If At First You Don't Succeed...

flush, flush, AGAIN! Sounds hilarious, right? It didn't sound quite so funny to Nic as he heard the water splashing all over the floor and wondered what was going on. He was getting the bath water ready for one child upstairs and thought he only imagined the first sounds of splashing coming from the four children on the main floor. When he heard splashing a second and third time and the aforementioned child wasn't even in the bathtub yet he began to worry. Running down the flight of steps he found three very excited children rushing around in shock, and one little boy (Noah) enjoying all the commotion.

This lead to a lesson in what to do when the toilet gets stopped up...

which lead to a lesson on how much toilet paper you need and what to do if that's just not enough...

which lead to a lesson on what to do when the toilet overflows (hint: tell a parent, don't flush again and again!)...

which lead to a lesson on the difference between our family's bath towels and the old towels that are now "rags"...

which lead to another lesson on cleaning, cleaning products, chemicals, and general child/household safety...

which lead to a lesson on how to scrub a floor on your hands and knees...

which lead to a lesson on why it is important to change clothes and take ANOTHER bath after you have been cleaning up a backed up toilet mess...

which lead to a general lesson on the difference between clean and dirty - a lesson we reteach about twice a day...

which lead to a lesson in how to take a quick shower because two other people are STILL waiting for their turn and it is now past bedtime...

which lead to the lesson we teach (and are taught) 1,000 times each day on patience.

And this is just one example of two hours, one evening at our home during the past two weeks. Each day is the same: endless opportunities to learn and practice skills and ideas the children were never exposed to. They are learning the many idiosyncrasies of life and these can only be learned through experience, and some the hard way. By the time they get to the breakfast table each morning we have already taught, reviewed, corrected, and redirected 100 lessons on how to do life in a family.

It is exhausting, but worth every exasperating minute to see them understand, learn and overcome! They have already overcome so much in their lives and now they are learning how to thrive. It is a joy and a blessing to be able to be a part of this journey together with all of our children. And daily we are learning together how to be a family of seven.

Obviously, when a family grows one child at a time in the traditional fashion, there is generally more time to pause and collect ones thoughts each day. Since we are still in the midst of a transition to Life in These United States, we haven't found those moments each day yet. In fact, hopefully you'll understand if you call and we don't return your call for many days. I can promise you it is unlikely that it will be quiet enough here for me to even hear the phone ring, so I've given up on answering it for a while. Most nights it is too late to call anyone back by the time I remember there was a message to check. And the same goes for emails. I have some that I'd really like to reply to, so I've saved them in my inbox and now there are 170+ waiting there for me! It's really best if I don't touch the computer at night because I have a better chance of getting to bed at a decent hour if I avoid the computer. We know that this is a season of transition and change for our all of our kiddos and we want to be wholly available to them to help them through it, but unfortunately that also means being unavailable elsewhere. It is a momentary sacrifice we are happy to make for the sake of our kids.