Ahhh K, the pendulum swings again

After reading a friends blog, I got to thinking about how much K has progressed in the last year and a half, but how, like their son, something happens and you just get smacked upside the head, and the little house of cards comes tumbling down. We have struggled with pee since K came home. She was completely potty trained, so much so, that she very effectivly used the pee when it suited her, to get attention, to show displeasure with your clothes choice for her, and she knew it, she would give me this look and then piss her pants, wow! I don't even have words for what ran through me when she did that. After pulling out the therapudic parenting tricks of the trade, we had seemingly resolved most of those issues. But the pee remained, most notably, as soon as we put a pull up on her for the night, they gave her a free license not to have to hold it anymore (I might point out that she is wicked immune to the stuff possible because where she came from, reports have it that the smell of urine is overwhelming and I guess after awhile, you just don't smell it anymore). Seriously, pull up on, 15 min's later, pull up is wet???!! Come on! So it was time to jump into the deep end of the pool and start working on overnight toilet training, the pullups are gone and it is underwear and a waterproof pad. Amazingly, though we have a lot more laundry going on, the overnight training has helped her during the day, frequently, she would have 2-3 accidents a week at school and home and since we started the overnight thing, it is down to pretty much zero, yah!! for the little successes! There is nothing worse than pee soaked pants and underwear after they have been sitting in a closed plastic bag all day. That was until this morning when the zombie reappeared. Routine is get up in the morning, use the potty, get dressed, come down for breakfast. A quite awake K came down, was directed to the potty, stood flatly in the center of the bathroom and peed all over herself, the floor, the rug, just feet from the toilet, I found her, still frozen, standing in her own pee, staring at the wall, unphased by any of it. I know, I know, the puppet show at school yesterday freaked you out to the point that you pinched all your friends, and then everyone praising you this morning for making it all night and staying dry was too much when you have such a bad image of yourself that you need to mess it intentionally before it happens accidentally. The revised routine: get out of bed, go into bathroom, pee on your self, clean up your pee, come down for breakfast, start fresh and try again tomorrow.

Faith

Faith, for me, has been a sort of love-hate relationship. With 4 adoptions, my faith has been tested more times than I care to count. I always went into each adoption overflowing with faith, but often mid-stream, I am embarrassed to say, the cup ended up empty and I would put my energy into forcing my will on the situation, not relying on God's. Then something changed, maybe temporarily, but hopefully permanently, all this practice with faith was tested when a family member had emergency open heart surgery just before Christmas. I could have cried, I could have screamed, but driving up the morning of the surgery, listening to my favorite Christian music station and hearing songs of worship and praise, it was like it all came together in this immense peace that came over me that everything was going to be ok. This huge mountain would be moved and i just needed to trust in God. And I did, and everything was ok. So I started to wonder if this deeper sense of faith was going to stick around in me for awhile. We then watched as one of the Congo adoption families lost their son after a 7 month battle with leukemia and a few short days later, another Congo adoption family lost a daughter they will never hold to malaria. As a mom, even the passing thought of someone losing a child sends a lump in my throat so big I can barely swallow, and this was no different. I sat sobbing on our bed after kissing my 4 sleeping kids foreheads one more time that night. I cried for the families but also cried out of fear of the unbearable pain of losing a child. Then my grandma died at 96 yrs old, an amazing life lived to its fullest, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren and I praised God for the wonderful life she had lived and how her pain had been washed away and her senses restored, how she had been made anew through her baptism and faith and my heart rejoiced knowing she will see and hear the choirs of angels in heaven and that she was blessed, and that she had faith in God's plan for her. Pastel in a sea of black, light in a time of darkness and wondering.....this is my FAITH in my God and Savior.......my PEACE in a will that is His, not mine.....

Love the Higher Law

What an Iconic, Inspiring, Reflective, Epic song. Surely one of the best of all time. And if this version of the video can't help touch the coldest of hearts, nothing can.. The only thing left to say is. "Love the Higher Law"

Peace

(might want to pause the music player at the bottom of the blog before watching)

A hard topic, but one that needs to be heard...

We recently received this link from a friend.  It a hard topic.  One difficult to read and ponder.  Unless you are Mother Teresa, it probably hard not to find yourself within this article somewhere, somehow.  Hard not to feel guilty or angry or both.  If nothing else, minimally, its an interesting read.

You Carry the Cure In Your Own Heart

Peace

Happy New Year and Torching Ano Viejo

I'm all for any holiday traditions that involve torching something or throwing something on the roof, so I jumped at the idea of incorporating Ano Viejo, a Colombian tradition into our family traditions. Here are the steps:

1. Make a creepy looking doll out of old clothes and set on front porch for the week after Christmas or until the neighbors start whispering things about you.

2. Write all your baggage that you want to leave behind going into the New Year onto pieces of paper and stuff into creepy doll you have lovingly referred to as Ano Viejo during the past week (you know, I wonder if Ano Viejo is cold out there...I think Ano Viejo is staking me like a creepy clown, etc)

3. Now the best part! Torch that sucker!

Ano Viejo made me reflect on the finer points of our family and what makes us uniquely us:

Our kids walk around the house singing Le Mis.

Macaroni and Guacamole are the same thing here

We took 4 kids under 6 roller skating on Christmas Eve and no one broke a leg

We followed that by 3 kids under 5 at the dentist at the same time, done, done and done

Our Colombian daughter can Ethiopian shoulder dance and loves Doro Wat

There is a great debate currently whether what T & E saw whizzing by their heads in the basement was a bat or a bird.

Everyone calls nuts "gubas", its the only Lingala word we use, even when we are speaking Spanish, they are still gubas

Our 3 yr old has barfed everytime he has drank a mango lasse at our favorite Indian restaurant so he is now on a lasse-free diet

I caught myself before finishing the 8-mil e lyrics to "The Roof is on f ire" tonight

E2 loves telling the story about the time he fell off a camel on 'opia

The quote of the day is "Mom, can I have more rootbeer float? I horked down the first one"

I love my family!