Life with 4 Boys

Obsi has been home for 9 days already. Tamirat, three months. As of right now, this is my take on it:

Two boys were easy. When Tamirat came, it was still easy. He fit in really well and the change to our culture was easy for him. It may be that the orphanage he was at did an excellent job of training him for the change. The only hard thing for him was our food. He still continues to eat mostly Ethiopian. We love Ethiopian cuisine so it is no big deal for me to make it.

Bringing Obsi home was completely different. Obsi was in a large orphanage with 150 boys! As he told me about life there, it sounded like a military boarding school. They were in a very remote area. Showers were taken in the river. Food was not abundant and Obsi said he was very often hungry. He did eat well while at the Transition House. The cook there is very good at what she does. I am trying to feed Obsi often. He is at that age, 13 going on 14, that I know he needs fuel in his body because it is changing and growing.

Obsi doesn't know how anything works. Doors, appliances, toys, pitchers, .... everything is new to him. We love explaining what things are and how they work. He is always amazed.

Obsi is also an introvert. He loves to sit back and observe everything. Tamirat is very sociable, Obsi is very unsociable. He gets very fidgity around large groups of people. He loves to sit on his bed and do math. He loves the computer and all the friends he has reconnected with on Facebook. He loves Ethiopian Christian music.

Obsi eats just about anything we ask him to. He loves tacos, kiwi, mangos, pork steaks, french fries, pizza, scrambled eggs, pancakes. He doesn't like green beans so far. He learned the hard way not to drink more than one can of Mountain Dew after 6pm. He was up until 4am and the next night in bed at 6:30. I asked if he knew Mountain Dew was loaded with caffeine and he did not know that! I explained to him that I don't allow MD after dinner. He was at a youth group event and I missed the MD.

Four boys makes life very busy and hectic. It could be I had catching up to do when we got home. I had Obsi to settle in. He lived out of his duffle bag for 2 days and lived and slept in the same clothes for 5 days. Once we took him shopping, got him his own drawers to keep his clothes in, and showed him my huge front loading washer/dryer, he seems to be doing better wearing clean clothes and sleeping in clean clothes.

Once I got all the laundry caught up, it isn't so bad. My kitchen is in order. I did a major grocery shopping trip. Things are good but still hectic. I can see I am going to have to start planning meals better. The boys need to help me more often. Obsi has a long way to go before he is comfortable here. I can see it is all so different and really hard for him.

We have a doctor appointment in 1.5 weeks. We have the hurdle of him being exposed to TB to get over. We didn't come back with a chest xray, like the CDC expected us to. We are required to report it to the Center of Disease Control so I am going to count on the clinic to take care of all that for us and provide us with the "expected" chest xray. Obsi was exposed but the xray he had in Ethiopia showed him to be clear and inactive. If it was active, he wouldn't have been able to come home. As part of the adoption process, we are all required to be tested for communicable diseases.

Life is good and I feel very blessed to have these boys here. They have enriched our lives so much! We finally have communication lines open with Tamirat. Obsi does a great job translating. What a joy it is to always hear Ethiopian music and the Amharic language flying. We are so blessed!!!