I am starting to put together my 2009 album (hopefully it will be done before the girls graduate from college!). This was taken at the beginning of January when the girls wanted to go outside and play in the snow. We don’t normally have a lot of snow, but January gave them plenty to play in. 
TaylorMade – Life+Sprinkles
TaylorMade – From the Heart vol II brushes
Elegant Wordart – word art
My goodness, this week has gone on forever! At least that is what it feels like. I guess it is just that the week has been so busy. We have been watching our neighbor’s children after school a few days a week because her husband is out of town and she can’t get home from work in time to get the kids off the bus. They are really no trouble. The girls really like having someone to play with right after school. JB had therapy early Tuesday. Last night we had visitors in our bedroom – not one, but 2 of them, one of which decided that early morning is a great time to serenade everyone. Today DH had a tooth extracted. I drove him to and from the oral surgeon’s, got his meds filled, then worked the rest of the day, the kids (including the neighbor’s) got home, ate dinner and then went for a meeting at school. JB’s teacher held a meeting for all interested parents in ways to help the kids with their homework, letting us know the terms she is using the classroom so that when JB comes home talking about something I understand what she is saying, ways to incorporate learning into everyday activities, and 2 pages of websites for parents and for kids full of games, worksheets, flashcards and other information. I stayed for a few minutes after the meeting and talked to her about JB’s therapy and to get some tips from her for helping JB with her homework. Then I ran into the art teacher and stood and talked with her for quite awhile. The meeting started at 6:30 and I did not get home until 8:30. Tomorrow is just as packed and then the weekend will be busy with running EB to my parent’s house for a sleep over so we can go to JB’s retreat in preparation for her first reconcilliation. I am ready for a day to sleep in and do nothing! So far, looking at my schedule, I am not seeing that in my near future.
I know it sounds like I am complaining. I honestly am not. I am busy. I am tired. I am feeling a little overwhelmed. But I think back to those days when we had lost all hope of having children, and I am so thankful that I have the chance to be so busy with healthy, thriving children.
Back in April of 2008 I was really struggling with the reality that another adoption is probably not in our future. I created this layout at that time and shared it only with some close adoptive friends. This is the first time that I have felt confident enough to share with the bloggy world.
There are people out there, if they read the journaling on this page, who would be angry that I would request a child of a specific gender. While the decisions that DH and I make are exactly that, our decisions, I would like to clarify our thought process in a miniscule effort to decrease the amount of anger out there in the adoption world. I always said, long before I was married, that I wanted to have sons instead of daughters. I was not a pleasant teenager. I really did not want the mother’s curse to be visited upon my head. Second, I had much more experience with baby and toddler boys because most everyone I babysat for as I grew up had boys. When we were trying to conceive, the joke was that I wanted boys and DH wanted girls – but honestly, we did not care, we were just praying for a healthy child. When it became clear to us that God’s plan was for us to expand our family through adoption we once again did not care what gender the child was, only that we would have the skills and knowledge to provide the best home possible for the child. We prayed for a child that needed us as much or more than we needed him/her. When it became clear to us that China was where we were to seek out a child, it was a foregone conclusion that the child would be a female because of the social situation in China. After we had adopted both of our daughters, we felt that we were being called to adopt a special needs child from China. The special needs that were identified were within the skill set that we had to care for the child. During our time in looking for a pre-identified child, it became apparent that many of the children who needed medical care and a family were actually boys. But if we had been guided to a little girl with special needs, there would have been no question that we would have welcomed a boy or a girl with equal joy and love and devotion. So while the layout does refer to an empty frame and a boy – it is actually an empty frame representing the hole we feel there still is in our family. Will it be filled? I don’t know. Maybe God is telling us that we need to seek out a child somewhere else in the world other than China. Maybe we will be led to sponsor children in China so they can receive medical care and find homes within China. At this time our future regarding this situation is not clear. We continue to hope for an adoption. But more importantly, we seek to find God’s path for our family.
Layout Credits: Kit – Designing on the Edge (no designer name given or TOU with the kit
Chinese Character – From Little Treasures Templates
Has anyone noticed that we humans are usually not content with what we have been blessed? Does anyone else think about that one other thing they wish they could add to their life? I will be the first to say that I am very guilty of that. In fact, that was one of the things that I beat myself up over during our infertility struggle. I had (and still have) a wonderful husband, a job that pays the bills, family and friends that love me (though heaven knows why some days), a place to live, a car to drive and food to eat and the freedom to worship and live my faith. But I wanted more, my heart and arms felt empty and I did not know how to stop that longing. I kept thinking that I should be content with what I had been given. I went so far as to apologize to God for not being grateful enough for the things He had given me. It took me a long time, a lot of tears, some painful medical tests and procedures and 2 trips to China to realize that it was not just me being ungrateful, it was a yearning that God had placed in my heart. I just needed to shut up long enough and listen to what He was trying to tell me. But without those struggles I would not have learned the lessons I needed to gain some of the tools that my girls would need their mother to have to help them navigate the waters of being adopted and growing up in a transracial family.
One day DH and I started to panic at imminent danger of our children going naked from lack of clothing. Then we remembered that we had several tubs of very nice hand-me-downs from family and friends that we had put away because they were too big for the girls. We pulled those out. In order to actually find those tubs, though, we had to wade through the tubs of outgrown clothes. We hauled all of it down into our living room and started sorting. 3 evenings later we were finally, sort of, part way done. We found enough clothing to avert our children starting a nudist colony. We also found a lot of clothes that brought back a lot of memories. The outfit a friend a showed up at our door carrying the day she heard about our referral. The outfit that JB wore her first Christmas with us. Squeaky shoes that we had bought in China. The outfits that we had purchased in China because none of the clothes we had packed for either trip had fit! The Halloween costume that my best friend had given us that JB wore the day after we returned from China. So many memories wrapped up in such tiny pieces of fabric. We sorted all of those clothes according to size and packed it up and stacked it in the corner of my office. I had a friend with little ones and had her come over and go through the clothes. She took a sack full of clothes, but there were still so many left. Those clothes sat stacked in my office for almost 1.5 years. In the meantime the crib was taken down and cannibalized for hardware - no one had slept in it for several years and it was actually starting to fall apart anyway. DH dismantled the toddler bed since EB had been in a big girl bed since she was 4.
Finally there was enough stuff stacked in my office that there was danger of bodily harm if it suddenly shifted and fell on one of the girls. It was time to do something. We loaded all of those clothes and all of those shoes and took them over to the abused women’s shelter in our town. We explained to the girls, as gently as possible, why there was a need for this shelter and why there was a need for the clothes we were donating. Both girls pitched right in and helped unload the truck. Then came the hardest part, getting into the truck and driving away from all of those clothes. It was not because I felt that we were giving them to an unworthy cause – on the contrary, I was trying to figure what other closets I could clean out to help these people who had the courage to face a new life with absolutely nothing but the clothes they were wearing. It was not because I thought my girls could ever wear them again – they couldn’t, though EB gave it a good try! It was because I was letting go of a dream.
We always thought we would adopt 3 children. And when we had talked about going back to China for the third child, we had decided that we were going to seek out a special needs boy. So it was not like I was saving the clothes for that child. But with China’s adoption rules changed we are unable to return there for our third child. With our advancing years, we are aging out of other international programs. So by giving up these clothes I was symbolically giving up our dream of that last child. I know that God has a plan for everything, and that His timing is perfect. I don’t discount the fact that God has a seriously odd sense of humor, either. But right then, as I walked away from those clothes, I left some of my heart and a lot of my dreams behind.
I have a wonderful husband. I have two beautiful children. I have a house that has indoor plumbing, heat and windows. I have food to place on my table. I have wonderful people in my life who still love me. But I still want – I want one more child. Is this my desire or is it one placed their by God? I don’t know at this point. All I know is my heart aches at times. Then I hear someone screeching at her sister, or I have to mop up tears because someone was “fired” from her group of friends, or I have to negotiate the politics of giving one attention without disturbing the sleeping jealousy beast and I thank God that I have been entrusted with these two precious little girls. But still, in the deepest recesses of my heart, I know there is a place where I continue to hope, where I continue to dream…
