A couple of my favorite things

If you've been a reader of my blog for a while you know of my love for Brother Francis. I happened upon some videos on YouTube one day a couple years ago, found my way to their website, and ordered our first Brother Francis DVD. I couldn't help but share here, on my blog, how awesome the DVD was and how it was teaching my kids all their prayers. So post I did, and somehow the Brother Francis people found that post and have since been sending me the rest of their Brother Francis episodes to review.

So we were thrilled when the newest DVD from Brother Francis arrived in the mail - The King is Born.

You can find it here.

Clara and Luke knew that Christmas is Jesus' birthday, but beyond that their knowledge was lacking. Last year our Christmas was a little, let's just say, unorthodox. We spent it in a hotel room, many, many hours away from home, with a new baby (the similarities to the Christmas Story were not lost on us at the time!). Although we had an Advent calendar before we left for our big trip, I'll be honest, that was really more about crafts than Scripture.

So this year I knew I wanted to focus on teaching them what the holiday is really about. And who better for a busy mom to turn to for help than Brother Francis?

Like with all the episodes, a lot of information is packed in here. Watching it, I can't help but imagine the writers trying to figure out how they are possibly going to get ALL that very important info into 25 minutes. But, somehow, they do. And they keep it interesting for kids. And, like with all the episodes, I think different ages can take away different levels of learning from this video. My kids were happy watching it (catchy songs, interesting animation), but I think older kids would be too (the story was detailed and not overly simple).

But, as I'm always surprised to find, I think toddlers even get more out of videos like this than we realize. I remember after watching the Let's Pray episode, Clara started telling me (at age two) about mysteries. So to me, Brother Francis is a win-win for this reason. They watch a lot of stuff that is right at their age level; why not show them something that keeps their interest, yet also exposes them to information I may otherwise not think to share with them? While we have prayed the Rosary together, I probably would have stopped short of explaining what mysteries are because I would have figured it was over their heads (not to mention I would have no clue what to say. Explaining things to small children is not my strong-suit).

So we'll be watching this video throughout Advent. And I keep thinking of how this DVD would make THE BEST St. Nicholas Day gift for my kids - if they didn't already have it. 

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While I'm on the topic of gifts.....

I'm always on the hunt for saint dolls. So much so that I actually made Clara one last year because I just couldn't find any that weren't ridiculously expensive. Little did I know, my friend Mandy is a super talented artist and has an awesome Etsy shop...with JUST what I was looking for!

Seriously, how cute is that?

I ordered a doll for Ryan's Goddaughter a couple months back and it was completely adorable. So, I bought another one for my Goddaughter for Christmas.

I love her stuff so much I wanted to blog about her, because I know there must be other moms out there like me who are looking for saint dolls that don't cost a fortune.

She makes dolls, plushies and finger puppets and while she isn't taking any more custom orders for Christmas, there's still a lot to choose from on her site (although there are just two dolls left.. I'm glad I grabbed one before they were gone!).

And once is Christmas is over I'm sure she'll be accepting custom orders once again, and her dolls make great feast day or birthday gifts too. So go check her stuff out :)

Birthdays

It's birthday season around here. Today (or technically yesterday, since I'm publishing after midnight) was Luke's.

Unlike most mothers on their children's birthdays, I will not say that I can't believe Luke is three. It's actually rather believable. He's always kept up with Clara, has been talking practically since they pulled him from my womb, and (lucky for us) never really had a terrible two's. Now, don't misunderstand. Luke had his very own unique breed of terribleness that involved not going to bed at night until past midnight, no matter WHAT I tried, but that can't be attributed to age. He's done that his entire life (although there is a VERY promising update on that front that I'm still a little nervous to boast about just yet. Stay tuned).

While my two oldest always seem the same age, today starts the week when they actually are. For five days, I have two three-year-olds.

Be still my heart. This photo makes me want to write another post about adoption right now.

With the way Thanksgiving fell this year, with Luke's birthday before it and Clara's the weekend immediately after, we decided to have a joint party for them this past weekend. We don't always have parties (seems to be an every-other-year trend we unofficially have going at the moment), but when we do, the kids get very into them. And as excited as they get about them ahead of time cannot even compare to the lasting impression the party leaves.

Luke has a photo book that chronicles his first year and there's a page devoted to their monkey party. It's his favorite page, by far. In particular, he loses it every single time over the cake I made. He gets so excited leading up to that page that he can barely contain himself and I had to talk him out of a monkey cake again this year.

So parties - and cakes - are big deals in our house and I started discussing this year's theme with them earlier this month. At the time, we were right on the heels of a Jake-and-the-Neverland-Pirates Halloween, and my Jake and Izzy were beginning to make the transition into the more classic Peter and Wendy. I can't say I wasn't happy. That theme had a lot of potential. The ideas pretty much created themselves.

I love planning parties for my kids. Love it. Fall is my season - Halloween costumes right into party decor. Stressful, yes. But a good kind of stress (and this from the person who no longer paints because even that is too stressful for her). It's easy. It's glue-guns and felt and sewing only when entirely necessary. It's making pretty things that they can use in their rooms (that's a big requirement, and why I make the decorations in the first place). So I spent most November evenings making banners, party favors, more banners, and any decoration I could think up.

It all came to together this past Saturday and was a success because Clara and Luke had a blast.

 

My only regret was not having the party earlier in the day. It gets dark way too early this time of year to have any usable natural light for pictures. You know, priorities.

So I was about to relax last night - with wrapping presents my only task before Luke's actual birthday today - when he, as I tucked him into bed, announced how excited he was for his Batman birthday. Okay.... And it wasn't some manipulative thing, like a spoiled kid trying to bleed their mother for every creative ounce she's worth. He said it so innocently, so excitedly, with those big doe eyes (okay, maybe he's just really good at being manipulative...) as I stuck my head into his Thomas the Train tent that goes over his bed... that I had absolutely no choice.

The glue-gun came out one last time.

I set out to make a cape and a banner. Upon pulling out all of my yellow and black felt from my "craft room" (a.k.a. my mess of plastic Target bags thrown in among my clothes in the tiny closet I share with Ryan), I realized I didn't have enough. But I had an old pair of black sweatpants that had seen better days. Once too many holes in all the wrong places means I can't wear them to the grocery store, I really have no use for them. So I cut one leg off, opened it up, and it became a cape. No sewing, nothing. Just cutting. I had enough felt for the Batman symbol and for a banner. Phew.

It's safe to say he loved the cape (side-note - my mom once told him a story about a red-haired boy who grows up to be Batman and, ever since, he very reluctantly accepts it as his destiny).

Photo-of-Lukie-and-his-Batman-banner FAIL.

I'm starting to realize I may have set the bar too high. After freaking out about the awesomeness of his banner and cape this morning, he asked, again innocently, why his Peter Pan birthday banner was still up and hadn't been replaced with another Batman banner. And he told me how excited he was about his Batman cake. Uh oh.

His defrosted chocolate cupcake and green (from Peter Pan) frosting were more than good enough for him though (okay, I might have created the Batman wings out of buttercream) and he was thrilled about the entire day, even mommy's request to take a birthday photo (well, maybe thrilled isn't the right word here, but he obliged).

I love this of him. Just want to eat those cheeks right up. Almost makes me forget all the hitting and fighting.

Now only one more birthday to go in the next week. Then Advent (which starts the same day, in fact) and another birthday, then Christmas. Then it's my birthday. Just in time for me to start feeling really tired and old.

Love you to pieces, Lukie... I mean Batman. Next up, Clara!

Adoption: Thoughts from the other side

I have lots of thoughts swirling in my cluttered head about adoption, most of them having to do with me giving the "old me" (pre-adoption me) advice. Since that's not possible, I thought perhaps someone else out there could benefit from my current perspective of being on the "other side" of adoption. We've made it through the discernment, the application, the home study, the wait, and the call. We adopted a daughter. And then we did it all over again. We've crossed over to parenthood and I can now look back on all those hang-ups I used to have back then, when I put it off for (what felt like) so long. So here are some of my first thoughts, on God's immense grace.

It took us five years to adopt once finding out I was infertile. Four years passed before we even began the home study.

We desperately wanted to start a family, so what took so long?

Well, it took time to mourn the loss of the ability to conceive. That's not an easy reality to process. I basically went through the Five Stages of Grief, and that can take a while. There were surgeries in there, several doctors, countless medications. Six cycles of this, nine cycles of that. I counted years by treatments. I could barely manage my part-time job that was infertility, let alone begin the difficult journey to adoption.

Not that I didn't think about it. Every day.

Ryan wanted to move forward. He wanted to be a dad and, more importantly to him, he wanted me to be a mom. He had a peace with the thought of adopting that I did not.

I struggled with it constantly. Went over and over it in my head. I wanted to have a family, I didn't want to keep my husband from fatherhood, I wasn't getting pregnant and probably never would...  But, oh, the hang-ups.

It's amazing how discerning a big decision like that can really dig deep down in your soul and brings all your insecurities to the surface.

A big one for me - a HUGE one - was that there would always be another mother. That just ate away at my insides. I wouldn't be number one. I'd be number two. The understudy. I wanted to be IT, the child's entire universe. His mother. I couldn't bare the thought of sharing that title with another woman. I was so broken down already. I just didn't think I had it in me.

I was jealous of a person I didn't even know. I didn't even know if there would ever be such a person. But I was jealous of her.

I can't tell you how I specifically overcame those thoughts, but I did. I let go and jumped. Took the ol' leap of faith. I prayed the heck out of it and muttered, "Jesus, I trust in you. You better take care of this." And guess what? He did.

There is no other way to describe my change of heart other than pure and total grace. Grace is one of those words that gets thrown around in Christianity. A buzz word. I knew I wanted it, others said they'd received it, but I had no idea how to even know if I had it. Those things you can't touch, see or smell are tricky like that.

But my change of heart about adoption and birth parents can only be attributed to grace, so I'm going with it.

We never met Clara's birth parents. We don't know anything about them. I have ways that I could do a little research in this age of the internet and all, but I just haven't. I know some of you might think I have crazy willpower, but the truth is I have had no desire ever to find out anything more than we currently know. It was easy, not having a face to put with the title of birth mother. There was no one to be jealous of, no one to compare myself to, no one to make me feel inferior. I knew she was adopted, of course, that there was another mother out there, but it was very easy to forget when we knew so little.

When I first laid eyes on Clara - the nanny, who cared for her after she left the NICU, handing her to me.

Then came Essie. Or, rather, first came her birth mom. It was she who I knew months before I first met my daughter, and she was so incredibly sweet. I was already an adoptive mom, I had this down. I knew I would love that baby like I birthed her, that there would be no worries. I learned early on with Clara that it's those sleepless nights and 2 a.m. diaper changes that make you a mom, just as much as carrying them in the womb.

We got to know Essie's birth mom over email and then we met her at the hospital, shortly after Essie was born. I cannot describe to you how grace-filled that room was. If I wasn't sure what grace was up until that point, I knew then. It was palpable. God turned it into something I could touch, see, and smell. Because He is awesome like that.

This photo doesn't tell the whole story. It's the birth family behind the camera that made it so special.

And you know what? I've never once been jealous that Essie has a birth mom. I've never once felt insecure knowing she's out there, that she carried my beloved daughter in her womb for nine months, that she was her first mother and will always be her mother. I get teary-eyed at that thought, but not because of any hang-ups. It's because I'm so glad Essie will always know she has another mother and I feel beyond honored that she chose us to raise her precious girl. I will forever feel honored to share that title with her.

I love knowing that Essie looks just like her. And I hope Essie has that neat way about her that the whole family all seemed to have when we briefly got to know them (I can already tell she does).

I know I didn't overcome those insecurities on my own. I'm not that strong. I like to wallow in self-pity and don't read books about spiritual growth. But I took a leap of faith back in 2008 and God did the rest. It's amazing being on the other side of it now, looking back at my former worried self, wondering how I would cope, and knowing now that it's all okay. Better than okay. I worried for so long about how I would handle always knowing there's a birth mom out there. And then it happened and knowing she's out there has actually been an enormous blessing. My heart feels healed. The absence of jealousy and insecurity is a beautiful thing.

So have faith. God wants to heal your heart. If you're like me, you may not know how to get there even if you want it desperately. If there's a road map, I haven't found it. But I'm here to tell you it can happen. He will work on your heart and your insecurities if you let Him.

Adoption is such a blessing. Born from pain and suffering, but so beautiful. I'm so thankful to have it in my life. And I'm so blessed that God used it to do a little work on a sinner like me.

It's Election Day.. Vote for Essie!

It's Election Day and, of course, we voted. And I discovered that I apparently have an Election Day uniform because I'm cool like that.



And if on this Election Day you feel like there are just no candidates you can really get behind, like no one you can really, really trust and love and support, well... I have one for you. And you can vote for her no matter where you live.

It's Esther Grace. Remember this costume? (I know, it's been so long)

I happened upon a costume contest last week and entered her and just happened to check an email account today that I hardly ever use, and there was an email saying she's a finalist!

So please, exercise your right to vote this Election Day and head on over and cast your ballot for one candidate we can all support (thank goodness it's Election Day as I'm writing this. It's making it a lot easier.. and cheesier).

I mean seriously. How can you resist that face? I know elections shouldn't be about superficial things like looks, and hair, and clothes, and the boxes the candidates' moms made for them. But just forget about all that this time and vote for cuteness.

Essie's trailing the leaders by a couple hundred votes. And voting ends Wednesday at midnight. So click here right now so Essie can win some organic toys. Pretty please???

Thanks!!!!! Happy Election Day!