Spring Break-Keeping kids busy

Kids do have a spring break, but we do some school work everyday. All kids do math, and who knows how to read, they have reading time. I think one great thing about big family is that kids play with each other, keeping each other busy, and there is always someone to play with. I usually help and work with every child during day, on things they need help.

We need to patch DA's eye, to help hims with his vision.  Spring is here and Denny's allergies are back, he has bad allergies, swollen and itchy eyes. When one of his eye started to get worst (he was rubbing too much), Denny request a patch on his eye. Actually it did stop him from rubbing in more, and now his eye is back to normal. They had fun to walk and play together. 

Kids love chalks, and we let them to get creative outside. Hopefully by the time summer will come, we will put a big chalk board outside for kids, and they will have even more fun.

DA wrote ABC and playing "school" with others. 

 Later I saw this picture, Princess is playing "school" :) EE was her first student

Later she got more student. 

 This is picture of our almost almost 3 year old ElliAna. Very creative and colorful.

 This is same picture done by DD, and he is 5,5 years old. I really hope and praying that his world will become more colorful and his pictures will be same as ElliAna's. This little boys needs a lot of love and help.

Learning to cuddle. He was dancing with big kids, and hit himself with remote. He was crying and came for comfort. 

Happily  playing! Very happy child :)

Last two days DJ is working a lot on his LEGO's. 

Dancing on Wii. 

Just playing in the living room. 

DJ love basketball, and EE showing a lot of interest too. They play very well together.

My "twins", they weight the same, same size of clothes, and of these "twins" is not even 3 years old, and other one is 5,5 year old. They love to play together. 

SN and Denny.  

Dont' let them out :) Please :)

Most of the time they are together. DA is very gentle and taking good care of babies. 

 Playing ball, oldest and youngest :)

My smiley boy:)

One of the favorite things to do, cutting newspapers. 

Daddy home from work, kids loves to spend some time with him.

 EE doing math. He is doing really good! Very proud of him!

Our life, Our Church

Since EE and DD came to live with us, we didn't go to church together. For both boys it will be way too much to handle and it will be way too much for us :) I think few times Sergey went to church with older boys and ElliAna, and I stayed home with EE, DD and Denny(he was sick).

 Sundays we try to do church at home, we do watch service over internet (thank you for Live option), and later we try to read Bible together, and pray. Usually our younger kids can only sit through first 20-40 minutes and they are done. EE and DD loves music, and I think we will not have a problem during our worship time in church, but during preaching and rest of the church we will have a big problem :) With a lot of time and work some day we will be able to attend church all together.

Sunday 3-24-13

Older boys and Daddy

Our 3 youngest 

Someone from our church did gave us few toys for our kiddos. There was a box with a train set. It is a nice addition to the set we already had and now all the kids have enough trains and they like to build and play with it.  Thank you so much to whoever decided to send this gift our way, all kids enjoying a lot.

Moving to Day-shift

For last two years Sergey been working swing shift and would come back home when kids were already in beds. So basically for a whole week Sergey would spend 30 minutes total with a kids in the morning while they get ready for school, and now Sergey is home every day around 4:30 pm.

Kids love it that daddy is home every night, I love it that now he can help me with kids and put everyone to beds. We can pray together, eat dinner together and just spend time as a family :)
 We are so blessed and  day shift  is much better for our family. Sergey does see kids more now, and does spend more time with all boys.
We all still getting use to it, and adjusting. It was hard for a first week for our two new boys, but it got a little easier in a second week.

Respite care, attachment and issues

With respite care of EE and DD  we are learning many new things, and facing more issues in our every day life. Attachment is one of the things we are working on now.

It's so hard to try to help them while we don't  know if boys even will stay with us, and for how long we will be taking care of them.

At first we thought that biggest attachment problems we will have with EE , older boy, but from what I can see, DD will need a lot more work in this area. They have no social skills and we are slowly working on their social skills, especially it's hard at school. EE's is more behind, and get in-trouble in school a lot.

Little bit on background on both boys and what we been working on for last 6 weeks and a progress:

Never been in a family, both boys had no idea what is like to have a family, or be a part of family. Have no idea about sharing, controlling their emotions if something is not their way. Both boys doing much better at sharing and slowly are getting an idea what family life is, and how to be a part of the family.

DD would call all male guys out-there "daddy". Anyone who set a foot in our house and after 5 minutes EE and DD are happy to go with them. Even in school if someone(janitor, tutor, teacher from another classroom)  walks in the classroom and said hi to everyone, especially EE would start crying when they leave classroom. Two weeks ago my aunt and uncle came to visit, and EE had hard time when they left.
Today they are getting and idea that every child has their own mommy and daddy, and all those guys and ladies out-there not their parents. Last weekend my parent s came to visit, and they didn't  really interact with boys, but when they were about to leave DD started to throw a tantrum wanting to go with them. EE for the first time said that he does want  to leave and wants to stay in our family, and they are not his parents and he is not going with them. He even tried to tell DD "dont' cry". 

 They had no idea what hug is. DD didnt' like when we try to hold him, or hug. When me or Sergey does pick him up he would just push away with both hands. Older boy EE is a little better at hugging, and when we hold him.
Now both boys like to come for a hug, especially when other kids do it. We can hold DD for a few minutes at the time, and he is doing much better. 


Older boy, EE couldn't  play with games, toys, or keep himself busy for more than 5 minutes, and he was not interested in anything just to go around and grab, touch, or take anything that it not his. He was fascinated with keys, remote controls, any electronics, and had no idea that things are not his, or why he can't not touch and push all those buttons. All my perfume bottles, shampoo and other things did felt his little hands in last 4 weeks :)  We are amazed at how much progress he made in this area. EE is very interested in LEGOs and can play for 30-40 minutes at the time. He can sit still for 10-15 minutes watching cartoons. He just loves puzzles and usually does 2-3 puzzles at the time, keeps him busy for about an hour. He loves to do homework and loves school, and I will share more details about school later. 

Little DD afraid of any kind of water (rain, shower), and just couldn't handle it when there is food, things on his hands. He doesn't like to play outside on the swings, with ball, or just run around with kids. He usually prefer to stay in the house by himself and play with toys. He does like to go and ride a scooter and try to learn to ride a bike. He is getting better at the table, and learning to go outside more and have fun. 

Both boys were afraid of any kind of animals, bugs, spiders. They would not even come close to our bunnies. They love bunnies, they do like to play with them and they are learning to gently touch them. They are no longer running and screaming in terror when they see a fly or spider. 

EE is coming and saying "I love you's". This words are nice and sweet to hear especially from him. This is a boy who had a lot of anger in him, and the only things we would hear from him when we talk to him or ask him to do anything would be a screaming "NO", "DON'T TOUCH", "EE WILL BE BIG , AND YOU SMALL ", if someone would get near his things he would scream "IT'S MINE"  and other not nice things. He did pack his bags many times to leave after we try to correct him, he scream that he doesn't  love us, we are not his parents, and that he will go to a different nicer house tomorrow. We had this behavior for a few weeks, and every day he would talk how him and his brother will go to another house.  Today we see a loving happy child, who is eager to learn and try hard to make us happy. He is still has a very long road of healing ahead  of him but just now I am trying to finish this blog, and he was on the floor playing with cars he said very loud, "EE NOT LEAVING, NO DIFFERENT HOME, NO DIFFERENT MOMMY AND DADDY, EE IS NOT LEAVING WITH ANYONE"

Please keep praying for boys! I shared a little about boys, but there is a lot more going on , and there is many more issues we are working on with them, and trying to help them.

Father's House

This is a little video about Father' House. Our two boys DA and SN came from Father's House. Amazing people work there  and we had a privilege to meet them. They do put in a lot of work into life's all those kids. We are so thankful for our boys! In this video they have few pictures of our boys, it was nice to see their little faces.

God help me so I can help them

Respite care is going great most of the time.

Both boys are a big challenge, but also there is so much potential in them. I am not very experienced in doing respite care, or caring for very hurt child, but from what I can tell is that these boys need a lot of unconditional  love, consistency, patience, teaching basics, someone to praise them and just be in a family.

Unconditional love, is very powerful words, and it's more then just a words, its our actions. I am learning how to love, and love even more with every day of my life. From my own experience , it's so hard to love when child is not accepting your love, when child is screaming, yelling back at you, and doing things that it's hard to believe it's coming out of  this little body.

Consistency, structure  is very important with adopted children, or just any children with trauma. We are learning to be  more consistent so all of our kids knows what will come next, and that we are always be there for them. Our adopted children did well even from the beginning.  Sometimes, any changes in routines would make them anxious  but we never had meltdowns  or anything like that. With kids that came to us from disruption it' totally different story. The other day I changed linens on bed, and I wasn't  able to put them back on before they got home from school, boys were going "crazy" when they saw their empty beds. We were able to avoid big  meltdown  but the rest of the day their emotions we out of hands. For us, and for our already attached children it's  normal, they know that mommy will put new, clean sheets before they will go to bed, but for boys that never new love of a family, and what family is was a huge deal.


Boys came to us with a lot of baggage. They never been in a family before, they were taken from their mom at the moment they were born. They never experienced and knew what family life is. These boys have a lot of orphanage behaviors  but they do have tender hearts. Older boys is always eager to help, and if someone is crying he is always asks and worry if the other person is ok. For being with us for only 5 weeks they already made a huge progress. We will need to teach them how to eat, act, walk, touch, talk, and just be a kid. Sometimes I wonder if they were kept in a "cage", I know it does sounds very harsh, but kids don't even know basics. It's harder for us to help this boys do to a language barrier but we are trying to do our best. We do not speak Bulgarian, and boys know only basic English. We are trying our best to help them to heal, grow and become best they could be. I have no idea how long they will stay with us, which direction everything will go, but I know that as long as they with us we have to do everything we can to help them, they are our children now.

Probably 10 minutes a day total, I am thinking I cannot do this, this is not what I choose to do when we heard your voice God, please tell me that I don't have to do this, and the rest 1430 minutes, I can see changes just hurt little kids who needs me, who need us, I feel that this is exactly where I want to be, this is exactly what makes me a woman of God, to care for fatherless, and help these little boys!

Please pray that God will give us strength, wisdom, and He guide us in every parenting decision we make in our every day life. Please pray that we will teach boys something, and it will help them in their future! Pray for boys so they heal and they will not be sad, scared, hurt children, and they will grow in to happy kids.

Random pictures from last month

our younger kids DD, Princess and Denny

 Child labor :) making healthy-sugary snack

final product :)

A little train :)

 DJ is very cuddly, and love to be held 

 DJ and our bunny

 DA is playing with one of our visitors

 My sister came with her baby, all the kids love  little Vicky

DA spend some time with my uncle, and learn few new things, 

Not fun to have only 1 bathroom. And when there is visitors in the house, we get a line :)

 Having fun outside

SN and DD

 Denny and SN, they are getting very close, becoming real brothers

DA did this for me from lego pieces! 

Ukrainian pirozhki, it was enough for only 2 days :)

I will try to post more pictures, as many people do read this blog and especially for DA and SN grandpa, he is in Ukraine.

pictures from last week

 Pajama day at school

 We ordered few piece of furniture, and had all this boxes. Boys and Sergey had fun building a little house.

 After they were done with a house, Sergey made few fun things for boys.

Denny

EE

This is how their little house looked like. Sergey covered all sides on the top and the bottom of this playground , and made few little windows.

Our princess is ready to go to store :)

DD and Princess play very well together :)

 Playing doctors, and a big doggy is a patient :)