Matt and I are facing some setbacks in our adoption.  I just found out yesterday that I may be losing my job.  Things just aren't rosy for us right now.  While it is easy to be discouraged and to feel hopeless when we see our lives appearing to go backwards instead of forwards we're trying (some days more successfully than others) to keep our chins up.  I thought I would pass along part of an email I received from a friend and mentor.  She says so gracefully what I wish I could do...what I hope to do.   I hope you'll be blessed by her wisdom like I was.

Often the most important crossroads appear as significant setbacks....but changing paths often puts us on the right path for the right time.  Our job is to walk  our God-given journeys with integrity, perseverance and excellence, even when it looks like a dead end.&a ...

Ben can sing "Jesus Loves Me", "The B-I-B-L-E" and "Jesus Loves the Little Children". **Good Mama**

I like my Hinder CD a lot and it's very b-a-d...sometimes it still takes me awhile to realize just how dirty some of the lyrics are and I still like it a lot. **Bad Mama**

I don't listen to it if I have Ben in the car. **Good Mama**

I do listen to it, loudly, if I only have Elijah in the car. **Bad Mama**

Result: TIE

Hey, at least I have my own interests, and tastes, right?!

You know you're a mother when the baby's playgym is in your not big enough master bathroom from the last time that you took a shower, but that was last week and you still haven't moved it because if you have to step over it every time you need to go to the bathroom doesn't that count as exercise?

You know you're a mother when instead of being aggrevated that you have to load the dishwasher you realize that you've got some serious dishwasher loading skills and you experience a small burst of pride at the number of dishes you can get to fit in.

You know you're a mother when you've realized that just stepping over the playgym isn't going to return your thighs to their prepregnant state and so you start to exercise for real and even though you only need twenty minutes of time to yourself to do this you find yourself either a) holding the baby while you use a step and justify it as resistance weight inste ...

Oh, my goodness.  I can't remember the last time I was this tired and this happy!  Our garage sale this past weekend was so much work and so much fun!  Matt and I are so blessed by our fast friendship with Brian and Cindy (the other adopting couple).  They are the only couple we know that has not only been through this process before but is going through it concurrently with us.  They have been a great source of information, support, and love.  We are so thankful for them!

We are also incredibly thankful to all of our friends and family for their donations, volunteerism, and prayers.  I don't know how people go through this process without a support system like ours.  We are richly blessed.  How richly blessed are we, you ask?  Well, I guess if we had to put a number to it...Matt and I had been praying that we would have enough money from the garage sale to pay for our immediate home study co ...

Elijah is upstairs napping. Ben and I have draped the ottoman with a towel and are sharing a bowl of Multigrain Cheerios each with our own spoon as we watch the Today Show. It's a sweet little moment as we eat and talk and it makes me happy that I can stay home with him. I look over and tell him that I love him and he dutifully says, "yeah". Then he smiles at me and says no and I tickle him and he laughs.

Then he looks at the tv again and they're doing an interview segment. He says, "I see ladies." I say yes. He says, "I see a black man. Two white ladies and a black man." I say, what? He repeats himself, "two white ladies and a black man".

I'm thinking about my sister in law's kids that are "mixed". I'm envisioining the sibling group that my sister and brother-in-law are in the process of adopting. I'm thinking about the desire of my husband a ...

These are some funny incidents that happened this month that didn't get their own blogs.

One day we let Ben take his nap in our bedroom. We heard him thumping around up there as Andrew got home from work (I was feeding Elijah) and so he went upstairs to get him. He found Benjamin covered in a very slick substance. His hair was matted down, it was streaked down his cheeks, and his eyelashes were stuck together. Closer inspection of the bedroom led us to some empty KY Jelly bottles. He had dumped them over his head!

The other day Andrew was putting Ben's shoes on him and was talking to him about the things that they needed to do before they could go outside for a walk.

Ben: Huge yawn

Andrew: "Sorry, Ben. Am I boring you?"

Ben: "Yeah."

We also had our first & ...

I spend a lot of time (too much time) thinking about what kind of mom I am based on what I'm doing at the moment. Here's a recent moment I had:

We're watching the news and Ben looks up from playing and see President Obama. "President Obama!" he says and suddenly I'm a good mom.

I turn the TV on at 10:00 am and we hear theme show music. Ben says, "Oh, Ellen is on" and runs over to watch. I decide this makes me a cool mom.

I sit down to nurse Elijah after his nap and turn the TV on. Ben looks up at the talk show and says, "Dr. Phil." And this makes me a bad bad mom!

(In my defense we only get one channel so it's not like I can just switch to something better...)

The other day I was flipping through a World Vision catalog and it made me very sad. Just looking at the things that people need that they don't have and can't get on their own, can't get for their children. Not to save their lives. Literally.

i think that the ideaof gratitude and responsibility are two of the most neglected values around these days and I personally think that they are among the most important. I also believe in the adage "with great privilege comes great responsibility" and ("Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.) And the second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself."

Maybe this is just my inner liberal social worker coming to life, but I desperately want my boy to be grateful for what we have and to happily help those who have less than we do without expecting anything in return and ...

"More than anything, I want my kids to be happy."

I nearly wrote that line in my journal several weeks ago as I was describing our experience of taking the kids to Great Wolf Lodge. I didn't write it. Instead, I ended up thinking about it. A lot. For days. And, I have come to the conclusion that there definitely are things I want for my children MORE than I want for them to be happy.

If my chief concern as a parent was the happiness of my children, I would give them everything they ever asked for. Every toy in a store that struck their fancy. Every item on a commercial that caught their attention. If my chief concern as a parent was the happiness of my children, I would never discipline them. I would never do anything to cause them confusion or sadness or pain. I would never tell them "no." If my chief concern as a parent was the happiness of my children, I would never make th ...

I thought of these last night and realized that "You know you're a mother when..."

You know you're a mother when you're hurrying up the steps as you're stripping your clothes off on the way to the bedroom...not because you've got something spicy going on, but because you're really that eager to get some sleep.

You know you're a mother when you have holes in your shoes and in your socks and even though you're on your feet for about two thirds of the twenty four hours in a day you don't remember when you had new ones, but your two month old who doesn't walk, stand, bear weight, or really even allow himself to be put down on the floor has three hundred pairs of socks and a couple pairs of shoes that he will outgrow before they even grace his feet.

You know you're a mother when you realize that the reason there is no book telling how to manage life with two children ...