Weekly Update and Random Thoughts
Tags: Adoption
Posted: April 15, 2008 at 4:39 am
I don’t seem to find/make the time to update very much anymore. I blog several times a week in my head, but fail to get my thoughts to my fingers. Which is really irritating since I do hope to someday write a book.
Whatever.
Hmmm… now I forgot what I wanted to say. Sigh.
The kids are amazing. Growing more and more independent every day which is FABULOUS for mommy and daddy. Sad, but fabulous. Daddyo and I are leaving for four nights and as the trip gets closer, we are seriously considering taking Carter with us. He’d have so much fun and we just know he would LOVE the alone time with mommy and daddy. I think it would be really good for him to spend that time with us. We haven’t decided yet for sure.
Then there’s the whole baby thing. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Who knows? I’m still walking the fence. I can see myself carting a newborn around with Carter and Gracey, though. I can see and I love it. I can also see things staying the way they are now and I love that, too. We are truly happy with whatever God gives to us.
I am a little irritated these days, though. I know. You’re just overwhelmed with surprise that this chick is irritated at anything. When you get over the shock of that, you’ll unerstand. Maybe. I know there are people who don’t think I can handle three kids. It’s not the words that come out of their mouths but more what they don’t say. More what their tone says or their eyes. And I want to slap them. Really, really slap them. Because one, DUH! Who knows what they can or can’t handle it until it’s in their lap. And two, because not handling it will not be an option if it happens, you just do it. and three, because if I can handle a excessively hyper 2 year old and a newborn preemie with minor issues, I can handle adding another baby to my clan. I’ve had two years with Carter and Gracey. Adding a third will not be harder than starting with two the way we did. And if it is harder, it can’t be too much harder.
So give me a break. Have some faith in me. I may not do things the way you would do them. I may not do things the way you think they should be done. But that doesn’t mean I do things the wrong way. I have my struggles, sure, just like the next person. But I face them head on instead of pretending they aren’t there. I admit I need help when I need it. And boy do I sometimes need it. But that’s okay. It’s part of who I am. Admitting I have challenges doesn’t make me weaker. It makes me stronger. I am strong. I am capable. And most of all, I have God’s Grace to stand on.
I joke about having three kids and about how much it will suck to start all over again. I laugh about the torture we may be putting ourselves through. But you want to know my deep, dark secret truth? I’m delighted. I’m thrilled. I really hope we get to do it all over again. I’m not at all worried about the logistics of three kids. I’m not worried about how I’ll survive each day. We will do more than survive. There is room in my heart for one more and part of me is afraid that room will become a hollow place if it isn’t filled.
His will. Not mine.
In other news, I learned this week that there was very recently a case here in our area where CPS placed a newborn into a family different from the one who had the siblings. CPS knew the other family wanted to adopt the baby, but chose deliberately to place the baby in a different home. Unless there are some serious extinuating circumstances, that is an outrage to me.
Please pray that God will put the right people in the right places at the right times so we can bring our baby home.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Phillipians 4:6
Father, please protect our littlest child and keep him/her safe. Make a way for him to come home to us and thank you for the beautiful gift of this child.
tags: Adoption, Gratitude, Parenting, Travels 9 comments
Accentuate the Positive
Posted: November 28, 2007 at 2:56 pm
One of my favorite shows on TV is “How I Met Your Mother”. Basically, it is the latest and greatest “Friends” show and it is hilarious. A few weeks back, the episode was about annoying habits. Each of the characters had a very annoying habit that no one noticed…..until someone else pointed it out. As soon as someone pointed out that she crunched really loud when she ate, it started driving EVERYONE nuts. You get the idea.
Our minds naturally gravitate towards the negative – it’s so easy to pick out somebody else’s flaws and then get hung up on them. After a while, all you see is the flaw(s) and you forget about the many redeeming qualities. I was listening to a sermon by Joel Osteen last night and he gave a wonderful reminder of how important it is to stay focused on the positive. I cracked up when he said that maybe the only thing we can find to be grateful for about a particular person is that we’re not them. ha ha ha
As a mother of young children, there are days when it is hard to hold to gratitude. Kids are sick and whiny, laundry is piled up and you have work to do on top of it all. When I’m ready to lounge in self pity, I remember all the women who want desperately to have children and can’t. I remember the days of battling infertility and how empty – barren – I felt. I thank God that i have kids. I thank God that my kids are healthy and good natured. I thank God for their enthusiasm and contagious laughter. It’s hard to sit in funk when you’re listing all the things you are grateful for.
Start today. Make a list of ten things you’re grateful for. When you get to the end of your list, think of ten more. Keep going. See how long it is before you run out of things to be grateful for. I bet you’ll be at it a while.
tags: Gratitude 3 comments
Thursday Thanksgiving
Posted: November 22, 2007 at 5:27 am
Happy Turkey Day, Friends…Bloggers….and random internet searchers who somehow wind up here.
I can’t let Thanksgiving Day go by without my Thursday list (the one I seem to have abandoned lately):
Today, I am thankful for:
A God who is big enough to protect a child still in the mother’s womb.
Infertility.
A wonderful husband who is truly my partner in life and this thing we call parenting.
Two beautiful kids who have taught me more about God’s love than a lifetime of study.
A support system of family and friends.
God’s faithfulness.
Families who answer the call to adopt older kids and teenagers.
Foster parents who lay down their lives for the kids they care for.
Other moms who just “get it”.
tags: Gratitude 3 comments
Thankful Thursdays
Posted: September 13, 2007 at 11:19 am
This one is for you, HH!
Today I am thankful…..
…..for God’s redeeming love.
…..for my family.
…..for a job that lets me choose my hours and work very little.
…..for Mother’s Day Out.
…..for my friends – the ones I talk to every day and the ones I can pick up with right where we left off before.
…..for the sweet sound of Gracey’ voice saying, “Mommeeee! Up! Peas!” and “UVVVV EWWWW”.
…..for other moms who get it.
…..for the birthparents of my children.
…..for my wonderful church home.
…..for my mother-in-law, who watches the kids every week so I can work.
…..for music.
…..for Carter’s enthusiasm for life.
…..for infertility.
…..for giving me a man who loves me completely, flaws and all.
…..for a sense of humor.
…..for the cross.
edited to add:
I am also thankful that I live in the Great State of Texas, where we not only have the death penalty, but we also have an express lane to get you there faster when there are 3 valid witnesses to your crime. I only wish it could be given out to people like this.
tags: Gratitude 3 comments
Happy Fourth
Posted: July 6, 2007 at 3:30 am
What a fun few days we’ve had! Granny took Carter with her to the lake on Monday and Gracey and I met up with them Tuesday evening. We swam, we played, we really all had a great time. There is too much to tell about our adventures so I’ll just give you the highlights.
Overheard this morning:
Carter: I love you, Gracey.
….
Carter: Where is my little potty?
Me: Remember, we left it at Granny’s lake. She will bring it with her when she comes home.
Carter: Oh yeah. Dear Lord, thank you for Granny and my potty.
…..
Me: Awwww, maaaan…
Gracey: Ahhhhhh maaaaa
Carter was very well behaved this week. He is listening better and following directions better…..he’s even saying m’am and sir more often without being reminded. 
Gracey loves to sing now. She’ll sing along with the ABC song and with Jesus Loves Me. I’ve just got to get it on video.
tags: Carter, Gratitude, Parenting Add a comment
So lucky
Posted: April 19, 2007 at 3:17 am
Sometimes it still hits me – I have a son and a daughter. You’d think I’d be used to it by now but I’m not. A daughter. A son. Wow.
I’ve been meaning to tell you that Gracey is talking now – or at least she is saying a few words. She’s been saying “ma ma” for a while now but recently she has added “Carter Carter” (this is what she calls Carter) and “hat” and “Bye bye” (i think those were her first real words) and now she also says, “hi”. I can get her to repeat me or to attempt to repeat me on just about anything but those are words she seems to really know.
We’re still not walking but we’re getting closer. Sometimes I worry a little that she’s not walking yet, but I know she will when she is good and ready. I actually think she could walk now if she wanted to. Gracey is very sweet and affectionate – when I’ve been gone or in the other room for a while and I go in the room where she is, she’ll immediately crawl to me with a huge smile on her face and give me a hug. (her version of a hug is to lay her head up against you.) There is no doubt that girl loves her mommy and no doubt I love her.
Poor Carter must have fallen out of his bed tonight because when I went to check on him he was curled up and asleep on the floor. He never cried or fussed so I’m thinking he must not have woken up – he didn’t wake up when I picked him up and put him back in bed. He’s really such a sweetheart, too. He almost always tells me “thank you” when I bring him his sippy cup or something else he wanted. This morning we went to the grocery store and I wasn’t feeling all that great (sinus thing) and was a little grumpy. After fussing at him a little for not moving as fast as I wanted him too, he said, “mommy, did you get mad with me?” I just looked at him and said, “Carter, I’m sorry, mommy doesn’t feel good today and I just don’t have a lot of patience.” His response? “here, mommy,” as he puts his fist out, “you can have some of my patience.”
How did we get so lucky?
tags: Gratitude, Love for us 3 comments
A Slight Change in Plans
Tags: Adoption
Posted: January 31, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I think we’re going to do things a little bit differently. Instead of having the party on Saturday, I’m hoping we’ll be able to have it on Sunday instead.
We’re having them both baptized on Sunday morning, which in our church is really a “baby dedication” where we, as parents, promise to model the Christian life for our kids. After church would be a great time to celebrate it all! Don’t ya think?
tags: Adoption, Gratitude 3 comments
Happy Thanksgiving
Posted: November 22, 2006 at 10:55 pm
I know I don’t have to post about what I am most thankful for. You all know it already.
It’s funny, though, because I feel like this is our first Thanksgiving. I’ve been around for 31 of them so it should in no way be my “first”, but honestly, I feel like a Thanksgiving virgin. Come on, you know it’s funny.
Carter and certainly Gracey won’t have a clue as to what is happening tomorrow, it will just be another day at Granny’s for lunch with other family there. But I know. I know that this is our first family Thanksgiving. It has been a year of “firsts” for us and I can’t tell you how exciting it is. I feel like a little kid – and this is on Thanksgiving! Can you imagine what I’ll be like at Christmas? (that is, if I can survive the budget constraints daddy-o is putting on me! )
Speaking of Daddy-O, he’s in the kitchen right now baking pecan pies. Is that an amazing man or what? I took his picture but I’m too lazy to post it right now so I’ll do it later.
He was outside this evening picking some things up and I could hear an obnoxious noise which I later realized was him singing Christmas carols. ? I was just as alarmed and confused as you are. He came in the back door singing his own rendition of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and if I hadn’t just had a conversation with him, I would have accused him of being drunk. I said, “keep it down, please, the kids are asleep!” And he said, “I’m just getting so excited for Christmas already!”
We’re both excited. Carter is excited, too. We got a “Little People” nativity set from Granny J and put it out the other day. It’s really cute, when you push on the angel sitting atop the stable, “Away in a Manger” plays and the star lights up.
I was just interrupted and called to the kitchen to inspect the pies. And I quote, “if you are going to blog about me cookin’, you better go take pictures of my pies and put them on there, too.” So you’ll get pictures afterall.
Anyway, back to Carter. Sometimes when he sees Santa Claus, he will point and say, “Jesus.” LOL Um, no, not quite son. Though some of us would like for Him to be a big Santa in the sky, that’s really not the way it works. But he’s making the connection between Jesus and Christmas and I guess that’s what is most important.
tags: Gratitude 3 comments
Coming Home
Posted: November 6, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Home is a funny thing. For most of my life the word home conjured up images of a little three bedroom house with a tiny front porch and a rope swing hanging from a tree in the backyard. I can still imagine the feel of the brown couch, see the bricks around the fireplace and huge old tv with built in speakers on the side.
I remember playing with my very first computer hooked up to that same tv screen – a TI99 4A. I played Q-Bert on it and thought I was a big time programmer when I learned to make the computer keep repeating whatever sentence I typed over and over again on the screen. Hours were spent playing Pac-Man on the Atari and we had a yellow bean bag that we used to jump on and bouce each other off of.
Home was a kitchen with a built in snack bar where we all usually sat for dinner. It was a bathroom closet with a box filled with “community socks” and a little ceramic toilet lid with the saying, “We aim to please; you aim too, please.”
When I was about 17, we moved out of that house and my mom married my step-dad. Although I was very comfortable in that house it was always the little three bedroom that represented home to me.
When I went away to college the word “home” started to change a little. Home still made me think of the little house but mainly I remembered the church I grew up in. Every time I went back to service in that church it felt like coming home. No matter how many times I went away, or how long I stayed away, many of the faces in that church stayed the same.
I like to think of them as “Heroes of the Faith”. People I watched in church as I grew up. People who taught me in Sunday School or GA’s. Men and women, moms and dads of friends and people who just showed up week after week.
I’ll always remember a man I’ll call Mr. G. I didn’t know him all that well, but his wife had taught me in Sunday School. He looked like a grandpa, gray hair, soft face and big belly laugh. I remember that he loved Jesus. I’ll never forget the Sunday he sat behind me in church and he sang louder and prouder than anyone around us. I don’t remember the exact hymn we were singing, but he was praising God with all his heart. That particular morning stands out to me because at the time Mr. G was dying. He had terminal cancer and wouldn’t be on earth much longer.
It’s Mr. G and many others like him I remember seeing week after week in church. Not only people who talked about God’s word, but people who lived it.
I visited that church (in a new location) this weekend at my sister’s. It’s changed so much that it no longer feels like home. It hasn’t for a long time. I know the church changed and I know I changed; I’m not sure who changed more. I don’t see many of the same faces I have such fond memories of, but one face and hairstyle hasn’t changed in 20 years. I won’t name names but it made me laugh to see her looking so much like she did so many years ago.
So as I sat there and listened with one ear to the sermon, I mentally wrote this post. When I think of home now, I think of our current church and the people there. I think of the faces who will repsent “heroes of the faith” to our children and I wonder how those faces will change through the years.
I wish I could go back to the same building and the same people who made up the church I started in. Within the walls where I first learned to trust in Jesus. I wish I could sit on those altar steps one more time or pass notes to my friends during the sermon. I wish some things would always stay the same. I’d like for my hometown to not change so much while I’m away;Â those roots are precious.
I’m so thankful that God doesn’t change. NO matter how much I will, He won’t. He is always the same – today, tomorrow and yesterday.
tags: God's Provision, Gratitude 2 comments
5:17am
Posted: August 4, 2006 at 4:41 am
It is officially 5:17am and I have been awake for almost an hour. Kids up? no. Early appointment? no. INSANE? yes. Definitely yes.
I just can’t sleep. I had trouble going to sleep last night and couldn’t get back to sleep after 4:30 this morning so I finally decided to quit fighting it and just drag my butt out of bed. Afterall, it gives me some peace and quiet before the little ones wake up.
Here’s hoping I get to nap this afternoon – this will be certainly be a day where they sleep on alternating schedules, right? Murphy’s law.
Gracey has her 6 month check up and shots later this morning and I’m not looking forward to it. Poor Carter has to come with us because none of my sitters are available and I’m going to have to convince him that the doctor is there to see Gracey and not him. He usually does fine until the doctor walks into the room – then, he jumps in my lap and starts saying, “bye bye” to the doctor and gets a little fussy. HOpefully he’ll figure out that he’s “safe” for today!
Yesterday, Carter and I went swimming. He absolutely LOVES to swim and he’s been doing so well all summer. I started him with one of those swimsuits with a built in life jacket and he could be completely still in the water without going under. Once he got used to that, I downgraded to another suit with less flotation support and he had to work just a little bit harder, but still his face was kept completely out of the water with just the suit. The best thing about this particular suit is that it has different chambers of air so I can slowly reduce the support he has without him even realizing it. Yesterday, I took out the middle compartment in both the front and the back and he was working hard to keep his face out of the water – but he did it! He swam around very well in it and even though I noticed he was breathing a little harder from the extra work, he swam for about an hour. Hopefully before the summer is out he will be able to dog paddle without any support.
Carter loves to be thrown up in the air in the pool and when he comes up laughing he says, “Yay, Carter!” and tries to clap his hands in the water. I love that he cheers for himself and I hope it is something he is always able to do. I spend a good part of my day telling him what a great job he does with something and he has learned to tell himself that, too!
As much as I enjoy encouraging Carter and praising him for good behavior, trying something new, etc…. I can’t help but wonder if that is what God does with us. When He sees me doing something good, I wonder if He is sayaing, “YAY Queenbee!” with a big smile on His beautiful face? And what about me praising Him? Do I do that often enough? When was the last time you said, “yay, God!” Do we praise Him for everything or just for the big things in our lives? I want to live a life of praise – I want my children to learn to thank God in ALL things, good or bad. He is so worthy of our praise.
Ps 66:1-20
All together now — applause for God!
2 Sing songs to the tune of his glory,
set glory to the rhythms of his praise.
3 Say of God, “We’ve never seen anything like him!”
When your enemies see you in action,
they slink off like scolded dogs.
4 The whole earth falls to its knees —
it worships you, sings to you,
can’t stop enjoying your name and fame.
5 Take a good look at God’s wonders —
they’ll take your breath away.
6 He converted sea to dry land;
travelers crossed the river on foot.
Now isn’t that cause for a song?
7 Ever sovereign in his high tower, he keeps
his eye on the godless nations.
Rebels don’t dare
raise a finger against him.
8 Bless our God, O peoples!
Give him a thunderous welcome!
9 Didn’t he set us on the road to life?
Didn’t he keep us out of the ditch?
13 I’m bringing my prizes and presents to your house.
I’m doing what I said I’d do,
14 What I solemnly swore I’d do
that day when I was in so much trouble:
15 The choicest cuts of meat
for the sacrificial meal;
Even the fragrance
of roasted lamb is like a meal!
Or make it an ox
garnished with goat meat!
16 All believers, come here and listen,
let me tell you what God did for me.
17 I called out to him with my mouth,
my tongue shaped the sounds of music.
18 If I had been cozy with evil,
the Lord would never have listened.
19 But he most surely did listen,
he came on the double when he heard my prayer.
20 Blessed be God: he didn’t turn a deaf ear,
he stayed with me, loyal in his love.
(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)