About 10 days in....

So we've been home for about 10 days now and people keep asking me how things are going.  I thought I'd go ahead and write a post about it:).  Things are really going well.  The boys play well together- sometimes Temesgen either seems to get overwhelmed with his crazy brothers or just doesn't quite get what they're playing and chooses to go off by himself for a while and read books or ride his scooter.  He's a very content boy.  He tends to 'yell' at his brothers if they're doing something he doesn't want them to do- and really he just says their name loudly and that's about it.  I told the boys that those are the English words he really, really knows so he feels safe to say them louder.  He's usually pretty quiet throughout the day, but can get more verbal when it's just him and his brothers playing.  He loves to shout "GOAL" when there is a goal made, followed by 'yes' or 'nice'.  He's great at keeping track of the score.  They were all playing hide and go seek in the basement this afternoon and having a great time.  I was hearing more out of him when he was doing that.  But usually, I don't get much from him, word-wise.  We do school work every day in the summer and so we're all doing that.  I've started him on a reading program and he's moving along quickly with it (Kalid is feeling pretty darn cool since he's a better reader than one of his big brothers for now:)).  He can do addition and subtraction, but very slowly.  We've decided that we'll put him in 3rd grade instead of 4th so we'll have 2 3rd graders (in fact, he will be in Landon's class- I think that will help him for this school year- usually I wouldn't love that idea, but this is a special circumstance) .  This will give him 3 years of elementary school before moving on to middle school.  That makes me feel a little better.  I know he will learn quickly, but there is SO MUCH to catch up on so I think this is in his best interest.  His bone-age scan showed he was 7 or 8.  Those aren't known for being crazy accurate and they can be off, especially when the kids first come home (Abuzaid's said he was 3 1/2-4 and he was at least 5).  But it shows that possibly he's closer to 9 which would put him more at the 3rd grade level.  We haven't been to the dentist yet, so we'll see what she says next week too.  Either way, I'm pretty sure it's not a bad idea to put him in 3rd grade.

All of his blood work came back beautiful!  We're working on getting some stool samples still so we'll see what those say, but he has no symptoms at this point (and I'm pretty sure he just doesn't like the thought of going in 'the hat' and is waiting as long as possible!). 2 samples down, at least 1 to go.
We've gone to the zoo this week and that was lots of fun!  We've done lots of park playing.  He LOVES his scooter, which helped him with his balance.  So we tried out his bike a little bit Sunday, but mainly today and he's got it down now.  We didn't have any training wheels in our house so he had to just learn.  He worked and worked until he got it. So cool to watch!

Saturday, we drove down to Castle Rock to  a birthday party.  This family has adopted 4 Ethiopian kids in the last year and one of their sons was having a party.  It was fun to see them again (we had met when we went for our court trip) and Temesgen's best friends, Zebdi and Lezer, were there as well! It was a BFF reunion in Colorado!  They were pretty quiet at first, but played together after the grown-ups left them alone:).  Temesgen still lights up when I talk about that day- I know it meant a lot to him.  We'll probably be seeing them in another month or so as well.

He's a great eater and will eat anything we put in front of him- we eat a ton of salad at our house and I was worried he wouldn't eat that, but he does- yay!  He doesn't eat as much as our other boys right now, but he still eats well.  He probably eats like a normal 9-10 year old boy, I've just never had one of those:).

We've just been living life as normal pretty much.  It's summer so it's a little more lax around here, but we're getting out and doing things.  I'm bad at cocooning- I'd invite anyone with 5 active boys to try to cocoon and tell me if it's easy:).  I guess that's it for now.  Thanks for following our journey....:)!