It's hard to believe that tomorrow will bring us into the last month of 2013! This year has gone by so fast! This past month was pretty quiet adoption-wise, so this update will be short-ish. :)
The past 2 years now for the month of November, I've tried to do "30-days of thanks" on Facebook. I know that some people think it's cheesy, but for me, I love how it makes me more conscious of all the many, many things I have to be thankful for. And with the adoption news being next to nothing for close to a month, sharing something(s) that I'm thankful for daily was great for helping keep a right perspective. It's easy, at least in my case, sometimes to get tunnel vision with adoption, and keeping an attitude of thankfulness, helped to widen my vision. :)
November 1st- 6 months ago we contracted with our agency.
November 13th- Go to the clinic to pick-up my ear tube letter. Everything looked great, except it was not on clinic letterhead. It needs to be re-done on clinic letterhead, so I'm waiting for a copy of my letter on clinic letterhead.
November 19th- Decide to email our social worker to find out if there's any news. Hear back that she's just waiting on background checks to come in, the new ones we just did in October and my step-mom-in-laws.
E and I call her to find out if she thinks it'd be a good idea to call our local sheriff's department to see if we can speed things up, she says, yes.
I call our sheriff's department and get transferred to the lady who is doing the background checks. I asked her if she could give me any kind of timeline as to how soon she might be able to get to them. She looks through her pile and ours were the 2nd stack of papers on her pile. She told me that she'd have them finished in the next 15 min. and would email the results to our social worker as soon as she finished (Yay!!).
I also get an email from the woman who takes care of a lot of the background check stuff at the agency our social worker, works at, saying she had just received the final bit of information on my step-mom-in-law (out-of-state background check), and everything is clear and good to go. She'll get the information to our social worker the next day.
November 21st- We get an email from our social worker saying she had just sent an updated copy of our home study to our adoption agency to look over.
I emailed the lady who reads over all the home studies for China at our agency asking her if she could give me an idea of how long it might take before we'd hear anything. She emailed me back within 10 minutes letting me know that she was actually reading through our home study when my email came through, and she'd be finished in the next 30 min. and would let me know. Within the hour she let me know our agency had officially approved our home study and that she'd given our social worker the go-ahead to finalize our home study (Hooray!).
An hour or so later we got an email from our social worker saying she'd gotten approval from our agency. She sent our home study to her supervisor for approval and once her supervisor approves it, she'll send the home study to the state for approval. Once the state approves things we'll get the hard copy of our home study.
The 21st was very exciting for us! Our home study is so close to being finished now. After almost a month of hearing nothing, we finally received news, exciting news! The most time consuming portion of our dossier is so close to being complete. I'm not sure when we'll be holding the hard copies in our hands, but we're hoping it's really, really soon! Up next (after we get our hard copies) we apply for Immigration Approval, which unfortunately can take 2-3 months to get. So the sooner we get our hard copies the better. :)
Heading into December as much as I wish we were further along in the process, I am thankful for how God is teaching us through all of this. I'm thankful that even on the hardest days, He's teaching me to be thankful even when there's pain. If you think of us please pray for us, we still have a long way to go, and while we would like for things to be moving along quicker, we also don't want to get a head of God's timing. Pray for patience for us, and that we continue to trust Him no matter what things may look like from day to day.
If you have been praying, thank you! Thank you so much!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Saturday, November 30, 2013
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Quiet-ish Moments
I'm not exactly sure what direction this post is going to take. Over the past week or 2 I've had 2-4 different ideas for blog topics swimming around my head. I'd think of a topic and somehow as I began writing the post in my head it would take a turn and I'd decide that I should maybe make the one topic into 2 topics, otherwise the post would get too long or maybe too confusing. However, I'm pretty sure this post won't have much to do with my latest ideas. :)
When I type out my monthly updates or any other blog post I try and wait until I have some down time, alone time, quiet time...basically a time when I'll be least likely to be interrupted. With 5 kiddos, that doesn't happen very often. I should rephrase that, ideal time for me to blog would be early in the morning or at night when the kids are in bed, but those are typically not my best intelligible sentence making times of the day. :) And I'm writing this when I probably should be trying to sleep, but it so rarely happens that I'm the last or only one up at night these days, so you've been warned. If there are parts of this that make no sense, you know why.
This post I think is mainly for me. A way to write out how I'm feeling, so I can look back and remember a year from now where I was at, what I was thinking.
The past couple weeks have been not the easiest parenting-wise. Dealing with attitude issues, addressing school related issues (i.e. homework not always complete, not reading as much as one should be), bathroom issues, and other normal child-related issues. Add into the mix all of us getting some form of sickness (colds, sinus infections, ear infections, strep throat) all within a 2 week period and there's plenty of days I'm left feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.
My 2 youngest kids are a small 2-man wrecking crew. They can wreak havoc in any room in a matter of minutes. If they're out of eyeshot for too long, it usually doesn't end well. And lately we've been dealing with some newer ways they've come up with to make life interesting. For example, the 3 year-old is newly potty trained (Yay!). Monday, we were getting ready to leave to pick the older kids up from school and he decides that it'd be fun to take a cape that he has on a pair of pajamas and use that instead of going to the bathroom. So minutes before we need to leave, I've got a wet mess to clean-up. Then once we were at school I was meeting with one of my older boys teachers to finish up our conference from parent/teacher conferences and the 3 year-old had an accident in the classroom on the carpet. Accidents happen, I just felt bad it happened on the carpet, but was very thankful I had an extra set of clothes along.
Later that night when I was getting ready for bed, I had be out food shopping so my husband got the kids to bed. We usually snuggle our little ones in our bed before they fall asleep. Well, apparently at one point the 3 year-old, although we don't know for sure if it was him or his sister or maybe both together, were left alone in our room for a time. I was going to climb into bed and noticed white streaks all over the sheets. Thankfully my small children are not good at covering their tracks so I figured out right away after seeing my deodorant laying on the bed that he/she/they decided to deodorize our sheets...yeah. After the earlier events of the day this was par for the course, and I was too tired to care, so I flipped my pillow over to the untouched side and went to bed figuring there were worse things I could wake-up smelling like. :)
Why am writing all this out? Well, I'm slowing coming to a realization.
Often times when I'm having days like this, and we end out in public somewhere, well really many times when I'm out somewhere with my kids, I get the comment a lot, "wow, you've got your hands full." And I know that most of the time it's because people may not know what to say to me because I have 5 kids and not a lot of families have that many kids these days. For the most part the comment usually doesn't bother me. I get it, I have a lot of kids, and when someone said it to me yesterday, I literally had my hands full (my purse, a bag with books in it, a coat or 2, and a child) but lately it's been harder to hear that.
I take things very personally when it comes to my family. By that I mean, when I see failures in an area, I'm really good at blaming myself. I mean logically if my child fails his social studies test it's my fault. When my son forgets his lunch and adamantly tells the office ladies he cannot get hot lunch and when the school calls (about the missing lunch) and finds out our phone number changed and I forgot to let them know so they had to call my cell phone, in my mind the school thinks I'm a delinquent parent. Or when my child pees on his pajama cape, clearly I'm doing something wrong. I know these seem extreme and as I'm writing them now, I'm finding more humor in them then I originally did. But that's how I roll, instead of remembering in the first place that there are failures in life, because I remember most things for 5 sometimes 6 people other then myself, I'm bound to forget things now and then, and well, life is messy, and when your potty training your kiddo life can get even messier for a while, I blame myself.
On these days that are harder then normal, more emotionally draining then normal, especially when there's many consecutive days like that, it's so easy for me to question our choosing to adopt. So easy. And I've had a lot of days like that recently. Wondering how it's all going to work. Realizing we truly are crazy. :)
And it's days like that I'm so thankful that God made it clear that our adopting is part of His plan for our family. He has sent us on an adventure that's going to take us literally to the other side of the world.
I know that I'll have many more days to come where I wonder why God has led us to adopt, why He would think to entrust us with another child? It leaves me speechless sometimes...
The past couple weeks have been harder, and sickness has played a part, but for the past 5 days in the midst of all the extra craziness and questioning how we're going to do this all with 6 little people, my heart has been aching. My heart has been hurting, my heart is missing her, my arms are aching to hold her, my eyes are wishing we had a picture, my mother's heart is aching for my daughter.
I'm thankful for that ache. It brings me to tears.
But it reminds me to pray. It reminds me to trust. It reminds me to savor the moments we have as a family of 7. It reminds me of all God has done in my heart so far.
I'm realizing that our hands will be much more full, our life is going to be even more crazy, and the day-to-day is going to get harder for a while, but she is worth it.
When I type out my monthly updates or any other blog post I try and wait until I have some down time, alone time, quiet time...basically a time when I'll be least likely to be interrupted. With 5 kiddos, that doesn't happen very often. I should rephrase that, ideal time for me to blog would be early in the morning or at night when the kids are in bed, but those are typically not my best intelligible sentence making times of the day. :) And I'm writing this when I probably should be trying to sleep, but it so rarely happens that I'm the last or only one up at night these days, so you've been warned. If there are parts of this that make no sense, you know why.
This post I think is mainly for me. A way to write out how I'm feeling, so I can look back and remember a year from now where I was at, what I was thinking.
The past couple weeks have been not the easiest parenting-wise. Dealing with attitude issues, addressing school related issues (i.e. homework not always complete, not reading as much as one should be), bathroom issues, and other normal child-related issues. Add into the mix all of us getting some form of sickness (colds, sinus infections, ear infections, strep throat) all within a 2 week period and there's plenty of days I'm left feeling physically and emotionally exhausted.
My 2 youngest kids are a small 2-man wrecking crew. They can wreak havoc in any room in a matter of minutes. If they're out of eyeshot for too long, it usually doesn't end well. And lately we've been dealing with some newer ways they've come up with to make life interesting. For example, the 3 year-old is newly potty trained (Yay!). Monday, we were getting ready to leave to pick the older kids up from school and he decides that it'd be fun to take a cape that he has on a pair of pajamas and use that instead of going to the bathroom. So minutes before we need to leave, I've got a wet mess to clean-up. Then once we were at school I was meeting with one of my older boys teachers to finish up our conference from parent/teacher conferences and the 3 year-old had an accident in the classroom on the carpet. Accidents happen, I just felt bad it happened on the carpet, but was very thankful I had an extra set of clothes along.
Later that night when I was getting ready for bed, I had be out food shopping so my husband got the kids to bed. We usually snuggle our little ones in our bed before they fall asleep. Well, apparently at one point the 3 year-old, although we don't know for sure if it was him or his sister or maybe both together, were left alone in our room for a time. I was going to climb into bed and noticed white streaks all over the sheets. Thankfully my small children are not good at covering their tracks so I figured out right away after seeing my deodorant laying on the bed that he/she/they decided to deodorize our sheets...yeah. After the earlier events of the day this was par for the course, and I was too tired to care, so I flipped my pillow over to the untouched side and went to bed figuring there were worse things I could wake-up smelling like. :)
Why am writing all this out? Well, I'm slowing coming to a realization.
Often times when I'm having days like this, and we end out in public somewhere, well really many times when I'm out somewhere with my kids, I get the comment a lot, "wow, you've got your hands full." And I know that most of the time it's because people may not know what to say to me because I have 5 kids and not a lot of families have that many kids these days. For the most part the comment usually doesn't bother me. I get it, I have a lot of kids, and when someone said it to me yesterday, I literally had my hands full (my purse, a bag with books in it, a coat or 2, and a child) but lately it's been harder to hear that.
I take things very personally when it comes to my family. By that I mean, when I see failures in an area, I'm really good at blaming myself. I mean logically if my child fails his social studies test it's my fault. When my son forgets his lunch and adamantly tells the office ladies he cannot get hot lunch and when the school calls (about the missing lunch) and finds out our phone number changed and I forgot to let them know so they had to call my cell phone, in my mind the school thinks I'm a delinquent parent. Or when my child pees on his pajama cape, clearly I'm doing something wrong. I know these seem extreme and as I'm writing them now, I'm finding more humor in them then I originally did. But that's how I roll, instead of remembering in the first place that there are failures in life, because I remember most things for 5 sometimes 6 people other then myself, I'm bound to forget things now and then, and well, life is messy, and when your potty training your kiddo life can get even messier for a while, I blame myself.
On these days that are harder then normal, more emotionally draining then normal, especially when there's many consecutive days like that, it's so easy for me to question our choosing to adopt. So easy. And I've had a lot of days like that recently. Wondering how it's all going to work. Realizing we truly are crazy. :)
And it's days like that I'm so thankful that God made it clear that our adopting is part of His plan for our family. He has sent us on an adventure that's going to take us literally to the other side of the world.
I know that I'll have many more days to come where I wonder why God has led us to adopt, why He would think to entrust us with another child? It leaves me speechless sometimes...
The past couple weeks have been harder, and sickness has played a part, but for the past 5 days in the midst of all the extra craziness and questioning how we're going to do this all with 6 little people, my heart has been aching. My heart has been hurting, my heart is missing her, my arms are aching to hold her, my eyes are wishing we had a picture, my mother's heart is aching for my daughter.
I'm thankful for that ache. It brings me to tears.
But it reminds me to pray. It reminds me to trust. It reminds me to savor the moments we have as a family of 7. It reminds me of all God has done in my heart so far.
I'm realizing that our hands will be much more full, our life is going to be even more crazy, and the day-to-day is going to get harder for a while, but she is worth it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)