Honestly? I have never taken comments like these as compliments on our adoption. And holy moly, people sure did like to share with me all of their terrible experiences with the system, as well as their (often broad and generalized) thoughts about foster kids.

Hmm. I just realized that people often do the same thing with pit bulls…

Anyway, I remember thinking to myself ”Great!  Thanks so much for letting me know how much you DO NOT envy my journey!”

But you know what?

I don’t deserve that much credit. It’s not like we had some crazy special “thing” (besides willingness to take the risk) that everyone else doesn’t have, thereby making us specially qualified to adopt kids who have experienced significant loss in their lives.

We don’t have a happy little perfect marriage, with happy little perfect kids, in a happy little perfect house. Nope. Even our dogs are a little off. Except Hogan. Hogan is perfect and is happily snoring on his happy little bed as I type.  He snores like a loud old man, and for some reason it’s one of my favorite, most soothing, sounds in the world.

Really though.  Sometimes, I just shake my head in confusion.  Sometimes I lack compassion. Sometimes I feel defeated. Sometimes, my patience is very, VERY thin. Sometimes I withdraw. Not every day, but some days.

I came across this quote today that I jotted down last year:

Now I don’t really know who Epicurus was, and maybe I wouldn’t agree with anything else he had to say, but I think there is some truth here. I’m learning that when I dodge conflict and adversity out of fear that things will no longer be ”happy,” I am not living courageously or relating honestly with people in my life.

There is peace in not pretending, and freedom in telling the truth in a loving way, even if people don’t like me for it. But it takes a little courage.  My word for 2011 was “courage,”  and the Lord sure did give me some great opportunities to develop that last year. Growth was not easy for me and my faith was s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d, but I’m sensing that he’s not done with me in this area just yet, so I decided to keep the word ”courage” for 2012 too.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:8-10

Whatever.

Yesterday was my last vacation day before returning to work, and I am SO glad that I actually took the time off.  I am not quite sure what I was thinking not taking any significant amount of time off after the boys moved in permanently, but I am really sure that I needed this little break.  Oh wait.  I did take some time off right after they moved, but I had bronchitis, so I’m not really sure that counts.

I can’t adequately put into words what the last year was like, but I can say that last year at this time, I was just bracing myself. Bracing for Jason being pretty much absent for the next year, for the boys being pretty much here all the time, and for a whole different way of being.  In fact, it was this very day last year, when we went to pick up the boys and all of their belongings from their foster home for the last time.  I actually remember looking at Jason and telling him how uneasy I felt. So, yeah. Last year, the prospective new year felt heavy with uncertainty.

This year though?

I’m REALLY looking forward to this year.  My feelings of uncertainty have been replaced with something else. We will call it peace.

I usually get nauseated at all the year-end summaries that pop up all over the universe this time of year, but since I did fall off the planet and all,  I thought it would be proper to show some of the fun parts of it.  Beware: these are mostly of the kids, because, HELLO, I didn’t get out much without them in tow.

During the Ten Month Blur, the air went out on my Jetta (okay, some other expensive things went out too), and somehow I ended up with one of these:

It’s a Ford Fusion.

Warning: What I am about to say is very shallow.  Actually, probably the rest of this little story will be shallow.  I feel better when I acknowledge being shallow before you can judge me for it.  Ahh. Self protection. 

I am way off topic.

I am thankful to have a working, new car, however, I’m not thankful for the following new car related issues:

1. The Jetta was almost paid off.  A brand new car payment is a major bummer.
2.  Before the purchase, I didn’t notice that I am actually too short to see out of the back of the car while backing up. So I have almost backed into several people.  I did do a test drive which included backing out of a parking space, so I blame The 10 Month Blur (also known as The Time I Almost Lost My Mind.)
3. I just can’t park the car.  I am ALWAYS crooked.  When I attempt to ”fix” it, I am normally still crooked, just in the opposite direction than I was before.  So I have given up on parking straight and have settled for at least being in between the lines.  I am now one of “those” people.
4. I am feeling ever so slightly like a soccer mom while driving the car. It’s so much larger than my Jetta was.  Because of this new concern,  I have told my kids that they can play any sport but soccer.  I am kidding. l just hope they wait until I am over this whole “insecure about being a mom AND driving a big(ger) car” thing.  I am sensing a deeper issue here.

The point is that miss my Jetta.  I don’t care that it had over 200 thousand miles on it, or that it was slightly dented on one side from the time I hit the big white van that was carrying about 10 tourists. Or that when I first got it, I put a Chick-fil-A  Polynesian sauce (gross) in the center console, in the middle of the sizzling, Florida, summer heat. The sauce exploded and got really sticky. I didn’t notice it for a month or two, so it became a thick, hard substance that cooked into the velvety liner.

Now that I have revealed the depths of my shallowness, I will stop. Just please don’t tell me about all the deprived people out there who can’t even eat, much less have a car with AC.  I KNOW.  I know. I actually haven’t been able to get this image out of my head this Christmas season:

This image (I’m not sure of the source since I first saw it on Facebook) put things into perspective for me, but somehow, I still find myself in the tension between my reality, and the very different reality of much of the rest of humanity. 

Rather than be consumed with guilt though, I am just trying to remind myself to be a little less materialistic, a lot more thankful, and to extend myself grace when I do act a bit shallow.

Part of the reason that I have abandoned this here blog is that, well, things have been messy.  And serious. And seriously funny. And not funny at all.

See?

Confusing.

Pretty much in a day, my life went from worrying about finding a place to tan on my lunch break at work (Celebration Hotel was the BEST place to lounge, by the way), to talking to the school on my lunch break about things like why my seven-year old might have stolen my NyQuil gel tabs, taken them to school, and distributed them to his classmates.

It was hard enough to live through my days, much less write a recap at the end of them. Mostly, I just wanted the days to be over. I think that some probable titles over the past 10 months might have been:

• “I Think I am Losing My Mind. No. Really.”
• “Self Pity: Mourning the Loss of My Simple Life”
• “Surviving the Four Hour Tantrum. For the Fourth Time This Week.”
• “My Stomach Hurts Each Time the School Calls My Cell”
• “Yay! I’m Using My Vacation Time Again Because My Kid Is Suspended (Again!)”
• “I Secretly Thought the Following Behavior Issues Were Funny…”
• “I Am Pretty Sure That I Am the Worst Mom.  Ever.”

I’m not trying to get sympathy.  Just being honest.

When I did actually want to write, I wasn’t sure how far to go.  Would I be crossing a boundary with my kids by airing these things for the world to read?  So, I just stopped writing.  I created this little space to have fun and poke fun at life. It’s kind of how I cope, but it felt wrong poking fun at things that were not at all fun for the boys.

Now that things are beginning to calm down just a bit, I think I can share.  I can share some of the great, big triumphs.  Like the fact that for the most part,  I silenced all of those naysayers who told me that I would cave on clean eating and exercise once I had kids in the house.  I actually didn’t gain any weight, and have actually increased muscle mass over the last ten months.  I have also developed a love affair with yoga. In fact, I’m pretty sure I would have lost my mind without it.

I also want to write again because I used to try to find blogs about families who adopted from foster care, so that I wouldn’t feel so crazy,  but those are scarce.  I suspect it has something to do with the fact that this journey is simultaneously painful and wonderful. It is a rollercoaster that is loopy, fast, scary, exciting, and totally worth the ride.

But I don’t want to shift the purpose of my little space here. I don’t want to write only about our adoption and kids.  I’m still a silly girl who can find humor in almost everything.  I still love shoes, dresses, my sister’s babies, and getting my hair colored. I’m still entirely passionate about clean food and fitness.  I still feel the sting of infertility.  I still work full time, and am still trying to figure out how to make my passion a career (or at least part of my career).

My life is difficult, but it is still good.  And I have learned that those two things CAN exist at the same time.  I don’t have to deny either of them, and I am growing comfortable with this messy, painful, imperfect, beautiful life that I have been given.

So Jacob had been asking me to fill out his for a few weeks. I had filled out his older brother’s tag, and out of pure laziness didn’t fill out Jacob’s.  Doing it for one of them was good enough for me.  So I kept putting him off about it.

One day, I went to pick him up after school at our neighbor’s house (she watches them for us), and she asked to speak to me privately.

She  told me that Jacob had said to her “I can’t figure out why my parents want to leave me at school.”

(Insert my heart sinking right to the floor as my mind started racing about what I had done or said that he might think that we would want to leave him there.)

“What?!?” I asked.

She said that he then told her that since I filled out his brother’s tag, but not his, he couldn’t figure out why I would want to leave him at school.

So  thanked her and we went home and I immediately talked to Jason about it.

We decided to talk to Jacob together about it, and were both holding back tears, as I apologized about the tag and we fumbled through our words and tried to explain to a seven year old that he is an important part of our family.

Jason: Look at my eyes, Jacob. We would never, ever have John picked up and not you.  You are so important to us.

Jacob: Walks to Jason sits on his lap and puts his head on Jason’s shoulder.

Me:  Have you ever seen Lilo and Stitch?  It’s kind of like that movie. In our family, nobody gets left behind! Jacob, do you know that you will be with us always?

Jacob: Shakes head to indicate “no.”

Me: We will never leave you, Jacob.

This was probably one of the more heartbreaking conversations we have had with one of our kids.  The really heartbreaking thing is that he was once left at school by his biological parents, while John was picked up. So this isn’t some random thing that he made up in his little head.  It was just a reminder of how much patience and work will need to be done to build his trust in us.

Later, as I was thinking about the conversation, I thought of how my son’s heart is broken, and how even though we know without reservation that we will never leave him, he isn’t so sure. He will only come to know it know it by our steadfastness. Every day that he is picked up from school as promised, his trust in us will deepen.

I couldn’t help but think of my own brokeness, and how I, like Jacob have sometimes allowed the heartbreaks of life to marr my trust in the Lord.  How I can be so afraid to yield to Him, keeping a tight, controlling grip on some areas of my life.  How at times, deep down, I wonder whether he will pick me up again. 

Jason and I know the truth. That despite Jacob’s brokeness, and some of the resulting behaviors of it, his place in our home is secure and we would never consider leaving him.  Neither would the Lord leave me because of mine.

I am resting in that today.

I will never leave you nor forsake you. Hebrews 13:5

I’ve been to Hatha Yoga, and Hot Yoga, but never Restorative.

So my friend and I walked into the studio and found a packed class.

“No problem,” I thought, as we laid our mats near the door. Near the door that was also close to the wall where people leave their shoes.

Yeah.

As I settled into shavasana on my mat, I was immediately overcome with the scent of some seriously funky foot odor.  One look at my friend, and I knew she experiencing it too.

Since all sounds are welcome in yoga (once during hatha yoga class someone passed gas very loudly, and as I silently shook with laughter because I am so very mature, the instructor calmly said that “all sounds are welcome,” which of course made me shake all the more violently), I was thinking that it probably applied to odors as well. So my friend and I made eye contact, and silently acknowledged that we would indeed stay put and ignore the odor.

Except that we just couldn’t.  As the class went on, I learned that restorative yoga focuses very much on BREATHING DEEPLY using only your nose, and stretching.  It’s kind of hard to focus on breathing when you’re trying to plug your nose at the same time.

So when I got up to quickly use the bathroom and get some fresh air, apparently my friend decided that she’d had enough and moved the offensive pair of shoes outside of the door.  Then she came to the bathroom and we laughed very hard before composing ourselves and returning to our mats to get our restoration on.

I guess the point of all of this, is that if you have a offensive foot odor problem, it truly is okay. I have a beautiful pair of animal print peep toes that smell as fierce as they look. But please. Please wash your feet before you come to yoga, and leave your shoes outside of the door.

I couldn’t very well write a two sentence post that said “Holy Crap. The End. ” so I just trashed post after post, and closed my computer.

I finally have enough clarity and perspective to be able to write something coherent.  I finally feel a little normal again.  Here’s how things have been going down:

The boys have been adjusting.  We learned in our “training” that we received that there could be some behavior problems where the children test their stability in your home, your limits, and generally have some bumpy adjustment moments.

While I would like to tell you only how fabulous things have been since January when the boys moved into our home, I can’t.

Let us just get the ugly stuff over with first so that we can end on a good note, okay?  Great.

There have been hard moments.  Like the first weekend we had them and out of nowhere, the Little Man ran way from me at Epcot, stomping all over pretty Disney flowers, running into a crowd of people. Seriously. He was well-behaved all day, then he’s simply asked to step off the grass by my friend while I’m in the bathroom, and he splits.  I got the irritated stares from people I didn’t know that seemed to say “shame on you for raising him that way.”  And I felt like saying “I’VE ONLY HAD THIS KID FOR ONE DAY, SO PLEASE STOP STARING AT ME LIKE THAT AND JUST MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL AND GRAB HIM FOR ME. THANK YOU.”

Daily calls from school. “Little Man in the principle’s office today for (climbing on top of his desk, holding a chair over his head and threatening to throw it, stealing from the book fair, calling fellow classmates b#&ches on the playground, kicking someone in the crotch, standing on the lunchroom table and double flicking off the lunchroom). Did I mention that this kid is six years old?

Dog fights. Our dogs are also adjusting and two of them have been fighting.  With each other.  This  is pretty scary, but ironically, my pit bull has not been involved in these shenanigans.  I submit to you again that this breed has an undeserved notorious reputation.

Exhaustion and mental fatigue.  One day, I passed right by the store I was going to, and one of the boys asked me why I passed it.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You must have a lot in your brain right now,” Little Man said.

“Yep, I must,” I replied.

What was actually going through my brain: “Why yes, I do have a lot in my brain right now. Last month after work I was going to the gym, coming home, painting my toes, and watching Celebrity Rehab.  This month, I’m pondering  why you are jumping on tables in the cafeteria at school and calling your classmates b&%ches, learning to compromise between healthy and kid friendly dinners, supervising homework and bathtime, followed by a crap load of laundry, and making your lunch.  What was I thinking?  I think I need to go cry.  Or shave my head like Britney did.”

That’s the bad.  Now for just a small glimpse of all of the good.

Aside from the Epcot episode, we have had very minimal behavior issues at home (making us scratch our heads even more.) Little Man is smart, funny, and very affectionate. Also, we’ve gone from several weeks of four “bad behavior” school days and one “okay” day, to two weeks of four “very good” days and only one “bad” day.  Things are looking up!

Also, our other boy, who is in third grade, is adjusting amazingly. In fact, he was the student of the month last month. What a blessing.

Another good thing has been the support and encouragement that we have received.  The Lord has shown himself so good and so faithful. I need an entire post for this.  We have been so loved on.

There have been so many funny moments that I can’t wait to share.

Since I’m worried that nothing I’ve said makes sense, I will stop here.  Because my finger is hovering dangerously close to the “Move to Trash” button.

Actually, it seems like that post was written about a year ago.

Over the past few months, we have been gradually getting to know the boys. Day visits turned into night visits, night visits turned to weekend visits, and then we had them for seven full days over the holidays.

And want to know what happens this Saturday?  Saturday they move in to our home.  Their home.

The past few days  two months have been pretty crazy.  Last minute paper work, meetings at their new school with guidance counselors, meeting psychiatrists, finding after school care, working out schedules, being stretched and challenged, and lots and lots of prayer.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that Jason enrolled in the police academy.

Yep, you heard me right.  He will be working all day and be in school at night for the next 11 months.

Holy crap, people. Everything is changing.  Right now.

Luckily, we have a pretty deep support system, and that is fabulous, because I’ll be anticipating lots of things in the weeks to come.  Maybe some behavior challenges as the boys adjust, some challenges for me as I adjust to having little people around ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY. Also, trying to make sure that I pay attention to my own needs and try not to neglect things that help me function.  Like working out. And having navy blue highlights in my hair.  It looks pretty and not ridiculous, I promise.

My emotions have really run the gamut over the last few months.  From being so excited about expanding our family and thankful that the boys are with us, to angry that they have been subjected to some very hard things, to fearful of the unknown and all of the changes to come, to selfishness about my world totally changing.   I think I have finally landed at a place of surrender and rest.

Everything is worth it for this:

If you pray, please send some love our way with all of this transition, or if you think good thoughts, do think of us over the next week!

A few months ago, I mentioned that we were approved to be adoptive parents.  A week or so after we were approved, I came across a picture of two brown-eyed boys on our local Heart Gallery that captured our hearts, so we asked that our home study be submitted in consideration for them.

Since they are so young (eight and six), there were over thirty home studies submitted for them.  So we thought that we’d just hang out and wait to see what happened.  I prayed every day.  I prayed that the Lord would bless them with the very best parents for them, and that if we could be those parents, then great.  We stood by as their case worker selected five families who would be considered possible matches for the boys.

A few weeks later, we got a call wondering if we would be open to a phone interview to talk about the boys, and what their needs where, to help their placement team determine who the best fit would be.  So we did the phone interview and waited another week and a half.  Since Hogan was a cause of concern that came up during our conversation (because of his breed) we honestly didn’t have our hopes up that we would be chosen.

Then, about a week and a half after that conversation, we got a call letting us know that we had been selected as a match for the boys!  It was us!  Seriously. I really couldn’t believe my ears.  After a five-year struggle with infertility, the Lord is blessing us with children!

We ended up meeting the boys for the first time at SeaWorld at a “match event,” where prospective adoptive parents, and children who are in the foster system waiting to be adopted come together and meet each other.  Honestly, I have never been to a singles event, by imagine that this what it is like. A little awkward.  Like everyone knows why they are there, but no one talks about it. 

So the boys were seated at our table, but they didn’t know us and didn’t know that we had been selected as their parents. We couldn’t tell them wither because one more meeting needed to happen before they could know.  We had a great day with them though.  They were so sweet, and were really comfortable around us. At one point, one of them asked if we had dropped any children off to be adopted!  We really wanted to tell them, “no we are here just for you!”  But we couldn’t.

Our next step was a “full disclosure” meeting where they bring everyone who works with the children into a room, sit you down and disclose everything from why the boys came initially came  into care, to who their dentist is.  We left that two and a half  hour meeting with a HUGE stack of papers to read. Reports from when they were removed from their parents, psycological evaluations, statements from their parents, termination of parental rights papers, and many, many more. If, after that, we decided that we would still like to move forward in adopting them, then they would be told, we would start meeting them, and start the process of adoption formally.

So…we decided to move forward!  More tomorrow but int the meantime, here is a picture of John and Jacob.  It’s about a year old, but you get the idea.

I felt like an incredibly bad doggie mom, since we didn’t even know it was broken for an entire week.  When Brady came limping into the kitchen from outside with a big, swollen foot, we assumed that he had just sprained his ankle or something, and called into our vet for some meds for swelling and pain. 

One week later, the swelling had gone down, so we assumed that he was healing up nicely.  Especially since he was running around like a crazy man outside. Then last week, Jason took him in to the vet for yearly shots.  Two hours, one x-ray and 500 dollars later, he had a blue cast and a HUGE satellite-sized cone around his noggin.  The cone became mandatory only after he tore his first cast to pieces, and licked his foot so badly that it got infected – costing us another 30 dollar visit to the vet.

Poor guy.  He is totally hating life right now, because we were instructed that he can basically only walk when he goes outside to go to potty, or to eat, for AN ENTIRE MONTH. This is no easy task. I’m sure that he thinks that we hate him, judging from his pitiful moaning.   Why else would we make him lay down for a whole month while letting our other two pups run circles around him?

Anyway, I really hope his foot heals quickly, because he is pretty much over the cone on his head.  It has really messed up his sense of space, causing him to run into literally everything on the rare occasion that he is allowed to walk.  And I think that he hates the sound that his hard cast makes on the tile floor that covers most of our home, because he has taken to hopping around on three legs.

Is it me, or does seem like a pretty big cast for such a little toe?  Also, I think that 500 dollars for a vet visit should be a crime.