As The World Turns

Summer is beginning to feel like it is flying by!  (It's about darn time!)  We've had a much better week this week than the previous weeks.  The girls finally had a few good days together where there was no fighting.  It's so great because they are both such awesome, neat kids and they could really have a good time together if they'd stop fighting for the role of alpha female.  They said, "It's actually more fun to play together than to fight." and I said, "Duhlallujah"-  which is a new word that I am coining that is Duh! and Hallelujah! mushed together.  All the cool kids are saying it now.     

We've been spending a lot of time outside.  We spent a day at my dad's farm running around and catching crawdads in the creek.  One might think that the easiest way to catch crawdads would be to just jump in the creek and catch them with your hands.  However, we saw MANY snakes swimming around in the water and ain't nobody got time for that.  So we tied fishing line onto sticks and baited them with bologna.  Hours of fun.  It's the little things.

You can't tell it very well from this picture, but this child has pulled out all of her eyelashes.  Sadie has  trichotillomania and during stressful times, she pulls her hair out.  It started when she was about 6 or 7.  We are hoping that the worst of this episode is behind her- but if you could pray for some calmness for my girl, this mama would REALLY appreciate it.  She is entirely too precious for words and it breaks my heart to see her have such crippling anxiety at such a young age.

On a lighter note...

She drew this picture of herself lounging on the beach in Hawaii.  She has a Shirley Temple in hand, complete with umbrella.  Can you tell we need a vacation (and drinks with umbrellas?)

Our new house is soooooo close to being finished (we are hoping to move in about 5 weeks).  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be an easy move being as how we left most of our stuff in boxes after the last move 5 months ago.  Last week, the water lines went in and I don't care how old you are, it's fun stuff to watch a backhoe dig up your front yard.  

I'm thinking that a year down the road we will look back at this time in our lives and say, "Holy crap!  You remember 2013?  The year that we moved twice AND started being foster parents?  I can't believe we made it through that." Then we'll clink our classes and vow to never take on that much at one time again. 

Our kids have all stayed about this dirty all summer.  The girls almost have dreadlocks that rival Miles'.  Just whatever.  I'm doing the best I can.  Plus, they mostly love each other and that matters more than cleanliness, right?

Soccer season just ended.  See what I mean about the dirt?  

That's Sadie in the gray shirt about to boot that ball.  She's decided she'd rather play sports that don't require running.  Perhaps table tennis or shuffleboard is going to be more her pace (she totally gets that from me)

Miles got his first every medal.  He raised his arms in the air before the game, knowing that he would get a medal at the end and shouted, "Yes!  It's my life!"  He's enthusiastic 115% of the time about everything.

We've goofed off... a lot....

We had a play date last week with my friend, Crystal, and her totally adorable 7 week old son.  Sadie was all about it and is now on her "mom, please get us a baby" campaign.  3 of my closest friends are all pregnant.  I'm not drinking the water.  I think I like my sleep too much. (I would pray about my selfishness, but I'd probably fall asleep during)

Summer swimming started.  Our two oldest and our foster daughter are all swimming on the swim team this summer and LOVING it.  Swim practice every morning really helps break up our days and gives us just enough structure every day to keep up functional.

Father's day happened.  On the morning of Father's day I found myself alone in a hotel room with my husband.  That's a whole other blog post (which will be very funny because for once, the mister made a fool of himself in public instead of me!).  The kids all made Kamron random kid crap that he loved.  Our favorite was this poster that Miles made for him.

It says: 

My dad's name is: Kamron

Dad is: 70 years old

My dad is great at: chopping wood

If you looked at my dad you might say he was: straight face

It would be cool if his name were: PacMan

Dad likes to cook: spaghetti and meatballs

When he's bored my dad likes to: sleeps and snores. I hear it from my room

My favorite thing we do together is: play and tickle monster

I love my dad because: he is so nice.

That 70 year old Paul Bunyan I married and I have laughed and laughed about that one.

Hope your summer is going well!

From The Corners Of My Heart- Foster Care Edition

I have so many thoughts about how foster care is going for our family.  None of them fit into a nice little flow, so some bullet points of the highs and lows are about as good as it's gonna get!  I always wonder if it's best to blog it out as I'm going through it or to wait until I've processed things before writing.  With Miles' adoption, I wrote it as I was going through it and personally, there was a lot of healing that came with being that vulnerable.  So vulnerable and imperfect, it is.

*  I hate to say, that up until this point, I didn't realize just how much progress Miles had made.  When we were in the throws of transitioning him into our home, it was horrible.  And then it wasn't horrible anymore.  But I didn't realize that over the years he has still steadily become more and more secure.  Having a new guest in our home has shown me just how cemented in Miles is.  I should have known this already, but having another child in our home has made it glaringly clear just how grafted in Miles is in every sense of the word.  It's all kinds of awesome to have that kind of revelation.  It gives me a new appreciation for just how hard he worked (and we ALL worked) to become a family.

*  There are so many things that are really different this time around.  When Miles came into our home, all of his frustration and confusion came out in behaviors that were targeted at me.  I'm a grown up and even though I didn't always handle it well, I did handle it.  With this addition, I feel like my kids are bearing 95% of the brunt of the fallout.  This is infinitely harder to watch it unfold this way that to take it all on myself.  I saw just how great our adoption was for our other kids- the worldview that it gave them, the compassion that it taught them- even when the transition was tough.  It may be that we are still in the thick of transition now, but I have yet to see any benefits for our kids.  And that is a hard pill to swallow.  I wish that I could say that we are all learning humility and selflessness, but those lessons have yet to come.  It may be the difference in the permanence of adoption versus the temporary state of foster care or the difference in ages- I don't know.  It's just very, very different for our kids.  And mostly in a negative way.  It brings me a lot of guilt and a lot of anxiety and worry that I've asked my kids to take this on.  They still overwhelmingly say that even when this placement is over that they want to continue to be a foster family- but they want a 6 year old girl with brown skin from Africa.  They don't understand that foster care doesn't work that way and I think that they are still grieving our failed adoption.

*  If I had all of this to do over again, I would do ONE MAJOR thing very, very different.   I feel like I did not do a good job of preparing my kids for why foster kids come into state care.  We told our kids that sometimes kids would be staying with us for a while while their mommies and daddies were working on getting skills to be better parents.  In other words, I gave them a Sunday school type answer instead of giving them the truth about what lands kids in foster care.  On the third night of our foster blessing being in our home, she divulged to our oldest the things that brought her to our home.  First, I panicked.  Then I cried myself to sleep at the loss of innocence for both of the girls.  Then I kept my Sadie out of school the next morning, took her out to breakfast and burst her perfect world bubble.  I gave her the nitty gritty of all of the awful things that adults can do to kids.  I tried to think of every situation that would ever put a kid in foster care and laid it all out for her.  I wish that she'd heard it all from me to begin with- I think it would have been less confusing for her.  So if I had it to do over, I'd have those conversations in advance instead of letting her hear it from the child in our home.  Our boys, at 6 and 4 were still okay with our generic answers, but for our oldest, there were just things that she needed to know the truth about.  As moms, I think that we all want to protect our kids- so explaining all the evil that exists and lifting that veil of innocence for my child was one of the hardest things I've ever done as a parent.

*  I dressed up our foster daughter in a beautiful dress and fixed her hair.  I took her to the gorgeous field beside our house with my fancy pants camera and we did a full scale photo shoot.  As she twirled around in her dress and smiled and posed, it hit me like a ton of bricks just how much every little girl deserves to be adored and doted on and made to feel like a beautiful princess.  We printed out all the pictures and made them into albums for her mom and dad.  She can't wait to give them to them and it was a great way to help her foster her relationship with her birth parents.

*  One thing about all of this that I will probably never feel comfortable with is the affection part.  Kids need affection!  If we sit down anywhere in our house, the kids crawl up on our laps.  I love it.  However, when I see our foster daughter crawl up on my husband's lap, it makes us both feel weird.  We absolutely know that she needs the same affection as the other kids.  There is nothing icky about it. But as a mom, I think that if my 9 year old daughter were in someone else's home, I would not want her sitting on another man's lap.  I know that it's because I'm thinking as an adult here and not as a child- but it just makes me uncomfortable and reminds me how vulnerable we are as foster parents.  There is such a strange balance of wanting to give kids what they need (including appropriate physical touch) and remembering that they aren't actually your child to give that to.  I always go back to the same example in my mind when I try to make sense of all of it- When Sadie was in kindergarten her bus was in a minor accident that left the back window of the bus shattered.  It absolutely scared her to death and she was crying a lot.  Her big, burly, bus driver held her tight and kissed her on the head.  Normally- not cool.  But in this instance, it was exactly what my scared daughter needed and I thanked that bus driver a million times over for taking care of my daughter so tenderly at a time when I couldn't be there.  I can only hope that I can get over my discomfort at providing what this child needs.

*  She also asked if Kamron and I were "for real married" or "just common law married".  Cause all 8 year olds know about common law, right?  Bless it.

*  Last week, we decided that it was best to move all of "our" kids into one bedroom together (for various reasons).  This is working out really well and has helped to alleviate some of the sibling rivalry issues that we were having.  However, in this rental, our three kid's bedroom feels a little like an orphanage.  I sent my friend this picture and her response was, "Should we send twin sheets or mosquito nets."

*  We have awesome support.  I have so many fostering friends that have been there to offer advice.  But even when you are really supported, there are days when it totally sucks. I'd be lying if I said there weren't times when I've wanted to throw in the towel. One night I had a complete breakdown- complete with tears. Usually my medication makes tears damn near impossible. (thank you God for meds)  As an aside, one time I asked one of my friends who was getting ready to take her family out on the mission field how in the world she was making it through the day.  Her response?  "Jesus and Zoloft".  It's my favorite answer now when people ask me how we do it.  Anyway- I was crying and telling my husband that I just thought that we'd "be better at this".  He said, "What do you mean."  I explained to him that I just thought that I'd enjoy fostering more than I do.  He said, "Oh baby.  You mean you thought this was supposed to be FUN?"  And then he looked at me like I had 40 heads.  Expectations, people.  My expectations of how things are supposed to go wreck me every single time.  One day I will learn to set the bar so low that I will live in a state of always being pleasantly surprised.  

* We are going on vacation in a few weeks to Hawaii.  It is a trip that Kamron earned through work and we had to book it almost 9 months ago.  It was not feasible to add a ticket at this juncture and I am having major guilt about taking a vacation without our foster daughter.  We have lined up a super fun week for her while we are gone and she will get to experience her own kind of vacation at a camp designed just for foster kids.  But still- there is major guilt over it.  And I feel like we can't talk to our kids about our upcoming trip and get super excited like we'd normally do before a vacation because I don't want to hurt her feelings- even though she's totally pumped about going to camp.  These are the things they don't teach you how to deal with during the classes.  I also feel guilt that I am really looking forward to spending the week with just the three kids.  I feel like we really need it.  I know that probably makes me an awful person, but just whatever.

*  It is so cool to give a child experiences that they've never had- doing organized sports and making new friends at church/the neighborhood/the pool are such a joy to watch.  We got to take her to the movies and she had never been before- and fishing, and wading in the creek, and four wheeling and late night bonfires in the yard.  Watching those new experiences and giving a bigger world view to a kid are so freaking much fun.  It reminds me of why this is so worthwhile.  And while I wouldn't consider the overall experience "fun" - it is rewarding beyond belief to know that you are impacting someone else's life in what is hopefully a positive way.

*  Having someone else in your home for an extended period of time has made me wonder one major thing- what would my kids say about our family? (This girl deemed it super important that we know that when her aunt toots that she runs away from it)  And what would my kids act like in another family? It's a strange transference of skills when you mix people like that.  Our foster daughter has musical armpit talent that could probably win her some sort of award on America's Got Talent.  She's tried to teach the other kids, but they just can't catch on.  But my kids have taught her all the words to Crazy Train.  Armpit farts and Ozzy.  It's like the mecca of kid skills.  Together, these four will change the world with their critical knowledge.  God help 'em.

Throw Back

Being the slacker laid back mom that I am, when I put new pictures in a frame, I leave the old ones behind the new picture.  When I take the backs off the frames, sometimes 10 photos fall out on top of me.  It's always like a stroll down memory lane.  I had a couple of frames that I wrapped up years ago and last night I pulled them out.  When I opened the backs two pictures fell out and nostalgia just rushed over me.

It's weird how time and perspective change so much.  The first one is of Sadie and Noah when Noah was about 18 months old.  I thought life with two kids was soooooo hard.  Now, when I look at that photo it seems like the golden age.  These two have always had such a loving bond.  It just makes me smile to watch them together.  This picture was taken on a beach in Florida and that vacation will always be one of my favorites that we've ever taken.

And then there is this one of the first Easter after Miles came home.  He had only been with us for about 6 weeks when this picture was taken.  He looks so tiny and his little eyes were so droopy (pre-eye surgery).  Sadie has always thought that she was the little mama of Miles and her hands on his shoulders just seem so fitting of the way that she steers him through life. And then there's Noah- just off to the side and giggling like Noah always is.

I don't do it very often, but sometimes it's so fun to look back and see how such key elements of their personalities were present from the very start. And crazy to watch how they grow and change so quickly.  Sometimes it just feels like it just rushes by...

Still entirely too cute...

And today feeling especially precious to me.

Defending our choices

A few weeks ago someone asked me why I'd turned my back on the Congo by choosing to foster in the US.  First of all, that took me completely by surprise.  And second of all, WHAT?  The funny thing is that when we were adopting from the Congo, this question was always asked to us in the reverse form. I think the old adage that you can't win no matter what you do applies here. (Except that I do feel like I won, so maybe just scratch that.)

There are very few things that one must defend harder than their family planning choices- especially in adoption.  Why is this?

This person felt that by us going the route of domestic foster care, that we were "slapping Congo in the face". (Nothing could be further from the truth)  I get the occasional hate email (yay) and usually let it go right on by me.  But this statement just cut me right to my core.  I wanted to explain to this person that by not currently adopting from the Congo, we were actually able to help more kids there.  I truly didn't think this person would get it though. It hasn't been only this person.  Many, many people asked us why we didn't go back to Congo to expand our family.  They assume that it's something scandalous or that I'm trying to "make a statement".  Dude- my kids aren't statements!  The basic story is that for a time such as this, Congo didn't feel right to me.  That in no way means that I've turned my back or that I don't advocate like crazy for the kids there.  So I just want to take a minute to share my heart about DRC.

I love the Congo.  I think the people there are amazing.  My heart soars when I hear beautiful stories come out on the DRC.  And my heart breaks at the grossly under-reported tragedies that occur there in rapid fire.

I love adoption.  I think that for the children who have no other options, that this is such a wonderful way to build a family.  I've read so many great posts lately on adoption ethics.  I'm glad that this is being talked about more in the mainstream.  I think that there are a lot of great conversations happening.  That being said, the climate of adoption in the Congo is a lot different now than it was when we began the adoption process for Miles almost 4 years ago.  Then, there were a handful of us going through the process (I think the online groups I belonged to then had maybe 25 families in them).  There were even fewer organizations facilitating adoptions from there.

Before I knew it, I was a part of online groups with hundreds of families in process and messages that said things like, "Our agency matched us with a pregnant mother who is set to deliver in a few weeks" and "is $2000 a reasonable fee to expedite an exit letter?" and "my agency won't give us an account of where our money went- what should we do?"  Once I even got an email after I wrote a post breaking down the cost of Congolese adoptions that said, "Our agency said that you are a liar and that it really does cost $45,000 to adopt a baby.  Are you lying?"

The climate shift wasn't gradual, it was sudden.  Very sudden.  Booms like this scare me and parents who have the best of intentions find themselves smack in the middle of a ring of corruption so thick that they can no longer see. I was worried that I would be one of them because I am emotionally charged and trusting by nature.  Hear me on this: I will always think that children in the Congo deserve families.  I still think that adoption for many children in Congo is the only way that this will be achieved.  I applaud the families who are willing to ask the hard questions and wade in murky water and make a big stink to make sure that the children who are being referred truly are orphaned and take on a Congolese adoption in these uncertain times.  But for my family- this wasn't the right thing.  I just didn't have the time to dedicate to making sure that everything was done properly.  So instead of signing up and hoping for the best, we chose not to sign up.  I will never be one of the those people who gets her child home and then tells other people they shouldn't do it.  I think that adoption in DRC is still necessary.  I just hope and pray that the people signing up understand the current pitfalls.  I wasn't up for it- but I'm glad there are people who are and who are fighting for change and an end to secrecy and corruption.

It was such a difficult decision for me.  For two years we investigated the orphan status of a little girl I met in the Congo and that investigation ended in a way that did not lead her into our family.  Twice we've committed to adopt an older child from a disrupted Congolese adoption and both times the family has changed their minds (how many times your heart can break over the same child you think is coming to live with you is yet to be determined).  When I put forth a vision five years into the future, I STILL see my family having another Congolese child.  But right now, the timing and the climate for me just doesn't seem right.

After much prayer and research we decided fostering made sense.  As an aside- can I just say that one of the things that really bothers me right now in all the talk about adoption is that you can only be "pro-adoption" or "pro-family reunification".  For the record, I will always be both.  I refuse to choose because I think that it's going to take both (and a whole lot of other models, too) if we want to really care for children holistically. Fostering allowed us to have more kids in our home and allowed us to use the adoption money we would have been saving to give to development projects in DRC and help other families with their adoptions.  I hate seeing comments made on blog posts about ethics about how "if everyone who wanted to adopt would invest that money into keeping kids with their families..."  Can I just say that there are SO many people I know who ARE doing this?  By the way- adopting is not charity.  It's just not.  It's a way to build a family- period.  If you want to do something "charitable"- write a freaking check.  For me, it's not comparing apples to apples.

As with all things that happen in adoption, that's just one more thing that doesn't have to be either/or.  It can be both.  Right now we are enjoying being a part of other people's villages.   Perhaps in the future, we will be ready to move forward with another adoption. (someone catch my husband, he just fainted) In the meantime, we are still committed to the kids in Congo and it broke my heart to have that called into question. (Ironically, this accusation came just one week after our raffle raised over $6000 for vulnerable kids in Congo.)

While I know that I don't have to defend our choices to anyone, I just wanted to put a few thoughts on record.  So- to sum up- it takes all of us doing something and this is just the something that we are currently choosing.  NOT to make a statement about whether kids from here or there are more worthy of a family or because we turned "anti-adoption" or whatever other reasons people have asked me about.  One thing that I've learned is that we all have ideas and paths that we take and just because we don't always agree with each path that another takes doesn't make it wrong.  I love both of the paths we've taken and the people who have been on them with us and I love how they intersect in ways that have blessed us (and challenged us) beyond our wildest imagination.

Random- ocity

Time, lately, is a weird thing.  It seems like the days are flying by and dragging all at the same time.  I decided that we could not stay cooped up at home all summer and so we are spending our days at the pool.  The kids go to swim practice (which they are all loving!) and then we eat a picnic lunch and then play at the pool for the rest of the afternoon.  I should buy stock in sunscreen.  The kids are all brown and tan and gorgeous and I'm just fried and red.  Such is life!

This boy.  Oh my heart.

*There are a few things that I've noticed while spending my days at the public pool.  First of all, there are no men at the pool in the summer.  It is full of moms who fall into two camps: the moms with perfect hair, tan, teeth, bodies and whose bikinis and cover ups actually match and their kids all have perfectly monogrammed everything then there are the moms who are more like Honey Boo Boo's family who wear see through tee's in the pool.  I'm going to start my own group for moms who are trying to kill time who have cellulite and are just praying that one of their kids doesn't start to drown so that they don't have to jump in the freezing water.

*My favorite pair of jeans wore a hole through the crotch.  I was telling my friend, Jessica, about this and she said that her jeans were starting to wear through in the crotch as well.  We are trying to figure out what is going on with our crotches that makes them melt denim.

*They started putting the deck on our new house.  We are just so excited to have a place to sit that is not covered in mud or drywall dust.

How cute is this man I married?  When we got married 10 years ago, he was all city.  In the last few months, I've seen him wield a chainsaw and an ax (which is oddly sexy).  I'm going to convert this one into a country boy, yet.  His metamorphosis is almost complete.  Or at least it's complete from the hours of 6 pm until bedtime.  The rest of the time he sits behind a desk in a suit and tie selling mutual funds and such which is not very country at all.  But he looks cute doing that, too, so it's all good.

*We are becoming experts at "kids eat free" nights around town.  The fourth kid tipped the balance in our eating out budget.  But sometimes a mom just needs a night out of the kitchen.  Tuesday was kids eat free night at one of our favorite barbecue places.  They have these giant glasses that are the equivalent of 3-4 regular sized glasses.  If I had to give them an ounce assignment, I would say they maybe hold 32 ounces.  I ordered an iced tea and it was so delicious and I was so thirsty that I sucked it down in record time before our food even arrived.  I had a second glass with our meal.  And then for some reason, I said yes when the waitress asked me if I'd like a giant tea in a to-go cup.  Miles would have called it huge-normous.  I call it a sickness.  I drank until I puked.  And then I had a good laugh and how my 21 year old self would have been so disappointed with my 32 year old self's definition of "drink til you puke" and then I puked again.  I have learned my lesson.  100 ounces of iced tea in 2 hours = very, very bad.

*Noah's bear Max has become such a staple in our home, that many times, I find Max sitting at the table eating Teddy Grahams (cannibalism) or perched in a chair watching TV.

Max came along at such a transition time for our family and I'm so grateful that Noah has him.  Granted, 6 years old is probably bordering on too old to have such a strong friendship with a stuffed animal, but whatever.  I slept with my teddy bear until my husband banned it from our marital bed, so I'm probably not a good example of age appropriateness.

* Sadie's friend came over to play yesterday.  I heard the following conversation.

Friend:  I wish I had a sister like you do.
Sadie: Well, you have a parrot.  It's pretty much the same thing.

I never had a sister so I think that I underestimated just how freaking competitive sisters are.  The other day we were talking about tornadoes.  One of them started talking about how they had to sit in the basement during a tornado warning.  Then the other said, "Oh yeah?  I saw a tornado once."  Which escalated to the other saying, "So, when I was little, a tornado picked up my bike and threw it through the roof."  I had to remind them both that neither of them have ever been in a tornado but if they would like to keep up this type of talking that I would be more than happy to pick up both of their bikes and throw them through the roof.  Mom=1 Whiny Kids=0

* Miles has a new hobby.  It's not a good one.  In fact, it's rather disturbing.  He does this all. the. time.

And that's life in a "nut" shell.  (I couldn't help myself, sorry.)

Day One Of Summer- Crash and Burn

Yesterday was our first day of summer break.  It was a complete and utter disaster.  It was the kind of day that makes one text their spouse in the middle of the day things like "One or more of these kids is not going to make it to their next birthday" and "is it in our budget to send everyone to daycare for the whole summer?"  It was the kind of day that might make a girl feel like she could rip the cork out of the wine bottle with her teeth if she had to.  (I mean, not me- a hypothetical girl, of course)

The girls are doing this thing where they are orchestrating a fight to the death to determine which one is the alpha female in the house.  I already told them that I have the crown there, but they are hell bent on figuring out who comes second.  I may or may not have instated a game today called "Hollywood Manager" where they each get to be the "manager" of the other in 30 minute increments just so that they have set times for when they can boss one another around.  I thought it was all kinds of brilliant.   So far, so good.

Another group of two has decided that it is their mission in life to get as dirty as possible every time we go out to the building site of our new house.  One of them went through four outfits yesterday which made me have to instate the rule that if you ruin it with mud, you will wear that mud all day long.  Even if you stink.  I may or may not be gunning for meanest mom in the backwoods of Kentucky.

We did the visit with the foster child's parent and all the driving and killing time that that entails.  By 4:30 when that was over, I was cooked and dubbed it "eat whatever you can find leftover in the refrigerator night."  It wasn't in the refrigerator, but when I looked at one child's dinner it was a bun, a pile of goldfish crackers and water.  Like kid prison food.

We did showers.  The place that we are renting must have the world's smallest hot water heater.  Two quick showers is all it can handle- so I scrub them down so fast and furious that I'm surprised that any of them have any skin left.

By the end of the day, we were all exhausted and some of them just crashed where ever they could find a spot.  (Have I mentioned that it is cramped in here?  Oh, only a few billion times?  Sorry. Our new house is not going to be ready soon enough.)

In the midst of winding down the most horrible, terrible, no good very bad day, I walked in on the most precious, little, peaceful, sleeping angel baby who had flaked out on the floor.

Noah and his fearless bear, Max.

It was a much needed reminder that tomorrow is another day.  We woke up today with better attitudes and a better game plan for how we would operate this summer.  I want the kids to enjoy summer and I want to enjoy them enjoying summer.  That's a lot of enjoying.  Sheesh.  I decided that summer mornings were going to have to be 2-3 cups of coffee mornings.  And after that third cup this morning (don't judge) I got on the internet and did what every good mom does- I mapped out the schedule of every church in town's vacation Bible school.  I figure that if a girl plays her cards right there's one for just about every week of summer- and kids can never get enough Jesus, kool-aid and paper plate crafts right?  Please tell me I'm not the only one...

Butterflies and Crackers

Miles is having trouble with his ears.  No matter how many sets of tubes we have surgically inserted in those ears, he still has difficulty hearing and his ears stay full of fluid.

Lately, he's been humming or singing CONSTANTLY.  We think it's a way for him to relieve some of the pressure in his ears.  At first this humming thing was really, really cute.  Kind of like when he first started singing a song that he made up about a year ago called "Jesus is alive.  Or what."  Once we'd heard the song Jesus is alive- or what for about the 3 billionth time, it started to wear on us.   When Miles finds something funny, he repeats it over and over until he runs it into the ground.  He gets this honestly.  I still only know one joke and I tell it over and over.  (I say, "It smells like updog in here." Then they say, "What's updog?"  And I say, "Not much.  What's up with you.")  You are welcome for that gem, internet.)

I digress.  Back to Miles being stuck on things until they cross right over into annoying land... Luckily, this new song he's made up does shift and change ever so slightly to break up the monotony.  But it's still starting to wear a little.  There's a song on a tv show called "I'm a little butterfly."  It has many verses, but the only line Miles can remember is "I'm a little butterfly."  So he sings that one a lot.  Except when he eats and then he substitutes the name of the food he's eating instead of butterfly.  Think:  "I'm a little goldfish" or "I'm a little teddy graham" stuck on repeat.

It's all good and fine until he eats crackers.  He's really on a jag where he wants to eat Ritz crackers and pepperonis for a snack daily- which means hearing "I'm a little cracker" over and over again between the times of 1-2pm every day.

It's just wrong on so many levels.  Brown child singing about being a cracker?  He obviously doesn't get the racial slur.  But worse than that, his speech impediment makes cracker sound like "Cwack-o" which sounds kind of like slang for "crack ho".  Isn't that just want every parent wants for their kid?

In the privacy of our kitchen, it was okay.  But yesterday, I locked my keys in the van in the parking lot of a restaurant.  They had some outside seating and it was a nice day so we sat outside and drank iced tea while we waited for the locksmith to come and rescue us.  It's a place that we go to often and many of the staff know Miles.  They kept talking to him and joking with him and we explained that we had locked our keys in the car.  The lady at the table next to us struck up a conversation and she ended up giving Miles her packet of crackers that came with her salad to nibble on while we waited.

All of the al fresco diners were serenaded with "I'm a little crack ho".  Two of the people even clapped for him.  There is just something about this kid.  He just draws people in- even when he's talking about being a promiscuous drug fiend.

Other funny kid stuff:

*  One of the kids came home with a letter informing them that they'd been selected to participate in the gifted program/ talent pool at school.  This child was absolutely convinced that they'd been invited to an exclusive swimming field trip.  How that for gifted?  They were a little disappointed that one could not swim in a talent pool.

*  "Mom.  Can I have more strawberries with sugar on them?  Only, I don't want the strawberries.  Just the sugar with a spoon."

*   "Tell me the truth.  Am I your favorite kid?  I promise I won't tell the other ones unless I get really mad at them. Then I might tell them." -Noah

*  From a man walking into the doctor's office at the same time as me with all the kids in tow  "I'd open the door for you, but I better go in first or you'll take up all the chairs in the waiting room.  How many kids is that?" 

*  Me:  It might be time to start wearing deodorant.

    Kid: (excitedly)  Okay.  That's the section in the body book right before getting boobs!

Not funny- but a totally proud mom moment:

Love.

How I See It

I have to confess, I'm not really sure how to operate in this space anymore.  If you read back over the last almost four years of writings that take up room here on this page, we've been an open book.  I've shared the deepest parts of my heart and my family.  It's been one of the greatest joys of my life to connect with people in this way.  There has been such healing and redemption and fun in putting my life here.  And now that we are foster parents, there are so many rules about what we can and can't share.  In many ways, that has crippled me because I am a sharer.  My husband would say that I'm an oversharer. Whatever.

But more than that, it just makes me fear that my corner of the Internet will now become somehow less authentic.  Less like our real lives.  More canned.  Less truth.  Kind of like how I felt when I realized that parts of Teen Mom are scripted.  (Just for the record, that was devastating to me, y'all.)

And so I've struggled with what this will become- when so much of our lives will have to be hidden.  I'm still figuring it out.  The story is still being written.  It's molding and changing and in so many ways, the way that this space is having to change is representative of the ways that our lives are changing, too.

The stress and insanity that comes with a new foster placement is dying down.  All of those initial appointments are over.  Parents have been met, workers have been established.  Initial fears have died down.  New sibling rivalries are born and die in rapid fire cycles and the children are beginning to operate like brothers and sisters instead of strangers or versions of "the old kids" and "the new kid". Life begins again.  Different life.  Life where another family's story and our family's story collide and mingle and twist and turn and we all try to turn this into something beautiful.  We try to write a new story that will be different for everyone involved.  We are different- and no matter how long this placement lasts, I can guarantee you, we will never be the same.

For us, we went into this hoping not just to take on another child, but to take on another family.  Not to step in and be saviors, but to walk along side.  To carry one another's burdens and listen when appropriate, to learn when appropriate and to act when appropriate.  I can not tell you what a great joy it is to watch healing take place in the life of another family.  I can not tell you how amazing it is to have a front row seat in watching the pieces of brokenness slowly get glued back together.  It's an incredible blessing.

One time I heard Michelle Bachmann say "Every child deserves to have at least one person who is absolutely crazy about them" and then later in the same speech, "Every mom needs at least one person who is behind her who believes in her."  The magnitude of the opportunity to do both here, is not lost on me.

We see the stories on the news- the ones where people's children get taken away for leaving them in cages or for starving them or other horrific things.  It's easy to assume that all kids in foster care have parents like this.  It's easy to pass our judgement.  I find that when we pass judgement, we take the easy way out.  Passing judgement gives us a free pass to not get involved.  To keep from getting dirty in the mess of rebuilding lives.

Somewhere along the way I heard someone say, "We are all just one mistake away from having our children taken away."  At first, I wanted to brush that off.  Not me.  I would never.  That happens to other people.  The kind that are really bad.  But after I let that statement marinate for a long time, it's become a simple sentence that I come back to in life repeatedly.  It brings me back to a really unhappy time in my life.

I recently talked about what a difficult time I had after our middle child was born.  I was a 25 year old woman, at home with two children and one of them cried all day long.  It didn't take me long to get to a breaking point.  I was still at a point in my life where I felt like I had to prove something to people.  I couldn't ask for help because that would show people that I didn't have it all together.  And so I sat in my house with a screaming baby day in and day out and cried.  There were times where it became so intense that I wondered what would happen if I just got in the car and drove away.  There were times that I thought I could snap.  But I had people I could call.  My mom would come.  Or my granny would invite us over for dinner.  Or I could get in the car and drive to Target.  And I had a husband who would eventually come home from work and help take over so that I didn't go nuts.

Not everyone has those supports in place.  And even though I felt like a failure for using them (don't you love how our twenties trick us into thinking that we have to be superwomen?) they were there and were my saving grace.  They kept me from being one mistake away.

What if those supports hadn't been in place?  I think that the longer we study these kinds of things and the longer that we are entrenched in the adoption/foster community- the more that we realize how many things happen just because of the lack of supports for families.  And while I wish there were more supports available to people before something bad happens, I still find it to be such an incredible blessing to be a part of being that support now and to hopefully continue to be a support for families even after their kids leave our homes.  There are times when this seems so far off and there are times when a conversation with our birth mom has totally restored my faith in humanity.  It makes me sad that I ever judged to begin with.  If you ever want a way to keep your judgement in check- become a foster family.  We all have so much to learn- especially me.

So, forgive me if this space becomes blank sometimes- or feels like a scripted reality show sometimes.  We are figuring this out.  Oh boy- are we learning!  I am still trying to figure out what it looks like to live our lives out loud and yet be reserved.   Because while I really want to tell you the stories from the trenches of foster care, like how a certain visitor taught all of our kids about oral s.ex at the breakfast table on a random Saturday morning, perhaps I shouldn't.  Or how all the posters hanging in the office where we take our foster daughter for her supervised visits make my kids who can read say things like, "Mom?  Is my period late?  Should I call this number for help?" (For the record, no, six year old boy, your period is not late.)

For now, we'll focus on the big picture.  And the big picture?  It's pretty freaking cool.

And a partridge in a pear tree

Wow.  I've never neglected this blog quite this badly before.  Thanks for hanging with me.  Adding a fourth child has added a whole other level of chaos to our already cuh-razy lives.

I think that each mom has a threshold for how many kids she can thrive with.  I have friends whose numbers are up in the teens.  Some have a threshold of one.  Mine is evidently four.  Just as source of reference, though, when we had two kids, I said that my threshold was two.  I upped it to three when Miles came along.  You see where I'm going with this?

Anyway- things are going okay.  None of this "foster family stuff" is quite what I thought it would be.  One of our kids is really struggling- and it's not one of the ones that I anticipated having a hard time.  If I'm being honest, it pulls out every ounce of insecurity in our decision to do this.  You always hear that the risks are high- but you don't realize what those risks are going to be until you are living them.  The rewards are high, too.  There is nothing quite like attending a school play for a child who beams at you from the stands and you know that being there and helping make a costume for her has made a difference.  And there's nothing quite like taking that child to the store to buy flowers for her mom for mother's day and knowing that you get to have a front seat to watching a family heal.  That's incredible.

And so, despite the risks, we plow through- because on this risk/reward system, the rewards far outweigh.  And we get therapy.  And we talk to other people who are doing it.  And draw strength from our friends who lovingly pop by with dinner or call to give a pep talk.  I think in times like this, it's awesome to sit back to just reflect on how truly blessed we are.

Speaking of blessed... the brick is going on our new house as we speak.  We hear that from this point on, it usually takes 6-8 weeks until completion.  We built this big house to fill with the world's children.  I designed it with foster kids in mind.  And yet, I've been getting these hair brained idea about what other things we could do with extra bedrooms- since four kids is my threshold, remember?  Like host moms in crisis pregnancies.  Or serve as a temporary shelter for refugees who are new to the area. It's a wonder that my husband has not divorced me.  I'm planning on turning our new house into a Motel 6 for strangers.  He just smiles and nods and probably goes to bed praying that my meds kick in soon.  Bless it.

So, our day to day hasn't changed a lot.  We are still on the go all the time.  We've done a LOT in the last six weeks~  Here's a little pictorial rundown of the last season of our lives.

 We went to the zoo.

Miles got a new shirt.  It says, "My mom is blogging this" and I make him wear it every single day.

Noah started sitting like this regularly and doing weird stuff with his legs. We think he's made of jelly. 

We took the fam (and our bonus daughter- Sadie's BFF Alexis) to the Blue/White UK spring football game. 

 We played outside A LOT!  This teeny tiny rental condo is seriously closing in on us more and more every day.  

First outdoor movie night of the spring in small town Kentucky.

I took the big kids to see Taylor Swift.  We had an absolute blast!  Sadie said that it was the best night of her life.  And Noah sang every song at the top of his lungs.  Now they want to go on tour with Taylor.  I kinda do too.

I got to go to and speak at the Christian Alliance For Orphans annual Summit.  It's possible that I fell while walking off the stage and into the front row of people during our presentation.  It's also possible that I shrugged it off and made a joke about breaking my hip. It's also possible that these things only seem to happen to me. I got to steal a few minutes with Bishop Martin, who's church essentially emptied the foster care system in their town.  He is truly inspiring.

New kitties were born at the farm.

 We visited with Kamron's grandpa.  Noah's middle name is Keller, after Grandpa Terry.  He is such a great man, and I hope that Noah lives up to that name!

The day before my birthday, we went fishing at my Granny Sadie's.  My mom and dad both came. It's the first birthday in my adult life where I've had my brother and mom and dad all together.  It was 12 kinds of awesome.  It was one of those days where I just crawled in bed at night and couldn't believe how lucky I am.  It was also the first time our foster daughter had ever gone fishing!  She LOVED it.  I wish that I could share the picture I have of her with her first little fish on her pole.  It is priceless. 

My dad and my kiddos and my adorable nephew.

 Oh, this girl.  She's on a campaign to convince us that we need a horse.  My answer of "but we can go and enjoy Granny's horses anytime we want to" does not appease her.

Today is my mom's birthday.  I hope that I age this well!  This picture embarrasses her.  She was sitting on top of the pickup truck watching my brother clean the mess of fish we caught.  She thinks it looks like a posey posey senior picture.  I think when she's old, she'll look back and say, "Holy cow!  I was HOT when I was 51!)  Right?!  Happy birthday, Mom!

And a few others just for fun...