Widows and Orphans

My house helper is a widow with many grandchildren. Three of them are orphans. Her son died maybe three years ago and then one year later, his wife and the mother of three.

This week my helper and two of the kids moved in. I think we'll get the third and oldest one eventually, right now she's with some friends. So, keeping score, we've got two adults in the house and 4 kids, maybe one on the way. Whew!

They're really good little ones, too. Julius is eight but I forgot how old Gladys is, I'll have to find out again later. I forget because these kids are not the right size. Julius looks like a 5 year old who needs to eat more. I was looking at his arms last night. My camera broke, I might've taken a photo and tried to post it.

Anyway, my money is tied up in property. At this time I live on teacher's pay, and I'm the bread winner for this group. I pay grandma more than all local house help and she is required to do less, and her family gets to move in. I barely make it, but I was looking at J's arms last night and I'm thinking that I'm going to spend extra money on food. No more eating lunch here at the college. My goal is to feed these kids real food. My oldest needs to eat more, but he's picky. Julius isn't picky he's probably perpetually hungry.

I didn't sleep well and I'm tired today because of the new arrangement. Rosie the grandma knows not to wake me up, but my youngest autistic son was up buzzing around, but that might be because Julius was up. Anyway, Rosie hid from me this morning probably thinking I was going to re-iterate how important my sleep is. I won't do that because I know she knows. She'll handle the situation. She saw what happened this morning.

They wake up super dooper early, but they nap during the day when it's peak sun outside. I have to get up at 6:15. I don't get home until after 6 and there's no napping for me during the day. I have an intensive job. So Rosie's aware not to treat my sleep lightly in the morning. She used to drive me nuts and I'm like...no...and made it clear. She saw how tired I can be at night. She knows that our family life is not healthy if I have to come home and plop down for sleep.

Anyway, I trust things will go better than they did this morning. I have a surprise for her when I get home anyway!! Actually she knows it's payday. No surprise. But it's definitely happy time.

My oldest son loves being older brother to them (they've stayed with us unofficially before). He's happy. I'm kind of excited to see how things are going to go with a bigger family now.