Day Two with Ephraim

I won’t be sharing a post on every day that we are out here but I wanted to document the first couple of days while they were still fresh in my mind.

Sunday, November 16th was our second day visiting Ephraim at the home.

We had a little bit of one on one time with Ephraim before we went outside with 7 of the “older” kids (as in kids aged 18 months to just under 2 years).

If you sat down anywhere, outside or on the couch for more than three seconds you are bound to be bombarded by about 3 or 4 kids trying to sit on your lap, it was really sweet and heart breaking at the same time. I’ve got so many thoughts and feelings about this but I’ll save those for another time.

After playing outside for awhile we were able to give Ephraim a quick little bath, they have to be quick when there are 15 children to wash!

Around 11:00 am we were able to take Ephraim out of the home, and I’m so glad we were. We took him back to the place we were staying for the weekend and he was nervous to be in a new place and was holding on to me tightly. But after just a few minutes Jared and Raeca had him smiling and playing with balls and cars and after about half an hour Raeca had him smiling and we heard him giggle for the first time. He loves to hear Rae laugh. After awhile he was completely tuckered out and ended up sleeping on my lap in the living room. We had both lunch and supper with Ephraim at our B&B and then we took him back to the home around 5:30. He was a different kid when we walked through those doors, he became quiet and for the longest time just sat on either my lap or Jared’s, when they let the rest of the older kids come out he seemed to tense up around them and just wanted to stick with us.

Saying goodbye to Ephraim in the evening was so hard, Raeca kept crying, saying she didn’t want to leave him, it broke my heart.

We just told her this was the last sleep that had to leave Ephraim, tomorrow morning was court.