I find myself writing a lot about our adoption process, but not as much about our other family life. The adoption process does consume us at times but for the most part in the in between times of waiting on this paperwork or that paperwork we have “normal” life. Some stuff that has been going on around the Byrum house recently:

Elijah is finally going to the Asthma and Allergy specialist. He has had 5 bouts of bronchitis, 2 bouts of pneumonia, 2 ear infections and 2 sinus infections just this year. We are tired of being on antibiotics and nebulizers. I am really hopeful that we can find some answers and get something to help prevent all this from happening. And he isn’t even our special needs kid. On a lighter note, Elijah is doing really well with potty training. We set out to train Joshua, but Elijah caught on and has done well. The weird thing about him is that he will keep a pull up dry but will wet as soon as you put underwear on him. Boys are so hard to train. It will be a while before he is fully trained I am sure, but we are making some progress.

Joshua is making progress with speech therapy. He can say about 10 words now. It’s slow progress as he should be speaking in full sentences since he is almost 3, but at least it’s progress. He is currently transitioning into CMS for therapy, that’s our local school system. When a child turns 3 they transition from Early intervention for therapies to the local school system. This means ALOT of paperwork and evaluations. I am thankful for the evaluations though, he will be evaluated by a team of people including a psychologist, so we can really get a holistic picture of where he is developmentally. Being transferred to CMS means that our therapies won’t be at home anymore. We can either take him to a school to have therapy or put him into preschool and they will do therapy while he is there. So, we decided two days a week at a exceptional children’s preschool was the way to go. The odd thing is they start when he turns 3, so he will start preschool in March. I am glad for the break though. I have realized as a parent of a special needs kid you have to allow yourself breaks. I am not super mom and I have to take care of myself to be able to care for Joshua and my other kids. Having a special needs kid is more taxing than parenting a “normal” kid. Having an almost 3-year-old who barely speaks and then gets frustrated when I don’t understand and goes into rages (not tantrums, but rages) is hard. I don’t even notice how hard it is until I take a break from him and realize how much relish the silence of not screaming and raging for a period of time. He is also a kid that likes sensory input and therefore climbs as high as he can and then jumps off stuff. It’s a challenge to keep him safe all the time. When I look at Elijah, who is developmentally about the same age, and see how easy it is to parent him, it makes it clear just how hard it can be to have a special needs kid sometimes. It is well worth the difficulty, but I have to realize as a parent, that just because I need a break from him at times doesn’t make me a bad mom, it makes me a realistic mom.

Samuel is doing well in school, as always. He is starting to show signs of becoming a teenager, or a tween as they call it now. He gets sassy sometimes and he has started to show interest in his appearance and girls. I can’t believe how quickly they grow up. Glenn and I are facing the reality that we are not that  far from the teen years and we had better figure out how to raise teenage boys, and a girl for that matter. It’s a different stage of parenting, and can be just as challenging as the toddler years at times.

Jordan is in Kindergarten this year and doing well. He hasn’t gotten in trouble at school for talking, which if you know Jordan you can understand why we were worried. He is a talker. He has adjusted really well and is making friends. Actually he has LOTS of friends, which we expected. He is a likable and very outgoing kid. He has been invited to 6 birthday parties just this fall at school. We had to put a limit on how many parties they can go to in one year, it gets expensive and Samuel has yet to be invited to one this year so we want to make sure he doesn’t feel left out. Each kid is different and we expect Jordan will always have more friends than Samuel, it’s hard to try to keep that balance for them.

We have been busy with holiday stuff, funerals, wedding and baby showers. Life keeps moving at a faster pace every year it seems. This has been a good year for us and we are looking forward to next year when our daughter finally arrives here. Our house is always busy and sometimes chaotic, but we love every crazy minute of it. We are doing what God has called us to and He has mightily provided this year and will next year as well. We are expectant for what 2013 will bring for us. Never a dull moment.