The Cake, or Next Time Someone Else Can Drive

Last week, we had Dylan and Tiffany's adoption party celebration. After 16 months of waiting to adopt them, 2 months of party planning, (well, really more than that, because I've been planning to plan a party for a very long time!) and a few hours of decorating and cooking, we pulled it off.

Other than knowing we'd get to introduce our new children to some friends we hadn't seen for quite some time, the biggest thing I was excited about was their cake.

When Dylan first came to live with us, he brought one change of clothes, a couple of diapers, and a couple of small trinkets that the police officers involved in the case had given to him. That was all.

When he got to our home, he attached to a small, stuffed Jo-Jo, from Disney's Jo-Jo's Circus very quickly. Jo-Jo went everywhere Dylan went. He played with her so much that her nose wore off, so then he kept her under his pillow all the time so her "broken nose" wouldn't lose more stuffing.

In planning the party, I decided to go with a circus theme, for two reasons:

1. It describes our family perfectly!!

2. I wanted to have a huge Jo-Jo cake made by a local cake artist. (I don't use the term artist lightly...she really does do great work!)

Sunday morning, we skipped church (Shhh!) and spent the morning finishing up for the party, which was beginning at 2 PM. I left the party spot, retrieved the cake, and headed back to the party spot.

The cake was gorgeous. Perfect. Jessica did a WONDERFUL job.

(Photo courtesy of a very smart cake maker named Jessica, since I didn't get one with it looking like this!)

This trip, half-way across our small town, should take approximately 1.3 minutes, although we do have a double train track, so it sometimes takes longer. There were no trains during this trip. And apparently, I was trying to shorten the time to 1.1 minutes, because my foot slipped off the brake pedal. This, of course, caused me to hit the brakes again, a little too hard...

Yeah, you know what happens next...

I heard it going, reached back to catch it, as it was sliding off my van seats (which had been laid down for this particular excursion)...

Yeah..




Yeah....



Tom managed to salvage Jo-Jo's face, at least. Everybody said "Oh, don't worry about it. The cake tastes fine."

In the great big grand scheme of life, the fact that this cake hit the floor doesn't matter one iota...

Still...

Hallmark, Please Take Notice or You're Fired!

My Circle of Friends includes many families who have adopted, or plan to adopt, one or more children. This is a BIG DEAL. Promise!!

So when I went looking for an Adoption card at my local Stuffmart the other day, I was more than a little perturbed that not ONE card celebrating one of the most momentous occasions in family life was available.

I found plenty of the general run of the mill cards...
Birthdays, anniversaries, marriage, baby showers, engagement announcements...

There were other celebrated events represented...
Bar Mitzvahs (obviously being mailed out of our county - our Jewish population isn't huge here)
New homes (yeah, THOSE cards are flying right off the shelves these days!)
Moving away (Think my neighbors would get the hint, if I sent one to them?)
Moving back (Apparently some people LIKE their in-laws)
New job (Ha! Unemployment rate in our county is the state's highest, at 17.5%)

You can also find some great cards for your pets to send to each other, your friend's mother's brother's uncle who treated you like one of the family, coming out of the closet, and having your gall bladder xrayed prior to surgery to remove your heart of stone, and apparently these occasions are all MORE IMPORTANT THAN ADOPTION! More power to ya! I just want a dang adoption celebration card. Guess I'll make my own! It'll be prettier, anyway.

We didn't know it, but my sister and two of my nieces were waiting outside the courtroom when we finalized our adoptions last week. When we exited the door, there they were with balloons and stuffed animals for Dylan and Tiffany, and Hershey's Bars for the rest of us. Had my younger sister been closer than 1200 miles, she would have been there, too. They both had pictures of my kids on their Facebook pages within hours. Now THAT's what I'm talking about! It's a big deal!

Introducing...

Thanks for waiting so patiently! Without further ado...here are our babies!







Growing up, I had a List of Names I Plan to Name My Children. The list was rather long, and I fully intended to utilize every name on it. When I married Tom, his list wasn't quite as long as mine, but he didn't run away screaming when I mentioned it. We didn't have a specific number of children in mind, but we both knew we wanted several. The only name he talked about using was Preston. Try as he might to convince me it was in honor of the trucking company, he eventually had to confess to hearing it in the movie Tucker: The Man and His Dreams.

When I was about 11, I watched an episode of Little House on the Prairie that featured a teenage boy named Dylan. I loved the name, and it immediately went on my List. I planned to combine it with Michael, as my closest cousin bore that name. (Even though he was 5 years younger than me, we shared a special bond that probably had much to do with him ALMOST getting away with cutting my stringy, long hair when I was about 10 or so. My brother, unfortunately, saw Michael sneak the scissors into the room, and put an immediate stop to it. Darn it all, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this story.)

Tom had no problem with the name Michael, but he wasn't so crazy about Dylan. It reminded him of the singer Bob Dylan. Not being aware of anything more than the fact that there IS a singer named Bob Dylan, I wasn't qualified to determine if one of our children should be saddled with the same name, so I left that choice to him. Each time I was pregnant, however, I would ask again if we could name our baby boy Dylan Michael. The answer was always "No".

So the children arrived. (For proof, see the sidebar ---->)

Preston Thomas - naturally, Daddy's namesake. Fine. I like it.

Emmanuel Lucas - compromised, because Daddy wanted Clayton, and I didn't care for it all that much, so we sat down together with a baby name book. Emmanuel is only Emmanuel when he's in trouble, however, as he prefers Bucky, his nickname from birth.

Gabriel Timothy - again, compromised, because I had agreed to Clayton this time, but still didn't really care for it. Daddy acquiesced when Mommy had to endure 48 hours of labor and an emergency C-section. Timothy is a family name on both sides. Gabriel is a Biblical angel, Gabe has Angelman Syndrome...yes, I do look for the small connections.

Savannah Renee - a name on my List from early on, chosen after seeing the previews of the movie Savannah Smiles, which I never even watched until after she was born. Renee is my niece and my high school best friends' middle name. And obviously, Dylan wouldn't have been a good choice for a female.

Then the babies stopped. Having 4 children in 5 years tends to make one rethink their List, and the worsening post partum depression with each pregnancy played a major role in our decision to save some of the cool names for other people.

If you've been around here for very long, you know that we didn't stop wanting more children just because we made the final decision to not birth more. You know that we now have 2 more children, placed here courtesy of the Ohio Foster Care System. You also know that we received adoption approval for those 2 children a few months ago.

Today, I can introduce you to the newest members of our family.



At 9 AM this morning, our two babies legally became our children.



After a 16 month, 19 day waiting period, the adoption is final and they share our last name.



Our babies are biological siblings. Our little boy came to us on April 9, 2008. His birth mother was pregnant at the time. On July 7, she gave birth to a little girl, who came to live with us at 9 days of age.

We changed their last name only. Our daughter's name is Tiffany Navayah.

...and our little boy's name?

Dylan Michael.



Is my God good, or what?!?

It's Not Quite Official, But...

Yesterday, we had a court date. Our babies' birth parents decisions have all been made legal. Our social workers told us to get an attorney. Because in a few weeks, pictures like this...



will be able to be shown in their entirety...

We'll be finalizing our adoption of Mister D and Baby T.


Can you see my Happy Dance??? ;-)

Logically, Joe Loves Nancy

One of my more non-favorite parts of being a foster care provider is the dreaded requirement of Continuing Education. In Ohio, a foster/adoption home-study must be updated every two years, and in that time period parents must complete 40 hours of CE. Books and training videos can account for a portion of hours, but the majority must come from in-class training on various topics. It doesn't take long to figure out which presenters you like better, and which videos are always going to have cheesy acting. It comes with the territory.

I rarely look forward to attending the classes, because invariably they are scheduled when one or more of the kids are sick, the weather is gorgeous, or the snowy roads are hazardous. However, in addition to staying current on licensing requirements and gaining new knowledge, the friendships you build over the years are lasting and provide an extra source of encouragement. These are people who are walking the same road I am. They may have been on this journey for decades, or relatively new like we are. They might be our age and childless. They might be grandparents. They might be looking for a permanent addition to their family. They might be wanting to foster challenging teenagers with criminal histories. They might have been fostered or adopted themselves. Regardless of why or how they arrived at the decision to foster or adopt children, we have the same goal. We love kids, and we want to make a positive impact on the life of another human being.

It's such a joy to watch what's happening in other people's homes, and to see their dreams being fulfilled. It's wonderful to celebrate with them when they find out they've been selected to be the forever parents to a sibling group that's been living in separate foster homes. It's comforting to know that they're available to grieve with us if we get a diagnosis we weren't expecting, or have to watch "our" baby go back to the birth home. It's a small community where each situation is different, but we all "get it".

I spent this weekend playing catch-up on my hours, as our license is due for renewal in June. True to form, I was not gleefully anticipating this long session, despite the 9 credit hours, in part because of the chosen topic. Love and Logic was suggested to Tom and I several years ago as a training tool for our children. It was being offered at that point by a counselor we were seeing in regards to some challenges we faced with one of the kids. At the time, the professional basically handed me a thin workbook, mentioned a couple highlights, and said "Try this".

Glancing through the booklet, I nearly gagged. In addition to what I believed to be an insult to older parents, it looked like such a fat lot of hooey that I threw it aside and said "Choices?!? I'm supposed to give my kids choices?!? I'm the parent, they'll clean their room when I tell them to, by golly!" That was the end of MY experience with the Love and Logic curriculum.

But wait - now I need 40 hours of training. Love and Logic offers me 9. I can catch up with friends. I'll suffer through it.

This time, though, the concepts were being presented in an orderly manner by a seasoned speaker who travels across North America sharing these techniques with parents, teachers, military personnel, police officers, corporations, and numerous other groups of people. It was a completely different story this time. Now it made sense to me. Oh, there's parts of it that I could never in a million years visualize using in our own home, but much of it is just...well, - logical. We're already doing it, without calling it Love and Logic. Some of the techniques are obvious. Some are odd, but effective. I'm also trying to compare and, maybe, reconcile the concepts with a picture of Biblically-based grace. I can see how revisiting some of the material and fitting it into our family can be beneficial, but I'm certainly not planning to sell out to Love and Logic exclusively. The moral, perhaps, is that presentation can mean a world of difference.

But as mentioned, the fun part of the class is reconnecting with other foster and adoptive parents. One couple just started paperwork to adopt the baby girl they've had for fourteen months. One couple just met the two brothers they're going to be adopting. They're ten and five, and have been living in separate foster homes. The new mom and dad were heading to Menards following class, to pick up lumber to build a swing set. They weren't able to have birth children. Today was their 17th wedding anniversary and he had flowers delivered to his wife during our class. (What a smoooooooooth man...)

Then there was Joe and Nancy.

Sitting next to me, Joe and I talked extensively about our little boys. I assumed, because this couple looked older, that they had probably been foster parents for years. I was wrong. They've been foster parents for less than two years. Their first placement was a seven-month old little boy who shares our Mister D's name. Joe and Nancy are nearly seventy years old, and it is breaking their heart that they're "too old" to adopt him. They didn't feel right about being nearly ninety when their child graduates from high school, but they are oh-so-very happy with the adoptive parents who just this week got to take their baby home. They've cultivated a friendship with the new parents, and are now transitioning to becoming D's grandma and grandpa.

As the trainer was speaking, Joe made a comment to her about feeling like he's "done everything wrong for the last forty years!" When asked why, he replied with "I just wish I would have known these things back then!"

But I had been watching Joe, listening to him talk about his baby. Learning about birth children - he has four. His daughter is a school teacher who's birthed four children and adopted three. Seeing how Nancy turned to look at him and just smiled. I glanced at his legal pad where he'd been doodling the better part of the afternoon. In several different writing styles, he had written one word in lines down the paper...



Nancy

Nancy

Nancy




Joe, you've not been doing it wrong.

Yes, You Can Help

We're currently in a holding pattern regarding adoption. There's nothing we can do to hurry along any process that has to take place before these babies can have our last name. Only God knows right now if that's even going to happen. People ask us if we plan to keep fostering if the babies do become ours legally. They ask us if we would adopt more. Our answer is "We don't know". We won't say "No" to what God has planned for us. Whatever that is.

In the meantime, to keep my mind off what I can not change, I read other family's stories of happiness, sadness, hope, trials and blessings. I try to encourage people considering foster care or adoption. I try to make people aware of opportunities available for families who want to help in ways other than increasing their own family size, because that isn't for everybody.

Sarah's Covenant Homes in India is a new blog I recently found via one of my regular spots I visit. If you can visit her pages without feeling a tug on your heart, you might need a heart transplant. You might not be called to move around the world and run an orphanage, but if you want to help, you can donate through Sarah's website (see the FAQ section) or you can participate in fundraising opportunities with Kendra at Sugarplum Boutique. Browse that website - another family who's been blessed, and can't help but pass it on to others.

Fast Forward One Year

Had you told me this time last year that I would be buying diapers and bottles and potty seats and pink newborn outfits and size 7 Spiderman shoes and cribs and infant car seats and sippy cups and doorknob safety covers and all the other supplies that come with two babies, I would have laughed and said, "Whatever".

Had you told me that these two babies would be siblings born to a drug addicted mother who loves her children very much, I would have raised my eyebrows and said "Yeah, right!"

Had you told me that, aside from a speech delay that is now resolved, the 2 year old would be advanced in all areas of development, I would have asked for a second opinion.

Had you told me that the newborn would show absolutely no signs of drug addiction, I would have requested every available test be performed.

But...

Upstairs right now, sleeping safely in their beds, are two of the six most beautiful children ever born. They were not in our home this time last year. The mother who gave them life knows that she faces a very hard battle, and she hopes to overcome her addictions. Only time will tell if she is successful. She does not want her children spending that time without a permanent family to care for them. The father who created these children is rumored to feel the same way, but circumstances have not allowed that decision to be finalized yet.

During the past nine months, I have come to love these children just like I cherish the children I carried inside me for 9 months.



Tonight,

My little boy kissed everyone goodnight, took his Jo-Jo, his Chrissy Jo-Jo, his Big Blue, his Little Blue, and his Purple Monkey and walked upstairs with Daddy, where he prayed for happy dreams. Daddy tucked him under the covers, latched the gate so he won't escape downstairs to watch cartoons unsupervised, and left the room.

My baby girl snuggled into my arms with her bottle and her pink silky blankie and fell asleep as I rocked her. I carried her to her crib and covered her up with a blanket her brother Gabe gave her. She sighed, and I left the room.





Tomorrow morning,

My baby girl will giggle at me, show me her dimples, and reach to pinch my face when I pick her up from the bed. My little boy will stand at the gate calling "Mommy. I get up now. I waked up. I get Jo-Jo." until I come and release him from his confinement.



I will kiss them, because that's what Mommies do.

How Much for Just a Small Bottle?

Today over at one of my favorite spots for clearing my arteries...



Does this potion make the waiting time seem shorter?

Be Careful What You Ask For

With the increase in our family size - in both number of people and length of teenage boy's legs - the need for a different vehicle is also increasing.

The van I've been driving for almost 4 years is 14 years old, has 226,000 miles on it, and is currently sitting in the parking lot of Menards, waiting to be towed to the repair shop. It doesn't feel like running. It whines, turns over, and plays dead. Both front window motors have been repaired or replaced several times. The fuel pump and filter have been replaced at least twice. The alignment can not be aligned completely, so the front tires have to be replaced more frequently than average. The blower does not work on the high setting. The horn doesn't work at all. The van locks of it's own volition at the most inopportune times, usually when I forget to pick up my keys from the seat. The ignition key is duck-taped in permanently, because it broke off in the ignition.

Tom drives a Festiva, courting more miles than my van. This little circus car is part red, part blue, and part primer. It has several coat hangers holding the exhaust system together. The muffler is loud enough that it sets off the neighbor's weenie-car alarm system just as good as the Harley riders and the multitude of freight trains rushing through our town each day. The passenger window does not roll up all the way, and the door doesn't open all the way. When you close the door, you have to "lift and slam". The left headlight is covered by a sheet of clear plastic held on by a bungee cord or something similar. The heater does not work.


Believe it or not, both these vehicles were answers to prayer.

During the summer of 2004, I had been praying for some financial pressure to ease up a little, and in one particular moment, I said, "God, if we just had an extra $200 dollars a month, that would help us so much." A few short days after this innocent request,(perhaps not even a prayer so much as a fleeting thought, to be honest) someone plowed through a stop sign and broadsided me. This effectively eliminated a $188 monthly van payment, along with the insurance company calling it a total loss and giving us enough money to buy, with cash, the van we have now.

A few months later, Tom needed a better vehicle for work. Gas prices were just starting to rise above acceptable terms, and he prayed for a car that "gets at least 40 mpg, and won't cost more than $300". The ad he found in the classified section was the exact match, and he didn't have to pray for a week to decide if that was the car God intended for him to have.

There is a good possibility that we may be getting a baby in the near future. We are making some attempts to find the right adoptee(s), as well. Right now we have enough seat belts (notice I didn't say "enough room") for all family members, but one more addition will require either driving 2 vehicles or using a bigger mode of transportation when the whole family goes somewhere. But the bigger dilemma is actually deciding whether we want one of those gas-guzzling passenger vans, or do we want to drive separate, more efficient mini-vans? Would it be cheaper to drive one monster? What about when I need to take only 4 kids out? Should we get one monster and one normal car?

When we found this house, I had been praying that we would be able to buy, instead of staying where we were renting - the landlord called and said he was going to tear down our house to make a parking lot and we had 60 days to move. Since my prayers get answered in unorthodox ways, and since God apparently thinks I learn better through humor and comedy, I'm trying to make some of my prayers a little more specific. So...

We need:
Seating for 8+ family members and the occasional friend
A 2nd door on the driver's side
Accessibility for Gabe
Space for guitars, wheelchairs, strollers, car seats, diaper bags and other necessities of family life
Room for long legs to be comfortable and little arms to not be able to reach pullable hair
Economic feasibility - affordable insurance, decent gas mileage, etc.


Oh, and another thing, we can't afford a payment of any kind.

Yep, I know. I'm asking alot. But I seem to recall singing a song in Sunday School about God owning the cattle on a thousand hills. Most people would assume that means that God can provide a vehicle if it's needed. I'm sure He can and will. I just sincerely hope that His idea isn't to rope 10 of those Holsteins together and drop them off with a wagon at my front door!

Desire of My Heart

After we had our 4th baby, we made the decision to not have more children. Although the choice was difficult, we felt it was the best for us at the time. Over the years, I have occasionally regretted the permanency of our decision, but when I look at the entire picture, I still feel like we did the right thing. However, the desire planted in my heart when I was a little girl, the longing for a large family, has never left.

For more than 10 years, Tom and I have discussed the idea of adopting children. One of us would bring it up in conversation, but the other would object. Several months would pass, and the person who had objected would raise the topic again, but the other one would nix it. This went on for about 6 years, until finally in the summer of 2004, we agreed to go ahead and actually check into what steps we needed to take to adopt. I called our local adoption social worker, she answered some of my questions, sent me some information in the mail, and we decided to at least take the initial classes required.

Then, my world fell apart - literally. I was involved in a major car accident 3 weeks prior to starting the classes. Tom made the executive decision that we would not be taking classes, adopting, or doing much of anything except making sure I healed properly. Over the next 2 years, I slowly recovered to the point where we could begin thinking about other interests again.

The tugging on my heart that I'd felt for years was still there, and after making a few phone calls, we were able to get scheduled for the pre-service classes. We discussed our thoughts with our kids, and other than the inevitable "Would I have to share a bedroom?" questions, they were all open to the idea. It took some creative wrangling of Tom's work schedule, but we finished the 6-weekend course and received our certificate. Our first step was complete, and now the paper work started!

Fire inspection - fire chief missed the first appointment, finally showed up and did his part - Check

Medical exam - doctor said "Yep, you're healthy. How many kids do you plan to adopt?" - Check

Reference letters - friends must have been nice when they wrote about us - Check

Financial statement - ha! Check

Interviews with social worker - Me, Tom, Me and Tom, Me and Tom again, and again, and again, Me, Tom, kids - Check

Home visit for safety inspection - apparently a little clutter and some paint splotches on a bedroom carpet don't take off points - Check

Background check - We aren't criminals?! - Check

Fingerprints - Still aren't criminals - Check

Interviews - more of the same - Check

Interspersed in between all this activity were numerous phone calls, garage sale hunts for beds, dressers, car seats, and cribs, answers to rude questions by not-so-friendly friends and relatives about why we would do this, answers to how's-it-going questions by kind friends and relatives who know we've wanted to do this for years...

On June 27, 2007, we were issued a foster-to-adopt license. No one delivered a child with it. Nothing changed at our house. We didn't start putting more plates on the table at dinner. We didn't suddenly need an extended passenger van. Nothing changed. But it could.

For 10 years, the longing in my heart for more children has not subsided. It has steadily grown stronger. It began as a small seed when I was a child. It grew while I was in college teaching Bible lessons to inner-city children in Cincinnati and babysitting wealthy people's children, people too self-absorbed to love their own children more than their own need to rub elbows with the elite. Now I'm faced with the possibility, the blessing, the opportunity of loving, for a lifetime, a child not born to me, and it scares me.

We believe God will answer our prayer. We trust that He will place the child He knows we need, and who needs us, in our home at just the right time. We wait.