! I love her LOTS!! Not only can we scrapbook for hours together without feeling the need to talk the whole time or any of the time, but brutal honesty comes with this friendship too! So refreshing…and somewhat painful. So after much laughter on both our parts, I reworked the page. It looked better. Here are the pages I got done!

Around 6:30 pm ish we heard a loud family across the hall. The TV started blaring, children could be heard and above it all was a screaming baby. Sigh. Seriously?! The volume of this family ebbed and flowed but about every 45 minutes the baby would scream. At 9:00 pm I got twitchy and looked at Julie and said, “I hate to be that person. But would you be willing to change rooms if they had one available? I drove an hour and half away from my home to get away from a screaming child in the night.” And I knew her answer before I asked. SOOOO, I called the front office and made the awkward request and luckily I found the one girl in Ft. Payne with a sense of humor. I begged her for a new room and apologized profusely for being that person.  She told us to come down any time that she just re-keyed us some new cards. I went down immediately for the new room cards and thanked her again. We were on the same hall at the end in the corner room, which the front desk girl said was the quietest room in the hotel and by the way it was bigger! Score! Friends we moved our junk at 9:15 pm and it was soooooo the right move! It was very quiet and wonderful! Good call! Back to work. I got as far as my photos would carry me on the blog and realized I forgot the coming home at the airport file…dadgumit! So I switched to photo organization, uploading and some blogging.

I slept well but woke up several times to turn over, the bed wasn’t great, but the sleep overall was. We woke in the morning and drug ourselves down to the complimentary breakfast which was actually pretty good. I got to introduce Julie to a cool waffle iron but unfortunately the batter was yuckie and the waffle, while cooked to perfection, did not taste that good. We got a glimpse as the giant family we moved away from and they were unique. They even had a Noah doppleganger, no truly. I even had to show the woman a photo of Noah to prove it…I think I scared her. Anyway, we ate and then went back up to the room to eek the last hours out of our playdate. We sat down and got comfy and there was a knock at the door. It was the same cleaning woman from the day before…we freaked her out. She was all like, I didn’t know anyone was in here and weren’t you down the hall?! God bless this poor gal. And so, Julie showed me how to use my camera. Bonus! And then I realized we had no pictures of our weekend. We took two cell phone shots and I took one of the room and our lovely view of the interstate. Then it was 11:00…dum dum da dum. Time to check out. Sadness. We decided to eat lunch because Eric suggested I do that via text (love that man). We went to what we thought was a Mexican restaurant, but it was a steak house instead. Great food though and we got to throw our peanut shells on the floor. We chatted and then said our goodbyes. Sigh. I miss her already. Thanks Jewels…great getaway!

Block Party!!

Okay…this was from JULY! So I’m sorta catching up on the everyday life blogging. This was a fun afternoon where all 3 kiddos played together. They do play together a lot but it is normally a chasing game of fort building game, it is rarely and sit down activity. On this day, I brought out the blocks. For the most part it went swimmingly. Eden tends to have some ownership issues, as in she owns all the blocks. Yaya has some ‘clipping’ issues, as in she clips or steals peoples blocks (mostly green ones). And Noah has a heart of gold and the patience of Job issue…I love that boy. We made several towers and then we made a few marble runs. A good time was had by all!