Where to begin? Home 15 months… December 25, 2010

It’s so hard to believe that our beautiful girls have been in our lives for over a year now! This picture was taken our first week home. When we look back now it’s like looking at baby pictures – you can hardly believe they were that little!!

And here they are celebrating one year in Canada! I’ll post more pics later from this Christmas!

It has been an amazing journey so far and we feel incredibly blessed as a family. The twins are in grade one this year and loving every minute. They are doing exceptionally well at school and bring a lot of energy to their class. Well, truthfully, they bring a lot of energy everywhere they go! They are wonderfully sassy, loud, beautiful, graceful, and have the most wicked sense of humor! They are as different as night and day – in everything! Abebech is a tiny, academic, fashionista, techno-crazed, fiercely independent sprite with the cutest giggle in the whole world. She has made some significant gains with attachment in the last few months and is becoming much more cuddly as she allows herself to love us deeply. Abebu is a slim, exceptionally tall, sporty, emotionally intense, tenderhearted, lego building, gum addict whose main goal in life is to find the right man.

All four kids are so incredibly bonded – it’s wonderful! Some days I smile when I hear them fighting. It’s music to an adoptive mom’s ears! Our house has changed. It’s so LOUD, filled with giggling, shrieking, running, poking, tickling, dancing, singing children who make us laugh until we cry almost every week. We can hardly believe or imagine what our lives were like before the twins. After the girls were home six weeks or so Peanut announced at diner that our life was incredibly boring before they came. I don’t know if we were boring , but our life seems to be pretty exciting every day. Everything is “the best in the whole university!”

Parts of this past year have been hard. Very hard. There were times when we felt alone and felt like we had lost the ability to parent. People couldn’t always understand the reality of what was happening in our home or why we made decisions we did. I ached for my girls as I watched them grieve and adjust to their new lives. We wondered if we would ever be able to make it through a day without the caution and planning required to help our girls cope. But one day you wake up and realize that things are different. You realize that you haven’t had to pack chili powder in your purse for months… you realize that your kids are eating everything on the table and you have lost your position as short order cook! You aren’t counting grapes and hugs. You realize that you can plan activities two days in a row without major consequences. You realize that the temper tantrums are rare instead of a daily occurrence. And you realize that you miss things that frustrated you before – like the ability to communicate. The girls are almost fully fluent. How can that be? Just this week they pronounced monkey the way we all say it. “Mohn kee” is gone. So is “bee air” (bear).

Just today our kids were lobbying for another sibling. Well to be honest it went more like this – Peanut wants three more siblings! Budder has always said no more, but today said he’d really love a brother. “The Littles” as we call them, wanted two more. We discussed it with them very casually when they brought it up because we wanted to hear all their reasons and rationale. (we were in the van on the way to a gathering) The things they shared were so beautiful. As I listened I realized that it wasn’t the wanting another sibling that was important, it was the acceptance and love between them that I was hearing. “THEY”, the four of them, desired to bring someone else into their sphere of love. We were in a place now where we could reach out again and not be so inward focused. A season for everything. I felt like I crossed an important milestone today – we are whole and complete and healthy. The journey is far from over and we don’t pretend to have it all together, but we are celebrating! Or perhaps it is just me finally catching up….

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