A few random thoughts...

First of all Olav's skin test came back positive....he goes to the doctor tomorrow to follow up.

I also learned that Lily has a tb vaccination scar on her arm....which can cause a positive tb result. So I wonder now if she is taking this anti-botics unnecessarily.

A couple cute things...

Lily says here alphabet...ABCD Eat some Cheese HIJK....I love it!

Also last night I was at Kodi and Aly's eating dinner and Kodi proudly states that we he grows up he wants to be an engineer. Ali than proudly states that when she grows up she wants to be winnie the pooh! God how I love them!

Guatemala...the gift that keeps on giving!

Well, we may have our real Guatemalan souvenir with us for a while. TB! Yippee! As I may have written earlier, it had been determined that little Lily pad had been exposed to TB and to prevent her exposure from turning into active TB she is on 9 months of anti-biotic!

Daddy has been coughing horribly for the past two months. Tonight he finally went to the doctor thinking that maybe it was bronchitis or walking pneumonia. But no....they think it might be TB! He went to get a chest X-ray at the hospital so we will know more tomorrow.

I guess that means I better get myself to the doctor as well.

Here's the Guatemala gift that keeps on giving!

Birthday Parties...American style

Well, today marks the first of I suspect many American birthdays. Today we had two in one day! One for our friend Isa whom we actually met in Guatemala and one for our friend Emma who is the daughter of a co-worker. Both girls were turning 3!

Our first birthday party was a pony-riding party. Lily had a great time feeding and riding the pony! Although after one time she was done!

Our second party was crazy. It was at a place called Pump it Up. I have never seen anything like it. Basically, it was a glorified moon bounce place. You went into two separate rooms. The first room had three separate climbs, slides, and bounce "houses". The second room was similar but had different types of climb, slide, and bounce houses Lily loved it, but she was a little too small to do some of the stuff by herself, so I got lots of exercise as well. I must say though I was happy when it was time to go eat pizza and cake! I was beat! You'd think Lily would be beat as well...but no...over tired and over-adrenalized at almost 8 p.m. and she is in her bed yacking away! Oh to have toddler energy!

A grieving mommy

Lily is doing great! She is speaking more and more English every day. I am amazed at how quickly she has picked it up. In fact, she now chooses to speak English more than Spanish. As a mother, this is grieving my heart. I so want her to be bilingual, but I feel it slipping away. I am still speaking Spanish to her, but I am also painfully aware of my limitations. We recently hired a young girl to come to our home two days a week to speak Spanish with her, but is that really enough? It's like a personal angst. I guess what will be will be, but it still grieves my heart deeply.

In other news...Lily is doing so much better at daycare. She didn't even cry when I dropped her off. That was the first time since we began! She also has been going to bed relatively well and staying in her bed without waking up in the middle of the night.

She continues to be active! I asked Mrs. Helen how she was doing and she said good, but she was one of three little ones who tend to express themselves physically (i.e. hit, bit, push etc).

One of my favorite things is this song she sings...Mary had a little lamb. Except she sings Mary had a little man. So cute!

Where to begin!

I have wanted to start a new blog to chronicle the new chapter in Lily and our lives, but things have been so crazy I haven't had the opportunity to. However, with so many things having happened I wanted to get them down on paper.

We have now been home for about 2.5 weeks. Overall the adjustment is going much better than I expected. Lily is really amazing in her ability to adapt to new situations. She is acquiring English at record speeds. We recently started a new discipline program with her called 1-2-3 magic to help stop all the power struggles we seemed to be constantly having. She is responding very well to the program and has been making much better choices. Of course like everything it requires consistency and patience.

The other day she was put in time out because she would not put on her shoes and we needed to get out the door. Well, we had a new parent moment when once in the time out (in her room), she locked herself in the room. Our home being old, we didn't have any of the keys to unlock the doors and of course, communicating in English or Spanish to turn the knob did not go well. Anyway thank goodness Olav was home, he ended up kicking down the door! So we have a little drywall, painting, and trim repair work to do. But I can now safely say that the lock is now on the outside of the door! So much for getting on the door in a timely fashion.

This week Lily has begun to sleep in her big girl bed alone. If she cooperates, we will sit in the chair until she goes to sleep; if not, we leave her in her room.

She has done overall quite well in her bed, however, the other night she fell off the end of the bed. Poor little thing.

Lily has discovered Play-Doh and absolutely adores it! She plays with it all the time! She also loves shaking her body to the wiggles. She even break dances.

I went to a huge yard sale last week and bought her a few toys to keep her occupied. But still her kitchen set with the play dough seems to be the reigning favorite! She also really likes this Dora tent I got her. She loves to play hide and seek.

Lastly, she loves to play dinosaurio. She and Daddy play it all the time!

One thing that has been hard about leaving Guatemala is grieving the loss of her Hispanic culture. As much as I try to continue to speak Spanish to the best of my ability at home, I am not nor will ever be a native of Guatemala. I just so badly want her to keep that part of her life with her. I think if Yolanda is able to come home with us maybe that will help, but with the economy the way it currently is I am not sure if that is feasible at this given moment in time.

This week she started daycare. Originally she was supposed to start on Monday, but her TB test came back positive so we had to wait until we were cleared by her negative x-rays before she could start daycare. Overall she has done well. I was most worried about the nap time, but that has seemed to be not a problem at all. The hardest part is dropping her off in the morning. Today she was screaming....but I called Mrs. Helen and she told me after 5 minutes she was fine!

Today the staff at my school threw me a baby shower. They have been supportive and encouraging to me over the past two and half years...that this just took the cake. I just couldn't believe all their kindness. You'd think by now they would be so sick of our situation, but they just continued to pour out their love to us. I was in tears...humbled by their kindness and love for us.

The shower was incredible...they decorated with Dora tablecloths and Dora cake....many Dora-themed gifts. Just when I thought I had opened up all the gifts, my team brought in a radio flyer wagon and bicycle filled with gifts. I lost it...I couldn't even open them up. I was so overcome with emotion. I had to stay seated in a chair and just take it all in.....

I was having a talk with two of my co-workers one day shortly before I went to pick Lily and Olav up from Guatemala. My co-worker had bought Lily a few little gifts. I was so thankful to her and my response was thank you so much....I will never be able to repay you for your kindness to me.....so began an interesting discussion about giving and receiving.

You see growing up I always felt that if I was given something, I needed to repay somehow. Whether it was with an equivalent gift or some token of appreciation. But basically, I always felt indebted to that person somehow. I know this came primarily from my mother, who I loved and adored, but it was definitely an area of strife in our family for many years...as nothing came free.

So you can imagine over the last two years as we have been overwhelmed with love in the forms of cards, gifts, money, prayers etc.....that the "debt" became too great to repay. Never in my lifetime would I be able to "payback" people for their kindness to our family.

However, my co-workers brought up a very good point, that I am still learning to swallow. They said they didn't want to be paid back, in fact, it brought them great joy to give. They also asked me about how I liked to give and that when I gave did I expect to receive something in return. Of course, my answer was how I too enjoyed giving to others and of course, I did not want something in return. So this is such a hard pill to swallow...accepting such kindness and simply saying thank you.

Of course, this gets me thinking about spiritual things as well..... God cared so much about me, that he sent his only child to this earth to die for me.....I know my debt to him is great. I will never be able to pay him back for his love for me.....and yet that is not what he requires.....he simply would like to be thanked and praised and would like to continue to pour out his blessings. Honestly, the reality of the situation is so intense I can't even really ponder it.

Anyway, I don't feel like I adequately captured all my thoughts there, but at least it is a start.