Aren't 3 year olds precious?

I really do love the age of 3. It is full of discovery and language. It's so full of laughter and love. And for Misganaw, it seems to be full of sneaky mischief, as well.

The other day I was lying down with him for his nap when I suddenly remembered I had to leave right then for a dr. appt. for the adoption. I ran and told Katie to check on him in a few minutes to be sure he fell asleep. So she did. She opened the door to find the little man half out the window! He had the window unlocked and opened and only his little butt was still inside. (It's right at ground level so very tempting, I'm sure)

That same night, Blaine and I were working hard trying to complete the inventory list when at 11:00pm I said to Blaine, "I smell poop."

He said, "Maybe Misganaw pooped." (He's still in pull ups)

So I went into our stinky room (did I ever mention that Blaine and I share a room with the boys? Yep, all 4 of us!) and what do I find. Misganaw did indeed poop and had it all over his pajamas, bedding and even painted some on the bedspread on our bed! His hands were covered with poop. Believe me when I say I tried to get a picture of this but couldn't find the camera! I just couldn't spend time looking for a camera when this was so gross and I didn't want him to touch anything. So I stripped him down and he had a lovely bath at 11:00pm.

After that, back to the inventory!

I have to share something about the inventory. What I was working on (just remembering it hadn't been done yet) was the Legos. We had a huge Rubbermaid bin of Legos. Blake was a LegoManiac back in the day and got Legos at every birthday party and Christmas. He also was a little OCD about his Lego instruction books and all books for that matter. He kept many, not all, but probably 1/2 to 3/4 of his instruction books which were in a bin in the basement and were pretty unaffected by the fire. I was separating the instruction books into piles of price points to get a total dollar price for the Legos. They don't make most of them anymore, of course so I was trying to find sets equivalent to the ones he had. $1900! He had $1900 worth of Lego sets just in booklets! And that wasn't all of them. When I told him, he was so excited. I thought he'd say, "Good, I'll take the money for them." No, he said, "I can't wait to open every box and build every set!" 19 years old, but once a LegoManiac always a LegoManiac, I guess!

Blaine did see the neurologist in follow up on Monday. He actually couldn't believe how well Blaine was doing and peeked his head in the door like 3 times before he came in saying, "Is this the same guy??" He hadn't seen Blaine since the first day at the hospital so there had been a huge change. He began a taper for Blaine off the steroids at that time. He also told Blaine that he'd had industrial levels of steroids and that most people who have had that much would be so weak they couldn't climb stairs or get up or down from a chair without using their hands. These are the kind of steroids that waste muscle not build them. They really do have a lot of horrible side effects but they do work wonders on inflammation and irritation. He also told Blaine that most people on this much steroids would be psychotic by now. They cause irritability in people sometimes to the psychotic level.

I can tell you Blaine is definitely irritable and he'd be the first to admit it. He's working so hard not to be but it's not easily controlled. So if you see him, please don't do anything to annoy him. Better yet...just stay out of his way! Just kidding! Sorry, honey I just can't help myself. If you know Blaine, he is the MOST un-irritable person you will EVER meet! Off steroids, that is. So this really is tough for me, especially because I have done some doozies in the past that would make most husbands pretty upset but not Blaine.

Like the one time I left the grill on and melted the vinyl siding on our old house. Or the time I was mowing the yard and caught the edge of the downspout with the mower and kind of ripped the whole thing off the house. Did I mention the gutters were brand new at the time? I realized that it happened but I was going mach 1 (which is how I do most things) and just couldn't stop quickly enough. Or the time the sunroof of the new Jeep was left open (by one of the teenage drivers in the house!) when I decided I needed a car wash in the middle of winter. You cannot believe how much water they use in a car wash!

This one deserves a paragraph of it's own. I first noticed there was a problem when water began dripping in around the part of the roof that covers the sunroof. I slid it open and more water fell on me. I panicked because the car wash was kicking into full rinse mode by now so I quickly pushed the button on the roof. Yeah, you guessed it...I pushed the full open button. The roof was only propped open at first, not full open. So it begins to ooo.....ooooo....pppppp......eeeee......nnnnnn....nnnnnnn. The thing is so slow so in the meantime I am getting drenched! Once it is fully open I push the correct button and it begins to close just as slowly as it opened. There's nothing I can do! So I start to laugh and think of who I can tell first that I did this. I called Blaine. He laughed too and I could just see him through the phone shaking his head at me. The leather was soaked and the car smelled for a few days but all is well. Blaine met me in the garage and helped me clean it all up...that is after I changed my completely soaking clothes!

He's just the most patient, slow to anger guy. Right now I'm a little hesitant to ask him what color paint he wants for the exterior of the house! ;) I told him, "Now you know what it feels like to be a woman with PMS." He immediately replied, "Now you know what it's like to be a man who's wife has PMS." I thought I was going to prove a point here!

All this to say, he talked to the neurologist yesterday because he had begun to have symptoms of electrical shock feeling shooting up his back when he looked down. There is a name for this but the long and the short of it is that the dr. wants him to DOUBLE his steroids for a few days. This symptom is a sign of irritation in the spinal cord and he wants to knock it out. So would you please pray that it works right away???? Blaine was really discouraged to have to increase the steroids since one of the other side effects is insomnia. The dr. told him to double his sleeping pill for the next few days, as well. Not sure how much he slept last night.

I'm going to shove a bunch of unrelated stuff into this paragraph because this is getting really long. We were told that they are shooting to have the house complete by mid September!! The heating, electrician and plumbing are all in there now and working hard. Next week, low voltage goes in and then they wait for the windows to be done. Then windows go in, then insulation, then sheetrock. If they keep working this hard, it will be done. We are so excited at this news! We NEED to be back home so badly for a million reasons.

Sorry, new paragraph...we are still working hard on the adoption. Our home study is done and is being faxed to AAI today!!! Yes, our fingerprints are done and back!!!! YEA! I thought this meant that we could put T on hold at that point (that's the way it is with CHSFS) but I was told that we needed our Dossier complete as well. UGH, when I heard that I felt like I'd been kicked in the stomach. But my fellow blog friends who've also adopted older girls from AAI assured me that I could do it much faster than most. I got my old Dossier (application to the country of Ethiopia) out and began replicating it. I spoke to a woman at AAI to see if what I was doing was feasible. I told her we wanted to have all this done and the referral for T by Aug. 22, when Bibi travels to pick up T's best friend L. She didn't feel it was possible time-wise. I told her we were VERY motivated to have it done so T would know that she had a family when her best friend left for the U.S. It's already going to be hard enough to lose her best friend. We want her to have some hope at that time.

So I wait to receive AAI's official dossier packet but will do what I can to get all my ducks in a row for when it comes, finish it and get it sent back.

So prayer requests for today - pray for Blaine that the steroids will be effective right away, the symptoms he's having will disappear and he can resume his tapering off of the steroids.

-pray that the house will indeed be done by mid-September and work would continue un-interrupted

-pray that if it is God's timing that we could get this dossier packet done and returned and approved in time for Bibi to travel so sweet T knows there is hope for her, too

Wow, if you made it through this long post a big congratulations to you! Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts for caring enough about us to read this and pray for us. Some of you, we've never met yet you have reached out to us and for us. The internet does make this a small world. I remember when they first came out with the internet I said to Blaine, "Why would anyone need that?"

Thank you, Lord for the internet!

Love,

Laura