Thankful...

Today I feel compelled to tell you some of the reasons why loving Andy is so easy right now...

• This morning he spontaneously told me, "Why don't you walk over to Starbucks for 45 minutes and enjoy reading your Bible while I get the boys their breakfast." I was shocked. And thankful. And I REALLY enjoyed it.
• He prays for me...every day during his prayer time and every night as we lay in bed. And especially when he knows I'm struggling with something.
• Most days he calls during the boys naptime to see how my morning went. The conversation is typically less than 5 minutes.
• He works diligently to allow me to have breaks every now and then...Wednesday nights after dinner, Saturday mornings, etc.
• He allows me to be completely honest about how I'm feeling or what I'm struggling with without judging me or correcting me. I'm thankful for that freedom, and I'm also thankful for his words of encouragement that help me see things from a different perspective.

I could go on and on telling you about wrestling matches with the boys, washing dishes, picking up after himself, and other things. But I'll stop here for today and just let you know that I'm thankful for my husband. 

Loving Faithfully

On Monday nights Andy & I are leading a married couples life group through a curriculum called "Marriage Built to Last". This past week Chip Ingram gave a definition for love that I have thought about over and over the past few days. He said love is "giving someone what they need the most when they deserve it the least at great personal cost." Chip was specifically talking about marriage, but I've been meditating on it in relation to what that looks like with my kids.

Honestly, according to that definition, it's a lot easier for me to "love" Andy right now than it is for me to "love" my kids. Although this has been a busy couple of months for Andy, I can see how much effort he's putting in to helping out at home, trying to give me windows of relief, and empathizing with what I'm going through. We have really been working together as a team as we navigate this adjustment period with Sammy. It's not taking a lot of effort to "love" Andy.

Without going into all that we've been dealing with (mainly the same ol' stuff...sleeping issues, sibling issues, attachment issues) I'll just say that this has been a tough week for me and I've been feeling very weary. When I heard that definition of love I thought to myself, "That is where I am living right now."

Today as I was reading my Bible, I came across Proverbs 3:3 which says,

"Let love and faithfulness never leave you; 

bind them around your neck, 

write them on the tablet of your heart."

Love and faithfulness. That is what I need right now. I need to keep giving my boys what they need the most when they deserve it the least, even when it comes at great personal cost. I need to faithfully do that today. And tomorrow. And next week.

I'm so thankful that I have a Savior who loved me when I least deserved at great personal cost to Himself.

For your viewing pleasure...

A few Halloween pics of the littles...

Happy Birthday, Sammy!

We celebrated Sammy's 2 year old birthday tonight. We don't know his actual birthday, but we chose October 28th based on some information his birth mother was able to provide. We wanted to do something to make it special and celebrate, but nothing too big or overwhelming for him. So we just invited over our dear friends, the Santos family, for dinner, presents, and dessert. It was a very fun, non-stressful birthday party!

Here are a few pictures of our evening:

 

I love how Sammy is grabbing food off of Cailyn's plate 

while she's not looking! That boy loves to eat.

 

Name puzzle given to him by his Uncle Teve & Aunt Lala

 

All four of the kiddos "helped" unwrap the presents.

It was fun & exciting for all of them because they know

they will all benefit from Sammy's toys!

Notice how Caedmon very subtly "helps" Sammy

blow out his candles.

 

Pretty excited about his dessert...

 

He has a smile that will light up your life!

 Nite-Nite snuggles with Mama.

Dear Sammy,

Happy Birthday! We are so happy to get to celebrate YOUR LIFE that God saw fit to rescue from poverty and malnutrition and probably death. We are abundantly thankful that God chose to place you in our family. You are a priceless gift to us.

TWO things that I love about you as you turn TWO years old:

1- You are incredibly resilient. You have been through an enormous amount of turmoil and grief in your short life. I know in your heart that you realize your life is not as it should be. And yet somehow you smile and laugh your way through every day. I cannot imagine going through all that you've been through, and I think you've displayed great strength in the midst of it. I believe that God will use your resilience to enable you to overcome insurmountable odds that people who lack faith said could never be done. Your ability to maintain joy in the midst of uncertainty should be an inspiration to us all.

2- You are a "people-person". Not so much right now because you're still nervous when we go into new settings. But your daddy & I had the great joy of seeing your personality in Ethiopia and we can see it now when it's just us in our own home. Soon enough you will come back into your own again and the world will be so blessed by your winsome ways. Your smile, playfulness, and contagious belly laughter could win over the hardest of hearts. You know that you are adorable and you either assume that everyone else does too, or you just don't really care what everyone else thinks. Either way, God will use your "woo" to allow you to gain favor in people's eyes. This will give you influence into their lives and we pray that you will use that influence for God's glory.

Samuel Wondimu Wood, you have already added so much to our family. We celebrate YOU today and all that God has made you to be! I love you so, my precious baby boy. You are my answered prayer.

Love,
Mama

Monsters Inside Me

Have you ever heard of the show Monsters Inside Me? I hadn't either, but another adoptive family told me about it while in Ethiopia (when I was eating dinner, no less). It's about parasites and what they do to your body. The episode my friend had watched was very, very gross...made my skin crawl while I continued to choke down my spaghetti.

Any way, Sammy has had a monster inside him for quite some time now. Giardia. I was suspicious that something might be going on intestinally while in Ethiopia because his poop/gas would blow you out of a room! It was putrid! I promise you that if there had been a toxic gas alarm in our room, it would have gone off at all hours of the day. While he did have some diarrhea, stinky-ness was his main symptom. I felt the need to apologize to everyone who came by our room and felt sorry for those seated anywhere near us on the airplane.

Please meet the 5th member of our family, Giardia.

As soon as I knew the date we'd be bringing Sammy home, I scheduled a doctor's appointment for him and requested a stool sample, blood work, and thorough physical. Sure enough, the lab technician called me the next day informing us of what I already new...Sammy has a parasite.

This is super common in adopted kids and it's really no big deal to treat. I was honestly relieved to know that there was a reason for this godless odor that was invading our home and that there was hope for eliminating it. We started Sammy on meds right away and thought that was that.

When I took him back 3 weeks later for a follow-up, our pediatrician said "Let's do one more stool sample just to make sure the medicine took care of it." Might I add that gathering a stool sample is not on my Top 10 list of fun things to do. But, of course, I agreed and the next day we got another call...There are still monsters among us.

Sammy just completed round 2 of the meds and hopefully the monster has been neutralized. But now I'm totally paranoid. One nurse told us, "I've seen this get passed through a whole family." So Sammy definitely has at least one more stool sample in his future, but I told Andy that if this is a requirement for all of us, he's on his own! That is where. I. draw. the. line.

This is what we do with Giardia filled diapers (sorry it's sideways)...