Rest?

So last night at 1:30 a.m., approximately 83% of my family was simultaneously awake. Babygirl's screams wound their way into my ears and I pretended for a second that she was going to go right back to sleep. I wrapped my robe around me, stood still for a minute, then stretched back out on my bed until her cries resumed. She was standing in her crib with her overhead light glaring. She can reach the light-switch in her new room. Normally it's not a problem. Last night was not normal.

I switch off the light and nurse her in the dark and even half-asleep, I hear TwinBoyA's cries through the vent. His bedroom is downstairs. So, after ten minutes, I put Babygirl down, cover her up and head downstairs to check on TwinBoyA. He has a cold and also tends to have night terrors, so I find him wandering around near the bathroom, obviously disoriented. I help him to the bathroom and then who should apear? My husband, coming to check on TwinBoyA. He didn't realize I was already downstairs. He goes back to bed and I settle TwinBoyA back in his bed.

I happily returned to bed and thought how funny it was that five out of our six family members were simultaneously awake. I dozed for less than half an hour and woke to Babygirl's cries and her overhead light on again. I nursed her and finally put her back to bed at 2:00 a.m.

Needless to say, I was tired and crabby all day. And Babygirl did not nap today, so the day just went on too long. TwinBoyA was home all day, babying his sore throat and eating ice cream.

Tonight, Babygirl went to sleep at 6:30 p.m., which was great because I needed to help TwinBoyB write a report on the circulatory system. Parenting an adopted kid is such a challenge for me. When he became my baby as a 7 month old, I never envisioned the frustration of a nearly 11-year old kid who doesn't think sequentially. You think about a child inheriting your fingers or your nose or your hair color, but you don't think about passing along your brain. Until, of course, you are dealing with some other person's biological offspring who did not pass along a logical, rational, sequential, linear-thinking brain.

TwinBoyB's brain is like a shelf that can hold one item. If you give him two items, one wobbles and falls from the shelf. He does not think in straight lines or in orderly sequence. He could not be more intellectually different from me--and not just me, but different from the kind of student public school is geared towards. He's going to be homeschooled next year and we are going to figure out a way to help him succeed. He's smart, he's sweet, he loves to laugh--he just can't organize his thoughts into a cohesive report. He thinks in circles, he obsesses over one particular part of the whole, he forgets stuff a lot. A lot. For instance, tonight, after an hour and a half, we finished his report (he basically dictated it to me) and then he tried to find his spelling words. They are lost. He blames me. He thinks he gave them to me, but he did not. He spent an hour in his bed while he should have been sleeping obsessing about the words.

God must have really thought I needed a challenge when He led me through the valley of infertility and adoption. He gave me boys who don't mind if they smell, boys who track dirt through my house every day, boys who don't think in straight lines.

Excuse me while I bang my head against my finger-print smeared, dog-scratched patio door.