new house

gameroom upstairs



girls rooms on left, boys on right

boys room on the left, guest room on the right

boys' room - it's HUGE



 

one of the girls' rooms -

Jack-n-jill girls' bathroom

other girls' room - little window in closet

 Grandma room :)

 

 

 Family room

kitchen - huge breakfast bar

white appliances :(

 

pantry is almost as big as old house





study, to right as you enter

(they had the mother in law in here)

 

dining room (on left as you enter)

 laundry room

guest bath

 

 my closet

Maggie:

I had a dream last night that I had four feet. And two of them were Abraham Lincoln's.

 Had our follow up visit with the social worker today. 

Shep found out that we were moving (away from his next door buddy) right when the social worker was leaving out house today. He burst into tears, ran to his room, and slammed the door. As we said goodbye in the foyer, he yelled, "WHAT KIND OF MOTHER ARE YOU?!?!?"

Me: Are you gonna obey me, or are you gonna argue?
Eva Rose: I'm obeying AND I'm arguing!
And then we both cracked up.

Bethie said 2 words yesterday, uh-oh and Dada. Then today, 3: kaka (Amharic for nasty), GG, and ruff-ruff for puppy. She also mimics the kids and will do "tricks" for them (which they love), like make faces or noises etc. I hope this means we are having a language explosion! So ready for my baby to talk!

Sometimes adopted kids get real narrow in their diet and only eat a couple of foods because of sensory overload etc. You're just supposed to roll with it.

The past two days Bethie has eaten nothing but toast with butter, frozen organic waffles, and milk.

I'm loving it. Makes my life so much easier. #lazymom #onelesskidtocookfor

I laid with Bethie for over and hour and she would NOT go to sleep. Finally I said, your turn Daddy....10 minutes later he walks out, she's crashed.

So it has been proven. All five of my kids know I'm a sucker.

We watched The Bible with the the 3 oldest a couple nights ago. Maggie's questions "How could dey film them when cameras hadn't been inbented yet?" were much, much easier than Eva Rose's "But I don't get it! How could Abraham have a baby with Hagar when he was married to Sarah? How? Tell me now! I need to know!"

It's time for The Talk. Lord help.

I just stand and stare at Bethie in the bath. She is hilarious. Asks for soap, then dips her washcloth in the water, then washes her tummy. Dip, heinie. Dip, one armpit. Dip, other armpit. Dip, face. Dip, leg - every body part down to her fingers. At 27 months, she already knew how to do this. She also rubs lotion all over herself and can rub product in her hair. Makes my others at 2 look like lazy bums. Which, they were.

Since Bethie's been sleeping in our room, I've been showering in the kids' bath. I noticed that the water was taking a very long time to drain, so I reached in the drain, thinking I'd find soap or hair or something. Big glob of poop. Motherhood: the glamour never ends.

This was the first time I saw Bethie's sense of humor. She would eat and pretend to fall asleep and I would say "Bethie! Wake up!" and she'd giggle. She cracks herself up.

Facebook status from 2-26-13

If I may just share some prayer requests:

1. Please pray for her to attach to Walker. She is totally rejecting him. It is normal, it happens a lot that they reject one parent at first and better him than me. But that means that I am 100% everything from sunup to sundown. No, after sundown, because she sleeps with me too. 24/7. He can't even change a diaper. It's just exhausting.

2. If you think to pray for us from 3pm-6pm, please do. That's when the kids come home from school and you know, it's the Witching Hour. Homework, chores, baths, they all want me, the other four are transitioning and feeling neglected as it is, and this is when Bethie wants me to hold her full time. And I am at the end of my patience rope by then. Thank God for friends bringing meals. There is no way I can handle making dinner now. If you have friends adopting, please, for the love, TAKE THEM DINNER.

3. During that time Bethie gets wound up and tired and she has starting hitting etc. And I have no clue how to discipline her when we are working on attaching. I am at a complete loss. I've been saying sternly NO HIT but half the time she answers by hitting me. Can't put her in time out because of her abandonment issues. Trying to remember that even with my bio kids I was usually dumbfounded by 2yo discipline - adoption makes it 1000x harder to figure out.

4. Bethie thinks Eva Rose hung the moon. She just looks at her and laughs. Which is great - except it is breaking little Maggie's heart. Maggie has been acting out the most and I think it is because she is jealous. Bethie finally started playing and laughing at Maggie some tonight - please pray it continues. She also rejects the boys but they don't care as much.

5. Walker is driving to Beaumont and back tomorrow. I have this irrational fear of him dying in a fiery car wreck. Downton paranoia? Please pray he, like, survives.

thank you!!!

Walker Dollahon

February 18, 2013 · 

LOL. While Missy Hooks Dollahon, Maggie, and I are in Ethiopia this week Shepherd, Eva Rose, and Ike at staying with my folks in Houston. Shepherd was forced to sleep in the same bedroom that my grandmother passed away in. Eva Rose sensed an opportunity to pray a prank. In her words from an email we got this is what she did: "I played a joke on Shep. He has to sleep in great grandmothers old bed room so I wrote on a napkin in some made up handwriting that said "I've been looking for you. -Great Grandmother." Creepy, huh."

Shep: But.....how could Leonardo da Vinci's parents have him and not be married?
Me: Well, sometimes, especially back then, men who were married would still have lots of girlfriends. So his mom was one of those girlfriends.
Shep: You mean he was a play-ah.
 

I am really really hoping that 2 weeks from today I will be in Ethiopia with our new Valentine. Another paperwork messup has been resolved and hopefully the Embassy will email us next week.

Maggie just asked me, "Are we going to always celebrate the day we get her? We can call it Bethie Day!!" And then she decided all the dances she would do and the games she would come up with for Bethie Day. :-)

Ike tells me all the time that he wants to marry me. And this, my friends, is why he gets away with murder.

Eva rose said there are two angels in the bible, Michael & Harold. 
We said Harold? 
She said 'yes, hark the Harold angel sings.'

MAGS 

 

Bless her heart, Maggie can't spell worth a lick. But she spells just like she talks - which is ADORABLE. 

'I just played computer then Eva took my place then I had nothing (nufeg) to do then I had a plan to make Eva get off the computer it failed :( I was sad'

Shep just said "I think Santa would want us to leave him a beer instead of milk." This might qualify as a parenting fail.

A couple of weeks ago, we took our nine year old son to Ethiopia. There he toured an orphanage that reminded me of Auschwitz. He met a boy whose mother died on his 6th birthday, at which point he lived on the streets until he came to into the orphanage. He saw children wearing literally rags, with empty bellies, who had no idea where their next meal would come from.

We did this to try and give him some perspective on his life, and all his blessings.

We did this so that if, for instance, he were playing a video game on a Kindle that cost more than most Ethiopians earn in a year, and he spent a lot of time building a house in Minecraft, and it somehow disappeared, he would not burst into tears and say, "It's not fair! I hate my life!"

Two words:

MISSION FAIL.

Walker's morning words of affirmation: "You're an extremely good looking woman. You have lots of other really, really negative qualities. But know this, you're very good looking."

 Eva Rose reading her Kindle, which I thought I had censored: "Mom, I just looked up cannibal on the dictionary on my Kindle. Ew! What does 'sexual organs' mean?" Holy crap, what are you reading? Bugs. It's a book about bugs.

"I've gone a whole week without any wine. I've been at your house an hour and I'm ready to pour a glass." GG 

A while ago, we set up wish lists on Amazon for the kids to put their birthday and Christmas wishes. Shep's has 4 items on it. Eva Rose's has 10. Maggie's has 743.

Me: shut the door! If you lived 5000 years ago and there were lions out there you'd so be dead by now.
Shep: yea! I'd get to go to heaven!
#misapplicationoflifelessons

We're at the Austin Nature Center for a Halloween bash. Ike is dressed as a dragon. He forgot to wear underwear. And he just informed me there's a hole by his peepee. Could be an interesting night.

Someone told me tonight he was going to marry me when he grew up. Dr. Freud, meet Ike Dollahon.

 Note that the Tooth Fairy (aka Shep) wrote tonight:

Dear Eva,

I do exist, except the Tooth Fairy Queen won’t let me give you proof because remember about that boy who went to Fairy Land? And made a lot of mischief? That’s the reason. Sorry, I can’t show you any proof. But please believe in me. 

Sincerely,

The Tooth Fairy

Tonight during prayers I asked Shep to say what he was thankful about. He said, "Thank you God for making me so awesome." I think we have a little more discipleship to do...

Ike got in trouble for something. After I fussed at him, he asked, "Mom, do you still love me?"

"Yes, I always love you," I answered. Then, I thought to ask, "Do you still love me?"

"Nope."

Shep: 'Mom, I'm growing up. I'm learning new words like democracy, mechanism, confidence, privacy...'

Eva Rose: 'I've been using all those words for months now.'

Ike just filled his water blaster gun with toilet water. And I don't mean perfume.

Ike just filled his water blaster gun with toilet water. And I don't mean perfume.

Email from Mimi

Things Ike said when we were in Mexico:

That "a man is going to put new things in my house."

You are going to live "for 10 weeks" in Austin. Glad it's only a temporary stay! I had no idea!

He has three grandmothers, "Gigi, Great-grandmother and Mimi."

Great-grandmother is "in Heaven with Jesus."

I teased him about his boiled eggs that they were dinosaur eggs, dog eggs, etc. He frowned and told me that "No! Birds have eggs! NOT ANIMALS!"

He has been funny and enjoys a laugh when I tease him and has been a very sweet kid.

~~~~

Raining again - but Steph. had told me that Meyer Branch Library was having story time at 1:30 and that there was going to be a juggler! So Dad and I took Ike and met her  and  the juggler looked a bit like Dick Van Dyke (about aged 50+) and used to work in Vegas and at first I thought....Oooooooooooooooooooo....he wore a jester's hat and shirt and made a lot of crazy faces right off the bat. Kind of you know...creepy.

 

But he got better and better as time went on and actually rode on a unicycle and THEN actually balanced it ON HIS CHIN while juggling three of those longish juggling things! He did a magic trick with scarves and had all these little kids hootin' and hollarin'! Ike was amazed! Hattie, Ike and Mary Ellen all got to do something and virtually all of the kids old enough at least tossed him a cloth ball to juggle or something. Ike tossed him a scarf back. It was really quite a show!

 

Later I took Ike to the mall and he was not at all interested in the play area. Too many kids, too big and noisy and all of that. So we had lunch and watched the ice skaters (Memorial City Mall) and on the way home he said such a funny thing.

 

"Bicycles don't have ONE wheel! They have TWO wheels!"  He had been mulling that over for hours.

 

He said that his Mom and Dad and siblings could all ice skate. "But not Gigi or Mimi. They would fall down."

 

He has appreciated his daily gifts and actually I just remembered to give him the Wednesday one. I will do that in a while.

 

"I wish we were rich."

 

"I wish birds didn't poop. They poop on cars and on windows! Eeeewweeee.......!"

 

~~~

Maggie learned that her sister (who had traveled to Mexico on a different plane than her) was able to watch movies on personalized mini-monitors on the seat back in front of her seat.

Maggie was AMAZED at this and wanted learn more.

Maggie (eyes wide in amazement): What sort of movies did you watch? Were they wrestling movies? Jesus movies?

Yep, those would be the first two movie genres that would pop in my heads too. "Wrestling" movies and "Jesus" movies.

Shep: What does forwegian mean?
Me: Norwegian means from Norway.
Shep: No, not Norwegian. Forwegian. F-o-r-e-i-g-n.

Walker Dollahon

May 23, 2012 · 

So Missy Hooks Dollahon goes to a plastic surgeon's office for a post-op check-up from her recent abdominal surgery and Ike find something to play with...look very, very closely...

Eva Rose: So...how does the baby come out of the mommy?
Me: It comes out of the mommy's vagina.
Eva Rose: What's that?
Me: A hole down there.
Eva Rose: A hole down where?
Me: Down here.
Eva Rose: (startled) OOhhh. How big is the va...gina?
Shep (walking in): It's bigger than Texas.
Me: What??
Shep: Yeah. It's bigger than Texas. China is WAY bigger than Texas.

Walker: Maggie, are you beautiful?
Maggie: YES!
Walker: how do you know you're beautiful?
Maggie: Because I have long hair, and green eyes, and I don't fart too much.

(but in Maggie speak: Becuz I have wong hai, and gween eyes, an I don faught too much.)

Maggie: Mom, how did God get so powerful?
Me: I don't know Maggie.
Maggie: Well can you google it?
Me: No, Google doesn't know either!
Maggie: What about Siri? Ask Siri.

Walker Dollahon

April 14, 2012 near Klein · 

 

Allowed on Timeline

Mags with My Widdle Ponys. Ike with cars. Hard-wired.

Walker Dollahon

April 5, 2012 · 

Ike had his birthday yesterday and the family went out and celebrated. Can you tell which of my children was super jealous all day?????