Life in My Body is Hard

This morning didn't start how I had hoped. Last week was harder with Drew. Not the worst week by any means, but hard. We were discouraged thinking about the medicine and how long this bad spell was this going to last this time. Though last night I counted 5 days of no screaming. This week was different than the last, so much better. But then the morning began with screaming.

After time spent using all my learned tactics on how to calm a raging child, I was ready to throw in the towel. Thankfully Jathan was about to leave but hadn't yet. If it is only a 5 minute break, it still helps. So he stepped in, allowed me to breath for 5 minutes, then he had to leave.

I stepped up again.

Finally, Drew settled down and instead of screaming mad, he cried sad.

I held him.

We took relaxing breaths.

Then he says in a defeated tone

"life in my body is hard".

Heart breaks

I try to empathize with him, encourage him, point him to Jesus, assure him of our love for him, remind him he is not alone.

But I don't totally understand. He knows it, he sees my frustration.

Life is hard inside his body.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Today is an absolutely beautiful day. The sun is shining. The air is not hot and not cold, just right. The birds are chirping.

So the doors and the windows are wide open. The kids are on the patio playing. I won't allow them in the house. Days like this should not be wasted shut up inside.

It is refreshing to breath the fresh air.

Thank you God! I needed an afternoon like this.

Legoland California

Legos are a huge thing at our house. An activity that I happily support. You can't go anywhere in our house without finding a Lego piece. Hopefully you didn't step on it barefoot! The Lego magazine was introduced just over a year ago, as well as Lego.com. What a marketing genius. With the magazine came the realization that Legoland is not that far away and even better each issue has a free child ticket with the purchase of an adult full price ticket! The wheels had been turning in their heads on how we can use these free tickets since the children outnumber the adults. But they didn't have to figure for too long because in November, Grandma told them that their Christmas gift was to spend a week down in Carlsbad visiting Legoland. This was a dream come true.

So last month, mom and I drove the kids down (Jathan was able to join us for a couple of days). We spent 3 days at Legoland, a day at the beach and a day swimming in the pool. We had a condo with plenty of space + a kitchen. We had a great time.

I have to admit leading up to the trip I was a bit nervous because we had struggled so much with Drew on past trips. The meds seem to help him, but still you just never know. We packed a stroller to carry water bottles, snacks and lunch. And to carry Drew. He will be 7 next month, and looked way too big for the stroller, but you know what? It helped a huge amount. He cannot distract himself, so when he is tired of walking, that's it. He won't walk anymore without a fight. It doesn't matter what exciting thing we are headed to, he cannot concentrate on anything but how tired he is of walking. So into the stroller he went. I battled in my mind thinking "he is almost 7, we are not asking much of him" "He can physically do this, there is no reason he has to be in the stroller" "Are we making it worse by enabling him?" But at the end of the day, we had a peaceful time at Legoland. So, all I could say is we did what we needed to do to make this a pleasant trip. And it was!

Monday, the day Jathan joined us at Legoland was a rainy day. We got wet, but we only had to share the park with 500 people. That made up for the rain.

Slowing Down

Sometimes I think the key to surviving being a mother, wife, teacher, (pick any other title that applies) is the ability to multitask and squeeze things into tiny time slots. And some days it is true. Many things would never get accomplished if I didn't. Would I ever get any laundry done?

But I have been reminded lately, that maybe that isn't always the best way. Especially squeezing things in. I can't even count the times we had some place to go, I looked at the clock and saw we still had 5 or 10 minutes before we needed to leave, so I picked a "quick" task to do. To me, it just makes sense. I mean, not doing anything for that 5-10 minutes would be a waste. Right? But 9 times out of 10, that 10 minute project really took 11 minutes, now we are late and you know how the story goes. I'm stressed. I'm yelling at the kids to get in the car, and they never get in as quickly as I would like. So now I am really stressed. I am yelling at the driver in front of me because he actually made a complete stop at the stop sign. (ok maybe I am only muttering under my breath, but you better believe the kids in the back heard) I know my blood pressure is on the rise, but my testimony just plummeted.

I don't know if any of you struggle with this. But I have found that when I am trying so hard to be efficient, I often times am not a very nice person. And it is my family, most always my kids, who pay the price. I am yelling at them to hurry, I say "no you can't help with dinner, because we have to get it ready quick", etc.

I have to slow down. Do I really need to do everything on my "to do list" right now? Is it really more important than being calm and nice with my kids? More important than having time to stop what I am doing to listen to what they are saying?

Now I know that there are times when you have to get things done. And sometimes you have to multitask while your kids are talking because, lets face it, some kids will talk all the time (which isn't a bad thing) and if you have multiple kids, you would be stopping and listening all the time and never feed the family.

MacKenzie loves the kitchen. I am ashamed to say I have denied her request to help me prepare dinner countless times recently. I have lost sight of what my job raising her is really about. I can justify that it takes so much longer than if I just get it done myself. But what am I doing? Is my only goal that her tummy is full or is it to train her so some day she will be able to put a meal on the table for her family?

Thursday night, all the kids helped in some way with dinner. Whether it was food prep or clearing and setting the table. Did it take longer? Oh I am sure. Drew missed the bowl when breaking open an egg, the whole thing was on the floor. Paige was pretending she was on a cooking show, describing in detail every single thing she did and why. But that is not all, we ended up with a wonderful meal, time together, proud kids and full tummies.

I don't know why I have to learn this lesson over and over. Maybe if I slowed down I wouldn't have to.

100 Days Survived

Today we celebrated the one hundredth school day of the '11-'12 school year. Generally the only reason to keep track is in case a social worker comes to the door and asks for school records. Because really when you school at home or where ever you find yourself, you realize that learning can take place without a math worksheet sitting at the table. But for record keeping purposes, I keep a calendar of the days between fall and spring that we do sit at the table with a math worksheet.

Until recently, however, those numbers were not posted for the students to see. This year is different. Drew's special ed coordinator recommended us count days using numbers and coins. The thought is to help him see the numbers increase and see a value for the number. Also to see the value of 10 pennies equaling 1 dime and now 10 dimes equaling 1 dollar. I told the kids at the beginning of the school year, we would celebrate the 100th day. I wasn't really sure how, but I said we would do something different.

As the day approached the questions started increasing about what we would do. One child (Clay) said that maybe we wouldn't have school that day. Another (Paige) responded that if we didn't have school then it wouldn't be the 100th day. That would be a dilemma. hmm. So we settled for no chores (so the house isn't looking the greatest right now, but oh well), a special snack, the bare essentials of subjects (everyone had their math worksheet to do of course) and games. Several games.

I got a chuckle at lunch when MacKenzie prayed for the meal and thanked God for allowing us to survive 100 days. Yes, we did survive. And yes, we still have quite a few more days before we can call it a school year and put away the calendar. But we are over half way there!

Anybody Still Out There?

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Happy Thanksgiving

and every other holiday that has passed since I last wrote.

My intentions were to blog more once the adoption was finalized. I realized how hard it was to blog and post pictures when I couldn't write much about MacKenzie or post any pictures of her. It didn't seem right to leave her out. I hated cropping her out of photos or leaving some of the best ones off because she was in it. So I told myself as soon as the finalization happens, I will post more again. But then I had completely gotten out of the habit of posting, so that of course didn't happen. Well I would like to say that my New Year's resolution is to post more, but it isn't. I hope to. But I going to focus more on spending time in the Bible, spending more quality time with my family and growing patient as I parent and teach my kids at home. I would love to write more. It is kind of a journal online. But I know it won't be my priority.

But today I AM blogging. So here goes...

MacKenzie's finalization did happen in November. We are so grateful! Thank you to all who prayed. The relief that was felt when we walked out of that courtroom was huge. A seven year old knows when she doesn't share the same last name with you. She notices when the social workers come to check on things because she doesn't legally belong to you. And she notices when you say that you are the foster mom to the nurse in the hospital, because legally that is what you are and for insurance purposes it has to be straight. So when it is adoption day it isn't just a relief that we don't have to answer to the county anymore. We invited a few friends to celebrate with us at the courthouse and afterwards with dinner.

A couple of days after MacKenzie's adoption we headed to Death Valley National Park to camp over Thanksgiving. It was so freeing to be able to leave town without calling the social worker and to get to go into Nevada without having to have a judge approve of it. We had a good time. I didn't realize how beautiful a place with the word "death" in its name could be but it sure was.

We are continuing to learn how to navigate through life with prenatal alcohol exposure. The charter school that we are working with is absolutely wonderful. They have set us up with speech therapy and occupational therapy for Drew. He goes every other week for both of those and then daily I work on things at home with him. The special ed teacher guides me along as I teach Drew at home, offering wonderful support and encouragement. Every other week we see a psychologist. She is working to help Drew with his rages. I am not sure if it is helping, but I do feel like it is helping Jathan and I know how to handle him better. We still have really, really hard days and sometimes the bad spells go on and on. But God continues to give us respite through other people or just Drew having calm days himself. Parenting Drew is a new world. We fight daily with figuring out what does he have control of that is sin and he needs to work on, an obedience issue and what is something that he has no control of. We had a glimpse at how the wiring in his brain messes up when one evening he couldn't remember his own sister's name. It saddened us greatly, but I think it was good for us to see. It truly is an invisible disability. Drew looks completely normal. And when he is around other people, most of the time he can act completely normal. Even for Jathan and I, we have to remember the brain damage. I am seeing it more and more with school. But it is so hard when his frustration results in raging. Which it can so often do. It is hard to focus on helping him when it feels like he is verbally abusing me. Yet it isn't Drew saying these words. But when we can get him down from a rage and we have to do it, he cannot calm himself down, he is broken. God is sanctifying us, but I have to admit, I feel like I fail more times than I succeed. I break more times than I care to admit. So we are constantly on our knees. We came to a point in December where we had tried everything from nutrition to psychologist but were only seeing things get worse. So we went back to the psychiatrist we had seen at the beginning of the year. The result is that Drew is now starting on meds. I have to admit that I struggle with this. I feel like maybe I failed somehow. I am one that does not like to take medicine for anything. But our home had become a place of constant tension where we were constantly walking on eggshells so we wouldn't set Drew off. Quite honestly it was not a pleasant place to be for any of us. So when we went into the office, the doctor acknowledged all we had tried and said that maybe it was time. I walked out relieved, scared and feeling a bit defeated. We are going slow, continuing all that we did before, because we do not want this to be long term. Are we getting results, it is hard to say yet. The dose is so low. I stop and think so often, what am I doing to my son. At the same time he is miserable himself, feeling completely out of control. We can most certainly use your prayers if you think of us.

I went more into detail than I planned on, but then again if you follow the blog and really want to know how things are going, you need to know the background. I am reminded daily of God's love for me. I don't deserve it at all. But his son, Jesus Christ, purchased my forgiveness and Christ's righteousness covers me. I am in awe when I think of the work that was done on the cross. Christ conquered sin. His work is finished. And God is still working in me.

We Have a Court Date

We met with the paralegal today and were given the official court date and time.

Friday, November 18 at 3:00

We praise God that it did not have to be pushed back anymore. Two more weeks and she is legally ours!!!

Thank you for praying!