When the good things you teach them have consequences

Everyone knows we try hard to teach the kids about money.  But, something need to be kept to themselves.

Today is Father's Day.  Chase was so sweet and used his own money to buy his dad a duck statue to go in the recroom with his other hunting stuff...aka the duck he shot years ago.  Anyways, I had taken Chase to the store awhile back when he apparently first saw it.  Then, one day when he and Kaelin were with their grandma and going to town he asked if they were going to that store and told her he planned to buy this for Father's Day.  He hid it and kept it to himself not revealing the surprise prior to today.  I mean this thing is about 10" or so long and several inches high.  He gave it to Brian this morning and I was telling Brian how proud I was of him for spending his own money on it and having the idea to buy this himself.  The kids don't usually buy us stuff and we wouldn't expect them to.  Kaelin quickly piped it 'it was 50% off!'.  So takes the fun out of it.  Had to give her another lesson in money in that while it is good to be frugal we don't have to share how inexpensive we got something when it was a gift!

As a side note I don't think Father's Day was too shabby for him.  We don't do a lot of buying items for these days.  We just don't have the money or justification for that type of expenditure.  So, yesterday since he wanted to mow and work in the garden I cleaned the whole house.  This morning the big boys got up before him and made waffles.  And Chase made his usual card.  He's GREAT about making us great cards to keep.  Always creative!  I'm telling you he's definitely one of the best dads in today's world.

Is there a trick to quiet kids in church?

Jibberjabber...fine.  But, yelling and trying to go everywhere and throwing things....not so much.  I almost hate sitting with Brian when he has to sing.  It's so tiring going up and down the stairs when he can't behave, so I put up with it a lot longer than when we're not in the choir loft.  With Chelsi twisting and turning around constantly why would J think he had to behave? 

On the drive home...a whopping 5 minutes, all 5 kids were fighting.  Fun night huh?  Good thing we did a badly needed date night last night.

My artwork will be on it's way

soon!

Here is what I'm having printed at Walmart.  Then, I'm going to get an 8x10 frame for the big one and 4x6s for the random pics from Korea.  I love how they all turned out.  I'm going to put them in some sort of cluster on our wall as art since I can't afford anything else.  But, then again, what's better than those great memories?

So that's what it's going to be like

I think Brian had one of those 'ah ha' moments last night.  You know..the ones where you say something and then you go 'ohhhhhh'.

We went to a work barbeque and were talking to one of the clients he knows.  He's 1/2 Chinese descent.  So, on the way home he says (paraphrasing) 'you know, every time I talk to S I expect him to speak with an accent even though I know him and then out comes this gruff voice'.  See, S was born here and has been in the US all his life.  I looked at him and he was just puzzled why I was giving him the duh look.  I told him...what do you think your 3 youngest are going to hear one day?  When we're not around and they're older I'm sure at some point in their lives someone will tell them how great their English is and without any accent....other than a little southernish twang.  He never even realized it.  You can definitely tell who browses the internet and who only gets on when ABSOLUTELY necessary.

I think mostly I've thought about it because I'm the one most likely to approach an Asian person to find out if they're Korean.  But, as we've gone further through our adoptive lives I've done it less and less as I realized how invaded they may feel or offended or how hard it is to phrase it since they could be newly here and truly immigrants or they could have been born here or adopted.  There are just too many options, so I have learned to quietly smile and walk on.

Business as usual

Cole and Jaemin and I were all home this week one day.  We all 3 had fevers, real low, on the same night.  I figured Cole had strep again, so I took both boys in since Jaemin had been coughing for so long.  Cole definitely had strep, but the doctor didn't want to put Jaemin through the test, so since he either had strep, sinus infection and/or bronchitis he put all 3 of us on meds.  Cole and I were feeling better pretty quickly, but Friday was still really rough on Jaemin.  I had called the doc on Friday to see if it was his acid reflux getting worse or what he thought.  They finally called back and decided that we need to seriously look into his allergies.  We know he's allergic to blueberries and strawberries.  He's also allergic to all sunscreens we've tried...including my mother-in-laws that has nothing added in it because of her allergies.

They're supposed to call back tomorrow after they find someone to look into the foods and someone willing to see a child under 2 years old.  I'm debating taking him to a pediatric gastroenterologist too.  But, I'm not sure what that would entail.  I don't want them scoping him right now and putting him through that if we don't need to.  I'll see what they say regarding an allergist first.  He was wheezing from time-to-time yesterday, so I used the nebulizer yesterday and today and it worked wonders.  Yesterday he was scared of it and today he just sat down and inhaled.  His cough sounds so much better!  Acid reflux is just not good for anybody, so hopefully we can figure out the cause for him.

Chelsi is still awaiting her follow-up.  They don't think her birth defect is causing her problems and we've got her on daily cranberry juice to make sure she has no further infections.  I'm hoping they're going to have more information for us in July.

Got a scare tonight

I was checking emails tonight and we had one from one of our agencies.  Out of the blue, so of course, my mind wandered for a quick second all I could think was "please no sibling call again".  Luckily it was just them asking if we would talk to someone else who had gotten one and wasn't sure what to do. 

Don't get me wrong, it's great that Korea finds the families, but I do pray we get no more.  We have Jaemin and we love him and we're good and complete. 

Whew!

Another new word

Finally, Jaemin is really blossoming with the words he's able to say.  He says more and more each day.

His new word this week was "hhaa  pppyyy".  I asked if he was a happy boy and he nodded and repeated it.  I would want one of his first words to be nothing different than for him to tell me he was happy.  Since he could make a two syllable word out with the 'e' sound on the end we got him to say Chelsi too.  It wasn't great, but he definitely tried.  So now he says everyone's name.  And, yeah, he says Kaelin's, but for some reason when we tell him to say K or Kaelin he says @$$ everytime.  Don't know where or why that came to be, but that's what he says.  He's such a little stinker!