Lux et umbra vicissum…

I’m starting to wonder whether I could offer a service by teaching people how to braid. I thought it was something pretty basic and never questioned that I could do it, but I’ve gotten so many comments on Desta’s hair and how amazing it is that I did it myself that I’m starting to wonder. Several people have said they have no idea how to braid. Wow. It’s really not that hard. Getting her parts straight is the hard part for me.

Here’s a couple of pictures from her latest braiding…

I can’t wait to get myself a fine-tailed comb to make those parts an easier job! I’ve french braided that front wispy part once and I’ll probably do it again sometime, but it also looks nice when I just spray it with some leave-in conditioner and make it curl up really nicely. The little braids that were sticking out at the sides were laying down nicely by morning after she slept with a bandanna on her head for the night. 🙂

Now to pluck up my courage enough to actually trim both her and Eli’s hair. Now that makes me quake!

What I really want to be doing right now is… something. I know mothering is something, but it’s something I could do anywhere when it comes right down to it. I’d like to be doing the mothering thing somewhere where I could make a difference.

Here’s what I’d really like to be involved with: the African Widows and Orphans Project. What a fabulously wonderful idea and what an amazing difference this could make to so many women, orphans, and families! With all my heart, I want to move to Ethiopia and work with AWOP. Maybe the Lord will allow my dream to be realized at some point. Joel has had a similar desire, so that’s a good sign. I wonder what my parents will think? Oh well. They already think I’m crazy. 🙂

Once again, this can’t be a long entry because there are children needing attention. Having five children age six and under is… not fun. There are moments that are fun, of course, but in general I’m splitting up a lot of fights and being called on to resolve a lot of petty issues. Most of the fights involve either the almost three or the almost two year old. They’re at about the same level emotionally, so it makes sense that they’d butt heads over things. They also both annoy their older sisters equally well which is tough. And the three year old hits. I think it’s mostly a communication frustration, but that doesn’t totally excuse it. She’s talking better and better each day and she needs to learn that even if she doesn’t have the words to express her feelings she can’t hit her siblings.

We also have our townhouse on the market… still. It’s been on since early August. That’s probably not that long in the current housing market, but when you’re paying two mortgages it seems like a long time. We’ve cut out all things we consider unnecessary for living (like Mt. Dew for Joel and ice cream for me) and we’re buying 2% milk for the kids instead of whole milk, and skim for me. I can’t really complain. We’re still far better off than most of the world’s population. At least we can still buy milk.

Joel is in Honduras on a mission trip this week so my mom is staying here to help me. I wouldn’t have been able to make it through without her. Even with her the two of us are just barely hanging on by our fingernails. The laundry is constant, of course, and so are dishes. We also had the insane idea to pick apples from an orchard a week ago and ended up with two bushels to use. We’re saucing them, but it’s time consuming work and it’s hard to find that many consecutive hours when the kids aren’t needing attention.

Sometimes I wonder what the heck I was thinking when we decided to adopt, but in that it’s a comfort to know I’m in good company. Apparently that thought occurs to a lot of adoptive parents sometime in the first year of the adoption. Things supposedly settle down greatly by a year. I sure hope so.

Eli has been testing as severely hearing impaired, but he just got tubes in this past Wednesday, so we’ll see if that takes care of the problem. The doctor said it was about a 50/50 chance that it would. He does seem to be hearing better, though I can’t tell if his hearing is perfect or not. He’s a good baby, in any case. It’s the almost two and almost three year olds that are really driving me up a wall. It’s a good thing I never had an alcohol addiction because those two would certainly drive me back to drink!

Branwen needs more one on one attention since her younger siblings arrived and we moved and such. I wish I could find a mother daughter art class or something. She loves to paint and shows real talent for a four year old. Maybe I’ll find something yet. In the meantime, I’ll just have to try harder to give her some time alone with me during the day. Not an easy thing to do.

Alexis and Branwen are both in Awana now and they’re enjoying it. Since we can’t afford to do Christian School at this point, I’m happy to have them in a program that really encourages Bible memorization. We’re church hunting, too, so hopefully we’ll have a new home church before too long where they can attend regular Sunday School again. Branwen has trouble when we try new churches, so we try to put her in a class with one of her siblings. That seems to help a lot.

I’ve left my mom alone with the kids for long enough. Time to jump in again. Ready…. set… dropping like a hand grenade…. *sigh*

I knew Joey Offutt years ago when she attended our church for a while in Northern Virginia. We hit it off well, but lost touch at some point and I haven’t talked to her in a few years now. I was just made aware that she’s gone missing. Please, if you have any information that could help the police to find her, please let them know. You can see her picture and read more details of her disappearance here. Joey’s a sweet woman. Please keep her and her two living children in your prayers.

… and I’m very tired. I wish I had time to post about our incredible experience going to Ethiopia to get our new children. Joel and I both fell madly in love with the country and are already working out plans to go back. Anyway, since I really need sleep, I’ll just post a couple of pictures for now and then head to bed.

It really started on Saturday. Charis came down with a fever with no other obvious symptoms, and the fever just kept going up. It spiked that day at 104.2, and she was doing her best impression of a dishrag. Since she didn’t have other symptoms, we just did our best to watch her and keep her relatively comfortable for the day. When the fever was still high Sunday morning I decided to take her to an urgent care place. There they found an ear infection in one side, the beginnings of another ear infection on the other side, and a probable sinus infection because mucous from her nose had started to be tinged with blood. Joy. So she was put on Zithromax, a five day antibiotic.

What they neglected to tell me was that she might not show signs of improvement until near the end of her antibiotics course.

Monday: Charis still isn’t herself and her fever is still high. She won’t eat anything, but she’s drinking well.

Tuesday: Charis still has a high fever, though she’s starting to perk up a little bit and I don’t have to hold her every single minute… just every other minute. I call the doctor to ask if maybe she needs a different medicine. They say to watch her for one more day. The poor child’s fever is at 103.7 and she’s still not eating.

Wednesday: Hey, the fever seems a little lower. It’s reading at about 100.3. Wow… that’s the lowest it’s been since it started. Charis eats some cheerios for breakfast. I decide to take Charis and Branwen outside to play to give them some good, healthy sunshine.

This is where we have to switch tracks a bit. Charis was doing better, so it was Branwen’s turn to get in on the action of making her mother’s life dramatic.

After we had been out for several minutes and I had gotten a chance to trim some bushes, taking advantage of the nice weather, we saw that a neighbor across the street had come outside with her own children to play. Some of her kids (she has eight of them) are close in age to ours, and they enjoy playing together. She asked if we wanted to come over, so we went ahead across the street to play. While we were there, she happened to mention that this was the day they were accepting registrations at the local elementary school. Hello??? I had called a month or so ago and they had said to watch the local paper to find out what day, so I had and I hadn’t seen anything. Aargh! She offered to give me the list of required papers to take with me to register Alexis for first grade, so I grabbed Charis and went to the door of her house. At the door I turned around and told Branwen, who was sitting on a tricycle on the sidewalk, that I was going in for just a minute to get something from our neighbor and she could come in if she wanted to, then I went inside.

Our neighbor has a storm door with a full glass front, so I had a good view of outside while I was in the house. I stepped away from the door for a minute (and I swear that’s all it was!) while I talked to my neighbor, and when I looked back our the door, Branwen was gone. At first I thought maybe she was just out of my range of vision, so I stepped closer to the door so I could see better. There was the tricycle… no Branwen. So in the middle of a sentence to my neighbor, I said, “I can’t see Branwen… hold on,” and I stuck my head out the door. No Branwen.

That’s when I started to panic. Branwen isn’t a kid to just wander off by herself. She can be pretty strong willed and independent in some ways, but she’s not into taking adventures alone… she wants company. My neighbor saw me start to tense up and she immediately enlisted her teenage daughter (who’s home schooled and was home) to watch the younger kids while we went out searching. We headed off in different directions and commenced running around the neighborhood yelling for Branwen. With each turn I took I panicked more. I figured that the only explanation was that someone had driven up in a car and snatched her away.

I had called Joel and was just running back to the house to call 911 when our neighbor’s teenage daughter stepped outside and said she was sure she had heard Branwen’s voice somewhere. She listened for a second and said she thought it was coming from the neighbor’s house.

I ran up to the door, knocked a couple of times, then opened the door. There in front of me was my beautiful three year old, almost as panicked as I was, with tears streaming down her cheeks.

Here’s what had happened: Branwen had been looking straight at me when I told her she could come in, but she hadn’t noted which house it was. This is a row of townhouses, so it can be fairly easy to mix them up. She decided right after I said that that she wanted to come in, too, but she went to the wrong door. It just so happened that the house next door contained a sleeping mother who worked night shift (and either sleeps very soundly or uses ear plugs), and the young teenage daughter who lives there had forgotten to lock the door when she left for school. Thus, the door was unlocked and Branwen went in, but she couldn’t find anyone and no one heard her crying for a while. By the time I found her, we were both a mess. It took me quite a while to calm down completely, and for the rest of the day I was exhausted.

I did manage to get Alexis’ registration started, though.

Thursday: Charis’ fever finally seems to be gone, but her nose is running excessively and she’s got a terrible sounding, though not frequent, cough. I realize that I already have her 18 month appointment scheduled for Friday, so I call the doctor to make sure that an ear re-check is noted on the appointment schedule. That’s when I hear about Zithromax often taking until the fourth day or so to make marked improvements. 😛 Great. Thanks. I know if I had gone to this doctor first instead of urgent care I would have already known this… or, better yet, they would have prescribed something that worked faster. Anyway, appointment is all set for Friday afternoon and everything’s hunky dory.

Thursday Night: Charis was coughing a good bit and it was waking her up, so Joel brought her upstairs and I held her upright for a bit. That seemed to help a lot, and after maybe 15 minutes to a half hour, Joel was able to return her to her bed. I didn’t feel like I slept after that, but I’m sure I did. Around 2 AM, I was suddenly wide awake and hearing a child gasping for breath over our baby monitor. I said, “Joel! I don’t think she can breathe!” and Joel was out of bed immediately and running down the stairs. He ran into the girls’ room, and I heard him say in a surprised voice, “It’s Branwen!”

So he carried Branwen upstairs and we struggled to give her Albuterol, but she was fighting us for some reason… probably just because she was panicking and may not have been fully awake. I wasn’t sure how much of the Albuterol had gotten in and she still was having severe trouble breathing, so we called 911. We went downstairs with her, and by the time the ambulance arrived I was noticing a slight improvement in her breathing. The paramedic in charge at first thought it was an asthma attack, but as he listened to her he decided that it was a severe case of croup. They gave her oxygen and saline mist, and she started to clear up nicely. After making sure that her oxygen levels were staying up, they said we could take her in to the hospital to see if she needed an antibiotic since she very likely had some kind of infection with this, or we could watch her for the night and take her in to our regular doctor the next day. I opted to watch her because she sounded so much better, and the paramedics went on their way. Thank God for paramedics!

Branwen slept in our bed the rest of the night. We put a cool mist humidifier in our room and had her propped on a couple of poofy pillows and she did all right other than some coughing. Of course, I was on high alert, not helped by the fact that Charis was coughing, too. Joel slept on a twin bed in the nursery so that we would actually get some sleep. Three in our bed is a bit much and ends up being rather uncomfortable.

Friday: We’re tired. Or at least I am. Branwen and Charis slept in, Alexis slept through it all, so that leaves me and Joel. I think we’ll make it through the day. I called the pediatrician’s office and got an appointment for Branwen right before Charis’ appointment, so I can take them both in together this afternoon. Of course, both girls seem pretty good today. Charis’ nose is still running and that wet cough is still there occasionally, but the fever hasn’t come back and she’s very playful. Branwen seems fine with a very infrequent cough, but chances are she’ll seem sick again tonight if we treat her like she’s ok. I’m guessing we’ll just have to have the cool mist humidifier in her room and prop her up and she’ll probably be fine, but we’ll see what the doctor says.

And now maybe I can shower before I give them any lunch. We had such a late breakfast that it would be pointless to try to feed them anything else right now.

Thank God it’s Friday!!!

I didn’t type about the adoption for a while because we were cautioned to keep the circle of people “in the know” fairly small, but things have been moving along nicely so I think I’ll go ahead and post an update now.

We received and accepted a referral about a month ago for a sister and brother, ages 2 and 8 months at the time. (The baby would now be about 9 1/2 months.) I’ll share more about them and their full names when things are more finalized, but for now just know that we’ll be calling them Desta and Eli. 🙂

Nothing’s final until the court date, and that hasn’t been set yet. There’s a good chance they’ve been moved to the care center in Addis Ababa, which means that we’re close to having that all-important court date set. I’m hoping we’ll hear definitively today that they’re there. That’ll also mean we’ll be getting new pictures (we have some cute ones of Desta, but all we have of Eli is a grainy little thumbnail from his referral), and they’ll get new medicals done so we’ll have updated medical information. Exciting, exciting!

Once the medicals are done (which is usually quite soon after they arrive at the care center from the orphanage), our agency will petition for a court date. The courts have been much busier recently with increased adoptions throughout the country, so it might be a bit before our case will go to court. I’m hoping it won’t be more than a month, but there’s really no telling. Once the court date is successful (which will hopefully be the first time… it should be as long as all of the paperwork is present and the people who need to be there are there), the children will be legally ours. We just can’t go and get them yet. 😛 That’s the US’s decision, not Ethiopias as far as I can tell. According to the Ethiopian government, the children are ours once the court date is successful, but since they don’t have their visas yet they can’t come to the US. Therefore, after the successful court date, and embassy date is set with the US embassy. That usually takes place about a month after the court date, and that’s what we’ll have to travel to attend.

It feels odd to think that for a whole month we’ll be the legal parents to children halfway around the world. The time will probably go by quickly, though. I’ve already started buying baby boy clothes (what an adventure!) and registering for other things (my friends are planning an adoption shower). I keep thinking of things that we’ll need either for the trip or for afterwards and adding them to the registry or going out and getting them. The shopping is actually wearing me out! I guess I’m not a power shopper. 🙂 Thank goodness there’s online shopping!

I’ll try to post when we find out the court date. After the court date happens, I’ll be able to post pictures and full names. May that day come quickly!

Vedat’s surgery is scheduled for next Tuesday, March 6th beginning at 7 AM Central Time. It’ll last 8 to 15 hours, so anyone who thinks to be in prayer during that time, your prayers would be welcome. This is an extremely dangerous surgery, but God is in control. To Him be the glory!

For updates on the surgery, please check Vedrana’s blog which will be updated as soon and as often as we receive information.

As far as the adoption goes, we’ve accepted a referral for two young children, but I’ll stay away from specifics for now because it could still fall through. It’s only definite after a court date, and the court date can’t happen until we get our I-171H form (an immigrations thing) from USCIS. The people at USCIS are doing a lot of work, and the work they do is so very important… but it’s hard to be patient. 🙂 They’ve been very kind when I’ve had questions in the past, but they haven’t had time to update me on the status of our I-171H recently. Hopefully we’ll receive it soon and can get the ball rolling to get these two little beauties home. Once the court date happens, you can be sure I’ll be posting pictures and information as fast as I can. 🙂

I’ll have to type quickly because Charis is just finishing up her cheerios. Once she’s done I need to take her up to bed.

I’m taking Branwen to the allergist this afternoon. I just told her she would be getting allergy tests…. I wonder what she thinks that means. Well, whatever she thinks I don’t think she knows what’s in store for her. She absolutely hates shots, and though this isn’t anything like shots it’s certainly not going to look very happy to her. If you’ve never had a child go through this testing, they put drops of different hystemines on their back, then put a little tiny scratch in each one to let it get in the skin a bit. A control drop is also there for comparison purposes. Then they leave you for about 15 minutes to let your skin react. If you’re very allergic (as I tend to be to several things), you get really itchy with hives popping up on the things you’re allergic to. If you’re not allergic to anything, you’ll only itch a little bit on the control spot.

The waiting and itching are bad enough, but I’m wondering if the nurses are going to have to hold her down to do the scratching. 😛 Only time will tell. I think I’d better put on lots of padding just in case.

This is a test. There’s a lady who’s had a website for her church for some time and it’s not showing up on Google yet. I’m going to link to it here to try to help a bit. I’m not sure how often Google indexes my blog, so we’ll see what good it does…

To visit this lady’s church, go to http://stjohn.ny.goarch.org/

Her church is St. John the Baptist Greek Orthodox Church in NY.