One Family's Journey: How Far We've Come

Svanna finished a large book, sort of part of our homeschooling. So exciting! She's coming a long ways. We've been home a little over 10 weeks now. Wow! We're to the point of being able to communicate many things, especially household things. Concrete things. There are things we aren't able to talk through yet. For example, the girls had an away game last week. The kids weren't able to understand that until we got there, no matter how we tried to explain. And then today, Svanna asked whether she could wear shorts to ball tomorrow.

It goes kinda like,

"Mom, please short ball tomorrow? No pant."

They are technically supposed to wear pants to ball for sliding. But it's been miserably hot so far this week. Monday was 98 degrees F. Yikes. And, they really don't slide in her age group. So I said yes. She brought up some pretty nice shorts. I told her she could wear shorts, but they had to be jean shorts. We tried to explain. Pointed to long jeans. And said, "like this, but shorts."

It was too funny...cuz shortly she came upstairs with every pair of jeans and shorts she owns to help figure it out. NOW she knows what jean shorts are!!

She's learning quite a bit too. We're getting to the point where she can sound out simple words. Yeah! And she knows her letters and numbers quite well. Many preschool worksheets that I used to think were useless became very useful. To do an "above and below" worksheet with my daycare kids was...well...too easy for them as 4 year olds. For Svanna and Gabe when they first got home they were perfect. They were new words for them (in English) and they could practice coloring, cutting and pasting (which of course, is good for all preschoolers).

Here, Summer had to get in on the picture too!

And then today, we were all looking at pictures of when we were in Ethiopia. Kaitlin was seeing them for the first time. I had forgotten how far we'd come.

Maybe better said I didn't realize how far we'd come. Seeing the kids on a day to day basis vs. looking at then vs. now.

This first picture is the first day we met Gabe.

We're in a park of sorts with Julie and Lou and their kids (I'm still vertical at this point! Julie unfortunately was not). Now granted, Gabe was not good at taking pictures. But he didn't smile all that much, then, or when we first got home. He still doesn't always have a great picture face, but the smiles are very regular! When we first got home he was very quiet and stoic. Then the tantrums came. Now, he is anything BUT quiet. LOL! And I think he's going to turn out to be a little clown! Now, we can go 3 or 4 days without a tantrum. Wonderful. His English is coming along, too, but he is quite less interested in learning. I don't push him. It will come. And he's got more time. He'll start preschool in the fall, not 2nd or 3rd grade like his sister.

Gabe in Ethiopia, April 5...

(he's to the left of Julie)