Taking Off

I used airline miles.

And I'm going to the LA area to have two fun filled days with my college roommates, one of which is turning thirty today.

Troy--with help from our good friend, Christy--is going to hold down the fort. I'll be back on Thursday and I'm hoping that I'm relaxed, well-rested, and overflowing with girl talk, delicious food and good stories.

I'll miss my guys. I always do. But when you live in a house filled with testosterone, an estrogen fix is sometimes very necessary.

Let us all pray for an uneventful flight, unlike that one time I went to New York and the crazy lady was screaming at her daughter to kiss the plane in order to save us all.

What I Believe

I thought I'd post, occasionally, about what I believe. Here is the first installment.

My faith is everything.

I believe that "...God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but will have eternal life." John 3:16

I believe that "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23

I believe the words of Jesus when he said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me." John 14:6

I believe that "...while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:8

I believe that "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast." Ephesians 2:8-9

I believe "That if you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9

I believe in believer's baptism. Baptize means "to plunge, submerge, immerse." In the Bible, baptism always follows a declaration of faith by the individual and always involves being submerged in the water. Once a person becomes a follower of the Lord, then baptism follows. I was baptized as a baby, in a denomination that practices infant baptism. Later, we began to fellowship with a denomination that practices believer's baptism. As a teenager, my youth pastor immersed me under the salty waters of the Pacific Ocean. By that time I had accepted the Lord as my personal Savior. By that time I was prepared to make a public confession of my faith. I also do not believe that water baptism can save our souls. The only thing that can save us is the blood of Jesus Christ.

My boys have both been dedicated to the Lord. Troy and I promised to raise them in the Truth. We promised to teach them the ways of God. My oldest son has received the Lord as his personal Savior. When he can fully comprehend baptism, he will experience it. I eagerly pray that a day will come when my younger son accepts the free gift of salvation and, later, is baptized.

If you want to know more about a personal relationship with Christ, please ask me. Nothing makes me happier than seeing another individual receive the gift of eternal life. Two nights ago, my very good friend made a commitment to follow Christ. The angels are rejoicing. I am rejoicing. This is what I believe...

Moses and Daniel

Toads.

We have two.

The Rock Star named them Moses and Daniel. Moses is appropriate given the whole plague of frogs thing. And Daniel, apparently, is Garrett's favorite character in the Bible. Well, next to Jesus but even Garrett had the good sense not to name a toad after our Savior.

It all started when toads showed up at Troy's softball game, courtesy of a couple from our church who now live in Wyoming. Apparently they have an infestation of toads. They're home for a visit and they brought a bunch of these creatures back with them. At one point during the game, my son came to me with big, bright, eyes. "Tyler says I can take them home!"

Sweet, adorable boy who once occupied my womb, say what?

Oh yeah. I heard him right.

When the game was over I talked to Troy. You know, figuring that he would say no. He told me it was up to me. No. It was up to him. No. It was up to me. You see where this was going. Our major concern was that we're leaving soon for a road trip. Garrett's solution to this, "They can sit next to me in the car!"

"How will we get them home tonight?"

His answer, "I can put them in my pockets!"

I looked at my friend, Abi. "It's become evident to me that I'm raising one of the Little Rascals."

Troy and I went back and forth. I finally broke the news to my precious son, the one I was now imagining in overalls with no shirt, a toad in his pocket and a club house with a He Man Woman Haters sign on the door. "No." I whispered gently.

I expected a fit. He didn't throw a tantrum. Instead, his eyes welled up with tears, his spirit fell and his lower lip began to quiver and I realized that this was one of those "pick your battles" moments. I could crush him and possibly deal a blow that he would remember into adulthood. "Once, when I was four, my mom wouldn't let me have toads." Or I could acquiesce.

I struck a compromise. We'll own pet toads for approximately two weeks. The plan, after that, is to release them into our garden.

Moses and Daniel are currently living in our butterfly habitat (boy has that thing come in handy!) where they've consumed crickets, sat in a dish of water, and played hide and seek in the weeds. Occasionally we get them out and let them hop around--being sure, of course, to keep them away from our cat because I really don't want amphibian carnage strewn about.

It really is another opportunity for my sons to see God's creations up close. It's also another opportunity for me to realize, as I'm grabbing crickets with my bare hands and getting urinated on by toads, that I should have seen my all boy world coming. I should have seen it coming from a mile away.

There Comes A Time

There comes a time.

There comes a time in every little boy's life.

There comes a time in every little boy's life that his mother mutters, "What have I done?"

There's comes a time in every little boy's life. Right? Please tell me I'm not the only one.

In the summer, we keep The Little Buddy's hair pretty short. He likes it that way--seriously, he asks for hair cuts--because he doesn't particularly like us combing through his thick, curly, hair. I use ethnic hair products that make it easier but he still just isn't a fan. He hates to sit still and he has better things to do than primp. He was in need of a haircut so I got out our clippers and I cut it.

(Before. Hamming it up for the camera.)

(After. Swimming in the pool.)

He likes it. When I finished his hair, I held him up to a mirror. He rubbed his head. "Mah hayah. I yike it!" (My hair. I like it.) He's obviously not the one this story is about.

We also decided to give The Rock Star a buzz so that, when we go camping in two weeks, he can just roll out of his bed sleeping bag and go about the day. The Rock Star had a cute, often spiked in the front, hair cut.

For the life of me I can't find a really good example of that spikage but there he is with hair. Anyway. Which is something. Something he used to have. Oh what have I done to my child?

A week ago I buzzed The Rock Star's head as well. It was shorter but it didn't look drastically different. In fact, it was such an unimpressive buzz that he still woke up with bed head. He still jumped out of bed and required a little water sprayed on it to make it go where his mother wanted it.

Last night we went to Troy's softball game. There were toads there. More on them later. Oh will there ever be more on them later. Because, well, I'm the proud new, temporary, owner of two toads who eat crickets with wild abandon and with lightning speed. We've explained to Garrett that in a couple of weeks they will become "yard pets" and if they choose to actually stay in the yard, all the better. I digress. The point is the hair. Don't mind the strange look he's making. Just mind the hair. Decent buzz cut. Kid looks alright.
But again with the bed head thing. It was totally defeating the purpose. That purpose was that he could roll out of his sleeping bag and go about his day. No water required. No having to jump into Lake Tahoe or the Oregon coast to properly wet down his mind-of-its-own hair.

So this morning I told him we needed to go one shorter. And, here is the thing. I'm still pretty convinced that we only went one shorter.

Straight down the middle. That's what I did. And then I audibly gasped. "What have I done?" I considered walking away from the project and leaving him with a reverse mohawk. But I didn't. I closed my eyes, dug deep, and continued to practically shave my baby, my firstborn, my whole heart, bald.

Please understand. The lighting in the pictures makes it look even worse. But only a little worse. It really is, just about, as bad as it looks. Of course, I didn't tell him that. I told him it looked great. I told him I'd rub his head for the next two weeks until it doesn't feel spiky anymore. (I've always been a sucker for a buzzed head--just ask my brother.) I told him to go surprise his daddy. Then I watched his daddy's face. "Wow Buddy! You got your hair cut!" Then he looked at me with enormous eyes and deep concern.

Later, his friend came to the door. "You got a haircut!" he exclaimed.

Garrett followed with a big grin and a sweet, "Yep!" Oh, Son. I'm glad I was able to veil my horrid mistake and not make you feel self conscious. When you're old enough to understand the catastrophe, I grant you permission to chastise me for this event.

Because there isn't going to be any bed head tomorrow. Of that, I am sure.

I just can't believe I did this.

It's all my fault.



There comes a time.

There comes a time in every little boy's life.

Right?

That One Movie...

When we went to see Soul Surfer we did it with the idea that we might let Garrett see it. We had our parental filter on, deciding whether it would be alright for him to see. When it was over Troy said no. Something about how Jaws traumatized him for life and he didn't want the two second shark scene to terrify our boy. That seemed reasonable enough to me.

Last night I told The Rock Star that I was going out with some ladies. I didn't tell him what we were doing but later on in the evening I said something to Troy about "the movie" and Garrett immediately howled.

"You're going to the movies? Can I come?"

I explained that I was going with a bunch of women and that we weren't sure he was old enough to see it.

"It's about a surfer girl who lives in Hawaii," I said.

Nonchalantly he replied, "Is that the one where the girl gets her arm bit off by a shark?"

Turns out that when I was watching an interview with Bethany Hamilton and I thought he was watching something on television, he was actually listening to the interview as it played quietly on the computer. In it, she mentioned surfing that Halloween morning and she talked about the ensuing loss of limb. Apparently, it didn't bother my son at all.

So at some point we'll probably let him see it. It's such an incredible story of faith and overcoming adversity and how we can do all things through Christ who gives us strength. But maybe I'll still fast forward through the accident sequence so that he doesn't stop loving the beach.

Soul Surfer

Last week, Troy and I went to see Soul Surfer for his birthday. The boys stayed with here because my mom and dad were visiting. And can I just take a moment to say, "God bless grandparents!" If you live in close proximity to your parents, do not take them for granted for two seconds. I can't tell you how often I think, "If only my parents lived here." There was a time when we lived by all four of our parents. Those were the days.

Anyway.

It's not like I think the film is going to win any Oscars. It's not going to get the year's Best Picture or anything like that, but it's one of those movies that just kind of sticks to you. We talked about it all night. And then it went to the dollar theater and I knew that I needed to go see it again.

I love that it portrays Christians in such a way that we don't look like complete quacks. I love that there is a Holy Bible and "Blessed Be Your Name" and a World Vision trip. I love the island of Kauai.

I was supposed to go see it on Monday but I ended up on an important phone call concerning the protection of my family and missed it. But I get to go back tonight. I'll leave the theater wishing I was a surfer, wishing I lived in Hawaii, wishing I could swim in warm water every day.

Wishing for everything about that lifestyle. Shark attacks notwithstanding.

When it comes to shark attacks, I'd much rather live by the Great Salt Lake.

Resolve

I was born without confrontation skills.

I'd really rather crawl into a hole and die than get into a conflict with someone. As I grow and change, I'm trying to develop biblical skills for dealing with differing opinions, or hurts, or arguments. But still, conflict makes me want to pull the covers up over my head.

Unless my family is concerned.

I'll fight 1,000 battles in its defense.

The primitive mama animal instinct bubbles up from somewhere in the depths of me, wraps its fingers tightly around my heart, and I find that I'll fight any fight with anyone.

I can't go into detail at the moment, but we're being called to protect this thing the Lord has built through us. And while I find myself exhausted from the sheer weight of it, I find that inside of me is a resolve I don't think I knew I had.

Excessive Poop

The Little Buddy pooped 13 times in 3 days.

That's what happens when one eats copious amounts of fruit and black beans.

Then he got the worst diaper rash either of my children has ever had. His brown bottom was red. And puffy. And bumpy. And if I so much as got a baby wipe within two feet of him, he recoiled. We took to using the bathtub, a wash cloth, and large volumes of diaper ointment. He walked as though he'd been riding a horse for days.

He's better now. It was a sad state of affairs for about a day.

Crushing

Not quite five.

That's when my oldest, my son, the one I carried in my womb for nine long months, turns on a dime and decides he's crushing. That's when he gets a twinkle in his eye and a silly grin on his face. That's when he says that maybe he won't marry me after all. Maybe he'll marry her.

Danica Bananica.

I'd change her name to protect her innocence but then it wouldn't rhyme with Bananica and what would be the fun in that.

Tonight is preschool graduation although, technically, they have another week left of school and, even more technically, my son isn't going to kindergarten next year. We've long since decided to give him a third year of preschool. Of course, he met Miss Bananica at school. Darn that academy.

Like a complete ignoramus, I failed to realize that he was talking about this girl frequently. Danica said this. Danica did that. Danica brought a Barbie for show and tell. My teachers call Danica "Danica Bananica". Finally, on a whim and fully expecting a recoiling shout of, "NO! Ew. Gross," I asked my beloved firstborn the now dreaded question.

"Do you like Danica?" He stumbled for just a step, recovered, looked into my eyes and replied.

Slowly.

"Yes."

My parents were here and my dad, like any good grandpa, egged him on. I'm pretty certain that it culminated in Garrett saying something about how she's beautiful. And nice. I can't be sure because I'm attempting to block it out of my mind.

Today, when I picked him up from school, he had a confession.

"I told Danica that I like her and I gave her a hug." I smiled at my precious boy.

"Did you give her a kiss?" I asked.

He contorted his face into a hysterical concoction of appalled meets snips and snails and puppy dog tails. "Ew. No!"

"Good," I sighed a breath of sweet relief. "She wouldn't like that very much."

Miss Bananica is already five. She's going to kindergarten in the fall. Their romance will be over by next Friday. But a day will come when my sweet son will kiss the girl and the girl will like it.

This won't be happening for at least another twenty years. If I have any say in the matter.

Tired

I'm tired.

And, yeah, I threw a surprise 40th birthday party this past weekend, lost my voice, have all kinds of post nasal drip, am waiting to go back to the doctor to have a thing looked at and I'm having to choose, very deliberately, not to freak out, and feel like my calendar is just a list of one thing after another but I'm generally not one to get down because of any of that stuff. Well, with the exception of the thing which, at this point, really just has me more perplexed than anything.

But I'm tired of a lot of things.

I'm tired of the wind. I hate wind. Unless it's a soft trade wind blowing across my back as I sip a cool drink under a palm tree in Hawaii. Or other such similar circumstances not involving Hawaii but involving blazing temperatures somewhere else instead. So, you know, not really similar circumstances at all.

I'm extremely tired of it really not being warm. My definition of comfortable temperatures is no less than 75 and no more than 85. I deal with under 75 but I don't like to deal with it in a bathing suit and I'd really like to be in a bathing suit by now. On the side of the pool. With the smell of sunscreen drifting past. I deal with over 85 but I hate running my air conditioning because I have Borderline Tight Wad Disorder.

I'm tired of wondering if Matthew's father really will visit at the end of the summer like he says he will or whether it will be another situation where we plan for his visit and then he suddenly can't come. Just thinking of it makes me want to take a sleeping pill.

I'm tired of this.

And that.

And that other thing.

But I'm so thankful for so many things. It might not be as warm as I'd like but there isn't snow on the ground. It might be really windy here on occasion but my house hasn't been destroyed by a tornado. It might be difficult trying to plan for Matthew's father but we're no longer in the middle of a contested adoption. And I might be tired now but we're going to Lake Tahoe in less than a month and I can't think of anything more refreshing than that. At the core of who I am, I have everything I ever wanted. When I think on that, really think on it, then I stop feeling like I need a nap.

And who would I be kidding anyway? I haven't napped since I was two.

Moratorium Lifted

Transparency.

Made visible by light shining through from behind.

There was a time when I tried to be honest and permeable when I wrote. It was a time when I said what I needed to say, believing that people understood that they held my heart in their hands, believing that by letting others catch a glimpse into what this life was like, I might make a difference, however small. The discovery came as a shock to me. People who disagreed with me in huge ways were also paying attention. People were reading who knew that by holding my heart in their hands they could do intense cardiac damage. Many times, over the past year and a half, I've wondered why it bothered me so much. I knew the details. They didn't. I had all the information. They didn't. I knew me. They didn't.

I became blocked. If I couldn't convey my heart through words, there was no point in writing about anything except funny things my children say, bipolar Utah weather, and barf. When I've allowed myself to write anything about adoption, I've feared that I'll receive uninformed and accusatory responses, that I'll end up on yet another website slamming my family for stealing someone's child, that the details will be falsified.

I've had people ask me how we talk about adoption with our sons, how we plan to forge ahead as a transracial family and how we honor Matthew's birth parents. The truth is that I want to share some of that here, from time to time. I don't want to be afraid of slanderous comments.

We take one day at a time. We are constantly having to change our approach. I think this will always be the case. Matthew will always be growing, changing, needing more, needing less, expressing himself in different ways. And it will always be, first and foremost, about him. His mother and his father will likewise grow and change and express themselves in different ways. Troy will change. Garrett will change. I will change.

I'm praying my way through this, trying, always, to do right by Matthew. We try to think about what is in his best interest right now and what might be in his best interest twenty years from now.

If you've adopted, are considering adoption, or are just plain curious about something, feel free to ask. I'm really trying to lift the moratorium on writing about the details of open adoption.

Happy Birthday, Troy!

When I first met Troy, I had a boyfriend. Troy and I became good friends. Good friends with a big, fat age difference. Later, the boyfriend became a fiance. Troy and my friendship continued. Throughout the summer of 2002, my relationship with He Who Shall Not Be Named began to fizzle. I realized that there was the idea of someone out there who would be everything I was looking for in a husband and that the yo-yo I was dating wasn't it. I saw, in Troy, everything I wanted. Of course, Troy was much older, much wiser, and, you know, all grown up. So it wasn't Troy that I was looking for. I just knew it wasn't He Who Shall Not Be Named.

When I broke off the engagement he asked me if there was someone else. Like a total idiotic moron I said, "No. But there is the idea of someone. There is the idea of someone who will be everything I'm looking for."

He asked, "Like who?"

Like an even bigger idiotic moron I said, "Like Troy."

Who, for the record, The Ex knew.

As it turned out, Troy liked me. He didn't seem to mind that I was all, like, a baby and still in a cradle and stuff. He came to a show I directed and we went out to dinner afterward. He asked me to date him, officially.

I needed to consider this for a moment. See, I can do quick math as long as it's basic. I knew that if we dated and if we got married there would come a time when I'd be 29 and I'd be married to a 40-year-old.

That time has come.

For the next three months my 40-year-old husband will have a wife in her twenties. What a lucky guy. ;-)

Happy Birthday, Troy. I love you with all of my heart. Thank you for providing for us, for loving me and our boys and, above all, our Lord and Savior. You are my everything and I hope we get to share another 50 years together.

Do You Mean Fudge?

My parents flew in yesterday.

We all hiked up to Timpanogos Cave today. I took a trillion pictures so there will be more on this to come.

We'd also decided to get ice cream afterward.

On the hike back down The Rock Star was talking about what kind of ice cream he wanted. "...and I want hot pudge on it."

"Hot what?" I asked, not thinking I'd heard him right.

"Hot pudge," he said.

Well, I guess that gives new meaning to the phrase A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

Potty Progress

I forgot how often little tiny people go potty. Today Matthew used the toilet about 12 times and only had one wet diaper. That diaper was barely wet. Really. I thought it was dry. After sticking my nose within an inch of it and sniffing I changed my mind. And if you think that's too much information, well, you'd be right. He also had a poopy diaper. I didn't stick my nose in that one.

Typically, he runs into the bathroom, lifts up the toilet lid and then waits for someone to come take his diaper off. When he really needs to go, he runs to find someone older than him. Then he pounds on his diaper and yells, "HAVE POT!"

I really hope I never get pulled over by a cop while Matthew simultaneously needs to use the bathroom. Because. Seriously. They'll do a narcotics sweep of my car and my child's unmentionables.

Potty Training

Potty training The Rock Star was easy. I tried, for about a minute, to train him around two. He was uninterested, confused, and generally unready. When he was two and a half we found out that we were adding to our family. I started getting out baby stuff. I started stocking up on diapers. I started talking about how the baby would be really little. The baby would wear diapers. Babies wear diapers. The Rock Star potty trained himself in about two seconds. And *gasp* he was dry at night. I take no credit. He did it all on his own.

But poop was another issue entirely. He was inexplicably terrified of pooping on the toilet. On his third birthday I took away the Pull Ups. Armed with a bunch of presents my mom had sent as incentive, we persevered through nasty loads in his underwear, through a serious bout of constipation that culminated in hysterical sobbing on the potty, through about a week of fecal hell. Once he actually managed to go on the toilet, he received a Grandma Gift and the rest was history.

About a month ago I asked Matthew if he wanted to go potty on the toilet. He nodded emphatically. Nothing happened. From time to time I'd ask him. He'd hop up and strain and grunt and nothing would happen. I wasn't pushing it. He's still really young and he's only very recently become verbal.

But he started going. On the potty.

Three days ago he went three times. (Of course, there were still lots of wet diapers.)

Two days ago he went three times. (Of course, there were still lots of wet diapers.)

He's been telling me that he has to go. And then actually going!

Yesterday he went three times.

At the end of the day the boys were in the bath together. I walked across the hall to grab their jammies. I heard the toilet lid and assumed it was Garrett. A couple moments later Garrett called out, "Matthew went potty!"

"He did?" I called out. Just then a naked, wet toddler wandered into the bedroom. "Did you go potty?" He nodded.

He followed me into the bathroom. The lid was up, the toilet seat was soaking wet and floating in the water was more than potty. The Little Buddy had left a little deposit. My two-and a-quarter-year-old got himself out of the tub, climbed up on the toilet and went poop. No fuss. No screaming. I didn't even know it was happening!

When I got him up from his nap yesterday he had left a major stink in his diaper for me. "You know, you can go poop on the potty too!" I'd explained. Apparently this was news to him and he needed to test my information.

I am not crazy. I know that he'll probably regress and I'll be worrying about whether or not he's going to head to kindergarten with diapers. But last night I was definitely proud of my little pooper.

Motherhood. There's no where I'd rather be than down here in the toilets trenches.