make way for the awesome kid

Day 13

2012-02-13T23:03:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 13

(Happy Birthday Daddy/Husband!)

Your daddy. As I said last year, my favorite thing about you is who your daddy is. If I could pick any man in the world to be the daddy of my babies, I would pick your daddy again and again.

Your daddy excels at his two most important jobs: Husband and Father.

He is selfless. He always puts our needs, our desires, our preferences - big or small - before his own. No one knows how to love better than your daddy. (On his birthday, he let me sleep in because he wanted to have a Daddy-Daughter date with you this morning! He must really love us!)

Your daddy is a hard worker. He has amazing work ethic. He puts his best effort into his job every day and he often works longer days than his job requires. Then he comes home and cooks us dinner and helps me clean up the house and take care of you. I often feel like I don't do my fair share, but it's only because your daddy so willingly does his fair share and more!

Your daddy is creative. He is an amazing drummer, an awesome writer, a creative film-maker and has a witty sense of humor. He has a unique and clever perspective on many things and I love hearing his ideas about the things he creates.

He is loyal. I never ever worry about whether he will choose me each day as the object of his affection and you never need to worry about that either. Your daddy is trustworthy and stable. He is predictable in a good way. He is true to his word.

Daddy is fun! I don't need to be the one to tell you this! You know it better than anyone! He invents creative games with you, he chases you around the house, he allows you to "make" him pancakes or coffee in your play kitchen. Your daddy knows that fun is important and he makes time to play. (For Christmas he wanted a baseball mitt to keep in his car just in case someone ever wanted to play catch on a whim. I found this very cute, by the way.) He is intentional about play and recreation and that makes him a really fun daddy and husband!

I could go on and on about your daddy!

He is sensitive. He is affectionate. He is smart. He is a problem-solver. He is responsible. He is intuitive. He is passionate. He is intentional. He is a learner. He is honest. He is a good, good man.

Your daddy is the best. But you know that already, don't you? He's the very, very best. And I'm so grateful that he's ours.

I love you, Husband. Happy Birthday. Thanks for choosing me and for loving us so well. And Lila has one last thing to add:

Day 12

2012-02-12T23:21:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 12

You are a wild thing. You know the way the book Where the Wild Things Are starts? Max "made mischief of one kind and another."

One Kind:

And Another:

But I love you anyway, my Wild Thing. I'll eat you up, I love you so!

Day 11

2012-02-11T16:31:00.002-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 11

Your logic. It's so fun to get little glimpses into the way your little brain works. You have all this information stored in there - experiences, words, things you've read or seen, ways Mommy and Daddy have described or explained things - and it's entertaining to see you take your brain's resources and put them to work to figure out a new situation or experience.

The other day you asked me in a worried voice, "What happened to Lila's beard?" You were picking at something on your chin and upon closer inspection I realized that you had the chin equivalent of a milk mustache. A milk beard, if you will. It was as though you had the following thought process: There's something on my chin. Daddy has something on his chin and he calls it a beard. I must have a beard, too!

You were so concerned about your beard, so of course I had to take a video:

Ahhhh, milk beard. You are silly.

Day 10

2012-02-10T23:04:00.001-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 10

When you are scared your first request is that I talk to Jesus about whatever is scaring you. You have a very active imagination, so we'll never know what might scare you - the big cow at Chick-fil-a, the shadows in your room, the V is for Vulture key on your computer.

The other day in the car, I was thinking about this a lot. We were going to see Daddy for lunch and an ambulance ahead of us turned on its siren suddenly. You were scared by the loud noise, which prompted this conversation:

You: Mommy, what dat noise?

Me: It's just a siren on that ambulance - they're going to help somebody.

You: It's too loud! Mommy talk to Jesus about that siren?

Me: Are you scared because the siren is loud?

You: Yeah! Mommy, talk to Jesus about that siren!

Me: Okay, Dear Jesus, help Lila to not be afraid of the siren. Help her to understand that the loud noise just means they're going to help somebody and she doesn't need to be afraid. Help her to know that you are with her, and when you're with her she doesn't need to be afraid of anything.

You: Mommy, talk to Jesus about that siren again.

Me: Can you talk to him?

You: No, mommy.

Me: You can. Jesus will hear you if you talk to him

You: hesitating and then quietly mumbling Dear Jesus, help Lila not afraid loud siren. Help not afraid of anything.

Me: Good job, Peanut! Jesus loves to hear you talk to him. He heard you and he'll help you not to be afraid.

You: Yeah.

That conversation got me thinking. You changed your tone of voice and the volume of your voice when you repeated my little prayer. It was like you understood that you were talking to someone else. It wasn't for my benefit. It was as though you have a sense of Jesus' nearness to you.

Our little not-afraid prayer is based on a story we read in your Jesus Storybook Bible. Listen:

Jesus and his disciples are in a boat on a lake and a big storm comes up. The disciples are terrified and fear for their lives, but Jesus...Jesus is just snoozing away on the boat as though the raging storm is just a figment of their imagination. The disciples wake him up and say to him, "Jesus! Do something! Don't you care that we're going to die?!" And Jesus wakes up and, in a word, quiets the storm. "Hush. Be still," he tells the wind and the waves. And instantly, they are still. You would think that the disciples would be celebrating, breathing a sigh of relief, thanking Jesus for saving them. Instead, they are even more terrified than before. They have just seen the kind of power and control their Teacher has and they just don't know where to file that information away in their brains! And Jesus turns to them and says, "Why were you scared? Did you forget who I am? Did you forget who is with you?"

And here's the line that has inspired our prayers:

Jesus' friends had been so afraid. They had only seen the big waves. They had forgotten that, if Jesus was with them, then they had nothing to be afraid of. No matter how small their boat, or how big the storm.

We hope that you are beginning to remember what the disciples forgot. When you are afraid of something, we want you to remember that Jesus is always with you. We want you to look past the big waves or the loud siren or the big cow at Chick-fil-a. We want you to remember that when Jesus is with you, there is nothing to be afraid of.

Day 9

2012-02-09T14:23:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 9

You are particular. You have opinions about lots of things. Like:

where you want to sit
where you want me to sit
who should drive the car ("No, Daddy! Mommy Drive!")
what color diaper you wear ("green one!")
which bink you want
where your toys should go
which socks you want to wear
which shirt you want to wear
which shoes you want to wear
which pants you want to wear
whether you want to wear pants at all

You get the idea. But in case you don't, here's another example:

One day I could only find two Snuggles (we have four) and I started to worry that there might come a day when I could find NO Snuggles. That would be a day filled with lots of whining and crying and very little sleeping. And I started to think that I would rather not have that day. So I got the brilliant idea to order some more through our friend Heather who owns a sweet little natural mama store called Teeny Greeny. Snuggles were originally designed to be burp cloths, but you adopted them as your comfort object. (Correction, one of your comfort objects - you have four: Lambie, Snuggle, Bink and Birdie Blanket. High maintenance, aren't we?)

Anyway, I asked Heather if she would order me a few more Snuggles and was all excited to show you the brand new (clean!) Snuggles! I showed you the package and said, "Look, Lila! Mommy got you some new Snuggles!" You gasped dramatically as you are prone to do when you are excited and surprised. But when I took the new Snuggles out of the package and handed one to you, a look of disgust came over your face and you said matter-of-factly, "Dat not Suggle."

"Yes it is! It's just a new, clean Snuggle!"

"No. Not Suggle."

"Lila, it's the same as your other Snuggles, it's just a little softer. See?" I held out the new one next to the old one.

In your defense, they weren't the same. The old one was smaller (shrunk, I'm sure from many washings), dirtier (despite the many washings), thinner and the fleece was all pilled. The new one was offensively clean, soft, full-sized and brilliant white. And no matter how much I tried to convince you, there was no talking you into accepting that normal burp cloth masquerading as a Snuggle.

As someone who is very particular herself, I can appreciate the need to control your environment. I just wish your particularity didn't interfere with my particularity (I would really rather you wear pants).

We interrupt this program to bring you this special announcement!

2012-02-08T23:45:00.000-06:00

We are officially a waiting family!!!

I came home from teaching today and checked my email to find this:

I immediately started sending out a mass text to...well...everyone I know. (If you didn't get one, it's probably not because I didn't send it to you. It's probably because I have a new phone and I can't really figure out how to use it yet. It's too fancy for me. Many people said they got a text, but couldn't open it for whatever reason so I have no idea who got the text and who didn't. Arg. Stupid technology.) We truly feel like each of you are on this journey with us. As I was flipping through my contacts on my phone, I was reminded of how each one of you has contributed to us getting to this point. We can't say enough how grateful we are for your support, donations, encouragement and excitement. Grateful just doesn't cover it.

I'm hoping to have more information regarding what our wait might look like soon. I have an email in to our consultant to ask what our official number is, so I'll update again when we have that information. But until then we were just too giddy to not announce this wonderful news! We could not be more excited/relieved/thrilled/hyper to finally be on the waiting list!

It's a little sobering because we know it will be a LOOOOONG wait, but it feels so much better to be officially waiting rather than waiting to officially wait!

Now that we are officially a waiting family, I feel much more "pregnant" than before. It's a strange thing to be expecting without being pregnant. Strange, but beautiful. One of the ways this has manifested itself is that the Husband and I (okay, mostly I) have been obsessively researching name possibilities. Thinking of names signifies a transition for me, I think. Brainstorming names was the beginning of bonding with Lila when I was pregnant. And as I begin to research and pray over names, I begin to imagine who this little baby might be. I have been asking the Lord for a name that would speak to our baby's identity the way Lila's name speaks to hers. We have a few we are tossing around right now and if we get more sure about them, we'll for sure let you know (you guys know I'm horrible at keeping those kind of secrets!).

Would you pray with us that the Lord would give us a name for this baby? And while you're at it, would you pray that the wait would be bearable and that it would at least feel quick even if in reality it's very, very long? We'd love ya for it. Oh, who am I kidding. We already love you. But we'll love you more. Nope, not possible. Ah, well. You'll just have to settle for praying out of the kindness of your heart.

One day of waiting down, only the Lord knows how many more to go! We'll have to figure out a way to track and mark our waiting. Any ideas?

Thank you for doing this with us, friends. We're humbled and grateful. So, so grateful.

P.S. If you'll remember, we have lots of rules about naming our children - it's funny to look back on how we were processing choosing Lila's name. And also funny that we totally broke some of our own rules (like not having a nickname).

P.P.S. Of course, our baby's given name will be a factor, too. We will be keeping all or part of the given name. We'll decide whether or not we think the given name will make life easier or harder for him or her. If it's the latter, we'll keep it as a middle name at the very least.

Day 8

2012-02-08T08:01:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 8

You love to read. You have always loved to read. We love reading to you, but it is just painfully cute when you read to yourself. Sometimes you'll disappear and I'll notice the house is way too quiet so I go to investigate expecting to find you doing something naughty only to discover you sitting quietly in your room reading books. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to capture the effort on film:

Last summer, "reading" your Jesus Storybook Bible

And this one we captured sometime before Christmas this year, reading one of your favs - The Monster at the End of this Book

And more recently you pulled your little rocking chair into your room and set your baby doll on your lap so you could read to her the way I read to you. This sent images forcibly into my head of you holding your baby brother or sister on your lap and reading to him or her! Oh, my heart! I love the way you make up words as you "read" books that you don't have memorized yet.

Of course, you're not actually reading any of these books. You have many books memorized and you know them by the pictures. I have such sweet memories of your Nanny reading to me and I can't wait until you're old enough to enjoy the Little House series or the American Girl books or the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA!!! Oh MAN! Am I going to love reading those with you! Hopefully you'll still let me read to you at that point!

Day 7

2012-02-07T15:47:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 7

You love to sing! Both Daddy and I love music, so it shouldn't be a surprise that you do, too! We love that you love music! You sing all the time and always have a song request when we get in the car. Your favorite used to be Brooke Fraser's Something in the Water (which you call "doo-doo"), and right now you seem to love Feist's I Feel it All (which you call "feel tall song"). It's so cute the way you sing along with the songs you know and even clap or drum along with a few, too! You seem to be able to pick out certain instruments (mostly drums) in songs and you often exclaim, "Daddy drums!" when a song has a particularly noticeable drum beat. I think Daddy's heart skips a beat (pun intended) when you manage to clap along in rhythm and images of a young Meg White flash into his head.

This weekend, despite being sick, you gave us an enthusiastic performance of a new favorite of yours, Gungor's Beautiful Things:

(side note: I love how Daddy's head pops into the frame at 1:17. Hilarious.)

Sometimes your singing is more endearing than others. Example?
Endearing=you singing Happy Birthday to Aunt Jess:

(can anyone guess what my favorite part of this one is? I'll give you a hint, it happens at 57 seconds)

Not-so-endearing=you ~~singing~~ yelling Something in the Water:

Endearing or not, we hope you continue to sing your little heart out!

Day 6

2012-02-06T18:47:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 6

You are so snuggly when you are sick. We've been lucky that you haven't been as sick recently as you were this fall, but I guess our luck ran out this Saturday night when you woke up around midnight screaming. Never a good sign. I rushed into your room and you were burning up - 103.2° fever. Sad baby. I gave you some water and ibuprofen, stripped you down to your diaper and sat down to rock you back to sleep (I'm a fever pro after our many fevers last spring, most memorably this one). After several minutes, I was about to put you back in bed when you started crying and sobbed, "I have it a-fever!" and then threw up all over me. (By the way, it is a testament to my love for you that I did not return the favor. I usually have a very sensitive gag reflex - ask anyone in my family and they'll tell you their favorite exaggerated story of my wussy stomach.)

This is when my expertise failed me. We've done puke. We've done fever. We've even done strep. But I've never done fever and puke at the same time. Good thing your Aunt Jess works weekend nights! I called her to see what I should do to get your fever down if you couldn't keep anything down. Per her instructions, we kept you naked, let you eat some ice chips and tried to get you to take some more medicine. You were adamantly against that last part having just thrown up your last dose. We must have gotten some of it in you, though because your fever started going down. We ended up bringing you in bed with us and you and Daddy slept while I tossed and turned because you both SNORE! Normally I would be grumpy about this, but you kept patting me with your little hand and feeling for me next to you in your sleep. I was kind of loving it. Under usual circumstances we could never be a co-sleeping family because you live by the motto "when people are present it's time to party," but when you're sick you snuggle up quietly (with maybe a whimper or two in there) and go to sleep.

The next day you were so so snuggly. It was awesome. All you wanted to do was sit on our laps quietly or lean against us or snuggle in bed or have us hold you.

I think your Daddy was enjoying this a little bit:

is it just me or do you look like an eight year old in this picture?

Of course I'm grateful that you are now on the upswing, but I was sure enjoying the snuggly silver lining of a sick Peanut!

Day 5

2012-02-05T14:06:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 5

You do the silliest things when you wake up from your nap. When you wake up from your nap, I usually let you play and talk for a little bit. Partly because I am usually desperate for an extra 20-30 minutes of Mommy time and partly because I love to see what little games you invent or what songs you will sing to entertain yourself or your choice of words when you finally demand that I release you from your nap time prison.

Here are a few of your most common:

Mommy, I poop!

Mommy, yar-you? (that's Lila-speak for "where are you")

Mommy, come in here!

Mommy, I all done!

Mommy, good nap?

Mommy, come get Lila!

MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!

One of my favorite things you do is create little imaginary situations with your Lambie. Lambie is poopie and needs a new diaper. Lambie is sad and needs a bink. Lambie is tired so you tuck him in with your snuggle. Lambie wants a story. Sometime I sneak in to see you lying next to Lambie (who is tucked in under your snuggle) and you are patting his back. And sometimes I sneak in and see Lambie perched on the end of your crib surveying your antics:

Lambie is playing King of the Crib.

You usually have a comment about my physical appearance when I get you up from a nap because I'm usually either very sweaty from just having worked out, wet from just having gotten out of the shower, or greasy from being lazy through your nap and NOT having showered yet. So I get comments like, "Mommy sweaty?" or "Mommy wet hair? Take a shower?" or "Mommy shiny?" That last one usually means I need to take a shower! In the following video you ask me if I'm wearing a swimsuit because I was wearing a workout tank:

The most memorable situation was a week or so ago when your daddy and I were having a stay-in-bed stand off and, though we were both very groggy, we remember the following sequence of events:

Mommy! Mommy! I poop! Mommy, I poop!

five minutes later

Ta-da!

a few minutes later

Mommy, I poop on the pottttyyyyy!

Mommy, I poop on the potttttyyyy!

Daddy finally conceded the stand off and went in to get you out of bed (because he's a good man who knows that sleeping in = happy wife). When he opened your bedroom door, he found you half naked with your pants and diaper off and the diaper folded closed and placed intentionally on top of your Snuggle. Our best guess is that you had pooped (as you announced) and then took it upon yourself to change your own diaper. The "ta-da!" is mostly likely when you succeeded in getting your diaper off. As for your proclamation that you had pooped on the potty, we are in pre-potty training mode and you seem to be confused about what it actually means to use the potty. You often tell us that you pooped on the potty when you really mean that you had just pooped in your diaper. Needless to say, we both spring into action now at any poop announcements coming from your crib. We were grateful that it wasn't a messy poop this time so the cleanup was minimal - next time we might not be so lucky! Either way, it makes a great story! And we all know how much I love sharing a good poop story!

Day 4

2012-02-04T08:25:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 4

You are polite! We have been pretty intentional and diligent about creating the linguistic habit of kindness in you. We do the usual reminders of, "what do you say?" when you ask for something or when you are given something. But what makes my mommy heart proud is when you say please, thank you, excuse me or sorry without being prompted. I will do pretty much anything for you if you say please unprompted. For instance, yesterday at lunch, you had already eaten your animal cracker treats at the end of your meal when you spotted the box of letter cookies that your Nana gave us. You looked at me sweetly and said, "Please letter cookie please, Mommy?" And I just couldn't resist your charm. "One letter cookie, okay? Because you asked so nicely!"

Sometimes your politeness makes us giggle, like when the doggie was lying down in front of the door and you said, "Excuse me, please Franny," and then when she got up (probably not because she understood you, more likely because you came toward her and she's learned to view your advances with apprehension!) you said, "Thank you!"

And yesterday you were trying to squeeze past your high chair and you said, "Excuse me, seat!" which made me laugh and you looked at me in confusion as though to say, "What's so funny? Didn't you teach me to say excuse me if someone is in my way?" Yes, I did. And I'm sure your seat is very impressed with your good manners!

The best is when you say please or thank you without my prompting in public and I can just smile humbly while inside my heart swells with pride (like the Grinch's when the Whos in Whoville celebrate Christmas even after he took all of their presents and decorations). A while ago, we were at your Nana and Papa's and as we were leaving, you ran up to your Nana and hugged her and said, "Thank you, Nana!" without our prompting. I just about cried, I was so proud of you. I know it sounds like such a small thing, but practicing the habit of saying thank you will eventually form a heart of gratitude which is something I want so desperately for you. It does my heart good to think that your little two-year-old spirit is already forming and shaping into one that reflects Jesus.

So thank you, for making your mama and daddy look good!

Day 3

2012-02-03T08:54:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 3

Your outfits. You are at that age when you are beginning to have an opinion about what you want to wear. And more often than not, you want to wear something like this:

the outfit you wore to school a few weeks ago

or this:

The outfit I came home to when Aunt Jess watched you. (Notice the wings)

or this:

Your preferred outfit for our make-shift picnic lunch in the living room.

In general, your outfit preference involves either more or fewer articles of clothing than are appropriate for the weather or occasion. Perhaps this isn't a new thing because I just remembered this picture from one of the hottest days last summer:

Long-sleeved tee, pajama pants, and sweater booties all over your swimsuit. And it was 100+ degrees outside.

For the most part, I let you have a say in what you wear. The result is usually an endearing mix of tomboy and pixie. Besides, it charms the old ladies at the grocery store and that's well worth it!

Day 2

2012-02-02T08:33:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 2

(Happy Birthday, Aunt Jess!)

You are so social! When Daddy and I were still waiting for you to be born, we would discuss how our greatest fear was that you would be the extrovert to rock our introvert world. Surely two introverts couldn't produce an extrovert though, right? Wrong. You, as they say, have never met a stranger. People passing on the street, children in shopping carts at the store, the mailman, the receipt checkers (I'm sure that's not their official title) at Costco, the sister-in-law of a friend - all of these people are greeted with a cheery, "Hi, friends!" You literally stand at our big picture window and yell to people walking past, "HI! HI, FRIENDS! HI!" And Tuesday night we were at our dear friend Genny's birthday dinner and I looked around to see you sitting on Genny's sister-in-law's lap. You had known her for all of 30 minutes and I couldn't figure out if I was more concerned or impressed that you had charmed your way into her heart and lap in the time it took me to finish my cheesecake. (Of course, our only concern is rooted in the fear that someday you will befriend a not-so-friendly stranger in your innocence.)

Every once in awhile we get a true glimpse into just how deeply rooted your gregarious nature is. For example, we met Daddy for lunch a few weeks ago and there was a little girl - probably four or five - in line ahead of us with her mom. You kept trying to get her to talk to you. Actually you kept getting all up in her face and saying, "Friend? I Lila!" while gesturing forcibly toward your chest indicating your name. She kept retreating further and further behind her mom's legs. It was a sight to see a child twice your age and height cowering in intimidation because of your social intensity. Daddy and I just looked at each other and reminded one another, "She's an extrovert!" I think sometimes we try to convince ourselves that all toddlers are social, but you are truly uniquely so!

I think I would be a little more terrified about this if I hadn't grown up with your Aunt Jess. She'll give you a run for your money in the social butterfly contest. I am so proud and thankful for the kind of friend, wife and sister she is because I can see so much of her in you. You officially have my permission to turn out like your Aunt Jess. I would be thrilled. Happy Birthday, Little Sister! We love you!

Little Sister, you might be mad at me for posting this, but you took it in Photo Booth on our computer so therefore it's free game!

Day 1

2012-02-01T09:00:00.000-06:00

29 Things to Love about Lila

Day 1

You are so sweet to babies. I can't wait until you are a big sister. You are going to be so good at it! Your friend Ruby (or as you call her, Yuby) comes over every Monday and you are getting so good at sharing with her, taking care of her and shepherding her around our house. I regularly hear you telling her, "No, no Yuby, that not safe!" when she is adventuring or exploring. You are learning to bring her toys to replace the ones that you snatch out of her hand and you are also learning that sometimes you just have to share. You give Ruby hugs and kisses all day long, tickle her toes when she's sitting in her highchair, bring her Pink Puppy (Ruby's version of Lambie), and just all around take care of her.

Last week we took advantage of our unseasonably warm weather and took a walk (yes! a WALK! in JANUARY!). I wasn't sure how it would work, but I flattened the seat in your stroller and had you sit behind Ruby with your legs straddling her so that she was sort of in your lap. I worried you might think she was crowding you, but instead you seemed to soak up the snuggling and whenever Ruby tried to lean forward to see something you would pull her back onto you and say, "Lay down, please!" It was so, so sweet and quickly turned into a game that had you both giggling.

I can't wait to see the way you take care of your little brother or sister. That baby will so lucky to have you for a big sister!

Updated 2/2/12: We visited Baby Afsana today and you kept asking to hold her. So we set you up on the couch with Afsana in your lap and you both cooed at one another and snuggled contentedly for several minutes. It was so sweet!

28+1 Days of Lila

2012-01-31T15:36:00.000-06:00

Last February, we documented 28 things we love about Lila. This year, we're lucky to have an extra day to our month of love so we'll be sharing 29 things we love about Lila. We dedicate the month of February to this little tradition (two years in a row make it a tradition, right?) because we want to remember the little things about the stage she is in right now. There are so many things that I wish I could bottle up to enjoy later - like the way she says smoothie, "smuse-me" or the way she makes me change Lambie's diaper before I change her diaper or the way she...wait, I'm getting ahead of myself!

So for the next 29 days, we'll have a post a day detailing our favorite things about two-year-old Lila. Because we don't want to forget this cuteness:

drinking a smuse-me.

Bedtime conversations

2012-01-30T23:41:00.000-06:00

I had a migraine tonight so the awesome Husband took over parenting duties with the Baby Girl. They had a Daddy-Daughter date at Wendy's (where Lila managed to dump an entire cup of water on herself and then declare, "I soaked, Daddy.") and then, because he's so very awesome, he cleaned up the disaster zone left by Hurricane Lila/Ruby while Lila played with her "Sesame Street Guys."

I found this the other day after I had put Lila down for her nap. Evidently her Sesame Street Guys needed a nap, too.

I was out of commission right up until bedtime, but I wanted to be sure to say goodnight to Lila so she would feel like her world wasn't completely falling apart. You see, upon further reflection of our day from H-E-Double Hockey Sticks a few weeks ago, I have a suspicion that part of the problem was that I hadn't been very accessible to her for the 48 hours previous. The two days prior to that day, I had been teaching all day and in bed with what I thought at the time was the flu, respectively. So tonight I wanted to end her day with our normal routine since she had to share me (and all of her stuff) with Ruby today in addition to my reclusive migraine-induced behavior. I was determined to do what I could to prevent a second installment of One of Those Days.

Oh, and in regards to one of those days, we are doing much better. The weekend following the Day was rough, but I went to bed that Sunday night and prayed a prayer of hope that tomorrow is another day and that the Lord's mercies are new every morning. And true to His word, that Monday was tons better. I am grateful to you, sweet friends, who affirmed and encouraged me as a mom with your comments and emails and phone calls.

At some point during my conversation with my parents that Friday night, I tearfully blubbered, "If I could make the choice to do one thing perfectly in my life and do everything else terribly, I would choose raising Lila as the one thing I would do perfectly. She's that important. She deserves that."

What mom doesn't feel like that? Of course, that choice doesn't exist. But, as my friend Kerri encouraged me, our imperfections allow our children to see first hand the redeeming work that Jesus Christ does in a heart. And boy, does my broken life allow for lots of hands on experience in that department!

A few weeks ago, a dear friend of mine and I were talking about how moms (ourselves included) can be so judgmental of other moms. And we concluded that judgement and comparison does no one any good (duh). A different friend once shared something she heard in a sermon: comparison always leads to carnality. When you compare up, you end up feeling less than, insecure and even ungrateful; when you compare down, you end up feeling prideful, judgmental and self-righteous. There is no healthy comparison.

When I see a thin, fit mom with her angelic child dressed in a hip little outfit or when I look at blogs of people who have amazing style and decoration sense, I can't help but feel bad about my lingering baby weight (can I still call it that two years later?), my naughty little girl and my house decorated in unfolded laundry. On the other hand when I see a mom with her screaming two-year-old at Walmart at 11:00pm (for shame!) or witness a preschooler demanding a candy bar in the brattiest voice you can imagine, I can't help but congratulate myself on giving Lila boundaries and setting her up for healthy sleep habits and a cavity-free (and unspoiled) life. Never mind the possibility that the mom with the two-year-old in Walmart might just be there because she's picking up some tylenol for her sick (and therefore screaming) kid, or because she's a single mom who works two jobs and 11:00pm is the only time she can run to the store for groceries. And never mind the possibility that the mom of the bratty kid is just as appalled by her child's behavior as I am, but she's too exhausted to discipline her kid because her husband has been out of town on business for the last three days and she's spent.

The truth is: most moms are doing their very best with the tools they have and most moms fear that their best isn't good enough. There is absolutely nothing more terrifying than motherhood. Nothing. The responsibility of shaping, protecting, discipling and training a child is the most nerve-wracking and self-doubt-inducing thing a person could possibly do. And to make matters worse, the results of our blood, toil, tears and sweat (yes, I'm quoting Churchill) are walking around in their own independent bodies to be admired or judged by the rest of the waking world. Heaven help us. Literally.

We have no other option but to trust God to fill in the gaps. An example that comes to mind happened when Lila was about eight months old. I was picking up a few things for my classroom and Lila was being really wiggly, so as I shopped I set her down to let her move around a bit. Once I had found all I needed, I picked her up and got in line. I noticed she was drooling a ton, but I attributed it to teething. It wasn't until I was strapping her in her car seat that I saw a flash of white in her mouth. I immediately stuck my finger in her mouth and fished this out:

I kept this little disc as a reminder that the Lord holds Lila in His hands

It's one of those little plastic discs that holds a sales tag on the edge of a shelf so that it sticks out and catches your eye. She must have picked it up and popped it in her mouth in the few minutes I had let her crawl around in the store. I sat in shock for several minutes, holding that innocent looking disc in the palm of my hand, tears springing to my eyes in a mix of gratitude and fear of the what ifs. I wondered what could have happened if I hadn't noticed it when I did. What if she had choked on it while I was driving and, in her rear-facing seat, I couldn't see what was happening?

That fearful moment will be permanently etched in my memory. Along with the time I got her out of the car in our driveway and realized that I had driven seven miles with her unbuckled in her car seat. I had been to lunch with my cousin and had her unbuckled in her car seat, snapped into the stroller. When I had gone to transfer her from her stroller to the car, I had forgotten that she wasn't buckled in the seat and then driven all the way home with her vulnerably free from the car seat's restraints. In those moments, it's clear to me that no matter how attentive I try to be, no matter how much energy and time and prayer I put into worrying about doing it right, in the end Lila's health, happiness and survival isn't in my hands because I just can't do it perfectly.

So here's what I propose, when you find yourself sizing up a mom because her child is putting on an impressive performance of Rebellious Toddler in Target, or judging a friend of yours based on her parenting decisions, remind yourself that she is doing her very best and that her deepest fear is that her best isn't good enough. Remember that little adage and whisper something encouraging to her. Tell her she's doing a great job. Tell her that parenting is hard (especially in public). Tell her that second-guessing and worrying is a natural hazard of the job. Affirm before you advise. Encourage before you judge. Because she's doing her very best and no one wants her best to be enough more than she does.

But I digress, this post was supposed to be about a conversation I had with Lila tonight.

So, after Daddy had snuggled, rocked, sung and prayed with the Baby Girl, I went in to tuck her and pat her back. As I bade her goodnight, here is the conversation that ensued:

Me: Goodnight, Sweet Girl. See you tomorrow.
Lila: trying to form her question Um, where, uh, where, uh, uh, uh, where tomorrow come from?
Me: giggling Tomorrow comes after you sleep. When you wake up it will be tomorrow!
Lila: Oh.
Me: kissing her hand I love you so much. See you in the morning.
Lila: I love you so much.

Oh, my heart. My poor, poor, Mommy Heart.

Thank you, Lord that tomorrow comes after we sleep and that there are new mercies waiting for us when Tomorrow wakes us. And thank you that I get to wake up to this little face:

And to all you moms out there, you're doing a great job. Parenting is hard. All you can do is give it your best, and even when you don't or can't, it's okay. The Lord will fill in the gaps. He's cool like that.

Dossier: APPROVED!

2012-01-26T16:09:00.000-06:00

Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh!

That pretty much sums up our emotions right now! We are so relieved to have the dossier out of our hands! Of course, we'll keep you updated as we receive news about our precious dossier's journey to and from Washington DC. In the meantime, we've been planning our month of posts for this year's 28 days of Lila so stay tuned!

Dossier ARRIVED!

2012-01-24T18:10:00.000-06:00

Hooray! So, as you can read, our dossier arrived safe and sound to our agency! Wahoo! And also, the marriage license doesn't need to be re-notarized! Yay! Whew. What a relief.

I know I kind of already explained the next steps, but just as a reminder I'll recap. The next thing that will happen is our adoption consultant will review everything to make sure we did everything correctly (please?) and then it will be sent to Washington DC for authentication. According to our original paperwork, this step should take between two and three weeks so we're looking at mid-February before we are officially on the waiting list. Maybe the Husband will get an awesome birthday present and we'll hear our official number on his birthday on the 13th? We'd both be thrilled with an early birthday present, though!

Well, the Husband and I are off to a date night, but I wanted to give you all a quick update to keep you in the loop!

Thanks for your prayers and support thus far. This has truly felt like a team effort. We are so grateful for our outstanding community. Literally couldn't do this without you guys.

Dossier MAILED!

2012-01-21T17:21:00.000-06:00

Well, we did it. It's out of our hands. Our dossier - that pile of papers that has simultaneously been our most protected and precious possession and the bane of our existence - will be shipped on Monday and should arrive in St. Louis on Tuesday. And I will be obsessively checking our tracking number until then. Because I'm a control freak and that's what I do.

The day was not without its share of excitement. You would think mailing a pile of papers would be simple enough, but leave it to me and I can complicate any situation. I felt like I was mailing away a second child. Which is sort of true - I mean, at this point that pile of papers represents our child. When the Husband and I were talking about how to send our dossier we knew we wanted it trackable, but we were debating insuring it. On one hand, if something happened to it, no amount of money could buy us a brand new pile of those papers. No amount of money can buy the three months of our lives it took to compile those documents. But on the other hand, just the literal cost of some of the documents alone made that envelope worth over $200. $10 for a copy of our marriage certificate, $15 each for copies of our birth certificates, $10 for medical letters, $7.50 each for 23 state certified documents, etc. To say those papers are precious to us is an understatement. Our agency will probably think we are neurotic lunatics when they receive our dossier because we ended up putting all of the papers into a bigger-than-necessary stiff envelope (because I didn't want to risk folding corners if we tried to squeeze too many papers into a smaller envelope) and then packing that envelope in a larger box cushioned with packing peanuts. I wonder how many dossiers they receive in that sort of protection - or are we the only crazy people?

We spent a good twenty minutes making copies before packing it all up, during which I realized there was a section on the back of our marriage license for notaries that had not been filled out. We don't know if it was supposed to be filled out because the Secretary of State office certified the original notary from when we got married rather than the notary that perhaps should have witnessed the person who prepared the official copy of our license. We plan on calling our agency on Monday to clarify and if worse comes to worst we'll have to make a trip downtown to get another official copy that has been notarized, get that state certified and then mail that to St. Louis to join our other documents. The good news is that it is a Missouri document so it's a 20 minute drive rather than an hour drive. We hope it won't be necessary, but we'll keep you updated.

During all of this, Lila played happily with the toys the UPS store provides for its customers' children. Until it was time to leave. At which point she threw a fit. In her defense, it was past her nap time, but let's just say that we haven't had the most peaceful last 48 hours. Eric picked her up off the floor, and he handed her her cup of water. She promptly threw it in defiance and it hit me in the mouth. I. was. furious. If I had been standing a few feet further away and the cup had just fallen to the floor, I would have merely scolded her knowing that she was running on empty - hungry and tired. But I wasn't standing a few feet further away and it didn't fall innocently to the floor. It hit me in the mouth and it hurt in that way that causes tears to burn in your eyes involuntarily from the shock of the impact. I was grateful that Eric was there to deal with Lila so I could just turn away and take some deep breaths. By the time we got in the car I had regained my composure enough to tell Lila that when we hurt someone, we need to say we are sorry. I told her to say, "Sorry I hurt you, Mommy." At first she refused, but after several stubborn moments, she finally mumbled something close to those words and I just had to take what I could get and nurse my swollen lip, still holding back tears that I think were less due to my sore lip and more residual from yesterday's failures.

We got home and Eric got Lila ready for her nap. I started filing our copies away at which point I realized that we had forgotten to include the $4,100 check with our dossier. Yeah, that's probably kind of important. Frantically, I called the UPS store and caught the guy who helped us just as he was sealing our box. He set the box aside and I hurried back to add the check to the dossier packet. I gave it one last glance, said one last prayer that it would make it to St. Louis safely and then I got in my car and went home.

There. So NOW, it's done. Really, really done. Finished. Done-zo. The end.

Unless of course we need to get another copy of our marriage license. But the after that, we'll really be done. Really. Hopefully. I think. *sigh*

One of those days

2012-01-21T03:17:00.000-06:00

Today was one of those days I'm glad Lila's childhood isn't defined by one day. The day started fine and slowly regressed from fine to bad to worse to horrible, dramatic meltdown and monumental mommy screw up.

We've been working really hard on getting Lila to come to us when we call her. I know it sounds like I'm training a dog and sometimes it feels that way. I've been really frustrated recently by her tendency to high-tail it out of the room when I am trying to get her dressed, change her diaper, feed her lunch. Essentially every time I try to meet one of her basic needs she stages a revolt. Only, I'm pretty sure she just thinks it's a thrilling game. But it's exhausting and annoying. And then a few nights ago I had a dream that Lila ran away from me into the street and I couldn't get to her. She was running straight down the middle of the street and I was too slow to catch up with her. I woke up before anything happened to her, heart racing, sweating. I resolved to train that pooch to come when called. It's now beyond a minor irritant. It's a safety concern. We've had very few real safety concerns, but usually because I can catch her in time for her to really be in harm's way.

Anyway, the last three days, I've really cracked down on her disobedience in this - even if she just thinks she's playing. Good-natured defiance, you know. She needs to understand that when Mommy or Daddy say, "Come here," there's no choice involved. Sometimes it will just mean, "Come here, I need to put your shoes on." Others it might mean, "Come here before you get hit by a car/eaten by that bear/snatched away by the creepy guy lurking behind the corners at Target."

Today seemed like we took one step forward, and 29 steps back. The one step forward might even be a little gratuitous. It was just a constant battle all day long. So when Eric called to tell me he was heading to Topeka to get our last dossier document certified I let out a sigh that was 50% relieved that it would be done and 50% resigning to an extra hour or two of Mommy vs. Toddler. So I called my parents and asked if we could come over for a break.

Before we headed to Nanny and Pop's however, we stopped at Target to return something. And that's when I won the battle but lost the war. Actually, I'm not even sure I won the battle. Lila ran away from me in Target. I had a brief panic attack when I turned the corner where she had disappeared and she wasn't there. The little booger had taken off down another aisle. I found her easily enough, but now I was really put out - the anger and frustration that had mounted all day combined with the momentary stress when she slipped from my sight pushed me right to the brink. Stupidly, I soldiered on after I gave her a stern reprimand. As I searched for the shortest checkout line, she took off again, this time more slowly because I think she sensed that I was "stuck" in line. Finally I had to relinquish my place in line, abandon my purchases on the belt of a closed lane, scoop her up and march out of the store. I gave her a spanking in the car. Just a swat on the hand, but she looked at me with this offended look that was a mixture of shock, pain and defiance. I told her, "Lila, when Mommy tells you to come, you need to come right away. It's not safe to run away from Mommy." Then I got in the car and drove to my parents' house, bubbling with frustration, exhaustion, self-doubt and regret.

I was thinking, "I should have gotten a cart - then I could have just corralled her in there and I wouldn't have had to resort to spanking her. That mom with her three angelic children who commented that she was wondering who Lila belonged to when I finally retrieved her probably thought I was being an irresponsible parent. Did I spank her because it was a fitting punishment or because I was angry? Should I spank her at all? Ever? If time outs don't work, what other choices do I have? I'm really a bad mom if I can't even keep my cool for something that small. I wonder why she's been acting up so much today - is it because I didn't play with her enough? Is it because I didn't get her in bed on time so she only took a short nap? Is it because I spent too much time on the computer this morning when I could have been interacting with her? Is it because she's hungry? Maybe she's getting sick. If she's sick I shouldn't be so hard on her. I shouldn't have gone to Target. It's my fault she's acting this way...." and on and on the self-doubt continued.

You might think that was the low point, but you would be wrong. The low point came an hour or so later when, after some innocuous comments from my parents about Lila's behavior, I completely lost it and ended up yelling at my dad in front of Lila. Which made her cry because I don't think she's every seen/heard me yell like that. Thankfully, by then Eric had come home so he took her home after I picked her up and told her "It's okay, Mommy was just upset. I shouldn't have yelled." When she kept crying I asked her if she was scared and she wailed, "Yeeeaaahhhhhh!" and my heart broke. Of all the ways I screwed up today, this one did it. I had completely lost it and now my daughter was scared. Of what, I don't know. It was just clear that Mommy was not okay and that was scary. So Daddy took her home and put her to bed and I stayed to talk things out with my parents.

What a horrible way to end a horrible day. I hate the thought that the last interaction we had was that scared, upset, emotional one. I hate it. I really, really hate it. I'm crying right now thinking about it. Of course I went in and held her for a little while when I got home. I held her and cried some more and begged Jesus to let this day just slip away from everyone's memory. Let it just be gone.

I'm still praying that prayer. I'm praying that in 18 years when Lila is reading this post she says, "Mom, I have no memory of you ever yelling like that." Maybe that's wishful thinking, because I'll probably be guilty of many more days ending like this. But I'm going to pray it anyway.

21“Pay attention, O Jacob,

for you are my servant, O Israel.

I, the LORD, made you,

and I will not forget you.

22I have swept away your sins like a cloud.

I have scattered your offenses like the morning mist.

Oh, return to me,

for I have paid the price to set you free.”

I should have known

2012-01-20T15:39:00.000-06:00

Well, we had our trek to Topeka yesterday morning, all hopeful and excitedly talking about finally having the dossier completely DONE.

However. As Georgia (the nice lady in charge of state certifications in the Secretary of State's office) looked through our papers, she pulled out one document - a reference letter - and said, "The notary on this one is expired."

What?! No! It's not possible! I checked them! I double checked them! I sent them to our adoption consultant to check them! I...

Oh bother.

I almost cried. I mean, we drove an hour to get this stuff done so that we wouldn't have to delay getting on the waiting list by waiting on the mail and now we had to get a new letter with a new notary's signature and get that letter back to the SOS office which means delays and waiting and BAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

But I should have known. I should have just prepared myself to have something not be done. Because that's how this whole process has been! Everything just takes so much work and has to be just so and there are so many humans involved in each document so the possibility for human error just climbs and climbs. I'm not complaining. Well, maybe I am. But I'm not suggesting it should be any other way. After all, this is a child's life we're talking about here. So I'm glad there are so many checks in place to make sure that our child will be placed in a safe and loving home. But still...BAAAAAHHHHHHH! It's just infuriating when you think you've done everything right only to find out that you haven't. ONE. MEASLY. LITTLE. DATE. can ruin it all. Can knock back your schedule by a week or more.

But no use bemoaning what's done. It's really no one's fault. At the time of the signature, the notary wasn't expired, but the notary has to be valid through the date when our dossier is reviewed by the Ethiopian Embassy so our agency suggests all of our notaries have expiration dates at least six months out. I should have caught it. But I didn't.

On the bright side, it was only one document. And it was a reference letter from my sweet friend, Kathleen (also known as Baby Ruby's Mommy - that's what Lila calls her) as opposed to a medical letter from our doctor that would have involved a lot more people and more money. So Kathleen graciously took time this morning (even though her mom is visiting from out of town) to get the letter re-signed and notarized. Lila and I picked it up and the Husband will drive it to Topeka on Monday. We could mail it, but the earliest we would have it then would be Wednesday. This way, we'll have this document back on Monday and be able to mail our completed dossier overnight that day so it will be in St. Louis (where our agency is based) on Tuesday.
UPDATE: The Husband just called and he left work early today to drive the letter to Topeka tonight! Then we can be done-done-done!

After that, our adoption consultant will review our dossier and if everything looks good (please, LORD let everything be good!) she will send it on to the courier in Washington DC to have it authenticated. I don't know what "authenticated" means nor do I care. All I care about is that it is out of my hands. No longer will it be possible that I can delay the day that our baby comes home to us. After it is authenticated by the U.S. Department of State, then the courier will pick it up and bring it to the Ethiopian Embassy in DC to be authenticated again by the Ethiopian government. Once that is done, our agency will be notified and we will be put on the waiting list. This all should take 2-3 weeks so our realistic hope is that we will be on the waiting list by the end of February.

The last email we got from our agency said that there are 94 families on the waiting list and there hasn't been a referral since December so that means there are still at least 94 families ahead of us. Eek. But we know and trust that the timing will be perfect. The Lord knows who our son or daughter is even now - just as He knew Lila even before she was conceived. We have to view even little hiccups like the expired notary as intentional stalls to get us where we need to be to be matched with our son or daughter. We have to. Otherwise, we'll go crazy. Well, I'll go crazy. Eric is usually the sane one of the two of us. Usually.

In other news, we did get our passport photos taken on Wednesday so that's one more thing checked off the list.

The Husband is actually smiling in his photo. I was giving him grief because he usually looks so depressed/angry in photos for things like this. I think in an effort to look cool or something. Grumpy does not equal cool, Husband.

Lila wanted her photo taken even though we didn't need one for her and the sweet lady working at Walgreens took one of her and then printed it for us for free. And it's super cute! See?

She's been putting her hand in her mouth when she's self-concious. It's kinda cute, kinda gross.

Lila was thrilled beyond words. And I was thrilled beyond words to check one more thing off the list.

Also, I bought this hardcore contraption to keep our documents in:

I wish I would have bought this at the very beginning of our adoption process. It would have prevented many unnecessarily dramatic gasps, panic attacks and Husband scoldings when our flimsy folder was put in harms way. For whatever reason, the only one big enough to hold our entire dossier came with a calculator. I find this hilarious. And awesome.

Here's hoping our next post will be titled: Dossier MAILED! Stay tuned...

"So, how's the adoption process going?"

2012-01-16T18:47:00.000-06:00

We've been getting that question a lot recently and for a detail-oriented person like me it's really hard to give a short answer. If I can tell it's someone just being polite, I just say, "Really well!" or maybe add "We're finishing up the paperwork part of the process and soon we'll be a waiting family." If the questioner continues to ask questions, that's when I take the cue to go into more detail.

I thought I'd go into that detail here for those of you who are interested.

We have finally completed all of our documents for our dossier. The requirements for the documents are super picky as far as content and presentation of the documents. Each document must be in pristine condition and be notarized and state certified (the notary verifies that the person who signed the document is who they say they are and state certification verifies that the notary is a authentic notary in a particular state). Each document was so much work to complete - doctors letters, references, original birth certificates, financial declarations, employment verifications - and each is now precious to me because of the amount of effort put into each one. I would cry if something happened to even one thing and I sweat every time I have to bring our paperwork out of our house!

On December 9th, we got our fingerprints taken as a part of a criminal history background check for USCIS (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services). We had to wait until we got that approval back before we could get all of our dossier documents state certified. The approval came in the mail last Friday, January 13th. (Not a bad turn around for having the holidays in there as well as a little hiccup when they called and said page 5 of our home study was mysteriously missing. Not to worry, our awesome HS agency fixed that problem the same afternoon!)

So here's what's next:
1. Drive to Topeka and get all of our dossier documents state certified. (We plan to do this on Thursday)
2. Get our passport photos taken.
3. Submit all documents to CHI for processing/checking for accuracy.

Once our dossier is completed and turned in to our agency, they will sendit on to Ethiopia and put us on the waiting list. At that time theywill tell us how many families are waiting ahead of us. However, justbecause we are number 81 (for example) on the waiting list, doesn't necessarilymean that we will wait for 81 referrals to be handed out to other familiesbefore we are matched with our child. There are two lists - one ofchildren who are ready to be matched with a family and another of familieswaiting for a referral. Each list would indicate the gender, age andhealth conditions of the child and the specific requests of the family (age,gender, heath conditions, siblings, etc). The lists might look like this: (sorry if the lists are all wonky...I was having frustrating formatting issues)

Children waiting Families waiting

1. Two year old girl 1. girl 0-12 months

2. 7 month old boy 2. siblings 0-7 years

3. 3 year old boy 3. boy or girl 0-3 years

4. 4 month old girl 4. boy or girl 0-12 months

So, our agency would lookat the child in the number one slot - a two year old girl in my example - and thenstart going down the list of families to see if she matches a family'srequests. So in this case, families in the 1 and 2 slots don't match withthe first child available, but family number three does - so they would skipahead and get their referral next. Basically, the more specific you are,the more likely you will be waiting longer. In theory. Of course,it's all dependent on the children who are available for referral.

Remember this story, aboutthe family whose daughter turned out to be a son? The were several slotsdown on the list, but all the families in front of them had requested boys, sobecause they had requested boy OR girl and their son (whose paperwork mistakenly said hewas a girl) was the first child available, they got bumped to the top of thelist. If his paperwork had been correct, he would have been matched withone of the families at the top of the list. It's a crazy, unpredictable,beautiful process. But, you just have to trust that God is in it.

We are requesting a boy or girl 0-12 months. We have recently seen families wait 10.5 months for a referral that fitsour request, but we're telling ourselves to expect a year at least so we don'tget our hopes up too high. In that time, we will be fundraising for ourreferral fee (note our new thermometer on the right!), loving on Lila, and praying for our son or daughter and his or herfamily in Ethiopia. It is bittersweet when we think about our baby joining our family because we know for that to happen, a terrible tragedywill have to first happen in his or her life. Kids just don't becomeorphans without a tragedy.

In light of that reality, I've been thinking about Baby Jesus (I know Christmas is over and everything, but stick with me) and the fact that as he snuck into this world, the tide began to turn and from that moment all the wrong things began their journey to become right.

During the weeks surrounding Christmas, Lila and I read and re-read the nativity story in Lila's Jesus Storybook Bible:

"But it's too wonderful!" Mary said. "How can it be true?"

"Is anything too wonderful for God?" Gabriel said.

So Mary trusted God more than what her eyes could see. And she believed.

As I've been praying for our baby and his or her family, I have been reminding myself that nothing is too wonderful for him. I have been praying for the least tragic option for our son or daughter...whatever that might be. I am trusting Him to bring good from even the most horrible tragedies because nothing is too wonderful for him. He's here and wrong things are becoming "righter" by the second because of Him.

Christmas

2012-01-11T20:23:00.004-06:00

Okay, so I'm slow on the updating here, but better late than never, right?

We had an extended Christmas as we tried to make time for each side of the family.

On Christmas Eve, we had brunch with the Kautzi family and opened presents with Lila's cousins. She thought this was the best thing that ever happened to her. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera so I have no pictures. Booo.

Christmas Eve night, we went to church - got there 15 minutes early (unheard of for us) and still had to stand in the back! It was packed!! Lila distracted all the nice people in the back by running back and forth and yelling "Yay!" every time a song ended. Also she looked this cute:

Yes, that's a bloody gash across her nose. She was climbing on the dog and when Franny decided she'd had enough she stood up to walk away (her only defense, really) and vaulted Lila into my dresser. It was a sad day.

Christmas day, we spent with just the three of us. We took Lila to see the Muppet Movie as her Christmas present. The girl loves the Muppets. We were grateful that there were only about 12 other people in the theater for Lila's first movie-going experience. She did amazingly for the first hour or so, but got restless for the last 45 minutes. Overall, it was a fun experience - and if you are a true Muppet fan, you will LOVE the movie. Both the Husband and I cried. I mean...I cried - the Husband is too manly to cry at a movie. (But not really, he cried more than I did.)

We spent Christmas evening at my grandparents' house with our cousins and the usual 3-5 extra guests that people had invited. This year we were representing many cultures - Chinese, Indian, and Carrigan. That is, Jason Carrigan, self-proclaimed adopted brother and Lila's "Favorite Uncle." (I try to tell him that he's lucky to even get the uncle card for not being related to us and that it's pushing it to go for favorite, but the man won't hear reason.) I wonder if Jason still reads my blog. He'd be happy now that we actually put pictures and stuff on here. Jason? Do you read my blog?

We always end the night by singing some carols as a family. It's both sentimental and hilarious. It means so much to my grandma - she is a retired preschool music teacher - and she has printed caroling books and jingle bells to boot. Let's just say the Kahler clan is not known for its musical abilities. We can't seem to manage to sing on tempo, much less on key.

Here's a glimpse:

My favorite part of that video is Jason nodding as he sings "won't you guide my sleigh tonight?" We were all excited when Kyle joined the family and he was quickly enlisted as our choral director. Although as you may have noticed in the video, not everyone is accustomed to submitting to someone else's leadership. Often, the mob takes over and we fumble through a song unaccompanied.

The last song of caroling is always Twelve Days of Christmas. For you brave souls who can handle 7 whole minutes of Kahler caroling, I captured it this year in it's entirety. The video starts out with Grandma assigning the parts.

Since we were all spending the 26th with my family, I had the brilliant idea for all of us to spend the night at my parents' house. I think in the future this could be really fun, but it was decidedly NOT. I think there were just too many X-factors with two dogs (one of which is an ENORMOUS weimaraner "puppy" and the other is a cranky herding dog who kept trying to keep the pup under control) six adults and an over-stimulated 2-year-old. I don't think anyone got any sleep and I will be the first to admit that I was a GRUMP the next morning. Not exactly the nostalgic Christmas experience we were going for. Ah, you live and learn. We still had a great day, but by that afternoon, we were all toast. It took a good week and a half to recover.

Which is why I'm writing this post halfway through January. The end.

Stay tuned for an adoption update! I promise, it's coming!

Ahhh, Presents!

2012-01-06T17:08:00.000-06:00

In my head I said that title the way Tina Fey says one of the lines in the Bossypants audiobook: "Ahh Babies!" It's only funny if you can hear it. Which you can't. Because I can't figure out how to put the sound byte on here. Or, I'm too lazy to figure out how to do it.

Before I get into an overview of our birthday/Christmas/New Year celebrations, I thought I'd write out a post about Lila's favorite gifts. There are eleven days in between Lila's birthday and the 26th (when we celebrated Christmas with my family) and I'm pretty sure Lila is under the impression that those are now called the Eleven Days of Lila. In fact, I think it's a distinct possibility that she believes she is now entitled to a present a day because the gifts are still trickling in from sweet out of town relatives and friends who missed her party. I swear she gets up in the morning and holds out her hands and says, "Present please." Okay maybe not, but it wouldn't surprise me. Needless to say, we've got some figuring to do so that we don't end up raising an ungrateful little booger.

Anyway...as of right now, her favorite presents are:

I may have played with this for 20 minutes after Lila went to bed.

Doggie Guitar. She picked this out with her birthday money with only a little prodding from the parental units. And by prodding I mostly mean steering her away from the more obnoxious toys with loud noises and flashing buttons. My favorite part of this toy is that it has three settings: acoustic, electric and howl. Lila likes the howl one, but she's scared of the howling on the song that is played when you use the whammy ~~bar~~ bone. However, like many other things she's scared of, she seems to think that immersion therapy is best and just keeps pushing the bar over and over. Her reaction is one of two: 1) wailing, "Mommmyyyy!!!" and running to me or 2) saying, "Doggie noise - it not scary," to herself with shaky confidence.

Picnic Basket. This one was a gift from Aunt Mackenzie and Uncle Scottie. It talks to her and tells her to find the orange circle or the purple cup. If she leaves it alone for too long it will try to get her to play with it again by asking her to find the pie shaped like a triangle or something like that. The hilarious thing is that she often doesn't hear/comprehend what the basket is saying so she turns to it and says, "What? What Basket?" To make matters worse, I sometimes catch myself translating for her: "Basket said, 'Can you find the brown triangle?'" I'm sure she thinks there's a tiny person living inside her picnic basket. Which might explain why she guards that thing with her life and yells, "MIIIIINNNNNE!" whenever anyone goes near it. Or maybe she just does that because she's two.

I think she's contemplating retaliation for all the unflattering pictures I've put of her on this blog.

Her computer. This gift was chosen by Lila's buddy, Emri who assured her mom in the store that, "Lila wants this." When I told Kerri that Lila was obsessed with her new computer (so much so that she refused to open any other gifts once she discovered the computer), Kerri responded, "Emri knows best." It's a LeapFrog computer and I credit it with Lila's new skill of naming every letter and most of their sounds. "A says ahh." You can even personalize it by entering in your child's name. So now when she pushes the "L" button, it says, "L! That's the first letter in your name, Lila!" There's a setting for animals starting with each letter, too and a little animated version of the animal appears on the screen. Of course, there is one that she's scared of. "What animal has a long neck? V! Vulture!" and then it makes this sort of creepy wah-wa-wa-wah-wa-wa-waaaaaah sound. And of course, she's also chosen immersion therapy for this fear. Or rather the Husband forced it on her because he thought she was saying she wanted to see the vulture and was completely befuddled when she flopped down on her floor in hysterics when he left her in her room by herself. Enter, mommy who, because I log more hours talking Toddler-speak, was able to translate what sounded like "see vulture" as "scary vulture" Don't worry, she's not scarred for life. We told her she didn't need to be afraid - a vulture is just a "big birdie." So now she pushes the V button and assures herself in a shaky voice, "Just big birdie."

Are we noticing a trend here? All of her favorite toys are plastic electronic things that make weird noises and only pass as tolerable because they are somewhat educational. Just for giggles, wanna know what Mommy's favorite of her presents were?

Lila says, "Aren't I cute in my skinny jeans? Oh, and GO CATS!" (That tee was also a birthday gift - thanks, Anna!)

Lila's skinny jeans. Of which she got two pairs! One was from my cousin, Laura (whom Lila adorably calls "Laurla"), one was from my Grandma who asked my mom to ask me what I really want for Lila, but wouldn't buy myself. I tried to think of something that would fit that description and also be fun for Grandma to give her, but I just couldn't think of anything that fit the "I want but wouldn't buy" category more than skinny jeans! When my Grandma showed my Pop what they were getting Lila for her birthday he asked, fairly, "Where's the top?" Thanks Grandma and Pop for being generous to us even if you don't get what "skinny jeans" are and why my toddler needs them. :)
(P.S. Hi Grandma! Hi Pop! I hope you are enjoying reading our blog on your new IPad! I'm so proud of you for learning something new - I'm sure it's intimidating! Now, everyone on the Internet, say "Hi" to Grandma and Pop, the cutest new additions to the world wide web! All together now, "HI GRANDMA! HI POP!")

Lila's Ethiopian Dolly. My awesome friend, Joyele MADE this for her. MADE it! With her own two hands! (Okay, probably with a sewing machine, too.) And isn't it perfect?? I love it love it love it! In fact, I often suggest to Lila, "Don't you want to bring your Dolly with you to church/the store/a friend's house?" because I want to show it off. To which she replies, "Yes!" Not really. She replies, "No. Doggie guitar," and then I sneak it in the car anyway so I can show it off.

Laurisa also gave her a little rolling pin, but...we...lost it already. I'm sure it rolled under something in the playroom.

Lila's sugar cookies. My other awesome friend, Laurisa made these for Lila. Is this not the CUTEST THING!?!? She can roll out the dough, (by the way, I just spelled "dough," doe, do, and doh before I remembered how to actually spell it. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I teach 6 year olds how to spell. Rest assured, the literacy of future generations is resting in these capable hands.) cut the cookies, ice them and bake them in her little kitchen! Or rather, I can. Which I do. By myself. Quite often. While Lila assures herself, "Doggie noise - it not scary."

Yes, I have very creative and talented friends. I like to think that their creativity will rub off on me eventually. So far...not so much. In the meantime, I'll just play with all the things they make my kid.

Well, that's the run-down. The moral of the story is, if you're looking for a gift that a two-year-old would love, go with something that talks with flashy buttons. On the other hand, if you're looking for a gift that a two-year-old's mommy would play with, go stylish (skinny jeans) or hand-made.

Coming soon...a Christmas update - better late than never.

P.S. I feel like I should mention - on behalf of those of you who got Lila gifts that didn't make either Top 3 list - that she really did love each gift she got. Truly. She is so blessed to have so many people who love her so much. Me, too.

Also, a tip for those of you with peanuts born close to Christmas, I usually put away some of her gifts to bring out in the summer so she has new things to play with throughout the year. It's just a small way to help with the over-abundance of toys this time of year. A little delayed gratification never hurt anyone, right?

Lila's Birthday Party

2012-01-02T23:30:00.000-06:00

Lila's birthday party was December 17th. Simply put, it was 3+ hours of joyful chaos. Lila was beside herself with glee as each of her favorite people walked through the door. Franny, the over-zealous guard dog, gave up her barking fits after the 17th person walked in without knocking. Lila just kept running around showing off and yelling intermittently, "Butterfly Birthday!!" It was awesome.

Here's a glimpse of the party in pictures:

invitations

the spread

party favors: butterfly ornaments

two!

little notes for the big two-year-old. I love reading what people say about my girl.

Birthday banner from last year, embellished with little butterflies made by Laurisa

birthday girl/hostess was busy cooking up some fake food for her guests. that plate has half an orange, a croissant and a giant chicken leg. hilarious.

blowing out her candles on the butterfly ice cream cake. I have a death grip on her neck because my little sister once caught her hair on fire when blowing out birthday candles and now I'm paranoid.

enjoying the cake with Daddy. you can see that the crash is coming soon...

...and here it is. after everyone left, a very tired and chocolate-covered birthday girl.

All in all it was a fun and exhausting day. Eric made Lila a film about her 2nd year just like he did for her first year. She watches them obsessively. Oh to be a narcissistic two-year-old with parents who spoil you rotten.

I'm having technical difficulties with last year's video, but here's this year's for your viewing pleasure:

Lila's Birthday!

2011-12-28T01:42:00.000-06:00

Whew. These last few weeks have knocked us out! I've got some catching up to do in the blog world. Here's what's coming in the next few days (hopefully):

1. Lila's birthday post (today!)

2. Lila's birthday party post

3. Christmas post

4. Adoption update post

And we're off!

Lila's birthday was the 16th. The Husband took the day off so we could spend the day as a family. We began the day by having a birthday donut for breakfast (I made her have some yogurt first so she had more than just sugar in her) at John's Space Age Donuts.

a little snot to season the donut hole. did I mention she had another ear infection?

Lila and Daddy

Lila and Mommy

Later that morning, we had her two-year-old pictures taken by the awesome Jenae Weinbrenner (click here for a preview). After her nap we took her to see Santa. If you'll remember, she was TERRIFIED of him last year. This year she was a little more composed:

She still looks a little nervous, clutching Lambie and Snuggle with a death grip.

But she was kind of wigged out by the three anamatronic elves that were holding gifts next to Santa, falling head-first into an upstairs window of Santa's house and wielding a hammer on the roof of the house respectively. Now that I type that sentence, I completely understand her concern. She kept saying, "Mommy, see those guys?" with this really nervous voice. The funny thing is she said the same thing about my cousin Jenny's husband James at Thanksgiving: "Mommy, see that guy?" In her defense, he does have a huge mane of curly hair and a bushy beard. And also in her defense, those elves were creepy.

Nothing like a little childhood scarring to go with the Christmas memories. I guess that's whatcha get for a free Santa picture at Bass Pro Shop.

We ended the day by going out to dinner with Nanny and Pop and Grandma and Great-Pop. We got her in bed early because her party was the next day. But that's another post for another day!

I'll leave you with this:

P.S. A few notes on the video:

1. I must have brainwashed her with all my excited talk of her butterfly birthday party because she started answering the question "How old are you?" with "Butterfly!"

2. Don't you love her little jammin' head bob? It's very Night at the Roxbury.

3. At the end when she says, "Oh look at that, Mommy!" she's referring to the giant vintage Santa that Metcalf Bank puts up ever year. Her last words on the video are, "Oh really scary!" She's a sensitive soul.

a letter to my daughter: year two

2011-12-18T15:28:00.000-06:00

Dear Lila,

Can it really be true that you are two years old? On the eve of your second birthday, I was heading out the door to run a few errands and I mentioned to Daddy that I wouldn't be back before you went to bed. As the words came out of my mouth I realized what that meant. It meant that on the last night of your second year, I wouldn't be the one rocking you and singing to you and praying for and with you. I think Daddy saw that realization come to my mind because I made a little "oh" sound and he looked at me knowingly.

And then I cried. The emotion came out of nowhere. It hit me with such force and clarity and I suddenly found myself scrambling, grasping desperately for more time with your one-year-old self. But even as I processed these thoughts another thought hit me: my one year old had faded away months ago without my even noticing. As words became sentences and songs; as toddling became walking and running and galloping and skipping, one-year-old you slipped away. And I didn't even notice.

These realizations came in the span of a few seconds and tears filled my eyes and dripped down onto your dinner tray as I bent to kiss you goodbye. You looked up at me with concern and said, "Mommy sad!" and then you reached your little arm up and wrapped it around my neck, pulling me close to you so that our cheeks touched. Your tender little gesture of comfort just about undid me.

I got in my car and cried all the way to the store, asking Jesus how to manage these strange emotions of loving someone so desperately and wanting to keep time from moving - to somehow absorb each moment more fully. I thought of a line from Gilead (or maybe it's Home?), when Boughton is bemoaning his old age and complains, "Jesus never had to grow old." A part of me wanted to make the same sort of accusation: Jesus never had to feel this strange emotional cocktail of longing, desperation, pride, love and gratitude as he watched his daughter age in a matter of seconds. What must it be like to have eternity in your bones?

And in Heaven, what form will you take, my sweet girl? Will you be my snuggly newborn all sweaty and folded up? Will you be my sweet, wordless toddler - looking up at me with learning eyes? Will you be my precocious two-year-old, caring for me with an arm around my neck? Will you be some version of future you? Or will you somehow, miraculously be all of these? Will love of you even be on my radar in the presence of the Lord? It seems impossible that the perfection of Heaven would be complete without you to love wholly and perfectly. But then again, what do I know of Heaven yet?!

You see?! You see what you do to me! You make me into some sort of philosopher trying to solve the great questions of this world. Lila, there is a part of my heart - a part of my spirit - that was asleep before you. You have woken this part of me, the part that is reserved only for those who call me Mommy. And when that part woke up, the rest of me broke. I will never be put back together. You've ruined me - in the best way possible.

When I got home from the store, I snuck into your room to look at you. And soon, I found myself lifting you out of your bed and carrying you to the rocking chair. You blinked sleepily at me and then snuggled into my chest and we rocked for a long time. I held you and kissed your forehead and brushed your hair out of your face. I prayed for you and whispered your Bible verse to you.

This is what I prayed:

Thank you.
For the time you have given us with this sweet girl.
I know that each year, each minute is a gift and that there are many moms (some dear friends of mine) who have already known the last minutes with their babies.
I do not take that for granted.
Please, please, please, give us many more birthdays with her.
Put in her heart a unique love for you.
May she recognize your voice when you call her by name.
Help us to train her well, to love her well, to know her well.
Thank you. Thank you, Lord.
Amen.

Happy Birthday, Baby Girl. I love you so much - even if you disobey me and insist on growing up.

Love,
Mama

A conversation

2011-12-14T17:31:00.000-06:00

Former student (now a third grader): Hi, Mrs. Kautzi.
Me: Hi, Chad. (not his real name)
Student: Mrs. Kautzi, my uncle would want to hit on you.
Me: sputtering, stammering, mumbling something in disbelief
Student: walks away oblivious to my befuddled reaction

I assume this is a compliment, but there is a small part of me that worries that this kid is just a couple years shy of a sexual harassment case. There's also a small part of me that thinks he doesn't know what it means to hit on someone. I hope?

Adventures

2011-12-11T20:59:00.001-06:00

I had a few adventures last Tuesday. The first of which was a visit to the American Girl Store with the families who won our raffle. It was such a treat to get to be there when the girls picked out their dolls. Most of our tickets were purchased by families who attend the school where I teach, so it didn't surprise me that both winners were former students of mine! But what was a fun surprise was that the two families who won have daughters in the same class who are best buds! Stella and Elena were in my class last year and they are just the sweetest girls. Both girls were so excited, and both made the comment that they were even more excited that the other one won. I'm telling you - these are sweet girls!

Lila and I had a blast helping them pick out their dolls at the store.

From left, Sophie, Stella, Lila, Elena, Natalie and Lydia.
Sophie and Stella picked Josefina and Natalie and Elena picked Rebecca.

Then the girls and their moms invited us to join them for lunch to celebrate their dolls and Natalie's birthday!

Lila's looking a bit disheveled, no?

Right from lunch, I dropped Lila off at my parents' house for her nap so I could go to the airport to help Aaron and Heather welcome Arthur home! Here's where the real adventure began.

Initially their flight was supposed to get in at 4:30, but they changed flights and were now coming in around 2:00. I called Eric around 1:30 to have him check their flight status because I didn't want to get there too early and have to pay for parking. However, he soon informed me that I had the opposite problem. Their flight was early - estimated to arrive at 1:37! Ack!

I nearly didn't go. I pulled into my parents' driveway at 1:40 and told my mom I thought I would miss them if I went. She convinced me it was worth trying to get there so I got in my car and prayed I would make it in time.

**Dad, don't read this next paragraph. I usually don't speed or text while driving. Extenuating circumstances. No need to scold me, k?**

It took all my willpower to not speed recklessly. Meaning, I did speed. Just not excessively. When I saw the sign that said 3 miles to KCI, I texted Heather, "I'm coming! Hope I don't miss you!" A few minutes later, as I took the airport exit, she texted, "Oh no! We're just leaving!" I called her:

Me: What do you mean you're leaving? You're leaving the airport or you're in your car already?

Heather: We're just pulling out of the parking garage.

Me: Ahhhhh! No! I'm here! I'm here! I'm passing the terminal signs!

Heather: We could pull around...

Me: feeling very selfish and thinking to myself, "Yes! Please!"

Heather: Okay, we're pulling back around to Terminal A - we'll pull over.

Me: Oh! I see you! I'm pulling up behind you!

The next few minutes were some of my more tearfully hyper moments. I gushed over that perfect boy and resisted the urge to stroke his sweet chubby cheeks. I blathered on about how thankful I was that they waited for me and how sweet their boy was. Arthur just blinked up at me with those big brown eyes and with each bat of those eyelashes I saw bits of my future flutter through my imagination. Then I got back in my car and drove back to my parents' house, giddy as a school girl.

Mere seconds would have told a different story. I might have missed them entirely and then I would have driven back to my parents' in a disappointed funk.

All this has, of course, made me daydream about the day when we bring our baby home. The chaos and delirium of an airport welcome after a 20 hour flight. The excitement of introducing our son or daughter to all the people we love mixed with the sheer terror of transitioning an overwhelmed infant to a new life. But the bottom line is, I can't WAIT until one of you is making poor driving decisions on your way to nearly miss us at the airport! I! CAN'T! WAIT!!

P.S. We had our fingerprints taken on Friday! We're now waiting for the final approval from the FBI before we can submit our dossier and be placed on the waiting list! We're so close!!

Christmasing our House

2011-12-08T00:01:00.000-06:00

Well, the Husband - aka, the "Tree Whisperer" - has done it again. He found us the perfect tree. It's so hilarious to see that silly smirk come over his bearded face when he's found "the One." He's really nice and humors me when I suggest other options, but we always end up with the one that "spoke" to him. I'm okay with that because the man has a gift.

We bundled Lila up again this year to cut down, er, pick out our tree at Home Depot.

She was just as baffled this year as last by Daddy's shenanigans in tying the tree to the roof of our car. She kept saying, "Uh-oh, Mommy! Tree! Uh-oh!"

She's pointing to the top of the tree she could see through the sunroof.

And then she was equally as bemused when Eric brought the tree in the house. I guess it would seem weird to a kid who is used to trees rooted firmly in the ground outside. But once we brought the lights out she was transfixed.

She "helped" Daddy put lights on the tree.

She "helped" us hang some ornaments - although not before we made the mistake of handing her one of her many "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments and saying, "Here, Lila you can hang your ornament," and then trying force her to relinquish it to it's spot on the tree. The child was not thrilled about the prospect of handing over anything that had previously been described as "hers."

I snuck it on there when she soon got distracted and starting "cleaning" the lamp with her Snuggle. She's weirdly into cleaning for being my daughter. I call her Cinderella.

Once she tired of her cleaning, she found something else to do.

Meanwhile, the Husband and I plugged away on the tree (well, I stopped intermittently to document Lila's activities). And when we were mostly done, we of course we gave her the honor of putting the star up on the top.

By the time we were done it was past her bedtime and she was pretty zoned out.

And now every day we have our very own lighting celebration when she runs out of her room in the morning and says, "Lights on!" and we count to three and then plug them in. Every day it's the same ridiculously excited response: "YAY!!!" (at the top of her lungs) "Yights!" Ahh, the simple joys of being two.

I'm pretty excited about Christmas this year because I think the magic will begin for Lila from now on. She's really into playing with a little nativity scene which I strategically placed on the bottom shelf of our built-ins. She calls it "Baby Jesus and those guys." And she puts them to bed every night. However, it often looks like some sort of twisted Nativity Massacre. The bink is her signature. They call her the Bink Bandit. Okay...I've now taken this creepy digression too far.

Anyway, back to how we've been Christmasing our home. In lieu of our usuals (I Will, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, You are My Sunshine, Goodnight My Someone, etc) we've been singing Christmas songs before bed - Lila's favorite is Sara Groves' version of Angels We Have Heard on High which she calls "Gloria Song," and Sufjan's version of Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella which she calls, "Hush, hush song." The other day she was walking around the house saying, "Deo! Deo! Deo! Gloria! Gloria! Deo!" I tried to get a video, but for being such a show off, that kid is hard to capture on film. I think because she can't get through a line of a song without interjecting, "My do! Pictures!" Which means, "I'd rather look at the pictures on the camera than recreate that adorable scene for you to document, Mom."

I did manage to capture this though:

You're welcome, Mom and Little Sister. I know you're the only ones who watch these videos in their entirety besides us.

More to come soon - including the stories of a few adventures I had on Tuesday. But for now I'm busy tending to my almost two-year-old Baby Girl who has yet another cold. All orifices are streaming and her cheeks are rosy red. She cries when I wipe her nose because it's already so raw and her hair was plastered to her cheeks with snot this morning. It's so sad. And gross. *sigh*

And the winner is...

2011-12-01T08:00:00.000-06:00

Or as I should say, "And the winners are...!"

Our American Girl Doll giveaway is officially closed! We had a total of 105 tickets purchased! Thank you! Thank you!

And like I said on Tuesday, we decided to add a second doll if at least 100 tickets were purchased so I'm pleased to say that there will be TWO winners today!

I'm so nervous!

Drumroll.......

Wait....

Okay....

I'm ready.......

The winners are:

Ticket number 39 - Noel Heinbach!

AND!

Ticket number 101 - Heather Whalen!

Congratulations! I will be contacting each of you soon to find out which doll you would like and where you would like her shipped! Yahoo!

And to the rest of you - THANK YOU for supporting our adoption. I know that for all of you, it was always more about helping us bring our baby home than winning a doll. And for that, we are so very grateful. Humbled and grateful.

Stay tuned for more info on our next steps now that we have our dossier fee funded in full! Yahoo again!

P.S. We chose the winners using Random.org. We simply entered in our possible numbers and hit generate and got these numbers. Try it out here.

Only 2 days left!

2011-11-29T10:32:00.001-06:00

Today, we are celebrating! We are celebrating with our friends Aaron and Heather who are, as I type, on a plane to Ethiopia to pick up their son, Arthur! After months of hiccups and unknowns and delays and stress and anxiety, they received an email yesterday morning that told them they had received clearance from the Embassy and they could come get Arthur! They booked a flight for today and will be picking him up on his first birthday! Can you believe it!? (If you remember, Arthur's birthday has been a significant and meaningful part of their story.) I talked with Heather last night and she was surprisingly calm. Keep them in your prayers these next few days as they travel and transition home with Arthur. There's an awesome post here about how to care for families who have just brought their adoptive children home. (You better believe I'll be linking to that post again when we're getting ready to bring our babe home!) Praise the Lord for his PERFECT timing.

We are also celebrating some movement in our own adoption process! Our American Girl Doll raffle has been a success and we have sold 95 tickets as of this very minute. We initially said that we would add a second doll to the giveaway if we sold 150 tickets, but we've decided that if we sell five more tickets to get us to an even hundred we will add a second doll!

We want to do this in celebration of God's faithfulness in providing for us to meet our most recent goal - and then some! A majority of the $2000 we needed when we launched our raffle came from generous friends who chose to support our general adoption fund, rather than contribute to the raffle. So even though we didn't sell the amount of tickets I was hoping for, the Lord provided in other ways. I'll admit, adding a second doll is a little selfish on my part because I love giving gifts so the thought of making two little girls (and their mommies!) so happy was a big motivator here! Plus as I saw each donation come in, I would think, "Oh I love them! I hope they win!" This way I'll get my wish for two of you, at least!

Here's what's so exciting to us about surpassing our $4100 goal: all donations now go to fund our REFERRAL FEE. The fact that we're starting to fund our referral fee is huge to us for two reasons:

The referral fee is the biggest fee yet - somewhere in the neighborhood of $8,000 to $9,000. We'll have nearly a year (in theory) to raise/save this money, but it's still a daunting number! Which is why it feels so good to already be adding drops in that bucket.
The fact that we're now saving for our referral fee means that the next step of the process is our REFERRAL! And our referral means that we will know who our son or daughter is! I can't believe we are ready for that step! It makes me positively giddy! (Thus, all the exclamation marks!!!)

I promise that another post is coming with details explaining our next steps and what a "referral" even means, but I didn't want to bog down this post with that stuff.

So, five more tickets to go! The raffle closes at midnight (CST) on Wednesday November 30. We will use Random.org to choose the winner(s) and announce the winner(s) here on December 1st! Just click that little "Donate" button underneath the picture of the American Girl Doll. Here----------------->>

Not cool, Zeus. Not cool.

2011-11-23T00:09:00.001-06:00

I've had the hiccups for the last hour. I'm not exaggerating. I blame Lila because she had hiccups earlier today I think I caught them from her. Hiccups are contagious, right? No? Well then aren't we cute that we both had hiccups today?

For real, though my stomach kinda hurts now from all the hiccuping. I've tried holding my breath, drinking water upside down, concentrating on hiccuping, concentrating on not hiccuping, holding my breath some more, drinking water right-side up. No good. So as a last resort I just said out loud, "Not cool, Hiccups. Not cool. Now I'm going to blog about you." Eric's response was, "That'll show 'em." We'll just have to see, won't we? If my hiccups are gone by the time this post is done, then I am a genius.

I just have a few random things to share with you tonight.

Firstly, we have a week left of our American Girl Raffle and we have only sold 47 tickets. Which means several things:

1. We are still about $700 away from our next goal Update, 11/25: since I originally posted this, we have surpassed our goal thanks to some very generous friends! Hooray! All additional donations will help fund our referral fee! (I'll explain what that is in a later post) Thank you, friends! We are overwhelmed!
2. I don't have enough friends with 5-10 year old girls
3. Your odds of winning if you bought a ticket are VERY good - 1 in 47 in fact! And if you bought three tickets, your odds are even better (except that math is harder to do, so you figure it out).

Raffle closes at midnight on November 30th so hurry your little self up and buy a ticket or three - we've got good odds! Just click that little 'ole button on the right there and Paypal it up for a good cause.

B of all, I have been praying for our family's immune systems this week because last year at Thanksgiving, a nasty and very contagious flu took out all but three or four people over the course of about 48 hours. It was NOT pretty, my friends. Eric and I took turns passing Lila back and forth as we alternately ran to the bathroom to throw up and held her over the toilet while she threw up. I think it should be a law of nature that parents cannot get sick when children are sick. So, get to work on that, Isaac Newton.

Third, we received news from Immigration that our paperwork is being processed and we have been given an appointment to have our fingerprints taken on December 9th. It feels amazing to be checking the last few things off our lists! Here's what we have left:

In case you can't read it (every time I tried to snap that picture, I hiccuped so it's kind of blurry), here's the list:

Collect remaining reference letters
Take a casual and "semi-formal" photo of ourselves (we may just have to get dressed up specifically for this photo as we don't really have a reason to get dressed up in real life)
Get passport photos taken
Wait for my birth certificate to be mailed to us
Fill out financial statement
Get fingerprints taken for Immigration

I can't believe the list is this short! Wahoo!

Finally, Lila would like to say a few words to end this post:

P.S. I still have the hiccups. Boo.

I have an idea

2011-11-19T00:32:00.000-06:00

I want to try to buy most of my Christmas gifts in a way that supports orphan care or another family's adoption. So I'm on the hunt for some cool products with a cause.

I hate to say it, but there are a lot of really UNCOOL adoption things out there. Just cheesy or overdone or not quality.

Okay, so I'm a snob.

But, there is some really cool stuff out there. Here are a few things I've already found (mostly via links on my friend Heather's blog - if you want cool, start with cool, right? Heather's cool. And I'm not, because I say "cool" too much...)

Jambo shirts from Love is Waiting

Bear onesie from Twenty9Freckles

B is for Bear print from Dear Friend

Ugandan wildlife tee from Little Adventurer

Watercolor Ethiopia Map from Jodi Queenan

bird necklace from Love is Rising

Superman was Adopted tee from Team Parker

Have you guys seen any other ~~cool~~ ~~groovy~~ awesome stuff for sale that supports an adoption or orphan care? Tell me! Tell me! Leave a comment with a link! Do it! Do it! Please?

(Sorry about all of the overly enthusiastic exclamation points. I'm feeling silly.)

It's that time of year again!

2011-11-14T23:57:00.001-06:00

Maybe for most of you it's the time of year when you bring out the holiday decorations, start shopping for Christmas gifts, rake your leaves on a daily basis because they just keep coming, or start making gratitude lists. But for me (us) this time of year is punctuated by my obsession with planning Lila's birthday party. (In one month, my baby will be TWO! What?! That can't be. *sigh*)

As I mentioned last year, I am determined to not allow my daughter's close-to-Christmas birthday to be overshadowed by the holiday. I LOVE birthdays. Love them. Especially my own. But Lila's is almost more fun for me than my own. And her first birthday party was awesome. I joked that it was really more for me than for Lila. And it was. I mean, she won't remember it anyway. First birthdays are really more about celebrating the fact that we, as parents, made it through year one. And for that matter, second birthdays are kind of the same - just maybe the percentages eek a little more toward her side as far as for whom the party is thrown. It's like 70/30, me/Lila this year.

Last year, we had a little birdie theme for her birthday party and I went a little bit crazy. Evidently I was desperate for a creative outlet. And I'm a sentimental fool who loves traditions so of course, I had to implement a few traditions for celebrating Lila's birthday. Ornaments for party favors, little notes for people to write down favorite memories or things that characterize Lila for that year, etc.

I made these:

invitations*

And these:

little notes for the birthday girl

And these:

brownie bite toppers (did NOT make the brownie bites themselves. thank you, Costco)

And these:

party favors: birdie ornaments

And this:

one!

And this:

happy birthday banner

The ornaments were definitely the most time consuming and Eric had to endure finding bits of felt in our bed every night and the all-too-frequent out loud wondering, "Where did I put my needle?" In fact, despite our no-Christmas-presents-for-one-another rule, he splurged and bought me a pin cushion for my stocking. Perhaps it was more of a gift for himself to avoid the whole needle in the ~~haystack~~ bedsheets dilemma.

So since the ornament party favors are simultaneously my favorite birthday tradition and the most time consuming project, I'm already getting started on this year's ornament. Here's a peek:

pardon the poor quality iphone picture

Can you guess what this year's theme is? One of Lila's favorite things these days: butterflies! Oooh...I'm excited! And Lila is, too. Or at least she thinks she is. I keep asking her if she wants a butterfly birthday party and she says, "Yes!" with great enthusiasm even though she has no idea what a birthday party is. I think she just senses my excitement and wants to be on board.

Okay, back to work. Those butterflies won't make themselves. Now...where did I put my needle?

P.S. All photos (except for my crappy iphone pic) were taken by the awesome and sweet Jewel Anderson. Check her out here.

* I made the invitations using a photo I found doing a google image search for bird drawing or something like that and then doctoring the picture a bit in photoshop. I feel bad that I can't give the artist credit, but I tried to find it again and it got lost in cyberspace, I guess.

five and five

2011-11-09T22:13:00.003-06:00

Five things I'm happy about today:

1. Lila took a nap at school today! Lila took a nap at school today! What? You're not jumping up and down and peeing your pants in excitement? Well I was, because that girl is a stinker I tell you and she usually refuses to nap anywhere other than her own cozy bed with the perfect balance of white noise and light filtration. I usually line someone up to take nap duty on Wednesdays - they pick LJ up from school and bring her home for her nap. Well, the last few weeks I couldn't find anyone to do it so we had to give it a go at school. I figured worst possibility was she'd be wiped out when we got home and she'd take a quickie nap around 3:30. In fact, I bet Eric $1000 she wouldn't nap at school. But what do you know, she went down without a peep! And slept for nearly 2 hours! Maybe it's because she kept me up all night coughing (the nerve). Poor kiddo. Yup, she's sick again with the mother of all snotty noses and an ear infection to boot. Seriously, I've sucked puddles of green goop out of that kid's nose and she still manages to produce snot bubbles every ten minutes. It's gross. I'll try to snap a picture for ya. I know you're dying to see it. But anyway, back to the celebrating - she took a nap at school! A-wahoo!

2. We are only $1000 away from our next fundraising goal! That means if we sell 125ish more tickets to our raffle, we not only will have met our goal, but we'll also have sold enough tickets to add a second doll to the giveaway! I'm almost more excited about the giveaway than I am about meeting our goal - I mean, I get to make someone (or maybe two someones) really happy who in turn gets to make their daughter or niece or granddaughter or next door neighbor really happy! What fun!

3. A parent of one of my students left me a Chick-fil-a gift card as an anonymous gift last week! AND I've had the willpower to not spend it frivolously. I'm saving it for this weekend when the Husband goes on his annual Man Trip with his dad and brothers (aka, hunting, eating steak and punching each other). Fried chicken sandwich, a big Dr. Pepper, and a play place for Lila, here I come!

4. The way Lila runs to me when I pick her up in the nursery after school: "Mommy!" with arms wide open and snot running down her lips. We'll just ignore that last part and bask in the small bits of that idealistic dream every pregnant mama dreams about her future children. You know, the dream about her children always being thrilled to see her and showering her with affectionate hugs and kisses. Never in that dream do those kisses come with a desire to immediate wipe oneself down with Clorox wipes, but alas, I'll take what I can get. Snot-drenched or not, it's still awesome to be greeted like that.

5. Lila says hilarious things. The other day, I was standing up on our bed killing a spider and she scolded me, "Mommy! Get back here! Sit down!" Apparently she was appalled that I would break the rule that I so incessantly drill into her head: No standing on the furniture. Today I asked her if she wanted to go play in her playroom and she said, "No dank you, Mommy. Go ahead." And finally, she has picked up on some language nuances of mine and it's so hysterical to hear her say them. Whenever she coughs, I ask her, "Are you okay?" because she often sounds like she's choking. So she started asking me if I was okay whenever I cough. To which I usually respond, "Yeah, I'm okay. Thank you, Baby." So now, it goes like this:

Lila: cough, cough, hack, cough, cough

Me: Lila, are you okay?

Lila: (in the sweetest little voice you ever did hear) Yeah, I okay, dank you Mommy.

It's so adorable, it hurts me.

Five things I'm sad about today:

1. As I mentioned earlier, Lila has a cold and an ear infection. Yes, she's sick AGAIN. (If you're keeping count, that's four colds, two flus and an ear infection since September.) And even though I know they're trying to be helpful, sometimes other moms make me feel like a bad mom when they start asking me whether I've tried this (hippie remedy) or whether I do that (random rain dance/good luck charm). I should remember how this makes me feel the next time I try to give a fellow mom "helpful" advice. Unless I ask you what ideas you have, I mostly just want you to say, "Man, that sucks. I'm sure you're doing everything you can."

2. Someone in our house got a speeding ticket today. And I really want to be mad at him, but he's so mad at himself that I just feel bad for him. In fact, he voluntarily grounded himself from his hunting weekend as punishment (and because, frankly, we can't afford $140 ticket on top of luxuries like hunting licenses and giant steak dinners). But still, $140! It just feels like a punch in the gut. P.S. Good news, though, Eric's dad is generously paying Eric's way this weekend because he wants time with ALL his boys. :)

3. Our house is a mess again. That's what happens when your kid is sick all the time. My time is divided between equal parts wiping a snotty nose, cleaning up puke, changing poopy diapers and chasing a weirdly-energetic-for-being-sick-all-the-time toddler around the house. So our house is a mess and it makes me sad because it was once and very briefly so sparkly and shiny. It looked like a holiday. (name that movie!*)

4. My favorite jeans ripped. I mean RIPPED. As in, my whole butt cheek was hanging out at church after I bent down to pick up a sippy cup and heard a loud RIIIIPPPP. And by favorite jeans, I mean "the only pair of skinny jeans I own which I bought for $20 at Target because I am always so late picking up on the fashion trends that I didn't want to spend a ton of money on something that would surely be out of style in a year or two but then I wore them every day and thus wore out their $20-quality material" jeans. It was a sad day. And so I had to settle for Jeggings as a replacement because they were the cheapest option at Target and I really don't NEED another pair of jeans. I have plenty of non-skinny jeans. But it's not the same. I need pockets and zipper.

5. It's cold. Don't like.

Okay, and just so I don't end on a low note, here's a little ~~trick or~~ treat for ya. Lila the Peacock:

As kids, all of our cousins and Little Sister and I would always end our trick-or-treating at our grandparents' house.
The tradition was to have us all lined up on the fireplace to take a picture of us in our Halloween getup, so of course, we had to do the same for Lila.

Here's a back view of the AWESOME peacock tutu that Holly made for Lila. It's so darling! I kind of want to make her be a peacock next year, too because it's so sweet!

Hope your Happy List is outweighing your Sad List these days!

* "Very sparkly, very shiny. Looks like a holiday." - Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man

Lila sings her ABC's

2011-11-05T22:11:00.000-05:00

Goodness gracious alive and Heaven help us.

2011-11-02T20:13:00.003-05:00

Did we just have a major terrible twos episode? Or is my poor kid just so exhausted from a LONG day at school and a too-short nap? Yes and yes.

First, let me just say that the girl has been honing her pre-bedtime stall routine for the last few weeks. An example might look like this:

Me: Lila are you all done with your milk?
Lila: Yeah.
Me: Okay, let's put it here on the shelf in case you want some more in a minute (read: let's put it here on the shelf because I KNOW you're going to THINK you want some more in a minute)
Lila: No, fridge.
Me: No, let's leave the milk here in case you want more later.
Lila: NO! FRIDGE!
Me: Okay, are you sure you're done?
Lila: Yeah.
5 minutes later as I'm laying her in bed
Lila: Milk?
Me: Lila, we already put your milk in the fridge, remember? You said you were all done.
Lila: Milk.
Me: No, you said you were all done. We're all done with your milk.
Lila: Milk!
Me: Lila, Mommy asked you if you were done with your milk and you said yes.
Lila: MILK!
Me: thinking to myself, "she HAS been sick, maybe she really is thirsty." Okay, I'll get you're milk.
Lila: thinking, "My mom is such a sucker."
I get her milk back out of the fridge and bring it to her in bed.
Me: Here you go, Baby.
Lila: turning her head away No milk.
Me: grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So the moral of this story is two-fold: I am a sucker. And my kid is a master manipulator.

who me? really, mom, I can't help it if I'm charming.

That exchange may have influenced some poor parenting decisions tonight. I was so intent on not being had again by my not-even-two-year-old that I refused to see things for what they were. Lila was being stubborn (ironically, it started with milk again) and I was being stubborner.

The short version is that I asked Lila if she wanted to shut her bedroom door (which is part of her little wind-down routine) and she wanted to get her milk out of the fridge first. I told her I had already brought her milk into her room and that she needed to close the door or Mommy was going to. She still persisted, so finally I shut the door for her. What seemed like a natural consequence of her stalling and manipulation attempts backfired into a full out meltdown. Lila ended up in complete hysterics as I calmly told her that she was wrong and I was right. Which was true. However, that should have been neither here nor there. The reality that should have most influenced my parenting choices was that my 22-month-old was exhausted and therefore out of her mind with her NEED to "shut da dowa! shut da dowa!"

Unfortunately, I'm still a rookie. Even though I've been in this whole mommyhood thing for almost two years, this is still my first go-round with a toddler. Poor Lila will always have to be my guinea pig for the challenges of each age. So while I was so adamantly clinging to my pride and my desire to not let my child play me like a fool, I completely missed the fact that she was running on empty.

Which is a mistake I should really know to avoid. After all, some of my favorite parenting advice is to always ask yourself if your child's "tank" is full before you require something of them*. Is she hungry? Is she sick? Is she overwhelmed? Is she out of her element? Is she tired? If the answer is "yes" to any of those questions, then the expectations need to be altered. Not thrown out the window, just altered.

Which brings us back to tonight. After about 15 minutes of absolute hysterics, I finally realized my grave error: I had entered into a power struggle with a child who had lost all control of what little emotional stability she had to begin with. I realized I had two options:

1. Stick to my guns and fight this power struggle to the end - the end being a child who would surely wail/cry herself to sleep and potentially cause herself to vomit in the meantime.
2. Swallow my pride, admit that I entered into an unwise battle and give my kid what she wanted.

I chose option number 2. Because a) we've already had our share of vomit recently and b) it seemed like the most loving thing to do. You can judge me if you want. I don't care. I feel like I did the loving thing for my kid in the moment. Sometimes the loving thing is a firm, authoritative voice to teach them that there are consequences to their behaviors. But sometimes the loving thing is to get them in bed ASAP and not waste any more time on character building and good precedents. There's plenty of time for that tomorrow. After they've had a good night's sleep.

I remind myself over and over in this whole parenting thing: it's not about being right, it's about showing them you'll meet their needs.

Even if this particular need is to "shut da dowa" all by themselves.

(By the way, option number 2 worked like a charm. She stopped crying immediately and I was left with a snuffling, gasping, exhausted and snuggly baby to rock to sleep. So there.)

*It should also be noted, that it is important to ask yourself the same question in regards to your own tank. Yet another reason I should have avoided the emotional battle was that this introverted mama was toast after a day of corralling rowdy 1st graders :)

Announcing a new fundraiser: American Girl Doll Raffle!

2011-10-31T14:42:00.001-05:00

UPDATE: This raffle is now closed and the winners have been announced here. Thanks for participating!

First off, I feel like a total jerk that I haven't mentioned this before, but our t-shirts were designed by the guys over at Factory 43. They have some other awesome tees and prints for sale there so check them out!

So as I mentioned last Thursday, Eric and I have been brainstorming several ideas of how to reach our next fundraising goal. We decided we needed one more fun idea to hopefully bring in the last $2000 we need for our dossier fee (which we hope to turn in by the end of the year).

So I set about researching ideas and I found a link to this post from Julie Gumm's blog. I originally read about the idea in Julie's book, Adopt Without Debt. It had stood out to me when I first read it, because as a first grade teacher, I overhear a LOT of talk about American Girl Dolls. I, myself still have my beloved Kirsten doll from when I was little. I plan on passing her on to Lila some day. And I'll admit that I've had a daydream or two about giving an Addy doll to my Ethiopian daughter (no, we don't know if we'll be adopting a boy or a girl yet - I just have a daughter so it's easier to daydream about what I know).

Anyway, that's the backstory to our latest fundraiser. Here are the details (totally stole much of this from that post I mentioned since they did such a great job of explaining it):

We will be giving away one* American Girl Doll of YOUR CHOICE to one* lucky winner! *If we sell more than 150 virtual tickets, we'll add a 2nd doll so there will be TWO lucky winners!

The giveaway is open for the month of November (November 1st - November 30th). The winner(s) will be announced Thursday December 1st - perfect timing for a Christmas gift for your favorite little girl in your life.

Here's how it works:

Purchase a virtual raffle ticket by clicking on the PayPal button on the right that says "American Girl Raffle." Important: Please indicate your contact information in the notes section so we can find you when you win.
Each donation of $10 buys you 1 virtual raffle ticket. A donation of $25 buys you 3 virtual raffle tickets.
Once your donation posts via PayPal, you will receive an email with your virtual raffle ticket number. It will look like this:
The winner will be selected using Random.org and announced here on this blog.
If you are the lucky winner, I will contact you via email to find out which doll you would like. I will order and ship her to you through the American Girl online store (dolls can only be shipped within the 50 states - see their shipping policies here).

**We reserve the right to refund your donation and cancel the giveaway if we do not sell at least enough entries to cover the cost of the doll.**
UPDATE: It's on! We have enough entries to cover the cost of the doll! Every subsequent entry will go directly into our adoption fund! Thank you and keep 'em coming!

We are so excited about this giveaway! Well, I'm excited. Eric doesn't quite get what all the fuss is about. He was all, "$100 for a doll?" and I was all, "Yeah! Cuz they're awesome." But he has a point. $100 is pricey...BUT $10 or $25 is a steal of a deal! Plus, of course, you're helping us MAKE WAY for our Ethiopian Small One. And for that, we are so grateful!

P.S. You can see all of your doll options here.

P.P.S. Please blog, email, link, tweet, facebook this giveaway! Help us spread the word! We appreciate it!

New fundraiser coming...

2011-10-27T11:37:00.003-05:00

We are still about $2000 away from our next fundraising goal to cover the cost of our dossier fee, so Eric and I have been brainstorming ideas. As ~~luck~~ ~~fate~~ coincidence would have it, an email popped up in our inbox the other day:

What!? How exciting is that! True to her word, she blogged about us today! I never thought that mentioning her book in this post would get us mentioned on her blog! Hopefully it will open us up to a wider market and keep our t-shirt sales moving! In fact we already had another sale this morning! What an unexpected gift!

Her email got me blog-rusing (that's perusing blogs for those of you who can't interpret my made-up words) her blog again which eventually led me to our next fundraiser. We'll announce details early next week so stay tuned!

In the meantime, we're still cleaning up toddler puke. Poor Baby Girl. And poor me, too. Let's just say that milk is best if you only see it on the way in. Yucka.

P.S. You know how much we love the Jesus Storybook Bible. And Haiti holds a special place in our heart as well because our sweet friend Melissa is a medical missionary there and our friends the Moldrups are adopting two kiddos from Haiti as well. Well there's a quick campaign going over at World Orphans to raise money to send 500 French translation copies to Haiti where they will be used in schools, churches and homes caring for orphans. The Bibles are usually $10-$20 dollars, but they have a deal with the publisher to sell them for just $4 each so your money goes a long way. If you want to help, check it out here.

No no no no no....

2011-10-26T13:58:00.000-05:00

At 3:30 this morning an all too familiar alarm went off in our house. It wasn't my phone barking at me to get up for work three hours early by mistake. It was a sad and desperate cough, followed by an even sadder and more desperate retch over the monitor and a cry from Lila's room. Kelsey, being a far lighter sleeper than I, made the first leap out of bed and it wasn't until she was holding Lila over the toilet that I offered my first dazed and completely unhelpful response, "did she throw up?" Some times I'm sharper than others.

So after Kelsey cleaned her up and I changed her sheets, and we had reluctantly hoped that it was all caused by an isolated and particularly tenacious cough, we put Lila back to bed only to be back up every fifteen minutes over the next three hours doing the same thing. Since Kelsey teaches Wednesdays (which seems to be the day Lila's body decides to not like itself) I took the day off and she eventually made the wise decision to sleep on the couch while I alternated between cuddling Lila on our bed and running to the bathroom every time she made a gurgling sound. Finally by 7:30 baby girl had slowed the pace down to only erupting once an hour, and seemed to be happy in between episodes. She even slept for about fifty minutes until her usual wake up time of 8:30. And true to form she wanted a pancake when she woke up.

So my morning looked like this- Lila sitting on my lap eating her pancake, then lying in the middle of the floor, then on my lap, then off, while we watched the following celebrity guests on The Muppet Show: Helen Reddy, Raquel Welch, Jean Stapleton, Leslie Ann Warren, Liberace, Pearl Bailey, Gilda Radner and Sylvester Stallone. Yeah, that's a lot of Muppet Show, but routine changes when kids throw up all morning. While Lila was into a marathon of her favorite show, I answered work emails and tried to keep things at the office relatively under control in my absence. Then I saw a blur of pink pajamas and blonde hair run out of our room and heard the familiar pat pat pat of tiny feet on hardwoods. And, "Daddy! Freezer!" I followed my sweet on-the-mend daughter into her play room and to the little wooden kitchen that my dad built. Again she said, "freezer!" It's worth noting that Lila's context for the purpose of a freezer is to quickly cool her pancakes enough to eat when they're right out of the pan. Naturally, I took her cue and opened up the toy refrigerator. And found this:

She was cooling the remaining uneaten half of her pancake, as well as a pot and her left Chuck Taylor. I guess they were all too hot.

After a lunch of crackers and applesauce and peaches (and it's a miracle she conceded to eat any of it) I changed her diaper and asked her if she wanted to rock before her nap. She said definitively, "No. Bed." And she hasn't made a sound since I put her in it. I know I'm prone to jinxing myself in these matters, but let's hope it was just a quick attack on her little tummy and we're in the clear. Because who wants a sad little girl when you can have this:

Exactly.

no, I not

2011-10-24T22:55:00.000-05:00

Lila has this phrase she says when I ask her a question and her answer is a "no" of some sort. "No, I not." It doesn't always make sense in the context:

Lila, are you picking your nose? No, I not.

Me: Lila, did you poop?
Lila: No, I not.

Me: Lila, do you want some strawberries?
Lila: No, I not.

Me: Lila, did you eat another crayon?
Lila: No, I not.

Me: Lila, should we get ready for your nap?
Lila: No, I not.

See what I mean?

Speaking of that last example, we've been having nap time battles reminiscent of our little games from last fall. I really hope this doesn't mean that the Age of Naps has come and gone for the Baby Girl because that would pretty much ruin my life. I've kind of been living in fear of her dropping her last nap at a young age since she dropped all of her other naps early and, my friends, all the signs are there.

Yesterday was the perfect example. We started our routine around 1:00 as usual and Lila was in bed by 1:15 or so. Her usual M.O. is to talk to herself for anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes (no joke) until she falls asleep. Conversations are usually about a song she likes or something about her Lambie. Sometimes she is recounting a conversation she had with a friend ("No, Josie. No Yi-ya's.") or sometimes it's just incoherent babble.

So, after an hour of this yesterday, I was starting to get a little bit fed up. She was all hyper and squawking and I was grumbling and growling "Go. to. sleep!" under my breath. So Eric finally turned off the monitor. His logic was: if she's not going to sleep, I might as well not torture myself with the not-very-sleepy-sounding-at-all sounds of her delighted chatter. Smart husband. And I was at peace for about 15 minutes, until I decided to turn the monitor back on and see if she had perhaps miraculously dozed off during our radio silence.

No such luck. In fact, she was now meow-ing. Grrrrrrrr. And while we're on animals, to make matters worse, I turned around to see the dog (who happened to still be drying off from her bath earlier) lying on my pillow smooshing all of her wet dog smell into the place where I rest my head (with my nose attached to it, I might add). Let's do the math, shall we?

1 Baby Girl X 1.5 hours into her nap protest + 1 smelly wet dog lying on my pillow = don't mess with me

So you can only imagine what my reaction was.

I told that dog to get her "wet ass off my pillow."

Ok, so maybe I overreacted. But, do I feel bad for cussing?

No, I not.

(ass hardly counts as a cuss word, anyway)

thank you, sesame street

2011-10-22T12:02:00.001-05:00

love this:

and I just found out that it was written by an adoptive daddy for his Ethiopian princess!

costume developments, adoption updates and a bonus lila story for good measure

2011-10-17T22:29:00.001-05:00

Due to the abysmal response to our Halloween costume idea post (boo to you people), we have nixed the poll for this year and have decided that Lila will be....

source

...a peacock! My sweet friend Holly is making this for her peanut, Camille, and she offered to make Lila one too and I was all, "yes please!" and "screw all those blog readers and their lack of contribution to the ever so important dilemma of Lila's Halloween costume." (But, just kidding - please keep reading my blog. I love you!) Anyway, I couldn't resist Holly's offer so there you have it. Plus also we did some shopping for a potential Kermit the Frog costume and had a stupidly hard time finding a green sweatsuit or matching green pants and shirt or even non-matching green pants and shirt and hat. We were thwarted in the green toddler clothes department so we were even more excited when Holly showed us her plan. Lila will be, as they say, "pretty as a peacock."

Well, now that that's out of the way, we've got some adoption updates for ya:

1. We're officially done with our home study and we were approved! Whew. That feels AWESOME. Now we just have to wait for our HS agency to send us the actual document so we can start applying for grants and get going on dossier stuff - some of which we've already started on.

2. We have a conference call scheduled later this week with our adoption agency and we're expecting to get some updated information on wait times and some of the changes happening in Ethiopia regarding adoptions. These changes have been in the works for awhile, so it's not really news to us - it's just an update on progress being made. We don't expect to get any shocking news or anything, but we'll let you all know what we learn.

3. We found out we do NOT have to pay our post-adoption fees up front so that $900 we had set aside for that can go toward our dossier fee! Wahoo! So that brings us to just $2000 short of our next goal of $4100! We can do it! We can do it!

So that's what we've got for now.

Hmm, I feel like I should tell a Lila story in here for good measure. So here you go, obligatory story about my cute (and slightly odd) kid:

A few weeks ago, we were at Target and Lila found a comforter in the clearance section.

She pulled it off the shelf and insisted on carrying it around for the next 15 minutes

We kept trying to talk her into putting it back, but she was adamant about her quest.

When she finally got distracted by a singing Elmo doll, the Husband took the opportunity to carpe comforter (that's latin for seize the comforter in case you didn't know) and put it back on the shelf. My daughter is such a weirdo.

What should Lila be for Halloween

2011-10-09T01:22:00.001-05:00

Last year, we were at a loss for good ideas for Lila's first Halloween costume so we asked you all to help us brainstorm. Then we narrowed down our options to our three favorites and had you all vote for your favorite of the three. The three options were Cindy Lou Who, a Monchhichi and the Lila version of Donny and Marie (she's a little bit country and a little bit rock-n-roll). And the winner was....Cindy Lou Who!

And what a cute Cindy Lou Who she was!

This year, we have a few ideas, but we're open to other ideas as well. Once we have our top three, we'll do another poll to decide which costume to use.

Here are the ideas we have so far:

1. Go Chiefs!
We found a cutie pie Chiefs Cheerleader dress in a bin of hand-me-downs and since Lila loves to say, "Go Chiefs!" whenever any football game is on (it actually kinda sounds like she's saying "Go Cheese!" but it's cute either way) we thought it would be a fun Halloween idea. Plus, I'm loving Lila's ponytails these days.

2. Kermit the Frog
Lila loves the Muppet Show. With a passion. Which is why we watched it non-stop when she was sick. I realized (through a little internet snooping) that I could easily make a Kermit costume with a green sweat suit, a felt neck piece and a foam ball cut in half.

3. Some sort of animal
An owl? A chick? A cow? A dog? A turtle?

That's all we've got. Any other ideas? Leave a comment and we'll come up with our top three and get a poll going in the next week or so.

P.S. Sorry we've been quiet on the adoption front. We're still waiting for my fingerprints to come back so that our home study can be finalized. Eric's been working on grant applications and I've started the paperwork for our dossier. Please pray that my fingerprints come back soon without any hitches! We'll keep you updated!

In the words of Lila, "Three, six, ready, go!"

Lila's latest accomplishment

2011-10-07T11:27:00.000-05:00

After a week straight of spending 10-20 minutes a day trying to put her shoes on by herself, this morning I heard Lila exclaim from the other room, "Good job, Yi-ya!"

Soon after I hear the telltale tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump of a toddler wearing only one shoe. And she emerged around the corner with a proud grin on her face.

"Did you put your shoe on all by yourself?!" I asked, making sure she could hear my excitement for her in my voice.

"Yeah!" she said proudly.

"Lila! Good job! I'm so proud of you!"

"Yeah!"

It's so fun to get to celebrate those little accomplishments of independence with her.
(sorry about the bad iphone photo)

on the correct foot and everything!

Friends

2011-10-04T22:33:00.000-05:00

Every day I come home and Lila is another year older. She'll be wearing a new jacket (or a new hand me down, anyway) that adds a generation and walking around like a two and half foot tall grown up. Today she ran to me, arms open in anticipation of embrace, and jumped onto my shoulders to deliver a hug. Now dads out there know that this welcome home hug is no ordinary hug. It is a coup de hug. An alpha and omega hug. A hug that transcends its own metahugness and implodes upon itself only to explode into a hug supernova to end all and create new hug universes. Am I laying it on a little thick? Too bad, it's the greatest feeling in the world, so let me hyperbolize. But still, when I picked her up again not ten minutes later, she'd already put on another five pounds and I swear was about to ask for my advice on selecting a grad school.

The thing that I do love about this rapid development is seeing the new things she's saying and doing and ways she's communicating all the time. In fact, I have a new favorite that gets me every time. Anytime she sees another kid she pauses what she's doing and says, gleefully, "Hi, friend." On Sunday we were swinging at the park and another dad brought his son around in a wagon. From across the wood chips Lila, mid-swing said, "Hi friend. Hi friend's daddy." And even if she can't see the new friend who is the subject of her greeting, she extends the courtesy of salutation anyway. Like on our walk tonight she heard some kids playing in a tire swing a block behind us and at the sound of one sneezing she stopped to offer, "bless, friend."

Sure, I think it's cute, but I'm a dad and a sucker. Kelsey has made more than one "hilarious" observation about me being wrapped around Lila's tiny perfect finger this week. But I can deal, because Lila's current habit has me thinking about her character and how the future miss Lila Jo will relate to people. I love that she considers herself a friend to all, and everyone a friend at first contact. Now as an introvert, I'm aware of the inherent challenges of having a daughter who is like her Aunt Jess or Uncle Scotty who isn't thriving unless she's surrounded by maximum occupancy. And I don't care one way or the other if she's a popular kid or not, but I love the glimpse of a life of hospitality that comes with calling people friends. I hope that proves accurate. Because who doesn't want to be greeted with an enthusiastic "Hi, friend" and have it be the truth, whether or not you've met her before? Exactly. Nobody.

And, just for some sad-but-cuteness, here's a picture of sick Lila when I stayed home with her last week. We watched a lot of Elmo. A. Lot. I took this picture roughly ten minutes after she threw up all over herself, which was one minute before she hoarsely squeaked, "paaancake." So, yeah. Puke, then pancake. I'm a great dad.

the sass factor

2011-10-03T18:56:00.000-05:00

need a reminder?

2011-09-30T10:49:00.001-05:00

It's really easy to get caught up in a story - especially a tragic story - and have it captivate your thoughts and heart. It's also easy to forget about people's tragedies once the drama of it wears off. As someone who has experienced a significant tragedy in my life, I know that it's really lonely three months later, six months later, a year later, five years later. It's lonely because the grief of the tragedy can hit you just as hard after months or years have passed as it did when your emotions were raw and fresh. The difference is that everyone else has moved on and it's hard to fight that whisper of "just get over it, already."

On the other hand, as someone who has often been really caught up in someone else's tragedy in the moment and then moved on, I understand that it's easy to do. You know, your own life just gets distracting. I know that sometimes I appreciate a little reminder to pray for or be sensitive to someone who is still walking through their life with a significant hole in it. Someone for whom it's not as easy to forget. Someone who wishes they could just get over it, already. I know for me, just having a friend remember the date (or even close to the date) that my cousin died is HUGE for me. It makes it all feel a little less lonely, a little more bearable.

So, speaking from the perspective of both of those people, I just wanted to remind you guys of a few people I care a lot about who continue to need your prayers. And maybe remind you to remember the people in your life who might just need, uh, remembering. This is in no way a guilt trip. It's just my attempt to honor my friends who are going through more than their fair share of heartbreak. I'm just here to help you remember. And I encourage you to make your own list - who do you know who would be blessed by you simply remembering them?

Here's my list:

1. Waverley and her family. It's been awhile since I've written anything about Wavy, but I keep her picture visible on our blog because I want to remind anyone reading us that the story didn't end last February. Matt and Molly and Harper still need our prayers - especially as they move into the season of the year that held the most heartbreaking months for them last year. And Wavy still needs our prayers as she still adjusts to being in a new home with a new dad and no mommy and no sister. Pray for them, would you? Ask the Lord to guide your prayers. He will. I promise.

This is an old picture - Waverley is three now.

2. Emmaus and her family. Emmaus continues to have seizures daily and it seems like that may just be her norm - even on the medication she is taking. This will be a long road for the Ballews. They handle everything so incredibly well, but that doesn't mean it doesn't take a toll on them daily. We still have hope that the Lord will heal Emmaus through and through. Join Lila in her prayers that Jesus would make Baby 'Maus "aw-beddah."

um. cuteness.

3. Our friends Aaron and Heather are waiting to hear when they can travel to pick up their son, Arthur. They got caught in the limbo of the rainy season (courts close in Ethiopia during the months of August-October) because of a small error in their paperwork. It's been three months since they've seen their boy and they thought they'd be home with him by the beginning of September. The best way I can imagine how they feel is if I had given birth Lila, held her in my arms and then had to hand her over to the hospital workers for an unknown amount of time before I could come back to bring her home! I would be a complete basket case! Pray that the judge fixes the problems with their paperwork and that they get the go-ahead to buy their plane tickets SOON!

This is their first family photo - taken when they met Arthur in June.

4. And of course, our adoption. We appreciate your prayers, your support, your generosity more than we'll ever be able to convey. Please keep us and our Ethiopian Small One in your prayers!

Who's on your list?

this is my view today

2011-09-29T15:20:00.000-05:00

Yup, we're watching the Muppet Show...again. Because of this:

sick baby.

welp...

2011-09-28T18:32:00.000-05:00

Four weeks into school and Lila has already had two colds and now some sort of fever-causing bug. I think we've solved the mystery of her many illnesses last winter. Turns out (thankfully) it wasn't faulty parenting or a weak immune system. It's school. Kids+toys+slobber+germs=sick kiddo. At least we were healthy all summer so we got a reprieve.

The Husband stayed home with Baby Girl today since I had to teach. I missed her so much since I usually get to peek in at her during my breaks and I felt so sad when I called to check on them and she was wailing in the background. A 104° fever makes a kid miserable, I guess.

The only thing that kept her happy today was watching Sesame Street and the Muppet Show. We've lost count of how many episodes of each we've watched today. But the good news is, the Peanut is perking up. She's dancing to the theme song and just sang, "sooooooo!" to the last word of the phrase, "this is what we call the Mup-pet show!" It's such a relief when she starts to act like herself after being a sad littles.

Thank God for Jim Henson!
Bort! Bort! Bort!

updates and lila's new game

2011-09-27T00:34:00.002-05:00

We had our last home study appointment today - our home visit. After our cleaning party this weekend (have I mentioned I have the best friends ever?), I still spent all day cleaning up the messes our shedding dog and rambunctious toddler had made since Saturday. And at 4:30 when Heather, our social worker, knocked on the door, I greeted her with broom and duster still in hand. Everyone who had been through this part of the home study before told me it was really no big deal...and they were right. But they also told me that, although they were given the same comforting advice, they also spent the days before scrubbing their house down! I don't think anyone can just sit still and not clean frantically with so much at stake!

Anyway, Heather did not check that I had cleaned out the spiderwebs from under Lila's dresser (which I had) or that I had reorganized the laundry room cabinets so they could actually close (which I had) or that I had cleaned out the closet in the extra bedroom instead of stowing last minute items in a teetering pile behind the closed door (which I hadn't - good thing she didn't check!). She did glance in each room and we pointed out smoke detectors and fire extinguishers as we gave her the grand tour of our little house. And that was that!

Now we are just waiting for my fingerprints to come back from whichever government office is responsible for such things. Eric's came back already and there was some concern that my fingerprints weren't dark enough so we are really hoping we won't have to redo them and add more time to our wait. Hopefully, they'll be fine and we'll be able to wrap our home study up in the next week or so. Then it will be on to the final documents of our dossier. I have yet to fully digest everything in that notebook, but it looks pretty manageable now that we are paperwork experts!

We are still hoping to have our dossier submitted by December so that we can be on the waiting list by the first of the year. So far, we are on track! The biggest factors in staying on track are the speed with which certain government offices process our paperwork (we have to get a bunch of stuff certified by the state) and the funds. We don't have any control over the former and I'm not at all worried about the latter! I thought I would be losing sleep over the whole money thing, but you guys have been so generous and God has been so faithful I have had no reason to fret!

On that subject, I am so excited to announce that we have hit our second fundraising goal a month ahead of schedule! Whew! That feels awesome! Unfortunately, we can't celebrate for long because our next payment is a doozie! You may have noticed our new fundraising thermometer to track our progress toward our next goal of $4100 for the dossier fee. We are well on our way with $1200 already in the bank. Here's where we are on our fee schedule:

If you'll remember, the $890 was a part of our just-completed second goal of $2500 so we have that money already, but we just haven't had to write the check yet. Also, we just found out that we may not have to pre-pay the $900 for post-adoption support which would mean that we can put that money toward our dossier fee! We still have to do some double checking to see if that's the case, but if it is, we would be just $2000 away from our next goal! Piece of cake!

Okay, enough money talk. I'll leave you with a little video of Lila. A little backstory, first off though. Remember how Baby Ruby (who's really not much of a baby anymore - she's almost a year old!) comes over to play on Fridays? Well, our little routine is for Lila and I to hole up in our bedroom during Ruby's morning nap because Lila's shrill little voice carries a little too well in our mostly-wood-floored house. If we're lucky, Ruby's nap is timed perfectly with Sesame Street so I drag Lila's high chair into our room and plop her in her seat with her breakfast in front of the TV (because I'm a good mom, that's why). Well last time Ruby came over, she took an enviably long nap so Lila and I had to improvise our entertainment after the hour of muppets was up. Here's what Lila came up with - enjoy:

Don't you love how it ends with Lila announcing that she pooped? Me too.

with a little help from my friends

2011-09-24T22:51:00.000-05:00

We've got our home visit coming up on Monday which means that I have been officially in a state of frenzy trying to get my house in order. So last week, I sent out this email:

Hey friends, I'm humbly asking for your help. We have our home visit for our home study on Monday September 26th and my house is in need of a good deep cleaning for the occasion. I hate cleaning, so (I am embarrassed to admit) I rarely clean beyond sweeping, vacuuming and cleaning the bathrooms. I need windows washed, floor scrubbed, baseboards, cabinets and doors wiped down, the garage reorganized (a MONUMENTAL project), and the house dusted.

I would be ever so grateful to have your help. So I am hosting a cleaning party on Saturday the 24th at 4:00. I'm hoping with a good group of us, we can knock it out pretty quick and then celebrate with some pizza or something for dinner.

What say you? I know it doesn't sound like fun (who likes cleaning? Oh, pipe down, Mrs. Battleson!), so it's purely a favor to me and I'll owe you one. Who am I kidding. I already owe you all lots of "ones." Add it to my tab. Love you all! Even if you reply to this email and say "no way, José!"

I had been told by several people that this home visit was not a "white glove check" but I wasn't about to take any chances. If I'm honest, it took some pride-swallowing and sincere trust in my friends' ability to not judge me by my dirty house to even write that email. And I was amazed and humbled by the response. Let me clarify: I wasn't amazed that my friends would be willing to give up their Saturday afternoon to clean someone else's house - they're just those kind of people. I was amazed that I am lucky enough to have friends like these people.

I just took a lap around my house and was awed by the sparkling tubs, the dust-free shelves, the smudge-free windows, the curtains no longer covered in dog hair and the general scent of clean permeating the house. And the only emotion I can seem to muster is all-out gratitude. Seriously, how did I get so lucky to have friends like these?

Oh and I can't believe I didn't take a before picture of our garage. The best description of its previous state is a "pile." Or rather, "a pile of clothes and toys and lawn equipment and soil and mulch and bikes and car seats and tubs and old speakers and microwaves and the hover board from Eric's Halloween costume from 2004 (he was Marty McFly) and shovels and dog food and a wagon and some spiders and a really big green stuffed frog." And now, thanks to my stud of a husband, it looks like this:

The biggest difference? The fact that there is a path through the garage. And that I had somewhere to stand to take the picture.

And my house looks like this:

And this:

And I look like this:

Don't I look tired and happy and thankful? I am all of those things. But mostly thankful.

toddler conversations

2011-09-20T14:47:00.000-05:00

Lila ate a crayon today. An orange one. At first I thought she just had strawberry on her face and then I realized she hadn't eaten any strawberries today. And then I found the gnawed-on crayon on the ground.

Me: Lila! Did you eat the crayon?
Lila: Uh...no?
Me: Let me see your mouth.
Lila: Ahhhh (opening her mouth)
Me: Lila! You did eat this crayon! I see orange crayon in your teeth!
Lila: (looking confused/guilty) Uh...color?
Me: No, you can't color right now. Look at Mommy. Don't eat crayons! They will hurt your tummy.
Lila: Yummy?
Me: No. Not yummy.
Lila: Oh, dee-dah ("dee-dah" is how she says "thank you")
Me: (sighing) Okay, no more coloring.
Lila: (already running out of the room) Lambie!

I think I really got through to her, don't you?

I wish I could...but I can't

2011-09-16T23:34:00.000-05:00

I wish I could say that I didn't take out my frustration of having two non-napping babies this afternoon on my daughter who was enjoying herself a little too much (and too loudly) when she was supposed to be sleeping...but I can't. (I apologized to her later, but based on the look on her face I think she thought she was in trouble again because I was saying all the same words I say when she is in trouble...wrong, sorry, forgive, etc)

I wish I could say that I brushed my teeth before 4:00 today...but I can't.

I wish I could say that I changed out of my PJs before Eric got home from work...but I can't.

I wish I could say that I came home from getting ~~coffee~~ tea with a friend at 10:00 tonight and went to bed at a reasonable hour instead of stopping at Quik Trip for a Dr. Pepper on the way home, putting a Party Pizza in the oven, and watching 30 Rock with the Husband...but I can't.

I wish I could say that I did the 30 Day Shred during Lila's nap yesterday instead of sitting in bed eating three monster cookies and watching the Bachelor Pad...but I can't.

Admittedly, some are more regrettable than others.

Oh Cuke Baby!

2011-09-16T10:34:00.001-05:00

I've been on the hunt for a black baby doll for Lila to begin prepping her for her future brother or sister. I was disappointed to find that Target had slim pickin's in the multi-racial toy department. It's funny the things I notice now that were never on my radar. I was a bit put-out as I looked around at the sea of white dolls and barbies and pictures of white kids playing on scooters. Most of the black dolls available were Tiana dolls from the Disney movie, but I was wanting a normal baby doll. The only one I could find had creepily huge eyes:

But that wasn't really what I was going for. So I asked Molly if she could point me in the right direction and she advised checking out ToysRUs or Amazon.com. I did a quick online search and there did seem to be more options, but while we were in Minnesota, I thought I'd try Target again in the hopes that a different market might provide more options. And it did!

So Lila is now the proud owner of her first baby doll, who just happens to look like her Ethiopian brother or sister might look. And, much to my delight, she is really into that baby. She loves changing her diaper, putting her shoes on, giving Baby her bink (and occasionally taking a turn on the bink herself since I am weaning her from her own bink), and putting her baby to bed. We even found Baby her own little lambie, snuggle and "birdie blanket" (Lila's blanket has birds on it so she calls her baby's blanket "birdie blanket," too).

Baby's lambie is a beanie baby, her snuggle is a fleece cloth wipe, and her blanket is a
little blanket Lila's Nanny-Goat gave her when she was little.

And here's MY Baby Girl all ready for her nap:

Lila thinks it's awesome that her baby has a lambie and snuggle just like she does and she gets a kick out of putting her baby to bed before her own nap. She even tucks her baby in like her daddy tucks her in at night, (and she says, "tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck!" like he does, too) kisses her baby like I kiss her and blows her a kiss as she closes the door. It's painfully cute. Or as Lila says, "Oh! Cuke baby!"

My prayer is that Lila will be just as enamored with her baby brother or sister as she is with her baby doll. I like to imagine us a year or so from now, watching Lila examine her new brother or sister and saying, "Oh! Cuke baby!"

A little of this, a little of that...

2011-09-13T00:06:00.000-05:00

I've started a post about five times already. There's too much to update you on and I've been having a hard time focusing on one thing in particular, so you'll just have to settle for a discombobulated post about a lot of things!

1. We went to Minnesota this weekend! I went to school there and my mom grew up in Minneapolis so the Husband, the Baby Girl and I try to make it up there around Labor Day every year to visit college friends and family. We had a blast and Lila did great - other than refusing to take a nap on the way up (boy did we pay for that the next day -the girl was Grumpy with a capital G). If I can get my act together, I may share a few funny stories from the trip in a later post. If you're lucky. Some may have something to do with this nutty lady - my Nanny - who we brought home with us from Minneapolis to stay with my mom for a few weeks. Since my mom is now Lila's Nanny, my Nanny decided she should be Nanny-Goat (naturally). So Lila calls her "Nanny-Goke." Nanny-Goke entertained us on the car ride home by dressing up with ribbons she had in her purse and arguing with us about whether we would be driving through Wisconsin on our way home to Kansas City from Minneapolis. She was adamant that Wisconsin was on the way. It's very, very not.

Nanny-goat

2. We are $70 away from our next goal! That feels so amazing! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

3. Emmaus and her parents were able to get in to see a neurologist in St. Louis who specializes in TSC (her genetic disorder). They had that appointment last week and were able to get on a new medication that effectively stopped her seizures for nearly a week. Unfortunately, she started seizing again on Saturday. Laurisa thinks it's a different tumor causing these seizures because they are different than the other seizures in length and severity, but she doesn't know why the medication isn't stopping them. It's got to be so discouraging to have a glimpse of hope and then have it taken away again. AND to never truly know what is causing the setbacks. Please keep praying for them - we are believing that Jesus can heal that sweet baby through and through!

sweetness.

4. School started up again. My class has 16 boys and 6 girls. That is a LOT of boys. I'm still figuring them out, but so far the boys seem sweet and active. Innocent chaos. I need to start writing down the things these kids say to me. They are hysterical.

5. The Husband and I have been learning more and more about being a transracial family. We're trying to figure out how to not ignore the race/color thing and yet not make it ALL about the race/color thing. There's a fine line there. I emailed Molly (Waverley's mommy) the other day to see if she would share her thoughts with me and, as though she was reading my mind, she put this post up on her blog that same day. Read it. It's awesome. Girl can preach! Someday soon I'm going to gather my recent thoughts on the whole race thing and write a post, but I'm not ready for that yet.

6. I have the greatest Husband in the world. Here are just a few things he's done for me recently: given me foot rubs almost every day for the last week, brought me a surprise Dr. Pepper for my first day of school (I NEEDED that baby), gotten up with Lila on the weekends so I can sleep in, drove all 16 hours of our road trip this weekend, followed me around Ikea for over an hour without complaining, told me I was cute even though I hadn't showered in over 18 hours and wasn't wearing any makeup, folded the laundry AND emptied the dishwasher on multiple occasions, wakes up before me every day and works hard at his job so I can stay home with Lila. The list could go on and on. He's the greatest.

7. Lila gets scared when I laugh too hard. She thinks I'm crying. I laughed a lot this weekend so I started telling her, "Look at Mommy's face. Mommy is happy!" So now whenever she's trying to figure out if I'm laughing or crying she says, "Mommy? Happy?" It's probably the cutest thing ever.

8. We've had two of our four home study interviews so far. We're hoping to have the home study in the bag by the first of October - that's assuming our fingerprints and references come back on schedule. Moving right along. Learning a lot. Learning how much we don't know! It's overwhelming and wonderful all at once!

9. Our friends, Aaron and Heather just found out that they will probably have to wait another 2 months to bring their sweet boy home because of a small error in their paperwork and the Ethiopian courts being closed for the rainy season. They are heartbroken. Please pray for them and for Arthur (their peanut) that the Lord would bind them together as a family even across the oceans. Pray for peace in their hearts and protection over Arthur while he is apart from them.

10. I feel like I should have ten things. So I'll tell you that Lila is learning to count. She doesn't so much get the concept of counting as much as she just remembers which words to say after the word I just said. And those words happen to be numbers. I'll say "One..." and she'll say, "twoooooo..." and sometimes she'll keep going and say "fweee...fow...fahve...six...eight...nine..." She always skips seven and always ends at nine. Sometimes she just likes to skip right to six. Like I said, she's not actually counting. Just reciting words that happen to be the names of numbers. Occasionally in the right order. But you know me, I like to pretend my child is a genius. I was trying to show her off to my grandma and Grandma said, "Oh, Kelsey. She doesn't have to count yet." In other words, "Quit trying to make your child learn more than she's ready for." I can't help it. I'm a teacher!

Well, there you go. A nice little conglomeration of randomness. Someone just make it October already. September is wearing me down and we're not even halfway through!

Bragging on my kid

2011-09-03T00:01:00.000-05:00

We went to First Fridays tonight to see a friend's art show. Lila was a mess for no apparent reason. Everything was setting her off and she was far from her usual charming self. We've had a lot of social time this week so could it be that I've found the limit of my extroverted child's people capacity?

Anyway, I'm writing this quick post to share with you a conversation that, in all humility, amazed me at my child's intelligence.

As I mentioned before, Lila was having some major meltdowns at the gallery where our friend's art was displayed - mostly out of what appeared to be some frustrations with pushing her stroller around the crowded gallery. No amount of consoling or problem solving seemed to satisfy her, so we finally just threw in the towel and headed home.

When we got in the car, she seemed to perk up for whatever reason, so I asked her:

Me: Lila, why were you so grumpy at the store?
Lila: Sad.
Me: Oh, you were sad?
Lila: Yeah.
Me: Why were you sad?
Lila: Stroller. Push.
Me: You wanted to push the stroller?
Lila: Yeah.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry, Baby. There were too many people in the store to push the stroller, weren't there?
Lila: Yeah.

Eric and I were just recounting that conversation and I remarked how amazing it is that she could explain how she was feeling and why she was acting the way she did. His response was priceless, "I can't even do that, yet."

So, yeah. At the risk of being that mom. My kid's a genius.

cute genius

This is a long one, people

2011-08-31T00:39:00.000-05:00

So all of a sudden my life is out of control. September isn't even here yet and I already have no room on my calendar to add anything without sacrificing a small slice of sanity. And because I've learned my lesson on overbooking our lives and because I'm trying to practice a little thing called the rhythm of rest, I realized through a conversation with dear friends that something had to go. And that something is our garage sale. I just can't pull it off. Scratch that, I just can't pull it off well. So we will be postponing our garage sale until the spring. Whew. I feel better already.

The only thing that makes me a little hesitant is that I was counting on our garage sale to make a significant dent in our upcoming dossier fee (4,100 big ones due in December when we hopefully turn in our completed dossier), but God has been ridiculously faithful and you have been ridiculously generous so I'm not too worried.

We are in full blown home study mode. We've turned in a huge chunk of our paper work and we have our interviews on the calendar (one of the things that got dumped on my unwitting September calendar). Eric and I will each have 1.5 hour individual interviews, followed by a joint 2 hour interview and a 1 hour home visit during which our social worker will visit our home (duh) and meet Lila.

Maybe I can recreate something this charming for our home visit. Who could give us a bad report when this cuteness is happening in our home? I ask you.

In the meantime, we are gathering the rest of our paperwork. Unfortunately the easy stuff is done. Of course, it's easy to do the simple paperwork first: budgets, references, contact info, etc. The difficult paperwork is things like the "Issues to Consider" questionnaire with questions like "How will you help your child develop his or her own racial identity?" and "Do you as parents feel ready to prepare your child for the prejudices he/she will encounter as a black person in a society where race relations are sometimes strained?" Eek. Those are good but hard questions. They are questions I don't have good answers to, but fortunately were designed to spark discussion and thoughts, not to judge us on our transracial parenting abilities. Before these questions, I think I thought, "I won't care if my child is black or white! I'll love them just the same." It never occurred to me that parenting a child of a different race is much more than just my own ability to see past his or her skin color. It's about equipping them to know who they are and what to say or do when other people can't see past their skin color.

As challenging as that questionnaire was, even more difficult has been the sheet titled "Profile of the Child to be Adopted." I think a more apt title would be "Eliminating All the Children You Won't Adopt." The sheet is a basic checklist of medical and physical conditions (everything from Down's Syndrome to HIV to heart problems to facial birthmarks). We have to go through and check Yes, No or Will Consider for each condition. With every "no" I check, I am haunted by the faces of unknown children who may never find a forever family because they are not the much-desired "healthy infant." There is something that just feels wrong about being able to choose the kind of child you want (like something out of Gattaca). After all, if I were to give birth to our next child and he or she had a deformity or a medical problem, surely there wouldn't be a box to check on our hospital discharge papers that said, "Yes, I will consider parenting this child."

But in the case of our next baby, we have choices. Like it or not. And the reality is that if we check "yes" on a box, the likelihood of receiving a referral for a child with that medical issue is very high for the simple reason that most people check "no." So it's not as simple as playing the genetic lottery as we would with a biological baby. And we have to consider what we are equipped to handle and the kind of life we are choosing for Lila by checking "yes" on even one of those boxes.

Can you see why we have been procrastinating this form? It's heartbreaking. But we cannot proceed without filling it out. We have to make these decisions. We have discussed and prayed and thought and researched and in the end, we have decided, like many other adoptive parents, to ask for a healthy infant. It's painful to write those words. I don't know how much of that pain is from the aforementioned reality that saying "yes" to a healthy infant means denying a sick child yet another chance at a mommy and daddy. Or maybe a part of that pain is pride. I think I'd much rather say proudly that we checked "yes" on every box - of course we'll adopt the most unwanted! Of course we'll care for the child whose needs overwhelm most people. Of course! But when it comes down to it, is self-righteous pride any reason to make a decision that will affect not only our life, but the life of our daughter?

For us a healthy infant is a safe beginning. We figure we don't even know what having an adopted child is like. We are still unfamiliar with the unique struggles and difficulties of a transracial family. Heck, we still don't know what it's like to have more than one kid!! In the end, one of the things that helped us to make the decision to request a healthy infant is that we don't think this adoption will be our last adoption. I know it's premature to say this, being in such an early stage of this adoption, but we hope to give our adopted child an Ethiopian brother or sister. Our hope is that, once we understand a sort of baseline experience of a "normal" adopted child, we will have a better grasp on any other factors we might be able to add to that. We may find that a transracial, adoptive family is excitement enough for us and again decide to request a healthy infant. Or, we may decide that we feel called and equipped to adopt a child with special needs. Or perhaps an older child. The thought of that is a small way for me to feel at peace about saying no to the hundreds or thousands of children who may not ever have a family.

In the end, it's still possible that we would request a healthy infant and get him or her home to discover an undiagnosed medical problem. In which case, we would remain delighted to be his or her parents and trust God to equip us with the grace and mercy needed to provide health and happiness for our baby. It would be our honor to follow in the footsteps of our friends Dan and Laurisa, who continue to amaze me each day with the perseverance and faith they show as they adjust to their new normal with Baby Emmaus.

As a quick update, Emmaus has continued to have anywhere from 7-15 seizures a day. The doctors have advised Dan and Laurisa to allow the seizures to happen so they can figure out what a "baseline" is for their daughter. Meaning, "normal" for Emmaus might be 20 seizures a day. They need to figure out what normal is so that they can know what abnormal looks like. Dan and Laurisa calmly comfort and protect their daughter as her body seizes, timing the seizures, riding them out. I can't help but think of Little Sister's reports of Laurisa in labor (she was in the room for much of Laurisa's labor with Emmaus). She described Laurisa as calm, serene, quiet. (None of those adjectives would accurately describe me during my labor, by the way!) Jess said when a contraction would hit, Laurisa would close her eyes and breath softly, waiting for it to pass. I watched Laurisa do much the same thing with Emmaus' seizures. She leans in and calmly rides the waves of the storm in Emmaus' brain. I know that she doesn't feel calm all the time. I know that she is heartbroken and disappointed and angry and exhausted. But Laurisa has said, "I know we're covered." She has testified to the mercy of God stepping in at just the right time to give them a reprieve. And she says, "I still think God will heal her."

You might be thinking,"But what if He doesn't?" and Laurisa has an answer for that, too.

"It's not my job to protect myself from being disappointed. It's my job to have faith in God being who He says He is."

Friends, it is an honor to walk alongside people like this. And because of Laurisa's faith, I can say that I, too, believe that God will heal Emmaus. We got to gather together as a community and pray for Emmaus on Sunday night. The result of which was 18 hours seizure-free for Emmaus. We are believing that God's just hinting at what He can do.

I don't know who took this. Stole it from Laurisa's blog.

So the Kautzi family continues to pray for a miraculous healing for a sweet baby girl. Lila's prayers have been so sweet. She loves "Baby 'Maus." Today at nap, she wanted to "talk to Jesus" about Emmaus. So I prayed and then I asked her if she wanted to talk to Jesus, too. Here's what I overheard of that conversation:

"Jesus? 'Maus. All better."

Couldn't have said it better myself. Will you pray that with me, tonight? Tomorrow, Emmaus goes in for an EEG to see if or what damage might have been done to her brain and development as a result of these seizures. Seizures at such a young age essentially stop development, so the reality of multiple seizures a day is not good. Please pray with us as we ask that Emmaus' brain is protected from these seizures and that the tumors in her heart and brain would simply disappear. We hope to some day be able to look at the images from her MRI and see a before shot of a tiny brain cluttered with tumors and an after shot of a healthy brain clean of any trace of tumor. It would be a miracle, but as Laurisa says, we're just trusting that God is who He says He is. And He says He is a healer.

Jehovah Rapha, You have given yourself the name of Healer. We ask that you would heal Emmaus as only you can, in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Updates

2011-08-25T23:42:00.000-05:00

First, an Emmaus update:
My disclaimer is that I am in no way a medical expert. I will do my best to explain my understanding of what's going on with this sweet peanut, but I may have to back track or give corrections if I realize I've misunderstood something! You can read Laurisa's blog (Emmaus' mama) for more accurate information.
Emmaus is on anti-seizure medications that are doing their job at this point. She and her mama and daddy were discharged today and get to spend the night at home.

The renal ultrasound revealed no tumors in her kidneys - this is a HUGE answer to prayer. I don't know medicine, but Nurse Little Sister informs me that kidney problems are no good. We are grateful for one piece of good news!

The MRI revealed several tumors in her brain which were the cause of her seizures. This was no surprise, but we were hoping for a miraculously clear MRI...oh well, there's still time for those miracles. These tumors are not cancerous and neither grow nor shrink over time. As long as these tumors exist, the possibility for seizures exists. Our prayer is that the Lord would zap those tumors gone! In the meantime, we are praying that the anti-seizure medication continues to be effective.

The MRI also revealed several "spots" in her brain's ventricles. These spots could potentially cause or grow into tumors which could lead to pressure/fluid on her brain. We are praying that these spots, too would miraculously disappear and that no tumors would form from them.

If you are so inclined, please join us in these prayers for this wee one. Here's a pic her mama posted on her blog. Her words were, "No daughter of mine is going to be seen around the hospital looking like a boy!"

isn't she remarkable? there's not a more perfect kiddo out there. Lila excluded of course!

We are believing in a God who is big and mighty to work a miracle for this sweet girl. Join us in our prayers for a miracle healing and buy some cuteness from Laurisa's Etsy shop: SaSa Blue Design. They are using the income from her shop to help pay for the mounting medical bills. I think the photo above is reason enough to buy from Laurisa - only a wildly creative and talented person could whip up a cute little gauze bow like that, am I right?

And now for an adoption update:

We have turned in our first round of paperwork for our home study and are getting our interviews scheduled over the next few weeks. We also made our first home study payment (thanks to you guys!) and are well on our way to meeting our next fundraising goal. Wahoo!

The home study step is a two month process involving interviews, a home visit, paperwork, background checks and fingerprinting, and gathering a bunch of official documents (birth certificates, passports, etc). In short, not very exciting. But it will feel so good to get that done because it's a huge part of our dossier and a completed home study will allow us to apply for adoption grants!

We are about a week behind "schedule" (I wanted to have turned in our initial home study stuff by August 15th and it didn't get turned in until this Monday, the 22nd), but that's okay. Ultimately, we trust the Lord's timing in all of this.

One change we are making is the age of the child we are adopting. We initially had said boy or girl under two years old, but we are changing that to boy or girl under 12 months old. This was a very difficult decision to make. We are so aware that the older a child gets, the less likely he or she is to be adopted because most people want to adopt an infant. That alone is what influenced us to initially request a child up to two years of age, thinking that would give us about a year between Lila and her sibling (since we hope to have our baby home by the end of 2012).

But then we started doing the math and realized that the age is the age at the time of referral, not the age at the time we would bring the child home. We realized that requesting a two year old could mean that the child we were referred may end up being only six months younger than Lila. And, we have been warned that many of the children's birthdays are estimates so the child we are referred may be several months older or younger than the paperwork suggests (in other words, we might end up with twins!). When we looked at all that, we decided that it would be best for our adopted child and for Lila to have at least a year apart. Basically, we think there's a reason God's design is that the closest biological children can be in age is 10 months! We want to create the best possible family environment for our kids and for us, that means allowing for a good gap between our first born and her adopted sibling.

So that's what we know so far. Thanks for your prayers for baby Emmaus and for walking with us on our adoption journey. We'll continue to keep you updated on both!

I don't know how to end this post so...... over and out?

Didn't our hearts burn within us?

2011-08-25T00:44:00.000-05:00

That same day two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things, Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, "What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?"

They stopped short, sadness written across their faces. Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, "You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days."

"What things?" Jesus asked.

"The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth," they said. "He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.

"Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men rain out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said."

Then Jesus said to them, "You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?" Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scripture the things concerning himself.

By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, "Stay the night with us, since it is getting late." So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

They said to each other, "Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?" And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem.

We have some friends whose daughter was born with a genetic disease called TSC. The disease is a deletion in the gene that stops tumors from growing. Basically, there's nothing in her body to stop tumors from growing in her heart, her brain, her kidneys. She is a perfect baby. Beautiful. But her body is broken. There is something missing from it, needed to keep her body working properly. So far they have found tumors in her heart, and a few characteristic pigments on her arm and legs. When she was born, our friends were warned that if tumors develop in her brain they can cause seizures. She's eight weeks old. And today she had her first seizure followed by several more throughout the day. Tonight she is at Children's Mercy - a sobering place, all too familiar to my friend because she is a nurse there.

My friend and her husband are amazing parents with an astounding outlook on their circumstances. They are positive, hopeful, and realistic all at once. They believe that God will heal their baby. And so do I. Tonight I sat in a room with five other people (while at least that many more joined us from their homes) and we prayed for that healing. We confessed our unbelief, our doubts, our fears and we asked the Lord to help our unbelief and come in His power and heal this baby girl.

Tomorrow, our friends will watch their wee one endure a day full of tests that will give them a better understanding of what is going on in their daughter's body. My prayer is that those tests reveal that what is happening in her body is a miraculous healing. I am praying that her EEG will show nothing more or less than normal brain activity. I am praying that her MRI is clear as day (even though the CT scan today showed multiple large spots on her brain). I am praying that the renal ultrasound (checking for tumors in her kidneys) is clear. I am praying that a healing work is done in that baby and that my friends can see that their prayers were heard and answered as they hoped. I am praying that they can see in hindsight that Jesus was walking alongside them all along, telling them truths about himself and what the reality of His resurrection means for us.

Oh, yeah. This baby? Her name is Emmaus.

Again?

2011-08-21T23:14:00.000-05:00

Jesus, bright as the Morning Star

Jesus, how can I tell you how beautiful you are to me?

My Jesus, Song that the angels sing

Jesus, dearer to my heart than anything

Sweeter than springtime, purer than sunshine, ever my song will be:

Jesus, you're beautiful to me.

Thursday night when I was trying to get Lila back to sleep after our Thunderstorm Adventure, she was frightened and kept requesting that I talk to Jesus about the thunder. After about five prayers that sounded pretty much the same, I told her, "How about we sing a song to Jesus?"

I tried to think of a song that said his name a lot and the first that came to mind was Sara Groves' "Jesus, You're Beautiful." I sang it to her a few times and then I told her it was time to go back to sleep.

Well, every night since Thursday, Lila has insisted we talk to Jesus about the thunder even though it hasn't been raining when she's gone to bed the last three nights. When she was adamant again tonight ("Jesus - Nuh nuh!") I again suggested we sing to Jesus. That seemed to satisfy her, so I sang "Jesus, You're Beautiful" again. When I finished, she said in a sleepy voice, "Agah." Again. I sang it again. "Agah." And again. "Agah." And again. "Agah." Okay, last time. I sang it again. "Agah." Okay, but this is really the last time. I sang it again. "Agah." So I sang it three or four more times each time she requested it.

Am I a sucker? Probably, but my daughter's ability to manipulate me wasn't what was at work here tonight. You see, as I sang that song again for the 2nd attempt at the last time, I realized something. If my daughter wants me to sing the name of Jesus to her over and over and over again, why wouldn't I? I want her to know Him. I want her to understand that He loves her and wants what's best for her. I want her to trust Him to care for her in His perfect ways. I want His name to be often in our conversations so that it will be often in hers. I want Him to be "dearer to her heart than anything." I want her to know that there's never a time to stop singing His name.

So I sang it each time she asked me to and eventually she was satisfied. But I would have sung it 100 more times if she had asked me to. Because I'll never reach a point when I have sung Jesus' name "enough" times to my daughter.

thanks for NOTHING, KCP&L

2011-08-20T00:26:00.001-05:00

I don't like weather. Wait, that's weird. I don't like severe weather. So when my dad called my mom and I last night as we were heading home from helping a family friend to tell us a storm was heading our way, I had to talk my pulse rate down a bit. We ended up getting off the highway early because the debris and wind were making us a little nervous and we pulled into my driveway just as the heavens unleashed the torrents. About a block before that, my dad had called again and said, "Mom should probably stay at your house until the front passes - it looks like it's moving quicker than they initially thought."

As I ran inside to make sure Eric was dressed appropriately for a visit from his mother-in-law, the power snapped and flickered and then everything went dark and silent. There's something eerie about all the rumblings and murmurings of your house being quieted in an instant while a storm approaches. The thunder was crashing, the wind was picking up, the rain was pouring down and worst of all - Lila's white noise (a fan and a humidifier) had been shut off with the rest of the power. Oh no. Forget the fact that our garage is too full of garage sale donations to pull our car in out of the hail. Forget the fact that the trees are swaying ominously. The real worry here is that Lila's going to wake up. Sure enough five minutes later, we heard a little voice, "Nuh-nuh? Yeah! Nuh-nuh!" (Translation: "Thunder? Yeah! Thunder!") Great. I gave her a few minutes, but the next crash was the prelude to a little more nervous-sounding, "Nuh-nuh? Mommy?"

So in the pitch blackness - I fumbled into Lila's room and got her out of bed thinking this was turning into an absolute nightmare. She, of course, was delighted with the unexpected midnight party that she had been invited to. Nanny! Doggy! Daddy! Mommy! Nuh-nuh!

The worst of the storm passed and my mom drove home, but the power was still out. Eric lit candles, I called KCP&L for the 8th time, "We are aware of your outage, thank you for your patience." Stupid robot lady. My favorite recorded message was when they informed me that there was a map online that showed the areas that were experiencing outages if I would like to see where they were working. I'm sure that would be really helpful and informative. You know, if I had power and could use the internet. Thanks for NOTHING. (By the way, "thanks for nothing" is kind of an inside joke between the Husband and me, but I'll let you in on it: a few years ago when we were late getting on the Lost bandwagon, we were catching up and watching the first three seasons in a month. I guess Lost was on the brain and I had a dream one night that Eric had watched several episodes without me. When I found out, I was furious and I stormed off saying, "Thanks a lot! Thanks for NOTHING!" Apparently my psyche can come up with some really brilliant zingers in an argument.)

Anyway, back to this story. To get her back to sleep, I rocked Lila for a long, long time. Every time I thought she might be fading, the thunder would crash and her head would pop up and she would suggest through her bink, "Mommy? Jesus - nuh-nuh."

"You want Mommy to talk to Jesus about the thunder?"

"Yeah."

"Okay. 'Dear Jesus, help Lila to remember the story we read tonight about when you told the wind and the waves to be still and they listened to you because they knew your voice. Help her to remember what you told the disciples - that there was no need to be afraid if you were with them. Help her to know that you are with her right now and that you are bigger and stronger than the thunder and the rain. Please turn off the thunder. Help Lila to feel safe. We love you so much, Amen.'"

BOOM!

"Mommy? Jesus? Nuh-nuh?"

"Okay. 'Dear Jesus...'"

Finally I told her we would sing one song and then it was time for her to go back to sleep. I told her she was safe and that Jesus was with her. "Yeah," she said softly as though she wasn't entirely convinced.

When I left her room, she let out one wail and was quiet. However, the power was still out and it was getting really stuffy and humid in our house. And I was getting more and more irrationally angry at the fact that our power has gone out about five times this summer. I was muttering things like, "$150 bill this month...they should prorate it...don't pay them to sit in a sticky house...they should reimburse me the cost of all my Costco groceries I bought today that are now going bad in the fridge...$150 bill!"

We ended up deciding to open our windows to try to cool the house down and go to sleep. I kept expecting to wake up to the sound of the white noise of the monitor back on, but instead I kept waking up to imaginary moans and whimperings of Lila (I was a little paranoid that I wouldn't be able to hear her without the monitor so my subconscious kept waking me up thinking I heard her crying) and the fact that my body was stuck to the sheets with the humidity.

From one of my 8 phone calls to KCP&L I learned that the human beings come in at 7:30am so at 7:31 I called and talked to the poor woman who happened to answer my now even-more-irrational-and-moody-after-"sleeping"-in-a-sauna-all-night phone call. She was kind, but entirely unhelpful. "I'm sorry, Ma'am I don't know when your power will be back on. Maybe you should buy some dry ice to keep your food cool." Yeah, right. I'm going to drag my toddler to the store to buy dry ice for my groceries and risk getting home to my power flickering back on as I step inside.

I kept thinking it would come on any minute, but at 9:30 it was still out so Lila and I packed up the car with what I considered a reasonable amount of groceries and went to my mom's house. Again, Lila was perfectly delighted with this unplanned adventure and babbled happily all the way to Nanny's house. "Hi Mailman! Big truck! Doggy! Mommy, Elmo! Big truck! Train!"

And because I'm not entirely heartless, I brought the dumb dog with me thinking our hot house might not be safe for her. But I forgot that my dog would rather paw and bark at the sliding door than run around in a backyard like most normal canines. When she finally did explore the yard a bit, she found something to roll in and came back to the door looking like she had just gotten back from an Ash Wednesday service.

She may look innocent, but the dog is naughty.

Like a moron, I explained to her that she had lost her inside privileges because of her choice to roll around in something. That rational explanation went over well and we finally let her in because she wore us down with her obnoxious barking. Lila was imitating my irritated growls at the dog for the rest of the day. Ahhh, it's so self-revealing to have a toddler that repeats everything you say/growl.

Meanwhile, Eric was diligently checking the online map I mentioned earlier and he updated me every half hour or so as every neighborhood but ours was getting their power restored. Honestly, I'm not exaggerating. He said when he first checked it in the morning, most of the map was "in the red" (meaning there were 1000-4999 homes without power in that neighborhood) and by lunch time only our neighborhood was still red. Finally, 12.5 hours later, our power was restored and we got home just in time for Lila to take her nap. Whew.

Needless to say, I required a Dr. Pepper by the end of the day. One grumpy mama over here. But also one mama thankful to have air conditioning and internet again. And I have forgiven the power company. Mostly. I still think they should prorate my bill for the hours spent without power. That's probably a lost cause, though. Thanks a lot, KCP&L. Thanks for NOTHING!

Fundraising Update

2011-08-15T22:54:00.008-05:00

Just a quick fundraising update for you. We have been humbled and honored by your generosity and we are THRILLED to say that we have the money to begin our home study and then some! YAHOOOOOO!

In fact, you may notice we have a new thermometer on our blog (although I thought it would be fun to see our other thermometer completed so I kept it on at the bottom of the side bar) that will be tracking our next goal due mid-October or whenever our home study is complete.

With our completed home study we will be paying $600 for the remainder of the home study fee, $900 to pre-pay for post-adoption visits, and $890 to send our home study on to Immigration totaling $2,390. We will also have several fees in the meantime for fingerprinting ($110) and background checks ($20) and probably ordering copies of birth certificates and other official documents ($??) so I went ahead and rounded up to $2,500 for this next goal. Again, because of your generosity and support we are so excited to begin this next phase with nearly $800 already on the thermometer! That feels SO good!

To help us reach our next goal, we will continue our current fundraisers and we have a garage sale planned for September 23rd and 24th (Friday and Saturday). If you have any items you would be willing to donate, please email me (makewayfortheawesomekid[at]gmail[dot]com) and let me know and we will arrange to pick it up! We are hoping that this garage sale will provide a good chunk of the remaining $1,700 we need by mid-October. More details to come!

We also have two friends who are offering portions of their business profits toward our adoption!

Katy's Avon Store - 50% of the profits will be given to our adoption with at least 10 buyers. Make sure you send her a message (katykinney[at]everestkc[dot]net) telling her you're purchasing toward our adoption fund. Here are a few of my favorite products:

Laurisa's Etsy Shop - 50% of the profits will be given to our adoption. If you buy at least two items, she'll cover shipping costs, too! Cute headbands, hair clips, and other fun fashion items - all handmade by my sweet friend, Laurisa! She can also make them with elastic bands for babies - so cute! UPDATE: the other 50% of the profits from these purchases go to help Laurisa and her hubby cover medical bills they are incurring as a result of a genetic disease with which their sweet daughter has just been diagnosed. Read here for more info. And again, a few of my faves:

And just a reminder, we still have our other fundraisers happening:

Sponsor a Puzzle Piece
Buy a T-shirt
Donate to our garage sale

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for all of your support!

Dear Lila,

2011-08-15T01:21:00.000-05:00

I missed you today. I had a meeting this morning and you were asleep for your nap by the time I got home. We had to be at church early tonight at 5:30 for another meeting so we only had about an hour to play after your nap before we had to leave for church. Then I was invited to go to a movie with our friend Jordanne so Daddy took you home from church and put you to bed without me.

There was a little girl in the movie who looked like you. When she was sad in the movie, I cried because I thought about you being sad. When I came home, I told Daddy that I missed you and I wanted to hold you. Then I did.

I snuck in your room and picked you up. You wrapped your little arms around my neck and one hand played softly with my hair. I held you tight and listened to your steady breaths. I prayed for you and I cried softly, wiping the tears off my face before they dropped onto your bare arm. I held you for a long time. I didn't want to put you back in bed. Every time I adjusted you in my arms, your grip around my neck tightened slightly for a second before you relaxed back into my arms.

When I finally put you back in bed and snuck back out of your room, you cried. Which made me want to go back in there and hold you some more. I told myself to count to 30 and you were back asleep before I got past 20.

Sometimes it terrifies me how much I love you.

Love,

Mommy

and now, everything changes...again!

2011-08-11T15:22:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago at church, I congratulated a newly-pregnant friend and she responded with "Congrats to you, too!" She was, of course, referring to our newly announced news that we are adopting. But in the context of pregnancy congratulations, it took me aback because, well, I don't feel pregnant. I'm not throwing up or exhausted or peeing every ten minutes. But I suppose I'm as pregnant as I'll ever be for this baby. That has me thinking about how many things will be different in this "pregnancy."

We have many of the same emotions: excited, nervous, anxious, thrilled, hopeful, thankful, etc. But this time there's no book to read, no doctor's appointments to make sure everything's progressing normally, no growing belly, no excuses for eating entire Totino's Party Pizzas by myself. There's no reason for strangers to ask when we're due. There's no absolute timeline. We could wait a year for our baby or we could wait two or more years.

And the reality of the differences between this pregnancy and my pregnancy with Lila also has me wondering about how our experience as the parents of our Ethiopian baby will be different from our experience as Lila's parents. Some are obvious: I won't get the bond of carrying, birthing and nursing this baby. We won't have those conversations of whose eyes he or she has. At this point, we don't even know how much of our baby's infancy we will miss out on.

But much will be the same. I have faith that the Lord will give us ways to bond and feel connected to our Small One across the world. After all, he's done that for other people. I'm excited to see the ways he blesses us with a parental connection to our baby even before we know who he or she is. In a lot of ways, I am learning to embrace that whole thing about "treasuring things in my heart." Because unless I want to break out the button that says, "Ask me about my Ethiopian baby!" I think this pregnancy will be a bit more private than my pregnancy with Lila.

The better word for it is expecting. You know, that old-fashioned term from the I Love Lucy era where husbands and wives weren't even allowed to sleep in the same bed on camera? In fact, when Lucille Ball's pregnancy was written into the show, network sensors wouldn't let them use the word pregnant, but "expecting" was permissible. (Why do I know this? Because I was obsessed with I Love Lucy when I was in middle school. Lucy and the Beatles. I was convinced I was born in the wrong decade. Just a little Kelsey tidbit.)

So we are expecting. Expecting to be patient, to wait, to hope, to be discouraged and to be encouraged. Expecting to be surprised and taken off guard by the good and the bad. We are expecting to be terrified by how much we love him or her - just as we were with Lila. We're expecting for things to be blissful and things to be hard. We are expecting to wonder what in the world we are doing and we are expecting God to fill in the gaps.

We started this blog when I first found out I was pregnant with Lila. I asked the Husband what to call it and without hesitation he said, "Make way for the awesome kid." So that's what we called it. And now we find ourselves "making way" again, but I'm beginning to realize just how different the way will be.

Because this time, I'm not pregnant. I'm expecting.

make way: the story behind a name

2011-08-07T00:08:00.001-05:00

This is what the LORD says -

he who made a way through the sea,

a path through the mighty waters...

"Forget the former things;

do not dwell on the past.

See, I am doing a new thing!

Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

I am making a way in the wilderness

and streams in the wasteland...

to give drink to my people, my chosen,

the people I formed for myself

that they may proclaim my praise."

As I began to write out our journey to adoption, I called it our "New Story" on impulse. Each time I wrote those words, a verse would run through my mind. I couldn't remember where it was in the Bible, all I remembered was "I'm doing a new thing! Don't you see it?" (my paraphrase). I thought that was so fitting for the way I feel about our journey to this point. As I mentioned in this post, one of the things I realized in hindsight is that God started this story long before I recognized it for what it was. And when I finally started to clue in, it was as though he was saying, "I'm doing something new for your family. Don't you see it yet?" So I searched for the reference for that scripture and can you guess where it is? Isaiah 43.

Isaiah 43 is very significant to us. If you have been following our blog for any length of time, you've probably read one of my favorite posts: the story of Lila's name. And you may know that we pray Isaiah 43:1-3 over Lila every night before she goes to sleep.

The funny thing is, we've always left off the second half of the third verse and verse 4 because, well, it says this:

I gave Egypt as a ransom for your freedom;

I gave Ethiopia and Seba in your place.

Others were given in exchange for you.

I traded their lives for yours

because you are precious to me.

You are honored, and I love you.

Yep, the Lord sacrificed Ethiopia in exchange for his people. Do you see why we've left that part off of Lila's night-time prayers? It kind of bothered me so I just pretended that it didn't happen that way. (Oof - there's an uneasy revelation about my heart. How often do I ignore the uncomfortable parts of God's holiness? Do I not think he'll have a good answer when I ask him why he would do that?) But now I'm imagining our own little Ethiopian Small One reading this in his or her Bible one day and asking me why God did that to his or her ancestors.

So I decided to confront it. I looked up every time Ethiopia was mentioned in Scriptures and evidently Ethiopia was naughty back then. In fact, most of the time Ethiopia is mentioned in Scripture, it's not in a very positive light. And what I know about God is that he's in the business of protecting and fighting for his people. So if Ethiopia got in the way, he was ready to trade their lives for the lives of his children. The important thing is to look at the whole story. Because a few hundred years later, God finally got to fulfill the plan he had had all along: to adopt everyone - not just Israel - into his family through his son, Jesus (see Ephesians 1:4,5).

But I digress. Back to Isaiah 43. The next verses are (by the way, I'm cheating and changing the translation of these verses. The ones above are New Living Translation, these are New International Version):

Do not be afraid, for I am with you;

I will bring your children from the east

and gather you from the west.

I will say to the north, 'Give them up!'

and to the south, 'Do not hold them back.'

Bring my sons from afar

and my daughters from the ends of the earth -

everyone who is called by my name,

whom I created for my glory,

whom I formed and made."

A few verses later are the words I included at the beginning of this post: The Lord, who has a habit of making a way where there is no way, is telling a new story.

When I started to read through the whole chapter in light of our own story, I began to feel more and more connections to it:

The fact that Ethiopia is mentioned. Although not a happy mentioning, it's still significant to me.
The verses where God promises to gather our children from the east and west and bring the sons and daughters back from the ends of the earth. Ethiopia certainly feels like the ends of the earth - that plane ride is BRUTAL!
The idea of a new thing being done. I like to interpret that new thing as rescuing Ethiopia rather than sacrificing her (hmmm, "her?"...are countries feminine like boats?)
The words "make way" appearing a few times. Because as you know, Make Way has been the title of our blog from the beginning.

So when it comes to naming our adoption journey, it seems only fitting that we use these verses in Isaiah 43 and the words "make way." I love the verses that talk about God making a way through the sea and a path through the mighty waters. I envision the Atlantic Ocean opening up the way the Red Sea did when Moses lifted his staff. I envision a highway paved from Kansas to Ethiopia, a safe road laid down for us, making a way for us to gather our next Awesome Kid from the east.

Lila's Jesus Storybook Bible calls the story of Moses and the Red Sea, "God Makes a Way." My favorite part is the end of the story where it says this:

When there had been no way out, God had made a way.

Many years later, once again, God was going to make a way where there was no way.

From the beginning, God's children had been running from him and hiding. God knew his children could never be happy without him. But they couldn't get back to him by themselves - they were lost, they didn't know the way back. But God knew the way. And one day he would show them.

Our baby is in Ethiopia - our next Awesome Kid - and although it seems that there is no way we'll get everything done on time or have the money to write each check, we have a God who has a habit of making a way when there is no way. We don't know the way, but God knows the way. And he will show us.

To the mounds of paperwork ahead of us: MAKE WAY!
To the miles of ocean between us: MAKE WAY!
To the courts and government offices and red tape: MAKE WAY!
To the looming financial improbabilities: MAKE WAY!

MAKE WAY for the Awesome Kid!

t-shirts, t-shirts, la-la-la-la, t-shirts

2011-08-04T14:43:00.005-05:00

We have a few FUNdraising announcements (oh yeah, I just did that). I didn't want to taint our celebration earlier this week with the tasks and next steps that are already looming, but as you can see by our incomplete thermometer on the right there, we are still a couple hundred short of our first goal. It might be more accurate to say that the $900 we were celebrating on Monday was actually our first mini-goal. Our first goal that the thermometer is tracking includes the $900 plus the money we will need to begin our home study ($600) which is the next leg of the race.

Yesterday, we mailed off our first big check (thanks to you all!) along with our first round of paperwork! Hooray! So here's what we've got left of our first 6 months (from application to dossier):

There are a few things that are different from the first cost breakdown we shared with you. A significant one is the "Post Adoption Support" that we didn't factor in (because I only just now noticed it's pre-paid). Eeek! And I think there will be a couple hundred dollars worth of random fees for copies of birth certificates, fingerprinting, doctor's appointments, etc that we'll be forking out as we get started on our home study and dossier. The general feeling when it comes to the time and cost associated with adoption is: it always takes longer than you expect and it always costs more than you think. That is really hard for my structured brain to cope with, but I just remind myself that the return on investment will be immeasurable. When it comes down to it, any amount of time and money spent to have our baby home with us is worth it!

Anyway, as the title of this post alluded to, we're going into the t-shirt business for our next round of fundraising! We have TWO t-shirt endeavors happening to support our adoption. The first is still in the works as we are working with our new friend and fellow adoptive mama, Heather, on a design for our very own t-shirts. More to come on that in a week or so!

The second is one that we totally lucked into! Our sweet friend, Dan and his awesome wifey, Kandace, donated the leftover shirts from Dan's t-shirt business he used to share with his brother. So we have 4 t-shirt designs to offer you and 100% of the money will go toward our adoption because Dan and Kandace just gave them to us outright! Are they the best or what? And one of the designs is very relevant to our adoption! How convenient is that??

Here's the skinny:

All shirts are $15 (or 2 for $20!)
All the moo-lah goes toward our adoption
We have limited sizes of each shirt because they're leftovers
The designs are printed on Alternative Apparel's tees (Africa designs) or American Apparel tees (all other designs) and the tees run, in my opinion, VERY small
To order a shirt, go to the t-shirt tab for more instructions

Here are the options (for detail pics, check out the t-shirt tab):

Go check 'em out! Heck, 15 bucks for an American Apparel tee is a steal of a deal anyway! Thanks Dan and Kandace! You guys are the best!

And don't forget about our Puzzle Fundraiser - we still have over 400 pieces yet to be sponsored! Maybe one has your name on it - literally!

Lila's pink step stool

2011-08-03T14:03:00.000-05:00

Lila has a little pink stool that she loves to stand on and peek out the window. She has eagle eyes to spot birdies, the mailman, trucks driving by, any visitors, and Daddy coming home. Recently, Franny has taken to utilizing the stool, too which is usually met by a severe scolding from Lila, "No-no-no-no-no-no, Doggie!"

Today however, Franny spotted the mailman before Lila did and was on high alert (I think it had something to do with the fact that he was not our usual mailman and he had what appeared to be a wet towel on his head under his hat - I assume to combat the ridiculous heat we've had). Franny's tense barking clued Lila in and she joined the Doggie on her perch. It was pretty cute:

And yes, once again, she's not wearing pants. Because, what's the point? It's 109 degrees out. We are NOT leaving this house.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I scored that stool on Black Friday for $6.50 and every time I see it in Target for $16.99, I remind Eric of my shrewd bargain-hunting skills. "See, Honey! $16.99! And I got it for $6.50!" He's always very impressed and never counters with, "I know. You've told me."

Still, $6.50! And look at all the cuteness that's come out of it!

We met our first goal!

2011-08-01T22:29:00.000-05:00

I'm happy to announce that we have met our first goal of $900 ON SCHEDULE! Thanks to each of you who sponsored a puzzle piece, we were able to write the check for our first major payment toward our adoption! I can't tell you how wonderful that feels and how grateful we are.

In January, when we began to take some serious steps toward adoption, we invited a few friends who have walked through the last few years with us to be a part of the prayer, processing and discernment that went into our decision making. A few weeks ago, I sent those friends an email asking for prayer in light of the emotional, financial and relational mountains we felt like we were climbing. In response, one of those friends sent me this story - an excerpt from George Muller's biography - and I wanted to share it with you:

Towards the end of November, 1857, it was found that a serious leak in the boiler of the heating apparatus of house No. 1 would make repairs at once necessary, and as the boilers were encased in bricks and a new boiler might be required, such repairs must consume time. Meanwhile how could three hundred children, some of them very young and tender, be kept warm? Even if gas-stoves could be temporarily set up, chimneys would be needful to carry off the impure air; and no way of heating was available during the repairs, even if a hundred pounds were expended to prevent risk of cold.

Again Mr. Muller turned to the Living God, and, trusting in Him, decided to have the repairs begun. A day or so before the fires had to be put out, a bleak north wind set in. The work could no longer be delayed; yet weather, prematurely cold for the season, threatened these hundreds of children with hurtful exposure. The Lord was boldly appealed to. "Lord, these are Thy orphans: be pleased to change this north wind into a south wind, and give the workmen a mind to work that the job may be speedily done."

The evening before the repairs actually began, the cold blast was still blowing; but on that day a south wind blew, and the weather was so mild that no fire was needful! Not only so, but, as Mr. Muller went into the cellar with the overseer of the work, to see whether the repairs could in no way be expedited, he heard him say, in the hearing of the men, "They will work late this evening, and come very early again tomorrow."

"We would rather, sir," was the reply, "work all night."

And so, within about thirty hours, the fire was again burning to heat the water in the boiler; and, until the apparatus was again in order, that merciful soft south wind had continued to blow.

Isn't that beautiful? I remind myself time and again that our Ethiopian child is His child - he or she is THY orphan, Lord - and surely it will please Him to keep our baby safe and bring him or her home to us soon - or rather make it possible that "the job may be speedily done!"

Thank you, friends for your help in this. You are the workmen who chose to work into the night for the sake of the children. We can't do this without you and we are so grateful to have a community who loves us, loves the Lord and loves His orphans!

a little musical entertainment for you

2011-07-28T12:22:00.000-05:00

stories worth telling

2011-07-25T23:37:00.001-05:00

I've been obsessively reading adoption blogs recently. And by recently, I mean for the last eight months. But now that we know where our next baby is, I've narrowed my focus to mostly international/Ethiopian adoptions. You know, to try to wrap my brain around what might be our story.

And so far, every story is worth reading and many are worth re-telling. I've been so encouraged in my heart to read stories that prove that the Lord chooses our kids for us - biological or otherwise. We tried to get pregnant with Lila for several months before we finally got a positive pregnancy test. And often, I look at her and think about all the tears I shed with each month that passed un-pregnant. And I think, if those months had given us a baby, it would not have been Lila. It's basic science: different sperm, different egg.

I have loved reading adoption stories that have that same sentiment. I wanted to share a few with you. Please take the time to click these links and read the stories. You won't regret it.

She had a dream about the day he was born.

They thought he was a girl.

I'm sure I will encounter many more stories like this and I hope someday, we'll add ours to the list.

In the meantime, here's a really cute picture of our own little chosen one. Just because.

make way for the awesome kid

Day 13

Day 12

Day 11

Day 10

Day 9

We interrupt this program to bring you this special announcement!

Day 8

Day 7

Day 6

Day 5

Day 4

Day 3

Day 2

Day 1

28+1 Days of Lila

Bedtime conversations

Dossier: APPROVED!

Dossier ARRIVED!

Dossier MAILED!

One of those days

I should have known

"So, how's the adoption process going?"

Christmas

Ahhh, Presents!

Lila's Birthday Party

Lila's Birthday!

a letter to my daughter: year two

A conversation

Adventures

Christmasing our House

And the winner is...

Only 2 days left!

Not cool, Zeus. Not cool.

I have an idea

It's that time of year again!

five and five

Lila sings her ABC's

Goodness gracious alive and Heaven help us.

Announcing a new fundraiser: American Girl Doll Raffle!

New fundraiser coming...

No no no no no....

no, I not

thank you, sesame street

costume developments, adoption updates and a *bonus* lila story for good measure

What should Lila be for Halloween

Lila's latest accomplishment

Friends

the sass factor

need a reminder?

this is my view today

welp...

updates and lila's new game

with a little help from my friends

toddler conversations

I wish I could...but I can't

Oh Cuke Baby!

A little of this, a little of that...

Bragging on my kid

This is a long one, people

Updates

Didn't our hearts burn within us?

Again?

thanks for NOTHING, KCP&L

Fundraising Update

Dear Lila,

and now, everything changes...again!

make way: the story behind a name

t-shirts, t-shirts, la-la-la-la, t-shirts

Lila's pink step stool

We met our first goal!

a little musical entertainment for you

stories worth telling

costume developments, adoption updates and a bonus lila story for good measure