Life changed for Shawn Eisch with a phone call last January. His youngest brother, Brian, a soldier and single father, had just received orders to deploy from Fort Drum, N.Y., to Afghanistan and was mulling who might take his two boys for a year. Shawn volunteered.<\/p>\n
So began a season of adjustments as the boys came to live in their uncle\u2019s home here. Joey, the 8-year-old, got into fistfights at his new school. His 12-year-old brother, Isaac, rebelled against their uncle\u2019s rules. And Shawn\u2019s three children quietly resented sharing a bedroom, the family computer and, most of all, their parents\u2019 attention with their younger cousins.<\/p>\n
The once comfortable Eisch farmhouse suddenly felt crowded.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot more traumatic than I ever pictured it, for them,\u201d\u009d Shawn, 44, said. \u201cAnd it was for me, too.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n