Preschool Volcanoes and Backyard Animal Hunt

I wanted to share two of the activities that the boys had a lot of fun with this week. Fun and easy to try! 

Preschool Volcanoes: 

Our playdough eventually turns into brown muck because the boys love it and mix it so once in awhile I take the old brown hardening playdough and use it to mold volcanoes!! We mold it around a cup and then use our dino molds to make some prehistoric friends. 

Once these are complete, we drip some food coloring and plenty of baking soda inside. Then we add the vinegar. Explosion after explosion!! A definite preschool hit!! 

Backyard Animal Hunt: 

Something that always works if I want the boys to play in the backyard for awhile is to hide a ton of animals in the backyard and then tell them the animals need rescuing!! You can give them hot and cold clues if they need help, and with my boys it always turns into a huge outdoor, animal, play session!! ;-) Wahoo!! 

Tribute to my Boys

I have been worrying about things looming in our near and distant future lately. So I have been making an effort to focus on all of the things I have that I am thankful for. My three boys are in my top five.  I am so thankful for my family. I spend practically all my time with them and am so thankful for how much they love me and how they are always there for me.

Here are some of the things I appreciate about them:

Joe:

I love Joe. I love how he is always trying to improve. He is always reading, listening to audiobooks, and talking about becoming a better person. He believes that people can change and is always working on changing himself. He has changed so much since I met him, and I am in awe of that because it is difficult for me to change.

I love how he puts his family first. He always comes home on time or lets me know if he will be a little late. He wants to be with us. He is amazing about going out and doing things with us. He enjoys going on adventures with us, and I am so thankful. I love seeing him play with the boys. He is imaginative and plays with them in a unique way, which is wonderful. He also loves wrestling with them, which I appreciate.

I love how passionate he gets about things. Whether it is a new idea, a goal for the future, a business plan, it doesn’t matter. He has a light in his eyes when he is talking about his ideas, and I love seeing him excited.

I love his warm, solid, comforting full body hugs. He smells like happiness. ;-) 

I love what a hard worker he is. He has always provided for his family. It is very important to him that I stay home with the kids, and he has always made sure that I can.

I love how exact he is about everything. I love watching him complete a task. He is methodical and organized and will do things one at a time until everything he needs to do is completed.

I am so thankful for every day I get to spend with my Italian Stallion. 

My boys together:

My boys are inseparable. They are bonded as brothers and have had a fantastic year with each other. They are constantly playing, talking to each other, wrestling with each other, negotiating with each other, and wanting to be in each other’s presence.

I also really love the boys’ passion for reading. About once a week I will take them to a bookstore or library, and they can read for an hour to two hours straight with so much passion and excitement for all of the books. They love being read to every night in the bath and before bed as well.
I love how much they love the great outdoors. They love playing in bushes, with dirt, with bugs, and with lizards. They can spend hours outside and love being at parks, playgrounds, and on hikes. Thankful. 

I am also so thankful at how well they travel. I have been training them for the past 5 years to love going out, and I can take them anywhere. National History Museum, a three hour hike and outdoor exploration time, two hours at the mall, shopping at Target, it’s no problem for them. I don’t worry about taking them out or bringing them places. I enjoy their company. They are fun to talk with, and they keep life interesting.

Max:

When he is excited to tell me something, he says my name every three words. “Mommy, this robot is so big, Mommy!! And mommy, mommy it’s powerful too and when you set it down, mommy, it goes boom, mommy!!”

Max’s unrelenting excitement about his toys!! He has the absolute best imagination and will play and play for the longest time. His favorite thing to do at this age is to have me close by so he can tell me what is going on. Often if it’s a particularly intense play session and I am involved I will accidentally mess with the plot that must be in his head so he prefers telling me what’s going on instead.

Those straight blond locks that gently brush his eyebrows when he runs around and his brilliant blue eyes with the piercing green centers are mesmerizing.

Max has the best vocabulary. I love how he comments about everything that goes on during our day and has a reason why he thinks everything happens.

He loves to pretend that he is so many things, such as a baby cat, a Transformer, the Hulk, and so much more.

He loves his family with reckless abandon. He is so kind to us and treats us with so much more favor than anyone else in the whole world.

He loves his little world. His home, his toys, his best friend brother. He is content to be with us only every day, and I love his excitable spirit so much.

Eli:

Eli is such as a sweetheart. He wakes up every morning, and the first thing he wants to do is drink a cup of milk on my lap. He then wants to go back to the couch and cuddle. He loves hugs, being held, and being close to people.

He also is my chill kiddo. It is so fun to take just Eli out somewhere because it is so calm and enjoyable. I got to enjoy him for a few hours by himself at the OC Fair while Max napped. He loved everything. The birds, the goats, the art exhibits, the beautiful cakes. He asks questions, looks around, and is content to be with me.

He is definitely a people person. He can’t stand when I make him take a 20 min quiet time in his room instead of naptime. He asks me every five minutes if he can come out and be with me.

He is a follower. He watches Max and other kids carefully and will join into their games.

Eli knows what he wants and is very determined about reaching that goal until he does. If he wants a particular toy, he has learned he can’t grab it so he will follow Max around and watch him quietly. Eventually, Max will set the toy down and forget, and Eli will swoop up the toy. He is focused and doesn’t give up.

He also doesn’t give up when there is something particular he is working on such as building project. He will work and work until it is just right. He also loves symmetry in his building and is amazing at it.

He also loves going new places like his momma. I have never seen him have as happy a week as when we were in Colorado for vacation. He was a bundle of joy bouncing from new activity to new adventure.

I love that he loves to learn. I love his quiet spirit.

Adoption and Loss

            A few years into our marriage, Joe and I decided we wanted to start a family. A few months later we were pregnant with Eli, and we loved him and were so excited for his arrival. A year after we welcomed our sweet boy we decided we were ready to have another child. We got pregnant right away and awaited his arrival with great anticipation, treasuring him and pondering what he would be like. A year after our second little boy’s arrival we talked again and decided we wanted to add another child to our family. However, this time we decided to do so through adoption, which we had been talking and praying about since we met in 2005. I spent a long time researching countries to adopt from and organizations to partner with. We landed on China as the best decision for our family for a lot of reasons. However, we had to wait till we were 29 ½ to begin the process so we spent 2 years waiting.

The past two and a half years I have felt the loss that is present in adoption. At least a dozen times a day an image or a thought flashes through my brain reminding me of my baby girl on the other side of the world that I want to see, to hold, to comfort, but I can’t. I need to wait because we need to be matched, we need to fill out more paperwork, we need to be old enough, etc.

            I have decided that in this period of waiting for our organization to call us with a match that I would spend at least 30 minutes a day preparing for the adoption. Our organization has great training materials online, there are books to read, people to talk with, Mandarin Chinese to learn, and special needs to familiarize ourselves with. The online trainings talk a lot about the loss experienced in adoption. There is the loss experienced by the birthparents who lose the chance to parent their child because of a myriad of different circumstances. There is the child who loses the chance to grow up with her birth parents and in her birth country. Then there are the adoptive parents who miss out on the first years of their precious child’s life.

            The trainings state that the loss of an adoptee often feels more profound at specific moments in their life, such as their birthday, Mother’s Day, Graduation, and more. I feel like it is the same way for adopting parents. I feel my loss more profoundly at certain times, such as when one of my friends gets pregnant or has her baby, especially when that baby is a girl or is the third, when I remember the birth of my two boys on their birthdays, whenever I see a little girl interacting with her brothers or mom, especially if she looks similar to how I imagine Bella will look.

            I was sure that being able to move forward in action would make the dull ache I felt since we officially decided to move forward with adoption two and a half years ago feel less pronounced, but I was wrong. Since we officially started the process in January, it has been even more difficult. I calculated that Bella was probably born around the time we started working on our homestudy, which is difficult for this momma to digest on a daily basis. I am missing so many of her firsts, and as I get closer to bringing her home, my ache for her to join our family has only grown.

I feel similar to how I feel whenever I leave my boys who I love so much to go on date night with my wonderful husband. I am happy and thankful every day because I love my three boys and I am so appreciative of the amazing life that we have together just like I am excited to spend time alone with my husband during date night, but I am also anxious about all the time I have spent away from my baby girl just like I am always anxious to leave my boys every single time I go on date night since I spend every other moment of my life with them. Where is my baby girl? Is she okay? Is she crying herself to sleep? Is she hurting? I know she will have a special need, but which one?

The organization told us to go through the dozen or so special needs we were okay with and put them in order from most preferable to least preferable. We also should familiarize ourselves with treatment plans of all of them and try to talk with families who have a child with each of the special needs for additional insight. Talk about extra anxiety. I don’t want her to have any of the special needs. Not because I do not already love her with her special need but because I don’t want her to be hurting alone. I cannot imagine my little boys going through a major surgery or difficult health hurdle, and they have been comforted and protected from day one in a consistent, caring home environment. I can’t imagine Bella going through a health ordeal and/or surgery while living in an orphanage with an ever changing sea of faces making the rounds to take care of her. It literally breaks my momma heart, which has been growing and stretching the past five years to include room for not 1, not 2, but 3 children. She is already mine even though I have not seen her. But I know that she is also her birth mother’s. And I know that the day our loss for her ends will be a day of monumental loss for her. She will have already experienced difficult loss before that point but losing her caregivers, her orphanage, her language, her country, and everything she finds familiar will be monumentally difficult.

Adoption is a beautiful thing, and I am so thankful to have the opportunity to expand my wonderful family this way. However, pain will be involved, and I think these years of felt loss for me will hopefully increase my compassion and understanding for her felt loss in the years to come.

Some encouraging words for the adoption process that I need right now: ;-)

“But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.” – Isaiah 40:31

“Father to the fatherless, defender of widows – this is God, whose dwelling is holy. God sets the lonely in families.” – Psalms 68:5-6

“I prayed for this child, and the Lord had granted me what I asked of him.” – Samuel 1:27

“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord.” – Psalm 127