A Very Traditional Birthday Celebration

Lessons learned this Christmas:

1. If your 35 lb. toddler decides that Wintergreen rubbing alcohol would wash down dinner well, there is no need to rush the ER. Really. A very nice lady named Allison at poison control told us exactly what to do. "Watch and see how drunk he gets," she said. If he gets REALLY drunk and vomits more than once, call back immediately. Be more concerned about the chemical in the wintergreen flavor that can give him an aspirin overdose." The best part? "Give him lots of sweets, because the alcohol will lower his blood sugar, and we don't want him in a diabetic coma." The most important part: "Call back in an hour." We aren't quite sure how much of the 16 oz. bottle he ingested, but our C. had a very...happy... Christmas Eve. However much he ingested wasn't enough to require an emergency room trip, though, thank God! That is the LAST place I wanted to spend Christmas Eve!

2. C. loves Santa. J. doesn't; wouldn't go near him.

3. When your husband comes home with a 12 lb. goose for Christmas (even though there are only 2 adults and 2 toddlers for dinner, and you bought 1/2 ham the day before), don't panic. "It'll be nostalgic," he insisted. After a couple of minutes of confusion, like, "Where ARE the giblits in this thing?!"
...it turned out quite delicious, but I prefer it in small doses! A European friend of mine said, "Americans don't have the palate for goose." Consider that your warning. It is very rich, all dark meat, and goes well with a deep red wine-even though it's poultry. Tim loved it, and wants goose every year.

3. Another lesson related to geese: They have a lot of fat. Our 1 goose emitted three mason jars of fat! However, we learned that goose fat is some sort of odd delicacy-though aren't all delicacies a little odd?-and sells for $1-3.00 an ounce. So, don't throw out the fat. You'll have enough to replace all the butter and oil in your house for the new year. Just what you wanted, I know!

4. The traditional Christmas meal is the way to go. Goose, pears in orange sauce, asparagus with cashews, raisin stuffing-baked in the bird-red pepper and paprika breadsticks in the shape of candy canes and cranberry sauce... It did feel nostaligic, Dickens-esque; everyone had something they liked, and we don't have a fridge full of casseroles that jiggle.

5. Presents are good. I know they shouldn't be the emphasis of the day, and we did very well this year reminding the boys that all of these gifts were for Jesus' birthday, and because Jesus is sooooo loving, when it's HIS birthday, he give US presents. That's just how He works, and aren't we glad for it! Some of the biggest hits in red wrapper packages were jet airplanes, new babies (to practice on for the real new baby), Curious George movies, Amnesty International 2008 wall calendars (for me, of course), the Indiana Jones trilogy (for Tim) and pretend shaving kits.

Lesson 6: Above all else, take time to remember that the birth of the Christ child is the reason for the surprise goose, the "hot candy canes", Santa and elf hats, the "very very pretty" tree, school programs, nearly 200 Christmas cards sent out domestically and internationally, gifts with bows, pop-up nativity storybooks, the extra time with Dad, the annoying Chipmunks Christmas CD, the long drive looking at Christmas lights, new perfume, argyle sweaters, and the chocolate birthday cake. Happy Birthday, Jesus!

Merry Christmas! (Double click the x on the right of the video to shrink that box so that you can see the pictures.)

Can you see me now?

As firmly as he believes that cats are for chasing and music is for dancing, C. believes that if he covers his eyes, he is invisible and can therefore get away with anything! Several times each night, and in the wee hours of the morning, we find him running through the house with his eyes covered when he should be in bed. He'll even make a run for it right in front of us, like he did here, completely unaware that we can see him, convinced he's invisible and invincible. Usually, he'll run into a wall or two on the way, and often he'll yell, "I'm Okay!" or "Silly goose!" from the ground-still covering his eyes. Don't feel sorry for us about this, though. It is much prefered to the once weekly sneaking- off- of- the- diaper- in the pack-n-play and pooping. We may not always see that happening, but we smell it, and it is a mess. For that, you can take pity on us. Not only us, actually, but all of us raising two year olds! Merry Christmas! By the way, sorry the video is dark...it was 10:00 pm... and someone was supposed to be sleeping...

African Proverbs

While I wait-not so patiently-for this adoption situation to go one way or another, these African proverbs have spoken to my heart. By the way, I read of three babies that died in an orphanage in Ethiopia this month. Babies die all the time in third world orphanages; there is nothing necessarily unusual about this. However, reading of it this week isn't helping me to wait patiently to bring home baby #3, nor to accept that God may have a new plan as to when our adoption process can continue. Please continue to pray that the situation with our agency, Love Basket, is resolved quickly and to the best interest of the children-which hopefully is in our best interest as well...


"Lord, make my heart sit down." (Don't just have patience; have patience with peace).

"The moon moves slowly, but it crosses the town." (This baby will come home, in God's timing. What beauty would the night hold if it went by in a flash, going my way?)

"The wind does not break a tree that bends." (I tend to break easily when things don't go my way. I need to be more bend-y).

P.S. Is my header big again for those of you who said it had shrunk to a sliver? I fixed it on my screen. How's it look on yours???

P.S.S. (These are more pictures that Tiffany Shaw took last week. If you live in our area, she does a great job! You can contact her at her blog on my sidebar.)

The long awaited for glitch

In intercountry adoption there is always a glitch. With J., it was the fact that his birthmom had two different last names in his paperwork, so his US immigration papers were held up for nearly seven months as we had to prove that these two women were actually one and the same woman. It got worked out. I had to cry and beg and cause a small scene at my local friendly USCIS office, but they're used to that. Believe me, I've seen a lot of weeping and begging at that office.

With baby #3? Our agency may have to close down its Ethiopia program indefinately to restructure. There's a complicated story here, obviously, but I don't want to get into rumors and hear-say. I really don't know the full story anyway. But I do strongly believe that all the parties involved, Love Basket and the Ethiopian contact, have the best interest of the children in mind. I truly believe it is simply a miscommunication, maybe a difference of opinion on matching procedure. Whatever the reason though, unless our agency and their on the ground contacts can work out this confusion, the program will have to close until a new contact can be found and prodecures are re-written. I commend our agency for contacting its families ahead of time, and warning us that they may have to do the right thing to ensure transparency and ethics in adoption.

What does this mean for us? Well, we are waiting along with several other families for three weeks to see what transpires in Ethiopia. All could go well, and our process would continue as planned. If the next three weeks doesn't go well, then we'll have to switch agencies. That equals=loss of money, loss of time, basically this adoption going God's way and not Tiffany's way which always takes awhile for me to take a liking to. Grrrr....

Please pray with us that things are resolved quickly for the best interest of the children. Placement is life or death for many orphans in Africa, and delays like this, though God is in control of them, well...I just don't see how it's good for anyone other than teaching Tiffany patience and subservience. I'd hate to think I was learning this life lesson at the expense of a child. I really had my heart set on this baby coming home in the early summer, and now I need to accept that God's plan may be very different than that.

On a different note, Thank You, Tiffany Shaw, for taking our Christmas pictures this weekend! One of the pics she took is here. I'm saving the best for Christmas cards and later posts. The full color ones of the family in the leaves are fabulous!

And, PLEASE tell me what you see when you log onto my blog! Specifically, my header. It should be a black and white photo of Caleb holding my hand when he was 3 days old. It should say, "Namaste" on the top, and a few sentences of what that greeting means to me on the bottom. It should be BIG. The same way it has looked for a year. It still looks like this on Tim's mac and on my friend's pc. But on my computer, looking at it right now, it's just a sliver of what it once was. Very strange, and I don't know how to change it. This just happened yesterday out of nowhere. So tell me, BIG or sliver???

Happy December, by the way!