Adoption boot camp

Ha ha... i suggested last night that we were doing adoption boot camp. Darwin looked at me and said, "seriously?"

We were baby-sitting my nephews Robbie & Andrew, and Robbie is such a busy little guy (who either honestly doesn't comprehend/understand the meaning of "no" or doesn't care ~ or maybe a bit of both). I was running on sleep deprivation and feeling under the weather which didn't help a lot.

Friday i was wondering if i might be fighting a cold but hoped it was nothing and agreed to watch my other sister's 4 youngest from that afternoon til Saturday afternoon. I was a bit hesitant to keep the baby because he's been sick so much, and was again dealing with something that was affecting his breathing some ~ and because he hasn't been sleeping through the night lately. But I agreed anyway ~ may as well get open to the "night time parenting" thing since it could be a reality (at least for the first while) when we adopt.

So i managed to get the oldest three (of my sister's boys) to bed by about 9 or so, my kids sometime later, and the baby settled down (in my arms) by about 10. I had a hard time getting to sleep, or maybe a worse time staying asleep. My throat was hurting enough to keep me awake at times, and i kept expecting the baby to wake. Jonathan was milking that night (yes, he still does an occasional shift ~ and seems to look forward to it every time!), so he got home sometime between 2 and 3am. At 5:something am, the baby woke up crying. All my efforts to get him settled again took til 7:30 ~ by which time the other little guys were all awake. I eventually gave up trying to go back to sleep. My throat hurt, my neck hurt, basically the whole right side of my face & head was hurting and i was tired! (Think i'm still "adjusting" to our new bed ~ how much longer??)

I took a pain killer, and fortunately, by lunch time the pain was gone and i was coping a lot better again.

My sister had told me that Robbie was doing better at playing (as opposed to running around aimlessly getting into everything)... so i was hoping! But we didn't get to see much of that yesterday ~ lol. There was one thing he enjoyed longer than a minute or two... shortly before his mom came to pick them up, i sat down to play piano for a bit, and at first he climbed on the couch and just listenend, and then he came and climbed onto the piano bench and onto my lap to join me. This lasted at least a few songs!!!

So Darwin wasn't sure it was a fair picture of boot camp for adoption ~ he couldn't really imagine other children getting into things as much as Robbie does, so it prompted a discussion of how these children could possibly do exactly that! There will be SO many things for them to see that will be new and fascinating, and any child with any curiosity likes to check everything out... the big difference might be that most children understand "no" better than Robbie seems to, but we may have to be creative and involved because you really don't want to just be saying "no" all the time to everything. (I hope we can do some de-cluttering before then too ~ lol).