The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Truth be told every aspect of hosting has not been "sunshine and roses".  Having Dzintars in our home hasn't directly affected the kids in a negative way. They love having a "big brother" around to play with and choose to hold his hand over mine when crossing the street. Indirectly though, it's a whole other story. We chose to move Brennan into Kaelyn's room for the duration of Dzintars stay, their age difference and bedtimes were just too different for them to share a room. We did two "trial runs" for Brennan and Kaelyn which were supurb! They did far better than I ever expected and I thought this room sharing thing was going to be a piece of cake! Oh how wrong I was. They've started using lights as party time! They laugh and giggle and toss their stuffed animals around and while it's cute for awhile and I'm glad they love each other and can have so much fun together, it was also keeping them up far too late. We tried every consquence known to man but they just couldn't resist the urge to play, play, play. We were able to solve this problem by having Brennan fall asleep in our bed each night and then before we head to bed we'd move him back in with Kaelyn. We breathed a huge sigh of relief that they were once again getting the sleep they needed! Morning time hadn't been an issue at all, until this week:( They have progressively started waking up earlier and earlier each morning. This morning their party started at 6 am!!! So now momma is burning the candle at both ends because she stays up late with the teenager of the house and then wakes early because of the littles.

It became clear almost immediately this morning that their lack of sleep had caught up with them and the morning went downhill fast from there. Our four year old NEEDS sleep, and when he doesn't get enough his mood swings and behaviors reflect it! To make matters worse, daddy has a big orchestra concert this weekend and spent all morning at rehearsal so momma was flying solo, dealing with tantrums and breaking up fights left and right. It's difficult to even describe how rough of a morning it truly was, out of the four hours that Peter was gone I'd say there was about a 30 minute period of peace in our home and that was when I took them all to the grocery store. The hardest part being that our non-English speaking host son watching the two littles completely LOSE IT! Brennan and Kaelyn rarely fight, typically play quite well together, they may have a few differences of opinion in any given day but they rarely spend an entire day at odds. But when they are both overly tired all bets are off. It seems everything about this morning was conspiring against me! Tired grumpy kids, no daddy, and a host child wondering what on earth happened!!! I barely made it to nap time, which was a battle in and of itself! Thankfully they woke up refreshed and we were able to redeem this day!

Even when these hard times hit I praise God for allowing us to have this experience. The good parts of hosting as we come alongside Dzintars will ALWAYS outweigh the bad. Hopefully he's learning about family even as he watches my kids flip their lids because even when they are naughty we still love them! We'll forgive and forget and move on.


After they slept their grouchies away we headed to a BBQ with some new friends from church. The kids swam and played and had a blast. The first Sunday we were at church Brennan made a fast friend who at the time he only referred to as "Dude", we later found out that "Dude" was actually Josiah and they've been best buds ever since! Brennan was thrilled to be able to visit Josiah's house and he was talking about it all week!

Social functions and group settings like this are hard on Dzintars because while we can all sit around and talk he's just left feeling lost and left out. He did better tonight than I thought he would and I think he had a pretty good time even though he was the oldest kiddo by quite a bit. Tonight he learned that when you open a bottle of water and drink half of it you do not put it back in the cooler:) An important lesson to learn:) Right? I'm sure he'd never seen a cooler before and really had no idea what to do with his half empty bottle of water. Luckily I saw him do it and caught it before someone picked up the water and took a drink!

This silly boy asked me to take a picture of him with his bowl of chips. 

Little stinker:)