Ok, I am not going to promise that photo friday will happen every week even though I wish I could, but it will happen when I can get my butt in gear and take picture of my children:)  So here you go, our first photo friday pics.

Sleepy baby, happy Momma!

My babies:)

Such a little ham.

Kung Fu Anwen- Hi ya.

What are you looking at? Don't you suck on your binky this way too? (This picture is not a fluke this is how Esu sucks on his binky, sideways)!

What a cutie, he just makes my heart melt!

Baby girl:)

Three kids in a thrid floor, two bedroom condo with no backyard.  Life in our little nest above the trees is quickly going from cozy to cramped. As we have nt put our place on the market yet I feel like my life is being lived in a limbo of sorts.  Our place is not ready to show so I don’t have to be a stickler about it being spik and span but I also need the practice for when it is ready to be shown.  So where is the middle ground, and how do I keep my self and the kids in that middle ground area?  Am I asking too much of the kids to keep their room clean all the time, not that it happens even some of the time.  Do I need to wash the kitchen floor everyday?  How can we survive selling our condo? How can we exist in a space that needs to be clean all of the time?

Do you have any of the answers to these questions?  Have you gone through selling your home while you and your family still lived in it, did you survive?  Please tell me how, give me your advice, enlighten me.  Share your thoughts with us so that we may learn from those that have gone before us.

I look forward to hearing from you and learning some tricks.

So it has been a few weeks since I posted about my adventure in nursing my son Esuyawkal, here is what has been happening.

I tried the SNS and It is was a disaster:(  I felt like an octopus with milk spraying everywhere from the teeny tiny tubes. The nipple shield would not stay on and the tubes would not stay taped down.  Esuyawkal was screaming and I was on the verge of tears I was so frustrated.  I thought to myself this is not how it is supposed to happen, this sucks- or should I say I wish this sucked;)

I talked with my midwife about supplements while I was at my yearly and she told me again about Fenugreek  and also about Blessed thistle.  Here is the recommended does that she gave me for taking these supplements:

• Fenugreek- 3 capsules 3 times a day.
• Blessed thistle- 3 capsules 3 times a day
• Both of the herbs work quickly and so if you start taking them you will probably see a difference in three to four days, if you do not see a difference these will probably not work for you.
• Do not by the funegreek/thyme combination try to get the fenugreek capsules alone.
• You should talk to your doctor/midwife if you have questions or your local homeopathic pharmacist.

The drug my midwife told me would be a possibility is called Domperidone.  This is something I might try if the supplements do not work, and unfortunately I have not started the supplements yet.

I am still expressing milk and Esu’s pediatrician told me that even 1 ounce a day is better than nothing, he will at least get some of my antibodies.

So there you have it, I will let you all know when I start the supplements and how they go.

So as I have mentioned before Esu came home with giardia which is very common all around the world.  He is currently on antibiotics for this and is showing improvement.  The medication that Esu is on for his giardia is called, Metronidazole, and it is nasty.  The taste is horrid even though it has been heavily flavored by the pharmacist.  Here is what I have learned about administering this medication to my 12 month old:

• Do not give this medication too close to feeding time, or the meal may make a reappearance.
• If you mix this with a bottle then make two bottles, a small amount with the meds and then a regular amount without the meds.
• My best luck has been to give the meds straight and then the yuckiness is over quickly.
• Administer the meds slowly so your child does not gag or choke, I just try to have a lot of patients and get a little in at a time and that seems to work.
• Some pharmacists have recommended mixing yucky meds with chocolate sauce, I tried that with my daughter and it was ok, I have not tried that with Esu but then again I am not at my wits end.

If your blessed little child has giardia I understand what you are going through, hang in there!!

“The sick season” is what I affectionately call fall and winter, it did not used to be that way but since having had kids that pretty much is the way it is.  Last year I don’t think we went more than 2 weeks without someone getting sick, last year was a nightmare that at times I thought would never end.  My hope is that for every year older my children get the less sick they will be during “The sick season”.  Who knows maybe someday we will be able to refer to this time of the year as fall and winter again:)

Esuyawkal is the first to suffering through a virus this season and the poor little fellow looks so sad.  Glassy eyes, low-grade temp, more poo, fussy, crying, Esu is an all around unhappy little babe right now.  He is currently sleeping and thankfully does not seem to have much of a temp.  He is so exhausted he can hardly keep his eyes open, hopefully this extra rest will be the thing that gets him over the hump.

I think Esu has a stomach bug of some kind, and I think that Anwen may have had it earlier in the weekend but much more mildly.  I have been taking all kinds of precautions so I am not struck by this bug, tons of hand washing, vitamin/mineral supplements, good rest, you know all of the things that are supposed to keep you reasonably healthy.  For all of you stay at home parents out there you know how lousy it is to get sick and still have children to care for.

So if you think of it please say a pray for Esu to get better and for the rest of us to remain healthy.  Thank a bunch!!

I am one of those people who pretty much loathes seeing Christmas stuff next to the Halloween stuff.  So the thought of Christmas shopping this early does not appeal to me all that much, BUT supporting a worthy cause does appeal to me.  Helping make a difference in a child’s life appeals to me and if I can do something that will bring some cheer into their life at Christmas time, well that is just icing on the cake.  Which leads me to where you might start your early Christmas shopping.  Adoption Advocates International has a yearly Holiday Project to help provide Christmas gifts and a Christmas party for orphaned children at Layla (Ethiopia) and Eban (Ghana).

For a $30 donation, you can provide a gift and a festive holiday celebration for an orphaned child in Ethiopia or Ghana.  We hope to brighten the holidays for over 1000 children in our care in those countries—either residing at Layla or Eban Houses or in one of our orphan student sponsorship programs.

The Holiday Project also provides a gift certificate to each of our hardworking staff members in Ghana and Ethiopia so that they can purchase needed items for their families.

You can make a donation in someone elses name if you would like to give this as a gift or you could just add a few orphaned children to your Christmas list.  What ever way you chose you can know that you are brightening the day of a child and a worker.

Another way to get your holiday shopping done this year would be to visit the Benefit Orphans store.  The proceeds from this online store go towards the humanitarian efforts of AAI.

The red Christmas gift in the side bar will link you to the Holiday Project and further down is a link to the Benefit Orphans store.

Enjoys your shopping:)

Several posts back I mentioned that our school time each day was a challenge because Anwen needed more to do.  A fellow homeschooler recommended putting together some preschool bags for her to use during school time.  She recommended things like stencils, lacing cards, lacing beads, alphabet cards that match up, etc.  I really thought that was a great idea so I set out to find some low-cost ways to make a preschool bag for Anwen.  Here is the DIY project I came up with for lacing cards.

Materials needed:

• Yarn
• Tape
• Scissors
• Hole punch
• Old Christmas,birthday, or miscellaneous cards or old post cards
• Glue stick or Elmers white glue

What to do:

• Glue the cards together before you cut out the shape you want.  This makes the card stiffer and easier to cut later on.
• Either leave the cards as they are or cut them to any shape you want.
• Get crazy with the hole punch, be creative or be simple what ever suits you.
• Cut lengths of yarn, I used many different thicknesses.
• Use the tape to make one end of the yarn pointy so that it is easy for your child to thread and does not fray.
• Stand back and watch your child have fun with their new lacing cards and pat yourself on the back for saving $15 bucks:)

As you can see I went a little crazy with the lacing cards:) In the middle of this project I found a bunch of extra cards I had in a closet, that would be why there are so many finished cards.

Do you have any DIY home school projects that you have completed??  I would love to hear about them, share with us what you know in the comment section.

Our darling son Esuyawkal has this face he makes and it is pretty hysterical, we affectionately call it “the stink eye”.  I recently read that this might be a very common face amongst young Ethiopian children.  So I am posting some pictures of “the stink eye” and hopefully we will gain some conformation as to whether this is the famous Ethiopian pout:)

Oh look at that face!

Not a happy camper.

It's my birthday and I'll pout if I want to.

I am not going to smile for another picture.

So what do you think, is this the famous pout or “the stink eye”?

Just as our lives are starting to normalize we have decided to move on to our next big challenge, and that challenge is- selling our condo.  We have wanted to sell since just before we started our adoption but decided to put it off until the adoption was complete.   Now we are out of space and for us to be able to adopt again we have to have more bedrooms so that means we need to move.  And so begins the quest for a buyer and a seller.

Thankfully when we first started thinking about selling two years ago I did a good bit of preparation work; organizing, cleaning, de-cluttering etc.  Over the past two years we have somehow managed to stay pretty de-cluttered except for the kid’s room.  The other day I took 9 Rubbermaid bins down to storage that were full of toys, books and clothes.  Though we have managed to remain fairly sparse there is still stuff to be taken down to storage, and with five people living in a two bedroom condo we can be as sparse as we like  but it is still crowded.

My list of things to do is daunting and with three children the list is not getting done very fast.  My to do list for this place ranges from things like purchasing new lampshades to replacing our kitchen countertops and a whole lot in between.  Most of the smaller things I will be doing with the help of Brian but we are going to hiring a friend of ours to do the bigger things.  We had our friend over this afternoon to look at the projects that we want to do and it was really nice to talk design with someone.  Most of the projects that we want to do we have wanted to do for some time and so it will be  nice to seem them completed.  It is a little unfortunate that our place will probably look jus the way we always imagined just before we move out of it:(

I hope to chronicle our condo updating with before and after pictures so be looking for those.  In the mean time it will be one project at a time, slow and steady.  Probably done with one baby on my back and one tugging at my pant leg:)

Today’s project is clearing off the dresser in our foyer and finding a real home for all of the stuff that resides on the top of the dresser.  The ongoing project will be keeping it clean and clear which will probably be harder than the project itself.

I also hope to be posting pictures of our place here on the blog so if you know anyone interested in a large two bedroom vintage condo in West Rogers Park, Chicago let us know:)

This is our first family photo, I love this picture!!

My lovely family!!

This photo was taken the day after we got home at the memorial service for my grandmother who died the day before we left for Ethiopia.  It the midst of the sadness there was some joy.  About two hours after this photo was taken I was hardly able to keep myself conscious, the jet lag was setting in and it was intense.  I am glad I was at least able to be alert for part of the day, it was good to see my Papa and some other family I had not seen for a while, it was nice to celebrate Grandma.