Cute or Scary?

I would probably side with scary. 

This is what Lleyton woke up to this morning...
 

That's one unique wake-up call.

Said wake-up call must have left a pretty big impression on our very impressionable young man, as tonight he decided to sleep in his doorway for the first time ever.  Maybe he thought that Batman wouldn't be able to get in if he blocked the door.  Can't wait to hear the reasoning behind the move from his bed to the floor tomorrow morning when he wakes up.

Camden lives where?

A) Seoul, South Korea

B) My sister Emily's belly

If you have been reading this blog for any period of time you would know the correct answer is A.  You might also think that Camden's future brothers and sister would know the same, but we aren't sure that is the case after the other night when Lleyton told Sara that he thought that Camden lived in Emily's belly. 

No matter where he lives, there's no doubt he is a very handsome young man, which is quite evident from the pictures we received of young Camden this afternoon....

Working our way through a difficult time.

My lack of blogging hasn’t been because nothing is happening around our house, after all since I last posted we have celebrated Christmas with both sides of the family, Santa and Grandfather Frost paid us a visit and a new year has been rung in.

My lack of blogging is because nothing that is very much fun to talk about is going on in our household as of late.

Adoption can be hard.

Adopting older children can be hard.

We have lived through it, especially during the first few months after Parker came home with us. Those were tough times, and during those times I wrote about it. So I figure there are some families out there that may be going through or have gone through what we are now, so why not share.

Parker has hit a rough patch (which is an understatement at times). To those outside of our house, Park couldn’t be much more thoughtful, polite, caring, intelligent, and sweet than he is.  Parker is each of those, but sadly for him and us, we see a different side of him on occasion. Those occasions used to be pretty infrequent, but to our chagrin they have become much more prevalent over the past couple of months.

I don’t feel like getting into everything that is going on with him at this moment, but it would suffice to say that the last couple of months have been downright upsetting, frustrating, scary, unsettling, and confusing.

Way back when we were first experiencing all of our difficulties with Parker we could kind of rationalize what might be causing them, as we couldn’t communicate with him very well since we spoke different languages, he wasn’t used to living an environment like the one we provided for him, he was probably scared, and he probably missed everything that felt comfortable that he left behind in Ethiopia. As his language progressed and he got into school, his behavior improved and his outbursts became less frequent. Things from that point on have never been perfect, but we had gotten to a point where we hoped that any issues we had with him were just those common issues that any parent runs into with a 6, 7, or 8 year old boy.

Those feelings changed recently. Changed to the point where we realized that we can’t address this situation alone and we reached out for professional help. This past Tuesday evening Sara and I headed south to Lexington to meet with a family therapist that came highly recommended to us. It was something we knew we needed to do, but neither of us wanted to have to do (I hope that makes sense). We don’t want to be a position to seek counseling for one of our children, but we know it’s only fair to him, us, and Lleyton and Addy to do so. We needed help and hopefully this therapist will be able to provide that for us.

Over the past couple of months, whether it be during one of his outbursts or during a quiet moment, we have tried many times to gain and understanding regarding what is ailing our big guy and why he feels it’s necessary to react and behave the way he has. We have gotten a few different reasons, some troubling, some of which we doubt, and some of which break our hearts.

We didn’t go into adopting any of our children under the false pretense that is was going to be easy or perfect, but at the same time we didn’t go into any of the adoptions thinking it would be this hard.

We wouldn’t change anything about how we formed our family.

We love Parker.

We love Lleyton.

We love Addy.

That’s not going to change. The fact is that many times when kids grow up in hard places, they deal with difficult things and those things don’t go away when they are welcomed into loving homes. Sometimes they linger and present themselves at the strangest of times. To one extent we are happy that Parker has only acted out around us to this point.  Yet, on the other hand that can make trying to explain what is going on at home more difficult b/c no one else has seen this side of our young man.

So if you’re reading this and have made it this far, that’s the explanation behind the blog absence. But now we’re back and hopefully very soon we can get back on track with fun stories about the kids…like the other day when Lleyton and his sidekick/shadow/best friend/cling-on/biggest fan joined forces and fended off bad guys while dressed in Batman masks.