Praise

We got back a little while ago from the hospital. I am wrung out but so very grateful to God that he saw us through this little trial. Every request of my heart was not only answered but met with more than I could have hoped for.

Sweetpea handled not eating or drinking all day long remarkably well. We were kind to not let anyone eat in front of her so that it was not testing her endurance. She handled the intake and prep very well. When it got to the real stuff she started having great anxiety but never to the level she has shown in the past! We were also so pleased to find a wonderful Child Life Specialist at our disposal with lots of things to engage her and let her play doctor, she even got to place a real live IV line into a doll!!!! What a thrill for her.

She resisted her own IV line going in, but again not as much as in times past......in took only 4 adults today instead of the 6 of last time to hold her down. She also resisted falling asleep and started to get wild instead, which they said was a normal variable. Once asleep she wanted to stay asleep through recovery. We had a hard time waking her up. We could only get her to come around after enticing her with food, cookies and lemonade, which she snacked on and rolled back for another snooze!

We got her home and she was jello girl. Watch her wiggle, see her jiggle....if it weren't so serious it would have been comical. We had to help her walk and escort her everywhere. She really wanted to go out to dinner afterward and do something special but after all was said and done she barely made it to bed without becoming one with the floor.

Thank you to each one of you who held us up in prayer and encouraged us throughout the day. Your care eased our burden and pointed us to the only real peace there is, the peace offered by Christ.

Happy Birthday Big Brother

Wishing my big brother a very happy birthday.......

may you forever be outstanding in your field!

Big Day Thursday

This week has been really busy and I have been thankful for the activity because it has kept my mind from worrying about tomorrow, and yet tomorrow is looming large before me now. Sweetpea is going into Children's Hospital for a proceedure and will be under sedation and this bears risks for her more so than other children. I feel the pull to worry, and yet we have faith that God is in control, leading us and protecting her......so why am I in a funk over the risks?

I would be really blessed to know that people were praying for her. We go in at noon and they are saying that we cannot expect to be discharged before 6, if all goes well. Pray that I will walk in peace and that I will be able to give that peace to Sweetpea as she is not the most relaxed kiddo in a medical environment given her history. Pray that God is glorified in all that He wills and that our faith will grow as we tend to our beautiful little princess and her needs.

Also please pray for pleasant staff as each time it is difficult to explain our unique situation and each person has a spin on our situation, oftentimes it is not a positive or healthy one for Sweetpea to overhear. We are constantly challenged as to our position as her parents because it is the norm to see us as "foster parents" with no long term stake in the care of this child, rather than her full parents who are waiting for the legal machines to catch up with the realities of the heart.

o, the lengths we will go

Happy Anniversary T and G, we celebrated your day your way. Can you guess?

We went all in for cow today and for our endeavors we were rewarded with delicious food. We also were rewarded with meeting lots of friends who equal if not exceed our strangeness with their own brand of "unique". Some identities have been concealed to protect their dignity.

................that's the END, and I'm not telling any tall TAILS.

Blueberry picking

We were invited by some friends to join them in a clandestine raid on a blueberry patch. Even after 2 hours I think the blueberries were winning. We ate as much as we could hold and put the rest into buckets to carry home. The blue in our hands may eventually wash off, undeniable evidence that we were indeed the culprits of the blueberry scandal!

A 5K Fourth of July!

The day dawned early and we were up and getting ready to run the first race of our careers, the 5K. The 8 year old, the 6 year old and the 5 year old coaxed their dear old dad to run with them and we were off to the races!!!

These 3 buttons were the races youngest contenders. They were mighty proud to pin on their race numbers and line up at the back of the pack. There were some serious "out-for-blood" runners in the race and then there were some that had definitely just showed up to run with no training or serious thought about it.

The girls were briefed as to the water stations and looked forward to being able to "stop" at the 2 of them to take a break. When the time came there was no stopping and much to their disgust people where throwing their cups on the ground!!!! NO WAY - LITTERING!!! They were aghast. Seriously, their Baba had to command them to throw down their cups, otherwise they would have run the rest of the race with cups in hand! Too funny. I assured them later that the water station people gladly picked up all the cups and not a cup was left, it was the rule of the race....don't know if they really believed me though.

After tailing them for the start of the race and making sure they made it up "Killer Mountain" where I was afraid littlest button would take a fall and seeing blood not be able to continue the race (which of course she did fall but having been told to wear capri's and gloves the knees and hands were saved from injury and she went on unscathed) we wiggled into the middle of the race course to meet them at a corner to cheer them on. My Beloved was so happy to see Top Button and I as they came around that corner. He said it gave everyone an energy boost and they sprinted to go past us giving us thumbs up.

It was the perfect weather for the race and even one family had a sprinkler on the coarse to coll down the runners who wanted to run through it. The kids enjoyed their time. They enjoyed most seeing their rooting section pop up around corners where we could get to the race coarse. They knew when the end was near and they put their all into it to cross that finish line with their time recorded. Second Button was first in our group and then littlest Button, then Baba, lastly Sweetpea. Their best training time for a 5K has been 50 minutes. On race day they all came in under 38 minutes, which was Sweetpea's time. What great progress, all new personal bests!

After the race they indulged in liquid refreshment and bananas.......the reward of champions. Then we went to the parade and had an excellent but quiet 4th of July. They are already talking about their next race and planning how they are going to do it differently. We will have to see, this racing thing can get out of hand and poor Baba will have to really start loving running to encourage such optimism.

We missed the fireworks as everyone was ready for bed long before sunset. This year we only dreamt of pyrotechnics.

Beauty and the .......exhausted tribe

It was jubilant and wondrous, fabulous and grand. I am so thankful that God gave my button this opportunity to participate in this program and as we soar on the heights of a job well done we also recognize that it has been so exhausting.

We ended the 2 live performances today with a break down of the set and a total clean up of the building we were using before everyone headed over to a cast pool party where they indulged in excesses of sugar and giddy laughter. I was grateful that the car can drive itself home because by the time we we leaving we were melted.

Up to my Eyeballs in Beauty.....

Beauty and the Be*ast that is! My oldest button is at a drama intensive camp for the last week. When she auditioned for the program and got cast to play the part of "Chip" the little teacup I really thought this would be a great thing for her. I had no idea that when they said it was an "INTENSIVE" they really meant that included the whole family.

The rest of the buttons have been very supportive and helpful as we have been spending all of our waking hours working on the play. It is quite an undertaking they have cut out for themselves. In 10 days they take a group of green teens with the desire to act, some with experience and some not, and not only teach them how to sing and act but also produce the entire musical and then perform it live TWICE on the tenth day.

A little on the crazy side, but that's theater for you. Living large and crazy and praying that it comes out well.

To balance out all this craziness the rest of the buttons are hard at work training for their first 5K. They have decided that the July 4th 5K is the race to do and so we have ourselves quite a lot to accomplish in a short time. It is going to be a very interesting (read: riotous) week.

Pray for me.

Fanatical Racers

I am not complaining. There is nothing in this world that would make me complain about these crazy, lovely girls I am raising .... but I am perplexed beyond words as to why they have become such nuts over running.

It seems as the days go by they get MORE obsessed with running. They wake up and I find them staring me into consciousness, willing my eyes to open the slightest so they can ask the question burning on their brilliant minds for the nanoseconds they have been awake....."can we go running today?"

Monday they made a new personal best of 2 miles. Tuesday morning while waiting for time to get dressed for our court date they went out and put 1.6 miles under their belts, just to cut the tension. They took the dog with them and the dog barely made the circuit, and we think he slept for the rest of the day. After a gruelingly long day today they begged their Baba to take them running after dinner. They made a new personal best of 2.5 miles!

I went out to pick them up and they were so proud of themselves. My sweet hubby was limping slightly as his new shoes are breaking in his feet a little (he's had his new running shoes for over 2 years already and still live in the box, so rarely have they been used before). After being so eager to tell me about their run they pled with me to let them out of the car so they could run all the way home. Baba made the ruling on that one, no.

I marvel at how God has created their unique hearts and what so easily captures their imaginations. This running thing is Second Button's natural forte, she's an easy athlete but unfocused on what she wants to really do, except that is for running. She has pulled all the others into her love for stretching her limbs and feeling the wind under her feet.

Summers around here are usually filled with water and lots of swimming from May through September. We have yet to be immersed, it's such a shame. With all this strange weather pool time hasn't been an option. I would never have thought this summer would have been a summer of running instead of swimming.........it's rocking my world, help what planet am I on?!!!!

Glorious

Done
Done
DONE
Our court appointment went very well. God blessed us greatly. Firstly and not to be overlooked the buttons were dressed sweetly with nary a stress, and four hairdos with no angst. Fifteen minutes to departure and I still was undressed and unstyled but THEY looked great!

We got to the building with a full half hour to spare and got on street parking right in front of the building.......unheard of, sincerely. There was even time still left on the meter.

As we passed through the metal detectors the guards were more interested in making comments and admiring the girls then checking the bags and noticing that people in our party were setting off the machines. We have been here before and this was not the regular atmosphere. I felt we were breathing rarefied air today.

All through the building our little band did attract quite a bit of attention. The kids didn't seem as bothered by it as usual as their minds were preoccupied with the coming events. Our lawyer met us in the upstairs lobby and went over the details of the day and buzzed between us and the other families he was representing. We were one of 5 adoptions slated on the judges docket.

We went third. The courtroom was spacious and empty as it was closed to the public. Marvelous M took off his lunch hour and showed up right in time to be our photog guy. We sat across a wide table from the judge, the same one the B's and the K's had had, which was helpful in showing the girls his picture beforehand. The proceedings started and I felt like I was at an auction. Both the judge and the lawyer spoke sooooooo quickly that I had to listen with all my strength to follow along. There were several errors and I jumped in to stop them so that the errors could be corrected. Towards the end I realized that maybe I should have raised my hand or given some nod to the legal hierarchy when I wanted to interrupt but I really was barely holding my own in trying to get it corrected before they had gone to the next page.

The kids did really well. The littlest ones stood between us as we were seated. Second button stood beside her Baba and read a book and wondered as we stood up when it would begin, she had missed the whole thing because she was waiting for some "action" and not just the words. Top Button sat behind us and watched but did not really understand much.

The only time that was troubling was towards the end of the proceeding and the judge asked the lawyer if he knew whether the first parents would show up today. For the record the judge stated the date and time and took a moment to stare at the closed door to the courtroom. Sweetpea turned to look at the door with a jolt and a face of horror as if she fully expected them to walk through at that moment. I pulled her close and knew what she could not tell me right then. The judge continued on and with each passing minute her tense body began to relax.

It ended just as anti-climatically as it had begun and poor Sweetpea also wanted action. She wanted more than just words from this judge. She wanted him to "do" something, to signify what had happened esoterically on paper to satisfy the demands of the legal system. She wanted him to "cut the line" between her and the first family. He, of course, did not understand what she was talking about or why she would want such a thing.

We all stood up and posed for pictures. Which I will post later. Right now sleep is overtaking me. The judge asked that we send him a copy of the picture as he has a large scrapbook he keeps of all the families he has worked with, that speaks highly of him.

We exited the courtroom as they called the next family and we gathered in the hallway and the 6 of us did the happy dance. It was silly and it was great -- and the lawyer acted like he had no clue. Oh well, one must celebrate the big things in life and break out in dance. Six danced.

Then we walked hand in hand out of the building into the glorious sunshine and drank in the goodness of God!

We go back for the final hearing in January.

Until then we continue with visits from the social worker and reports to the court.

Tomorrow We Go to Court

Tuesday, which is tomorrow, we finally get our day in court. That will be our first of 2 court dates to complete the adoption process for Sweetpea. We lost the last court date in May and then it seemed so far away to wait for June 23rd, but now it is upon us.

The lawyer called today and informed us that he will not be there tomorrow due to a death in the family. He is sending his stand-in and the show will go on, thankfully. He then spent the next 20 minutes on the phone speed talking me through the "talking points" of the process tomorrow. Mostly dates and details that we will have to verbally testify to -- as if they do not have it printed ad nauseam in the ream of paperwork we have already submitted -- but perhaps for succinct-ness (word?)we will have to reiterate it once again. I am going to work on a cheat sheet tonight putting these important facts down on paper for us to quickly reference in case nerves or mommy brain kicks in? Otherwise it might sound something like this....

What's your name? ugh, ummmm, yea, hon could you answer that one for me?
What is the child's name? Top Button, no, Second Button, sorry no, Bottom Button, ugh, Cody (the dog) ergh! I'm sorry it's coming to me now......Sweetpea!
Where do you live? In a house! (Smiling sweetly as I revel in easily mastering one of the questions!)
What are the series of events that led to the placement of this child in your home in 2 minutes or less? You-have-got-to-be-kidding-me!

Get the picture of why I feel I need a cheat sheet?

Please pray for the kids as they are going with us and the bottom two are really scared. They are scared for all kinds of reasons but none that we can dissuade easily or reassure them away from. Sweetpea is covertly afraid that her first parents will show up, even though they are still oversees and have been abundantly clear that they had no desire to ever appear in court. She is also afraid that the judge will "make the decide" to send her back to them. I think that is a very understandable fear and a decision that would be very, very rare for him to make but it's in the margin of possibility and she is living in that margin with her fear.

Second Button has been telling her story of going to the judge and how he let her sit on his lap and bang his gavel and gave her a lollipop when she left. I have told Sweetpea she is NOT seeing the same judge and to not expect the same treatment. The retelling of the story was to assure her that judges are nice people, not a contract of what will happen tomorrow. Either way the wind blows tomorrow, fear or over-confidence, I am packing a lollipop on my person just to be on the safe side.

After the cheat sheet my biggest angst is what will we all wear, it is court after all, and a significant moment in our family's history. I have not yet applied my grey matter to what will cover all the bitty bodies. As if you couldn't guess this one, Sweetpea wants it all to be matchy-matchy. She has such a huge need to belong and find her significance in belonging. So I had best get this posted and let those brain cells spin in the direction of creative clothes coverings!

Please pray for all our hearts and for a favorable ruling in regarding to our petition to the court!

Father's Day in Photos

We loved on my main man today and celebrated his wonderful heart of fatherhood as he fearlessly leads this band of merry maids. They sang for him, danced for him, fed him a steady diet of pizza and root beer and got all dressed up for a special portrait to bless his heart.

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.

Wondering why no blogs???

Have you been checking in and seeing no blogs? Well there is a simple and not great reason why there has been a dearth of words from this side of space.

I am too mentally besieged with things to process that blogging has fallen to an all time low priority. So very sorry for those who have been such great readers.

So, just because you have been so faithful in waiting I will give you an update.

The unemployment thing continues to drag on ad naseum ....... causing my previously mentioned mentally besieged state. If I am not in prayer begging God for daily mercy to cover our need then I am trying in vain attempts under my own power to make something out of nothing. Please pray that the health program that we applied for to cover the kids would get going very soon. Right now we have done everything in our power to stockpile and safeguard but with all the special medical needs of our dear ones we NEED medical coverage.

We have a court date for Sweetpea's first adoption hearing, May 19th. Wow and wow. It cannot come soon enough and now that it is upon us I am nervous for it. This is the hearing that will terminate her first adoptive parents' parental rights, and then they will have no more say over her life. If all goes as expected we will then have to wait another 6 months and more social worker visits and reports before the final court date to make her forever and always a part of our family.

Speaking in that vein we are experiencing a wonderful phenomenon where we can see all her growth in these past 5 months and rejoice in it. How? you may ask. We have brought a fifth child into our home for a short stay. She is an 11 year old girl who was adopted from China 4 months ago but her single mother is struggling with this adoption. We know this family a little bit and were able to offer to take the child for respite care while the mother gets some rest and regathers her strength.

This lovely, vivacious child can wear a body thin in no time flat. She has a lot of the same behaviors that Sweetpea had when she first came home. Sweetpea just looks at me like I've lost my marbles that I am allowing such behavior in this other child that I would not have allowed her. The big difference is that I am not this other child's other and so I simply am providing basic care for her, but for Sweetpea I am her MOTHER and that is an entirely different kettle of fish - for this child I would climb to the moon.

My sweet husband and I were sitting together last night and marvelling at the changes that have overcome Sweetpea and I think I will detail some here for you as well:

• she no longer thinks about life in terms of how much everything costs
• she eats much less and is much happier about what she gets to eat and doesn't fuss as much about what she doesn't get to eat
• she no longer talks about going back to the Philippines or to Singapore
• she has learned to run, awkwardly but steadily
• she can show genuine concern over the error of her ways
• she can show true compassion
• she is learning to read expressions and emotive language, and rightly interpret them
• she is able to be content with not having to compulsively talk and or move
• she listens more
• she tells me when she is sad
• she prays and asks Jesus to help her become like Him

What a great progress report for only 5 months of being in our family. God has been so good to us.