A mix of Easter related pics!

Easter Bunny

Playdoh afternoon

The playdoh mess was well worth it yesterday afternoon when Isla spontaneously threw her arms around my neck and said "I love you mommy. This is the BEST!"

Math time!

Night before last Isla asked for me to cuddle awhile before she went to sleep so I told her we could sing two songs. As I finished the second song, she says "if you sing ONE more, that would be THREE." So I sang another song. When I finished it, she says "if you sing TWO more songs, that would be FIVE songs."

Scary smart. 😃

Heart melt...

Isla put her toy stethoscope up to my mom's chest today and said "bump, bump...bump, bump. Jesus IS in there!"

Beautiful day, beautiful girl....

Adoption....

I haven’t written much about our quest to adopt a baby. I’m not sure why—I think maybe because it’s such an ongoing exercise in faith for me that I have to keep processing and reprocessing things in my head and in my heart. And I keep realizing different ways that God’s guiding this journey so it doesn’t feel like I know everything that has happened yet. But I read something last night that made me want to find the time and sit down and write the story thus far. SO here’s the story…

I always knew that if I ever had one child, I wanted two. Even during the times I thought I didn’t want to have children, I knew if there was one, there would be two. Then I wanted kids. And I wanted two. And Patrick and I talked about having two.

After our first miscarriage, I was walking around the lake in the county park. Walking and talking to God. Now as I read The Circle Maker I realize that that was my first prayer circle. I walked around the lake several times that day. Walking and praying. I left the park with the clear understanding that God would give us a baby. And it would happen soon.

I was elated and confident when I got pregnant again the next month. When that pregnancy also ended in miscarriage, it really shook my faith. God said soon. But what’s soon? By the time a year had passed, I’d had four miscarriages and no medical test could explain them.

I knew five was my limit but we both felt we would have a baby. I circled the lake praying in April 2008. In May 2009, we conceived Isla. I told God that if He would give us this baby I wouldn’t be greedy and ask for another.

As soon as Isla was born, Patrick went into only child mode and I tried to come to terms with raising an only child. It felt like Patrick’s desire for Isla to be an only child was stronger than my desire for two children so I tried to be okay with one. But I love my family and I’d already seen how a child makes love grow and I wanted to share that with another child.

Before Isla turned two, Patrick changed his mind about a second baby. I think he had to have that time to heal from all the losses prior to Isla. I was seeing signs everywhere about adoption and wondered if we were to go in that direction. But the pregnancy with Isla had gone so well we set aside our fears and decided to try for another biological child. After several months of negative pregnancy tests, we decided we'd try for three more months—if we hadn't conceived in three months, then we’d talk more about adoption. The third month, I was pregnant and felt totally calm about it. I didn’t even call the doctor’s office for a week after I got the positive test. I knew everything was going to be fine—that even if I miscarried, I had Patrick and Isla and I knew God would take care of us.

That first blood test was too low—I'm a veteran of hcg tests and knew the levels should have been higher a week after a positive home test. Over the next couple weeks, my lab work started suggesting the possibility of an ectopic pregnancy. That’s when I started worrying and freaking out instead of remembering that God would take care of us. I knew I never wanted to try to get pregnant again. Five miscarriages was truly all I could endure.

The day that we found out that pregnancy wasn’t going to be successful, Patrick came home with the name of the adoption agency one of his coworkers used. He started seeing signs pointing him to adoption everywhere he looked—a display at the movie theater, conversations with friends, storylines on television…. We went to an information session at a local adoption agency. Over Labor Day weekend 2012 we completed our paperwork to start on a home study to move forward on our journey.

Since we started this journey, I’ve started realizing how adoption redeems our past. If we hadn’t had the losses before Isla, we’d keep trying for another biological child. But if God hadn’t blessed us with Isla, it’s doubtful we would have pursued adoption as a way to start our family.

It took three months to complete our home study. My feelings about adoption kept growing stronger as I talked with others who had travelled this path. November is Adoption Awareness Month and our church actively supports adoption. This year they invited families with adopted children to come on stage--the stage was full. My heart almost burst with the possibility that we could be onstage with a baby next year.

The week after Adoption Sunday at church we had the final interview of our home study. The social worker asked tough "how will you handle" situational questions. When I got home I seriously questioned what we were doing. Can I handle this? What would I do if someone made rude comments to us in the grocery store? Should we be more restrictive about the type of background from which we can accept a child?

When we got to church Sunday, Pastor Ron wasn't there--he had to unexpectedly leave town after Saturday night's service. Brett was filling in.

Brett said he was using Ron's notes, but the sermon was obviously his. I'm sorry to say I don't remember what scriptures were the basis for the message but there were two things Brett said that I will never forget. First, when God calls us to do something, He's not concerned about our comfort. Then he told us about one of the college kids he knows. This student's family was in the process of adopting another special needs child and someone asked him if that wasn't hard on him and the rest of the family that his parents were adopting again. He told them “yes it is, but it's not about us.”

Sometimes God is subtle; sometimes He’s not.

There have been several times since then that I've prayed and had answers quite clearly presented to me. We decided to use the agency that Patrick's coworker used but once we started working with them, I didn't get a great feeling. After praying about it, I found an agency in Florida that felt right. It feels like a ministry instead of a business. As I prayed for guidance in choosing between the two, a negative interaction with the first agency would be immediately followed by a positive with the second. We withdrew from the first agency and signed paperwork for the second.


We don't have a baby in our arms yet. That's okay. I know God has a baby for us and has set everything in motion for us. For the most part, I remember that as we wait. Occasionally I get a bit impatient--then I go to church and my concerns are addressed in that week’s sermon. I’ve worried about whether it's pestering God to pray for something you know He is handling--that weekend our service was about persistence in prayer. As I started reading The Circle Maker I realized it's time for me to praise Him for our adoption, not just pray about it. He put the desire in our heart. We are following His guidance. We have taken the steps we need to take to make things happen. He has hand-picked the child we will be blessed with. He has the time frame determined. I must circle the matter with my prayers for the expectant mother, prayers for workers at the adoption agency, prayers for all the other parents waiting for their babies, and praise for God for setting it all in motion. Now is the time to wait, and pray, and praise.

Interestingly, a friend of mine who rarely remembers dreaming, keeps having dreams of us with little girls. But the neighbor who gave me The Circle Maker says her prayer circles around us always include a little boy. She says he’s there without her even thinking about it.

I can’t wait to tell you who is right. Meanwhile, I’m learning a lot about God while we wait.

Chief Jesus

This statue sits by a building at a major intersection in the next town over. Driving through town one day, Isla started talking about Jesus. I didn't think much about it--we talk about Jesus a lot. The next week we're driving through town again and she starts talking about Jesus and asking where he is. We stop at the intersection--"there he is!" and points to the Indian.

I told M about this---her Ivy thought the same thing when she was younger!

Um...

What happened to my paragraph spacing??? Ugh.

Hello again....

Wow--long time no post. I'm not sure what happened there. I'm not sure where time is going at all these days. Here are some tidbits.... We are very much in the middle of the "Trying Threes" but I think we're learning how to cope. The best way to deal with getting things done with the girl these days is letting her choose. Cause, you know, Mom (yes Mom, sometimes still Momma or Mommy, but frequently Mom) couldn't possibly pick out something as important as what socks to wear on her own. So she gets a choice in EVERY aspect of getting ready. I have to think ahead to give her the option of doing something now or in 5 minutes (she's big on "5 minutes" these days). This morning she was determined she was going to stay home by herself--she's still not a fan of her new classroom at school. She has fun once she gets there but she misses her friends in her 2 year old room. Every tank top is a "swim soup." I can't get over how she's memorizing so many songs and books these days. I can read Cat in the Hat and stop and she'll keep reciting the story (word for word) for 6 pages! And it doesn't take long for her to start remembering stories either--by the third time we read a book, we can leave out words and she'll fill them in or we can have her "read" it to us and she'll tell us the story. She's still a big fan of TV but she's showing more interest in other things and just as likely to want to read or play in her room instead of watching TV. But Doc McStuffins, Blues Clues, and Team Umizoomie are favorites. She's also interested in movies these days--the Toy Story movies and Tangled are favorites. I'm not sure if we're officially potty trained or not. I don't know what counts as trained--she's been going to school in big girl panties for awhile (or big boy panties if we're having a Diego or Toy Story day!)and has only had 1 accident there. She just goes when the other kids go and it's no big deal. At home, we have more issues and more accidents so we'll wear a pull-up when we go out sometimes still. Naps aren't a problem and she'll wake up dry a lot of mornings too. Last week Isla said she wants a baby. We're working on that. We found an adoption agency that I feel very comfortable with so we registered with them and we're waiting for them to have an expectant momma to match us with. This agency feels so much more comfortable than the other one we'd signed up with, and we'll be able to complete an adoption with little to no debt. Hopefully it will happen sometime this year. I feel perfectly calm and fine about things for a few weeks, then I start getting nervous that we've made wrong choices with things, worried that it's going to take a long time, etc for a few days. Overall, I know God is in charge of this journey--we can't do anything but wait and pray at this point and in His time, when He is ready, He will bring us the baby we're supposed to have. M has had dreams twice seeing me with Isla and a little blonde haired girl. I see us with a biracial or Hispanic little boy. Only He knows what the future holds. That's what's going on these days. Isla took Daddy to a dance last weekend--I'm not sure who was more excited--here are pictures.