12 years and 12 weeks!

12 years old and 12 weeks old. I never would have thought that we would be parenting such an age gap when I was 25 years old. We are dealing with such different issues! With Sigel we're dealing with the pre-teen issues - the attitude, the talk back, the wanting to do everything on his own but at the same time not wanting to do anything :). I am now homeschooling Sigel - wasn't in the plan but when you don't have a choice and your kid needs an education you do what you gotta do. It's been tough because Sigel doesn't take correction from me well - or me telling him what to do - you can imagine that makes it difficult to teach. :) With Madelyn we're dealing with sleeping - or lack there of - with learning how to take naps that are longer than 20 minutes - which is more frustrating to me than her waking up in the middle of the night. I'm finding that Maddy is a much happier baby if we are home more -the busyness and noise of being out all day is stressful for her and I pay for it for at least a day. That is hard as we have a busy life. There are fun things that are happening too - Sigel is growing up in lots of ways - he's a big help while Tristan is gone - and it's amazing to see how he has changed in the last few months. With Maddy she's cooing and talking and keeping eye contact - she finds me in the room and starts to talk and coax me over to her (irresistible!), she now loves baths, her neck is getting stronger and she is getting better at finding her hands (but I don't think the revelation has come to her yet that they are hers).

Although it feels like all I"m doing is parenting, there is other things happening too. We're hanging out lots with our 'other' kids - the transition kids. Today I spent the day with Vanessa - it was a lot of fun to hang out with her. Last week Tristan took the older boys -Santos, Jorge, and Alex to the movies and to dinner to celebrate Santos celebrating his 18th birthday. We had another pig slaughtering party last week - had 15 people at the house from 5am to 9pm - went from live pig to pork chops and sausage in the freezer. This week at youth group Tristan and I are leading at talk on relationships - we'll split into guys and girls and talk about healthy relationships etc. Should be fun. We've also been doing the feeding project cooking and all that from my house - makes for fun and full Thursdays of lots of cooking and lots of dishes :).

This month we've also been working hard on our pastors training stuff. Most of you don't know - Tristan and I are both in training to become pastors through the Foursquare church. It is a lot of working - 2 big books (one of them 550 pages of theology!), plus a binder of 35 discussions with 4 essay answers each that we have to answer and study, plus an online course. When we finish we will go through an interview with a panel of pastors. So we're getting closer on that.

Tristan just got back this evening from Yorito - its the mountain village that we visited in December. We're kinda the support staff missionaries for a church in Boston that is working with the Toulapan Indians up there - pretty much an unreached people group - they are building a community center, working on farming improvement, helping one of the locals start a church etc. It's a neat thing they are doing. Tristan was up there for 3 days doing some ground work for the building of the community center that will be going up in September. Boy I'm glad that I'm not a single parent (hats off to those that are!) because I'm exhausted of doing it all while he was gone.

well, that's about all I have time for - my short napping baby is waking up again. ta ta for now.

next blog...the drama of attempting to get all of Madelyn's paperwork - birth certificates and passports!