Big Plans - Sweetpea Style

I wanted to share with you some photos from our day of preparation for Sweetpea's dedication at church. This was such a sweet day for my daughter and I and I got to see dimensions emerge from her that I had not seen before.

The oldest buttons returned last night from a party with these curlers in their hair. Thus, it follows that this morning the littlest buttons would want curlers in their hair as well. When the older girls took theirs out and sported their curls curl envy was born and they blessed their little sisters heart's by doing their hair up too.

My Sweetpea and I spent some cuddle time together talking about what it meant to be dedicated as this was a totally foreign concept to her. She liked the part where she got to pick the dresses and that we are to have a big dinner to celebrate after church. The dresses were the easy part for her, she knew immediately what she wanted.....to match her sisters! Then we got down to business to plan the dinner together. She really got into this hostessing thing.

She had very specific ideas of what she wanted on the menu for the dinner. I was impressed that things came out pretty balanced. Having never given her the power of the pen before to craft the menu I was pleased to see more than just sweets listed, ham was pretty prominent. I love her little lefty pinky that sticks out when she writes, it's so adorable.

There were of coarse some negotiations during the planning. She wanted to invite the world and I had to tell her that we had only one ham and a large family already so she was going to have one guest. She has become a social girl with a lot of friends. She has gone from thinking that the world is a threatening place and people are enemies to being able to seek out her special people and create ongoing relationships with them. They are not yet deep and true relationships yet but they are on the continuum now at least.

I love this angel face. I love that I get to paint her finger nails and toe nails and that it makes her feel all girlie girlie. She used to peel those nails off ridiculously harsh and the ends of the fingers were raw most of the time. I know that it was a reflection of the inner turmoil but now she has allowed them to grow. They have been quietly celebrated by her sisters who either want them and don't have them because they too are gnawers or have them and get to adorn them with light polish and wish others to match. Today she got them polished and it was a golden moment.

I can't believe today is our six month-aversary of having Sweetpea in our family. It has been an astounding six months. While it has not been easy she amazes me at how rapidly she has changed. She is a sponge for love and has flourished in this wild, crazy atmosphere we call life in our household. Her very face is changing and I don't just mean all those missing teeth are finally growing in either!

I love how she is growing in all facets of life. Because she isn't spending all her time surviving she has a lot more time for deeper thinking and has gotten to be reflective and a great one to hold conversations with about the big things in life. She will normally spring these large ponderings upon me during moments of cuddling when she is feeling safe and we are being quiet. I want to be able to make time to always hear what is on her heart, even if it takes her a while to get it out.

This is the face of love. I love this photo of her because she is so unguarded and so content just to be with me and do this silly planning thing. There is trust in these eyes. Trust that even though she has not a clue of what will happen tomorrow at church during this "dedication" she will be safe and fine because I am her mother and I will make it so. I look at this face and I feel so blessed by God.

Our Little Visitor

We still have our little visitor staying with us. This makes life a tad more stressful for me than normal. She is a great kid; vivacious, energetic, funny and smart. Yet she is a post institutionalized child with behavioral problems and so she also needs some aid in navigating the waters of life. This is something I am familiar with but not something I have done with children not my own. It takes on a whole new perspective when you are asked to draw patience from deep down into your toes and I am thinking that this is harder when there is no hope of future return.

But I am wrong once again as I see the fruit of God's love upon this child and the progress she is making in our household. When she first came she was bossy and arrogant, always first, always best, always biggest, always more and always RIGHT! Without lecture and reprimand for these negative behaviors she has noticed that the other kids aren't in competition with her, in fact they don't even play the same games (save Sweetpea who gets swept up into it easily and reacts accordingly). I think she believes she has stepped into an alternate reality that she doesn't understand because we have begun to see changes in her. Of her own accord, I cannot stress this enough, she is giving preference to others, SHARING, giving compliments and support and just once admitted that perhaps she did not know best! Wow, big stuff in a short time.

She is an aching heart longing for love and yet rejecting the very love that her family is trying to give her. It is a familiar orphan scenario, yet so heartbreaking. It will take her family lots of good support and counselling as well as consistency to demonstrate true love to her and get around her walls of defenses. I pray for this situation daily and would covet your prayers as well, that God would heal this child's heart and restore to her life.

Fun Mother's Day - with Art!

We had a very sweet and sedate Mother's Day this year. The girls dressed up for church for me without much of a fuss and that in itself blessed my heart. We went over to a friends house to share lunch after church and had such a sweet time together. I got to chat while the youngest buttons were creating works of art with play*dough and the older ones were having a blast playing board games. I was very impressed with Sweetpea's rendition of an elephant, this is the first time she has created something so realistic. I, of course, had to capture the moment on film.

Racy Racers

My girls like to run, they call it running club. Whenever we are out and about and they see anyone jogging or running they say longingly, "There's someone doing running club". It's not that they are very good at running or very fast, they are just persistent and slightly obsessed at times.

When Sweetpea first came into our family she thought running club was as close to torture as she had ever experienced. Due to her low muscle tone and difficulty with balance and coordination she really struggled with running a couple yards much less the distance that the others like to put in.

Slowly, as she has done a lot of therapy she has gained muscle mass and core body tone as well as benefited from increased balance and coordination (at least where her feet are concerned). She is not tripping and failing nearly as much and she has stamina now.

Yet, even with all these great gains she was not keen when spring came and we popped outside to start running in earnest. She threw some really stinky fits, and stood there and watched in amazement that the others were having a really great time and she seemed to be missing all the fun. Poor girl did not know what parallel universe she had landed on.

Well, she has persisted and slowly she has been able to make some progress with her running. I still think she thinks it insane but she does it with a willing and eager heart.

Today, for the first time in BUTTON history all girls ran 1.1 miles. This is BIG news. The most they had run heretofore was just over half a mile. They really wanted to break that mile barrier and so they did, all of them, even my newest button. I was so proud of her, I could not wipe the enjoyment of that amazing feat off my face and she knew it!

They are now considering what their running team name should be.....Great Wall Running Princesses is in the lead at the moment. In the pictures you will also see our little friend who is staying with us running as well along with the Great Baba, Father Spectacular!

This isn't stop sign ballet, they are really all stretching but it struck me as funny how they were all clumped together around the sign.

An amazing end to the story

I cannot wait to share how gracious God is. The money has all been supplied. There, that is the punchline and it indeed is amazing to us, because it was not by our strength or by our doing but by God's gracious and sovereign hand. We have a lot to boast on, and none of it is about us.

I sadly admit that I took the news and situation and went into a struggle over it. My heart was so bleak that I did not see any way and I was confounded. I literally cried out, "I cannot make this money appear out of thin air!" Yes, I know it looks very foolish and yet that is where I was.

My sweet husband shared our burden for the smaller sum with one of the pastor's at our church. This pastor has been such a sweet help to us through all the ups and many downs of this adoption journey and has offered great counsel and wise advise to us. The next day this pastor left a message with my Beloved, telling him not to worry, that the amount would be taken care of.

What a huge relief! What a kindness to us to hear this good news.

But........we had gotten it wrong! The message was not that the smaller sum was to be covered but that the entire sum was no longer a barrier and that the demands of the ss agency would be met in order to get the paperwork to the court.

The impact of that news hit me like a physical blow. It felt like the difference between being forgiven a debt of a few dollars and a debt of a lifetime. I know that sounds like an exaggeration but that is how visceral it felt to me.

How silly I must look to Christ when I fell immediately into disbelief and had no faith at the first sign of the problems when all along he had a plan to take care of it. He is so patient with me and so loving.

--------------okay there is a really neat post script to this amazing story too. After my last distressing post to the blog I got an astounding email from a person who reads the blog but who doesn't know us from a hill of beans and says that if we are in need of that money they would be in a position to help us with it! I read it and I was deeply shocked. It was as if God was saying "yes, but I CAN make money appear out of thin air". Superstop. What an amazing God we have and what a unique person to follow God's heart like that to help total strangers?!?!

Bang Nation

Spring silliness is running rampant around these parts and all my girlies got it badly today...........and the result was that they all wanted to "match" Sweetpea in a unique way.......by styling their hair to match her bangs. None of them have bangs and they are forever hearing her say that she can't wait for long hair like her other sisters......today they rewarded her with all wanting what she has and they don't - bangs! What lovely silliness we had. Sweetpea felt so loved and special by this act of "matching" by all her sisters."Matching" is a big thing around this household. I have not really aided and abetted except when the top buttons were very little and we had a couple of dresses that matched. Yet, they seek out things that go together and try to wear them all at the same time. It gets a little ridiculous when I hear them calling from one bedroom to the other to find out what color socks someone is wear on a particular day so that the person dressing might see if they had the same colored socks clean at the same time. We do now have a few things that match, like 4 of the same t shirts and similar hairbands. Even my mom who was adamant about NOT matching the girls even went against all her rules and bought them not one but 3 matching items, one of them being a 3 piece outfit x 4! Go figure, Grandmothers cannot be relied upon to hold to their guns especially if they have found a good sale!

F.R.U.S.T.R.A.T.E.D.

Oh this is going to be a venting post, so be warned and wary.

This week we received some very frustrating news regarding the process of the adoption. Let me preface this to say that this is the first domestic adoption we have done and while being very well versed in China adoption processes and set backs we are operating with the understanding that this final adoption will be a)more open and b)more easy to understand and access information. We are finding our assumption to be false......leading to some head scratching but not mass frustration up until this week.

The players are: the state court for which we have a date on the 19th, the lawyer who we are paying lots of money to represent our case and do all the work for us so that this is done well and expediently, the social services agency who do the homestudy and post placement visits and all the reports to the court, us the prospective parents and the child who has lived with us for 5 months now.

The lawyer contacted the ss agency and told them they needed this big, all inclusive report done on our case and that it had to be into the court 10 days before our courtdate. He did not communicate this with us in anyway. The ss agency calls us in a panic and tells us they need to do this in a hurry and that it will of course cost a lot of money, like $750! We asked why it wasn't done before and why after all these many months was this the first that we or the ss agency has heard of this very needful thing?

Well, I must thank God for our social worker because she is amazing and wonderful and has been the entire 4+ years we have known her. Yet again she comes to the rescue at the last moment and pulls this report together, not withstanding a very busy personal life, and without having to interview us again because she knows us just that well gets it all done. We fact check the document and get it back to her with some minor corrections and we think we are good to go......except for the fee or course.

Well now the frustration factor reaches a crescendo. The ss agency contacts us and says that basically the paperwork is complete but that they will not release any of their work to the court until we pay the fee. The next day it is not just this fee but a much larger fee of $1800 for services that they had already performed and services to be performed throughout the course of this adoption. The final tilt was that they wanted all monies up front or they would hold our adoption paperwork hostage thus submarining our court date and putting us into possible jeopardy.

I calmly reasoned with the woman that trying to find $1800 in the next 24 hours was going to be impossible and that it was a little untimely to demand full payment at this juncture when it was never mentioned before.

I wanted to throw a fit but I did not. I need to keep this woman on our side until the finalization.

Then she went for my weak spots and said that all the ss agency was really concerned with was for the best of the children they serve. That if our inability to pay caused us to lose custody of Sweetpea and necessitate a return to her first family then that would be okay. The child would be the same in either family ------------------WHAT!!!!!!!?????? This is from a woman who has read every detail of this case from the moment we first began the adoption process. She knows the intense trauma and hardship that was visited upon our lovely Sweetpea at the hands of her first family and she disregarded it in light of the larger need to get paid on her timeline.

I was undone. I was shaking badly and had to compose myself to get through the rest of the call in order to not say what was on my mind.

I feel so defeated and frustrated today. The echo's of fourth button's adoption sound loudly in my ears when at the final week before flying to China the adoption agency imposed another fee and without payment threatened to implode our union with our soon to be daughter. It seemed heartless then and it seems heartless now.

I just don't get it................and I cannot make that money appear from anywhere.