It's been a long time since I last wrote a blog post! The past two years, our family happenings have been written every Sunday night in e-mails to our missionary, Landon. Now that he's been home for a month, I feel like I need to start blogging again. Our blog books are our most priceless treasures. We have four of them, one from each year from 2008-2011. So much would already have been forgotten had I not kept up with blogging during those years! I still need to put the next year or two into books. I kind of fizzled out of blogging after 2012, so there will be a couple of years' worth of a gap before Landon's mission e-mails, which I'll put into a book. But there's no better time to start than NOW! At least while the kids are in school. I can sit and write during Liam's nap times.
December 2016 will go down in history as the most intense month at home for the Fillmore family. We arrived with Liam and Louie on December 2. The first week we were simply surviving...not sleeping, dealing with one very loud, unregulated boy and one very clingy one that wasn't sleeping at night, all while getting ready for Landon's return and trying to recover from jet lag. I wrote a couple of posts on our adoption facebook page during that time, so I won't rehash it all...I'm just glad we got through that!
Landon joined us from the Philippines on December 10. We have LOVED having him back with us.
I feel like his homecoming deserves it's own blog post, so I will write that one next.
He is a more mature, loving, fun version of the Landon we knew two years ago. I will forever be grateful for the time he spent out in the service of the Lord! His presence immediately raised the vibration in our home, which we needed desperately. He is going to live here with us this semester while he goes to school at Utah Valley University and works as much as he can to save money so he can move into an apartment with friends after this semester. No job yet, but some good prospects.
Louie was extremely anxious to start going to school with Eli. Every day we dealt with major meltdowns every time the kids all left and he had to stay home. It's good for older adopted kids to spend the first few months at least, at home so mom and child can bond. I decided it would be best for him and I both if he started right away, however. He just loves school so much and I really really needed some time to decompress. So I met with the principal at the Elementary school where Eli attends. We are unsure where to start him. He's technically supposed to be in 3rd grade, but he was only in Kindergarten in China, and he's the size and social/emotion level of about a 4 year old. I tried to get him in 1st grade, but the principal and the people higher up in the school district all agreed that it would be best if we gave it some time to see what he is capable of first. So we have him in 2nd grade. This school has a Chinese immersion program where the kids go to class in Chinese for half of the day and in English the other half. He went for just the Chinese portion of the day the first week before Christmas break. He loved it. Now he's there full day with a Chinese speaking aide during a lot of the English portion of the day, to help interpret for him and work on things with him. Eli is also in 2nd grade but we purposely put Louie in the opposite class so that Eli wouldn't get stressed by him. He is so cute to help him out of the van and down the stairs and into his classroom every day, then to pick him up and walk him to the carpool lane in the afternoon. It's so sweet seeing them together. I love the life lessons that my children are learning from their siblings with special needs. They are priceless.
I am really grateful that we have an immersion program so close. It takes me about 10 minutes to drive there. I don't like that drive twice a day, but I'm willing to do it so that our Chinese boys can keep their native language. Liam will lose it by the time he goes to 1st grade because he's only 2, but at least we can bring it back to him when the time comes.
On December 17th, the extended Fillmore Family got together at G&G Fillmore's in Cache Valley for our annual Christmas party. It was still too early to take the boys, so Jeremy missed the party and stayed at home with them while I drove the rest of the crew in our van.
Landon loved reuniting with his cousins, aunts and uncles after being gone for two years.
G&G found a way to heat their garage, so that's how we all gather in one room to eat.It works great. Grandma organized to have someone come take pictures since the whole family was going to be there. Well, it turned out that Jeremy, Louie and Liam didn't end up coming so we weren't all there after all. We felt bad about that. So there are 3 missing from this picture.
A week later, on Christmas Eve, things were settled down a little bit with the boys, and we decided to try taking them to my sister, Michelle's house for our get-together there. We were pleasantly surprised at how well the boys did. Liam stayed happy and loved playing with his new cousins. Louie mostly hung out with the older kids.
Some of the teens and young adults. Can't believe we actually have young adults now!.
Photo Credit goes to Jen Bacher for the rest of the Christmas Eve shots.
Our first photo as a family of 11. We are now considered a super-sized family. :)
The two week break from school was insanely difficult. Jeremy took the whole break off of work, thankfully. Managing Anya, Hazel, Louie and Liam with no structure in the schedule turned out to be a full-time, two-person job.
We are like fire fighters. Either preventing or extinguishing fires every second of their iPad-free hours. Louie is loud and explosive. Like Anya in many ways. They have learned to play a little better together, and they seem to genuinely like each other, but we still have to be close by because they are both so competitive and impulsive. Hazel is more on Liam's level as far as interests go. They are starting to hang out together here and there. But if you can imagine having four kids that are about 2-3 years old in emotional maturity, that's what we've got here. It's the sheer number of noisy, needy children that is killing us! We didn't anticipate that Louie would be so emotionally charged about everything. But he has had to fight for attention his whole life and, other than having a mom and dad who are striving to help him feel safe and regulated now, this not changed here in our family. We have two other kids with special needs, plus a two year old, in addition to the 5 other kids that we can't just ignore all the time!
I had many thoughts this past month that Louie would progress and heal so much more easily in a family where he is the youngest, or at least in a family that doesn't already have two kids with special needs already. A family where he could get all of the attention he needs and there would be lots of space for him to heal. But every time I did that, the Spirit reminded me that this is where he belongs. He already loves us and looks to us as his family. His family, the one that he has waited for for 8 and a half years.
He drew this picture a few days after we came home from China. This was before Landon came home so there are only ten. But he knew he belonged here from the start!
So we have to make adjustments, and learn to tolerate a lot of stuff we aren't used to tolerating. We are in this for the long haul and it's completely up to us what we want to make of it. We can be aggravated with everything, or we can change, and be more like Jesus. We can find the humor in things and seek to notice the miracles that are happening every day. It's all up to us.
Note to self: We have only been at this for 7 weeks...5 of them at home. Every week is a little bit better than the previous week, as we figure out what works best and as the boys learn English.
People often ask me how things are going. My first thought is to tell them how hard things are. But really...it's about perspective. The boys are doing amazingly well, considering the amount of adjusting and healing that they are going through. They are learning English at lightning speeds (or at least it seems like it compared to the girls, who struggle so much with speech and language.) And we feel like Liam has been here since day one. So in love with that boy. Our favorite thing ever is when someone walks in the door from being gone. He runs as fast as he can toward them and yells their name, then gives them a big hug. Melts our hearts every time!
We actually got together on Dec. 30-31 so we could all be back for church on Sunday. But we pretended it was New Year's Eve with a count-down and everything!
Saturday morning, we went to a church gym in Heber and played dodge ball. Liam and I hung out on the stage to keep him safe. We had a blast though!
December 2016 will go down in history as the most intense month at home for the Fillmore family. We arrived with Liam and Louie on December 2. The first week we were simply surviving...not sleeping, dealing with one very loud, unregulated boy and one very clingy one that wasn't sleeping at night, all while getting ready for Landon's return and trying to recover from jet lag. I wrote a couple of posts on our adoption facebook page during that time, so I won't rehash it all...I'm just glad we got through that!
Landon joined us from the Philippines on December 10. We have LOVED having him back with us.
I feel like his homecoming deserves it's own blog post, so I will write that one next.
He is a more mature, loving, fun version of the Landon we knew two years ago. I will forever be grateful for the time he spent out in the service of the Lord! His presence immediately raised the vibration in our home, which we needed desperately. He is going to live here with us this semester while he goes to school at Utah Valley University and works as much as he can to save money so he can move into an apartment with friends after this semester. No job yet, but some good prospects.
Louie was extremely anxious to start going to school with Eli. Every day we dealt with major meltdowns every time the kids all left and he had to stay home. It's good for older adopted kids to spend the first few months at least, at home so mom and child can bond. I decided it would be best for him and I both if he started right away, however. He just loves school so much and I really really needed some time to decompress. So I met with the principal at the Elementary school where Eli attends. We are unsure where to start him. He's technically supposed to be in 3rd grade, but he was only in Kindergarten in China, and he's the size and social/emotion level of about a 4 year old. I tried to get him in 1st grade, but the principal and the people higher up in the school district all agreed that it would be best if we gave it some time to see what he is capable of first. So we have him in 2nd grade. This school has a Chinese immersion program where the kids go to class in Chinese for half of the day and in English the other half. He went for just the Chinese portion of the day the first week before Christmas break. He loved it. Now he's there full day with a Chinese speaking aide during a lot of the English portion of the day, to help interpret for him and work on things with him. Eli is also in 2nd grade but we purposely put Louie in the opposite class so that Eli wouldn't get stressed by him. He is so cute to help him out of the van and down the stairs and into his classroom every day, then to pick him up and walk him to the carpool lane in the afternoon. It's so sweet seeing them together. I love the life lessons that my children are learning from their siblings with special needs. They are priceless.
I am really grateful that we have an immersion program so close. It takes me about 10 minutes to drive there. I don't like that drive twice a day, but I'm willing to do it so that our Chinese boys can keep their native language. Liam will lose it by the time he goes to 1st grade because he's only 2, but at least we can bring it back to him when the time comes.
On December 17th, the extended Fillmore Family got together at G&G Fillmore's in Cache Valley for our annual Christmas party. It was still too early to take the boys, so Jeremy missed the party and stayed at home with them while I drove the rest of the crew in our van.
Landon loved reuniting with his cousins, aunts and uncles after being gone for two years.
G&G found a way to heat their garage, so that's how we all gather in one room to eat.It works great. Grandma organized to have someone come take pictures since the whole family was going to be there. Well, it turned out that Jeremy, Louie and Liam didn't end up coming so we weren't all there after all. We felt bad about that. So there are 3 missing from this picture.
A week later, on Christmas Eve, things were settled down a little bit with the boys, and we decided to try taking them to my sister, Michelle's house for our get-together there. We were pleasantly surprised at how well the boys did. Liam stayed happy and loved playing with his new cousins. Louie mostly hung out with the older kids.
Some of the teens and young adults. Can't believe we actually have young adults now!.
Photo Credit goes to Jen Bacher for the rest of the Christmas Eve shots.
Our first photo as a family of 11. We are now considered a super-sized family. :)
Christmas Break
The two week break from school was insanely difficult. Jeremy took the whole break off of work, thankfully. Managing Anya, Hazel, Louie and Liam with no structure in the schedule turned out to be a full-time, two-person job.
We are like fire fighters. Either preventing or extinguishing fires every second of their iPad-free hours. Louie is loud and explosive. Like Anya in many ways. They have learned to play a little better together, and they seem to genuinely like each other, but we still have to be close by because they are both so competitive and impulsive. Hazel is more on Liam's level as far as interests go. They are starting to hang out together here and there. But if you can imagine having four kids that are about 2-3 years old in emotional maturity, that's what we've got here. It's the sheer number of noisy, needy children that is killing us! We didn't anticipate that Louie would be so emotionally charged about everything. But he has had to fight for attention his whole life and, other than having a mom and dad who are striving to help him feel safe and regulated now, this not changed here in our family. We have two other kids with special needs, plus a two year old, in addition to the 5 other kids that we can't just ignore all the time!
I had many thoughts this past month that Louie would progress and heal so much more easily in a family where he is the youngest, or at least in a family that doesn't already have two kids with special needs already. A family where he could get all of the attention he needs and there would be lots of space for him to heal. But every time I did that, the Spirit reminded me that this is where he belongs. He already loves us and looks to us as his family. His family, the one that he has waited for for 8 and a half years.
He drew this picture a few days after we came home from China. This was before Landon came home so there are only ten. But he knew he belonged here from the start!
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So we have to make adjustments, and learn to tolerate a lot of stuff we aren't used to tolerating. We are in this for the long haul and it's completely up to us what we want to make of it. We can be aggravated with everything, or we can change, and be more like Jesus. We can find the humor in things and seek to notice the miracles that are happening every day. It's all up to us.
Note to self: We have only been at this for 7 weeks...5 of them at home. Every week is a little bit better than the previous week, as we figure out what works best and as the boys learn English.
People often ask me how things are going. My first thought is to tell them how hard things are. But really...it's about perspective. The boys are doing amazingly well, considering the amount of adjusting and healing that they are going through. They are learning English at lightning speeds (or at least it seems like it compared to the girls, who struggle so much with speech and language.) And we feel like Liam has been here since day one. So in love with that boy. Our favorite thing ever is when someone walks in the door from being gone. He runs as fast as he can toward them and yells their name, then gives them a big hug. Melts our hearts every time!
Christmas Day
Last summer, Landon commissioned an artist in Tarlac City in the Philippines to paint this photo of our three "L" boys, whom we waited for and prayed for all year. He brought the canvas all rolled up in his luggage, then Jeremy had it framed. This gift made my Christmas so special! Louie and Liam love that their picture is now on the wall. It made them so happy.
Celebrating the New Year
By the next weekend we were so ready for a little break. We went back and forth on what to do, but ultimately decided to hire our babysitter, Hannah to come and stay overnight with Anya, Hazel and Louie while the rest of us went to the Brady's cabin for our annual (23 years strong now) New Year's Eve party. It worked out great and provided the respite that we needed from our 3 of our neediest littles for 24 hours. Liam came with us because he still needs me by his side at night, but he did great and loved all of the attention.
We actually got together on Dec. 30-31 so we could all be back for church on Sunday. But we pretended it was New Year's Eve with a count-down and everything!
Saturday morning, we went to a church gym in Heber and played dodge ball. Liam and I hung out on the stage to keep him safe. We had a blast though!
So...we survived December! Now the kids are back in school and things are SOO much better! I can finally catch my breath each day, even with a busy two year old putting everything in the toilet and dumping things. :)
I'm looking forward to 2017! My word for the year is JOY. I'm finding joy in all the little things and owning this calling that the Lord has given me. It's mine....now it's up to me to make it fabulous!
May you find joy in serving the Lord in your own special ways, as well!
1 comment:
What a touching post Heather. I love how Louie loves his family and Louie is so loving. You have such a great perspective!
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