About EE and DD and our decision

We are not sure if what we are trying to do is a right thing to do. We do love these boys, and want the best for them, we do have second thoughts and our reality sometimes takes over our emotions. I hope it does make sense to you guys?!  We are not making any final decisions about boys and are praying for wisdom. I know that God is in control and we rely on Gods perfect plan.

After I posted that we are trying to find a family for EE and DD, we got many replies and few comments made us think and realize things that we didn't even think before. Thank you everyone!

Everyone who was following our story, knows that less then a 1 year ago we brought two boys from Ukraine. They attached very well, but there is still many issues we are dealing with. Lately it seems like all our kids decided to test our patience :) Sometimes it does feel like we already have too much!

I know that devil  is not sleeping and it's not in his interest for these boys to be happy and have a family. It make is extra hard on us that  our community doesn't  understands adoption. Our family, friends dont understand us, and we do have many "negative " talks almost everyday.

 Please pray for our family. We believe that God is in control, and we know that there is no mistake why these awesome boys are in our family. Boys are happy with us and we  don't want to traumatize them more!

We are thankful to everyone who had contacted us, and for everyone who is just praying for EE and DD. I will reply to all e-mails as soon as I can. 

Please help find a family for E and D!

Two brothers 8 year old E and 5 year old D were adopted from Bulgaria about 5 month ago. Currently we are doing respite care, and taking care of these boys. They are awesome boys, but do need a lot of attention and one-on-one time because they are behind in all areas. We see a lot of potential, and they made a huge progress while they were under our care. Very smart boys!

Their adoptive family is very supportive and will help with adoption costs.

If anyone is interested please contact me tacipe@yahoo.com. We had boys for 2,5 month and can share a lot of information, and answer all your questions.

EE today-success

Talking and prayers do work ! Today was a very good and successful day for EE in school. I was so happy when EE brought home this piece of paper, and I am one proud mommy. I know it's not always going to be only one way, our life is like zebra, black and white. We will see good and bad while raising our kids, but it's so worse it!  For our kids it's a huge progress, even 1 good day out of 100, it's already good. EE is so smart, and I know that he will learn to respect others, and will learn better social skills.

Thankful for a wonderful teacher, and her wiliness to help and work with EE. This is so encouraging for EE and us. 

Progress 4-5-13

We did make it to church on Easter (only 5 minutes late), and were able to stay at church for first 45 minutes. It's a huge blessing!

After church picture! Everyone is happy :) no crying faces

Last 8 days was very calm, no big meltdowns, rages, or a lot of anger. All kids tried very hard to obey and listen, very peaceful and blessed Easter.

 We had to start to tell boys from beginning about Jesus, we spend time telling all kids about Jesus, His birth, His life, and how He died for us and been risen. It's hard for our little ones, and EE and DD to understand, it will take them time to figure out. EE showed a lot of interest in church, Jesus, and loved all the stories.

For  first 5-6 weeks with us DD had many tears about not wanting to go to school, and after school more tears for not wanting to come back home. Today he is happy child, and he knows that when he goes to school it only for awhile, we just not sending him away, and when he come back from school mommy will still be home. We slowly work on ABC, 123, shapes, and just coloring, but this little boy is just playing all day long with our 3 year old, and learning to be a kid. He is behind in all areas, and is acting like an 18 month.

On one thing that we work with DD now, is to teach him to put his clothes on, or just do simple task with out getting frustrated. Examples,  It can take him 30 minutes to just put his pants on, he would be trowing things, screaming, crying and just acting out. Also if we ask him to put his pajama on his bed, he can trow a fit screaming that he cannot do it. :) We teach him to come for help, and if he come and nicely ask mommy will always help him. He use to throw a fit at anything and everything we tell him or ask him to do(I am talking about very simple things), and today DD is happy most of the time. He come and ask for help 9 times out of 10, and is doing much better. DD slowly learning to use his emotions, and try to do something before get frustrated.

EE made a huge progress academically. When he came to our home, exactly two month ago, he could recognized only few numbers (1,2,3), could count to 12, and had no idea what is addition or subtractions are.

I been working with him almost everyday, and today he can do additions and subtractions up to 100 with no regrouping. He knows all the numbers, he can count up to 100 with few mistakes, and loves math.
Yesterday I introduce to him addition with regrouping. He is doing great job and hopefully by end of next week we can master that too. We are so proud of him. Slowly he is catching up to his class level. His English is getting better, and he just loves to learn and do homework.

There is a lot of work needs to be done on his behavior part. We don't  push it, and we really want him to learn, heal on his own of course with our help.
EE and DD is just two more toddlers in our house. Both of them needs 100% supervision, and can't not be left alone.
It's really frustrating at school because of his disruptive behavior. He would make just noises  after been told to be-quite while teachers is trying to explain something to whole class and teach other 30 students.  EE can start laughing, whistling  or just keep repeating everything after teacher. When teacher tells him to stop talking, or do some kind of work, EE most of the time just refuse to do it, and will keep talking.  But he just not taking his teacher, or others seriously. Poor teacher!   When one of our boys ask him to do something, or just stop touching something, EE will just do opposite.  Praying that God gives us all a lot of patience. :)He listen and follow directions really well from Sergey, but with females it's a different story.

EE is getting much better, and most of the time he will listen to me now.  It was more worst in the beginning  and it's much much better now. I know that someday with many prayers and work boys will understand how important is to follow directions, be respectful, and just obey. For now it's all new to them. Boys were use to get harsh punishments, and they would listen because they were afraid to be physically punish. We don't  punish them physically, and for them it's hard to listen and obey because they are not being scared anymore. Their little brain is trying to process why for their bad behaviors they are not getting punish the same as they use to get. Slowly consequences is staring to work with boys. Consequences and consistency is a key in our situation to teach boys to listen and follow directions.

We see a huge progress in their behavior, its two different boys we have now from when we first met them. We see that they are healing, learning and becoming more confident. They are awesome boys, very helpful, loving most of the time and we love them like are own kids, if we will have to let them go it will be hard.

Please pray for all of us. Please pray that we can figure out what to do with kids, to see Gods hand and to know exactly what God plan is for all of us.

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.