I remember shortly after our little girl came home from Ethiopia, asking, "How long will it take her to really be able to speak English?" I knew other adoptive parents had said the kids caught on really fast. But really fast is relative. She definitely seemed to understand us speaking English to her very quickly, within weeks! But, I wanted her to be able to communicate back to us. I wanted to know what she was thinking, what she was feeling and wondered how long -- 3 months, 6 months, 12 months? I really didn't know how long it would be for her coming home as a 3 year old and not knowing any English at all.
Being around our daughter every day, sometimes I think it's easy to take her progress for granted. She's just our child and we are doing regular, busy life.
But, occasionally it hits me, like this week, at just shy of 7 months home, my husband went to help the kids get ready for bed and I overheard the following from our 3 year old Little Girl quoted word for word: "No! You said underwear. It's not underwear, it's PANTIES, Dad!"
"Wow, that was perfect English," I thought to myself!
And now we know what she's thinking and feeling, all the time, because she can tell us! 'Course there is something to that whole, "be careful what you wish for" thing! Kidding. Mostly.
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I've been in spring cleaning/project mode this week. And, yes, I do know it's not spring, but I'm a little/a lot behind!
I think I'm driving my family crazy. I had my husband hanging pictures at 11pm tonight, really hoping the hammering didn't wake up the 4 sleeping children. It didn't. And then there's the whole grocery situation. I've decided we have a lot of food clutter. You know, random boxes of pasta or bags of frozen okra that have just built up and I buy new stuff and we don't use the old. So, I'm on a mission to get rid of all the backlog of food while also having the benefit of avoiding the grocery store except for the occasional milk runs. This plan is making for some interesting meals!
I'm not sure when I'll cave and go to the grocery store for real. I've said not until it's all gone, like there's 2 things in the pantry and nearly nothing in the fridge. But, I should probably stop short of feeding my kids lunch consisting of pickles and V8 juice! We are having some friends over for dinner on Sunday and I'm certainly not going to feed them the dregs from our pantry so at least the family will get a reprieve for one night, then it's back to eating what we have!
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We were at gymnastics for my daughters this week and my boys had been playing a DS game so I hadn't really been paying attention to them until near the end when they stopped the game and were standing up by me. Then I noticed my 5 year old son had his shorts on backwards (notice the half-way zipped up zipper there in the back)!
He's my kid that really likes to make people laugh and doesn't take himself too seriously, so he was fine with me taking a picture with my phone and telling him how silly he was to have put his shorts on backwards. He was also the first one to announce loudly to his sister when she came out of gymnastics that he had his shorts on backwards!
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Then tonight we were at family night for a VBS my 3 oldest kids went to this week at our old church and we were walking between classrooms (we had 3 different classrooms to visit) with the 4 kids trailing behind us and I heard a lady say to our 3 year old daughter, "Sweetie, be careful running. I wouldn't want you to trip and fall since your shoes are on the wrong feet!"
Yeah. Between that and the backwards shorts I'm definitely in the running for Mother of the Year!
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Happy Friday, Friends!
I LOVE the picture of your son's pants! Thanks for the giggle!
ReplyDeleteYour son's pants reminded me so of one of my sons at that age! He was too busy to care what he had on and could laugh at himself with the best and still can at almost 35! Thank goodness!
ReplyDeleteAnd it is amazing how quickly young children pick up English! We have friends that adopted two sisters from the Russia area and they had no other children. At the time I wondered how in the world they would communicate with them.....I was watching them the other night at church and they were just regular old English speaking girls! :)
My children (adopted from Poland) spent three months listening, speaking only a bit of english. then it just poured out. I read later this is pretty typical.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with the cleaning mission. I am headed on one this weekend too.
ReplyDeleteI truly enjoyed catching up with you via this post. Super cute stuff. I love the "panties" correction and the shorts snafu. Never a dull moment :)
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about the pantry and freezer. Kendall leaves for camp today, and Mr.4444 is headed to Germany, so maybe Kyle and I will put a small dent in things, but I know I won't be going to the grocery store.