Ordinary Time

Pumpkins were carved yesterday.  TM made a hat, complete with feather, for his. H. wasn't really sure she wanted to put her hand in the pumpkin to get out the seeds, but eventually did. She is pretty much thrilled with whatever activity we do and enjoyed the whole pumpkin-carving-thing. She has a costume for tonight, but is still a little fuzzy on what is going on. She will really like the candy. Now it's back to having fun with my parents. 

Whew! My parents are in town and we've been pretty occupied. For instance my mother and I spent most of the day Christmas shopping. Yes, it's true. She is now done. I'm not, but she is. Trust me, I'm an absolute slacker when compared with my mother. But that's what we were doing. I'll have pumpkin carving picture to share tomorrow, and then there'll be costumes, and then TM's birthday. So, lots of pictures to come.

I am of the opinion that one reason we do not see so many miracles these days is that we are all so terribly self-sufficient. Why should God step in and do the miraculous when we have it all taken care of? It is only when you allow God to lead you into situations where you are in over your head and realize that there is really nothing you can do to help the situation that God shows up with a miracle. And why I am mentioning this? Because I firmly believe we are having the incredible privilege of having front row seats to a miracle. That miracle would be the healing miracle that God is working in TM. And it is a miracle. But it took us getting to a point where we had to say that we were at the end; we had no more answers; we were not going to be able to fix this ourselves. We have been seeing a therapist nearly weekly, and while that has been good, I just can't chalk up the amazing gains we have been seeing just to that. Even though I really, really like his (our?) therapis...

J. and I were given tickets to see a local production of Shaw vs. Chesterton. We had a lovely evening and felt very pampered and grown-up. And the show was good. It was actually very interesting. G. K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw, both famous writers in their own rights (Chesterton for his many books and essays and Shaw for his plays), were good friends and disagreed on about everything else. Chesterton was a Christian, Shaw an atheist; Chesterton believed in private property, Shaw believed in redistribution of wealth via socialism; Chesterton enjoyed food (a lot), particularly meat, Shaw was a vegetarian; and so on and so on. The play was based on transcripts of actual debates which were held between Shaw and Chesterton. The topics were timely and sounded very, very much like the topics which are still being debated today, though they were held ~90 years ago. And while it was interesting to listen to each man's arguments for his view, what I found much more interesting ...

I told you they were silly. This is how Gretel sleeps most of the time. I can't believe it is comfortable. What is truly surprising about these pictures is not her ridiculous sleeping habits, but the fact that she is on a chair. In fact, I guarantee right now that my mother is probably calling my father to come and look at these pictures because seeing is the only way he will believe that we are allowing a dog on the furniture. I know I will never hear the end of it when they arrive in town on Monday. This combined with what a mentioned earlier this week about G. and L.'s normal state of wearing fairly odd clothing combinations had made me think about how I've changed in the past 19 years. I will admit I was pretty uptight about certain things when M. was a baby, and for the next several babies as well. The things I was mostly concerned with were doing things 'right'. While doing things in the best way possible is not a bad thing, it can be when you are conc...

Seventy degree weather in late October in Chicago is not to be taken for granted. So as not to be guilty of that, we and our friends the P Family and the H-S Family decided to head out to Lincoln Park Zoo. This seemed like a grand idea until we got stuck in horrible traffic and the 20 minute trip took nearly an hour, but we made it. It turned out to be a lovely afternoon. Some (well, quite a lot of) pictures. H. K. and P5 G. "hatching" out of an egg The whole crew... minus one and not counting the growing college contingent, which made for 19 children And it turned out to be a great time to get some pictures of G. and L. in their matching twirly dresses. If they're only going to wear something a couple of time, I have to make the most of it. Plus, they were looking particularly twinny. L. is on the left and G. is on the right. On our way back to the entrance we found this sculpture-pavilion-thing. It made for some interesting...

Adopting is expensive. That's how it is and there's no way around it. There are governmental fees for visa applications. There are country fees, orphanage fees, agency fees, homestudy fees, plane tickets, hotel bills, food while in country. There are gifts for government officials that must be brought. They pile up and never seem to end. At various points in our three adoptions I felt as though I was hemorrhaging money. (And since we are still paying off some of the expenses, it sometimes feels like a wound which won't quite scab over.) I understand that agencies have employees to pay, that "donating" to the orphanages which cared for our children is (in theory) good, and that the government will get their cut no matter what. It just all adds up. And even though I understand why many of the fees are high, I will say it again and believe it just as strongly, adoptive parents should not have to pay for their children. Yes, yes, I know that's not what we're...

I have no motivation to write today so you get pictures of the little girls. I realized that they have been somewhat lacking recently. No doubt due to the fact that we just take fewer pictures of them. They are rarely still, and when they are still, one or both of them have become rather disreputable looking, so that my first inclination is not to get out the camera. (L. still walks around in various states of undress, sometimes joined by G. And when they are fully clothed, they have often changed their outfits to something "unique" and pulled out whatever hair arrangement might have been put in. There's a whole other blog post in there somewhere about how this would never have occurred with the first few.) But on Sunday, J. captured these. We looked over to discover that G. was "reading" a comic book to L. It was very sweet. G. is in purple and L. is in orange. They are just too, too big. I love them. They are wonderful fun. But where, oh...

A couple of weeks back, when I was (finally) putting away the fabric that friends had given me, I found a very large piece of very heavy fleece. It was too heavy to make clothing with, and the color was not what you might call inspiring. Really, it just looked like a big, odd-shaped blanket. Hmmm...blanket. We could use more blankets. But would the material wash? Bedding around here really needs to be able to survive the washing machine. Figuring it couldn't hurt to try, into the wash it went. And it came out beautifully. So, I measured and discovered I could get two throw sized blankets out of it. These are a particularly useful size because we often add throws on top of beds for really cold days. Plus, people can curl up in them to read books or watch a movie. But, they were kind of dull. Useful, but dull. So I thought I would bind the edges. I really didn't have to because fleece doesn't ravel, but I thought it would look nice. I looked in my fabric stash and di...

H. and I have made such huge gains recently, that I thought I would bring all of you up-to-date on her progress. Medically, nothing much has changed (with the exception of having a lazy eye diagnosed, which has caused us to start patching two hours a day). We've had the three major tests done which the doctors needed (CT scan, EEG, and MRI), and right now we're waiting for the plastic surgeon to consult with his team and then he will get back to me with a plan. I have to say I'm not really in a rush to schedule surgery. Her seizures seem to be fairly well controlled. We have only had two within the last four weeks. I would rather her not have any, but they are fairly short and she doesn't have them frequently enough to really warrant a second anti-seizure prescription. (Her neurologist agrees with me on this... it's not just my whim.) I may change my tune when I have to actually start scheduling surgeries, but so far her special needs feel very minor. We have no...

Teaching children about money can be challenging, but one thing that I think is neglected is whether or not we are teaching our children the true meaning of having enough. I think we neglect it, because we adults have a rather warped sense of what enough looks like ourselves. I know I do. This was brought home to me once again yesterday when the children and I spent two hours cleaning up the 3rd floor playroom. Again. While there are people in the country who do not have enough food, who do not have a home to live in (home meaning shelter, not a house), who do lack for basic necessities, the vast majority of us do have these things. Not only do we have them, we live in outrageous abundance. And yet how often have we felt sorry for ourselves about what we don't have? (Yes, I'm including myself in there.) And like the mother looking in the mirror complaining she is fat while her young daughter looks on, what are we teaching our children every time we focus on what we do not h...

It's the monthly Hearts at Home link-up today and the assigned topic is how do we each teach our children about money. Over the past week I've been thinking about this, and what I have landed on really has nothing to do with the nuts and bolts of children handling money. Instead, what is becoming increasingly important to me is how the adults in my children's lives (myself included) view and handle money and what are our underlying assumptions about it. You see, we can overtly teach all we want, but what our children actually learn is by observing how we live. I have two different strands of thoughts on this. The first is our insistence on tying work to money and the second is the idea of what is enough and do we really live as if we have enough. I will tackle the first idea today and then write about the second tomorrow . As I have said before, we don't give our children allowances. We provide the necessities for our children and if they want something extra, then t...

Do you know the author, George MacDonald? He was a writer in the 19th century who was most famous for his fantasy writing. Perhaps he is even more famous for whom he influenced, the members of the Inklings... Charles Williams, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. I decided on a whim to reread his short story, The Wise Woman, last week. There are parts of it that have haunted me ever since. In a simple story, such deep truths are conveyed that they require a lot of thinking upon. What starts out as something the reader expects to be an allegory about good parenting becomes by the end, a glimpse into our own natural, sinful state and how God parents us. For instance, I found this bit of conversation between the Wise Woman and the princess to be compelling. The Wise Woman is preparing the princess for the trial she (the princess) must face. " 'You shall not be frightened, except it be your own doing. You are already a brave girl, and there is no occasion to try you more that ...

I have a new article up at Heart of the Matter about homeschooling preschool . To go along with that, I thought I would give details about the preschool activity boxes I made several years ago and continue to add to. These boxes have been great. It contains all of the stuff I have for the preschool set and allows me to rotate through the various activities. They only come out during 'school time', so they stay fresh and because they are a limited commodity, it makes them more attractive to play with. They are filled with a wide variety of activities. Some are toys which I knew my children would enjoy, but which they never seemed to get around to playing with, others are actual made or bought learning activities, and a couple are designed to develop manual dexterity. I'm going to list each box which I made and any important details about it. Use these as a way to spark your own ideas for creating your own. Other general comments... each box is in a labelled bin. On...

Birthdays for adopted children can be tricky occasions, so I wasn't sure how H.'s first birthday with us would play out. She had two requests (at least one of which was heavily influenced by TM's nearly constant talk of his own birthday). She wanted a beautiful cake and puzzles.  Here is the 'beautiful cake'. (Yes, there is a piece missing. A. can't eat butter cream frosting.) She was quite happy with it. For a few minutes we weren't sure that she was going to be happy about sharing it with everyone else, but in the end she was fine with it. Blowing out the candles: Laughing when the candles relit after having been blown out. (These are the same candles we used on P.'s birthday cake last month, so it wasn't a complete surprise.) And then there were gifts. TM raided his stash of flashlights and wrapped one up for her. Unasked... it was all his own idea. She was thrilled with it. Clothes from Grammy and Grandpa. But ...