Within six months, Ouseman had begun to adjust. He was still wailing a number of times a week, either because he was disciplined or because he missed his home in Liberia.  He still wouldn't allow me to hold him while he was wailing, but I still insisted.

But he was responding to our love and training and discipline.  He was trying to talk like the other kids, working on his accent. That made me sad because I loved his accent, and had finally begun to understand him. But it was important to him to be like the other kids.

He had adjusted to the milk in his diet, and had quit the projectile vomiting. He quit running around naked and actually became quite modest.  He used the toilet properly and learned to clean himself properly.  He was very hard on his clothes, but loved looking nice, so tried hard to quit tearing holes in everything.  He even gave up his quest for the green coat, listening to me when I explained about sharing and being grateful for what God gave us and not coveting that which belonged to others.

He quit peeling wallpaper and quit writing on walls. He went to bed with the other kids and stayed there till morning.  He quit wetting the bed, which told me he was starting to get over the trauma of the adoption.  And he started yelling at Jumoke to obey me, their mama.

One time, a few months after the boys came home, we took them out to dinner at Izzy's, a pizza buffet style restaurant, perfect for feeding a small army of kids.  The children were all chattering, the restaurant was loud, but over every other noise, I could hear Ouseman's loud voice and huge laugh.

I didn't want to embarass Ouseman, so I just mentioned quietly to Tim that the kids were being a little loud and maybe we should ask them to quiet down.

Ouseman overheard me.  He stood up in his chair, this tiny eight year old, and waving a fork, he began yelling in his thick accent, "Quiet, ever'body! You buggin' my mama! Quiet, you chil'ren! You hurtin' my mama's ear!"

Oh my word. I was mortified and laughing so hard that I couldn't pull him down.  Tim just stared, mouth agape, unable to make his body move to put this little man back in his chair. The children laughed and rolled in their chairs.  Matthew climbed under the table in embarassment.  Everyone in the restaurant turned to watch this little orator in amusment. Ouseman just stood there, unimpeded, yelling for all to hear: "Quiet! Now! You hurtin' my mama's ear!"

Tim and I reached out at the same time and pulled him back into his chair.  By this time we were all laughing, but embarassed as well. We finished eating and beat a hasty retreat.

The boys both had little respect or liking for me when they first came to our house.  It was a lovely thing watching Ouseman's love and respect for me bud and bloom.  It took a long time. It was actually over a year later that I felt confident that I had his respect as well as his love. But the journey had been so worth it.

Jumoke was another story entirely.  He continued to run naked whenever he could. When he found that I didn't like it, he started shutting the bedroom door and talking Isaac (3) into undressing and wrestling.  Isaac became pretty unmodest, and both of them began laughing at and joking about body parts.

Because we are a pretty modest family, I was uncomfortable with that, so started dressing Isaac separately. When Jumoke continued, bothering the older boys with it, I finally had Jumoke dress separately in the bathroom.

Jumoke continued going potty everywhere for a long time.  At night, he wore pull ups.  But often in the morning, his pull ups and jammies would be dry but his bed and pillow soaked. I didn't understand. Could he be waking in the night and getting confused and thinking he was in the bathroom while still in bed?

I just continued cleaning up the potty.  At least the messy from wiping seemed to be under control.

Jumoke was still destroying walls. I was still painting over his messes.

He took to picking paint off the walls and beds and furniture.

He destroyed his clothes.  It sometimes looked like he did it on purpose, but I didn't believe it was on purpose.  He was only four years old. He just needed time. I'd patiently explain that he shouldn't dig pencils into his shoes and i put up all the scissors so he would quit cutting the sheets and blankets and clothing and stuffed toys.

His manners at the table seemed to improve. But we found that as soon as we left the room, food would be flying, he'd be grossing people out by doing things with chewed up food, standing on the table.

He was only four tho. We had plenty of time to reach him.

He was destroying everything that belonged to anyone else that he could touch. Breaking the boys' wooden guns, tearing up dolls, taking apart trucks and cars. Nothing was safe.  We started making each child responsible for their own toys instead of having them all bunched together like we had, and gave each child a huge bin of their own to keep their things in.

But the destruction continued.  So did people getting hurt.  But it was always on accident, so I wasn't too concerned.

At the end of their first 6 months home, Tim moved us to the city. I am very much not a city person. City traffic and noise scares me.  But this was only for a year, and I figured I could do anything for a year.

The day before we were supposed to leave, I experienced a severe pain in my chest that would not go away.  My husband had left already for the city; we were to follow later.  My brother rushed me into the hospital, where I stayed for four days while they checked out my heart.  My husband came home from the city from his first week at his new job to be with me and the kids.

My heart checked out just fine. We had no idea what had happened.

We moved to the city, into a tiny neighborhood with excellent homeschooling neighbors.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  But I was still tense and nervous all the time.  I couldn't figure out why.  I just couldn't relax, even tho I loved the particular piece of the city that we settled in.

Ouseman continued to graft into our family.  Jumoke did ok, but we just couldn't get him to behave.  We tried all manner of discipline, but nothing worked.  Tim was on the phone with other parents who adopted from Liberia, picking their brains for information that would help us understand Jumoke. 

He was so cute! But so disobedient. And he had these strange things he did that we couldn't train him out of.

I was on all the time with Jumoke, but I still didn't mind. He was only a little guy, and I knew that it had been a terrible thing for him to be ripped from everything that was familiar to him.  Ouseman was doing very well, but Ouseman was a lot older than Jumoke.

Every day came to be about Jumoke.  My other kids were really good kids, so they occupied themselves constructively while I took care of Jumoke.  He was often in fights or arguments with someone, breaking and tearing things, doing exactly what he was told not to do.

I was still in patient mode. I still believed he just needed more time.

A couple months after we moved to the city, we were going to church one Sunday.  The church was huge! Thousands of people attended.  I was used to churches with only 100 people.  But I loved the teaching at this church, and this was the church Tim had attended when he was in college in this town, so this is where we went.

This one Sunday tho, we were just getting ready to sit down.  I felt my heart beating hard and my face flush and I felt dizzy and faint.  I told Tim we needed to leave.

As we walked out of the church, I felt worse and worse.  I knew I was going to die. I asked Tim to get me to a hospital immediately.  He looked very concerned, but confused. He said I looked just fine.  But he took me anyway.

After we got there, they put me on a cot, gave me some kind of pill, and within minutes, I felt much better.  Tim gave them information and they got on the phone to talk to the hospital I had been in a couple months before when we had suspected I had a heart condition.

I was feeling much better, and so when Tim said he was going to take the kids back to church and they'd be back after the service, I didn't think it odd and told him go ahead.  I fell asleep and slept for two hours.  The staff let me sleep since the emergency room was empty except for me.

Upon waking, a doctor came to talk to me. They could find nothing wrong with me. However, after putting together the symptoms from my last hospital stay with this emergency visit, he was fairly sure I was suffering from panic attacks, and he wanted me to go see my doctor.

I'd never heard of anything so ridiculous. I didn't know what was going on, but it certainly wasn't anything so...wimpish!

The next few months went by in a haze. The odd feeling I had in the church returned again and again, more and more often.  Soon my days were a haze of fear that something bad was happening, that maybe I was dying. I didn't say too much to Tim because I didn't want to concern him. 

My days continued to be filled with trying to reach Jumoke and love on him.  My other children were pretty much on their own. I fed them three times a day, bathed them, tried to school them, but mostly they took care of themselves, and played often with the sweet neighbor kids.  Their mother became a good and constant friend of mine.  She helped with the kids often.  I wanted to tell her that I wasn't always so scatterbrained and useless, but I didn't know how.

After 6 months of this, my husband grew convinced that Jumoke's constant needs were wearing me down.  He came home one night to be sitting incapacitated on the couch, holding my little ones close, letting Jumoke run and do as he pleased.  He asked me, and I told him things weren't ok. They hadn't been ok for a long time.

But I told him I was sure it was living in the city.  Tim was sure it was Jumoke.  Again he said that he thought Jumoke should live with a different family. Again, I fell apart. I just knew everything would be ok with Jumoke if we just gave it time.

We began to prepare for the children and I to move back home.  Tim would stay in the city during the week, and drive home to be with us on the weekends. It would only be for six months.  I was sure we could make it work, especially if I could get out of the city and away from this irrational fear.

Not too long before we moved home, I took the kids in the van along with my sweet neighbor and her children somewhere.  Wendy is really the epitome of sweet. She isn't the sweet that exists only in front of other people...she has a gentle, tender, loving heart. Almost too good to be true. She was an excellent friend to me, and all of my children loved her and trusted her.

I left her and the children in the van while I ran into someplace.  When I came back out, everyone in the van was very quiet. I asked Wendy what was going on. She said that Jumoke was kicking people, and when she asked him to stop, he spat in her face.

I was devastated. I thought we had finally trained him out of spitting at people.  And that he spat at WENDY! The most gentle woman I had ever met!

When I looked back at him, he just glared at me.

Everything changed in that moment. I began to see what my husband saw. But I still didn't want to give up. Jumoke was only five years old. We had plenty of time to work with him, and I had plenty of love to give him.

But I began to believe it wasn't going to be as easy as I thought it would be.