My sister-in-law, Kait, is back home. She has spent the last 3 months in Sri Lanka doing some pretty rad things. Have I mentioned before how much I love her? Because I think I have.

But she had yet to meet my new sons, so I was biting at the bit to introduce them. We gave her a few hours to try to sleep off the days of travel and then we hightailed it over to visit.

Kait, Leslie and hotflawedmama

Dailah caught up with her Uncle Jake.

Binyam bonded with Julio, or as Bini calls him, “baby woosha”.

Kait brought us traditional sarongs (sp) from Sri Lanka. I’m not biased or anything, but these men are beautiful in anything. (That’s mine with the kissable lips on the far right).

The ladies got one too. Emily (aka “Cash’s mommy”), hotflawedmama and Leslie. I think it’s only slightly creepy that Zach and his brothers chose wives who look so remarkably alike.

A shot of the couples.

But actually, this is what we look like most of the time. Laughing hysterically, peeing our pants just a bit. I love them all probably a little too much.

No night would be complete without Papa Frank handing out gum to the kiddies.

Today my “littles” started preschool. It goes everyday from 9-11:30. We weren’t originally going to put Binyam in school but after talking it out we realized it’d probably be better for him in preschool than at the Y. The preschool program is through the Y and the Director is the very best, we feel confident in all of this.

That said, we are not twinning the two littles. Binyam will go to preschool for two years and Dailah will start Kindergarten, oh crap, next year. Bini turns 4 in a few weeks so he’d be a young Kindergartner anyway.

So there you go. They were both so very excited to start school today and I was jumping out of my skin sad to see them go. For a few hours every day I’m all by my lonesome, though honestly it amounts to just 1 day when I’m not teaching. I’ve decided to dedicate it to grocery shopping, so that’s fun.

But pictures. These two were the cutest humans in the world this morning, no exaggeration.

Getting in the car (I have no idea why I keep taking pics in front of my dirty car, apparently that’s just how I roll).  By the way, we had to cut Bini’s beautiful locks because he had some funkiness on his scalp that I couldn’t reach. They will grow back and I will stop feeling so sad about it.

This was completely unprompted. I go to close the door, turn around and there they are. They genuinely love each other already.

After Dailah helped Bini wash his hands it was carpet time. Oh my heart. Oh. my. heart.

Yesterday my sis and brother-in-law were kind enough to let us babysit my nephew for a few hours. It was so much fun having him with us. He is a great baby and soo, soo precious.

At one point I had to ask Zach if babies were supposed to sleep this much, it has been awhile since we’ve had one of these little boogers.

I love baby feet!

The I’m crapping my pants smile!

During my photo session Dailah woke up and decided she was the babysitter.

I couldn’t resist

She was happier in this moment than ever before.

No shortage of cousins to feed Cash!

When Zach and I were drinking wine and celebrating abundantly reminiscing about the past 8 years of matrimony the topic of family kept coming up. As noted many times on this here blog, Zach and I were young and with child when we got married. Only now do we realize we probably couldn’t have done it without the help and support of our families. My parents and his got together to wrap their arms around us and give us a foundation of support. We didn’t know the private emails and phone calls between them that brought up who was helping with what and who could do what to make our lives a success. We had no idea how God had brought our two families together in this time of what could have been desperation for Zach and myself.

As we’ve gotten older we realize just all the sacrifices it took on our families to get us through college in 4 years, without going into debt. Did you just read that? We have amazing parents, believe me when I tell you this. We needed groceries? Done. We needed babysitting? Done. Rent? Utilities? Insurance? Done and done. We were/are absolutely spoiled. We have no doubts that what got us here was a lot of God, and a lot of support from family and friends. The way we started could’ve been a recipe for disaster if not done right but our families gave us all the tools to start our marriage off on the very best footing.

All that said, on our anniversary day Zach and I decided to do an afternoon of celebrating as opposed to night. For many reasons, one being that Bini is still nervous about nighttime and secondly, my parents were driving into town for the night. We owe at least the first 3 years of our marriage in large part to our parents so why not celebrate with them as well, right?

Since I had just gotten my camera it gave me ample opportunity to capture the many faces and reasons why I love them so as well.

The group including my parents, sister, sister-in-law and niece (though she’s still taking up space in my sis-in-law’s belly).

Montage of my mom with some of my babes.

My dad with Bini. Though Bini is blurry this is a good picture of my dad, John.

This just cracked me up. Look at the boys look at the girls. Uh oh.

Just shut it down. He’s irresistable. (And this was the worst blog ever-grammar wise, I apologize).

My amazing, most wonderful husband bought me a camera for our anniversary. The one I used was from the early 2000s (the horror!) and Zach said I could no longer use the camp camera. I thought I would have to wait forever awhile before Zach saw a new camera as a “need” as much as I did. But he loves me and knows how much I love taking pictures of the kids and crossing out words in blogger, apparently, I’m obsessed.

So while I was cooking and he was grilling Zach had time to snap a few of our beauties.

The whole crew. We love this picture because this is them right before we yell at them ask them to say “cheese”. Seriously, you can see their personalities shining through in this one.

Commence to the close ups.

And you thought you had the cutest kids in the world. Pphhhh

And I’m only a week late. 🙂 School started last Tuesday for the “big 3”, as we call them. Actually, school started August 5th, but we didn’t transfer them in until Tuesday. Let me back up:

Last year Trysten attended a school called Lincoln Academy. We had transferred him there from Buffalo Elementary for a number of reasons but one of the main ones was because Lincoln had a population that resembled our family a really diverse student population. It was a great school, Trysten had an awesome teacher that was constantly challenging him (his teacher one day told me that Trysten keeps him up at night trying to find ways to keep him challenged, I appreciated that more than I can say!) and he really learned so much socially as well.

But then we brought home our newest boys earlier than we thought we would so we had stuff to look into. Lincoln does not have an ESL (English as a second language) program, which troubled us seeings Tomas speaks no English. After much research, Zach found a school within our district that has both a full time ESL teacher and a speech and language therapist. This ESL teacher agreed to test Tomas to make sure he needed it. Since he clearly copies everything we say not knowing what it means doesn’t speak any English, she agreed he needed lots of help.

After taking a tour through the building we remembered that one of Zach’s very best friend’s moms was the Kindergarten teacher and one of Zach’s brother’s friends was the principal. We also knew a handful of other teachers through the building as well. The principal was dynamic, and enthusiastic, we got to see the teachers interacting, it was all very good.

I told Trysten that if he had strong objections to transferring to Monroe than we would pretend to hear him out, we didn’t want to make this decision without him (this would be his 3rd school in 3 years we suck). Trysten said the only reason he wanted to go to Lincoln was because he knew his way around and knew the expectations of his teachers. He wasn’t at all upset to hear we would probably transfer, knowing his brother needed the extra help.

So we signed them up. Tariku would be in our friend’s mom’s class (praise God!), Tomas would be in a 1st grade class that also has Vietnamese and Spanish speaking ESL kids, and Trysten was getting nothing in the deal in a class with a teacher that came highly recommended.

Before they even started we toured the building one more time. This was just 2 days after our first meeting at Monroe and already Tariku and Tomas’ teachers had their desks with their names on it, water bottles with their names on it and lockers with-you guessed it-their names on it. Tomas’ teacher told us she had told the kids all about Tomas and had done a little research on Ethiopia. The kids were fighting over who got Tomas as their “school buddy”, until one of the kids “claimed” his dad was from Africa so naturally, he won. How amazing is that?

Anyway, Tuesday they started. Trysten was visibly nervous, Tomas was jumping out of his skin excited and Tariku was a mix of both.

I dropped them off the first week while the bus routes changed to include us (we live 20 minutes from the school). This was a blessing, I got to take lots of pictures for the first day!

Tariku and his teacher (who we just love!)

Outside his class

Trysten’s class on the first day.

I didn’t get any of Tomas, to be honest I was scared poopless I was preoccupied with making sure he knew we were coming to get him after school, that he knew I loved him, that his teacher saw him and held his hand as he walked through the threshold of his class, that he saw my big dumb-ass grin and ridiculous wave. That he knew I was his mom and he was my baby, trudging off to school for the first time.

I cried. Probably more so for Tariku than anyone else. Tariku is one of those who lacks a little self confidene. He is very sure of himself when he is absolutely wrong talking about things outside of academics but when it comes to learning or letters or numbers, unless he’s 100% sure-he won’t answer or he’ll constantly second guess himself. It’s heartbreaking to watch one of the smartest kids I know hold so much self doubt.

But they all did well. All of them have made new friends, Tomas was sad to hear he wouldn’t be going to school today or tomorrow. Tomas’ teacher is making next week “Ethiopia week”. They will greet each other with “Selam” (“hello” in ET) and say good bye with “chao” (“good bye” in ET). The teacher is doing a presentation on Ethiopia and will ask Tomas the words for certain animals, etc. As she said, “Tomas will learn a lot from us this year but we might learn even more from him!” Seriously? Brings tears to my eyes thinking of God’s abundance in this particular issue.

Tariku’s teacher came up to me the second day, “So we have a little perfectionist on our hands, eh?” Yeah, pretty much. Turns out he started crying when he kept messing up the lowercase A. “From whom might he get that?” She asks. She’s known Zach since he was just a wee one so she knew he wasn’t one and since I haven’t given my kids a bath in a week don’t hold the typical markings of a perfectionist either it must mean this is a nature thing and not a nurture.

And Trysten, it turns out, has 3 other kids who have transferred in from different schools. He’s made fast friends and even got invited to a birthday party already. Trysten told me yesterday that he wants to go back to Monroe next year so I think that’s a good sign.

There you have it, first week of school summed up. “The littles” start preschool on Monday so be excited for a post on those 2 crazies on Monday. As for Monroe, it looks like we’ve finally made one good decision!

8 years ago my hubby promised to love me for the rest of forever, and I promised to do the same.

We were young, and marrying young gets a bad rap for good reasons sometimes, but we’ve got a lot of hard work, support and luck on our side so getting married young happens to have worked out really well for us.

We’ve changed since those “kids” 8 years ago, but we’ve been lucky to change together. Honestly, when we first started we were all about growing up quickly. We wanted the house, and the yard and the 2 large SUVs, we wanted the Benjamins everything our parents had worked hard for many decades to get. I remember our third anniversary we actually went shopping for bigger diamonds for me even though we didn’t have the money. Today, our wedding rings look like this.

Zach picked these bad boys up in one of the shops in Ethiopia. Just a little bull horn to seal the deal of forever. We think they look awesome and I think I look ridiculously pale we couldn’t be cuter with our matching rings.

Since that time 5 years ago, we’ve shrunk our income, I decided to stay-at-home, we aren’t buying cars every 2 years and we are tightwads sensible with our money.

We’ve gotten closer to God and closer to each other over these last 8 years and for that I’ll be eternally grateful.

But this man, he is everything to me he really is. I remember thinking when I married him that I couldn’t possibly love him more than in that moment but I was so wrong. Because each day is better than the last and my love really does only grow.

I don’t know if it will stop but I still get giddy around 5pm knowing he’ll be walking in the door in the next few minutes. I still like getting dressed up from time to time and watching his reaction (he’s good at humoring me in those moments as well).

8 years and 5 kids later he’s still the only guy for me…till death do us part.

Had a fantastic time with the Klipschs at the zoo a few weekends ago. Kids did awesome, parents did awesome, grandparents are fantastic.

Our big 6-year-old. Full discretion here, we nickname our kids. We have nicknames that we share with our kids and then ones we do not. Zach and I like to talk about our kids behind their backs talk about my days with the kids so we need nicknames to do that.

Tomas? Well Tomas we named “Beefy”. That sounds bad to those who don’t know him but believe me when I tell you that this kid is solid. As an example, Trysten is 1″ taller and 10lbs lighter than Tomas. It’s amazing. Tomas has a barreled chest, and a thick waist (it has gotten so much better since we got rid of his giardia though). Solid kid, absolutely.

I’m bringing this up so you can picture the effort it takes to pick him up and rock him when he’s hurt or how difficult it is to not wince smile with pride when he runs headfirst at top speed into my arms.

But he’s starting to do both of those things with me, which is a huge improvement from just a few weeks ago.

Tomas has started to look at me with a warm smile and a giggle on his lips. He’s started to tease me and come to me with a question or a problem. It’s no longer exclusively daddy, and in a lot of cases he even seems to prefer me.

Our relationship has been very organic, I’ve purposely let him take his time getting to know me. I don’t force anything (though once in awhile I would do attachment related eye contact things) because I knew for the first few months he just needed to start to like me, then we could work on the love and trust deal later.

I think for him, and this probably wouldn’t work for everyone, giving him the freedom to come to me on his terms has been exactly what he needs. I think he needed to feel in control of the relationship with a woman for the first time and in letting him have some control in that, he has allowed himself to feel all kinds of things he was holding back for me.

Because of our newfound budding relationship, we have been able to see more of Tomas’ personality that the nannies/caretakers told us about in Ethiopia. He is fiercely smart, really funny and playful, he is helpful and kind. Tomas is wimpy at times sensitive and full of joy. He has also gotten so much better at resisting the urge to “mommy shop” and, for the most part, no longer looks longingly at various dark-skinned dudes in hopes that they’ll be his dad.

Tomas sleeps well, takes naps well and is overall just a great kid. I am a little nervous the caretakers might have told him that he has to “be good” or we’d send him back, that is how good he is.

Tomas (and Trysten and Tariku) start school tomorrow. Trysten will be in 2nd, Tomas in 1st and Tariku in K. We have switched schools from last year (I’ll go into that more in another post) because this new school has a terrific ESL program. We’ve spent the last week working with the ESL teacher and the boys’ teachers on getting them ready.

Tomas is so excited to go to school. His teacher seems awesome. She came up to us last Thursday and told us that she had told the whole class about Tomas. They found Ethiopia on the globe and then she told them about what she had learned about Ethiopia. The kids fought over who could be his “school buddy” and by the time we went in to see his class on Thursday the teacher had picked out his desk and a water bottle. His face lit up.

I am nervous on so many levels for him to go to school but we know it’s the right thing for him, he is ready. I am nervous that all of the relationship stuff that’s been built between us will suffer, I’m nervous kids will tease him at school for not speaking the same language. I’m just nervous.

But I also know something that probably even Tomas doesn’t realize. I know that this is what Tomas looked like when he came into care in Ethiopia:

See that smile? Tomas knows not just how to live through impossible circumstances, but thrive in impossible circumstances.  I know his strength in that thriving will be one of the things we have to break down a bit in order for him to fully trust in us and love us as his forever family but I also know it’s what got him through the last 2 years of his life. I’m not willing to break down the walls yet when he still has much work he needs to do.

But you guys, I’m telling you this without a shadow of a lie, I love him already. In truth, I thought I’d be much more attached to Bini than him right away because of his age, etc. But probably the nature of our relationship and the pace we are letting it go has helped me too. I’ve never put pressure on myself to feel something that wasn’t there with him and, in the end, that has been the sole factor in why I love him so much already.

We have a ways to go, me and Beef, but we’ll go there together and I’m sure months years from now he’ll be calling me “Beef” and I’ll be looking him with the same googly eyes I reserve for all of my kids.

And really, how could I not?