Happy Mother's Day Everyone

Thank you Lord for blessing me with my beautiful children.

Happy Mother's Day to all of my dear friends.

PRAYER WARRIORS...You are needed today!

PLEASE PRAY FOR MY FRIEND. Today my friend
Steffie and her husband are in a hospital with their son Andrew. Andrew
will be having open heart surgery to repair a hole in his heart.
Andrew is from the same orphanage as Sophia and has the same condition
she did. My friend waited 3 years to bring this little miracle boy
home. Today she is on her knees before God praying for his life and
future. Please pray for this little boy and his family.

I was Hungry Momma...

It has been almost a year now since Sophia came home.  A beautiful wonderful life changing year for all of us. When I see my children together, their bond is so strong that it is hard to believe that there ever was a time when they were apart.  I don't like to think about that time.  The time when my daughter was in orphanage.  I don't like to think that I was not there for her for the first 3.5 years of her life.  It tears my heart out to think of all that she endured.  Some of the pains are written in scars on her tiny body that I pretend not to see, that I pretend do hot hurt me.  We live our lives for the present and the future.  

But every once in a while she and I talk about China.  And yesterday she told me that she was hungry when she lived in China.  And it pained me so much to hear it.  I knew it.  I had always known.  When she came home her hair was like straw and she was so small.  There were no full cheeks and huge dimples like there are today.  It hurt me so much to know that my baby had gone without the necessity of food. 

Now that she is home and happy and playing dress up, it is easy sometimes to forget where she came from.  But it is so important that I do not.  That I do not forget where I have been and what I have seen.  It is so important for me not to get too comfortable in this house and life with my completed family.  I need to keep working for the orphans just as I did before Sophia came home.

So today, I dressed the twins in their 147 million orphans matching shirts to remind me and those around me of the children who need help every day.  There are children who we can reach and impact as individuals by working with real people who we know and trust.  147 million orphans was started by a very good friend of mine who changed my life by her love and faith.  If you have gotten too comfortable and need to remember what you have seen and where you have been...go to 147millionorphans.com  Buy a shirt and feed a child dinner.  It's that simple, you buy a shirt, you feed a child in Africa dinner.  It is a direct one to one correlation.  

147millionorphans.com

Fun at the Hardware Store.

One of our new favorite things to do on a Saturday is to go to Lo*we's for the children's pojects.  Last Saturday Eli and Sophia made a wooden baseball game.  They each have their own aprons and receive a patch for every project they complete.  So far they have three patches.  Next week they are making a planter for the garden!

Easter Day Photos...Which one do you like best?

These are our Easter photos of the children.  I tell you, we took a ton of them and these are the best that we have.  It is so hard to get 4 kids to all smile together. I'm going to have Tim lighten up the one of Eli and Sophia.  I think that one will be cute in their room.

I wanted a gorgeous lake photo, but it was so windy yesterday that Sophia's eyes are closed in all of them and everyone looks like they were freezing (they were).

So, which one do you like best?

He Is Risen.

Happy Easter!

Warm Enough for A Day At The Park!

Woo Hoo!  It was beautiful yesterday.  Very warm and sunny.  I packed up the twins and we headed to a playground at a nearby school.  They ran and played for two hours.  I was amazed at the difference between Sophia on the playground now and when she first came home.  She is so much more agile now and moves much faster.  She is brave and willing to try to go down the high slide even though she is afraid. 
Eli is still much more aggressive and moves much more quickly, but I think a lot of that is the fact that he's a boy.
They are wonderful playmates and siblings.  They do have their spats, but for the most part, they take care of each other.
I love the last photo of Eli. That is his "Cool Guy" look.  

Visiting the Butterflies

We live near a wonderful botanical garden and each year they bring in a large number of butterflies and raise them until they hatch and then release them into a beautiful terrarium.  When you go to visit, you walk into a room filled with butterflies flying free all around you.  Eli and Sophia were completely enchanted. 

We had so much fun watching them fly and hoping they would land on us. There is also a wonderful children's garden area outside and we walked in the sunshine while the children ran and played.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Sophia on Sunday!

Does it feel the same? Bio and Adoption

Does it feel the same? Bio and Adoption       My latest post at No Hands But Ours


I remember when I was pregnant with my oldest son Zachary. I had no idea what was in store for me. I had no idea of the scope of the emotions that motherhood would evoke. I was on the verge of the greatest love of my life.

I remember looking at him after he was born. I loved to just look at him. I would check on him all of the time while he was sleeping to make sure that he was still breathing and that everything was ok. His smell was the sweetest. I would hold him and look into his eyes and he would run his little fingers through my hair. I loved him in a way that I had never loved anyone. My heart was consumed with him.

When I discovered that I was pregnant again with Tyler, I worried. It was a secret worry. I wondered how I could ever love Tyler as much as I loved Zachary. I could not imagine loving two people that deeply and completely.

My worries were completely unfounded. When Tyler was born, it was like my heart grew and Tyler had his special place filled with all of the love and joy that Zachary’s place in my heart held. I was doubly blessed with my two beautiful sons.

Elijah was a surprise for me. I had not truly intended to have more children. He came to me later in life. I was an older and more mature mother. It was a very stressful time in my life though. Tim and I had not been married for very long and had a lot of new family issues to deal with. My job was shaky. I was put on bed rest for six months due to uncontrollable bleeding. It was a tough time. But when he was born, he brought us such joy.

Shortly after he was born, I started to think about the gap between him and his brothers. There are 10 years between him and Tyler. I didn’t want him to grow up alone. I was already re-living the baby years and truly enjoying them. I knew that another pregnancy was not advisable since I had had such a tough time carrying Elijah. Tyler had been a very difficult pregnancy too. I started to think about adoption.
Tim and I started working on our adoption of Sophia on our second anniversary. I was very excited about it. But the secret fear came back. Can I love her the same? Will the fact that she is adopted make a difference? My mind said, “absolutely not, it will make no difference”. But I still had the secret fear.

Our journey to Sophia was a very long and emotional one. Sometimes it seemed as if she would never come home. But after three and a half years, it was our time. We were going to China to meet our daughter.

The feelings I had when I first saw Sophia were not the same as was when I first saw my sons. I was completely overwhelmed with sadness and anger. I was unprepared in my heart to meet a child who had no one. I could not believe that there was no Aunt, Uncle or Grandparent who would come forward for this child. To be looking into the eyes of a beautiful child who has no one in this world will literally stop your heart. How could this happen to this baby? How could there be no one? Looking abandonment in the face was devastating to me.

And then my heart kicked in. I was no longer looking at abandonment. I was looking at my child. Right at that moment she became my child. No longer an orphan. No longer with no one. We had come forward and with us Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles and loved ones in America came forward too. We were now her family.

My heart grew Sophia’s place where all of my love and joy for her lives. It is every bit as real and alive as the love I have for her brothers. The secret fear was unfounded again. For me a child is a child no matter how God brings them to you and I am so happy that I can say that. I am so happy that I love her the way that I do.

My relationship with her is uniquely its own. There has been a lot of bonding and growing and changing over these past seven months. My relationship with each of my children is unique. They each have their own personalities that interact in different ways with my own personality. They are each uniquely loved by me, their mother. I feel so blessed to have the motherhood experiences that I have had. I am so humbled by the gift of my children. They are pure magic to me and I thank God for them.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Visit to the Cardiologist

This is Jason. He is a nurse who works with our pediatric cardiologist. He was very instrumental in helping us bring Sophia home. He is the man who answered my call for help and had me e-mail Sophia's referral information to him. He reviewed everything and had the cardiologist review it too and got back to us very quickly. I cannot say enough about this man.

As many of you know, I was hoping for a better outcome from this appointment but I am still happy that everything is ok for our girl. Sophia's heart surgery for asd/vsd should have been done when she was about a year old and wasn't done until she was almost four. The result is that her heart is slightly enlarged from all of the additional work it had to do to keep her alive. Our cardiologist said her condition is mild and he thinks she will grow out of it, but she needs to remain on her blood pressure medication for another year. She does not have an issue with blood pressure, the meds help her heart to relax and get used to working properly now that it has been repaired.

Trip to the Dentist...

Eli and Sophia had their first trip to the dentist last week. They did a fantastic job! No fussing, they were perfect little patients. Eli has no cavities and Sophia has the beginning of two but we are going to keep an eye on them to see if they clear up. I was very proud of the twins!

More than I Love You

More than I Love You

Sophia has been our child for seven months now. She has adjusted wonderfully to our family. She enjoys playing with other children and attending preschool. She knows the family routines and is comfortable in our home. She sleeps soundly on her own in her big girl bed. She freely shows love to each of her family members. From all appearances, it truly is difficult to tell that she has not been with us since birth. From all appearances, she and Eli are equally adjusted in our family unit. Sometimes when I see them together, I don’t remember that it has only been seven months. Sometimes it is easy to believe that it has always been this way.

But there is something in the way that she says, “I Love You”. Sophia tells me that she loves me at least 30 times a day. That is not an exaggeration. And there is something in her words that I cannot directly explain, but I hear it. Her words say, “I love you Mama”, but I also hear the fearful words behind it, “the please keep me, I don’t want to go back”.
I believe that the constant, “I Love You Mama”, is her need to let me know that she wants to stay here with us. That she is still afraid of being taken away. She needs me to know that she wants to be here and more importantly, she needs me to affirm that I want her to be here with us too and that I am her Mama.

I know that this is normal. I know that this is something we will have to go through most likely for years until she knows on a subconscious level that she will be with us forever, but it breaks my heart. Every day I tell her over and over that I love her. I tell her over and over that she is my only girl. I tell her over and over that she is the most wonderful little girl in the world. I tell her over and over how much Mama and Baba love her and that we will be her Mama and Baba when she is 5,6,7,8 and all grown up and a Mama herself and even when she is a Grandma. I hope that she can hear the hidden words behind mine, “I love you so much that I cannot imagine a day without you, I could never imagine a daughter more wonderful and I would give my life to keep you safe”.

Eli tells me he loves me about 4 times a day. There is no need in his voice. The words come easy to him. I long for the day when it is the same for Sophia. I long for the day when she doesn’t need that constant affirmation because she knows in her soul that she is mine and I am hers.