Busy Busy Days

Today was just one of those days, where you feel anything that can go wrong WILL go wrong! Thankfully it was nothing too serious, but I felt like I was peddling backwards all day. First, we learned that our appointment in Denver for filing our I600A immigration papers and fingerprinting was going to need to be rescheduled due to a misunderstanding about when the fingerprinting office was open. I am SO glad that our agency rep. caught that and was able to let me know before we got all the way over there. We are working one rescheduling the appointment and hopefully can still make it within the next several days. We don't really want to pull the boys out of school but our pre-arranged sleepover plans won't work well for other days under consideration so we are looking into alternatives or may just have to bring them along. So much for the overnight getaway for us :-) Oh well, there are worse things, right?

Then I had printed out most of our dossier documents and realized afterwards that the words "sample documents" were at the bottom of them all and needed to be removed, so half a days work had to be redone.

Around lunchtime I received a call from the school, and Kenny was in the office crying and had been for some time. It seems that some 4th graders were on the playground and started bullying him, and pushed him to the ground. They called me so I could talk to him on the phone and see if I could calm him down. I asked him what had happened and I heard his little sniffles and tear filled reply as he tried to explain it. It is hard to understand Kenny when he is on the phone, and it is there that I realize his speech is worse than I imagine it to be. In person, face to face, I can almost always easily understand what he is trying to express but I guess I am taking clues from lip reading a bit or watching facial expressions, etc. I quickly calmed him down and told him we would talk about it after school, as I could sense he was fine but just a little shaken up.

Upon arriving at school later on, I learned that a whole group of Cub Scouts rushed to Kenny's defense. Matthew had not been outside yet when it all transpired, but was there for the aftermath and said he had guessed who the offenders were, and assured me I should take Kenny's word for it that he had not instigated it as evidently these particular boys see themselves as the Playground Kings and do things like this often to younger, weaker kids. I asked Kenny what he did and he said "Nothing Momma, I too scared they hurt me...then I can't stop crying.". It is hard not to want to go down there and solve the problem for him, but I have a feeling it will resolve itself if I let it go.

I was very proud of our little Cub Scouts, as we had just had our first meeting and I had talked about Scouts setting an example in our school, of being the leaders and the ones who would make a difference. We always try to emphasize character when we can, and we now have such a large group our boys are a real presence on the playground and in the halls. We even talked about the strength of the group and exerting positive pressure by not allowing kids to be mean to others, and by purposely showing kindness to everyone. It was so rewarding to hear that some of that was taken to heart. Scouting is an extraordinary amount of work, but we love every one of our boys and in such a small community we know we will be watching each of them turn into young men whom we will all be proud of someday.

In the midst of the lack of productivity today, I had a wonderful phone conversation with another Kyrgyz adoptive mommy, and we shared a lot realizing we have even more in common than we already thought.

Dominick always finds it quite humorous when I say that I don't know what I am going to do with my time once the kids are in school, or summer is here, or whatever change is happening at the moment. It seems that I am often busier now than I ever was working full-time! At the moment I have on my plate:

1) Dossier document preparation - and we all know how much time THAT takes!
2) Review and purchasing of giftware for the restaurants
3) Planning of a Murder Mystery Fundraising Party for our church
4) Rescheduling and planning of a younger kids Halloween party for church
5) Taking a class on prayer at church
6) Choir
7) Planning and Leading the Sr. High youth discussion group at church
8) Bidding on a playground equipment set and coordinating possible delivery for our church
9) Planning the next few months meetings for Cub Scouts
10) Working on a donation project and possible presentation for Kyrg
11) Volunteering in each of the kids' classes on a regular basis, including just being asked to come in as many mornings a week as I can spare for a Writing Workshop for Matthew's class
12) Coordinating transporting the boys to TaeKwonDo, music lessons and Scouts
13) Working diligently at home on homework with the boys, Dominick and I "tag teaming" it working specifically with Kenny on additional work for reading
14) Thinking about pink and yellow bedroom decor :-)
15) Trying to better educate myself about challenges and issues we might face with the girls so we are better prepared to parent them
16) Tailgate Party for Scouts tomorrow night for the Homecoming Football Game of the high school
17) Helping Matthew sell items for band
18) Pretending I really am keeping all the balls juggling in the air quite nicely!!

Whew! Seeing it all laid out like that in bold black and white scares me a bit! Lots of room for things to fall through the cracks. And yea, I am a stay-at-home mom most of the year so I really am not doing anything other than watching Oprah, eating bon bons and laying around in my housecoat all day! hahaha!

In the midst of all of this, the craziness and the tears, the planning and the fears, I try to find time to blog. It is my release, but there are days like today when the deeper and more meaningful blog posts just don't seem to come and I am lucky to get anything at all into words. Then there are the times when it feels as if I can't let another moment go by without writing something down.

And so we go on to another day, wonder if anything will actually get accomplished tomorrow???