Meet My Kiddos
“Within the child lies the fate of the future.”
Our oldest “home-made” daughter, Norah, is either exuberantly happy or overwhelmingly sad. She loves everyone and worries about the world's problems! She has severe anxiety and high functioning autism spectrum disorder;
Our second “home-made” daughter, Jacqueline, is incredibly helpful and takes amazing care of her little sister. She worries about what people think and struggles with dyslexia, anxiety and depression tendencies;
Our third “home-made” daughter , Claudia, is literally the sweetest cuddliest child you have ever met! She has a rare neurologic metabolic disorder called Glut 1 and autism spectrum disorder. Developmentally, she functions at a little less than half her age and will likely always be dependent.;
Our adopted son (who is 1 month younger than my third home-made!), Teague, wants to please everyone and helps whenever anyone asks. He was adopted from Ethiopia when he was almost 3. He struggles with very low self-esteem, no trust that I will be his mother if he fails. He is learning to understand love and a trust in God; and
Hope, our adopted daughter loves to have fun! She was adopted from Ethiopia at 13 months old suffering from tuberculosis during her time as an orphan. We are learning about reactive attachment disorder. She is trying to learn to ask for help and to be ok with imperfection.
We are certainly not perfect, which is good because our household rule is that “PERFECT IS BORING!” We learn so much everyday - sometimes the same things we learned the day before.
AND, so many others:
Our family enjoys spending time with many other children including my children’s friends, my friends’ children, foster children that we love to spend time with, kids in the park….
Being a nanny, a counselor for abused women, a counselor at a juvenile prison and a Guardian ad Litem grew my craving to find new and inventive ways to guide and train children’s minds and emotions. This craving has never stopped. I love this “job” of parent, coach, teacher, guide, religious educator, mentor and friend! I didn’t say I do it with ease and grace! I just said I love it! I love it because it is so challenging, because when I fail I have options, because my kids forgive me my faults and because I have been given, by God, the gift of forming an adult who will form an adult….