The Return of Baby Girl

Our little girl has found her way back to us. Last night we spoke with our adoption coordinator (while at our New Years Party! While everyone else is out at a party she is making adoption calls!). The news was totally unexpected, I originally thought she was calling to tell us about a new referal, turns out she was calling to tell us baby girl's adoption is proceeding and that she is now in the pastors care! What a shock and a wonderful way to start the New Year! We have new pictures. We will wait to share until we are through court. We are a bit saddened that the inability of the birth relatives to care for her has not allowed us to be her parents, it really highlights the statement that adoption is not without someone's loss, and that is truely apparent here, not only has she lost her birth mother and father, but relatives as well. My heart hurts for her.

My Worst Nightmare and My Favorite Present I didn't Get

Yep, it has only taken 4 years, 3 months, 2 hours and 25 min's since we brought our first child home from Guatemala for me to walk in the house after work to see one of my worst nightmares of parenthood come true. E1 glued to the computer screen with a computer game of Lightning McQueen playing and hubby glued to the TV playing basketball on Wii (my second worst parent nightmare is having a daughter that loves pink). My greetings were ignored, my attempts at conversation were ignored and I sat and ate dinner....alone. This was justified, I was told, by the fact that they had spent an hour playing in the snow before hand and they had a big lunch. Of course this is the after-Christmas excitement, but I cannot shake the fact that I have witnessed first hand how kids can no longer carry on conversations or talk to eachother at the dinner table without texting their friends or playing online video game. Remember the time when we were kids and could come up with a fun game with a stick and a rock and walked to and from school uphill both ways, (you would think I was going on 80 not 40!) I know, I know, I watch too much TV and am addicted to too many blogs so who am I to complain...

ok on to a more important subject - My Favorite Present I didn't get. Since our sponsor family from Ghana through World Vision moved out of the project area, we have been talking about sponsoring a third child. This year has been really hard on the child sponsorship program through World Vision, at last count, they have lost over 1000 (CORRECTION: oops, I was off by a figure of 10! It is 14,903! Yikes!)child sponsors. Not only does a sponsorship help an individual child, it helps their family and the funds are pooled to help the community with sustainable water supply projects, business building projects like bee cultivating and fruit tree growing, expanded agriculture etc. I thought it would be a good idea if the boys gave Papa the gift of a new sponsor child, so the boys helped me choose a little girl who happened to be sporting a traditional Congolese hair style (very cute) and we sent in the first monthly payment. We can't wait to write her a letter and introduce ourselves and maybe meet her when we travel for the adoption like we did with the little boy we sponsor in Ethiopia. So technically, it was not my present, but certainly one that I am sure T is going to share. If you are interested in sponsoring a child through World Vision, you can sign up on-line at www.worldvision.org.

Driving Myself to the Mad House!

Well it has been a few days since the news about the little girl we had hope to adopt broke and I think I am in a worse spot now than two days ago. We had a surprise 40th b-day party for T on Sunday. There was so much hustle and bustle after the Christmas Holiday, that it was hard to call a time out given that we had just returned from WI the day before and I jumped right into cooking, shopping and planning for T's birthday party, to make matters worse, all of which was accomplished during the worst snow storm of the year which made a quick trip to the grocery store an hour venture. I am so thankful for all the friends and family that attended the party and helped out once we arrived and discovered that the park district had not shoveled and T's mom and I were frantically shoveling the 200' +/- to the door of the facility only to find out they had turned the heat way down and the building was freezing (I didn't notice the cold at first given the fact that I was now a pile of sweat from the shoveling exercise). At least the food was good and the kids enjoyed putting together the gingerbread houses with their mittens and coats on.
So here I am, today, three days after our adoption coordinator called T, wondering why my first thought when he told me the news was happiness for the little girl, that she will be able to be raised with birth relatives, followed closely by my second thought of the three waiting siblings we talked to another agency about. Followed by my third thought of "am I mad!". In the last three days, I have had the scheme all worked out, talk to our adoption coordinator, have her talk to the attorney, have him meet with the attorney that represents these kids, work out the paperwork so we can adopt them and bring them home and live happily ever after. Never mind that the HS and USCIS approval would be for 2 not 3 kids, we could figure that out.....and the little voice again whispers...."are you MAD!" If this were God's will and not mine, things would have worked out, and try as I may I can't force it to become God's will. I commiserated with my good friend at work this morning who is also ready to take the wheel and lead the charge in her situation. I asked her to see what the "Today God is First" inspiration was before either of us do anything crazy...here is the summation "Have you ever been tempted to use your power, skill, and ability to force a situation to happen, perhaps even out of anger? God is calling us to use prayer to move the face of mountains. The force of our ability is not satisfactory. God is calling each of us to a new dimension of walking with Him. Pray that God will give you the grace to wait on Him and not take matters into your own hands. Then you will not be in jeopardy of failing to move into the Promised Land in your life." Yah, I get it God. Thanks for the reminder!

What a Difference a Few Hours Can Make

T got a call from our adoption coordinator this afternoon to inform us that during the investigation to have K transferred to the Pastor's care, that they were able to find a birth relative that was willing to care for her. It is hard to explain the emotion, but I think, overall, I am very happy for her. She will be able to remain with birth relatives and be well taken care of. In addition, I have to believe, that had we not started this process to adopt her, the investigation to find her relatives would not have taken place and she would have been stuck in that orphanage for an extended period of time. I believe God has his hand in all this and as often as I think I am controlling the situation, he lets me know, more often than not, that he is truly in charge, and our daughter will come to us when the time is right. I had my eyes opened last week at work when I was beating my head against a wall trying and trying to get this project I was working on to move forward. When I finally took a step back, I found a fatal flaw in the engineering design that would have rendered the project pretty much useless. Try as I may to force it, God let me struggle for awhile and in the end, it was for the betterment of all that I couldn't get the project moving forward and the design will be corrected. Our daughter is out there, we just don't know her yet.

The Democratic Republic of Guatemalopia!

The word is out and we are officially in the process of becoming a family of 5! We are adopting a little girl . She is about two and a half and we are currently waiting for her to be transfered to the care of a Pastor who will foster her with his family until we can go and get her. We will be busy in the next month finishing the basement so we can move the office down there and start decorating her room. I am also having fun learing about cornrows, braids, twists, etc. It has only been about a month since we decided to move forward with a third adoption, and things are moving very fast! A bit different than our other 2 adoptions where there was more waiting than moving! We are very excited about finally having a daughter and can't wait to meet her!

How low can you go..

Ok. really how high! Its cold (not much motivation to get outside to run). Its the holidays, so you I'm grazing all the time. So just how many pounds will there be to shed once the holidays are over. Gosh I hope its less than 10! I think I'm going to be one of those millions of folks that will have exercise and weight loss as a new years goal.

The Rules

The boys and I spent a nice weekend together while papa was down in Texas at a surprise 40th birthday party. We had a great time at Spanish class yesterday, playing in the snow and fun at a Christmas party with our Guatemala play group. I imagined with Papa, the enforcer gone, the boys would try to push the limits with me so I was a bit shocked when I caught them playing on the stairs yeterday:

Mama to E1 "Boys...What's rule number one???"
E1 to Mama "Always listen to mama????"
Mama (in a bit of shock at the response) to E1 "Ahhh...that's pretty good E, but I was thinking of the rule about not playing on the stairs!"

With the exception of E2 breaking his fall onto the ceramic tile with his face yesterday (tooth into lip, blood everywhere) and a large scratch on his nose from WWF smackdown with his new 4 year old girlfriend, we are all in one piece...so far! and the cats, dog and fish have all been feed as well and medicine given and the house is still in some semblance of order, I even learned how to use a beader on Friday....I know, I can't believe it either!

The Will of God, the Will of Me and the Intercessors

My goodness, that is a mouthful! There seems to be a theme in my life in the past few weeks with various friend and associates who are trying to follow the path that God has laid out for them but are getting tangled up in the will they have for their own lives. To add to the challenge, a good friend gave me a reading last week about the role of the intercessor. It goes on to describe Agabus, who received word from God that Paul would be beaten if he went to Jerusalem to proclaim the word of God. Agabus assumed this meant that Paul was not to go to Jerusalem, but here comes the "Ahhhh Haaaa" moment, Agabus was an intercessor not a leader, God calls intercessors to the role of seeing, but calls leaders to the role of interpreting actions. Paul knew that God meant for him to go and proclaim his word in Jerusalem knowing he would be beaten. It is confirmed in Acts where Jesus comments "Take Courage! As you have testified about Me in Jerusalem, you must also testify in Rome". Beyond the often difficult time many of us have discerning God's will in our life is the added challenge that input we may receive from the people we contact may be in the form of an intercessor as opposed to a leader. While we need the information to create a complete picture of the situation, we have to discern how this information will help us to know the actions that are necessary to fulfill Gods will for our lives. While I can comprehend in my head and try as I may to understand that God has a plan for all of us, I struggle with being patient and allowing that will to manifest itself, especially when I see the pain my friends are going through when a situation seems to remain stagnant and unresolved which just seems to prolong the hurt.

All Things Guatemalopia

We are so blessed that the Ethiopian community in Chicago is so supportive of us as adoptive parents that they put together a wonderful string of cultural classes for us adoptive parents and kids, but I start to get concerned when our little Guatemalteco starts telling everyone he is from Ethiopia! That being said, we were so excited when we heard that the Guatemalan adoptive parents group had combined forces with Casa Guatemala to put on a Christmas party at Mayan Essance, the fair trade store in Chicago, complete with homemade Guatemalan food that was fantastic, a Mayan prayer and a performacne by Marimba Ixchel. Even though it was so packed that you could barely move, the food was out of this WORLD! There were so many things I had never tried before and would really like to learn how to make. E1 and E2 cut a rug to the marimba music to the delight of everyone around us. It was a wonderful afternoon and we so look forward to some combined Guatemalan Community and Adoptive Parent get togethers in the future!

Its just one of those things..

You get a commercial jingle stuck in your head. Maybe something your heard on the radio, on the mp3 players. Sometimes its just flat out annoying that you can't seem to get it out of your head.

As I listen to the local Holiday station, I'm just mesmerized by that Trans-Siberian Orchestra song, "Christmas Canon". I don't normally post about the same thing so close together, but as I'm working tonight, its on the radio again. My head just fills with such a variety of things. I would say Good, Bad, and others but that's just not quite accurate.

I would like to leave something deeply profound about the topic, but I'll just say this. Lately when I hear that song, I'm just filled with hope, but also regret over my own personal missed opportunities to effect change, but also thanksgiving at being healthy and having more time and inevitably more opportunities to bring about change. Hmm.. sounds like "Christmas Story" like... not really intended though..

This night, we pray
Our Lives, will show
This dream, he had
Each child, still knows

Peace