Mother's Day Confession

I have a favorite child. Wanna see a picture?

Paul and Eli

Brianna

Sam

Josiah

Eli

Eli, Bri, and Samuel

Eli

Furby

This picture totally makes me giggle.  You have to be careful sleeping around here.  An army of pilgrims might come and camp on you.  

Furby & Paul

Furby

Brianna

Annaliese

Brianna

Sam

Furby

Zach

Josiah

Furby

Hannah

Annaliese

Zach

Hannah (who was being SO cranky that she got sat down to "think about it" for a minute, and totally crashed.  You'd think I'd recognize TIRED by the 8th kid.)

Back: Sam & Furby

Front: Eli & Hannah

Hannah

Hannah

My favorite child is the sleeping one.  Of course I love them when they're awake, too, but there's just something precious about a sleeping child.  They're so... quiet.  I like that.  

Recycled post

I'm bummed that our adoption blog is no longer online (the host closed) but I'm happy that I have it backed up on disk.  So here's a "blast from the past" in honor of Mother's Day.  The post I wrote while we were waiting to travel to meet Hannah.


I wish I could tell her

May 3, 2010

There's someone who's been on my mind and in my heart for the past week or so. Ever since Hannah's birthday, actually. Her mother.

Although I don't KNOW anything about her, that doesn't stop me from wondering. Wondering if she would have kept Hannah if she'd been born looking like other babies. Or if Hannah was destined to be abandoned simply because of her gender. Or if her mama couldn't have possibly kept ANY baby in her current circumstances. Was she very young? Or was Hannah a second child in a family who couldn't afford one?

I wonder if she protested and sobbed as her husband or mother in law wrapped Hannah up and took her away. I wonder if she, herself, was the one who left Hannah and watched to see if someone would find her and turn her in.

I wonder if this April 26th was a painful day for her, too.

I wonder if she's gone on to give birth to a healthy son, or if she's too afraid to go through such a difficult experience again. Or worse, does Hannah have a birth sibling in another crib in another orphanage?

I wish I could tell her. I wish I could let her know that Hannah is alive and that she's going to have a family. That we're going to take good care of her. That she'll get the medical care and adaptive equipment her first family may not have had access to.

I wish I could whisper that it's okay for both of us to love her and for Hannah to love us both back. If only she knew, that she'll be on my mind every year, between Hannah's birthday and Mother's Day especially, as I learn to navigate the uncertain waters of explaining Hannah's adoption to her as she gets older and is able to understand more and ask hard questions. I wish I could convey to her that I will speak of her with respect to Hannah and that with the rapidly changing technology and sociological climate of China, if the two of them wish to find each other 2 decades from now, I will support that reunion.

When we first thought of adopting, the idea of international adoption seemed attractive because there was no possibility of birth parent involvement. How silly of me. Hannah brings with her the shadows of her birth parents, and they will be present whether we ever meet them or not. I pray that God will help me find the right words to say to Hannah when we have the tough conversations. And I pray that He will comfort Hannah's first mama when she thinks of her baby girl and wonders what happened to her.

Our Father

In my Bible reading, I'm in the last book of the Penatuch.  (Which only sounds impressive if you don't know that's the first 5 books of the Bible.)  I was listening to it on my ipad while I was making dinner the other night and found myself thinking, "Yeesh, he's repeating himself!"  I wondered if Ol' Mo' was starting to get a little senile there at the end.  Then a child ran through the kitchen and I found myself hollering to the feet flashing by, "Shut the DOOR!"  Something I've said hundreds, if not thousands of times in my parenting career.  And it hit me.  We're like that.  God was repeating himself on purpose.  Because even though He said it over and over again, we still get it wrong.  Humbling thought.

Let's work on sight words!

Recently, a blog post on I Can Teach My Child reminded me of something I did when Zach was little to help him learn to read.  I'd done a similar project for myself when I was trying to learn Spanish vocabulary as a teen.  I still remember a small yellow post it with cuchara (which means spoon) typed on it in the silverware drawer of my dad's house.

I seem to remember Paul being un-amused at having words all over the apartment when I did it for Zach, so I mostly confined myself to the school room and Furby's room.

Furby got to put up some of the cards himself, like CLOSET, above.  In the week or so since they've been up, I've heard him reading them several times.  He struggles with reading, so anything that makes it more fun/interesting is a Very Good Thing in my book.  And if Hannah happens to learn something in the process, so much the better.

As I type this, the two of them are sitting behind me, doing a puzzle together.  I've recently had Furby start reading her Biscuit books once in a while.  Biscuit was a huge favorite of Furby's, and it's so cute to see him share that with her.

Sticks and stones may break my windows...

Sunday morning, we went to get in the van to leave for church and discovered this:

That's a shattered window, from a rock thrown SO HARD that it broke the interior paneling on the opposite side of the van.

And this is my boy's carseat full of glass.  :(

Between the age of the carseat (7 years),

and the glass embedded in it, and the fact that he's 8 now, we decided to just toss the seat.  So, for Furby, at least, there's a huge silver lining to the broken window, in that now he won't have to ride in a car seat any more.

This is the floor in front of his carseat.

Here is Paul, taking all the glass out of the window.  I did most of the interior vacuuming, and then he pulled the panel to expose tons more glass in the duct work that all had to be sucked out.

Even Brianna helped, by emptying out the van with me and moving all the stuff into the garage.

Fortunately, all's well that ends well, and this morning the glass guy came and replaced it.  I can think of other things I'd rather have spent $300 on, but I'm glad no one was hurt, and the van is drive-able.

Z is for Zachary

My boy.

Proving you're never too old or too big to sit on Mommy's lap.  

My firstborn.

The child who made me a Mom.

The one I made the most mistakes with.

Who turned out great, despite me, not because of me.

Big brother several times over.

The kids miss him.

I miss him.

I will always be grateful that I got to be his mommy.

I've learned so much from him and because of him.

My life will always be richer because he's been a part of it.

Now he's on the other side of the world.

Being a grown up.

Being an Airman.

Even though my heart still sees him like this.

He's obviously not.

I miss you, Zach Zach.  And I'm so very proud of you.  

Y is for Yesterdays

I had an interesting conversation with Annaliese that made me think back over my adult life.

I made the comment in passing that I was pretty much mortified by everything I'd said and done between the ages of 14 and 25.  She said there must have been SOME good things about those years, and I replied, yes, that was when she was born.

I was then asked when was the best time of my life.  Oooh, that's a toughie.  Looking back, it's easy to say, "oh, this time was so great" and forget the hard parts.

For example, the Early Married Years were good, because the babies were born, and we had a sense of community where we lived and with the church we attended.  However, the Early Married Years were hard because we were really broke and I was still so immature.  That was also when we lost Baby E.  Talk about hard times.

The Farm Years were good because the kids had space to run and play, more babies were born, we lived in a HOUSE instead of an apartment, and Paul got his dream job.  However, The Farm Years were hard because we had a whole bunch of little kids and Paul was working and going to school and working a second job and volunteering and gone a lot.

Then we moved out of Sonoma County, away from everyone we knew, and it was good because we bought our first house, and because Paul was happy at work, and because I feel like I finally grew up and mellowed out in that home, but it was hard because I missed my friends and realized that to many people, we're freaks.

Oh, harmless freaks, to be sure, but freaks all the same.  The lots of kids, homeschooling, home-birthing, extended breastfeeding, cloth diapering thing raised some eyebrows when I tried to break into the playgroup scene here in town.  Unfortunately, we're also freaks in the homeschool community for sending our kids to school.  Nothing like having a mom who's oldest kid is 4 tell you that she's going to homeschool through high school, and why aren't you homeschooling your older kids??  (Our motto:  Education is a year by year, child by child decision.)

Adopting is another way we're freakish.  Although we're starting to see more and more families with a blend of biological and adopted children, there are still people who asked why we were adopting, since we obviously weren't infertile.

6 months ago, we moved here.  In this chapter of my life, the kids are starting to grow up and leave the nest.  It's bittersweet.  Paul's dad once said, "Once they get to the point where they're actually helpful, they leave."  I can see his point.  Zachary's absence left a huge vacuum of quiet at first until we found our new normal when he went away to boot camp.  I'm sure it will be the same as the other kids grow up and spread their wings.

The best time of my life?  I think it's about attitude.  I look back at pictures of the kids and smile, seeing the fun memories and forgetting the pain and frustration interspersed between images.  If I can do that for my yesterdays, and choose to see only the good--not in a revisionist history sort of way, but in a choosing to focus on the happy times, the blessings--what's to say I can't do that for now?  This!  Is the best time of my life.  And the past 2 decades have been, as well.