Ordinary Time

K. turns 2 today. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he would not be home so we could celebrate with him. I even have a present for him. It actually started out as a Christmas present, but became a birthday present when we realized that he wouldn't be home yet. Surely he would be home for his birthday, right? Part of me feels such anger over this. He was matched at 7 months, he needs surgery, he has lived in an orphanage for 2 years...2 very important years in terms of development. And I just don't understand why. This past year of my life has been a spiritual struggle. I have had to repeatedly place the care of K and the timing of his adoption into God's hands. If left up to me, there would have been 7 stockings hanging on our fireplace at Christmas. It all really comes down to whether I trust God or not. Do I trust Him to do what is ultimately for everyone's best, or do I act like a spoiled child and slam the door in God's face and refuse to talk to Him becaus...

On the adoption front...we are currently waiting for just ONE piece of paper. A date on a VN government generated document was incorrect and needs to be emended. It's essentially a typo. Once we have the emended document, we will be issued a Giving and Receiving date. (That's the adoption ceremony for those not in the adoption world.) But, we have been waiting for over two weeks for this paper. Once again, I am beginning to despair that our travel call will ever come.

Barabara over at Mommy Life has asked why families choose homeschooling. Since it will be a distraction from waiting for the phone to ring, I thought I'd tell our story. A couple of months ago, when I was cleaning out my desk , I came across an old Baby Blues cartoon. I had completely forgotten about it, but looking at it immediately brought back all the emotions I had upon reading it the first time. The first panel has Wanda and baby Zoe looking out the window at the children leaving for school on the school bus. In the next few panels, Wanda tells Zoe about how she will someday leave for school and Wanda will pack her lunch, etc. Wanda starts out happy and excited about Zoe's future departure for school, but as the cartoon continues she becomes more and more upset until Darryl walks in, sees what's happening and finishes Wanda's litany of "what will happen when..." with, "And then your mother will throw herself in front bus, screaming, 'Not my baby,...

To say that life has been hectic around here the past few days would be a gross understatement. I continue to try to prepare for travel...so I'm ready when that call finally comes...and keep up with everything that needs to be done concerning the remodelling, and just manage the day-to-day running of the house, and then there are these six children who could use some attention every so often. You get the picture. I walk around with long to-do lists and most of the time I'm sure that I'm forgetting something. So it was particularly nice to have the quaterly update on K in my inbox. I'm posting a couple here so you can enjoy them as well. The children (especially the boys) have been enjoying this part of the construction. The vents for the air-conditioning(!) are being cut into the ceilings of all the rooms. This means that there are many worker-men in the house and not just in the back kitchen area. The little boys (and a bigger one) have been watching all the work...

When our older children were much younger (and there were fewer of them), we lived in a charming 1894 Victorian house. I really loved the house except for two things: it had only two bedrooms and it had a small kitchen. (Well, I thought it was small at the time...plus it wasn't ugly. If I had only know what I would be "moving up" to, I would have appreciated it more.) As we had more children and were squeezing number #4 into the same bedroom as the other three, I suffered acutely from an affliction I call 'house envy'. I always had a touch of it, but as we outgrew our home I suffered from it more and more. It is a dreadful disease that causes the sufferer to not be able to see the positives about their own living situation but to only see the faults. It is exacerbated by visiting the houses of others, especially if those houses are bigger or nicer or newly remodelled. It got so that there were certain homes which I just didn't want to go into because ...

The work on the house continues apace. The framing is done, the electrical and plumbing are roughed-in, and new windows are being installed. It sounds so easy, doesn't it, just putting in new windows? I thought it sounded easy too, until the large saws started ripping into the exterior brick on Thursday. I had not taken into account the fact that some of the windows are not exactly the same size as the old ones nor the fact that we are adding a couple of windows. To add windows one needs to make holes and to make holes requires great amounts of noise and dust. (Truly, it looked as though the fog had rolled in inside the house.) I've always known that I do better with calm and quiet, but it was not until the past two days that I fully realized how poorly I do with continuous loud noise. By Thursday night I was at the end of my tether...headache, less than no patience...you get the picture. So, by Friday, when it continued, I was seriously wondering if we should take a t...

March and June are very cake-filled months around here. March has two birthdays (soon to be three) and sometimes Easter, while June leads with four birthdays, one anniversary and father's day. (Technically, June is a month of pies because J and B much prefer pie to cake.) A. turns 10 tomorrow and M. turns 15 next week. I can't believe these two girls are that old. It seems as though they were just born. I love watching them grow and seeing the caring and capable young women they are both becoming...but I sometimes miss the babies and little girls they once were. Sometimes I feel this so intensely it's like a form of homesickness. That's why I believe every child should be equipped with a "Go Back" button. Do you remember the Chrissy doll? I'm probably showing my age here, but, she was the doll whose hair could be pulled long by pushing a button in her stomach and then made short again by turning a dial in her back. I want something like that on ...