Every day I write lovely blog posts in my head, and by the time I get my kids to sleep, I can’t think of a single coherent sentence!  Right now I am dried up and used up and exhausted…and grateful…but still all of those other things, too.  Today was filled with ups and downs.  Some of what we’re working through is adoption-related, and some of it is just adding a second child to our family.

We had a great morning.  Evie wants to “anit” constantly, so a trip to the park is magical…for 10 minutes.  Same with Target, Panera, the front yard, the back yard, the playroom, the wagon.  ”Let’s go let’s go let’s go!!!”  She loves everything new, but then gets belligerent fairly quickly.  Her tantrums seem to be shorter now, and I really focus on saying yes as much as possible and praising her profusely when she responds well to a boundary.  She’s beginning to hear and accept boundaries a little quicker.

She went down for a nap and fell asleep quickly, but then some noise woke her up about a half an hour later.  And the afternoon was rough.  I almost had her skip Elliott’s soccer practice, but we decided to push through, and she had the best time!  The baseball-soccer complex is the biggest yard she’s ever seen, and it was like she was shooting her own music video out in all that grass, rolling and running around blowing raspberries.  Speaking of raspberries, a highlight for the day was definitely Evie pulling up my shirt and both my kids taking turns blowing raspberries on my tummy.  They thought it was hilarious to tickle Mommy!  Ahem, and speaking of hilarious, Evie might have my laugh.  My mother passed down her gargantuan laugh to me, and I really thought one benefit to not creating a daughter with my DNA was that this laugh would one day die with me.  Nope.  I think Evie and I are biologically related through our laugh.  When she gets really excited, she starts to suck in air, over and over, making a squawking noise that gets louder and louder and louder…poor thing.  Snorting is right around the corner for her, as I’ve found that my laugh has deepened and broadened and gotten more obnoxious with age.  Someday she, too, will cause people to get up and move away in the movie theater.

Right after a rough patch this afternoon, my next door neighbor Nancy brought over banana bread, Evie’s favorite.  Perfect timing.  God bless Nancy!  God has several people here serving as His hands and feet for us right now.  Just when I hit a wall, food shows up, or someone posts something encouraging on Facebook, or someone texts.  We’re nearing 3 weeks of meeting all of Evie’s needs ourselves, to try to help her lock in that we’re her family, not just new caregivers.  We’ve been the only ones to hold her, feed her, change her, and we’ve also kept Elliott with us except for school, so that we can all just gel as a family.  Mom’s coming over on Monday, and that’ll be a big day, when we let her hold her granddaughter for the first time.  Anyway, with trying to meet all of Evie’s needs ourselves, it’s been such a blessing to have a few people meet some of ours!

I’m learning so much about parenting and juggling and balancing and I feel like I’m doing it wrong half the time.  But sitting here more objectively, kids in bed and quiet, my emotions are settling and I do think that, despite the difficult moments and utter exhaustion, we have more laughter, more hilarity, more hugs and kisses, more twinkling eye contact, more happy babbling.  I think most of the time she likes us!

And through all of the emotion, when I stumble and fall, I’m trying to model using my words.  Today I got really frustrated and tired.  The kids could see that.  I couldn’t hide it, so I just started talking about it.  ”Mommy’s really frustrated right now!  Elliott, do you ever get frustrated and you just feel like AHHHH!?!  Well, that’s how I feel right now.  We’re all adjusting to new things right now and it’s hard, isn’t it?  But don’t worry, we’ll get there!  Anyway, I’m really sorry for getting so frustrated!”  Then a little while later, the coolest thing happened.  After Evie wrecked Elliott’s Lego building and he got frustrated with her, he turned to me a few minutes later and said, “Mom, I’m sorry for getting frustrated with Evie.  I’m sorry!”  Oh, praise Jesus, I’m so glad that if I’m going to screw up in front of my kids, at least they can learn from me about how to handle it when they screw up, too!  So, we’re all just giving each other grace and apologizing and learning how to be a family of four.  It’ll take some time.  I’m trying to make sure that my kids hear how precious they are over and over and I’m just kissing and hugging them until they can’t take it any more.  Hopefully that’ll be what stands out.

Family takes work!  It took a lot of work to bring each of our kids home (one through five years and a ton of doctors and one through two years and a ton of paperwork), but I’m finding now that the real work is just beginning.  Just like it takes a lot of work to have a healthy marriage, it takes a lot of work to have a healthy family.  Even amidst the exhaustion and self doubt, I’m really excited to watch as we all grow into our roles and I’m excited to dig deeper and learn more about this whole mom-thing.  But at this very moment, I’m mostly excited about lying on the couch.

We haven’t been able to get Evie to eat any meat. Until tonight. Before we left for Ethiopia, I’d started practicing making some Ethiopian foods, injera, doro wat.  I wanted to be able to make foods that she’d recognize.  I mixed up some berbere, a spice blend, and some qibe, spiced clarified butter. My injera tasted nothing like Ethiopian injera, but it was pretty tasty, and my doro wat was pretty darn good.

Tonight, I didn’t have time to work on injera or wat, but as I was browning some ground turkey, I grabbed my berbere and added it in. Evie LOVED it. She was jamming handfuls of turkey in her mouth. Finally! We got some protein in her belly! It just needed to taste like home!

My friend, Sara, who’s in the adoption process, showed me a cookbook which I ordered online, The Soul of a New Cuisine, by Marcus Samuelsson.  This cookbook is amazing.  He’s an Ethiopian man who’s a chef in New York, trained in Europe.  He toured the continent of Africa and has developed recipes from many different regions, including many from Ethiopia.  The book has gorgeous photos and descriptions of the locals making the foods of their countries.  He’s adapted the recipes for the average cook here in America.  I’m a suburban homemaker and don’t have time to run to Atlanta to get special ingredients.  Using his recipes, I’m able to make yummy food using ingredients from Publix, and he also includes a resource section where I could order special ingredients online if I wanted to.  The only thing I had to substitute was mustard seed for fenugreek seed.  So, am I claiming that my Ethiopian food tastes anything like the real thing, that I just ate in Addis?  Absolutely not!  But, my American suburbanite version is really tasty, and it got my Habesha daughter to finally eat some meat!

I make the berbere and qibe ahead of time, keeping the berbere in the fridge and the qibe in small sections in the freezer, so any time I want to whip up a batch of something, I don’t have to start from scratch.  Sometimes I just sit and look through the photos and read everything.  Reminds me of my own African travels!  There’s even a chapati recipe that I’ll be trying out next time I find myself really missing Uganda!

Today, Evie had a bath with no tears! She still won’t sit down, but she plays with a couple of toys and helps me soap her up. We went to church. Kind of. Elliott missed his class so much and we wanted to stop by and see our high school small groups. We snuck in between services and introduced Evie to her class. I played with her for a few minutes until she was ready to leave. This girl won’t stay in one room for longer than a couple of minutes. She’s had a taste of the world and won’t sit down till she’s seen it all! I took her to visit my high school girls, we stopped by Alex’s high school boys, and then we just toured the church, around and around. Snuck out without any major lobby excitement. A good first taste of our favorite place to be.

The rest of the day, we hung out at home. Alex and the kids had a water fight with the hose. She LOVED it. Everyone completely drenched. She grabbed the hose and gave it a try. Into dry clothes then laughing, balloon-punching, eating peanut butter, running running running around the house with brother. My house filled with giggles and shrieks, not of anger and grief, but of laughter. Laughing shrieks wash away the pain of crying shrieks. Hearts are happy. So grateful. Hard to believe that she’s only been home for a week.

English words so far: “mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha” (I mean, c’mon. Everyone needs a good evil laugh!), “bubble,” “Elliott! Elliott! Elliott! Elliott!” (chanted, getting ready for his soccer season), “eyes,” “dog,” “woof,” and she’ll mimic just about anything you want her to – so fun.

Every night, Alex and I have talked through the “wins” for the day with Evie. We are seeing more and more! This morning, for the first time, she woke up with a smile instead of panic. It was beautiful to see. Her little body is on high alert so much of the time, so moments of relaxation and contentment are big wins. She trusted me that I would come in, change her diaper, and give her hugs and kisses!

We walked downstairs this morning and she giggled and said “Dog, woof,” when she saw Spike. The terror is gone! He’s going to double in size from the amount of food she’s feeding him off of her tray, but she’s not afraid!

Today I had to leave her for about an hour and a half for a doctor’s appointment, so she was with Daddy for the first time. We prepared for the worst…and after a few minutes of whimpering, they had a great time! Huge win. Huge.

Every afternoon after we pick up Elliott from school, we play with the bubbles and swing set in the backyard. She loves to be outside, and the stifling humidity doesn’t seem to faze her. We fill up watering cans and water the dying garden. I push both of my kids on the swing. Elliott shows off his mad skills with the soccer ball.

She still needs to sit on my lap while I go to the bathroom, but a few days ago she heard Elliott and Daddy laughing in the other room, and she hopped down to go check it out. Big privacy moment for Mommy. So exciting!

We bought her pink and purple Mega Blocks so that Elliott could keep his smaller Legos in his room…but of course he now wants to build with Evie’s blocks. So we have moments of building and wrecking together, and today they both got on riding toys and wheeled around the house.

She loves the golf cart and our first family outing was a golf cart trip to TCBY on Sunday. Today, Evie, Elliott and I piled on and went to Publix and the park. Another big win is the car. She freaked out at first when I strapped her in and then shut the door. I’d open my door ahead of time, put her in, then leap into my seat and turn around and stroke her leg, saying, “See? Mommy’s right here! Mommy’s right here!” Now, only a few days later, she gets that I’m not leaving and stays calm while I get in the car. I had to pump gas the other day and the super nice gas station attendant ended up doing it for me, because even though I rolled the window down and held her hand, it was too much for her.

When she’s tired, we have cuddles in the rocking chair and I sing and read. Today she fell asleep on my chest, just like Elliott used to do as an infant. At night, when I pop her in her crib, she cries for just a few minutes and then falls asleep really quickly.

She loves outings and still wants to “anit” all the time. I’m adjusting to the rhythm of two kids all of a sudden, both at the age where they want to play and usually wanting to play something different. They’re having to adjust to sharing me.

Anyway, after my last post, I’m keeping this short, but I wanted to stop and record some of the sweet moments. They’re adding up to the family life I always wanted. Grateful.