Jacklyn and Will

Here is a picture of Jacklyn and Will hanging at the beach. Will is "Modeling" his "life is good" shirt. Will loves to say,"life is good". :)

Will has discovered playdough. It keeps him entertained for quite some time! His favorite tool is the garlic press and he is pretty strong and able to squeeze all the playdough through the holes to create his spaghetti! Will had his blood draw a couple days ago and we are still awaiting the results to find out if the medication took care of the nasty malaria. I sure hope so. He has been a trooper with all the blood draws and shots these past weeks.

A couple Florida photos! We thought we would come back to nice warm weather when we returned from our FL trip, but that hasn't been the case. This winter is lasting way too long!

Super Will

Will started his immunizations today. He received 3 shots in his legs and a TB test which I have to go back and get read on Sat. I was all worried he would be crying and he surprised me again with his strength and brave boy character. Not a tear in his eye! He just layed on the table and said "ouch" once and then after the shots were done he said "all better" We did get some tylenol before the shots... so that led to him being tired and I got a nap out of him today. One hour of the nap was sleeping on me in my arms in the rocking chair. It doesn't get any better than that.

Today marks Will's 2month anniversary for being here with us in the states! I am amazed daily on how well he is adjusting to everything from having 2 sisters who shower him with so much love, to getting over his fear of dogs, to learning the language so quickly. We have been so fortunate to have this little guy join our family! It also is Jeffrey's birthday today! Jeffrey and I have been together for over half of his life! Wow! He is an awesome dad and more than I could have ever asked for in a husband! So Happy Birthday to the father of 3! Will is at my side now saying "mama, go night night upstairs" Pretty amazing heh?

Here are a couple of photos of our 10 day Florida vacation. We all had a great time being on the Ocean and soaking up the sun. Will loves the pools and said "Will Floats" about 100 times a day. He wore his water wings and was a natural. No fear in this boy. It was fun to watch the girls interact and be so good with Will. They are so good to him. We rented bikes on Sanibel for 3 days and it was so nice not having to get in a car to go places. Will got to ride on the back of Jeffreys bike and for the most part did pretty well except for one meltdown. I'll post a slideshow of our trip this weekend when I hope to have more time. We sure missed our animals while we were gone, and we're glad to be back home with them. I think Oscar missed Will climbing all over him!

Sanibel Island

We've been stranded on Sanibel Island vacationing without internet. I will post later on about our vacation. The girls and Will have been having a lot of fun in the sun!!!! We have a lot of great photos!!!!

The Hunt

We took Will and the girls to an Easter egg hunt in town. Jack and Jaymie had fun helping Will. Of course he didn't quite understand the concept, but it was fun for all of them. It was nice to finally have the sun shining.

Spending our "Good Friday" day off together!

The finished product!

Will and his Martha Stewart silk dyed eggs. Isn't he handsome?

Jaymie had a half day of school today, so Will and her had some together time outside. Jeffrey left for NC on Tues. eve and will return tonight. He is going to be pretty proud I figured out how to download the pics off our new camera. This camera is way more techie than my last one, so be expecting some pretty fancy photos of the famliy. Will had his 3 trial sessions of early childhood. We will be having a meeting to see if he qualifies for services in early May. He actually wanted to ride the bus on the last day home from school, so I followed him in the van and he was all upset when we took him off the bus. Go figure. This is the kid who cant stand being buckled up in his car seat, and he was all smiles on the bus. Boys and their big makeenas (cars )guess.

Christy our neighbor gave Will his first experience dying eggs. She went a little overboard with wrapping eggs in silk cloth and boiling them. (a martha idea) We will see how they turned out on Friday. Thanks Christy!

This little handsome man is going to be adding this photo to his portfolio!

My camera has arrived, now Im just waiting for my memory card. I thought I'd post a few photos from our trip. I plan on making a slide show of some of them over spring break, but figured I'd just put some on here for a new post to the blog.

Conversations with Will

While having a conversation with Will this afternoon we were talking about the following........

I was trying to prep him that I will be going to work 2 days next week so our conversation went like this...

me- daddy work

Will- daddy work, daddy money

me-Jacklyn School

Will-Jacklyn school bye bye in Makeena (car)

me-Jaymie school

Will-Jaymie school

me-mommy work?

Will- mommy makeena(car) as he motioned with his hands and arms that I was driving a car.

Smart little guy, yes it does seem to be that I am the mom taxi!

We have been without a camera for a week now, as ours broke and is no longer useable :( We are researching different brands and I think have it narrowed down to a canon. We better go purchase it soon as I am going through withdrawals not being able to take pics. We have lots of photo ops and firsts that we are missing out on. Tomorrow Will has his first day of early intervention services. I hope he does well with the organized activities. I will stay in the background as he takes part in his 2 and a half hours of structured play. Im a little nervous about how he will do with the other students. I really hope he participates and has fun. We continue to be amazed at how he has blended into our family. He surely was meant to be part of our family. On Sunday eve. we took him to the Ethiopian Restaurant in downtown Milwaukee. He was so thrilled to see his ingerra bread. Watching him eat it and pick up the food with his little piece of bread was so cute. Jeffrey was in a dreamland too as they both just have an appetite and love to just shovel in the food. We took some of the ingerra home and he had some the next day too. We plan on stopping by the restaurant and picking up the bread once every 2 weeks or so. Lately Will's favorite sentence is "Will is a good boy". He really is a good boy and we all love having this good boy as a part of our family.

Tonight we spent the evening at the club at another tennis tourney for Jacklyn. She won her bracket pretty easily, so we think she should have been in a harder bracket, but oh well, at least she got some hitting practice. During one of her matches we took Will to the interactive pool with water fountains and such and he stood in awe. At first he was not quite sure what to do... We got his adorable little swim trunks on and he was not too sure about taking off his shirt. Then, we got to the pool area and I convinced him to take off his shirt. He wanted to continue with the stripping and take off his swim trunks too. It took a little bit of coaxing to get him to keep them on in the water. But once Jaymie showed him what to do, he was brave and went on all the slides and ran through the fountains. He should sleep well tonight. Sweet dreams little Will.

Medical reports from Ethiopia mentioned Erythrocytic parasites on his blood smear, although in the records there was no mention of treatment for malaria in his med reports....so a new blood smear was ordered by the Childrens Specialty group and is red blood cellls did come up .2% positive. This is a relatively low parasitic rate, and our little man has remained asymptomatic most likely because he has had the infection most of his life and therefore he is partially immune to it... So treatment will begin as soon as we get the meds....We are on the radar for the CDC so we will proceed with treatment. Will is not infectious with this infection. I had to take him to childrens hospital again last night for another blood draw.....this one testing to see if he can take one of the meds to treat the organism which was identified as P. vivax.

Will is adjusting well to his new life:) He loves the attention and love he gets from his sisters and all their friends. He is a little lover with me and loves to be carried around. My right arm is getting buff again now that I have another little one to carry around. Every morning he wakes up and yells for "mama" He has a strong bond with Jeffrey and I am mostly chopped liver when Daddy gets home. It is quite the sight to see. We went to Toys R Us to use some gift cards today and bought some sand and set up the sandbox temporarily in the garage as the weather is not looking lovely for the next few days. ... We had fun with it in the garage. Teaching him how to play is something I have been working on with him . His fascinations are the switches and buttons and he especially likes the control panel in my van. His vocabulary is coming along. Once a word is taught, he masters it. So we work on a few new words a day. He does call himself Will and sings to himself "Will is beautiful".... very cute. We have to agree he is beautiful too. I had a lady come up to me a few days ago when we were at preschool open gym at the gymnastics center in town and asked me if I had Will in modeling classes.

Yesterday we went to the Monkey Joes playplace where there are bouncy/jump blowups and he was very coordinated on all of them. He had a good workout for about an hour and a half. He is a pretty strong little guy and we have no worries in his gross motor skills:)

We had nice weather for a few days here, now we are back to rain.:( Here is Jaymie at my sisters on her mini horse sugarbaby! She has so much winter coat she looks like a wooly mammoth. Jeffrey left for Boston today, so I am a single mom for a few days. It would help if the weather were nicer! We'll try to make the best of it. On Sunday Will has been with us here in WI. for 1 month. Hard to believe. He has adapted to so much change in his life. It amazes me. His little nightmares are not as often, he has become a dog lover, he had 5 viles of blood drawn from him yesterday. He has to eat my cooking :) poor guy! He doesn't complain though. He does have some meltdowns that show he is grieving, but it is healthy and they will/should become less frequent as he settles in and feels secure. Happy 1 month and 1 day home(as of today) I meant to post yesterday, but ran out of time!

Showertime

Just 4 days before we got our referral Jeffrey and I bought slate to remodel our upstairs master bath as we thought it would give us something to do to pass the time while we waited for our referral. Well, it turns out we had to get moving on our remodel because we got our referral so much quicker than we had thought we would. Jeffrey wanted 2 shower heads in the shower and I being the money saver wanted just one. Well, I'm glad I gave in to the sliding second shower head as showering in the morning is something Will just loves to do. Jack and Jaymie like it too! You can lower the shower head to his level and he thinks it is just the best thing ever. Sometimes in the morning I will plug the drain to the shower and he will sit on the slate shower floor and play in the wading pool while I am getting ready...Sometimes even Oscar walks into the shower while we are showering for a drink. He gets a kick out of that.
Our little man was a little under the weather today. Im guessing he caught a bit of what Jaymie had as his nose was running non stop and he was rather clingy. I hope he feels better tomorrow. On April first I have Will getting a trial session of 3 classes of observation in the early childhood in our district. They have to assess him to see if he qualifies. I mostly want Will in the program for behavior so he can learn how to appropriatly act in social settings and stimulation. He needs sharing reinforcement:) and needs to learn that biting is not appropriate when we are not happy. He has been pretty sharp on picking up words and remembers them later on, but I believe they may provide ESL services also.

our dog whisperer

Oscar is adjusting to having a toddler in the house. Will likes to lead him around the house on his leash and let him in and out of the house. Oscar continues to be tolerant of the whole new situation. Thank you Oscar for making Will feel at home!

Will finally got his taste of Spring in WI. With that came the purchase of his first set of "wheels" which he calls his "makeena". We put some miles on the makeena today with Oscar and our neighbor Christy. I am loving the handle in the back that allows me to steer and push, something I did not have for Jacklyn and Jaymie. We are hoping for more weather like this for the rest of the week. He took a nice nap today and told Jeffrey tonight that is was time for "night night" and Jeffrey layed down with him and he was out. Nothing like some good ol Wisconsin fresh air to tire the kiddos out. Will is putting words into sentences already. Today he said "see you later Oscar!" It is quite amazing what he is picking up on as his vocabulary grows...This weekend we took my van through the car wash and he thought it was pretty funny that my "makeena" was gettting a shower so he walks around now laughing to himself saying "makeena shower". Jacklyn and Jaymie continue to be great big sisters and get a kick out of his little personality. On Wednesday this week we have our first home visit since he came home. We have to submit 4 reports this year to our agency and then one once a year on the progress Will is making. This info is sent to the Ethiopian government as they like to keep track of how the children are doing and it keeps the programs/agencies of adoption open and running in Ethiopia.