The girls have been getting along FABULOUSLY now! I think it is mainly because we keep very busy now that everything is in full swing. Torrey is gone ALL week, basically I am a single stay at home mom during the week. I get the kids out of bed and put them back to bed at night while Torrey is at school and work. Torrey is hoping to finish his BA this year after 8 years of going part time we are making on final push by going full time this year. It has proven to be very difficult with the added stress of adoption transition. But I am trying to make the best my time with the kids and support Torrey as much as possible because he is so overwhelmed with his responsibilities at school and work. My number one coping mechanism has been filling our schedule with lots of activities to break up the day. Here is our schedule
Monday
Grocery shopping
Preschool
Boy's play soccer and the girls play with some friends at the soccer field
(Noah acts like he doesn't like soccer but he is really good! He just doesn't like to run alot, just short sprints)Carter LOVES soccer (but doesn't like soccer socks)!
BUT he would rather be doing this.....He is always a joker and will do anything for a laugh including teaching the other kids to play sumo soccer.
This is a game Wuby & Sefan invented. Sefan tells Wuby to run to me (about 100 yards away) and she stays where she is. Then Sefan says "na na you can't get me" and turns around to run. Then Wuby runs full force at Sefan to catch her and tackle her. Sefan is still working on muscle strength and Wuby is fast like lightning when she runs so it works out wonderfully...Sefan gets a head start and Wuby gets to run full force without upsetting Sefan because Wuby is faster and Sefan is jealous.
Tuesday
YMCA so mommy can get her workout on
Tumbling (this has be FANTASTIC for Sefan. We are learning directions: front, back, side and movement: jump, roll, slide. Most importantly we are learning that we have to listen to the teacher and it is okay if you don't get it the first time...it takes practice. At first she would melt into a little ball on the floor and say "I can't" but we are working on perseverance.This has been great for her abdominal strength too as she learns to sit up after each roll which is a struggle for Sefan.
Back to the Y for mommy to work in the evening. I am usually very thankful for this break :)
Wednesday
Dance
Preschool for both girls. I usually get to roller blade 6-10 miles during this time and then come home to do some laundry and dishes. It really is a much needed break as by Wednesday I am usually very very worn out.

Thursday
YMCA to work the booty again
Swimming lessons (they LOVE swimming lessons....the first class though Sefan pulled the "I'm scared" trick (it really means I don't want to do this because I can't get it perfect the first time..so I quit) and tried to sit out the entire class so she could ask distracting questions to the instructor. But mean mommy put her back in the water after 5 minutes and said "Sefan do it"...and wouldn't you know she made some great improvement.)
Wubitu has learned so much from swim lessons so far, she is a little fish! Sefan is really working hard on gaining muscle strength and confidence.
After school we go to the library together for a few hours to pick new movies and books.
Carter then has football after dinner (we all play soccer while he practices)
Friday
Preschool for Wubitu and Suki shopping for mommy and Sefan.
So our schedule is jam packed and we LOVE it!
Please forgive me if I don't get emails and phone calls returned ASAP...I really love ya, just a bit overwhelmed right now....29 more weeks of school for T.

I have been kind of quiet on here and on Facebook because we have had a lot to think about. The agency that processed Sefan ,s adoption followed up for us with Sefan.s actual birthdate. We did not get to meet a member of Sefan's birthfamily in ET because their was some communication breakdown. I was told several times the first week that she would arrive on Thursday....Thursday came and went and they said that they forgot to call her. It is 360 miles from Sefan,s birthplace to the orphanage in the capital city so I was told it would take a few days for her to arrive after they made contact. Unfortunately she never made it to see me. I am very sad we missed this important meeting because we have so very little background information on Sefan. Seriously at this point we have 2 sentences and now a birthdate. I am thankful, however for the birthdate and thankful that the agency did follow up as promised with this very important information.
Now for the complicated part. Sefan,s birth certificate says that she turned 3 a few weeks ago. We knew from the start that this was incorrect but thought that maybe it was just a year off or so. However, come to find out Sefan is really exactly 1 year younger than Carter....EXACTLY...the same birthdate but one year later. So that means she is almost 5 and a half.
There are several ways that this is complicated
1) 2 of the 4 kids now share a birthdate!
2) 3 of the 4 kids now have an exact birthdate which means that 1 doesn,t
3) According to the estimated Birthdate of Wubitu and the exact birthdate of Sefan, Sefan is 6 months OLDER than Wubitu.
4) Wubitu may actually be older than Sefan but since we do not have an exact BD for her we may never know.
5) With her age Sefan should be entering Kindergarten in the fall for sure. She will turn 7 before the end of Kindergarten next year. If we wait another year she will be 8 in K and 16 in 8th grade (biologically)
6) Sefan has a LONG way to go to catch up to Wubitu as far as language, academics, fine and gross motor skills.

So all of this has me in a panic of sorts. We haven,t really shared this with the kids yet because of #2, #4....Not sure what do to exactly...

So last week we started to do some very formal letter teaching to try to catch Sefan up. And well....she can recognize 3 letters but she cannot write them at all (the fine motor issues again). It is so overwhelming for both me and HER. She is still learning the difference between up and down, front and back, bread and english muffin, toe and finger....and somehow in the midst of all of this she has to learn the alphabet, what these strange things are, what they look like, sound like, etc. I feel bad for her really....I just hope we can make the strides we need to make in the next 11 months.

My friend Amanda is in Ethiopia right now picking up her daughter Samry (her son Teshe was in the same Care Center as Wubitu). She posted today about a little girl at her daughter's orphanage who wrote her a letter while she was there.
http://afamilywithoutborders.blogspot.com/2009/09/monday-morning.html

This touched my heart so deeply.

The boys each received blue ribbons for their flowers at the school Flower show!!!
We grew these Marigold from a seed packet they sent home with the future Kindergarteners in May. The school provides each student with a live plant at the end of the school year to keep alive and bring back to school in September for the plant show. Noah's has died EVERY year. Last year we entered the dead plant in the show anyway. This year it died again but I happened to be reading over the instructions for Carter's plant and saw that you could enter single cut Marigolds and a set of 3 Marigolds that look alike. So we let Noah pick 4 flowers from Wubitu and Carter's Marigold plants. Noah's flowers won 1st place and get to be entered into the Citywide Flower show on Saturday (Unfortunately Carter's can't be entered because Kindergarten Marigold's are not eligible for the City wide show).

We decided to go out for ice cream after the plant show last night because really the flowers were a family effort. The girls really helped their brothers out because they were the ones who watered the flowers every day and fertilized them every other week.

Wednesday was the first day of preschool! They were both SUPER excited. Unfortunately since we didn't know Sefan's age until we were home only afternoon preschool slots were open. So on school days we have to rearrange our nap schedule a bit and try to have a rest time in the morning. Sefan really needs a nap everyday and thankfully she is tired enough by 11am to fall asleep until lunch time.
This photo perfectly shows each girl's personality: Sefan the sweetheart, and Wubitu the goofy bundle of energy
An interview with Wubitu before heading off to school. She is kind of disappointed that she doesn't get to go every day and eat lunch at school like Carter.

Here is Sefan after school

I can't wait to see how much her language improves over the next few months. It is hard for her to answer questions like these right now. At home she has a very large number of phrases that she uses to be understood but most people who are not around her every day have trouble understanding her. She is very quiet so you have to be listening intently to hear her and if she doesn't know you very well she won't repeat herself because she is shy. I am curious how she does with the teacher at school. At the visitation she just grunted a "yes" to the teacher. As she was painting with the teacher and Sefan was grunting in agreement as the teacher named some colors, I let the teacher know that she did in fact know all of her colors. So when the teacher asked her what color each paint was she yelled them out with glee! It may take her some time to gain confidence.

After I picked the girls up from school they were sooooo excited to show me what they did. They were very tired though.

With both girls in school I had the very first day without children for a few hours in over 9 years! I had a few errands to run....can I say that it only took half the time it usually does...very refreshing :)
Then I enjoyed an hour and a half walk and still had time to clean out some of the van.
:)

The girls have been WAY into Barbie lately. Sefan's doll phobia has slowly deminished...she will now play with Barbie Dolls and some stuffed animals. Baby dolls though still make her scream and run in the other direction. Sefan received some birthday money, "bir-eee" as she calls it, and decided to pick out a blonde Barbie (we have other AA Barbies so I did not try to sway her from the one she wanted). I was not happy though about the less than conservative clothes that Barbie wears or the cost associated with these clothes (about $3 an outfit). Plus since Barbie wears such tight clothes it is near impossible for even me to pull her jeans over her bum. So my new hobby has been making more conservative, easy to pull on Barbie dresses for the girls. And since I am as many of you know CHEAP, I decided to recommission some clothing that the girls could no longer wear. So for these dresses I used a skirt that had a big rip in it that could not be repaired and a pink t-shirt with a stain that I could not get out after 7 washes.

The great part is that I am learning a lot about sewing by making these. If a seam is off, no big deal, I know next time to line it up better or that sewing one part before another makes it easier or what stitches to use with different materials Also it gives me an outlet for my new Project Runway addiction:)