Week 14: Softness

Our dear friends were here with us in the Salt Lake valley for the first year and a half of our ministry. Just after Matthew was born, they moved to the Cache valley. We see them as often as we can which is never often enough.

Last Thursday I made the drive up and met them at a working farm that was hosting an event called Baby Animal Days. The boys were able to hold baby chicks, ducks, bunnies, and turtles. They pet baby goats, lambs, and calves. They also had the opportunity to see a colt, cats, chickens, and even baby bears.

This week's theme was softness and I had my choice of several pictures that I'd taken that day. Matthew was leery of actually holding the animals but Garrett would have gladly lived in this moment for the rest of his life.

Peas Can We?

Very few things in the world are actually cuter than Matthew's voice. This is why I am going to have to stop taking him with me to the grocery store. Today, while Garrett was at school, The Little Buddy and I went to Winco.

"Mommy," he said, "can we get dat peas?"

"What?"

"Dat. Scoot me cwoser. I show you."

My second mistake, the first being that I took him with me at all, was to actually obey him and maneuver the cart over to the shelves.

He pointed. "Dat." Then he stared deep into my eyes with his own melting pools of chocolate. "I want it. Peas can we?"

And it's that voice. That completely irresistible voice just made the Peach Mango individual applesauces jump into our cart.

I'm powerless to stop it.

Rhythm

I am shamelessly in love with Amy Grant.

That has nothing to do with what I'm about to say but I just need you to know that whatever snarky comment you're making under your breath is simply not phasing me.

So the other day I was listening to her version of I Can Only Imagine found on her Legacy...Hymns & Faith album.

I've listened to that song so many times by so many different artists.

Surrounded by your glory, what will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you, Jesus, or in awe of you be still?
Will I stand in your presence or to my knees will I fall?
Will I sing, Hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine.


Suddenly, on this particular day, it hit me.

I think Jesus would really want me to be still.

Because, you know what? If I tried dancing, it would be neither glorifying nor God honoring. And I really don't want our Savior's first words to me to be, "Please stop."

Love and Protein

He has anxiety.

He's terrified of strangers and really grouchy when he's forced to be in a crowd of people. Especially if they're looking at him. Absurdly so if they dare to talk to him.

He was born wailing. We thought it was anger.

I usually interpret his adverse reaction to crowds, strangers, anyone who isn't his immediate family, really, as an extension of whatever fierceness he was born possessing.

I've begun to reevaluate.

That anger might well be better defined as fear.

He knew her. He knew the way she smelled, the way she sounded, the way she was. And suddenly, she was gone.

He bonded, quickly, to us. He wanted us. Was comfortable with us. Snuggled into us. When he was put into a situation with new people, he shrieked and clung to me. It seemed like he was angry at the world. Controlling. Manipulative.

I think, perhaps, it was entirely terror.

Afraid we'd go and not come back.

Worried we'd suddenly disappear.

So he claws at me to hold him in a crowd. Still. Not always, but often. He frowns when someone talks to him. Unless it's on his terms. He's reduced to instant tears if one of us leaves without him. It's as though he subconsciously thinks, "I've lost one mother. It wasn't on my terms. I'll be darned if I'm going to make friends or say hello or do anything unless it is because I decide to."

We've continued to be consistent. We've held and snuggled and loved, intentionally. Today, at the park, he made a friend. On his own. Just walked up and made a friend. Later, at the store, he said hi to an employee.

For the rest of the day he periodically ran up to me with his award-winning smile. "Wemember I say hi at store?"

"I do remember," I smiled back. "And I was so proud of you."

Progress.

Slowly we are replacing fear with trust.

I hope.

Of course, we did feed him a heaping helping of protein for breakfast so maybe that's all it was.

Love and protein. A recipe for success?

Perhaps the Most Important Words I Could Write

He is risen!

Week 13: Messy

These boots are one of the best purchases I ever made. I got them last year after the boys begged and begged for them. I finally silenced them by asking if they wanted them for Easter. They said yes and, aside from a few pieces of candy, that was what they got on Easter morning.

They love them. They wear them all the time. Especially Matthew. But that's not Matthew. That's Garrett. Playing in the mud. As my sons are both apt to do.

This is the part of our yard where the boys have "Ant Wars" on an almost daily basis. If there isn't mud, they make it. And you know what, I so don't care. If it keeps them busy and it keeps them outside and I know where they are, by all means, make mud. The brilliant thing about kids is that they wash off.

Garrett knows that he removes all muddy footwear and clothing before entering the house. Matthew, well, he's learning.

So thankfully, as I said before, this particular boot belongs to Garrett.

On A Cross

Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some of those who stood there, when they heard that, said, “This Man is calling for Elijah!” Immediately one of them ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and offered it to Him to drink. The rest said, “Let Him alone; let us see if Elijah will come to save Him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split...

Matthew 27:45-51

Easter Candy Drama

Well, I've met my drama quota for the day, how about you?

It was just after 1:00 pm and I'd put Matthew down for a nap. Bless his little soul, he still takes naps most of the time. There's a reason he's my favorite. Oh, okay, I don't have a favorite but if I did, and if it was based on napping alone, Matthew would be the hands down winner. Anyway, he was asleep--or at least well on his way--and I was cleaning out a drawer in my kitchen. Garrett was talking to me (if I had a favorite and it was based on communication skills alone, Garrett would take the cake) and simultaneously sucking on a candy he got at preschool today. It was one of those round, pastel, hard candies that resemble a Lifesaver but are quite a bit larger.

All the sudden, mid sentence, The Rock Star started to scream. It wasn't an angry shriek or a scared sob. It was a turn-your-blood-cold-because-something-is-really-wrong-with-your-kid scream. He immediately clutched his throat. "Ahhh. Ahhh. Ahhhh!" He wailed.

"Can you breathe?" I asked. Because, seriously, if that thing was lodged in a place where he couldn't get air, he was rapidly losing whatever oxygen he had left and I was going to be calling 911 in a New York minute. 

"No!" He wailed. Dramatic inhale. "I can't breathe." Dramatic inhale. "It hurts." Dramatic inhale. "Really bad! Ahhhhhh!"

Okay. So we established that he could, in fact, breathe. My heart rate slowed from an adrenaline frenzied rapid pump to a concerned quick beat. I might have been able to think like a rational adult if not for the screaming. I grabbed the phone.

My husband is no doctor but on more than one occasion I've heard the story of the time he swallowed his Sunday school offering. He was a few years older than Garrett and was taught a quick lesson on why we don't put quarters in our mouths. It lodged somewhere near the bottom of his neck. At the time, they happened to have a doctor attending their church. He took one look at Troy, shoved two fingers down my husband's throat and up came the quarter.

Garrett was pointing to the same spot on his neck that Troy has described as momentarily housing a quarter. I tried to dial Troy's cell. Maybe it was the concerned mother. Maybe it was the screaming. Maybe it was the adrenaline still coursing through my veins. I dialed something like 192-7116 which isn't really even close to my husband's number. And there was no area code involved which, if I actually want to reach Troy, I need to dial. I hung up. "Get me water!" My son commanded as if I was the dumbest human being on the planet and he, himself, possessed a medical degree.

I grabbed a cup, filled it with water, and thrust it at him. He swallowed. "Did it go down?"

"No! It hurts. Ahhh! What are we gonna do? It's going to hurt forever!" At this point he starting swallowing dramatically. When that didn't produce desired results, he began spitting a sticky foam all over the floor.

"I need to call daddy. You need to stop screaming. I know it hurts." I rubbed his back. "I know. I know. I'm going to help you."

I called Troy. Correctly. He didn't answer. I called the office. The church secretary went and got him for me and I asked him what to do. "Should I shove my fingers down his throat or take him to the doctor?" I asked.

"Well, you can try to make him throw up and if that doesn't work you can take him in." 

"Okay. How do I do it? I don't want to hurt him."

"Just shove them down there until he throws up," he replied.

"Okay."

"Keep me posted."

I hung up. Then I took The Rock Star outside. I know. It might not have been my finest parenting moment but, well, I didn't want to have him throw up in the toilet because I didn't want to fish around for the object to make sure it had come up. And, since he wasn't having trouble breathing and, therefore, his death wasn't imminent, I also preferred not to have to clean his vomit up off the floor. Call me a horrible mother but it took an extra seven seconds to get outside and he was irrationally yelling at me the whole time. "No! You are not going to make me throw up! I don't like to throw up. Barfing hurts my throat."

That last one really got me. If I wasn't worried about his pain level at that point I would have asked whether barfing or having something stuck hurt worse. Because if he wanted to live his life with a hard candy stuck in his throat who I am to judge? To each his own.

I told him to open his mouth. He batted at my hand, turned, and ran up the slide into his play yard. I turned around. "Okay, fine, I guess it'll just hurt then." I started to open the door. I do this reverse psychology thing on my kids a lot. Sometimes it dawns on me that I'm up a creek if they don't bite. "Hi, just ignore him. He never stops screaming because he's had a candy stuck in his throat for a month and a half." Thankfully he turned and came to me. I shoved my fingers deep down his throat. He gagged. Nothing happened.

"It still hurts! It's still there! Ahhhh!" He wailed. I reached for his mouth again. "No! I don't want you to do it again! I said I don't want to barf!"

As soon as he said that he keeled over at the waist and violently began to heave. I'm still not sure whether he took matters into his own hands or whether his body just took over on auto pilot. He heaved. Foam and sticky saliva came out. He heaved again. More foam. More sticky saliva. He heaved and retched. Up came a chewed tomato. Up came phlegm and gunk. Up came the hard Easter candy.

"Are you okay now?" I asked.

He smiled. "Yes."

I picked the candy up from the grass.

At that point I realized that my right hand was coated with a very sticky, very slimy, saliva. I'm still not entirely sure how it got there. We walked in the house. He saw another hard Easter candy, still in the wrapper. Looking at it with disgust he muttered, "I am not going to eat that."

I washed my hand. It took great quantities of soap and quite a lot of scrubbing to get the saliva off. Apparently his throat started mass producing some kind of coating.

Then I did what any good mom would do. You know, to make up for the fact that I made my anguished child walk outside to throw up. I took pictures.

The set up of this photo is two fold. On the one hand, I thought that by having the candy next to a quarter, people would get an idea for the size of the candy.

On the other hand, well, like father like son, I guess. Maybe 25 years from now Garrett's own child can add a trinket to the "Things Our Family Has Attempted to Swallow" collection. Although, this is not the quarter Troy swallowed. No. Because he actually washed that one off and put it in the offering.

He didn't beat his daddy on size but he's younger so it stands to reason that his esophagus is smaller.

All in all, it was about a five minute ordeal (much shorter than the 15 minute ordeal Troy went through). I have every reason to believe that his body would have broken it down relatively quickly--although I never would have just let it go what with the way he was shouting and sobbing. Thankfully it was just a candy. As Troy pointed out, if he'd had to wait for his body to break down the quarter, it would probably still be there.

Social Experiment

This morning I was reading a blog post by Kristen Howerton. If you aren't familiar, Kristen is the mother of two biological daughters, an adopted African American son and an adopted Haitian son. The particular entry has a picture of babies asleep on a tarp in the aftermath of the earthquake. Matthew crawled up on my lap and, seeing black babies, pointed and said, "It's Matthew baby." I tried to explain that it wasn't him but he was having no part of accepting that.

"I promise you," I said, "you've never slept on a tarp in Haiti."

Matthew understands his unique color within the confines of our family. As such, he thinks any picture of any brown baby is him. I pulled him onto my lap and typed "African American babies" into a Google image search so that we could look at several pictures of kids who share the hue of his skin but don't otherwise look anything like him.

As we looked at different kids, I came across this picture.

I was captivated. I moved the mouse to click on it. There is something about the immense muscles of this huge father holding the tiny child, something about the stark color contrast, something about the love, that made me need to see it bigger than it appeared in the image search. When I hovered the mouse over it I saw the title of the jpg.

Gross Picture.

Perplexed--and not in a good way--I clicked in to the site that the shot came from. It's a site for the Council of Conservative Citizens based in St. Louis. The title of the article reads "New York Times Celebrates adoption of white baby by black NBA star." It was posted in June of 2008. The man is DeMarcus Ware and, for starters, he's in the NFL, not the NBA. The article does correct itself in the body but the title gets it all wrong. This, however, isn't even the tip of the iceberg of what the article gets wrong. It may not, actually, even be on the iceberg at all.

"Why would a wealthy black celebrity go to all the trouble to adopt a white baby, ignoring the multitude of available babies of his own race?" The article asks.

"Why would an adoption agency give a white baby to this bizarre black athlete, when thousands of white couples are desperately waiting in line for the opportunity?" It questions.

"Why is the life of a young baby girl being used for social experiment?" The article implores.

Why is my heart pounding violently inside my chest? Why do I suddenly feel hot all over? I began to research DeMarcus Ware. He and his wife suffered several miscarriages and a stillbirth before adopting their daughter, Marley. They've since added a biological son to their family. When Marley was born, on February 29, 2008, it apparently sparked debate across the nation. The New York Times article doesn't mention ethnicity. Personal blogs and other articles do.

The Daily Voice: Black America's Daily News Source said, "Do you mean to tell me that the Ware's couldn't have found a little black baby to adopt?"

Mediatakeout.com said this, "...the writer never even mentioned the fact that their adoption was a cross-racial adoption. Guess in today's world of political correctness, you're better off pretending that there's no elephant in the room." It also said, "...maybe the next time around they can adopt an African-American child..."

Marley Ware is actually Hispanic.

Does it matter? I'm not asking if her ethnicity matters. Certainly it does. But does it matter if she's Europian American, Romanian, Spanish, Russian, African American, Korean, Ethiopian, Haitian, Hispanic or Canadian? When it comes to building a family, I mean. Does it matter?

Families become families in all sorts of ways that cannot usually be predicted. When people ask me how we "ended up" with Matthew I tell them that his mother chose us. She looked through countless profiles of countless adoptive parents and she chose us. The Ware's are an African American couple with a Hispanic daughter. We are a Caucasian family--a mostly German mutt-breed, really--with an African American son. If it's acceptable for us to adopt transracially and not them, that is overt racism at its worst. That we whites can do it but those blacks can't is absurd. If it's unacceptable for either of us to have adopted transracially, well, we're just dealing with a different kind of racism. And people need to redefine their idea of what it means to be a family.

Transracial adoptive families face an uphill battle of issues. An Everest of issues, if you will. Adoption. Identity. Racism. To call into question the very essence of our families is unwelcome and unwarranted. It devalues who we are.

There is absolutely nothing gross about that picture. It is one of the most incredible shots I've ever seen. And this one...

Gross? Absolutely not. Gorgeous? Yes.

Family.

Marley Ware and my son, Matthew, are full members of our families, deeply loved and fiercely protected. They are not social experiments.

Torture

An open letter to my neighbors.

To Whom It May Concern,

I find it necessary to explain that I was not, actually, murdering my oldest child tonight. If you live within a three mile radius of my house, you may feel that you were listening in on his brutal death. In reality, he was having a small amount of hydrogen peroxide applied to a dirty skinned knee. Terrified that it was going to send him into an early grave, he fought me with all of his might. Had he wrestled with half as much passion, he would not have ended his season with an official 0-9 record, I assure you. It took several minutes for me to get him into a position where his limbs were not flailing about and assaulting me. During the duration of these minutes, he was shrieking loud enough to power a small city--should that noise have been harnessed and converted into usable energy.

The whimpering you may have heard was not a wounded puppy but, in actuality, my younger son sobbing in the corner of the bathroom. He was begging me to stop. He was pleading with me to allow him to rescue his brother. On more than one occasion, I had to plant my entire body over the top of the older, look into the eyes of the younger and explain that mommy was only trying to help. She was not, actually, inflicting pain upon his brother for the sheer fun of it.

He stood, clutching his beloved blanket, tears flowing down his cheeks, repeating, "I sorry brother. I help you. Stop mommy."

His brother shrieked and sobbed and screamed hysterically. But he did, in fact, survive the ordeal. There was no death by hydrogen peroxide. There's really no need to call the authorities.

Together, Garrett and I explained to Matthew, when all was said and done, that I love them both very much and would never try to hurt them. They are both settled into bed now and neither seems to be sleeping with one eye open, afraid of the psychotic beast who refers to herself as mommy.

Garrett's knee is clean and sporting a band-aid.

Call off the department of child and family services. I assure you it wasn't nearly as bad as it sounded.

Signed,
The Hydrogen Peroxide Torturer

Ridiculous

In my last post I said, "This is the time in Utah when the weather can be 70 degrees on Monday and it can snow on Wednesday. Ridiculous."

Yesterday, when I got home from an amazing women's conference, I changed into capris and a tank top. It was a sunny, pleasant, brilliant day. The high was 79.

In the late afternoon the clouds rolled in.

Today, the thermometer reads 37. It's snowing off and on.

Week 12: Spring Has Sprung

When I first saw this week's theme I kind of rolled my eyes. Our trees are still bare. There are very few flowers. This is the time in Utah when the weather can be 70 degrees on Monday and it can snow on Wednesday. Ridiculous.

I had no idea what I was going to post. I thought about going to the archives and finding something nice and springy from last year. But then...

Garrett ran in from outside. "The Ice Cream Man! He's here! He hasn't been here since last summer!" He got his own dollar out of his own jar to purchase his own ice cream.

And at 7:00 pm it was warm enough for him to eat it in the backyard.

Spring has sprung.

My Little Bear

Last night was dress up like an animal night at Kid's Club. My husband, who does not currently have a face painting business on the side, turned the boys into a tiger and a bear. (We're one kid short of an oh my.) 

He should have a face painting business on the side, am I right?

When Matthew's face was finished, he sprinted into the room where I was and shouted, "Mama! Yook! Yook at me." He was frantically pointing a finger at his face. I oohhhed and ahhhed about how great it was and took to calling him Little Bear for the rest of the night. We actually decided that if Matthew was an animal he probably would be a bear.

On our way to the church I made a small gasp. Not so loud that Troy would think we were in eminent danger of hitting a small child, but loud enough that the boys would wonder why I'd done it. "What?" they asked.

"Little Bear," I said, "Do you know what happened to Matthew?"

He got a very puzzled look on his face, pointed to himself, and quietly answered, "I right here."

"I know where you are, Little Bear, but have you seen Matthew?"

He was silent for a few moments, clearly trying to figure out what rocker I'd just fallen off of. "Did we leave him at home?" I asked again in a playful tone.

He seemed to catch on and, with a glimmer in his eye, answered softly, "I eat him."

"You ate him?" I gasped, my eyes wide. "What did he taste like?"

Without giving the question any thought at all, he replied, "He taste like chocolate." Troy, Garrett and I were in hysterical laughter by this point which just made Matthew think the whole thing was absolutely the funniest thing he'd ever experienced.

"Little Bear," I said once I'd recovered, "did you also eat Matthew's brother, Garrett?

"Yeah," he confessed. "He's in my tummy."

"Oh. Well. What did he taste like?" I was very curious about the answer. I thought that, since Matthew tasted like chocolate, Garrett might taste like peaches or vanilla or Elmer's glue.

"He taste like chips."

Spoiled Rotten

Currently, I'm reading the boys Little House on the Prairie. We've already read Little House in the Big Woods and, truth be told, I chose this particular book after finishing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the simple fact that I think Garrett will absolutely love Farmer Boy and I figured we should go in the order they were put in. I'm sure that, at some point, we'll get stuck in the middle of The Long Winter much like I did when I was in elementary school. But, for now, we're trucking wagonning through the second book in the series. Being that both boys are obsessed with the idea of the wild frontier, Indian jamborees and running through the prairie all day long, they're loving it.

Several nights ago we reached a portion of the book that I could still have paraphrased from when I first read it 23 years ago. Even way back then, in ancient times, I realized just how spoiled I was. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the chasm is even greater.

And in the very toe of each stocking was a shiny bright, new penny!

They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny. Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Think of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy and a penny.

There never had been such a Christmas.

Wow. We're ridiculous. This society. This day and age. We are a spoiled rotten people. I hope I can teach my children that life is about so much more than stuff.

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days...You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter." -James 5:1-3, 5

Week 11: Night

Since we weren't anywhere spectacular at night last week, I had to go to the archives for this one.

It was taken near the entrance to Tomorrow Land last summer. We spent three nights and two days at Disneyland and California Adventure with my parents. My boys loved watching the fireworks, Matthew from my arms and Garrett from his grandpa's shoulders.