Sunday we spent the day making Apple Cider at Grandpa Keith & Grandma Joanne's house. Torrey has very fond memories of making Apple Cider at his Grandpa Ehrman's house as a kid. He was quite happy to pass along the experience to our chldren.
Uncle Brian helping Wuby with the apples
T in a tree!

My BABIES!!!

So this week has been quite a doozy!
Here is an overview:
It started on Sunday with the hedge trimmer accident (which has hindered my blog and emailing since I am missing a finger)
Then Monday, Torrey let me know that work was slowing down so he wouldn't be receiving very much overtime (we were using overtime to pay for adoption #2).
Tuesday, one of my daycare clients returned to original sitter
Wednesday, Carter looked ridiculously exhausted before school and refused to go into his class so after a cry fest in the office, I decided to take Carter home with me to see if taking a nap would clear up his dark circles.
Thursday We visited the preschool next door to see if Carter was comfortable but they were on their way to the pickle factory for a field trip so I was only able to observe for a few minutes.
Friday we decided to officially withdraw Carter from Kindergarten but the principal called trying to change our minds.
Here is the nitty gritty...each one if manageable on its own but all in one week is VERY stressful:
Monday: Torrey had been working a TON of overtime at work *60-80 hours a week) which put us on par to pay off ALL of our adoption costs by the end of 2009! This news didn't hamper our adoption efforts though...we will most likely have to take on more debt for a longer period of time or be very aggressive in applying for grants. I may also have to go back to working at the Y a couple of shifts.
Tuesday: 6 weeks ago I started watching my friends daughter. She had been going to the same sitter since birth but the sitter thought she didn't want to babysit anymore. The sitter changed her mind and my friend decided to take her back to the original sitter. I totally agree that it was the best choice for her little girl! If I had to make the same decision, I would definitely do exactly what she did. It has put more financial strain on us and Wuby has not been doing so well with it. It is one more difficult change in her life and she has acted out all week because of it. She was afraid to go to preschool and I had to reassure her for about 5 minutes that it was her choice to go or not and that I would be back to pick her up. At home she get board more easily so she finds herself doing things she knows she shouldn't be doing.
Wednesday: Carter woke up a bear even though he went to bed at 8:30 and woke himself up at 7. He fussed the whole morning about not wanting to go to school so I tried to walk him in. He refused to go in and the teacher never came to help him come into the room. So I walked him to the office to get the office's opinion...where I burst into tears not knowing what to do! The principal wasn't in so the sweet, wonderful secretary listened to me go on and on and said she would pass on my concerns. I decided to take Carter home with me to see if we could isolate what exactly was wrong. It was a transition for him because I have a fairly strict schedule at home now (which has improved Wuby's behavior immensely) which includes only 45 minutes of TV (no Wii) scheduled snacks and a mandatory nap. He had been used to my laisez faire style of parenting with many, many field trips. Nap time failed miserably and ALL were cranky. Torrey was thankful I brought him home though because he was concerned about Carter before school.
We discussed at length our options and Torrey took the lead to say that there doesn't seem to be a "Right" answer in this situation. Carter is academically and socially ready for Kindergarten without a doubt. He is attentive, energetic, and responsive in class. He has made friends without any issue. However, at home is exhausted, emotional, and out of sorts. He has the horrible dark circles under the eyes and lashes out at people (mostly Wuby). All of which are not usually characteristic of Carter (except maybe fighting with his sister but usually there is less fighting between them). This leads us to believe that for one reason or another is his not physically ready for FULL DAY Kindergarten. Since half day is not available this really limits our options. So we leaned more toward taking Carter out of Kindergarten but wanted to check how he would fit in with the Preschool kids.
Thursday: During the 10 minutes before the kids left for the pickle factory Carter walked in without any problem and sat reading books with the other kids. He will be the TALLEST in the class by about 3-4 inches (right now he is the 2nd tallest in Kindergarten even though he is the youngest). He will also, likely be academically ahead but they work more on writing (Carter's main weakness). The preschool director assured me that it was completely acceptable to keep a child out of Kindergarten with an April birthday. Her own son who is now in college had a birthday a week before Carter and is doing wonderfully now. (We obviously are advocates for holding boys with Summer birthdays back a year since we did it with Noah but were not sure with a late April birthday) So with 2 hours to kill while Wuby and Landon were at preschool. We headed to the library for 3-5 year old story time. There Carter was very attentive and answered the librarians questions with enthusiasm (much like in Kindergarten I am sure). The music teacher stopped me to ask about Carter and told me that he waited to send his daughter because she as nervous (ready academically), and now she is at the top of her class in High School (I love to hear this). Nap time went better and we had some WONDERFUL family time with the "old Carter" back. At Carter's request we ate a picnic at the park and played there until bedtime. That night we continued to sway back and forth on the issue since he is very much academically ready but always came back to the dark circles. We settled again on taking him out of K.
Friday: While making Noah's lunch in the morning I burst into tears seeing Carter's empty lunchbox and asked Torrey again if we were making the right decision. At that moment he gave me such clarity that we were making the right decision. If the dark circles are exhaustion then he needs to wait until next year for K because no 5 year old needs that much pressure (there is plenty of time for that when he is in college or 30). If the dark circles are from allergies and they could get worse as the doctor suggested then he will need to be ahead academically because Torrey knows from experience as child who had allergies and has them now that the medication and allergies themselves can leave you in a fog from September to early November which will make it difficult for him academically later on.
So I called the school saying that we intend to withdraw Carter from school. Then sent off an email detailing our stance on Carter's physical readiness for Kindergarten. I bawled like a baby at Bible study that morning but felt like we were making the right decision. I felt like God was giving me more time to help Wuby & Carter's relationship after a long difficult transition this year, and let Carter know that I care about how he is doing and listened to him.
The principal called that afternoon to say she was disappointed that we decided to pull him out. She also offered to move him to the class we had requested at the beginning of the year (our teacher preference had been ignored like all of the other parent's requests). This was an interesting option since we had been battling his current teacher about inappropriate homework. The other teacher fits more with Carters' personality as a warm, bubbly, affectionate teacher...while his current teacher is very stern. I told the Principal that I would discuss the option with T but we would likely stay by our decision because of his lack of physical readiness for ALL day Kindergarten. After even more discussion we decided to call T's brother who is in college to get his opinion of being the "oldest" since he started K at 6 with a b-day a week after Carter's. He said he liked it because he could drive first and didn't remember any negative effects. So after 9 months of wavering and a full 2 weeks of agonizing decision making we are going to give Carter another year of preschool. And somehow with the financial blows from Monday and Tuesday we will work on affording it. But it all comes down to the fact that our children are our main priority and we may have to make some more sacrifices but we know we have make the best informed decision possible.

I am blogging to request prayers for our whole family. There has been an inordinate about of boat rocking going on here in Ehrmanville over the last few weeks. We have been hit pretty hard doubly in the last few days and we need some calm from the howling winds!

I am typing this a quick as I can before the numbing shot wears off but it is difficult to type with 9 fingers. We decided to tackle the bushes before dinner and as always I had trouble reaching the top of the 9 ft tall bushes on the side of the house. So standing on my tippy toes with the hedge trimmers over my head....sounds like an accident waiting to happen. They came tumbling down and silly me tried to catch them with my free left hand. I ended up cutting a large gash in the tip of my middle finger. I don't do blood well so I was freaking out all the way to Redimed. Then very bravely (as not to embarrass myself in front of strangers) took my tetanus shot and 2 numbing shots and 2 gnarly looking stitches in the finger. I wasn't reassured however when the doctor said that there is still a paper cut size opening that she was going to leave to see how it heals on its own! Pictures to follow!

So we are still in the midst of deciding about Kindgarten. I spoke with his teacher on Tuesday and she said academically his is right on target, seems happy in class, and she didn't even notice the dark circles. So Wednesday we kept an eye on his eyes and they were still bad so I called the office to see what we needed to sign to pull him out. She suggested talking to the teacher (check) and the principal. The principal went down to check Carter's eyes and thougth that it may be an allergy. Her other concern was Carter thinking that if something is hard that he can quit. (Something we had considered but he would inevitably learn it the next year if he still had trouble but had no choice and had to stay). We continued to dialougue when she learned that Carter is coming home with 20-30 minutes of writing homework a night. Carter goes to all day Kindergarten (no half day available in Indiana anymore) and is expected to sit down after school for half an hour to do more work...(10 minutes okay....but come on he is a 5 year old!) .seems a little crazy to me. The principal said she would check into it but I have really started to delve into the issue with the teacher and am in the process of comparing notes with other Kindergarten teachers to see if Carter's teacher has unrealistic expectation of the children with regards to homework. We took Carter to the doctor today to see about the possibility of allergies and she decided to start him on allergy meds to see if it helps. He doesn't have ANY other symptoms besides the dark circles under the eyes, so she said it could be allergies just starting that may get worse next year (Torrey has HORRIBLE...snot pooling out of his nose....allergies) or it could be exhaustion or it could be both. We decided to try the medication for a week and go from there. As I do more research on the homework side, we now have 3 options: 1) He is not ready to perform the writing tasks expected in Kindergarten and needs to take a year to work on it at home 2) He needs to transfer to a different teacher 3) The teacher needs to adjust her expectations of the students with regard to homework and work more diligently on teaching the children letter formation in class.

Any other Kindergarten parents out there want to weigh in on expectations of Kindergarteners for homework. At this point his class has completed ALL of the letters including letter formation. He has not picked it up as quickly as it has been taught so last night he had a full page of writting his name and another full page front and back of writing the letters V-Z. At which point I litterally had to teach him how to form each letter. It seems that letter formation is now review in Kindergarten. Another homework sheet in particular that I am frustrated with is an assignment that has come every Thursday from the first week of school requiring the children to come up with and handwrite 4 complete sentences using thier sight words....and they have to use correct punctuation, letter formation, and capitalization. The first week of school it was a major struggle just getting all of the letters on the page that I didn't even make him worry about periods but low and behold when the paper came back it had little orange periods marked after every sentence! I am awaiting a response from the teacher at this point as the the level teaching I am expected to do as a parent since the children clearly have not yet covered sentence structure and punctuation let alone letter/word spacing in the 4 weeks they have been in school. The basic issue comes down to the fact that Carter and I crying at the kitchen table over homework is not worth it! It has really given him a negative outlook on school and learning...when a month ago he was begging to go to "Elementary School!"

So I have found a new "machine" to rage against! I keep swearing that I am not "one of those parents"....but alas I have come to the conclusion that I AM "one of those parents"....however, I am one that really cares and goes straight to the source trying to change it. If teachers dread me...oh well.. at least I give nice Christmas gifts!
Love,
Mama Bear

So this week was crazy (and relatively boring) one, which was nice since it helped keep my mind off of the wait (mostly). We have been without a dryer for 2 weeks now and counting but Torrey may finally have the parts to fix it....hopefully. We fixed a leaky pipe in the basement that we have been ignoring for 6+ months. The little ones started full out preschool (instead of the 1 hour sessions last week to get them used to going) which was absolutley WONDERFUL!!!! I had 2 hours of "ME" time with NO KIDS. This hasn't happened in 8 years!!!!! I had big plans to go tanning and maybe browse the clearance racks at Kohl's with my lucky 30% off in hand but alas, I donated my time to the never ending PTA cause. It was very nice though to get some things done without the constant preschool potty breaks and hurrying adult conversations along so the kids don't get bored. Also in our weekly run down we finally picked out a toy to send to Maree when we get a referral. The specifications were that it couldn't be plush of any kind, it had to fit in a gallon size ziplock along with a few other things, durable, age approprate for a 2-3 year old, and my own specification that it included some sort of English language to help familarize our little one with English language sound patterns. Oh yeah and it has to be cheap (like $5 or less). We sent Wuby a phone that counted to 6 and played a few English words when you touched the buttons but it broke while we were in ET. So we finally settled on this:

Today was the first day of Dance for Wuby! She liked her new tap shoes but was a little reluctant to listen to her teacher. She thought it was more fun to make funny faces to see if she could get the other kids to laugh. Luckily they didn't....so hopefully she will listen a little better next time. She was so cute though!!!!

SOMEBODY from our agency with a dossier date 1 1/2 weeks head of us with the same age range recieved a referral last week!!!!!! I have such mixed emotions since this means our referral could come very very quickly or very very slowly. So the news of this referral may mean something (like we are close to the top of the list) or nothing (referrals are still going to fill in slowly). So I actually have nothing to report....just that I know I am crazy obsessed.

1- We received Wuby's Indiana Birth Certificate paperwork in the mail today. Since we readopted, officially changed her name, and registered it with the Indiana Dept. of Health, she can get a new birth certificate from the state if it is ever lost.
2- I forgot to mention that August 15th, Wubitu's adoption was finalized. It was rather anticlimactic as basically we recieved a boring piece of paper in the mail a week later saying that our adoption is now recognized by the Indiana courts and Wuby's name is now Keziah Wubitu....now I don't know what to do about her baby book that has a whole page for the "adoption day" where you get to put a picture of the judge with the family, etc...since we didn't even have to appear in court. We celebrated her finalization and Referaversary together as a family at the Ethiopian restaurant in town on Saturday...forgot to take pictures...oh well...I will just have to get creative.
3) We received our I-171H in the mail today....we are not wanted by the FBI!!!!! oh yeah and we are now officially approved by immigration to bring another child into the country to be our daughter!
4) We received an email addressed to all waiting families in the Ethiopia program saying the wait for infants will be 12+ months for everyone. (a month ago we were told 6-9 months for and infant) I am not sure how this will effect our timeline since we are waiting for an older child (18 months to 3). I was hoping to have a referral by the end of the year but it may be longer now... I am glad that we turned in our paperwork earlier than we had originally planned (Late October) or it could be 2010 before we brought our daughter home.

So, yesterday was my birthday. It was the first birthday that I didn't tell anyone about it and was very surprised to get phone calls, email, and visits from friends and family!!! Thanks everyone!!! However, my dear hubby totally forgot it was my birthday! He didn't find out until we went to my friend Becky's son's birthday party later in the evening where she wished me a happy birthday....you could see the wheels turning in his head....like "oh cr#p". So we had a great time anyway mooching off the John Deere cake.
Yesterday was also a huge day for me as it marked the one year anniversary of the last day that I sat around and obsessed about getting Wubitu's referral. I remember emailing my specialist asking for a birthday referral. At the time she asked me how high we would be willing to raise our age range in case referrals came in. We said that we would go as high as CHS would let us (40 months at the time in order to keep 12 months between Carter and our new daughter). The very next day we received a referral for our little girl!!!! Had we not raised our age range, we would not have had Wubitu (God knew). So yesterday we girls (along with Raina) did our PTA thing at the boys' school for an hour then, off to McDonald's for ice cream, hash browns and pancakes. There I was so overcome with emotion as I realized what a momentous day it was..1 year ago I had no idea who God had chosen for our family and could never fathom what a joy she would bring to my life. Wubitu is so perfect for our family (I hear it all the time...usually when she is showing off her "personality" for some reason;) ) and I couldn't ask for anyone more loving, sweet, and of course sassy. So after I wiped my tears (yep...I am the crazy lady at McDonald's) we headed off to Target to get Wubitu a dance outfit for her dance class (gush...yep...sappy I know) that starts next week. With sparkly lip gloss and King size M & M's in each sweetly manicured hand....we had the perfect day....just the girls....for my big 2-8.

Little girls are so fun!!! She sang this song for us for about 30 minutes on Labor Day! Daddy says that she can have WHATEVER she wants when she wears her pretty dress!!!

(Please ignore the mess in the background!!!! We were enjoying a Laborless Labor DAY!!)