OUR FINAL TEENAGERS

Since Ben and Jonah are the youngest in our family, these two will be our last run at parenting teenagers.

Ben turned 13 in June, and Jonah turned 13 last Thursday.

What a wild ride it has been so far with this dynamic duo!  

From this:

Arriving at the orphanage, 

Ben at 3 wks old so around 7-15-10

Jonah at birth, 9-14-10

To this:

Ben's 13th birthday, 6-21-23

Jonah’s 13th birthday, 9-14-23

These boys have had many adventures over their 13 years.  

Ben experienced orphanage life for 6 years.  At 18 months, he went through open heart surgery all by himself, no family to comfort and care for him.  Then at 6 years old, he met Andrew and I for the first time.  For one week, we would come visit him at the orphanage for a few hours each day.  At the end of that week, we went before a Lithuanian judge and were ruled to be his family.  We headed to the orphanage and packed up his things from the past 6 years which filled only a grocery big (humbling…)  We loaded him into a taxi and took him to our apartment.  Please remember, he had only known us for 5 days.  He had never lived anywhere except an orphanage or with anyone besides other kids and the orphanage staff.  He had never eaten anything except orphanage food besides candy and treats from orphanage visitors.  He literally trusted us 2 strangers with his life.  And then to top that, after a few more days in Lithuania, we took him on his first airplane ride ever to the US, where EVERYTHING was new to him: people, language, food, living situation, customs.  When I think about the amount of faith this little boy had to survive 6 years watching out for himself and then joining our family who were complete strangers to him, it baffles my mind with how well he has adjusted to everything over the years.  He is my hero- brave and courageous and determined to survive!

We were there for Jonah's birth, and he came to live with us at 3 weeks old.  So a very different experience for Jonah than Ben's experience of joining our family.  Jonah's biggest challenges over the years have been health-related.  He was hospitalized at 6 months old for a very serious case of pneumonia, then again for the same thing at 9 months old.  At 13 months old, he had 5 hour surgery for a kidney/bladder congenital defect.  He experienced complications from this surgery and so his total hospitalization time during all of this was almost 3 weeks!  The next years were spent trying to keep him healthy due to reactive airway disease and frequent ear infections.  Then at 8 years old, Jonah had surgery to remove his thyroid due Grave's disease that wasn't able to be handled by medication.  After surgery he experienced a scary breathing episode coming off the anesthesia.  Then in 2020, kidney/bladder issues reared their ugly head requiring surgery to have a stent and catheter placed.  This catheter was in place for 9 months instead of the planned 2 weeks.  Jonah suffered from several kidney/bladder infections during his surgery recovery time.  It was a rough period for him.  Finally in January 2023, we got the good news that Jonah's left kidney was back to normal size.  What a three year ordeal!  In summer of 2022, Jonah started to have his knee caps slip out of place quite often causing him great pain.  This necessitated him wearing knee braces almost full-time.  Oh and he also got Lyme's disease in the summer of 2021.  And on top of all these health issues, Jonah didn't really start talking using more than 2-3 words until 2020/2021-age 10/11.  He has worked VERY HARD to become verbal.  This kid is also my hero- he is also brave and courageous and determined to survive!

Now in regards to all of these boys' adventures these past 13 years, I'm really hoping and praying that their teenage years are very quiet, boring, and uneventful!  We're older parents, and I don't know if we have the energy anymore to deal with difficult teenagers...