October 4, 2008

Well we just finished our first week at home as a family of 7...yikes...I’ve never seen that in print.  A family of SEVEN!

I have to admit that I am cautiously saying so far so good.  Jeff did a great job of running the family her while I was with Noah Musse in Ethiopia.    

Noah is doing well.  He has definitely bonded with each family member on their own terms.  He sees Hannah as more of an aunt figure and thus reveres her...something H said she could really get use to since the other three brothers don’t seem to. : >)  A few days ago I was looking for Noah and H called down from her room to say he was with her.  I went down there and she was standing in the middle of her room while Noah was picking up  her clothes off the floor and folding them neatly on her bed he had just made for her.  I looked at her and said, “this is SO wrong.”  She smiled back at me and said, “maybe...but check out my clean room.”  He has hence been banned from being Hannah’s personal servant.   He just wants to please SO bad.  

He really looks up to Nick...especially after the first morning he was home.   Nick pulled out the frying pan and made Noah his first breakfast in America....scrambled eggs.  He’s also watched Nick in his first football game and was really quite confused by the whole concept of American football...although he loved Nick’s helmet and pads.  He used his first sani-can at the football game.  You KNOW sani-cans are disgusting when someone who has just recently come over from Ethiopia, where pit toilets were the norm, turns up his nose at the inside of a Honey Bucket.  Either that or he is really quickly conforming to elitist American standards. : >)

Zak has been a wonderful big brother to him.  They share a room so Zak has bared the brunt of Noah’s early morning wakings.  He’s gently guided Noah back to bed several mornings in the early  hours.   I think now Zak ‘gets’ what families go through during the transition phase of adoption.  He was on the other side 5 years ago this month and every now and then he makes mention of his appreciation of the work we put into making him feel like he was home.  Zak is  growing during this process...I am so proud of him.  

Sam...without question...has had the roughest go of it.  We’ve had some tears and conversation about bringing in a new family member. Sam is analytical, thoughtful, quiet, and compassionate...he has had to process this change on his own terms.  I have seen in the past 24 hours an accepting change taking place.  Right now he,  Jeff, and Noah are having an afternoon out together buying Bionicles at Target.  Sam and Noah are going to build them together this evening.  Sam is going to be fine.  We would have never entered this adoption if we knew our children couldn’t handle it...fortunately we are seeing hearts opening in all the kids to their new little brother. 

And now on to Noah...he is a character.  It’s always a fear when you adopt that the child will not bond with the family.  This is not the case with Noah.  As I mentioned in my journal he ran to me and hasn’t let go of the concept of family from day one.   He is very sweet...compassionate...curious.  This new world of gadgets fascinates him.  The phrase he learned first and foremost... “don’t touch”.  We get a chuckle now and then when he pulls a “George of the Jungle” stunt....like a few nights ago he took a coon skin hat off the wall that was hung for a decoration and washed it by hand and hung it up to dry like a pelt.  Then we have touching moments...he found Hannah’s old tea set and set up an Ethiopian coffee ceremony and invited our whole family to take part in it.  Of course he kind of lost the seriousness of the moment when he served the coffee in Hannah’s blue taffeta princess dress and a purple and gold afro wig...but...it was the thought that counts. : >)

Noah’s health for the most part is good.  His stomach/intestines are full of parasites etc. that he picked up in Africa,  living in such poor unsanitary conditions.  He’s on  medications for all of the junk in his belly and it should be cleared out by mid-week.  This is another concept Zak has forgotten from his early adoption days...and when I told him I had to do the same for him that I am doing for Noah (waiting for the poop to fall and then running the sample to the lab within one hour for a proper culture to be taken) he was speechless.  It’s what we do...to make our sons better.   So long story short...Noah and all of the Barclay’s are doing well.  Noah starts school on Monday and of course I will be on call AND on pins and needles those first few days.  Cindy teaches on the same campus and we have visited her class several times this week.  It is comforting to know she is just footsteps away from him as well.  They are quite a pair. :>) 

Thanks to everyone for all their kind words of support over the past several weeks.  It may not be acknowledged but it is appreciated more than I can ever express.