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!

A Hard Lesson in December Giving

Our December of Giving took an unexpected time out due to a family illness and a number of revised plans. We had been collecting items for a shelter for abused women and their children since December began and today seemed as good a time as any to get the items over to the shelter. E1 was down with a fever and when the other three quickly put on their coats at the thought of going out, I gladly agreed as it seems that any experiences that they can see first hand who they are giving to has a much greater impact that just sending something off in the mail. We all got out of the car and I pulled out the laundry basket with the donations. E2 carried a decoration, K carried the gingerbread house and I tried to get N to carry the oranges. She quickly decided against it and insisted she wanted to carry the barbie. I should have seen where this was headed as soon as she went for the barbie and given her something else, but alas, hindsight, we got in the door and I was a little taken aback by the tone of the lady behind the desk who barked "It's all NEW right?!!?", ah yah, I answered, she called another lady from the back to come up and get the items and E2 and K quickly give me the items to put in the basket, N, not so much...then began the drama, the tears were flowing and continued when we got back in the car. It was again a hard lesson for N about the meaning of Christmas and wasn't the first as we embarked on the December of Giving. Lots of explanations in Spanish about what Christmas is and why Christmas is about giving and not receiving. The thing I always find interesting about these talks with her is that she always tells me she doesn't have any toys. I part wonder if this is a kid thing, or if she really doesn't think anything in our house is hers, even though things have specifically been given to her and we have told her many times that clothes, shoes and toys are hers, but she is not yet at the point of believing it. Either way, this is a marathon, not a sprint and as she grows and owns us more as her forever family, this perception will change as will her understanding that giving is more important as receiving.

Luke 15:11-32

As we approach Christmas, remembering the lesson of Luke 15:

"You are always with me and everything I have is yours, but we celebrate and are glad because this brother of yours was dead and is now alive again, he was lost and now found"

Ask for forgiveness and you will be forgiven and will be welcomed home into God's kingdom with open arms.

How do you spell Christmas?

In our house we spell it C H R I S T.

Joshua 24:15
"If it is displeasing to you to serve the LORD, choose today whom you will serve, ... As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

3110 down.. thousands more to go.

Day by Day.
Step by Step.
Stride by Stride
Stroke by Stroke
Mile by Mile

3110 miles completed on my mileage journey to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Lately I have been reasonably disciplined on getting on my trainer in the basement. Supplement that with an occasional run, and some treadmill miles at the fitness center.  I am about 100 miles per week.  Even at that pace.  I will still be 39 weeks until I reach the DRC.  Oi!!

Follow that up with the 2704 to Bogota Columbia (that might be adjusted for Bucaramanga).  I've got a solid year minimum of effort.  Of Sacrifice.  Trials.  Challenges.

But that's what this is all about.  I'm not looking for a cakewalk through life.  Yes a break now and then, sure.  That said, the Lord gave me legs, endurance, fortitude, and if offering up some effort or soreness or aches-n-pains via  some miles results in aid to even one person... It will be an effort most worthwhile for me.  And so I ...

Tri for Hope, Sacrifice with purpose

Peace

World Vision Sponsor Kids Holiday Cards

A little behind due to an unexpected flu bug that reared it's ugly head on Saturday, but the kids were able to put together their holiday gifts to send to their World Vision sponsor friends. Having children from four different countries and cultures it has always been on our minds the importance of doing something concrete to support another family from our children's birth countries in hopes that that family may not have to make the same difficult decision some of our children's birthparents did in order to feed themselves or other children already in their home, so with each adoption, we have also "adopted" a sponsor kid from the country they came from. Through World Vision, as we saw when we met our sponsor child in Ethiopia, the families are not given handouts, but opportunities for schooling, businesses and clean and safe drinking water that they themselves run and maintain. In the area our sponsor child from Ethiopia is from, their main staple is false banana, which is a terrible tasting starch with little nutritional value, many of the children are malnourished. World Vision's work in the area has brought in a multitude of vegetable crops and fruit trees that are being grafted and sold for profit by residents in the area such as our sponsor child's grandfather who he lives with. In addition, he is also able to go to school and even showed us some of his school work when we met him after getting over the initial shock of all the ferenges! So the kids spent some time making Christmas cards and a care package for their sponsor child from their birth country and really took the task to heart knowing their friend will enjoy the package they packed for Christmas.