Brooke's 'Dissertation'

Every day I laugh out loud at the funny things that happen in our house. I think most households with young children are filled with stories like ours...just about 10 minutes ago I was standing at the sink in the kids' bathroom and got peed on by a wandering little 2 1/2 year old's pee stream. Huge wet spot on my pantleg...I mean, Luke is good-he hit me from the other side of the bathroom...they just don't pay attention much when using the potty...I have to clean it at LEAST twice a week. So gross-I feel sorry for Grace having to share a bathroom with 2 little boys. So in case any of our friends who spend time at our house are reading this, please make a mental note that even though it may not seem like I clean, when you use the bathroom at our house, know that my boys have an amazing ability to hit the entire bathroom and avoid the actual toilet bowl-it is not a reflection on my cleaning commitment!

I'm happy to report that Anteneh still has not had to visit the emergency room! Haha!Yahoo! He is learning! In fact, I think he is trying very hard to be a good boy and not get into things he is not allowed to get into...he is a hard worker and loves to please so now that he has learned some boundaries, things are getting much easier around here. Hopefully the kids are going to be good for Daryn...I am leaving in a few hours to visit Tracey in Clearwater, Fl for 2 1/2 days!!! Yeh! I am so excited. A few days to hang out, go out to eat, read, walk dogs...maybe walk on the beach...just what I need right now...Daryn is a good husband...it was a surprise from him to give me a break and buy a plane ticket...not only is he a good husband, he is quite wise...As a good friend of ours said once, "either pay for me to take a break now or pay for it later when i need therapy b/c I never had a break!" Heehee...And she seems to be a super mom-so, I don't feel so bad getting away for a few days.


Well, that's about all there is to report at the moment...things are going well...the boys play Spiderman and Superman ALL DAY...just about every waking moment. They are best friends. (when they aren't telling on each other for hitting)! Grace is doing well, too...loving her new haircut (it's so easy! i used to spend 20 minutes a day brushing and braiding it!)...and she and I have been scrap booking together a lot. We made her own little corner next to my scrapbooking desk. We have all her stickers and stamps and stuff in little drawers. Lots of fun. Sometimes I want to be a kid again!

Oh! Last thing...here is a movie recommendation: Amazing Grace...it's a great movie all about William Wilberforce and his efforts to end the slave trade from Africa. It is a movie EVERYONE should see..It's a true story about this man who selflessly changed the world. It's amazing...just watch the preview...here is the link to the website: Amazing Grace. Having Anteneh as a son now has sparked my desire to learn more about the history of slavery and the American Civil war. History is so interesting to me and to have a son from Africa has just made this part of history so much more intense to me. I think of how if he would have been born just a few hundred years earlier, he might have been one of the men who was captured and taken from Africa on a slave ship. I have always been outraged at what humans have been capable of when you examine history but to have an African son makes me think about it even more. I have been reading a historical book called Mrs. Robert E. Lee: The Lady of Arlington. It is a biography about the wife of the commander of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War. What an interesting book. To see this perspective is different. They were devoted Christians, and actually abolitionists. Mrs. Lee and her father were very instrumental in a program to end slavery and return slaves to Africa. It was a flawed program and never really saw success. General Lee actually called slavery, "a moral and political evil in any country..." I bet not many people know that. At the same time, the family owned slaves. (They gave them all their freedom BEFORE the Emancipation Proclamation, though). What a family of contrasts. IT was illegal to teach a black person to read or write(I never knew this! How crazy!) But over her lifetime, Mrs. Lee never stopped teaching the slaves that her family owned to read and write and also held a church service for them. So many contrasts. I am not saying I respect this family much -they had some beliefs that were downright wrong-they actually believed that the black race was inferior to the white race. As educated and intelligent as they were, it seems obvious that they were ignorant in many ways...BUT it is so interesting to just become educated on WHY they held the beliefs they did and WHY they fought so strongly for the Confederacy. I've always heard 'the civil war was not just about slavery'...but I have never understood that much until lately as I read more about it. It has been a blessing to me to become more educated on the history of this country's involvement with Africa-including all of the horrors that occurred. I feel that really it is our responsibility to know this country's history-especially when it comes to the institution of slavery. It is something we can't escape. It really was not that many years ago that this country was divided to the point of war! Do you realize that it was only 150 years ago that it was illegal to educate a black person! That a white person could OWN a black person 150 years ago? These barbarities happened not that long ago...ok...I need to calm down and quit writing...I'm sure as I read more, I'll have more to go on and on about soon...

Well, I need to go put my jeans in the dryer. They aren't going to be dry in time if I don't go now... I leave in about an hour! Relaxation, here I come!

My Sweet Girl

Today Grace was so brave! She never ceases to amaze me with how giving she is...I told her months ago about Locks of Love-the organization that takes hair donations to make hairpieces for children who have lost their hair due to childhood diseases and chemo treatments. From the moment she heard about it, she was set on donating her hair. We let it grow a few months to get it long enough and today we went in and got it cut! I did the honors of cutting the pigtails off b/c I'd read the requirements of how long they had to be(we cut 10 inches!) and our friend Nick Berry did a GREAT job of giving her a cute little bob! I felt like crying-like he'd cut MY hair off or something...and Daryn wasn't too excited for her to cut off her hair (he didn't tell Grace that) ...BUT GRACE LOVES IT! Which is great b/c I was scared she'd cry and regret cutting it...I just love her...she is such a giver. She has a giving little unselfish heart. WE are going to package up her pigtails in the morning and send it in! I'd better hide them from Anteneh, though-he has a tendency to get in to things if you haven't noticed:) Haha!

Cold Water

So, I'm taking a shower the other night and the water goes ICE COLD....I ask Daryn, "Honey, will you check the water heater? Something is wrong with the hot water!"...He comes back in and informs me that the dial on the water heater (you know, the water heater that has the 'warning' picture of the man getting consumed by flames on it) had been turned all the way down. One of my 3 children had messed with it and I had a pretty good idea WHICH ONE IT HAD BEEN!

Let me just say that if I hadn't had to stand there for 10 minutes with soap in my hair waiting for the water to heat up-I would have given Anteneh a piece of my mind:) Well, he was asleep, anyway... Haha...instead, I stood there fuming thinking of what I was going to say in the morning until the water had most of the chill gone-enough that my teeth only chattered for the next 2 hours as my body struggled to regain normal body tempurature...

He fessed up the next morning...he had turned it down when we'd let him walk into the garage alone to get a bike that day. Hence the name from a few blogs ago: "Little STINKER!!!" Anyone want to make some bets on how long it will be before he ends up in the emergency room? I'm scared for the boy...God protect his little wandering hands!!!

Anteneh's First Camping Trip

Monday we decided, rather spur of the moment, to go camping! Here are some pictures...Anteneh is a WORKER! He loved helping Daddy put the tent up...the kids all had a blast with their new headlamps and Anteneh especially loved getting to sleep right next to Shadow in the tent













He tasted his first smore and HATED it...he then opted for a banana...It was a great trip...(oh, besides Anteneh crying for 30 minutes b/c he was scared of the dark and then later peeing in his sleeping bag-haha-we know better than to let him down the water before bedtime!)
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You can see Anteneh in this picture eating his banana while the other kids toast their marshmallows...if Anteneh is going to be an American he is going to have to learn to love smores! Haha...just kidding...I'd rather my kid chose a banana over a sugary dessert ANYDAY!

A Tale of Two Bellies

Today was fun-never mind the fact that we let the boys strip down to their underwear in the front yard...Daryn and I were so tired by 4pm that we just put two buckets of water in the driveway with sponges and cups and let the kids play in the water-lots of fun for a 2 year old, 3 year old, and 5 year old...well, the boys were soaked so they kept peeling clothes off and ended up in their underwear. Grace was a lady and kept all her clothes on (I think she is past the age where being in underwear outside is OK...Haha



The kids had a grand old time and we got to sit and rest in lawn chairs. I hope our neighbors weren't offended...As we sat watching the kids, I couldn't help laughing at their little bodies...Luke is stocky-he's strong and muscular but not very lean. He has washboard abs. Anteneh on the other hand is lean and thin and long. And his belly is the roundest belly I've ever seen-I guess some kids just have bellies and some don't...his health is good and he eats as many calories as I do...I am pretty sure he is just built like that. It's funny how all our kids are built so differently but they are all so cute in those ways that they are different from each other-I had to capture it on film. Am I horrible that I put pictures of our kids in their underwear on the internet? Don't answer that.
Oh! And last night we had an Ethiopian college student over for dinner-which was very fun-I was a little scared to do it b/c I had no clue what to cook (OK...I know that it's not that big of a deal but what would he like to eat???) It was nice to talk to him and to see him talk to Anteneh a little-of course, Anteneh was too shy to talk back very much but we'd like to continue the relationship with Tesfa...he also told us about some Ethiopian children in Evansville! We might have to get a hold of their parents! I asked him what Harar is like (the city Anteneh came from) and he said, "We say it is the land of the beautiful ones-all of the women there are beautiful"...that doesn't suprise me at all...his mother was so beautiful...
I've gotta quit wasting time online-we have less than 2 hours to be awake after the kids are in bed if we want to get enough rest before they get up when the sun rises...oh...i remember those days of long ago where we got to sleep until we wanted to get up...those days are long gone. But these days are better:)

ER Wishes and Traveling Refusals

Well, I think Anteneh has an emergency room wish. Before I tell you all this, I just want you to know that I don't leave the kids unattended for long...Grace and Luke are quite knowledgeable as to what they are allowed to do and touch and what is off limits-but Anteneh is still learning. And even when he KNOWS he can't do something, he still does it half the time.

Well, I ran upstairs to get some paperwork together for our post adoption legal process and I left the boys in their room, playing peacefully. I was gone a few minutes when I heard our bedroom door shut. They both know that there's not really anything in there they are allowed to mess with so I went down to check on them. The door was locked (which is a BIG no-no) so I got the key and let myself into my room. They weren't there so I walked over to the bathroom door and it was locked. I unlocked it and found them in the shower with the door shut. I opened it and there they were-Anteneh was standing there with my 3 bladed RAZOR in his MOUTH!!! I almost had a heart attack!!! I'm talking-the blades were against his tongue and his lips were closed around it...(and I had just shaved my legs last night-yuck!)I grabbed it away from him and proceeded to check his mouth for cuts and send them to their room crying-they both knew better...and before anyone thinks, "oh, poor little anteneh-I'm sure he didn't understand", let me tell you of the 20 times we have told him 'no-no' when he locked us out of a room or tried to get in our shower! Those little stinkers!

OK...so later in the day I decided to make homemade bread-I thought the boys would have fun kneading and punching it...so, I sat them both on the counter around the bowl and let them stir and pour...as I'm mixing up the dough, I see Anteneh take the butter knife I had been using to level off the flour and jam it into the (plugged in) toaster!!! AAAHHH!!!! I know better-I ALWAYS unplug it when the kids are on the counter cooking...this time he really DIDN'T know better....praise God he didn't electrocute himself. Actually, I'm not sure how he managed to not get electrocuted.

So, the day isn't over yet-seems that Anteneh has an emergency room wish...I think the thing is: he's just a 3 year old boy. They get into stuff...and now we have TWO of them!!! AAAHHH!!! Haha...they are fun, though...and Grace comes back from Florida tonight-we missed her...

And I might just be losing my mind: Here is why I say that:

...almost 4 years ago we took Grace (then 1 year old) to Jamaica for her first mission trip. It was a week and I swore I wouldn't take my kids ever again b/c it was too hard. Well, I've learned to never tell God what I will and won't do b/c 2 years later He told me I was going back. So, 2 summers ago we lived there for 3 months with Grace (3 years old) and Luke (12 months). Very hard...that was a hard summer for me with 2 little kids on a 3 month long mission trip to a third world country...(of course our living conditions weren't horrible but Daryn was busy 24/7, there was no running water 1/2 the time, and it was just HARD)...we've taken the 2 kids back twice since that summer...and I said, "I just can't keep doing that-it's getting too hard to take our kids on missions"...and on the 16 hour long plane ride home from Ethiopia w/Anteneh, I told Daryn, "Honey-can you tell me that we don't have to fly with the 3 kids for the next 4 years? Please...? Just say it...It's just too hard"...of course, being the good husband he is, he said, "Sure honey-I'll say it if you really want me to"

Well, it's kind of like childbirth-flying with kids is....you forget the pain and think, "I could give birth again-it wasn't so bad..." even though you SWORE at the time you could NEVER do it again! Here is why I say that: now we are thinking of taking the THREE kids to Jamaica this summer for 1-2 weeks(Daryn has back to back mission trips to take and we don't want to be apart that long)...I may be losing my mind...or else God is stretching me and making me do it just because I said I wouldn't...I did claim I learned that but apparently I did NOT learn it...I said on the flight from Ethiopia I refused..man...there we go-that's why we are going this summer. Maybe someday I'll learn.

They like to move it, move it

I taped the boys dancing together...they crack me up!

Here is another one: starring LUKE! Have you ever seen moves like that?! Haha!

And one more starring Anteneh! He knows he is cute!