8 Years

Yesterday Chris and I celebrated 8 years of marriage. Our 8 years have been richly blessed with great adventures, both at home and in travel. Our greatest adventure has definitely been the growth of our family with 3 amazing kids. I used to think of God as a list of rules to obey but thankfully He has grown my understanding to see Him as the author of our great adventures. He has incredible plans for each individual, if we would just seek Him and His dreams for us - what a great ride He desires to bless us with!

In explaining what it means to have a wedding anniversary to our children, Lily's first response was to ask if I was going to wear my wedding dress. Of course I had to take a spin in it but here is what happened next:

Oh man...I could write a novel about these pictures.

Thanks (a huge thanks!) to my sister, Leslie, Chris and I enjoyed a rare evening out alone. It was a slice of heaven. I will leave it at that!

Strawberry Pickin'

We went with our neighborhood playgroup to pick strawberries last week at Sweetberry Farm. It's one of our favorite outings - they let you pick strawberries in the spring, blackberries in the summer and pumpkins in the fall. Plus they have goats, donkeys and horses in pens you can get up close to. However, Claire was not impressed with the volume of the goats.

120 Years

The Gladney Center celebrated 120 years over the weekend. We drove to Ft. Worth to participate in the celebration. It was a gift to be there and meet some of the people that connected Zane to our family and helped to bring him home. Mary, Natalie and Tonia are three special people in particular that helped us through the process and before Friday, we only knew them via email and phone. I can still hear Mary's voice on the other end of the phone when she made "the call" to us saying she had a referral for a baby boy. And Natalie's voice calling sharing the joyous news that we had a successful court date and Zane was legally our son. They work so hard and we loved showing off Zane so they could see the sweet fruit of their labor!

Friday night's festivities included a party at Billy Bob's. Being the punctual family, we arrived about 30 minutes before the party ended. We were bummed to miss out but glad to meet the Gladney folks and visit with Belay (Gladney's in country director of the Ethiopia program) and the Brown family (on staff with Gladney in Ethiopia). Not sure they even recognized Zane as much as he has grown!

We stayed in a hotel Friday night which provided entertaining conversations with our three-year-olds. They have traveled before but I don't recall ever staying in a hotel with them? They've stayed at a condo, house rental, cabin, tent, friend's houses, etc but I can't remember ever staying in a hotel with them and they were so confused by it.

Me: "Girls, don't jump off the bed!"

Girls: "Why not?"

Me: "You might wake the other people here."

Girls: "There are other people here? In the closet?"

Given Lily and Claire's imaginations, it's a miracle they didn't have nightmares all night wondering about "the other people."

Saturday we went to Gladney where it was an all out kid fest! Gladney did a fab job of celebrating adoption and the various cultures represented. Ethiopian dancers, face painters, bounce houses, pony rides, cotton candy, pop corn, balloons, clowns, some way tall dude on stilts juggling stuff, burgers, hot dogs, etc.

We met a few families who have also adopted from Ethiopia and a few currently in process. I am so jealous of those in process because the ride is amazing! Thank goodness for their blogs so I can live vicariously through their adoption adventures. We also ran into a couple that we crossed paths with in Ethiopia. Actually they enabled us to record one of the most historic moments in our family. Upon arrival to the Gladney infant home I could not find the tape for our camcorder. This family was at the foster home for a coffee ceremony and were scheduled to fly home the next day. They came to our rescue and gave us a blank tape to record our first moments with Zane.

I think the highlight of the day was watching these young ladies dance. Zane was rightly smitten and the feeling was mutual. One of the girls asked if she could take him home. Lily and Claire were thrilled when they invited kids on stage to dance with them. I wish I could bottle L&C's lack of inhibition!

After stuffing our kids full of sugar and depriving them of naps, we loaded the car and drove to my sisters...lucky Aunt Brittany and Uncle Greg!

Easter Weekend

Our Easter weekend started off with Lily and Claire's first egg dying experience. Now, my primary focus in maintaining some sort of sanity with two 3-year-olds and a 1-year-old is simplifying. So when it comes to dying eggs, I would have skipped it until the kids were a bit older. I envision eggs + dye + little hands = massive mess with egg yolk and dye on on my walls. We have lots of daily messes so I try not to add to the chaos. BUT, when Grandma and Aunt Rebecca show up with all the supplies including already hard boiled eggs - and the weather is nice for doing this project outside - it was great! The girls loved it. Zane opted for a game of peek-a-boo.


Sunday we shared our Easter celebration with friends and family. The kids of course enjoyed the egg hunt and gorged themselves on chocolate. But I think the confetti egg fight took the cake!


Chris gave the kids a serious pep talk before the kids are letting them outside.


Zane ferociously guarding his eggs. Lily definitely found the most. Claire had the wind working against her game.

Thankfully no black eyes resulted. And yes, I think the grown ups had the most fun.

Seriously

"Are those your twins?" asked a little girl today while I was sitting at a playscape with Claire and Zane. I'm serious. Someone actually asked if my tall, blond, fair skinned, 3 1/2-year-old-daughter and my 13-month-old Ethiopian son were twins. Granted the little girl was probably 4 or 5 years old. Gave me a great laugh.

AGHHHHH!!!

It was really cute when my first daughter was an infant and she began to suck her thumb. It was also very convenient not to deal with pacifiers - the thumb is always available and never gets lost in a crib at night or falls out and the baby can't get it back in, nor does it fall on the filthy floor of restaurants or stores. Then daughter #3 comes along and sucks two of her fingers - yes, cute.

Now these very cute girls are 3 1/2 and almost 4-years old. For the past six months we have tried rational discussions about the negative effects of thumbsucking, showed them photos online of what braces look like, and painted their nails with "the yucky stuff" as they call it (some foul tasting cactus extract for nail biters or thumb suckers...our pediadontist swore by it). They cried at the taste initially but eventually acquired a taste for it. Then we even resorted to taking a sock and covering their hand in it, then DUCT taping it so that they could not remove the sock. This has worked successfully with Claire so far. She is two weeks and going strong. But our sweet Lily - she is tenacious! She will chew, tear, and bite her way through any amount of tape.

I love her tenacity - except when it comes to thumbsucking. I ordered ThumbGuard for her - guaranteed that a child can not remove it. Except that Lily is like Houdini and has removed it already five times in the past 3 days. We've not had one successful night. I even took her to the toy store to pick out a handful of toys to be used as bribes - for each night that she keeps it on all night, she gets to pick a toy at breakfast. No luck yet.

I feel like I'm going to pull my hair out. It's so hard to know when and how hard to push our kids. Poor kiddo. I know it's so hard for her. I just have no idea how else to help her on this except to keep plugging away and encouraging her. So if any of you have bright ideas to share, help!

Needless to say our son uses a pacifer.

Child's perspective

You know the cartoon, Little Bill based on Bill Cosby's series of children's books? I was watching it with my daughters a few days ago and this particular episode included a baby that Little Bill (age 5) wanted to hold. At the end of the episode Lily turned to me and said, "mommy, next time lets get a baby like that one." Trying not to laugh, I responded, "you have one like that!" She said, "well, I want another baby brother like that." I'm not sure what she means by "like that." Is she referring to skin color, size, or the fact that the tv baby never cried and got into Little Bill's toys?

I've read that children typically don't notice skin color until around 4-years-old. My daughters often compare and contrast their eye color, hair and height but they have yet to notice, or at least verbalize different skin colors. I feel like my ears are tuned to high alert for any comments that might be related to adoption or race, so that I can help teach them positive and healthy views. Instead I hear them say things like ..."Zane's belly button is different from mine. It goes out a little bit and mine goes more in." "Zane has curly hair exactly like me!" (Lily has some curl in her hair). "Zane is so tiny but I am really big so I can stay up extra late, right mom?"

One of my favorite comments the girls have made about Zane, I may have mentioned before, I can't remember. He was splashing in the bath tub and the girls started screaming "Zane pooped on himself! He pooped in the bathtub!" I said, "Uh, no, that is part of his body" and then went on to remind them of the differing boy and girl parts.