My Kid Circus

There are some words that are magic to a mother’s ear.  Sweet little K, for example, loves to sing.  The last couple of nights after I have put her to bed, I have stood outside her door listening to her sing,”Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine”.  Even now, just thinking about it, my heart hurts it is so beautiful.

Then, there are words that are not exactly like magic.  My little guy got into the car after preschool on Friday and told me, “I put a raisin in my nose, and it got stuck”.  Oh, these words.  Words that brought a sinking feeling, along with a touch of anger that I know that he knew not to do that, and a little bit of irritation that our nice afternoon was no longer going to be so nice.  There was also a part of me that wasn’t sure if I should believe him.  His snack time at school had been 3 HOURS before I picked him up!  I was thinking, “Surely he didn’t have a raisin in his nose for HOURS, and not tell anyone??”.  Still, he seemed pretty persistant, so I got a dr.’s appointment for him, but it was still 2 hours away.

At home, I shined a flashlight up into his nose, but saw nothing.  I tried getting him to blow and blow, but still saw nothing.  Then I googled “raisins in the nose”.  I immediately saw posts saying that raisins in the nose were a medical emergency because they will swell inside the nose, and can get lodged in the sinuses.  YIKES!!  Then I moved from irritated to a bit worried.  I took a hint off of one of these sites and held my sweet boy down while he screamed, and sucked out his nose with our baby nose aspirator.  After several tries I looked in his nose again, and there it was!  (Part of me was a little impressed that he was actually telling me the truth the whole time!).  He was then able to blow it out.  We got to cancel the dr. appt.

And then the words that I was relieved to hear, “Mommy, I won’t EVER do that again!!”.  All in all, not a bad ending. 🙂

I have heard people call the time of working on paperwork in adoption a “paperwork pregnancy”.  I have a new understanding of that now.  WOW!  It sure is easier to have a baby the old fashioned way.

We have already turned in what seems like a full inch of papers, and that really was only to get access to the “real” paperwork.  We had a meeting at our adoption agency today, and my head is swimming with everything we need to do for our next steps.  Basically, we have to compile proof of every aspect of our life (birth certificates, marriage certificates, tax records, health reports, etc., etc.)  After we have most of this together, we will have our first meeting with our social worker for our “home study”.  After 3 visits with our social worker, she will complete the home study, and we will be able to ask for permission from U.S. immigration to adopt a foreign child into our country.  They will then send us approval to be fingerprinted.  After our fingerprints are “approved”, our entire file of paperwork, our “dossier”, will be sent to China.  We then wait to get approval from China to adopt a child.

Because we have applied for China’s waiting child program, we actually could be matched with a child at any time.  My hope is that we won’t be matched for a while.  We have at least 6 months of paperwork ahead of us, and I know that once I see that sweet face and have that child engraved on my heart that it will be torture to have to wait months and months before I can hold her in my arms.

So that is where we are now.  I’m excited to move on to this next step in the process.  I feel like I have a similar level of anticipation to what it felt like when we were newly pregnant, but it seems strange to have no idea of our due date! 🙂

At some unknown but hopefully not too distant date in the future, we will become a family of 6.  We have already started the process of adopting a Waiting Child from China. 🙂

This news might come as a surprise to some of you who have seen how crazy our circus can be, but those people who know me well know that adopting is something that I have wanted to do for many many years.  I couldn’t be more excited right now that we have decided that the time is right for our family to grow again.

We have been laying the ground work with our kids for a while.  One day, several months ago, Z started praying out loud in the middle of breakfast that God would send him another baby.  My heart was touched, and I started telling him that sometimes babies don’t grow in the mommy’s tummy, but instead a family adopts a baby who needs a home.  He got a huge smile and said, “That’s GREAT!  Let’s do that after school!!!”. 🙂

Since then, we have been talking a lot about China, and the children there who need a home.  Z seems to have a good understanding of what we are going to do, and has remained excited.  I think it helps that they have a wonderful cousin from China, so they have some concept of adoption.  D seems to understand to some extent, but I think only time will tell how much he really has processed.  He is not the same kind of deep thinker that Z is, so there is a good chance that he will never spend much time thinking about it.  I kind of picture him when the baby comes home thinking, “Oh, you live here now?  Okay”.

At this point, we are in the very beginning stages.  We have selected our agency, and had our initial application approved.  Our reference forms have been turned in, and the agency has already made some calls to our church to follow up on work we have done there with children.  We will have an orientation meeting later this week, and our home study will begin after that.  We will have several months of paperwork ahead of us, but I am hopeful that we will be bringing home a baby girl in the next 12 to 18 months.

We have had so many things to be thankful for this year, and beginning this process definitely tops the cake for me.  I love this little girl already, and I am so looking forward to the day that we bring her home!

Sometimes at breakfast time (well, not ONLY at breakfast time), our house can be a bit “lively”.  The other morning we were having that sort of morning. Z was drawing and eating breakfast, and D and K were running around, eating some breakfast, spilling drinks, demanding more food, etc.

Z looked and me and said, “I bet you wish you never had those kids”.  Ha!  I think I spit out my own breakfast that I was attempting to eat amidst the chaos.

I said, “NO!  I love those guys.  Don’t you??”.  He said, “Well…I think you should have had another me.  Then another one just like me.”

I have a feeling that there a lot of oldest children that can identify with this logic…(not me of course! 🙂 )

I think it is safe to say that this guy loves his little brother. 🙂

And come on, what would we do without this little face? 🙂

A few days ago we had  K’s follow up appointment with the hand surgeon.  I haven’t had to mentally revisit the “incident” for a while, and in the couple of days before this appointment, I found myself filled with anxiety about it.  I know K has not forgotten it. This poor girl will still hold up her hand for you to see if you say, “where is your boo-boo?”, even if she has just skinned her knee! 🙁

Anyway, the wonderful news was that the surgeon did not recommend doing any surgery to her finger.  Her index finger does have a split through the center of the nail, but she believes it will become less noticeable in time.  She said you will still be able to see something but, “we all have something, right?”.  I liked that kind of logic.

The other problem is that the top section of her middle finger is pointing slightly to the left instead of straight.  The apparent solution to this is for K to wear a splint while she sleeps for the next 8 weeks.  Well, this is night 4.  At this point we are 0 for 3 for wearing the splint.  We have already tried putting the splint on me, my husband, and all of K’s stuffed animals, but she is having none of that nonsense.  She will watch us with it with curiosity, but if you get it near her hand, she starts screaming.  Not the kind of scream you can ignore while you force it on her anyway.  The kind of all out, kicking, thrashing, if you touch me with that thing I am going to faint, kind of scream.

We recently went to Epcot, and in “China”, we were told that she was born in the year of the Ox.  The Chinese man told us, “oh, she is a STRONG baby”.  He  got that right.  She seems to have a strength of body and will that I think will do her well in her life.  It might challenge her parents for a few years, but that is okay. 🙂

This girl knows what she wants when she wants it. If she doesn't get it, watch out!! 🙂