Darts and Farts

You may be thinking, what a crass blog title.

But if I had to sum up the main themes of our first week in America with D, it's darts and farts.

Lots of nerf gun action, which means unsticking those little foam darts off of every flat surface in the house on a regular basis.

And oh, sweet child of mine, the farting.

Eleven year old boys smell.

At first he thought the word was "fard", which somehow made it cuter.

It's not cute.

Whether fard or fart, I choose neither.

And if he's not farting or burping, there is a constant stream of noise coming out of his mouth hole.

That is if he is not eating all of our food.

Seriously.

Boys.

Everyone has been asking how it's going at home, and every single night since Monday I have intended to update the blog.

But every night I am just.  so.  tired.

I seriously can't fathom how parents with 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or dare I say 6 of these things do this while continuing to be functional adults.

It is never-ending!  

They are always around!

And I only have ONE, count him ONE, and he even feeds/wipes/clothes himself.

 AND he sleeps through the night.

How do you people do it?

I have a new respect, my friends.

But I digress.

It has been a great week. 

 Challenging in many ways, but a great week.

I'll back up to one week ago today, when we were finally back on US soil.

After an early wake up in Riga at 3 am followed by a long day of travel, we landed at O'hare.

D loved the plane rides.

Every bump, every sound, every little movement of the wing flappy things were exciting to him.

And the buttons.

So many buttons.

Lights went on and off, flight attendants were summoned then dismissed, seats were reclined only to be de-reclined.

Oh the buttons.

And oh the feelings I felt as I looked at Fans one row over (unfortunately we were split up) all nestled up with his little headphones on well into his third, uninterrupted movie.

Oh I felt feelings.

Everything went great, until we reached customs at O'hare.

We had to get a 9 month stamp in D's visa, which is not the norm, so we were sent to a waiting room where we sat for two and a half hours waiting for the stamp.

Two and a half hours.

I was definitely the most frustrated/angry/impatient one of the three of us and at one point D looked at me and said, "Mom?  Bad attitude…no iPad tonight."

After 18 long hours of travel, it was not a fun experience.

Especially knowing that these sweet people were waiting for us just outside.

Several people from the Mission Hope team made the drive, as well as some family and friends.

After a really long day, it was so great to see some familiar, smiling faces.

They were awesome.

From the airport we headed to Chris' sister Mo's where many of the Fanning's were waiting to meet D.

There were sweet welcome signs hanging outside, even written in Latvian.

Chris' sister Missy made special cupcakes complete with tomats.

Mo had at the ready all of D's favorite foods…pizza, tomats, red peppers, green beans, sunflower seeds, and chicken.

So cute.

  He loved meeting his aunts, uncles, and cousins.  

For having been awake for almost 24 hours, D had a great attitude.

It helped that he had finally met Wrigley.

They hit it off from the very start.

He is absolutely, 100%, head over heels in love with Wrigs.

And Wrigs approves.

Amazing to watch a little boy finally get a dog of his own.

Something he has been dreaming of for years.

We said goodbye to our family in Illinois and drove home to Wisconsin, where D got to see his new room.

He loved it.

He had just enough time to look around in wonder, then we all went to bed exhausted.

The next morning was like Christmas...D woke up and started opening all his new things.

And I woke up to a remote controlled helicopter hovering a bit too close for comfort.

The next day he met more cousins.  He was really shy at first, but after they taught him how to shuffle his feet on the carpet to build up static and then shock each other, he was loving it.

He actually ended up spending most of the day with them.

He had a blast.

The next day, Fans took D to the Young Life office for the day while I went to work.  I walked into my office and saw this.

My boss had gotten me a legit Latvian street sign with the name of our street where we lived in Riga. 

 I was speechless. 

And so confused as to how he knew what an iela was!  So tricky.

He even had our apartment number up there too!

It is seriously the best gift…we will always have a reminder of the place where we became a family.  It is hanging in D's room, and I love it.

It has definitely been an adjustment for Fans and I to return to our jobs and lives back in the US while also adjusting to being insta-parents.  D will not go to school full time until the fall, as he is not allowed to enroll until he is a legal citizen.  Until then, we are thanking God for flexible jobs and bosses that allow us to stay home a little more and adjust our hours so that we can do a little homeschooling.

We are certainly learning as we go.

On Monday as we were all leaving the house, we were almost out the door before realizing that we probably needed to pack him a lunch or something.

I've heard kids like to eat every few hours.

Whoops.

And this first week definitely hasn't been without its bumps.

We were warned that similar to when he pushed the boundaries in Riga, he would probably do the same once we were home.  Which was true.  We had a rough few mornings where he was mad that we were making him do some English homeschooling, so he holed himself up in his room and refused to come out for breakfast.

You may remember the sweet cave that I made him in his room.  It is a cubby in the wall filled with pillows with a ladder going up to it.  I had imagined him climbing up there to read/chill/game.

I did NOT imagine him climbing up there in a fierce pouting stand off/hunger strike.

He's actually inside of there in this photo.

Pouting.

Taking a stand against mean Americans and their lofty expectations.

(Put your pants on.)

(Come eat breakfast.)

(Homeschool for one hour.)

I would have opened it up to take a picture of him inside, but you never want to unleash the wrath of a pouter by mocking him.

He eventually emerged from the cave of misery and unfairness.  

But not without tears and arguments and lots of explaining via Google translate.

After learning that the family expectations are the same regardless of the time zone, things have been much better.  He is amazing us with his English progress and he has realized that a few hours of homeschooling each day is not so bad.  Fans and I still feel like we are fumbling through it, but we have learned to just take this whole thing one day at a time.

We also learned that his impressive breakfast refusal/hunger strike wasn't so much a result of his strong will and ability to fast until lunch, but rather his ability to eat through a large bag of candy that we had forgotten he had in his room.

Duh.

This pout brought to you by the makers of fructose.

It has only been one week but it has felt like seven.  There's just so much that is new.

New to us...new to him.

Trying to maneuver through parenting/homeschooling/working/Young Life...

it is a huge adjustment.

But there have been plenty of great moments.

Of course, many of those moments involve the Wrigs.

Wrigs, by the way, is even more exhausted than we are.  She hasn't gotten this much action in years.  D is constantly whistling for her, playing hide and seek with her...petting, walking, snuggling.  And due to some early miscommunication and translation issues, he did feed her an entire pound of deli turkey the first day.  

We corrected that.

He has learned how to play carpetball.  

We've been to the YMCA a few times.

Fans taught him the joys of double coupon day at Pick 'N Save.

"Now, look how much we saved today!"

He pretended to be enthralled.

He discovered my vintage (1997) rollerblades and has loved taking them out every night while I walk with Wrigs.

He has no fear and goes down every hill, no matter how steep, at full speed.

A helmet is on the list of things to buy ASAP.

One night we went to the library with his friend who was adopted from Latvia a few years ago.

Yesterday we went to a homeschool ice skate event.  Fans met us there as a surprise.

D saw him across the rink and yelled, "Hey Papi!"

Usually he calls Fans Dad, sometimes Papi, sometimes "old man".

No joke.

Don't know where he got it, but it is pretty funny.

And then he practiced his "I'm a professional hockey player and I'm coming off the ice onto the bench" moves.

It's amazing no one lost a limb.

He has been reading us a book in English most nights.

It is mostly used as a stall tactic but heh, it's good English practice.

This weekend he had his very first sleepover ever when his cousin Cole spent the night.  They had a blast and I am so happy that they have bonded.

Now he wants Cole to sleep over every weekend.

So here we are.

Week one is done.

We have all survived.

Seven days down…64,254 to go.

Sometimes it's just surreal and we realize, holy cow, we have a kid.

Sometimes it's surprisingly easy, sometimes it's really hard.

Sometimes I struggle with feeling connected to him.

Other times I feel like he's been with us for years.

It's hard to put into words what this journey of adopting an older child is really like.

Strangers one day, family the next.

The other night when we were at the YMCA, we were getting ready to leave the pool and I pointed to the towels and said, "Go grab a towel, buddy."

He looked at me with a sad face and said, "Nooo, mom…you come.  You help…please?"  And he made the motion of wrapping himself in a towel and rubbing his hair.

I quickly realized that he wanted me to do the mom thing, to wrap him up tight in a towel, to towel dry his hair...the things he had probably watched many moms do for their children.

When I realized that, I quickly led him to the towels, threw one around his shoulders and as we laughed I wrapped him up tight, scooped him up like a baby, and called him my little burrito.

This lanky 11 year old, this fart machine, this kid only steps away from being a teenager, just wants to be loved.

Wrapped up like a burrito.

And loved.

I try to remember those moments.  

On the days that it's really hard and the challenges seem overwhelming, I try to remember that he is just a little kid, starving for love, in need of consistent, daily assurance that we are here to stay.

We are not going anywhere, buddy.

Unless it's to momentarily escape your fards, to restock the fridge, or to hide in the bathroom just for 5 minutes of quiet.

We are here to stay.

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future”. – Jeremiah 29:11