The second year was more stressful than the first year.  It started out with our 6 year old daughter needing surgery to take out her tonsils.  She had been very sick with a hurting tummy and not able to gain much weight since she was two years old. The doctors could find nothing wrong with her though.

The summer before she had a bout with mononucleosis, which caused her already swollen tonsils to swell even larger.  Soon she was suffering severe breathing issues at night to the point that I could hear her stop breathing from my bedroom. I started sleeping with her so that I could turn her over to get her breathing again.

For some reason her pediatrician didn't feel it was serious enough remove her tonsils.  After a few months of not sleeping much, and with the anxiety being an issue, Tim decided to approach a surgeon in the city and demand the tonsils be removed.

They were removed.

Dawn began improving immediately. She began gaining weight and learned to ride a bike.  Before her surgery, she was always fussy and crying and couldn't play for very long at a time. The new little girl was outside for hours, and learning to be friends with her siblings.

This was a very good thing.

We moved home to the valley.  I started schooling Ouseman, thinking that he had adjusted enough culturally to begin.  We started in pre-Kindergarten. We both worked hard, but couldn't get past the basics, recognizing numbers or letters.  After much very hard work, he learned to write the first three letters in his name 3 months later. 

We took him to an ophthamologist soon after he came home.  We were told that though the slits he looked thru were tiny, that he could indeed see well.

After almost a year of working with him and making no progress, I took him to a different eye doctor.  The doctor said he couldn't complete the exam because Ouseman's eyes were so scratched up from his lashes growing inward. He said that Ouseman was pretty much blind.

Ouseman had eye surgery to open his lids. Within a month, he was reading!  All the lessons had come back to him, and with sight, he just raced ahead.

We also had the very large hernia in his tummy removed soon after.

Then we had tonsil surgery for our youngest daughter, whose tonsils had swollen till they were causing the same apnea problems as her older sister.

The anxiety attacks continued even after we moved home, but I assumed it was because of the stress of all the surgeries and the changes they brought about.

Life was still about Jumoke, tho I tried to keep pouring into my other children as well.  When we were going thru a stressful time such as one of the surgeries, or when I was spending a lot of time teaching Ouseman to read, or anything to where I wasn't 100% available to care for Jumoke, he would begin to run wild, destroying and hurting and wreaking havoc.

Both Tim and I worked hard to find solutions outside the box to reach Jumoke. We tried everything that every parent who adopted from Liberia suggested to us. We would feel a little success, think we were seeing some real change, and then Jumoke would just learn to walk around whatever we were doing and go back to doing as he pleased.

Ouseman loved to work.  Our niece and nephew, also adopted from Liberia when they were 3, loved to work.  Jumoke hated to work. He would never do a chore unless I was right with him.  As soon as I turned my back, he would stop. 

It was that way with everything. As long as I was physically present, Jumoke would comply.  As soon as I turned my head, he would stop complying. So I became his constant companion.

We were beginning to get comments from family members about Jumoke not being treated like the other kids. We tried to explain that we tried treating him like the other kids, but it was like he didn't want that. People would say it's obvious that he isn't grafted into your family or that he feels isolated. We'd try to explain that we were doing our utmost to include him and bring him in, but we just hadn't found a way.

Our parenting practices were being strongly doubted. Certainly our love for Jumoke was doubted.

We were beginning to doubt it ourselves.

We were constantly evaluating ourselves and examining ourselves, our hearts and our parenting style.  Every once in a while, Tim would tire of our lack of success and tell me once again that he felt that Jumoke belonged in another family.  I always knew in my heart that if we just tried hard enough, we could reach the boy.

The second year ended much as the first year did: we hadn't gained any ground with Jumoke.  All that we had gained was the knowledge that if we kept him near us and kept firm consistent control on him, that we could keep him from hurting people and damaging things.  The only things at this point that he was damaging were his bed things and his own toys and the occasional toy that someone left out.  He still refused to obey unless we were standing right over him.

But at least we had learned to put a lid on the worst behaviours.