70piggies

grandma.

2012-02-13T11:16:00.000-05:00

yesterday i woke to news that my grandma had died. we knew this was coming and knew she welcomed release from the struggle of failing lungs, knew she was looking forward to Jesus somethin' fierce. but there's a certain ache in being the left-behinds, and so we sob into bed sheets and showers and hold close the hope of all things made new.

she was the last of my grandparents, and i suppose it's common to have them gone by 35, but still somehow it feels too soon to me.

[my brothers and me with g&g neuenschwander, 1985. i have no explanation for the giant-ness of my head.]

my grandma was a quintessential farm wife: sturdy, resilient, warm. capable. she knew her way around a sweet roll and a sewing machine. she remembered everyone's favorite pie. she was quick to laugh at herself, worked hard and expected the same from us, brought my brothers and me the tiny eggs from the chicken house, loved to read.

she was funny and opinionated and i miss her already.

on the flip side, my gorgeous little niece arrived last week. kinsley katherine. pretty sure i could inhale her warm squeaky babyness for all the rest of ever.

and this is neither here nor there, but i was downright floored by the valentine box my zee just constructed. the kiddos make these boxes to collect valentines at school, and usually they consult my creative expertise, but zee is very eleven and Full Of His Own Ideas.

his initial plan was to hollow out a log, but as we're not exactly big on wood hewing skills in our family, i thought this route could end badly. so his second plan was to scrape pieces of bark and moss from our woodpile out back and glue them to an oatmeal container. i wasn't exactly encouraging (i believe my exact words were i'm not sure how well that's going to work), but luckily he is not easily dissuaded, because take a gander at this:

i know, right? that thing is beautiful. he should never listen to me again. except for mostly he should, but clearly not that time.

anyhow, the silver lining to losing grandma is my parents and brothers will fly in from oahu tomorrow. i think the last time we have all been together (in our full-bloomed craziness) is four years back. it'll be good to have them near again.

thankful today for:

206. rhubarb pie
207. family
208. friends who help you pick out ties
209. cheryl, who cries with me
210. girl scout cookies
211. mom owens, who bolsters with words and prayer (and the milano cookies don't hurt either)
212. the way a solid night's sleep can change my vision
213. peace enough for this day

my kind of morning.

2012-02-06T13:02:00.001-05:00

mondays are for laundry, pre-k homeschool, menu planning and groceries. hammering jewelry, big kid homework, softie dolls, library, post office, dinner.

it helps if the sky is streaming sun, and if you have a child within earshot drumming up songs as he stamps snails on his rectangle of paper ('i wanna be...dora. i wanna be...sponge bob. i wanna be...ice cream. i wanna be...sunday school. i wanna be...aunt kindra. i wanna be...lowercase q.')

our weekend was a mixed bag: you had your stare-downs, your excellent company, your occasional one-child mutiny. plus also you had this:

indoor s'mores. the name pretty much explains everything. (recipe here, and you kind of have to squeeze your eyes shut so you don't see the boatloads of butter that take part in these gorgeous fellows. it's alarming. and delicious.)

and finally, we have a winner for the circle of hope necklace.

number 19, ms jennifer shults, you are my girl. (and thank you all for your bolstering comments...elle seems to have taken to her new 'do, and little em's pleased as punch with his burgeoning reading skills.)

and all this talk of hope got me thinking how this mothering business plays tricks on your heart. i can go to bed frayed and spent and convinced my child will still be screaming his tonsils out forty years down the line, but then today comes. and i wake and tell God in the shower how much i need him, and ask for the energy to be on my boy's side one more time.

and He supplies. and i am. and grace pours over the whole fractured mess till i can't make out a single split or seam.

continuing the list of thankfuls:

-honey soap
-lori, darcy, mom, crystal, lisa, shannan, aunty c and so many of you who are praying for strength and miracles
-towels worn soft
-skeletal trees
-expectancy
-guava jam
-and an almost-here niece (hurrah!)

small joys.

2012-02-02T08:12:00.000-05:00

so much to share with y'all this week. first off, my boy is reading. this kiddo is big on smarts, and he's honestly been ready to tackle simple phonetic books for a few months now. i held off till last week, sensing this would fall squarely into the category of i don't so much feel like doing that, so i'm going to sit here and be cute and helpless until someone else does it for me. we did this plan for two long days and then he decided to give it a whirl and read the whole book in one go.

he's brilliant and exhausting and i'm wildly proud of him.

also, this here kid got a haircut.

the story goes like so: once upon a time there was a girl who begged for her hair to be cut all the way up to here, except that when her mom finally caved, the girl moaned all weekend about how she didn't actually want it that short and also she looks like a boy and i can't seriously expect her to show her face in school attached to this haircut.

i told her a story back: it will grow. the end.

also also, our dear friends mike and erika, who sweated next to us in that ethiopian courtroom all the way back last may, are finally, finally, beautifully bringing home their sons. oh how we've ached for this day. and binyam is home and shonda's been cleared to go get her boy and my heart is so swollen it's about to kick out all those other internal organs just for room.

meanwhile, i've been stocking my etsy shop with softies and art prints and a few new jewelry pieces, and it hit me that it's been eleventy billion years since i've done a giveaway.

which brings me to the next item on our docket: a giveaway. i am awfully fond of this latest piece, a tiny little circle of hope, hammered and polished and paired with a pearl. here's the 411 on this guy: during the past couple months, no matter how the day prior ended, we've risen each morning with this irrepressible bloom of hope. and though the mister and i clearly still have moments of weariness and frustration, we're working to make our kids feel safe and loved because this is our part to do, our offering. and no matter how it all shakes out down the road, we'll wake up and do it again.

vaclav havel said it well: hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. it is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

so, could you use a reminder to choose hope? or do you know someone who could stand to know you're hoping alongside them? leave me a note in the comments below and i'll drop your name in to win this necklace.

entries close sunday at midnight (2/5).

and whether or not you win this guy, here's a boon for y'all who read my ~~drivel~~ blog: 20% off any purchase from my shop, now through sunday. use code 70PIGGIES when you check out.

have a beautiful thursday, my friends. :)

reading. who would've thought?

to have and to (up)hold.

2012-01-26T14:19:00.000-05:00

they probably warned us, those adoption classes and books and seasoned parents. they probably slapped it out plain as day and i, relentlessly starry-eyed, chose to believe we'd be the exception to the rule.

but here it is, staring me straight in the eyeballs: adopting a child can launch a unilateral, full-scale assault on your marriage.

first off, let me underline the word can. every child is different, every family is different, and i certainly know quite a few adoptive families who have flourished from the get-go.

but sometimes, the goings are rough. you're weaving about after eons of sleep deprivation, deaf in one ear from a child who knows his way around a tantrum. your patience has been pancaked by a mack truck driven by a kid too short to see out the windshield, and you can't even closet yourself in the bathroom for a gulp of sanity because the door stopped fully closing months ago.

the easiest thing to do, in times like these, is unleash a steaming load of ugly on the nearest Person Who Can Take It, most likely your so-called beloved. the hardest thing to do, but also the verybest thing, is cling to that spouse for dear life, spell out every last thing you love about him, give him an evening off from all that claws for his attention.

todd and i have weathered a few thorny patches in the last half year. at times we were snared by our son's triangulation, and it seemed nothing was working and the universe was going to pot and it very much looked like the other parent's fault.

but after a few of those patches we got honest. we shucked the excuses and the pride and just showed up, a smear of vulnerability. and we learned, and keep learning, the fine art of hearing. affirming. of aching together and not knowing a single answer but gripping close a God who doesn't fail.

i am sure we have miles of growth in store. and i am certain there are veritable forests of thorns ahead. but i also know that i've never been so in love with my husband. and so clearly that was never the point of this adoption, but oh, what a tender off-shoot.

dear mister:

it's a gift, this waking up each morning to a life with you in it. i'm overwhelmed.

love, me

* * *

come to em's place for more imperfect prose.

midwinter

2012-01-19T10:21:00.000-05:00

it's a hard time of year, barbed in cold, the sky ashen with winter's grief, and we indoors conserving warmth and hope.

and sometimes the lack of light makes my insides molder, but i can hear a small voice from the kitchen table as my boy draws and sings and makes himself a little bit at home.

and the mister wears tenderness like skin, and our church-family-soul-friends, we ache and yearn and revel together

and this God, this giant, rattling God, he loves, loves, loves me. fiercely. inexplicably.

and so even three-quarters frozen we flame with the wonder of Him.

loving this quote today:

'one who is truly an instrument of God's peace offers, in return for the injury, only one thing: pardon, remembering the millions of pounds he himself owed to the King, and how utterly he was pardoned.' (elisabeth elliot)

* * *

please come to emily's for more imperfect prose.

friday.

2012-01-13T11:59:00.001-05:00

sometimes i want to award shiny medals to the people under this roof for still being upright and functional at the end of the week. it's been a hairy six days and counting.

nonetheless. there's a clean blanket of winter on the ground and thick oatmeal and direly-needed haircuts and play. and also a boy who for the first time in all of ever reached for his daddy when he cried.

and so God shows up over and again, the most beautiful instance being that little m's best mate from the care center has been cleared for a visa interview. b is coming home, hallelujah.

and when i frame the week in those terms, i suppose it's a keeper after all.

:)

melkam-belated-ganna!

2012-01-09T15:14:00.000-05:00

saturday was christmas in ethiopia, so we got to unleash our festiveness again. (for the record: i am all about the double christmas. we should have done this always.)

little m donned his tunic and elle her scarf, and thus properly attired they perched on a deck chair in the sunroom to belt out christmas tunes at optimum volume.

they are cute, but they sing LOUD.

meanwhile, i logged about four miles traipsing back and forth between my desktop* and stove in a stalwart attempt to dredge up something resembling a traditional meal. (i am giantly obliged to shonda's blog for its delectable, well-indexed recipes. bless you, s.)

my sega wat (beef stew), doro wat (chicken stew) and gomen (collard greens) were none too shabby, but my poor injera ended up more like a stack of crusty crepes. sad times.

(warning: i am going to show you a photo of my food-stuffs. they are kind of homely.)

(normally, as in if someone else had made it, ethiopian food would look lovely and edible. however, i did the making, so this is what we've got.)

brace yourself.

i know. i almost spared you the photo, but when you cook for three hours you really have to document the result, kodak moment or not. in any case, we had a grand time at dinner. (right up till the moment where some of us refused to eat because we have figured out that mom and dad want us to eat and therefore we are not planning on doing it ever again, thank you very much.) but aside from that, completely grand.

now if only we could do a triple christmas.

:)

thankful today:
for food on our table
two handed euchre with my son
unseasonable warmth
john green
biscotti from the madre
new small-group friends
penicillin
horsey swings
how little m's lashes curl just like the mister's
matthew 6.33
and isaiah 53

*i can hear y'all shouting mobile devices at me, but i think we know by now that i am a Bad Member of the 21st Century. i am still wrapping my mind around texting, people. one thing at a time.

six months.

2012-01-06T09:09:00.004-05:00

the older kidlets and the mister have been on holiday this week, so we've been settling catan and netflixing and de-beaning edamame by the bowlful. i've a feeling these rooms will turn downright cavernous come monday when it's just little m and me tootling through the halls.

this past tuesday marked six months home for our youngest fellow. it's been a weighty half year, but he's grown and i've (against my will, but still) grown and sometimes it's good for my soul to look back and see just how much ground we've covered.

early july 2011, age 5 :: early january 2012, age 5.5

as of january third, little m:
no longer uses his hair as a napkin
can hop on one foot indefinitely
is well-versed in spongebob and perry the platypus
adds and subtracts with counters
can pretend-play with his bear, cookie
spells semi-phonetically
no longer calls all women 'mommy'
dances when he thinks i'm not looking
requests DUCK ON A BIKE many times per day
has stronger nails and an expanding hairline
draws on paper instead of walls/chairs/arms/pantlegs
has twice echoed back a lightning-quick 'i love you'
will occasionally circle his arms around me when i hug him

things little m is currently learning:
family is more than the sum of people who happen to be in your house
everyone else is valuable too
mom/dad can say no and still love you
mom/dad can say no because they love you
how to choose to do something one doesn't want to do, and vice-versa
abiding by the rules when mom leaves the room
how to elicit affirmation without wailing, breath-holding, or baby-talking
speaking the truth
doing your own work
your parents would give their lives to preserve yours, and they love you more fiercely than anyone else will

i tend toward autonomy and self-sufficiency, so internally i squirm a bit at how needy we've been these past six months. but far from shying away, y'all have come through brilliantly: cooking and praying and listening and cutting us an enormous length of slack.

i'm overflowing at the thought of it. thank you.

here's to the next half year of grace and growth.

in review.

2011-12-31T15:55:00.005-05:00

in lieu of a functioning brain, i'm channeling 2008 and bringing back this end-of-year meme. you can thank me later.

:)

1. what did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
ate brussel sprouts. (i had my doubts, but shannan does not lie.)

2. did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
mostly not, i'm sad to report. and still i'm bound to make more.

3. did anyone close to you give birth?
no new nieces or nephews, but i have BIG plans for k&b. (y'all have some major catching up to do: aim for triplets.)

4. did anyone close to you die?
church family, but i'll catch them on the other side.

5. what countries did you visit?
ethiopia. twice. also, i visited the fine airports of the netherlands and germany plus a lovely landing strip in sudan.

6. what would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
insight into what makes my five year old hum.

7. what date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
july third. seventeen months after first spying our son's deliciously impish face, we got to bring him on home.

8. what was your biggest achievement of the year?
recognizing that i do not hold the Secret Keys to All Parenting Wisdom. which y'all were clear on, but it was groundbreaking for me.

9. what was your biggest failure?
all the times i had the chance to love someone up, but wasn't in the mood.

10. did you suffer illness or injury?
nothing notable, apart from the occasional suspicion that a certain small someone has KIDNAPPED MY SANITY.

11. what was the best thing you bought?
plane tickets to ethiopia. twice.

12. whose behavior merited celebration?
the little gal who sat next to us on flight number two (or maybe three) and pretended my son was not draping his elbow, his hand, his forehead, the entire-lower-half-of-his-body across her lap every twenty seconds.

(where is 13? i have lost 13. alas.)

14. where did most of your money go?
plane tickets to ethiopia. twice. (it's a recurring theme)

15. what did you get really, really, really excited about?
plane tickets to ethiopia. twice.

16. what song(s) will always remind you of 2011?
in your arms. mandi mapes. you knew i was going to say it.

17. compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? tired-er.
b) thinner or fatter? well, my jeans still zip, so there's that.
c) richer or poorer? richer in the ways that count for something.

18. what do you wish you'd done more of?
affirming my children. making the people around me feel valued. push ups. (copied straight from 2008. still rings true.)

19. what do you wish you'd done less of?
nattering at a child who turns off his hearing the second i say his name.

20. how will you be spending christmas?
i spent it with my church family, home family and michigander family.

21. where did you begin the year; and where will you end it?
at home watching the ball drop (while the kids said, that's it? we stayed up for that?); hearty-partying with our church small group in the innards of our living room.

22. did you fall in love in 2011?
i continued to choose love, so yes.

23. how many one-night stands?
see #22.

24. what was your favorite TV program?
sesame street. that's a beautiful hour, i tell you what.

25. do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
nope.

26. what was the best book you read?
best rereads: tozer's pursuit of God, marchetta's jellicoe road
best new reads: schwab's near witch and stockett's the help, which technically i only read half of because guess what i bought? tickets to ethiopia. twice. and then all normalcy fled to the hills.

27. what was your greatest musical discovery?
it turns out i don't actually have time for great musical discoveries.

28. what did you want and get?
everyone together now: tickets to ethiopia. twice.

29. what did you want and not get?
tickets to fiji. not even once. :(

30. what was your favorite film of this year?
the last of harry potter. fare thee well, hogwarts.

31. what did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
i am thirty five, which is my best age yet, i think. i saw some of my favorite gals at prayer group, ate lava cake made by the mister, got to see my group of teen girls at church, played voicemails from my little brother and a bff from high school.

32. what one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
a heightened ability to see beyond myself.

33. how would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
my personal fashion concept is that the general public should be happy i managed to get rinsed off and dressed, period.

34. what kept you sane?
God and friends who pray (and knit).

35. which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
pink. (she wins most years.) (i know, but don't judge me.)

36. what political issue stirred you the most?
i am pleading the fifth on this one.

37. who did you miss?
see directly below.

38. who was the best new person you met?
little m.

runners up: angelia and lynn and netsanet and landon and mindy and tesfanesh and mieca and jeff and carin and chris and zemecha and andy and lisa and davy and erika and mike (and tariku) and heather and justin and sarah and tizita and elizabeth and asabech and candi and derek and bethie and little m’s friend binyam and lindsey and kevin and holly and casey and steve and meskele and katie and mitike and a whole LOT of people i had to travel 8k miles to find.

39. tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011:
frankfurt airport has the best smelling soap. this may seem piddly, but when you spend fifteen hours there, even the small things take on the sheen of miracles.

40. quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
if you call us to the fire, you will not withdraw your hand. we'll gaze into the flames and look for you.

happy 2011, friends. see you all in the new year.

people.

2011-12-29T12:43:00.000-05:00

i know i say this in april and june and october, but this very well might be my favorite time of year. the four biggers are home for a pair of low-key weeks, and we sport jammy pants and salt popcorn and fritter the hours away.

also, there's something to be said about my approval rating climbing 80% when our daytime kid-population jumps to five.

:)

i've been staying up late rereading my adoption-attachment books, which is good for me because even though most of the text doesn't apply to little m's experience, it still helps me frame our conflicts with compassion. like shannan sagely said over tb soft drinks, we're his people. in this world swimming with humanity, we're the ones. the ones who will root for him and pick him up and think he's the bees knees, tantruming or not.

and so today, again, i choose to be on his side. not because i'm selfless and patient like that, but because i am first loved with such hugeness it blows my heart over every time. and because God is crazy about little m, and i'm pretty much just passing the message along.

if you think of it, please pray for us. the struggle for peace bleeds all of us weak, and i can especially tell right now how it wears on our older four. pray that i will see them, that i will love them up and down and sideways.

thanks, friends. y'all are my people.

seven.

2011-12-25T15:36:00.003-05:00

we've had some days with eleven out of fourteen waking hours dedicated to the fine art of wailing. but we've also had times of silly and peace and together.

and sometimes it's gift enough just to know that our newest guy can be happy here with us.

today we're relishing our first christmas as seven, our hearts split wide to the wonder of a God who pursues us.

from our piggies to yours,

merry christmas.

bits&pieces

2011-12-15T11:54:00.002-05:00

1. my genius pal lisa (on whom i may or may not have a sizeable girl-crush) knitted these scrumptious fellows, and can i just say? they are like wearing clouds on your hands, only warmer.

2. my smallest guy has decided that maybe life is a happy thing after all.

and suddenly we are getting to try actual homeschoolish stuff and painting and playdough and songs and after six solid months of complete disregard of the parental units, it’s a full-stringed symphony to my ears to hear him chirp okay mom!

2b. also, i think he may be learning how to play.

when we first met little m, his idea of a rollicking time was sitting in one spot on the floor and placing blocks in meticulous rows. he didn't want to careen cars or build, and when he came home he showed zero interest in the stuffed hippo elle had bought him. but now he's beginning to stack legos and silly-whisper to his bear and he's still so emotionally young, but it makes my heart hope big things for him.

3. saturday we attended our little podunk of a town's luminary festival, where there were two sheep and two donkeys and it was freezing. however. we made off with some cookies and a hefty bag of kettle corn, and had ourselves a right quilt-picnic back home.

4. i'm guest-posting at hannah's space today. please stop by and say hello. :)

5. and so maybe just one more peek:

6. have you joined the advent conspiracy? if not, take a gander at this:

[AC] Promo 2011 from Advent Conspiracy on Vimeo.

and then thoughtfully consider giving water or an education or medical care. because we really can shake this world with joy--and live loud the praise to our Savior-King--one little life at a time.

fourteen.

2011-12-10T09:10:00.003-05:00

he showed up squalling and pink-wrinkled beautiful and the best thing i'd ever seen. and when, two days later, the hospital sent us on home i kept thinking, are you sure? you're seriously trusting us with an actual human being?

and fourteen years later we still don't know what we're doing, and this boy, our firstborn, he's patient and easy as he walks us through the finer steps of growing toddlers and fifth graders and teenagers.

he's a bunch of exuberance under sometimes-shy, and pesters and nurtures his siblings in equal parts. he's cautious, quickly bruised, responsible. he blooms this smile, warm and quick, like july.

we're bent toward expecting too much of him at every age, and it's a miraculous, beautiful thing to watch him flourish in spite of all the holes in our so-called parenting. he's growing straight up in love with Jesus.

happy birthday, b. you're the best kind of wonderful.

grace. and stuff.

2011-11-28T14:56:00.000-05:00

it's been quite the week. we've had gusty bright days where all that sun in your hair feels like summer, and then days like right this very instant where the wind whistles a thirty degree tune in e minor.

thursday morning, just as we were packing up to truck over to the mister's folks, little m took a spill and smacked his head and sent us off to the hospital instead. and while i hope to never repeat that particular thanksgiving experience again, i am glad for the small gifts attached: for the time spent focused on our littlest person, and for a bit of insight into the unique workings of his body that could prove Mighty Valuable for the coming years.

and as a side note, connecting and attaching in adoption is a jungly two-way street, slow and tricky and riddled with sanity-eating plants. some of y'all are tossing around that seed of an idea that maybe you'd like to adopt, and you've emailed honest questions like but what if i never feel like he's my son? and i'm glad for your heart and glad for your questions and glad to tell you that in harrowing times when you can't spare a second to rationalize and talk yourself in or out of love and there is only space to feel, the iron jaws of panic clamp down every bit as steely whether you birthed this child or prayed him home. i'm his and he's mine.

so the mister's family came this way instead and we had turkeyish leftovers plus many pies. also last week we did Christmas photos and thankful leaves and several of us got the stomach flu and elle fashioned costumes for a thanksgiving play. i got to be the boy pilgrim, as it was the least coveted role amongst the under-ten crowd. (everyone wants to be Girl Pilgrim or Squanto. pish, i say.)

[elle modeling her costumes. folks, Boy Pilgrim is nothing to sneeze at. just look at that hat.]

and last night? last night. for the very first time in the history of ever, when i said i love you to little m, he didn't answer back with his usual 'kay. it went like this instead:

goodnight.
goodnight.
i love you.
love you.

and so okay, maybe he was just parroting my words, but you know what? i'll absolutely take it.

thankful today, for

#180 crystal, who came when i called

#181 good nurses

#182 color and light inside (when all of the outside is grey)

#183 friends who whisk me away for girly-nights and the chance to get in touch with my inner-human

#184 children who teach me to give thanks

#185 providence and upholding in all our fragility

#186 mint pudding pie

#187 six o'clock light

thankful.

2011-11-15T15:16:00.001-05:00

it's two noisy weeks of splitting bathrooms eleven ways and cooking for a crowd and rousing games around the kitchen table and just like that they're gone.

[noel, mum, dad: a quick backyard portrait before flying out]

i tend to be a ridiculous version of myself when my folks are here. i'm a mess of petty and impatient, my jokes drowning in sarcasm. you'd think i'd be more careful with this small time pressed thin between years of absence.

but there's laughter too, and the sort of knowing that comes from decades of their stories twined with mine. and even if we spend half the time all up in each other's hair, these are my people.

[left: noel's 'candid' shot, right: my veryfavorite little brother]

[photo courtesy of mom]

and i'm so glad i'm theirs.

thankfuls #173-179:

noel charading 'cocktail dress'
boxes of fabric scraps from my late grandma, hoping to become quilts
hearty thunderstorms
tangy bowls of vegetable soup
flannel lined sleeping bags
my dad's wheezy laugh
a fresh stack of books from the library

first snow.

2011-11-11T11:17:00.002-05:00

on wednesday the hardier folk among us (otherwise known as not me) braved the bluster and cold and combed our lawn into crunchy piles.

there may have been jumping and burrowing involved.

[zee camped out under the umbrella and retracted into his shell whenever i swung the camera his way.]

then yesterday evening my madre’s deepest yearning came true:

it began as a light salting, and the kiddos (plus the grandma and great-aunt from hawaii) shrieked SNOW! and clambered into mittens and coats. and then the bowl of sky split wide and snow swarmed thick around us and we shivery-danced in the first official dousing of november.

the small folk and i are bound to have a change of heart come january, but right now? we* are crazy in love.

*i have no photographic proof for you, but believe you me that little m was not one bit amused with this frigid weathery stuff. he might be in for a disappointing six months.

soul food.

2011-11-04T08:32:00.003-04:00

last friday when i'd reached the last feeble thread at the end of my rope, the mister took little m for the day. i got to scrub the shower and paint my desk and fold stacks of fabric and eat my first conflict-free lunch in four months. it's a beautiful thing to have enough quiet to taste my soup.

my folks arrived fresh from oahu this week with my little brother and aunt in tow. they hand-carried sushi rolls and manapua, stuffed the crannies of their suitcases with candies and shelled out a small fortune to check a box of home-grown coffee plus goodies for the kids. in em's words: christmas showed up early this year. indeed.

my brother noel is a walking comedy routine and raves over my cajun pasta and is teaching the kiddos rubber band tricks. dad's been playing chess with zee and bee, my aunt reads and plays memory with the littles, and mom cooks a mean beef stew (and pretends she doesn't know the first thing about card games while trouncing us all). they're good for the soul, these people.

also, thank you. i asked you to pray and you did, and it's seeing us through this winnowing season. and i'll likely splinter along a hundred fault lines over and again for a good while yet, but maybe the point isn't to arrive intact at all. maybe it's to still be clinging to Jesus for dear life at the end of the day.

[every single one of you who dropped me a line, i've been praying for you too. and there's something renewing in that, to be a lifeline for someone else in the middle of the hot mess that is currently me.]

ps if you bump into us (or any adoptive family) regular-like, please read this primer on how to handle our special flavor of neurosis. bless you, jen hatmaker.

unchanging grace.

2011-10-28T09:08:00.000-04:00

it's been a long day already. i'm harrowed and spent, and i'm sure little m feels the same.

there are moments in most every day when i wonder if we'll ever get the hang of this, if i'll ever be any use at mothering. and right now, and in every now, the only remedy is Him.

on the occasions i manage to look outside of me, God's fingerprints are everywhere. the burnished oak out back. bean fields scraped clean. the soft oval of my sons' face. it's mercy, all of it, flooding straight from a Father who never retreats.

i rest on His unchanging grace.

* * *

would you keep praying for us, please? and if you don't mind, tell me how i can pray for you today.

thank you, friends.

almost time.

2011-10-19T13:27:00.004-04:00

my sister* is getting hitched come saturday, and we're a-flurry with preparations of the best sort. i've bits of dress-altering to finish up, plus loads of packing and optional baking, but just one more sleep and we truck out for some Fine Times Indeed.

[the minute i finished festooning elle's flower girl dress she paraded the length of the house in search of compliments, but the most eleven-year-old zee could manage was, eh. you're decent.]

little m began speech therapy yesterday, where he roundly ignored his therapist's requests and spent the entire session doing as he wished. it was not the most productive of ventures, but it was kind of nice not to be the only authority figure ignored in the room. i suspect we'll have a good weekend though, as he adores parties and sweets and people who are not mom, and the next string of days should be big on all counts.

and outside the leaves rattle like glass in the trees and split beneath our sneaker treads and who knew death could smell so dry and sweet?

and inside we are still learning how to navigate life with our smallest child, how to view each other with tenderness, how to practice mercy when we're defied and disregarded at every turn. [that last bit is the very hardest for me, but God keeps stacking my hours with opportunities to learn it. yay, right?]

hope your week is poured full of your favorite folk. see y'all on the other side.

*so technically she’s the mister’s sister, but whatever. she’s mine.

birthday girl.

2011-10-11T10:18:00.002-04:00

last friday elle made seven. we celebrated with a family camp-out on the living room floor, pizza and cupcakes and kit kittredge on the screen. she exclaimed over every gift and trailed me all weekend tootling on her yamaha recorder ('i put it on my list, mom, but i didn't think i'd actually get it'). we paired the recorder with a book of beginning songs in hopes that:

a. she might learn to read music

and

b. she might play something other than tunes comprised entirely of the note of c.

for the past three years or so elle's been an avid book-maker, crafting illustrated stories and pilfering my printing paper and ever in need of stapling services. so we assembled this author's (and illustrator's) kit for her, and oh is she ever in love.

cereal box blank books, watercolor cakes, the book book, drawing lab

she's already begun work on her first book, and though it's too early to give a full report, i've an inkling that this gift will be a giant hit for months to come.

* * *

to elle, seven things on your birthday:

-you have the best laugh this side of newark. it begins in your gut and ripples up into your throat and infects everyone in a quarter mile radius.

-you ask to be tucked in, every night, no exceptions.

-daily detritus is a treasure in your eyes, from library receipts to the tissue paper that comes balled up in new sneakers and you must keep it all. you are the pack-rattiest kid, and i waffle between amusement and exasperation each time i step into your room of happy clutter.

-you've an awful lot of spunk for your britches.

-you are chattery-sweet and need little prompting to detail every minute of your school day when you get home. (and oh, how i hope this never stops.)

-you mother everyone within hugging distance, whether they hope for it or not.

-you are tender toward God and people and my biggest wish for you is this: stand rooted in how completely God loves you, and treasure Him back fierce and full.

happy birthday, my girl.

even if He doesn't.

2011-10-04T10:17:00.004-04:00

it's one of those days where he's howling mad (this time at having lost his borrow-a-movie-from-the-library privileges) and he seethes along the walking path with a screech that liquefies my eardrums and leaves me soul-weary and spent.

but the cornstalks rattle bronze under a sky so clean it makes me ache for eternity, and the wind rushes and whispers peace till there's nothing else for it

and so i sing.

the brilliant thing about singing next to a screaming five year old is that i can belt it out as off-key as i'd like and no one is any wiser.

i work through hymns and some hillsong, matt papa, shane&shane, and then i get to a song that says this:

if You call us to the fire
You will not withdraw Your hand
we'll gaze into the flames and look for You

and it's referencing of course Daniel 3, and that trio of guys with funky names (my shack, your shack, and a bungalow) who refused to worship anyone but God. the king commissions this mammoth golden statue and assembles the people and commands everyone to bow to his image when the music sounds. and these three guys, they're captives but have worked their way into league with the bigwigs, and i'm pretty sure they know they're not dealing with the most stable despot here. but still, they won't worship the statue. and you know the rest, i'm sure. i would've demoted them, maybe hiked their taxes and plundered their cattle, but this king gives them a choice: either bow or get pitched into a fire so intense it melts your brain off just thinking about it.

and they come back with this, more or less: 'o king, we're not ultimately accountable to you, we answer to God. He can save us from your crazy-hot furnace.'

and then my favorite part: but even if He doesn't.

'but even if He doesn't, we refuse to worship anyone but Him.'

and the rest of the story is fantastic and God shows up in the fire with them and they come out untouched and His glory is made known.

and here's what i'm thinking as i'm singing and holding the unwilling hand of my flailing boy: that all along i've fully expected that we'll work through these tough spots and come out in love. i still do. we enlarged our family out of love for God and people, and i anticipate He'll work a boatload of miracles here.

but here's the other thing i'm thinking: God doesn't always show up in the way or the time frame i'm desperate for.

and even if He doesn't, even if things never get easier, even if we spiral dark and down for the next sixty years, i still choose this boy. i still choose this God. i still choose to obey.

and He'll walk with me in death valley, He'll keep me company in the flames, and His glory will be made known. good enough for me.

bright spots.

2011-09-28T08:52:00.003-04:00

an early rain has swept through and i’m sandwiched in miracle on every side.

above: a woolen sky sponging light all silvery-clean, and the sugar maples turning pink in the ears.

beneath: streets rinsed dark and freckled gold with confetti leaflets from locust trees.

and beside: a small boy with his hand perched in mine like a starling, and how sometimes he cups the heart of his palm to grasp mine back.

* * *

please stop by em's space for more imperfect prose.

progress.

2011-09-23T09:24:00.001-04:00

we stepped out beneath yesterday's mild sun, and just a block into our walk m decided he was done, thanks for playing. when our driveway didn't magically materialize, we entered Stage One of coming apart at the seams, but after a few minutes something unprecedented occurred:

he regrouped and pressed on

--albeit with pouting cheeks staunch enough to mobilize armies--but still, his feet had voluntary forward motion and i couldn't help but cheer him on at this one sweet step toward growing up.

in other news, katie's book is out (well, almost out--you can pre-order for the oct 4 release). without even reading it, i can tell you it's a must-read.

in other other news, fall is pretty much the best idea i've ever heard of. i grew up in the Land of It's Always Summer, and three-fourths of the year i hatch schemes that involve a trip back home. but come september and you couldn't pry me from the flaming trees and crisped fields of my trusty ol' midwest.

PLUS.

in six weeks' time, my mum and dad and little brother and aunt are flying way across over to see us, and i cannotwait. and i should probably start cleaning.

happy friday, friends. :)

crumbs.

2011-09-16T08:27:00.005-04:00

this first brush of september has been unusually brisk, and i am so in love. it's like an early heap of autumn, honey locusts fanning gold, that hard shot of sun sieved and softened through layers of cold. i am rocking the knee socks and wooly jackets and it's good times everywhere.

more happy crumbs:

morning work, and a little boy who is blazing his way through the roman alphabet.

pieced quilt tops, finally done. i have an inexplicable fondness for zigzagging, but lining those guys up can be pesky business. i'm also back to shooting portrait sessions and hammering silver and letmetellyou: it feels amazing to set my hand to tasks yielding visible results.

zany kiddos and a kitchenful of warm streusely-blueberry air.

harvest-autumn books from the library. tractor (craig brown) follows the work of a trusty red machine from planting to harvest on an organic farm growing sweet corn.

hurry, hurry, mary dear is a fallish book constructed from the silly rhyme of late poet nm bodecker, paired with erik blegvad's watercolors. the ending has a dash of humor that i'll leave a surprise. love it.

no photograph here, but i'm loving my six and seven year olds out on the soccer field. they're so much giggly exuberance, and i've one little guy who ran off from saturday's game calling, see you at practice, coach. I LOVE SOCCERRRRR! they are good for my old crotchety soul. :)

and even the hard spots are a whole bunch of good in their own way, pushing down roots of patience and mettle in the darkness, whittling off the parts of me gone stale.

what are your crumbs this week?

and now back to my regularly scheduled sanity.

2011-09-13T11:26:00.000-04:00

'tis the season when saturdays mean the smell of grass and sun, and two of our middles shin-guard-up for another fierce match.

the mister is coaching (big) m's team, and i've got elle's passel of U8-ers, so between juggling our players and our own five small folk, we've taken frenzied to a whole new level.

m was great out there. he's small, but a force to be reckoned with, and he kicks some serious hindquarters on defense. this is elle's first year, so i had my doubts, but luckily she did not channel her mother at this age (ie timid and ducking the ball). she plunged right in to that amoeba of jostling legs and even dribbled down the field several times.

in other news, i have recently recovered my emotional balance and (painfully dry) sense of humor, and i've decided that my way of approaching the day is loads more fun than the alternative. so pretty much it's okay if little m shrieks for hours on end and takes the scenic route to learning limits. i can still have a perfectly decent day.

and furthermore, if he decides to stop yelling long enough to join in on our good time, he is absolutely welcome to do so.

and sometimes he does.

:)

thank you, Jesus.

let the sky tumble.

2011-09-07T13:42:00.000-04:00

there's this early bit of morning when the trees ripple gold and the grass is quiet, unwrinkled, and the day seems possible.

and then there's the actual day. :)

it's easy to see God in the quiver of bulrushes, effortless to spot Him in a tatted cotton sky. what's not so painless is to search Him out in the desolate places, to trust His goodness and enough-ness when everything i touch comes up dust.

but right now i'm hoping at the top of my lungs (again) with mandi mapes:

whom have i
when my heart begins to fail
when sorrow fills the streets
and sounds of death prevail
Jesus is my hope
and i know He stills the wind
so take my very life away
as long as i get Him

so let the sky fall down
and earth and cities quake
and i'll say of my God and King
Lord, blessed be Your name.

He's still here. He's still mine. blessed be Your name.

* * *

come on over to emily's for more imperfect prose.

ask st francis.

2011-08-31T14:05:00.004-04:00

lesson du mois: cute as they are, i am not the sum of my children.

thing is, i know this. i know i've been redeemed at an unthinkable cost, and that it's madness to define my worth by anything outside of who God says i am.

and yet. when my kiddos are freshly-scrubbed model citizens, when they're bright and happy and high-achieving, it's insidiously easy to claim credit. to draw my value from these small, shining people. from my daughter, who pelts down the hall to circle me as tight as her skinny arms will go, crushing me with gratitude for adding lace to her flower girl dress. from my older boys, who don't let a day slip by without entreating me for a game of pit or soccer. z, who counts down the minutes till we can read of dragons and heroes each night.

but what happens when my child scribbles and grabs and tantrums, when at five years old he wields the emotional maturity of eighteen months and suddenly my personal worth won't pile up to a hill of beans?

what then?

yesterday was the hardest yet. m screams like the world's on fire if i hold his hand, pushes and flails if i gather him close. i'm mom, the one with those pesky things called limits and expectations and consequences, and he'd much rather seek affection from people who are all fun and no time-outs. and it feels akin to insanity, to insist on loving this small person who will kick my emotional shins all the livelong day, but he needs it and i need it and so we circle through these motions for as long as it takes, bleeding all the way.

Love is not like that, is not like
that easiness-in-getting
along that they call
Love; it is not like that, is not
like that desiring-companionship that
they call love; it is not like that, is not
like that desiring-of-one-beautiful
that they call love; it is not like that.
When will they learn that love is not
like that?

Ask St. Valentine—he was beheaded
because of love; ask St. Francis—
call him a sissy, but he became
a beggar because of love; ask
all those who know and they’ll tell
you that
Love is not like that; ask Jesus Christ.
--David DeBolt

grateful:
for a God who loves me when i kick and flail
for clothes to wash
for nate the great
for mercy, clean and free
for a husband who sees
for floors to clean
to know that the story doesn't end here

* * *

join us at emily's, where grace runs thick.

planting and tying.

2011-08-26T11:07:00.000-04:00

every morning my smallest boy and i lace up for a long, slow walk. sometimes we have a grand time, spotting trains and crickets and jets streaking the sky. mostly we don't.

little m is categorically opposed to exercise, and also temperatures that fall outside of the 70-75 degree range, so the combination of the two just about undoes him.

however.

yesterday this was at the end of the walk, and when we turned the bend he got his second wind (or first wind, actually) and took off at a sprint for the tire swings.

i know it's not always feasible to plant fun at the end of his drudgery, but his shrieks of glee sure have this way of warming me through.

:)

also blazing my insides today: oodles of you have said you're faithfully praying, and i'm overflowing. God is tying our family together in ways that transcend the impossible, and your faithfulness--and His--is nothing short of restorative.

* * *

join us at becky's for fingerprint friday
and dear emily's, for more imperfect prose

fovc

2011-08-25T07:12:00.001-04:00

my girl shonda is one of those fabulous folk who make this planet funny and inhabitable. she's authentic and warm and a wee bit sardonic, which all piled together equals My Cup of Tea. shonda&co brought taz home from ethiopia last may; come november they're headed back for mb.

to say we're pretty much stoked for their family doesn't quite cover it.

friends are hosting a shower for shonda, but in her signature style she's eschewing kid gear and cute clothes and instead simply asking that we help preserve the lives of some precious people. in particular, precious ethiopian people who, due to the ongoing drought, are desperately hungry.

she's chosen FOVC as a vehicle for giving, because they're a grass-roots bunch powered by volunteers. they're also the sole ngo at work in the region of ethiopia our littles hail from.

[photo via shonda]

we'd love to have y'all crash her shower:

purchase meals here
pop in at shonda's place and leave a note for mb

* * *

in other news, i woke wednesday morning hours before the alarm, which is normal. a rush of window fan and chittering crickets cloaked the dark, again normal. my spine curled with the ache of exhaustion, normal. the mister rose to breakfast the littles, normal. i finally gave up sleep as a lost cause and lumbered from bed, brushed elle's hair: normal. kissed the kiddos off to school: normal. but something about the day hung differently, and i've finally decided just what.

yesterday morning, for the first time in eight weeks, i rose with the expectation that the day ahead would hold more than its wearying tug-of-war, that something, perhaps many somethings, would be good.

it's the same fissured landscape, but the view transforms when i'm standing on a big ol' hill of hope.

i think i'll try it again today.

multitudes on tuesday.

2011-08-23T07:29:00.003-04:00

dad sat catacorner from me at the breakfast table and most days he halved a papaya the long way, scooped out seeds like a trove of black pearls. this is what i think of watching the sun climb this morning: the creamy orange-pink of papaya flesh, and my dad, smiling over his spoon.

a little late this week, but still thankful:

157-165
for sunrise
for parents who smiled
for a doctor who calls to chat about my child's health like she has all the time in the world for us
for the joy that is my pre-k class, and especially the child who prayed, 'dear God, thank you for me'
for baby bumps
for sidewalk canvases
for small-people quilts
for library books
and for hearts that hold on

progress.

2011-08-15T08:22:00.003-04:00

the biggers' first 4/5ths of a week at school has gone swimmingly, though by friday they were plum worn out. and slowly, slowly little m is learning that although mom will dedicate the overwhelming majority of her day to walks and home-preschool and games, i may at times engage in activities apart from Entertaining Small People. because occasionally we like to have laundered clothing and stuff.

friday threatened rain, but we pitched the tent out back anyway. i find it's easy to throw caution to the wind when a change of clothes and dry beds lie fifteen feet west. we had hamburgers with blues hog sauce, pb s'mores, a game of pass the buck and then euchre by flashlight.

we also had reptilian trilling noises in the dark, which may explain the guest appearance of velociraptors in my dreams that night.

and the rain held off after all. :)

these two boss each other like a pair of spinsters, but in the next breath i'll catch them tied up in giggles and clearly having the time of their lives, inseparable.

and though morning till dusk is one strung out dance of Who Is In Charge, and though i fall into bed bled of patience and humor, God is still there the next day with a fresh supply of mercy and the promise of His tender, unwavering company.

counting mercies today, with ann:

149-156
my girl lori, home
a sweep of cool in the middle of august
front yard baseball
the people who surround me in small group
food on our table
cornflower skies
crystal, who prays
the smallest signs that maybe he will trust us after all

off to school.

2011-08-10T14:15:00.000-04:00

'tis the season for packing lunches and 16 glue sticks (i've stopped asking) and traipsing to the bus in sneakers so fresh you can smell the new.

i'm quite certain we just started summer holiday, but time has been more slippery than usual as of late. plus also for reasons unbeknownst to my brain, the Educational Powers That Be shrink our vacation a wee bit each year. so. yesterday morning, after whole-wheat pancakes and much flattening of hair, the four olders trundled off to school again.

(mr. fifth grade)

(eighth grade)

(third grade)

(first grade)

this is her eek!firstgrade! look, but do not believe it. the rest of the time she was doing this:

however.

there was one small person (plus one mama) who was less than ecstatic about the commencement of school. little m spent much of the morning hanging out by the window to watch for his brothers and sister. we'd coax him away with puzzles and play doh and memory, but soon enough he'd scoot right back, as if certain the intensity of his vigil would bring them home.

but God knew just what we needed. my girl jenn & her sweet crew sent us a bucket of happy to keep small hands and imaginations well occupied.

(aren't chalkboard surfaces the cleverest thing? sadly, in my unpacking excitement i managed to thoroughly smudge up j's beautiful penmanship.)

(cooper household, thank you. your timing was impeccable.)

at 2:30 the biggers winged back home full of homework and first-day tales. little m was clam-happy. we had snack and bikes and play and an evening of together, and this morning? we pulled it all off again with only a few short minutes of window-time.

with friends like y'all and a God who sends mercy by the bucketfuls, i suspect we just might survive this school year after all.

:)

* * *

visit em's lyrical space for more imperfect prose.

nine.

2011-08-08T08:47:00.005-04:00

friday marked this fellow's ninth birthday.

he's so much bubbly chatter and vim, his heart anchored in tenderness and justice. he's silly and clever and a river of patience with his younger brother. (m cheerfully allows little m to drag him by the hand and dictate his day's itinerary, and though i remind him that he's allowed to say no sometimes, he delights in his brother's happiness.)

he's the middlest of the middles, a tough spot to inhabit if i've ever seen one. but oh, he's our joy.

m, i hope you flourish in the knowing that you are loved from your cowlick to your heels, that this knowing equips you for the long and messy business of loving others. i hope God is closer than breath, that He is your treasure, your magnificent obsession.

happy birthday, sweet boy. you're the best kind of wonderful.

grace. the buttery kind.

2011-08-04T11:34:00.001-04:00

wednesday came raw and clotted with storm clouds. it'd been a rough week already.

i knew to expect this, the endless loop of reteaching limits, the constant scouring and disinfecting, the one-sided loving. i knew, but somehow that doesn't make this existence any less exhausting.

but God has this way of showing up in the middle of my personal downpour. i pray for immediate evacuation, and instead He comes down and resides with me in my struggle, helps my heart expand to cover this need when it would be so much more convenient to disengage.

i was chin-deep in weariness yesterday when My All-Time Favorite Person (aka our trusty postal worker) popped up on my doorstep with a package. my soul-friend brandee baked us cookies, wrapped each one and double-bagged them. and as i unflapped cardboard to reveal those buttery rounds of perfection (that girl knows her way around a cookie) and drank in her words of kindness and affirmation, the not-aloneness of it all buoyed my spirit in a way that could only have come from Him.

and another soul-friend is bringing us dinner tonight and another sent m the softest welcome-home gift and my aunt and uncle dropped off a gorgey dresser and all of you loving us is keeping me afloat till pretty soon i realize i'm not up to my eyebrows in a sea of emotional demands at all. it's an ocean of grace, clear through.

* * *

please join us at emily's for more imperfect prose.

ps friends, if you are willing, please pray with me for the dear sosna family. they attended court with us in ethiopia back in may, and are still waiting for a letter from MOWCYA before their process can proceed. their two beautiful boys need so much to be with home their parents. thank you.

hors d'oeurve

2011-07-29T11:09:00.004-04:00

all the earth's an exhale, warm and sticky, so we caper about in icy spray and drip dry into evening. we whisper-read between chilled shelves of library books, the rasp of pages turning like music. we sift through yard sale sheets and desks and casserole dishes. we plan out parties and sport pop-tart smiles and sugar rushes (thank you, grandma owens). and the soundtrack slipping behind it all is a mix of belly laughs and kidspeak and footfalls and it's a hint of eternity, i think, all this goodness swimming up summery and gold. and i can hardly wait, just can't wait for more.

eleven.

2011-07-25T13:05:00.003-04:00

so this kid. he's eleven.

it seems just a few blinks ago he was crazy about cookies and sir topham hat and he’d sob his eyes pink each morning when the preschool van fetched his brother and never once took him. and i'm still unclear on what i was doing, exactly, while he got so articulate and wry and tall, but here we perch on the razor edge between childhood and teenage angst, a divide sharp enough to cleave me through.

in many ways it's the whole point of the mom thing, to work ourselves into obsolescence. but when he stops needing a copy editor or cook or chauffeur, i suspect he may still need someone who prays. someone who hopes. who sees him honestly, but is wholly and irrevocably on his side.

z, you have a mum and a dad and siblings and a church family and friends who treasure you up tall. you have a clear mind, a heart that bruises quick for others.

and mostly, mostly. you have a God who loves you with a tenderness so fierce that he died so you could live full. love him back, my sweet boy. taste and see just how worth it all he is.

to beginnings.

2011-07-20T12:24:00.000-04:00

he calls me mommy, but his heart isn't much in it yet. it's early still, so though he bustles and romps his way happy through the day, we get the sense that he'd be just as fine with anyone sweet on him.

we're venturing out more, bit by bit, enlarging our sphere to include church and the library. he sticks by me okay, but when i'm a whole bunch of no fun, vetoing scribbles on his palms and shorts or the unplugging of computers, he peels away and scrunches silly faces at other mums and dads, seeking attention from anyone less liable to say no.

sometimes the distance drags heavy and i want to fast-forward to the part where he'd pick us out of a crowd, where he'd feel clear to his spine how we love him.

but then i'd miss this, the slow, scraping, grace-washed crawl toward being a family.

during eight o'clock tuck-ins, he'll echo back goodnight with his smile curving the word like a slip of moon. and it's not everything, i know. it's maybe the thinnest wisp of a beginning. but still it puddles slow and sweet, honey to this mama's soul.

* * *

visit emily's space for more imperfect prose.

favorite things.

2011-07-18T13:57:00.000-04:00

currently smitten with:

1. yo-yo runners.

this here table runner is a Much Belated Birthday Something for my youngest sister, kindra. she had the grace not to fall over from shock when i actually finished the guy.

(ps all y'all with tutorials who said this will only take an hour or two either have quick fingers or fiery pants. that's all i'm saying.)

2. biggest and littlest brothers, playing makinas.

3. guava juice.

4. a sister getting married (squee!).

4a. elle's dearest ambition in life is to be a princess. just in case her father and i don't turn out to be secret royalty, she will settle for her second choice: flower girl.

after being asked by aunt kristin to fill this dreamy role, she's been skimming about the house like a balloon, buoyant with euphoria, sketching dresses in her journal and staging hallway rehearsals.

5. dear people who check in on us and stock our fridges with casseroles and mangoes and keep us afloat with prayer.

6. jersey sheet tents and stuffed friends and homemade games.

7. all this stretching and the kinship taking root in deep places, even if i can't yet see it. and all the somedays to come.

embassy trip.

2011-07-14T06:02:00.007-04:00

the second trip to addis was something akin to drinking from a fire hydrant, so it's only fitting that i give you the entire shebang in one post. that, and i am large on children and scant on sleep these days. blogging has now hit the list of endangered pasttimes.

so: ethiopia, take two.

monday, 6.20: finally got confirmed airline tickets, the mister left for sr high camp, grandma picked up the older four kiddos in the evening. also general mayhem.

tuesday, 6.21: left at 6am to fly from here to dulles to frankfurt to addis plus many longish layovers.

wednesday, 6.22: arrived in addis around 9pm (a day earlier than holt required since weds arrival = save $1400). hung out with a number of families about to jet home with their small folk.

[lucy land guest house. view from my window, from the courtyard.]

[addis dawn from my balcony window.]

thursday, 6.23: the rest of my travelmates flew in throughout the day/eve, and i learned to cast on and knit.* we also found out that our schedule had changed and guess what? nothing vital was happening till sunday. luckily, my court-and-now-embassy-buddy lisa still had enough new york in her to call the holt staff and request that we at least be able to see our kiddos since we were, in fact, right in town. all these days early. per their request.

with the happy result that

friday, 6.24: following an orientation at the holt office, we spent the morning and afternoon visiting our children at the care centers. friday night, i learned to purl.*

[niana care center.]

[care center playroom, bathroom.]

[another shot of the playroom. i'm near smitten with the pillow covers.]

saturday, 6.25: art gallery/shopping in the ayem, where i purchased an entire $8 worth of art prints to the tune of I Am A Reluctant Shopper. (seriously, i had to send carin off with the remainder of my birr later in the trip just to get some gifts purchased. neurosis at its finest.)

we spent the afternoon with our children at the care centers, where m and i paged through his photo book several dozen times, scrawled letters, towered blocks, pushed makinas over the paneled wood floor.

[photobook, alphabet beginnings.]

[m's bedroom, shared with about a half dozen other children.]

sunday, 6.26: at 6am twelve of us piled into the holt van for a trek to ssnpr, the region where our children were born. it’s beautiful country; a quilt of green scrub, false banana trees, acacias, eucalyptus, red dirt and thatched huts, dotted with small tin towns along the way. so much of the flora reminded me of oahu.

[disclaimer: please excuse weird photo composition/tilt/quality--pretty much all scenery and street shots were taken through a window at 90km/hour. drive-by photography is tricky stuff.]

[we pulled over to photograph a valley, and children seemed to pour out of bushes and cracks of red earth. our group gave them what we had on hand: hard candies, power bars, bottled water.]

partway there, we stopped at shinshicho health center to see the hospital holt is building to serve families in this region. following a pasta/tibs lunch, we arrived in holt’s durame office near 2pm to meet with surviving birth relatives. the value of this potential meeting is incalculable: it provides transparency needed for ethical adoptions as well as girds our children with firm ties to their early lives and families.

[medical center.]

[kids in a side street in durame.]

emotions clotted thick that day, and we ended the evening with a two hour drive to the hotel in awassa, where the dining staff kept us entertained with the number of orders they served sarah.

monday, 6.27 kicked off with a bracing, one-door shower, followed by pineapple juice and a gorgeous macchiato. we stopped to view the lake at the nearby awassa resort, then made the grueling trek back to addis.

[bits of awassa, awassa resort, monkeys!][no, we did not stay at this lovely place.]

[lake awassa.]

[giant anthills, small strip town.]

after some six hours of driving and an hour of rest/nervous-prep at the guest house, we headed out to purchase baby/kid supplies at a local grocer (no bebelac 2 or 3 to be found anywhere), then happy danced to our respective care centers for the farewell ceremonies. our kiddos were coming 'home' with us for good.

ethiopia's bunna (coffee) futbol team was playing their whatever 'insurance' is in amharic futbol team, which made for a lively radio-spiked drive to the care center, plus much background cheering by the staff during the farewell party. m was wide-eyed and chatty during the van ride back to the guest house, didn't eat a crumb at dinner that night.

[our favorite nurse. this gal is strong, smart, gracious, warm. i'm so glad God placed our boy in her care.]

tuesday, 6.28 was a long day. once gaining custody, we were confined to the guest house, and m could make a living out of fiddling with things best left unharmed: cable boxes, power strips, outlets, keyboards, other people's iphones/ipads/laptops/kindles. he was a cheerful, busy little man with no concept of boundaries. food of the day: bananas (and the occasional lime), m would touch nothing else.

[bajaj, three-wheeled taxis. turns out i really like to photograph these blue guys.]

wednesday, 6.29 we left for our embassy appointment at 8am. after an hour's wait, m and i were called to a window where an incredibly genial embassy lady interviewed us for two minutes tops and sent us off with instructions on what to do with the sealed packet (ie DO NOT OPEN IT) we’d receive in two days' time. food of the day: dabo (bread) and juice. i could only hope that by the week's end we'd have the food pyramid covered.

thursday, 6.30 we kicked a soccer ball in the courtyard, and after a few brief minutes of low key back-and-forth, m wanted to sit down or go inside or both. this was the first sign of just how little he enjoys exercise.

elizabeth regaled us with lively tales of nyc subways and hospitals. steve was m's cheerful human playground. m consumed half a pizza, played inaugural games of angry birds and food ninja with andy. (forget the visa, my child clearly just passed the test for american citizenship.)

friday, 7.1 slugged along to such an extreme i suspect time was actually retreating. at this point in the game we were all weary and cabin feverish and so ready to be home, provided the requisite trip didn’t do us in.

m and i left for the airport that night at 7pm, walked laps around the tiny single terminal to kill more than four hours. m slept during our seven hour flight to frankfurt, but he thrashes about in his sleep, and it turns out being kneed/sucker-punched every couple of minutes complicates my ability to rest.

eight hour layover in frankfurt. eight-point-five hour flight to dc. immigration was a breeze, security lines a bear, and we spent another six-point-five hours in dulles, where we both eventually crashed for a blessed hour at an empty gate. our final flight home was just ninety minutes, where the hubby met us at midnight in baggage claim and i cried. another hour and a half on the road and we pulled into our driveway at 1:30am sunday, 7.3 (8:30am addis time). we'd made it home intact.

we tucked our boy in bed and called it a night. thus ended a nineteen month journey home (we're prone to the scenic route), and kicked off a brand new sort of adventuring, one we’re still gathering clues on how to navigate.

God is faithful.

*knitting lessons (and motion sickness patches) brought to addis by the indefatigable lisa weisman. that girl is the stuff of legends.

five.

2011-07-08T08:08:00.003-04:00

'tis a strange and wondrous thing, how you're up and turning five and we're only beginning to know you. i could weep for the years i've missed were it not for the lifetime stretched before us, shimmering far off and hopeful.

here's a bit of what we're starting to know:

you thrill at the sound of the bob the builder theme song. you love baths with tub toys, crispix cereal, brushing teeth.

you must hold hands when walking, even from one room of the house to another. you sit leaned-up against your brothers, leaving four feet of empty couch on the other side of you.

your favorite english word: cake.

you take great joy in terrorizing the neighborhood cats, yelling dimet and meowing at them at the top of your lungs. word has spread, and they now flee at the sight of you.

you sleep like a rock star. (or maybe not a rock star, exactly, as i'm guessing those folks are chronically low on z's. like a librarian, then.)

you like to call your siblings banana and cookie, then cackle on the floor like an upended turtle.

you loathe exercise in any shape or color.

you continue to chatter happily to me in amharic, persisting in the belief that one of these days i'll catch on.

you have a lone, deep dimple on your left cheek that shows up when you talk.

you sneeze cuter than anyone i know.

you love to click mouses, press remote buttons, turn dishwasher dials, and increase the volume on anything that emits noise.

you smile big and easy.

you are loved.

happy fifth, little m. so glad you're home.

current status.

2011-07-06T05:20:00.004-04:00

the birds are singing up the sun and i’m reveling in my short stint as a morning person. this trick of waking at 3:30am does wonders for allowing me to finish up photography work, drink quiet coffee, pop in here for the sort of conversation that does not involve let’s not tell kaka jokes and please don't stand on the dining table.

i’ve been fielding a number of questions, and i will try to get to them all, but the one i encounter (and appreciate) most is the simple how are you doing?

the unvarnished truth: some moments are better than others, but we are, in fact, making it.

i don’t usually post info like this on the hairy-scary internet, but i’m in stark need of your prayers, so here it is—the mister’s overseeing part of a conference in louisville and i’m single-parenting this first week home, and that’s pretty hard. we were thrilled, touch-the-sky-elated, when we zipped from court to embassy so quickly. we wanted our boy home before his fifth birthday, home before spending a full two years in orphanage care, and all that coupled with the uncertainty of visa appointments in july meant that we needed to travel asap.

but it also meant that i’d travel solo. that i’d have custody of our boy for the first week ever in a developing country on my own. that i’d miss two nights of sleep in their entirety navigating four airports and customs and baggage with a scared smallish child alone. that the mister would have to be gone again right after we got home.

little m does this thing where he clings like a starfish to some part of me and leans most of his frame into mine, which admittedly is all sorts of endearing. north of twenty minutes, though, his sweatiness and heft (he outweighs my 6 and 8 year olds) plum wear me thin, and i just want to call a time-out and have somebody, anybody, grant me a small reprieve. you there at the pretzel cart in terminal 3? please prop up my child for just a bit. i would like to visit the restroom without a person glued to my kneecap.

on the happy side, though, he has taken beautifully to my older four, and they are fantastic with him. arriving home in early july with all the littles here all day has been the best possible scenario. and truly, though i gasped for peace like a beached fish during the trip and the travel home, i was never, not for the smallest second, alone. i've a Father who went ahead of me, beside me, behind me. who gave me strength to put one foot in front of the other when i was too bleary to see straight, who prompted fellow fliers to be patient with us all along the way.

God has not, and He will not, abandon us. and this morning His company and care are every bit enough.

under one roof.

2011-07-04T03:42:00.003-04:00

the great thing about being firmly awake at 3:20am is how the house marinates in stillness and room to think.

the past two weeks have been, incontestably, the most exhausting weeks of my life. i imagine the same could be said for this small fellow:

internet, please meet my youngest son. he has weathered a good deal of heartbreak, and still he's warm and giggly and quick to find joy. [i’ll likely share very small pieces of his background, but his story belongs to him, and we will allow him to be the one to share it with whomever and in whatever detail he chooses as he grows older.]

i can tell you this, though: he loves soccer and injera and knobs and buttons and books and all things electronic. at the guest house, he’d turn on old school looney tunes and then curl up in his chair, paging through the kitchen’s menu-book. he’d spend half the afternoon on the playroom balcony conversing with the guest house guard (whom he named 'police') in animated amharic.

we have a decent number of issues to tackle, but little m is sweet and brave and has a mighty big God on his side. he’s loving his older siblings, mimicking their speech and play with aplomb. given enough time and prayer and grace, i have tall hopes we’ll not only heal, but thrive.

this week's thankfuls, #s 140-148:
the soft rhythms of home
the care center staff, who loved little m well and with gusto
frisbee in the green front yard shade
new friends who looked out for little m and me
old friends who took such beautiful care of my family in my stead
rest, after 37 hours of travel and two nights' missed sleep
all of you--your prayers, your missives of encouragement
freedom to love God out loud
all five of my littles, together

thursday.

2011-06-25T00:53:00.003-04:00

yesterday was mighty fine all around. we spent a couple hours in the morning and a good part of the afternoon playing blocks and makinas and generally crooning over our sweet babes/kiddos. a formidable storm rolled in early afternoon, pelting the city with ice. i felt right at home. :)

today we'll visit a market and then trek back to the care centers again. it's funny how the jumbled traffic and cacophony of humanity and animals already feels familiar.

and our boy, our dear boy, who giggles and jokes and lights with wonder at the discovery of a pencil eraser--he's such a joy. can't wait for y'all to meet him.

:)

here.

2011-06-23T04:18:00.005-04:00

waking up in addis wears the scent of coffee and dust and miracle.

given the last-minute nature of this trip, i ended up with The Route of Mammoth Layovers, and i'd have to say the easy pace was much kinder to my blood pressure than last trip's sprint through terminals-passport control-visa line.

highlights from the trek over: a chipotle burrito with a party of veggies (and sizeable enough to function as both lunch and dinner during my 7.5 hours in dulles); getting to know my seatmates' stories on the first two flights; receiving an unexpected verbal blessing from an ethiopian grandma (instant tears on my part); spending this morning with other adoptive families in the guest house.

tomorrow those of us newly arrived will have an orientation meeting and spend some time with our children. i'm chomping at the bit.

ps it's not likely i'll be uploading/posting photos while i'm here; i promise to make up for it with a landslide when i return.

pps at breakfast i met a little boy who lived for a few months at the same care center as mine. he kept calling me m's mama, and my heart has been swollen ever since.

it's time.

2011-06-21T00:46:00.003-04:00

[a welcome home quilt for our son. the best kind of surprise.]

leaving for the airport in about five hours. the litany of details that fleshed out and laced together these past three days to make this trip possible is nothing short of astounding.

God is astounding.

please pray that i get on all the right planes, that i'm kind to the people i encounter. that our visa interview on the 29th goes swimmingly. that the smallest kiddo and i can smile through the exhausting trek home together. that we make much of God all along the way.

so many people labored to get us to this homecoming. whoever you are, whatever your hand in this: thank you. see you all on the other side.

in which God exceeds my wildest hopes.

2011-06-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

so apparently y'all know how to pray.

yesterday we received notice that the embassy has cleared us for travel. we've requested a visa appointment for june 29th or 30th, the earliest dates available. we're still waiting for confirmation, and if it's a go i may be addis-bound in about five days.

i'm absolutely floored by how quickly this final stage has come about. i've an estimated seven billion things to do before leaving, but i just may be with our boy this time next week.

and that, my friends, is a whole mountain of miracle.

closer.

2011-06-15T09:50:00.001-04:00

we're slipping soft into summer rhythms, filling days slow like honey with equal parts productivity and play.

zee and bee hole up in their rooms or wedge in a couch corner, folded deep in the grip of a novel or tapping out their own plots, lines thickening into chapters that flesh into adventure.

em and elle beg for 'summer school,' and will spend hours happily researching flamingoes or gorillas, constructing sequels for their favorite books, racing through math facts to best their quickest time.

we've whipped up a hearty batch of weeding and cleaning, letter-writing, walks along a thinned-chocolate river, picnics and parks and cheering at the church softball games. the boys love their wii time, but their daily allotment is twenty minutes apiece, which leaves oceans of space for actual get outside and build forts kind of play.

june's highlight thus far was succinctly expressed in the littles' whoop of exultation yesterday afternoon. our case has been submitted to the US embassy in addis, which means we just might be winging off to bring our son home in a few weeks' time. we now wait for travel clearance from the embassy, and then an appointment for our visa interview in ethiopia.

if you will, please pray with us that all of our paperwork is in order and that the reported reduced working capacity of the embassy in july will still make room for all who are waiting. please also pray for our friends who traveled with us in may and are either still waiting to hear that they've passed court, and/or waiting to be submitted to embassy. thank you!

hoffmaster state park.

2011-06-10T10:22:00.000-04:00

so we’re back, and not only do i have pictures, i also bring with me a nugget of camping wisdom for y’all that goes a little something like this: when tent camping, it’s kind of nice not to forget your tent.

i know, right? who even needs to be told that? except apparently i do, and though i have a reasonable explanation for how i managed this glaring oversight, it doesn’t actually matter, because i forgot the tent.

luckily the trusty neighborhood meijer had a small selection of quasi-cheap family tents, so we picked one up on our way in and voila, we are now a two-tent family. (and just think: i have doubled the odds of remembering at least one shelter next time.)

aside from that little bump, a splendid time was had by all*.

our loop of campsites was empty nearly all week, just us and a stand of trees and a night prowler that may or may not have been a polar bear, depending on the enthusiasm of your imagination. (for the record: i think it was likely a deer.)

we had strawberry-marshmallow-cookie-s'mores and forays into little black creek, hot chocolate mornings, hours of sand and a constant wind off the lake that ruffled and soothed us to sleep each night.

we had caterpillar rescue missions, card games, minnow chasing, pool excavating, and a gusty trek along the shoreline of lake michigan. it's not exactly mokuleia, but this stretch of water has got a beauty and grey-frothed allure all its own.

but the thing i like best about camping is how we get to be with our kids. no schedule, no pre-packaged entertainment, just the whole bunch of us together digging pools in the sand.

*so my court-buddy lisa asked how we were holding up during this wait, and i mentioned how everything we do has the air of someone missing. it was true; the whole camping trip i kept picturing our smallest in the flock, or doing the mother-sweep and panicking when i came up one short. please continue to pray with us that we'll be able to return for him soon. thanks, friends.

week in review. except not really.

2011-06-03T12:25:00.001-04:00

'tis the last week of school for the small folk, which means zoo trips and field days and awards ceremonies and popsicle parties and other such happenings that require buckets of enthusiasm/perspiration from the mums and dads.

i'm plum worn out.

still, even in my zombie-ish state, i'm deluged with daily wonders cropping up round about us:

like peonies. (peonies!) if ever i have told you some other sort of bloom was my favorite, i was sorely mistaken. these ruffly gals have wriggled their pink and their frill into my plain-jane heart and have no intention of moving out.

(seriously. like i have to pet them when i see them, they are so irresistible and puffy.)

also: corn on the cob. grilled, bathed in butter, and tied with baker's twine. triple swoon.

and nature walks. the kind that yield baby pinecones that make mum and daughter both puddle inside.

extra-terrestrial flowers that amaze me with their sheer weirdness every spring.

and a first tooth out (finally). which is a mighty good thing, since her big tooth has already shown up in second row seating.

plus also, the tooth fairy actually showed up on schedule, which is a miracle in its own category at chez owens.

this weekend promises more kid parties and graduations and baby showers and church and packing up for some good ol' lake michigan camping. if we time it right, we even might work in an hour or two of sleep.

:)

ps we still don't have any clearer idea of when we'll head back to ethiopia for our littlest person...eight to twelve weeks from the first trip is what we're told. i promise i shall let you know when we know! thanks for hoping and praying alongside us.

journaling ethiopia: day three.

2011-05-30T08:31:00.003-04:00

tuesday morning. court day.

i rose just past five thirty, showered and spent a ridiculous amount of time before the mirror trying to master the shirt tucking trick. (i am a compulsive non-tucker; the tucking, more than anything, attests to the gravity of this day’s events.)

following another gorgeous spread of breakfast that i was too nervous to eat, i wheezed up four flights of stairs to grab my bag for our 7:30 am pick-up.

now, most days i’m hardly one to blink twice at a creative interpretation of time, as i too hail from a land of 7:30 means we may or may not be there by 9. this day, however, was not most days. i was more than a little anxious coming up on 8am with nary a driver in sight, but fortunately they popped up just a few minutes later, and we dieseled off for the holt office.

once there we were all-too-briefly primed for court (aka, don’t give your passports directly to the judge; no answer is wrong), then given our mile high binders of paperwork—all the documents relevant to our case, painstakingly gathered, authenticated, translated over the past twenty months. the collaborative grit and labor carrying us to this court hearing was astounding.

we piled back into the van, wove through town, the internal butterflies morphing into starlings and then belugas. soon we were tempting claustrophobia in an elevator that opened on the third floor of the court building and the hardest hour of the trip.

anything i say here will be insufficient, but i need to at least restate the obvious: adoption is rife with antitheses. you have, on the one hand, a family awash with the miracle of a child soon in our home. and yet the very fact that this child needs a second family is steeped in loss.

after twelve successive eternities of waiting, our jittery contingent of families (plus exceptionally calm lawyer) was called into the court chamber. the judge addressed us together, asking questions that we answered as a group. i loved sitting next to mike--he answered with gusto, his heart huge and pinned to his sleeve.

the hearing spanned less than five minutes; three of us were told that all of our paperwork had arrived, while one family was given a second court date. the range of emotion was brutal.

the rest of the day was injera and coffee roasting, wandering streetside shops, repacking and showers, a final group barbecue (in a word: amazing) in the guest house hut. then the twenty-eight hours of van-plane-plane-plane-car rides home.

we pulled in to a house in full swing, todd’s mom managing homework and laundry and dinner with aplomb. i was spent, wrung dry of emotion, in desperate need of a shower and two days of sleep, and itching to turn around and do it all again.

the first seeds.

2011-05-26T11:35:00.002-04:00

[i’ve one more day to go in journaling our trip, but i’m pausing to highlight a moment from last sunday that’s stuck close with me.]

the door scrapes open and a cross breeze catches woven sheers, sends them billowing through a bright square of window as a nanny enters our sanctuary of three.

she carries a tray of oranges with skin mottled green and gold, wedges of almost-summer on a plate. our little guy takes a couple, delight stretched across his face, and in universal four-year-old form he sucks out every last bit of juice while leaving the mangled pulp behind.

his mouth full of seeds, he looks round for a trash bin or napkin and so i hold out my hand to him. he spits those seeds into my palm without a second thought, then scampers off for the beach ball with sticky-chinned nonchalance.

and sure, our court hearing lingers two days off, and we’ve yet to be granted official approval to parent this small person. but i smile damp at that handful of orange seeds, having become, in that single act, every bit his mother.

* * *

stop by em's place for more imperfect prose on thursdays.

journaling ethiopia: day two.

2011-05-24T10:30:00.002-04:00

[traditional hut built on the grounds of the guest house]

in the clutches of jetlag, i spent most of the night wide-eyed and wired. fortunately, i wasn’t the only insomniac in the neighborhood: a nocturnal rooster crowed every few minutes to keep me company.

spring draws the belg rains (short rains) to addis ababa, but monday morning broke warm and cloudless. after another ambrosial breakfast (seriously, those dishes inspire poetry), we climbed into the tiny car with our new friends lynn and angelia to drop off paperwork at holt’s office and visit the closet-sized shops on churchill road.

[back doorway and stairs leading to the hut]

the streets of addis were bright and pulsing with blue ladas, donkeys, humanity. our driver, john, is nothing short of a miracle: hyper-aware of traffic/bodies approaching from all angles, and so comfortable with the dimensions of our vehicle that he could eek that steel frame through openings with just centimeters between us and a collision.

john also walked us from shop to shop, bantering with smiling boys and keeping these ferengi safe from our own naïveté. i’m not much of a shopper (i’m all about functional and necessary), but we do want to have a few things that evoke comfort and familiarity for our littlest, so we left with a woven blanket and embroidered tunic in cream and green.

lunch was pizza at the guest house with lynn and angelia (the brief italian occupation in the 1930’s left noticeable marks on language and cuisine). we’d known l&a a mere twenty four hours at this point, but they were compassionate and articulate and genuine and felt so much like home.

a short while later, our court buddies and a group of families on their second trip returned from a two-day stint in the southern country. (we’d remained in the city since our child had been moved to addis a couple years back.) we scurried down two flights of stairs to the lounge and met lisa and andy and mike and erika and carin and chris and landon and mindy and mindy and greg and jill, and it took me a while to figure out who went with whom but they were funny, warm, colorful. for me, it was love at first sight. :)

at four, we left for our care center with mindy and landon. our mission was to say goodbye to our son and to meet with his physician; mindy and landon were headed for a farewell ceremony to bring their little girl home. since our visits coincided, we had the rare privilege of attending their farewell ceremony, one of the most poignant hours of the trip.

the care center staff asked landon to pray on the spot, and about one phrase into his prayer we were all undone. thanks, guys, for allowing us to be present for that precious experience.

i felt numb leaving our boy, but seeing little t with her parents on the van ride home was a balm to this mama's heart, proof that this story ends (and a new one begins) with together.

we enjoyed dinner of injera, mesir (lentil) wat, and steamed greens back at the guest house with friends from our amsterdam flight, jeff and meica. these guys are all manner of awesome, and when the region lost power we couldn't have drummed up two better people with whom to share a meal by candlelight. we talked family and faith and got to hear of their day spent with a local church and compassion project.

[coffee ceremony complete with popcorn in the guest house lobby]

the electricity flicked on and off throughout the evening as i attempted to pack by flashlight for our next day's departure. (when it first dropped off in our room, we stood there in the gloom with me saying, so the thing about bringing a flashlight in case we lose power is that it might be nice to not have to dig blindly through a suitcase to find the flashlight when we lose power. duly noted.)

mostly packed, i settled onto that extra-firm mattress for another night of wide-awake. :)

journaling ethiopia: day one.

2011-05-21T12:10:00.000-04:00

our first glimpse of addis seemed a study in wild contrasts: gated hotels kissing strings of ramshackle tin, a jerry-built sector boasting hyundai showrooms, goats brushing land cruisers in streets choked with diesel.

[view from our room] [scaffolding across the street] [from the lounge]

i didn’t photograph much. snapping what i’d normally want to capture—the people, the markets, the daily minutiae—felt inappropriate and not a little unwise. i’d left my 5D at home, but even the rebel weighed heavy and ostentatious, so i shot very little outside of the guest house and care center.

we flew from here to boston to amsterdam to addis, with a brief stop in khartoum for kicks. the flights were on time and smooth and more draining that i’d expected. about 10pm saturday, our van bumped along a pocked sideroad and honked at the razor-wired gate to the guest house.

that bed and shower shimmered like a mirage. despite bone-deep exhaustion, sleep was too slippery to hold, and i was sadly awake as the 6am call to prayer tolled through the dusty morning.

[guest house courtyard]

[slice of our room] [woven art just outside our door]

breakfast sunday was a fragrant parade of kinche, oatmeal, fruit, spicy lentil samosas, and small cakes with lime marmalade. from all reports i should have tried the coffee, but the tea was steamy and perfect.

before those samosas could settle, we were whisked off in a tiny car through the streets of addis to meet our son.

[view from our decorative balcony]

i was a puddle of nerves as the nanny led us to an airy playroom and called for our littlest. a jumble of footsteps came first, then his face in the doorway, lit with curiosity.

i knelt down and he loped across the room into my arms, then hugged and kissed the mister at the prompting of the nannies. they spoke to him in smiling amharic, shut the door soft so the room held just us three.

he unearthed trucks and foam blocks from a pile of toys, balanced a few in precarious towers, then set to work aligning rows of small toys into a wall-to-wall city.

we played the whole of the morning, left for lunch, then came back to while away the afternoon. i thought he'd grow bored with these two biggish people who couldn't speak right, but he was perfectly happy to deflate the beach ball (so as to be able to blow it up once more) and page through his photo book over and again.

[from our room] [guest house stairway and what i called the tiger picasso]

[from our window nearing twilight]

when 5 o'clock hit and the car returned to ferry us back across town, he slipped his small hand easy into the mister's and walked us out. we waved long and called ciao! and sank back into those seats damp with relief. he's real. he likes us.

and while i know we have miles to go in this journey to trust and family, this day seemed an awfully fine place to start.

back.

2011-05-19T12:48:00.001-04:00

our trip in a nutshell: 32 hours of travel there, 72 hours in country, 28 hours of travel back. intense, but wonderful.

we got to spend a good part of sunday and a snatch of monday with our son. he’s mellow with a dash of spunk, and sweet and funny and ours. he loved to play cars ('makina, mommy!') and soccer-rugby-catch with the fiñña (balloon—what he called the beach ball), and read books (especially the photobook we brought him, which he hugged to his chest and called 'foto. foto.')

we were surrounded by amazing people—both ethiopian and american—who made us belly-laugh and took care of us and cried beside us in the van/streets/restaurants/market/guest-house. i couldn't have asked for a better travel group.

after a good deal of waiting and jangled nerves, we scooted into that courtroom on tuesday and emerged as legal parents of our beautiful boy.

we are brimming and grateful.

let’s go back.

[i'll post in more detail over the next several days. and i apologize, but i can't share photos or any identifying information of our littlest until we have physical custody next trip. soon!]

2011-05-12T07:53:00.000-04:00

tomorrow we'll leave the house at the crack of 7am for this first trip to ethiopia. (or more likely, we'll leave at the crack of 7:12 after i've dashed back into the house for one more thing six times and the mister has had to practice deep breathing whilst waiting in the driveway. odds are on this one.)

we’d love to have you pray us along as we head out to meet our littlest. if you'd like to join in, please pray:

today
-that we’d have water restored to our house. (our tank and electric well pump fizzled out on tuesday, we’re hopeful they’ll both be back up and running today. on a side note, we’ve had church family and neighbors bend over backwards to diagnose the problem and keep us watered and showered: it’s been amazing.)
-that we’ll wrap up final preparations, have time to hang out with the small folk, prioritize well, and be chill.

friday/saturday
-for seamless travel, patience beyond ourselves, and the ability to gather sleep where we can. that we’ll choose to see the best in the people around us (up to and including and especially each other), that our words will be steeped in grace.

sunday/monday
-for meaningful time with our son. pray that he’ll have a visceral sense that we are safe and can be trusted, that we treasure him clear through, and that we will return for him.

tuesday
-for a propitious court hearing, for clarity and honesty as we answer whatever the judge may ask.

tues/wednesday
-for successful travel home and especially for fortitude and peace as we have to leave our little guy for a while. that we view the people around us with tenderness.

and every day: please pray that our quad of young’uns back home relish their time with grandma and don’t miss us one bit.

thank you, friends. see you all on the other side. :)

birthday heroics.

2011-05-10T09:13:00.001-04:00

this here is the mister. today is his birthday.

we don't have much photographic evidence of him, as he practices self-vanishment whenever a camera emerges. [i nabbed a series of shots, however, whilst making a photobook for our littlest guy, so here we go: proof that the mister exists.] [and that he's pretty cute, too.]

for his big day, the smallish folk and i collaborated on a mad lib in his honor. the kiddos supplied the series of adjectives, plural nouns, colors, verbs ending with -ing, etcetera, resulting in this gem of a tale:

By day, he is a mild-mannered and marvelous citizen, but by night our dad is none other than the legendary superhero Green Super-Snout. While the townspeople of Mars are fast asleep in their TVs, Green Super-Snout roams the rooftops, looking for any sign of the ever-suspicious hot dogs.

When he spots the nefarious hot dogs, Green Super-Snout stuns them with his fuzzy hula skirt, traps them with his mega-smelling powers, or--when he’s had a long day and just wants to get the crime-fighting over with already--apprehends them with his bare torso.

Only when the hot dogs are safely behind bars does the heroic Green Super-Snout pause for a nap and a quick bite of apple pie and a Big Mac to refuel. The citizens of Mars may never realize just how fortunate they are to sleep safely under the creamy eye of our brave, humongous father.

happy birthday, babe. you are all kinds of super in our book.

tripping the light fantastic.

2011-05-06T13:16:00.000-04:00

folks, i have just two words for you today: ONE WEEK.

except actually i mean the just two words part metaphorically, as i am not all that famous for brevity.

next friday (yee-haw!) we’ll board that plane (that will take us to our next plane that will take us to the plane after that) which will jet the mister and me to east africa where we’ll get to MEET OUR SON.

i am about two percent panic, a hundred and twelve percent sheer joy. am i ready? i have no idea. but all that stuff is details-shmetails as long as we are on that plane.

i’ll be honest: there were a few times in the past eighteen months when i wasn’t sure this day would ever come. in my more sardonic moments, i envisioned creaking along in our nineties, popping in dentures to make another call just to check how that home study report was coming along. :)

one week is a beautiful thing.

elle has passing the time by purchasing a series of smallish gifts for her younger brother, one for every holiday we've spent apart. this here is an easter car (note the green, which clearly means easter). when you are six with a steady allowance and few expenses, you are free to get a head-start on spoiling your younger sibling.

happy friday, friends.

ps baby lily is healing beautifully! thank you for praying and sewing up a storm. :) please stop by lisa's blog to see updated photos.

on older brothers.

2011-05-04T16:55:00.003-04:00

we were skinned-knee kids in a townhouse complex redolent of neverland: swooping streets and monkey pod branches shading pathways that crawled like a secret.

there were so many times in those days. the time we tied hulking cardboard wings to our arms and barreled down the back hill over and over, so sure we’d had lift-off for a hovering moment. the times we stomped trails in the towering cane fields and shrieked from spiders, big as hands. the time nate doodled on the neighbor’s convertible with permanent marker (k, technically i was too young to remember that one, but i do recall hearing it retold a bunch). the time we slung mudballs at ms-across-the-street’s fence and then had to go back to scrub it clean. the time i fell from the playground platform and smacked my skull hard and nate took off at a dead-sprint for help.

really, i’m not sure i can pull a single frame from that era that doesn’t contain my older brother. he was constant and everywhere and larger than life, usually egging me on against my careful judgment. every now and again i try to imagine the girl i'd be, had i not grown up close in his churning wake. but i give up right quick because any version of me minus nate is too boring to fathom.

he tilted my childhood brave and funny and teeming with adventure, and prepped me well for life with four boys of my own.

so nate? i s’pose i owe you pretty big. thanks for being my very first bestie.

:)

humble pie. again.

2011-05-02T09:49:00.001-04:00

'tis that time of year when the weather makes a resolute turn, and tepid skies displace bouts of spitting snow. so on friday i headed out for my inaugural jog of the year, a scenario which ends, invariably, with me choking down a hefty slice of humble pie.

i seem to replay the same scene from this tragicomedy every year. you’d think i’d know the lines by now, but nope, it still surprises me. i’m coasting along, joints loose, breath easy, inwardly gushing at the opalescent sky and flowering shrub trees and how the evening sun sheens the whole neighborhood glittery soft. and then it happens: precisely at the one mile mark i am seized with the distinctly horrifying urge to toss my cookies for all the good townsfolk to see.

and so i wilt for a moment on the grass, pretend to stretch whilst fervently beseeching God to please keep those cookies where they belong lest i become the first person in the history of public exercise to die of acute embarrassment.

the sheriff rolls by in his brown car, surely wondering if he needs to bust out his resuscitation skills. it’s all i can do to smile and eek out a nod.

after the waves of nausea calm, i start back home at a far less perky pace, my muscles aching with a mix of humility and lactic acid and the reminder that this? is maybe what happens when one hasn’t run since last september. right. got it.

i have learned my lesson, and shall never again set out at such a jaunty clip first run of the season.

at least not until next year.

:)

this week's thankfuls:

133. may. is. HERE. (t minus twelve days till we leave to meet our youngest)
134. possibility
135. snaking afternoon bikes along the driveway, sans jackets
136. the way em says 'tithes'
137. balmy walks in borrowed shoes with a friend who dreams in a familiar frequency
138. an email laden with affirmation
139. a God who gives us a part in this magnificent adventure

wednesdays.

2011-04-27T12:04:00.002-04:00

first, an update on the enat necklace: we have a winner! congrats to paula, i’ll be in contact with you! and thank you all for your warm comments and hellos. :)

now joining emily for imperfect prose:

there are days when the wind pulls and harrows, so that mid-week i weave along pock-marked and bare, all that tenuous courage heaped in pieces at my feet.

but i wake-shower-coffee myself to wednesday morning moms meeting, half surprised to get there intact. and i scoot in sheepish with the knowing that all i bring is fissured prayer and faith in a God who hears, a God who responds with the cross while i’m after an answer quicker, tamer, prettier.

and it’s a marvel, what a couple hours with those grown-up girls can sprout in me. without exception, somewhere in the middle of tea and mothering stories and a crack in a praying voice, a fresh sprig of courage wends up and buoys me even here, in this wash of fragmented plans.

i’m well versed in the full-throttle joy of brothers, but i look around the room at crystal and amy and carrie and think that this? is maybe what it means to know sisters.

awash in color.

2011-04-25T11:47:00.003-04:00

it’s a funny thing how egg-dying draws out one’s personality.

em was a machine of precision, careful about angles and elapsed time in each colored bath. (he was also keen to know when, exactly, we would wrap up the decorating and get on to the consuming phase of this egg project.)

elle was sweet zaniness, writing ‘egg’ on her egg in wax crayon and generally cracking herself up.

zee’s eggs were prettiest, his penchant for color and double-dipping resulting in the brightest shells, one of which was all sherbety swirl (not pictured, my bad).

and bee was a heap of caution and patience, quietly waiting for his siblings to take their turns with the crayon and the wire dipper before launching work on his own eggs.

they’re each one distinct but such a wonder, these smallish folk, and i can only spin the faintest threads of imagining what next year’s egg-dying might look like with five.

something tells me we’ve got some downright crazy times ahead. :)

counting to a thousand with the gratitude community:

125. a tomato-red rice cooker bubbling over in the morning’s background
126. a worship pastor head over heels for Jesus
127. brothers who play hallway-mini-dodge-ball while the sky’s a torrent of wet
128. elle, who fashions egg hunts for the rest of us
129. 1 corinthians 15.55
130. the electric green of spring
131. teachers whose words are tempered with patience
132. the joy of right now, tomorrow, all of forever with Him

2011-04-24T09:27:00.001-04:00

and this is how joy comes in the morning.

today.

2011-04-22T16:12:00.002-04:00

just slain today, my heart laid out by relief like rain, drenched in wonder of the One who sacrificed the unthinkable to make a way back to God.

'if His grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.'

five on friday. otherwise known as thursday.

2011-04-21T15:13:00.000-04:00

1. so bee and i have been working through the fsi amharic course, and i am pleased to report that we are making great strides (by which i mean we can say 'hello' and 'thank you' and 'oxen,' the last of which is bound to come in handy, i just know it).

2. from september through april i pad around the house in terry slippers and jeans and a fleece zipped to my chin. it's been blustery dark with lightning and a side of cold, the wind slicking petals to our glass.

sometimes you just gotta cook up your own sunshine, all lemony cream:

turkish bath towel : posy pins : goatsmilk soap : vintage dress
rosette broach : surfer photograph : zesty marshmallows : embroidered wall flower
sunflower print : porcelain dishes : giclee print : rain&sunshine letterpress
buttercream cookie-wiches : yellow dog canvas art : vintage minolta camera : boards print

3. it has only taken me thirty-four years to admit that while i'm right fond of the idea of cadbury eggs, the reality of all that sugary muck makes me a bit queasy. sad story.

4. i did not keel over from the yellow fever vaccine this morning, which always makes for a fine day.

5. in a fit of celebration over my survival in number four, i came home and hammered up this enat necklace. i'm so fond of the thing, i thought it’d be fun to do a shiny little mother’s day giveaway to one happy commenter. (enat equals mama in amharic, but i’d be happy to customize yours with mother or nana or grandmum or aunt tilly, as applicable.)

the sterling heart will be hammered and lightly blackened for a rustic feel, then curved into a slight cup. i'll top the heart with a baby pearl for each child, or else a fat cluster just for decoration—your choice. (i can fit probably nigh eight or so, but if you need more we’ll rig up something sweet.)

to drop your name in, just say hello in the comments below sometime before midnight on tuesday (april 26th); i'll draw out a name at random on wednesday. bonne chance!

mellowing and such.

2011-04-18T15:53:00.000-04:00

i find myself not minding much these days when the smalls cart out every last pillow, shoe, blanket and monopoly bill to form a restaurant, or when plastic bagpipe dudes keep company with our fruit.

i think i must be mellowing out nicely in my mid-thirties, softening at the edges. (plus also, it helps that the kids do regularly pick up after themselves, though not always as right away as the parental units would prefer. but right, totally mellowing.)

in other news, it has become apparent to me that i am a Crummy Explainer of Adoption Processes. your enthusiasm has warmed me right through, and a well-timed word of brightness from one or the other of y'all has carried me through many a stagnant morning. i need to explain, though, that we don’t actually get to bring our littlest person home next month. we will spend time with him, which is pretty much the best news i’ve heard in centuries, but then we must squeeze him goodbye and trust him to the care of his nannies, stand before a judge, fly twenty sobering hours back home.

then we’ll wait for the finalization of our paperwork, and for the US embassy in ET to review our case and clear us for travel for a visa interview. when we have the interview appointment we’ll return to addis, obtain his visa, and then bringhimhomehallelujah.

i am hopishly hoping and praying that he might be home with us before his birthday in july. admittedly, that’s a bit of a long shot, but boy would this mama rejoice.

and in the meantime, we (by which i mean mainly elle) will keep building him lego airports to practice that happy day of all together.

:)

soon.

week in review.

2011-04-16T11:22:00.000-04:00

well that week whisked by at mach speed. for an old dude, father time can move.

we now have tickets to addis; we’ll leave may 13th and arrive at night on the 14th. even though i’ve worked out in my head how far we are from the horn of africa, the miles only began to sink in when i studied our itinerary and exclaimed to the mister: this is nearly two trips to hawaii! get out! (i did not actually say the ‘get out’ part, but i should have. it’s very exclamatory.)

the cherry tree out back has bloomed like so much popcorn. on balmy days bees swarm the skunk-scented blossoms, which makes me think they are either resolute in their pollination duties, or else lacking proper noses. poor guys.

i am working on a now-late birthday something for my youngest sister in law, and in allegiance to my lifelong MO, it’s taking roughly twelve times longer than i’d planned. however. if it turns out even a smidge of the awesome that it is in my head, this will be time well spent.

i have officially learned to love lentils. now to convince the rest of the fam. (sort, rinse, simmer, drain. then cook in a bit of oil with onions, garlic, cumin and tomato sauce. serve with salsa and crispy quesadillas.)

(not a picture of lentils, but still sparkly, right? if only my brain would give me advance notice on what odd thing i'm going to find blog-worthy at the end of the week. then i could Photograph Appropriately.)

there’s nothing like a looming court date to make one stare down one’s wardrobe until it twitches. i’m to don business attire and quiet dress shoes, but as a mum who works from home, such things do not live in my closet. (do i own anything that would pass as dress shoes? for that matter, do i own a pair of shoes less than seven years old? um, that would be a negative on both counts.) luckily, i have spotted a dress shirt on clearance and some quietish shoes on ebay. please do not outbid me.

i am a list-maker. it’s entwined with my dna. and let me tell you, this week has been sheer nirvana as i jot and revise lists for everything under the sun: packing, grandma watching our current four, pre-trip tasks, contents for our littlest’s photo book, donations, immunizations. i’m near the point of needing lists of my lists, whereby i will promptly float off on a cloud of happy.

i am dreadfully behind on all forms of correspondence. if i owe you a phone call, email, fb message, or if i haven’t popped in at your space since caesar augustus had his day, please kindly bear with me. i will, in fact, get this carnival running smoothly. probably. perhaps. there’s like a one in three chance.

till next week,
n.

music.

2011-04-11T11:36:00.004-04:00

we rise to a sky slipping steel down the shingles, to a watery smear of sun. laundry mounds, papers tower in stacks of waiting and this is how i know it’s monday. i thought they’d tidied up last night, but the aftermath of books and legos on the middles’ floor is enough to make this mama sag into the morning’s grey.

clearly: this is day that needs singing.

so i put on some crowder band and hillsong and matt redman and start a load of whites in the washer. i fold up this cloak of exhaustion, step from the reach of sticky-fingered fear over all the things that could go wrong in the next month’s time. and i allow His fathomless grace to speak a better word for me today.

thankful:

118 for honest, broken friends who allow me to show up honest and broken
119 for birdsong in the rain
120 for soft-spoken travel agents
121 for the joy of brothers
122 for portuguese bean soup, hawaii-style
123 for lisa who prays
124 for peace enough for this day

rivers.

2011-04-09T10:56:00.000-04:00

in a long-ago april the mister held my hands, shaking like leaves, and we promised a life together.

we were scarcely more than kids, too young and bright-eyed to know all the reasons it shouldn’t work. and i didn’t have the first clue about wifery or growing a passel of littles. but i knew his look was a river of tenderness, and his frame halved the weight of anything that threatened to pin me down. and so here we stand, fourteen years wiser (or at least later), still happily shoring up that vow.

dear mister:

i reckon you didn’t much know what you were in for, marrying me. but you found out right-quick, and to your eternal credit you didn’t bat an eye. i owe you one.

well, maybe two: for that year of manual labor while i finished school, every stone you cleaved dulling your spirit.

and, okay, three: for how you pull yourself from sleep each morning with the kiddos, in spite of your night-owlish preferences.

four: the way you long and pray and work for our family to be together. all on the same continent, under the same spackled ceilings.

five: how you trade in your dreams for God's, and with relish.

so alright. pretty much i owe you twelve billion. but mostly: thanks for doing life with me, for showing up every day and putting in the beautiful, grueling, sometimes monotonous hours of effort. for trusting God’s grace to fill in the cracks and canyons. for loving Him so full it spills down into loving the rest of us, even when we are one part mess, three parts miracle.

you’re my kind of awesome.

love, me.

on funnel clouds and whatnot.

2011-04-07T13:21:00.000-04:00

first off, thank you for happy-dancing alongside us. y’all are some kind of wonderful.

for many adopting families, this process is a zany thing: one endless stretch of twiddling thumbs punctuated by the occasional blip of flurried activity. we’ve a mountain of things to accomplish in the coming five weeks, but since the last time i actually got to DO anything substantial was five months back, i’m embracing this funnel cloud of crazy.

bring it on, i say. :)

ps i peeked in on elle the other night, and maybe it was the way her limbs splayed over mounded quilt and sheets, but she looked two feet longer than usual. i love that my children are stretching into their very own people, all tallish and bright, but sometimes it freaks me out a little.

hallelujah. and i do not say that lightly.

2011-04-05T20:48:00.002-04:00

yes!! thank you, God.

:)

just around the bend.

2011-04-04T13:31:00.000-04:00

‘twas the cousins’ birthday parties this past weekend, which meant superhero masks and cupcakes and enthusiastic trampolining (i sat this part out, as there’s something about birthing four children that is unkind to one’s bladder).

we made baby e a little plum top with vintage lace, and big brother b a reversible cape for his many universe-saving missions (modeled by my second grader).

back at the homefront, we finally ventured out again into the gusty warmth that was yesterday afternoon. i’m heady with the promise of spring.

ps who votes for getting a court date this week? i'm a-hoping clear down to my bones...

april's hall pass.

2011-04-01T10:36:00.002-04:00

[my brain grows slipperier by the week, thus the need to write stuff down in this non-losable scrap of space. it’s like a future hall pass to these particular bits of memory. ]

dear self,

as of april 2011, you want to remember the following:

if you grocery shop with elle in tow, no matter how fast you scoot past those greenish tanks, she will invariably ask for a pet lobster. [please continue to tell her no.]

zee’s fourth grade class is sending socks to japan to help clad the feet of students displaced by the earthquake and tsunami. late tuesday night you found a note he penciled to the child receiving his package, and it was cloaked in so much tenderness you had to pop your head into his room to smile at him.

you really need to figure out this wii thing. one of these days bee is going to stop needling you to play fifa soccer, and you will be sad.

em proclaimed sunday’s supper ‘the best pasta ever.’ and it was whole wheat. and it had highly visible spinach, even.

elle refers to this guy as a pineapple plant:

she’s pretty bummed when it turns into a lily every year.

you wake each day to a patient, funny husband, happy kids, a sturdy home. your friends and extended family double-knot your days with warmth, so that even in this puddle of yearning, you are rich.

don’t forget.

love, me.

the vibrant stuff.

2011-03-30T17:16:00.000-04:00

in the soft chill of last february we’d sit flannelled-up before the pc and rhapsodize over the kids on the waiting child page: she’s got a smile that could melt you like july, this one, and doesn’t that boy look so brave and tender? and i wished they could all be ours for the joy of them, and i’d high-five the air when one by one their photos wore the happy banner: i have a family!

and there was one little guy we’d been praying long for, week after week the small circle of his face still there. and i’d stretch drowsy between the sheets at night still thinking of him, until i began to hope that maybe the family he’s waiting for is ours. that we’ve been waiting for him.

so mid-march we received his file, and we researched and answered long pages of essay questions and interviewed on the phone and closed our eyes tight and hoped. and weeks later the committee met to decide that yes, we would be a good family for him, and i sank back against the wall and wept with relief, surprised by how soon i loved this child.

we thought he’d be home by late summer, early fall. but sometimes things stall out, sputter and cough and leave you dusty on the side of the road thumbing a ride back to hope.

so we’ve been loving our boy long distance for a year now. and you’d think by this point i’d know better, but still every monday i think this could be the week, and still every weekday i think this could be the day, the one where we hear news of the next step to becoming family. and each night the minute hand hits eight pm and punctures my hope, but never mind, tomorrow i’ll wake brimming with the vibrant stuff again.

and all the while our hearts stretch eight thousand miles thin, a taxing feat even for the best of us. but we keep on.

'cause i tell you what: one of these days is going to be the day.

:)

and counting.

2011-03-28T11:05:00.003-04:00

in the end we stayed put, several of our small folk briefly ill on the very day we were slotted to leave town. but there was sunshine to be had, and a yard full of new grass and windows cracked to the clean march wind.

[also? it is good to have friends in minnesota. whenever i feel the need to gripe about how it is supposed to be spring and what is up with the cold, they snap things into swift perspective for me. still, if i ever learn to drive in the snow i am totally moving to minneapolis.]

continuing the gratitude list, #s 109-117:

crowder band
nurses in our faith family
b making a wii fifa player for his soon-here little brother
laundry soap
the Famous One
daniel 3.18 (‘but even if He doesn’t…’)
ukuleles
hand-me-downs
redemption

elle for president.

2011-03-26T19:02:00.002-04:00

found this scrap amidst the kindergarten flotsam that lives on my daughter's floor.

she colors me happy.

together.

2011-03-23T12:35:00.004-04:00

they have their squabbles and a vivid competitive streak [though i cannot fathom where they inherited such a thing], but mostly these guys are blessed silly with the gift of each other.

days slow like honey, plus an update on lilly.

2011-03-22T09:42:00.005-04:00

we’ve kicked off spring break in our signature low-key style. these days mean dozens of family games, kid-instigated crafts, trips to the library, plus relishing the new warmth of our backyard. we dig for earth worms and play hide-and-seek-tag (where the belly giggles of the littler ones give them away every time).

[this is the face of a child who is about to cream us all in monopoly deal. he's a sneaky genius.]

we plan to round out the holiday with a camp-out of sleeping bags piled helter-skelter on the family room rug and a road trip to pop in on people we love like kin. not a bad way to spend a week.

also, today is baby lilly’s heart surgery. please be thinking of her right now and in the weeks to come as her little body works to heal.

the indefatigable lisa hanna, who organized lilly's kimono sewing, has been posting regular updates on her blog and hosts a flickr group sharing photos of the gorgey little kimonos you all have sewn and sent in. please stop by and see.

thank you for loving on lilly. you are precious people, every last one of you, and my heart is fit to burst with the way you profligate kindness.

on tentacles and ardency.

2011-03-21T10:21:00.000-04:00

there’s this thing we do, we Mothers of Many Children, in the softball bleachers, the dairy aisle, the church parking lot. we perform this invisible periodic scan of the premises to ascertain that our littles are all present and upright and hopefully not slinging mudballs at the neighbor’s cadillac.

i don’t literally count kids; four is a quantity one can discern at a glance, and when a child is missing i sense the absence as starkly as if you’d punched a hole clean through me, loony-toons style. when b trekked off to an overnight school trip, for example, or when z spent half a week at summer camp, i schlepped about off-kilter, the axis of my motherhood truncated. those days were an endless loop of scan, panic, remember.

well, a curious phenomenon has developed as of late: i’ll send out my mom-feelers to probe for children and immediately register low-grade alarm at the sense that someone’s missing. i’ll scan again: bee-zee-em-elle. and then it hits me, i’m feeling the yawning absence of our youngest.

obviously, i know he’s in addis. i know we haven’t hopped the succession of planes, haven’t stood a bundle of shaking nerves before a judge, haven’t interviewed for his visa, haven’t plied him with crackers and books and in-flight entertainment and multiple trips to the bathroom just for something to do on the miles home.

and still, somehow, i scan for children and come up limping.

as bruising as it is for this mama’s heart, i’m glad for the preschooler-sized cavity, for the vining ache it grows. i’m glad it cuts me to my knees pleading his case before a Father who loves him clear through. i’m glad God is stoking a slow burn in me, an ardor steely enough to see us through years of distance and the coming days of grieving and exhaustion and hard work as we learn to be a family.

i’m glad, but oh how i want to hope that kid home.

adding to the list of thankfuls, #s 102-108

family and friends who do not leave us to pray alone
indoor plumbing
dr keller’s take on suffering
fresh socks
sturdy loaves of bread
em’s ready smile
yellow

on patches and pie.

2011-03-17T23:07:00.002-04:00

‘tis a well-sung chorus, how boys are merciless on their clothes (most notably the knees of jeans—can i get a witness?), but let it be known that my girl gives her brothers a run for their money.

let’s just skip the downsides to being The Resident Patcher and get to this part: the upside of patching elle’s jeans in particular is that in addition to the necessary interior patches, i get to stitch on bright scraps of florals on the actual outside legs. the boys, go figure, are not so keen on my decorative inclinations.

so today we went from shredded blues:

to kitschy-fun patches:

(you cannot really tell from the waist down, but this here is a Reluctant Model. i grabbed her on her way out to ride bikes, and she was rather sore at the fifty-second detainment.)

i just love it when thrifty and cute collide.

ps also? i’m gonna go out on a limb and suggest that this book?

is probably not the best thing to borrow from the library during lent. just sayin’.

perking up.

2011-03-16T16:23:00.000-04:00

in the space of twenty-four hours we went from damp chill to effortless blue, last year’s moldering quilt of leaves making way for fresh color. and though yesterday’s feverish child traded places with his newly ill brother, they are both perking up by the minute. there’s a little girl pink with the joy of bubblegum and news of our prospective son and the earthy-sweet smell of coffee lacing the air.

it’s downright lovely the difference a day can make.

still.

2011-03-14T11:57:00.001-04:00

it’s strange to wake up in a world where tens of thousands are newly missing but my house looks its usual organized clutter and my children are all accounted for crunching cereal around the breakfast table, everything in its place.

shouldn’t we see evidence of anguish, even here?

but my coffee tastes like sorrow and our thoughts wear a blanket of stillness for so much loss and i cannot spare the world its suffering but we can hold out what comfort we know to a few families who (were it not for the shell shock) look every bit like ours.

God, show up, please. show up through us.

picking up with the gratitude list, #s 93-101

hope still
a sack of potatoes
purple optimism springing up as crocuses
renewed potential of a court date each weekday morning
friends who scaffold my heart
truth spoken from a sunday pulpit
m’s wiggly teeth
God in us
faces i love gathered late in our living room

guest post at imperfect prose.

2011-03-11T10:50:00.003-05:00

i'm near giddy to be guest posting at emily's lyrical space today. do stop by.

ps thank you for all your kind inquiries on my family on oahu/kauai. i believe they are fine and well out of tsunami areas, but please continue to pray and reach out to the people of japan.

almost spring.

2011-03-09T14:50:00.002-05:00

Lent is not intended to be an annual ordeal during which we begrudgingly forgo a handful of pleasures. It is meant to be the church’s springtime, a time when, out of the darkness of sin’s winter, a repentant, empowered people emerges.

Put another way, Lent is the season in which we ought to be surprised by joy. Our self-sacrifices serve no purpose unless, by laying aside this or that desire, we are able to focus on our heart’s deepest longing: unity with Christ. In him--in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph--we find our truest joy.

—Dorothy Sayers, Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter

this is my first close encounter with lent.

i’ve never trucked much with liturgy, but i can see the value of examination, repentance, renewal. i yearn for a springtime in my spirit.

and perhaps i’ll bungle it all up, who knows, but i’m stepping into these next six weeks full of jagged breaks and hope. i’m excavating daily spaces of waiting, and i will tilt my face in raw need and expectation toward the One who awakens me full-bloom.

today and a sneak peek.

2011-03-07T16:20:00.002-05:00

yesterday afternoon handed me the distinct pleasure of photographing the darlingest six month baby. she was squealy and happy and so expressive: i am ever in love with this age.

in other news, the powers that be are discussing proposed changes to the adoption process in ethiopia. we are hopeful that the decisions made will be best for the children they affect. please pray.

a portrait of sixteen.

2011-03-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

but first: i’m maybe ten and swinging hard on the reedy branch that most times curves like willow, but on this morning it’s had enough of me. the wood splinters and i let go surprised, and splay stiff and sudden on cracked pavement of the street below.

a dozen seconds tremble in place before i can inflate my lungs with breath, one harsh swig of relief rushing in with the oxygen. the pain coiling from the back of my skull makes the whole world shimmer into a mirage.

i push up and wobble to the edge of the lawn to regard my father, steadily mowing grass. my bones rattle beneath my weight, partly adrenaline, but mostly because he was this close and hadn’t seen a thing.

i start toward the house, my universe unhinged.

and then i’m sixteen, insisting that i’m fine, that the kid i love is every bit as charming as he seems, we just fight a lot, that’s all. and i want them to leave me alone, let it go, but most of all see through my bravado to the girl knocked flat, gulping for relief that doesn’t come, drowning on solid ground.

but i’m too good at creating distance, i guess. and the pain coiling from the hollow of my chest makes the whole world shimmer into a mirage.

* * *

i'd be remiss to leave you sans-epilogue: that hope wins out in the end, and even this pain, brief but blinding, is redeemed.

plenty.

2011-03-01T15:04:00.001-05:00

on the unfortunate side, i’m still semi-miserable, concentrated mostly in my top half. the lower half has very few complaints, although my legs and feet feel woozy. (is that weird? that’s probably weird.)

but on the happy side, today’s sky is clean like hope and the kids left for school bright and genial this morning (even the one who sometimes gets my goat because he is hypersensitive and headstrong and A Replica of Me). (much can be said for taking after your father in this household.)

and light pours thick through filmy glass, and the dust motes drift and glitter, and God’s brewing his dreams bubbly-full in our beings. our cupboards are never empty. we’re one day closer to our littlest.

and i’m sure we’ll have more snows, but still the ground stirs and wriggles soft toward spring.

this day is ripe with grace all around, and i'm undeserving but wildly thankful.

* * *

linking with:
sweet shot tuesday
global communal
and the happiness project

sickish, plus marshmallow snow.

2011-02-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

‘tis a fantastical thing, how one can go from feeling Perfectly Splendid to sniveling and feverish in the space of a day. my throat’s hacked raw, my chest aches when i breathe, and i’m pretty sure a piece of lung flies loose each time i sneeze. it appears i’m falling apart at the seams (and possibly suffering a case of acute melodrama, but i don’t imagine a cure exists for that.)

nevertheless. i have bunches of photos from friday to share with you (from a healthy distance) before they become stale and crumb up my hard drive, so here we go.

friday marked yet another snow day for the littles. while i suspect we shall all be quite sad to find ourselves still subjected to education come june, that day is distant in a way that feels like it may never materialize, so it didn't keep us from an altogether lovely time.

the kids spent hours tramping veined paths through the drifts out back, packing wet battlements, batting with snowballs and a stick. i hammered and polished and sewed and watched them through the window, sticking my head out the sunroom door every now and then to offer up pearls of wisdom like, ‘pelting the house with snowballs is a great way to break a window. let’s pick a different target, shall we?’

the small folk warmed up with hot chocolate and (of course) soup and cinnamon-sweet friendship bread. ramona and beezus bickered and twirled on the screen, while we burrowed in blankets all around.

then i took ill and slept forever and recited shel silverstein's sick to elle, who found it roundly hilarious. i love that kid.

right now, as crazy-weatherness would have it, 'tis some fifty degrees with torrential rains and an electrical storm rolling in. i am off to search out a blanket and some honey tea (and possibly a new set of lungs). g'night, dears.

lucent.

2011-02-23T17:39:00.000-05:00

she’s woven up silly tender, this one, young in a way that makes her a magnet for bullies.

again she dragged through the door, clutching a scrap of yellow that was once a laminated tag on her backpack: another crumpled casualty of yanking fingers in the bus line.

'k-- did it,' she tells me. 'she ripped it off and held it in front of my face like this and said, aw. too bad.'

we talk about telling k to please not do it again and what it means to repay something hurtful with something kind and before i’m even done she’s skipping off to her brothers in the kitchen, her laugh this buoyant, lucent thing like birdsong lifting the sky.

and while i ache for the sad parts in her day, i find a quiet thankfulness that these hurts don't define her. that she is treasured through, secure enough to allow room for the weakness of others.

i could stand to learn a thing or two from that girl.

extreme measures.

2011-02-22T12:36:00.000-05:00

i think a certain groundhog was maybe just kidding about spring.

we went from all-day rain to ice to snow, a winning combination also known as wintry mix. wintry mix is general code for It's Time to Take Extreme Measures, and so i did: i made soup. although actually, those are Normal Measures around here, to which the mister and kiddos will attest (likely with a gratuitous eye roll at being served the stuff 2-3 times per week).

what can i say.

soup is healthy(ish), economical savory-warmth that nourishes one down to one’s very bones. pair a piquant bowl with slabs of sourdough, and truly: what’s not to love?

soup du yesterday: chipotle chicken chowder. ‘twas fantastic, i tell you, though please be advised that it’s a bit on the spicy side, especially if you overrule the recipe and add extra chipotle-adobo sauce while forgoing the cream altogether. my bad.

the middle two progeny gobbled it straight up, but the older and younger found it a tad too zesty for their liking. (also, normally? eating what mom just spent seventy-five minutes lovingly preparing for you is non-optional. but when a dish is liable to set small mouths on fire, i do allow for a pb sandwich.)

(the cilantro was having a hard day. please forgive its wiltiness.)

next on my soup-roll: chicken corn chowder. i may have to explore the origins of my sudden mania for chicken chowders. (was i harassed by a rooster at a young age? do i have a thing for the /ch/ digraph? ‘tis a mystery, this one.)

in any case, happy souping to you. and if you feel so inclined, please leave me a note about your favorite soup so i can add it to my line-up. i'll let it jump the queue if it starts with ch.

in the works.

2011-02-19T20:02:00.001-05:00

first things first: a few of you asked about The Secret of Heart Bokeh, and i am happy to report that it can be yours too with just a cheapy paper lens hood (see here). hurrah, right? totally hurrah.

and now, let us forge ahead to sewing matters.

i used to cycle through phases of sewing 30+ hours a week for months on end, and then be so sick of hunching over that beastly machine i'd let it sit idle and dusty for a season. feast or famine was the name of the game.

now that i’ve matured into a Balanced Individual (ha), i’m finally finding my groove: enough sewing to keep that excess domestic energy from shorting out my whole electrical system, but not so much that i cannot happily anticipate the projects ahead.

this week's projects colored me downright giddy because of the gals they're headed off to. the softie doll (above) is for the precious, hurting friend of a dear friend, and the teensy kimono dress (below) will soon be shipped to baby lilly.

lilly is scheduled for heart surgery next month. my new and altogether awesome friend lisa is organizing a kimono-sewing for baby lilly, who needs a bunch of wrap-style tops and dresses to wear during her weeks of recovery.

(photo provided by lilly's parents via lisa)

here's a bit more about lilly, written by her parents:

Lilly has a Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD), as well as an aortic valve leak. A VSD is a hole between the two ventricles which causes oxygenated and unoxygenated blood to mix in the heart. Her heart has to work very hard, which causes it to swell. Because the hole is between the ventricles and so close to the aortic valve, she has to have open heart surgery to repair it. She'll have surgery in March (at 10 1/2 months old) with about a week long hospital stay and 6 weeks recovery.

so here's the part where y'all come in. :) i know a bunch of you sew, and if you could spare an hour this week, i'd love it if you could stitch up a little kimono dress for lilly.

size: 3-6 months
chest: 17 inches
waist: 16 1/4 inches
hip to feet: 12 1/4 inches

online patterns:
habitual kimono
bettsy kingston kimono wrap (note: this one seems to run a bit large)

kimonos should be mailed to the following address:
For Lilly
417 Brazil Drive
Hurst, TX 76054

(if you don't have time to sew, but do have some fabric that would make a sweet little wrap-top, feel free to send that to the address above as well.)

and can i just say? i'm so thankful for every one of you, with your giant hearts and capable hands. you make my insides sing and twirl.

have a beautiful sunday, my friends.

home.

2011-02-17T10:32:00.003-05:00

i grew up in a place where the sky burned like summer and wind laced our skin white with salt. where the whole of my world spanned some forty miles wide, hemmed in by blue all around.

but i left for Tertiary Education on the mainland and never did angle back. and now home is a spread of globe starched stiff with winter, where the sharp mix of cold and ash and diesel smells just right.

the name of my childhood town means ‘beloved heaven’* in hawaiian, so you’d think anything after that would be a disappointment. but solid truth: the midwest is gorgeous. all these bare-limbed woods and fields of milk sift through my pores, burrow warm in a seed of belonging. and my neighbors, with their chapped and sturdy smiles, become mine. my people. my place.

i know we’re mere sojourners, steering toward He who is home, but He tethers us together on the passing through. and every stop we make becomes my people, my place, because God lives there. and home to me is the wild and hallowed, teeming, messy, impoverished and beautiful spaces He inhabits.

* * *

join us for more imperfect prose.

*mililani can also be translated 'to praise, exalt,' 'favorite' and so on...depending on if/how you break up the word. (i think. maybe. just believe me when i say this lies FAR outside the realm of my expertise. though i can count to ten, identify colors, and sing 'ten little indians' in hawaiian.)

yesterday.

2011-02-15T21:31:00.000-05:00

i had Big Plans to dazzle my dear ones with heart shaped calzones, cheesy broccoli, and tiny pudding parfaits last night, but then a migraine with a serious vendetta laid me out flat.

by the time i dragged down to the kitchen to manage homework and jumpstart dinner, ‘twas clearly too late for both rising wheat dough and properly chilled pudding: only one of the two could be made.

i’m sure it's already clear how this story ends.

but before you report me to the food pyramid police, i also made a surprisingly edible batch of chili and cornbread* to go with our dessert.

the chili batted .833, the cornbread a perfect thousand, and the pudding has already plum up and disappeared (which is sad news for me actually, as i was hoping to round out the day with a few creamy dollops).

and now, despite the embarrassing hour, i shall have to bid you all goodnight. those migraines leave me knackered for a good few days, and besides that, i am elderly. nighty-night.

*i’m pretty sure God covered for me with the cornbread, because hours after dinner, bee found a bowl of melted butter in the microwave that never did make it into the batter. whoops.

psalm 73.25-6

2011-02-14T13:17:00.002-05:00

He’s written it in iced glitter.
in swarms of suns freckling a night sky.
in blood.
God festoons the universe with grace and
i exist for the exquisite pleasure of loving Him
back.

on bravery.

2011-02-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

what are you being brave about right now? she asked, and i found myself at a loss for that blithe sort of answer i'm generally good for.

i can't so much say i've been heroic or plucky as of late. mostly these are leaden months of heart-weary.

but i got to thinking about it, and here's what i've decided: that sometimes courage means simply showing up, day after barren day, and allowing yourself the bright permission to hope.

* * *

more imperfect prose here. please join us. :)

odds&ends. but mostly odds.

2011-02-08T23:11:00.000-05:00

we got another photo of our littlest today. i wish i could share his grin with y’all, but i shall try to put words to it instead: it’s one part silly-shy and eight parts shining cheeks and just innocent enough that you suspect he’s actually up to something. my, but i’m a fool for that kid.

the mister has been gone to a far away meeting sixteen hours and counting today, and i cannotwait for him to shuffle back through that door so he can see how our smallish boy has grown.

please hurry, mister.

please hurry, court date givers.

a couple of you asked in this here post to spill the goods on my bestest childhood friend, and i almost forgot to answer till just now. actually, i wove in and out of childhood bff’s (so maybe just bf’s?), but my first bestie was next-door-stacey, who—you guessed it—lived smack dab on the other side of the fence.

when we were little, we’d shimmy up the poinciana tree in my front yard and whittle away whole summer mornings. there’s something about perching a good ten feet above the world, veiled in ferny leaflets, that makes it easy to suspend reality. on the ground we were a pair of sensible third graders in pigtails, but up there we were world-class chefs, espionage extraordinaires.

stacey was bright and an introvert and just the right amount of goofy requisite in a good friend. she wore humility close like skin, and boy did she ever love Jesus. (she loves him still. more.) (makes me wish she were once again my next-door-stacey, though i’m doubtful she fancies a move to iceland.)

exhibit a. iceland.

[this here is what i call Screen Bokeh. it's bokeh-y light through the screened window of l's bedroom. watch when i zoom in.]

screeny and fun, yes? aren't you glad we're friends? :)

today was our 457th snow day in the past two weeks (or 7th, if you’re not feeling the hyperbole). in the morning, i set the littles to work while i got orders shipped out and slipped in a few hours of labor myself. ‘twas a strange and wondrous thing to check in on them every few minutes and find all four earnestly pressing color to page and swimming in imaginings.

[He Who Must Not Be Photographed was up to his wiley camera-dodging ways, so you just get the three pictured above. c'est la vie. c'est my kid.]

and now i must be off to press my nose against the window until the mister arrives.

goodnight, dear friends.

valentine-eating monster box.

2011-02-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

so it’s sunday afternoon, three-thirty, and out of the blue it strikes me that when we’re not having winterish storms, my children do occasionally attend school. and clipping on the heels of that epiphany comes the realization that tomorrow is the day my second grader is to bring a homemade valentine box to school. as in, the day after right now.

oy to the vey.

my brain was doing its weekend trick of drawing a terrific and categorical blank, but i wagered that the crafty crow would have some stellar valentine box ideas, and she did not disappoint. we scrolled through the possibilities lickety-split, and m settled on this scary-cute guy. (incidentally: what did people do before the internet? besides plan ahead, i mean?)

i haven't found a tutorial anywhere, so i thought i'd break it down for my fellow last-minuters.

behold: the valentine-eating monster box. in one hour or less.

materials (in order of appearance): cardboard box (or an oatmeal container would be a darling variation), pencil, scissors, 1 empty paper towel roll (or 2 toilet paper rolls), 2 shades of washable paint, disposable bowls, newspaper, foam brushes, white craft foam or paper, black sharpie, optional colored craft foam or paper, glue, craft (as in popsicle) sticks, optional red felt or paper, clear packing tape.

directions:

1. child: in pencil, draw a mouth shape on the front of the box. (be sure it’s big enough for valentines to slip through.)
parent: carefully punch a hole in the middle of the mouth with a scissors, then cut from the hole to the line your child drew. cut out the mouth shape; remove and keep the cardboard piece for a later step.

2. child: draw a small x on the left and right sides of the box, indicating placement of the arms.
parent: cut the paper towel roll in half. these will be the monster’s arms. hold one half against the side of the box at the x (straight out like an arm). trace the circular end of the towel roll onto the box, and cut out that circle. repeat with the other side.

3. (at this point, we taped down our open side of the box, but realized the error of our ways when it came time to install the teeth. save the taping for later.)
parent: pour paint into a disposable bowl. layer your table with newspapers (possibly the floor and/or walls as well, depending on how enthusiastic of a painter your child is).
child: lay the box on its back, and use a paint brush to cover the left, right, front, and top sides of the box in paint.

4. while the box dries,
parent: pour a second paint color into a disposable bowl.
child: paint the arms (paper towel roll halves).

5. make the eyes.
child: using a pencil, draw two circles (or desired eye shapes) on the white foam, and cut them out with scissors. draw eyeballs on the foam eyes with the sharpie. if desired, cut eyelids from colored foam and glue to the white foam pieces. next, glue the eyes to the ends of craft sticks. set aside to dry.

6. draw the teeth piece.

[okay, pause. here is where you get to be smarter than we were. well, everywhere else too probably, but especially here. instead of placing the cardboard mouth piece right side showing as we did, flip it over so the back is showing before you trace. this way all the drawn pencil marks will end up on the back of the piece, and the front will be shiny clean.]

child: take the cardboard mouth piece your Big Person cut out (from step 1) and place it on the craft foam. trace around it very lightly in pencil. now draw a second line on the foam around the mouth piece, but this time leave about an inch of space the whole way around. remove the cardboard piece and draw large teeth along the edges of your inside outline.
parent: admire your child’s drawing skills.

(i know you cannot see our light inner line, but scout's honor: it's there.)

7. cut out the teeth piece.
child: with a scissors, cut the foam along the outside line.
parent: cut a small hole in the inside of the foam, somewhere in the mouth's negative space.
child: cut out the middle, following the teeth edges and inside line.
parent: assist as needed.

8. hopefully your box is now dry from step 4. if so:
child: flip the box over and paint the remaining back side (and bottom, if desired).

9. take a short cookie break while everything paintish and gluey dries nice and well.

10. optional: help your child cut out a heart from the red felt or paper.

11. assemble the monster.
child: dab a line of glue along the perimeter of the foam teeth piece.
parent: assist your child in adhering the teeth to the inside of the box.
child: dab glue on the heart piece and place it on the monster as desired.
parent: assist your child in finagling the towel roll arms into the arm holes on each side of the box.

12. assemble the monster part II.
parent and child: tape the top of the lid closed with clear packing tape.
parent: using the scissors, carefully poke two slits into the top of the box. assist your child in coaxing the craft sticks (eyes) into these slits.

13. and voila, we are done.
parent and child: give your monster-box a stern talking to, stressing that his/her diet is to consist only of valentines, and Absolutely Not teachers, card catalogues or hallway monitors.

(our guy looks unimpressed with our sternness, no? hopefully yours shall be better behaved.) enjoy!

:)

ice days.

2011-02-05T00:24:00.001-05:00

our share of this week's storm showed up as ice instead of snow, which was loads of fun in its own right (mostly because the power didn't check out on us, which tends to be a plus).

i was, however, prepared. last time we had a self-respecting ice storm 'twas six years back, and we lost power for five days.

funny story time:

we were fresh off the moving truck, half our lives still packed up in corrugated cardboard and with a houseful of Truly Small People. elle was two months, m two, z four, b newly seven, and i'm sure someone we barely knew warned us about the impending ice, but even so, i didn't fully (or at all) appreciate the message.

to me, a half inch of ice meant don't drive for a while. i didn't know it actually meant crashing trees and power lines and the eerie green light of transformers exploding all across town.

most importantly, i didn't know the part about zero electricity for five days.

i learned my lesson. the end.

so back to now. luckily, by this point the kiddos are made of sterner stuff, and there is no in-house newborn to shriek through diaper changes in a thirty degree living room. i also had beef jerky and peanut butter and several small creeks' worth of stockpiled water (we're on a well, so no power equals no water), plus lanterns and blankets and batteries.

and most importantly, i'd baked cookies. we were Prepared.

(fyi, i used the best white chocolate macadamia nut cookie recipe from whipped, 'cept i changed out the white chocolate for milk because i truly abhor most forms of the albino stuff. i've been told this calls my mental stability into question, but there it is.)

the backyard transformed into a veritable ice rink, and b played broom hockey with neighborhood friends.

indoors we've played speed and scum and bananagrams and twelve thousand games of gang of four.

we've written our sponsored kids all about the excitement of four days off school, and cooked up funny faces for the camera.

(by the way, this is the sort of pictures elle wants me to take when i'm trying to photograph her reading junie b. i'm all, just keep reading like a normal person, and she's like, kay but first get me lifting my eyebrow!)

no basketball games today, and while i feel i ought to be sick with cabin fever i'm truly quite pleased to be clad in sweats with a slow, cozy afternoon before us.

who knew ice days could be so good for the soul?

:)

the makings of a bibliophile.

2011-02-03T10:34:00.000-05:00

she turns the cover and skies peel back, whole universes string together bright and unwrinkled.

a spread of small, determined fingers press the paper. inked glyphs rise and pulse into talking farm animals, a silly babysitter, a junie b kindergartner with a riot of personality.

she can read, and walls crash down at her glance. i'm giddy with the rumble of flying motorcycles and the glint of mallorn-treed woods in her reach, of a lifetime of storied scapes to wander.

but especially. and best of all. when dark settles soft near eight o'clock and she pulls me or her daddy to her bible. and she ushers us into the bubbling pools and the vineyards and once more the Word becomes flesh. this time for her.

she can read.

* * *

for more imperfect prose, pop on in at emily's.

ps don't forget to drop your name in for a handmade softie doll. (i'm loving hearing about your childhood besties.) entries close tonight!

free to a great home.

2011-01-31T09:08:00.002-05:00

internet friends, meet phoebe.

she is squishy soft and crafted from european wool felt and the cheeriest cotton prints. phoebes would love nothing more than to be traipsed about the house in small arms, or to perch quiet-like on a dresser top and enjoy the thoughtful company of you.

[bonus points if you live in a stone tudor with secret passageways, or a sea-bright cottage, or anywhere within shouting distance of london. she has a soft spot for such things.]

if you'd like phoebe to come live at your place (or be gifted to someone dear to you), please tell me in the comments below the name of your best friend from childhood. [if you'd like an extra shot at winning, tweet or facebook this post, and leave me a second comment saying you did so.]

entries will close on thursday, february 3rd at 11:59pm est. a winner will be drawn at random and will likely be announced sometime friday.

bonne chance, and happy monday, friends!

:)

update 2/4
we have a winner: christa, who wrote, In my early elementary years Cori and Tami were my best friends...and nearly 30 years and 10 kids among us later and with the whole country currently dividing us, they're still my closest friends.

congratulations, christa!

a warm and hearty thank you to all who dropped your names in. i can't tell you how lovely it was to hear about your childhood besties. we're a blessed bunch to have grown up alongside such good and zany folk.

week in review.

2011-01-29T22:11:00.000-05:00

so really, that title is misleading. i don’t actually remember the majority of this past week, which tends to make a review somewhat of a challenge. ’tis a lucky thing i occasionally take pictures and also that my camera has the foresight to record the date; then on saturday i can look back and say, oho! so that is what we were up to this week.

ps i do not actually say oho. that is one of those expressions confined to the imaginary conversations of this blog.

on tuesday, if my camera is to be trusted, elle played school with her stuffed menagerie of students. you’d think they’d be well-behaved, this bunch, what with their lack of vocal chords and all, but the way elle plays it you’ve never seen a class so teeming with hijinks.

on thursday, we dished up bowlish mugs of tortilla soup leftovers, and for the record: i could make a career of eating tortilla soup.

recently i’ve branched out and tried several different takes on this steamy goodness, the latest being pioneer woman’s recipe. ‘twas hearty and filling, but i think i’m still partial to the stuff i normally cook up, which has more of a clear broth base and not so much thickness going on with the tomato.

also, it probably snowed in the past seven days, but that's just an educated guess. this here's a recycled pic from several weeks back.

ah, this part i do remember. we spent about six hours today in the church gym playing basketball. em had a few unintentional assists, and zee and elle were beastly on defense. (for elle it was a delicate sort of beastly, but still. she was on her man.)

this afternoon the ever popular aunt kristin played games with the littles, and then after supper we all (minus the hubby, who had a meeting) lounged in the living room reading library books and scribbling stories. 'twas My Kind of Evening.

my plans for next week include roasting a salty batch of these beautiful guys and also a february giveaway (stay tuned!). and if you've known me a longish while, then yes, it is uncharacteristic and possibly disturbing to find me ogling french fry recipes, but it turns out that adoption cravings are also kind of real. (if you are arching an eyebrow in disbelief, it's okay. i would totally not believe me either if i weren't the one it was happening to.)

and now i am off to a book and bed. see y'all in the ayem.