Post Op

Praise God, our boy is doing great!  He was a champ yesterday.

It was a long day - we waited for 4 hours before his surgery.   Mommy, Daddy, Hendrick, and Dabney made up Tesfaye's entourage and support circle (the other 6 enjoyed a fun day, staying with gracious friends).   Despite his distracting hunger and thirst, he stayed busy in the pre-op waiting room playing football and building pillow-block forts in his green "tiger feet" socks.  He was full of energy (and quite silly and giggly)!  When the time came, he selected his flavor (strawberry) of "sleepy gas," and picked out a gigantic stuffed snake from the much anticipated "toy tunnel" (brother and sister got toys too!).  

We gave him kisses and hug and said a quick prayer, then our boy bravely walked back to the surgery room by himself.  He tried desperately to stay awake, but the anesthesiologist always wins that battle :)  Tesfaye remembers falling asleep listening to the nurses chatting: "I can't believe they have nine kids and they home school . school . . school . . . school . . . "

After he was taken back for surgery, I left with Hendrick and Dabney to grab a quick bite to eat.  We had been told the surgery would take nearly an hour to perform.  20 minutes later, Mike was called back to talk to the surgeon.  The procedure was complete.  It's incredible to me that such a delicate procedure is even possible, let alone so quickly.  As suspected, the surgeon found a tendon on the right eye to be slack and felt very good about the work performed on both eyes.  Shorty after Daddy was greeting our groggy son in recovery.  His first words: "I feel like a midget."  He felt so small in the hospital bed surrounded by adults. 

Tesfaye loved the taste of his sprite, but was surprised by how "off" he felt.  He was so tough and so sweet, and so pitiful.  We all took turns sitting with him, holding his hand.  The nurses had warned us that the after-effect of anesthesia tends to hit the bigger kids much harder.  Nevertheless, 90 minutes later, we were off (with barf bag) on our way home.

Tesfaye had looked forward to an Ethiopian feast after surgery.  This was not to be.  Instead we promised him an Ethiopian feast next week after his post-op appointment.  He will enjoy the food so much more next week.  Instead, we stopped for another spite and a bowl of brothy soup and the boys watched "Lord of the Rings" as we drove home. 

At home, he rested (semi) comfortably, tired for the long day and sore from surgery.  His eyes will be sensitive (and sore) these next few days.  We will do our best to keep our house calm (yikes!), help him rest, keep the lights dim, and keep up with regular eye drops as he heals.

We are so thankful this is behind us and look forward to enjoying the fruits of this procedure.
Please continue to pray for Tesfaye's healing.  

Pre-surgery 10/28/14

Eye Surgery

Please pray for our son today as he undergoes eye surgery.  
We are praying for God's guidance over the hands of the surgical team.  
We are praying for His protection over Tesfaye. 

While in his orphanage in Ethiopia, our son Tesfaye was given eye glasses.

Our eye doctor strongly suggested, upon his arrival home, to remove the ill-fitted glasses and let him be a boy and adjust to his new family (without the worry of glasses).  Later, when his vision was tested, we found he had perfect eye sight - no need for glasses.  His wandering lazy eye was not because of a vision problem
We took him to an eye specialist who believed Tesfaye would be a good candidate for eye surgery in the future.

3 years later . . .

His right eye wanders.  He has trouble focusing with both eyes.  He tends to hold his head cock-eyed.  He has frequent headaches and a sore neck.  He sees double.

It's time for eye surgery.

A pediatric ophthalmologist in Memphis, who specializes in eye muscle alignment (Strabismus Surgery), will be performing surgery on both of Tesfaye's eyes.  His right eye is significantly worse than the left, but both are misaligned and will benefit from surgery.  It is possible that multiple surgeries will be required to "tweak" the eye muscles to achieve aligned appearance and improved eye sight.

Tesfaye has been really excited for this surgery. 

We are thankful for the availability of such surgical interventions - it's quite amazing.  This has a great possibility of completely transforming Tesfaye's life.  We are believing God to work a miracle in Tesfaye's life.

The surgery is fairly simple and will take about an hour to perform.  Discomfort is minimal, but we will need to take extra care to protect his healing eyes in the coming week.  God is the ultimate and mighty physician and healer; we would certainly appreciate prayers as Tesfaye recovers from this surgery over the next week. 

Pumpkins

Battle Forts

Hendrick, Tesfaye and Maegli v. Davis, Burke, Kolpin and Hiwot . . .

a backyard fort battle going on for 2 years
with shifting alliances, spies, and traitors
changing forts and big woods paths
prisoners, attacks and rescues

The kids have great motivation to get done with school and continue their backyard adventure.

Valuable lessons can be learned in the backyard :)

And these kid-built forts are pretty impressive: ammunition rooms, rain shelters, secured fencing, gates, booby traps, game rooms, bathrooms (!) . . . but I promised not to take any pictures.  They don't want to give away any secrets. 

Banks

Banks, our energetic puppy is back home with us. 
He's growing into such a good dog - a good soccer and backpacking companion :)

Little Sisters

Little Sisters playing while we're busy with school :)

School 2014-2015, Month 1

We didn't have the amazing, exciting, super start I had hoped for . . . it was more of a stumbling start to our new school year.  This first month, my goal was to focus on math, reading, writing, and read-alouds; and then to add one new thing to our schedule each week . . . easing into this school years and into our curriculum goals.

One month in, we're finding our new rhythm and learning how to successfully add in other educational elements for our 6 school-aged kids.

The biggest struggle we've faced is the attempt to prevent our home from becoming too chaotic during our school time.  The goals have been simple: no throwing math blocks, no flicking pencils, no keep-away, no tag, no yelling during "school time."  I can't expect them to excel in a chaotic environment.  A times this simple goal seems impossible to achieve.  Our lives are chaotic.  That doesn't mean we can't learn to be quiet, keep hands to ourselves, and strive for a few hours of peace in order to get our work done.  We'll just have to learn :)

We're falling into a very workable schedule.  My goal is to complete daily math, handwriting, and history read-alouds before lunch.  We work on weekly bible verse memorization over breakfast, and math flash cards over lunch.  During the afternoon naps, my goal has been to have the school kids complete one hour of quiet time for independent reading, one-on-one phonics lessons, language arts, and writing.  In the evenings, Mike leads our family in a daily devotional and latin or science lessons.  The kids each have weekly lists to work through, it's been a learning process to stay on top of the lists each week.  We have needed some weekend school time to stay caught up.   One month in, we're doing pretty well.

This year, our sixth official year of homeschooling, we are making the second tour through our 4-year history cycle.  Starting with 3-weeks studying Ancient Egypt and then, through Moses, we jumped back to the Creation beginning.  We have been reading lots of great Egyptian stories, as well as the biblical accounts of these historic events.

I am so glad for the privilege to guide our children through this learning.  We've had fruitful conversations about many life lessons, including funerals, weddings, and other events and often tied them back to our Bible or history curricula.

Each week, the kids have worked on a memorization: a poem or Bible passage, for recitation with daddy during our Friday night dinner.  We've done "The Goops," Lillian Moore's "I Left My Head," Lewis Carrol's fantastic "Jabberwocky," and a portion of Genesis 1.  It's quite impressive to watch these kids nearly flawless performances from memory after just a few days of practice. 

We've been enjoying our read-aloud time.  The kids all love listening to stories, and I love to read books.  We all lounge on the floor and couches (I usually have 3-5 kids nestled very close).  Typically someone is playing with my hair, a few boys attempt to be quiet while playing with Legos, and there is a lot of coloring.  In these first few weeks, besides several story books, we've read: "A Cry From Egypt," "Flora and Ulysses," "Anne of Green Gables," and "One and Only Ivan."  Reading aloud is a critical part of imparting the English language to Tesfaye, to provide him with a word bank that will improve his reading and writing.  In addition, we are able to provide all of the kids with examples of syntax, prose and pronunciation for words and phrases they might not otherwise hear.  Podcast on this subject: http://iew.com/help-support/blog/read-aloud-revival-enjoy-free-podcast-andrew-pudewa

As the kids are working through their individual curricula, we've had two move on to the next levels: Burke finished Alpha math and has moved onto Beta, Tesfaye finished Delta math and has moved on to Saxon 3. 

Overall a very good start to our 2014-2015 school year.  Despite our late start, we have accumulated 35 days of school (we give credit for our two weeks of at home camp).  We'll keep chugging along, tweaking our schedule, and working on added a more elements each week.
Still to be added: Art, Science, Music; plus I'm eager to start Kolpin on some formal pre-school work. 

Soccer

With only one game remaining, the 2014 Fall soccer season is coming to a close.  We have enjoyed sitting sidelines and cheering on our boys, while siblings ran around with friends on an adjacent empty field.  Fun was had by all (including Banks!). 

The U10 boys are an aggressive group of players.  The boys have had to work hard and have learned a lot.  Their team is 5-1 (they're still upset by their one loss).  They're really hoping to finish the season 6-1 - I know they'll be giving this last game their all!

Tesfaye has been one of the leaders on the team, acting as a team captain on the field.  He loves to play striker, but is very good at hanging back, passing, and setting up his teammates too.  He has strong soccer skills but is also a great team player.  Each game the opposing coach has pointed him out and has always made sure he is well defended - some games Tesfaye's had to work against 6 players, which frustrates him, but he handles it very well.  He is a force on the field.   He has said that he tries to not look tired on the field, because he never wants to be taken out of the game.  Tesfaye loves soccer.

Davis has really enjoyed playing on this team.  As one of the younger players on the team, he sure works hard on the field and does a great job keeping up with the game and setting himself up in a good defending position.  Always outgoing and friendly, he has loved playing with this team and playing against good friends too, and is apparently quite the talker on the bench.  Davis has been proud to share this season with Tesfaye.

Tesfaye:
"I didn't like everybody trip me.  I took people down too.  You can only do it to the person who have the ball and you have to run and hit against them, but you can't put your elbow up.  I didn't like it the coaches told their team to keep the ball away from me.  They were like "don't let him get that ball!"  I had a great time.  I scored three goals in this game.  One game I scored five goals.  One of the coach told me if I kick the ball with my toe I have to eat a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  I hate peanut butter and jelly, no offense."

Davis:
"I like running and playing with my friends.  I like kicking.  My job was mostly defense.  I had to protect the goal if the other team was getting really close.  If the other team come up we have to kick the ball away from them."

We are so proud of Tesfaye and Davis!