Learning to Adopt!

Just looking at my pictures, what do you think this post will be about? Hmmm, could it be, one of the Brown's favorite pastimes, our vacation to Disney World? Ding ding ding!!

You're right...kinda.

I sat down to work on this not having a clue as to what I was going to talk about, but knowing that if I didn't post soon ,

I was going to lose some faithful readers! So, Logan (along with a smelly Bubba) climbed into my lap and I asked Logan to look at pictures with me and pick his favorite. He picked these three. My favorite is the one with my tower of Boys on Main Street at the Magic Kingdom. It doesn't matter which picture I pull up from September's trip, Logan can tell me all about what was happening in the picture. He has amazing recall abilities.

Our trip to Disney each year is a trip into fantasy land. Literally. This is not real life that we experience, BUT, real memories are made. I don't think my children are aware of just how lucky they are that they have gotten to meet Mickey, or Buzz, or Pooh. There are children who will never have this experience and this is what I try to instill in my boys. Thankfulness to Beba and Teba for them taking us is something that I try to get them to express. Now that I think about it, we have tried to work vary hard to express thankfulness this year. I have repeated over and over, "Look at the person when you thank them." We've also worked on ma'am and sir with Logan. Reece and Garett have that down pretty good now and are great examples for Logi to follow. I didn't show this form of respect to adults until I was taught how to when I moved to the South and I love that my Boys are learning it at young ages. We are learning every day so I want to show you an example of progress that was made just this week.

Reece was sick on Thursday of this week and so I asked my friend Melissa if she could take Garett to school. She was fine with this. Garett was not. I was told that he wasn't used to riding with Melissa to school and that he wasn't going to do it. I begged, I pleaded, his Daddy offered him a dollar, I offered him a dollar. No dice. I sat down and explained to him about how sometimes we have to adapt to change. I explained that he would be fine. That he would make it to school just fine and go on with his day. I told him that even though I wasn't taking him to school, that I would be there to pick him up. I promised. Still, he was upset. I left him to get dressed while I made breakfast. Five minutes later he cam into the kitchen, smiling. "Wow! What a change", I thought! I was pleasantly surprised when he told me. "I'm ready to adopt!" What a wonderful moment for me, not just because he touched my heart by using adopt instead of adapt, but because he GOT it. Through all the crying and hyper-ventilating, my words reached him and he understood. We chose our JOY for the day (since we wouldn't be in the car together!) and when he left I emailed his teacher (Mrs. Deal, Wellford Elementary-wonderful teacher, we love her and Mrs. Gibson!) to let her know we had kind of a rough morning and related the adopt/adapt story to her. I asked if she could just love him a little if he was upset at all and she mailed me back and told me that he was doing great and writing about the morning in his journal. I breathed a sigh of relief and took Joy from the way the whole event played out.

Okay, so maybe I rambled today, but it's okay, because this is all for my family and you can stop reading at any time. I love all of my Boys and just wanted to get this story down before I forgot it.

Moral of the story: I know that my Boys are not by any means perfect, but they are mine and are a constant work in progress. That's all I can do. We wake up, choose JOY and move along trying to make others feel loved and good about themselves, fall into bed and start all over the next day.

I feel another blog coming on, but it will have to wait. I want to talk about my husband and the amazing job he is doing re-doing my kitchen, Reece and Garett and their basketball team, Logan and his growing up too fast moments and Harry and HIS growing up too fast moments. But, I am tired, it's time for Harry's bottle and morning will come quickly, so I will close for now.

Thank you to those of you who hung in there through all of my story!

Until next time, I'm fondly yours,

Jeanne

CHO for the Brown Family

P.S. Reece is better now, it was a 24 hour bug, thank goodness!!