Sunday Funnies

(My friend does this on her blog and I love it!  So I'm borrowing it for today.)

Mark started laughing today when I said, "Bella, don't bite me!  You kiss without your teeth."

We have taught Bella very effectively that the bathroom and the kitchen are off-limits to her.  So this is how she stands when one of us is in the shower or going to the bathroom.  

Instead of having her stand at the line in the kitchen and cry and whine when I have to be doing something, when she's exceptionally tired or needy, I've started doing this:

The first time I did it I thought, "this will last five minutes, maybe."  And then she stayed in there for forty minutes while I made Mark a birthday cake!

My gift

Yesterday morning I read this from A Holy Experience.  That’s the name of Ann Voskamp’s blog that is emailed to me almost daily. 

“You don’t get to make up most of your story.  You get to make peace with it.  You don’t get to demand your life, like a given.  You get to accept your life, like a gift.”

That about sums up what I’m trying to learn huh?  I’m doing a pretty poor job of accepting and making peace.  If the lot I’ve been handed lately is a gift, it’s more like a scratchy, ugly knitted sweater that doesn’t fit right, rather than the “how do you know me so well?”-“this is beautiful!”-“it fits me perfectly”-“I love it” kind of gift.  The former gift is annoying.  You’re supposed to be thankful, but you know you’ll never like it.  So you just fake a smile and say “thanks”.  But inside you say, “how could he think I’d like this?”  “What am I supposed to do with this?”  “Doesn’t he know me better than this?”  The problem is that I truly believe Ann’s words are true.  So how do I look at the hand I’ve been dealt and call it perfect and beautiful and trust that He knows me fully in giving me this gift?  I don’t know.  I just don’t know.

(Here I stopped and cried.  But then I sat and thought some more and wrote this…)

I guess I don’t have to be thankful for the fact that we can’t adopt Bella.  I can be thankful I’ve known her.  I can be thankful for what God’s teaching me through all of this.  I can be thankful in the midst of it.  But I can also grieve.  I can be sad and frustrated.  A woman doesn’t have to be thankful that her husband died or that her son was diagnosed with cancer.  But she can choose to trust and be thankful in the midst of her grief and confusion and sadness.  Maybe that’s what it means to accept the gift and make peace with it.

She walks

Actually this was taken about a month ago.  She is beginning to run all over our house and is more and more steady each day.  Does this make her a toddler now?

Our Christmas cutie!

We just celebrated...

a birthday!

Since Bella loves playing with her duckies during bath time, we decided to do a ducky-themed birthday party.  "Duck" was also one of her first words which she doesn't really say, but rather prefers to yell.

We had snacks.

We made a "pond" in our living room, which Bella and the other little guests absolutely loved.

We let her try her chocolate cake, but she wasn't super interested.  Therefore, she didn't get as messy as I'd hoped.  

This day was a quackin' good time!

December pictures

I had a late night and she had an early morning.  This little nap after her first bottle was such a gift!

Making her laugh is something we both LOVE to do!  Even though you can't see it, she's giggling.

Likely our only Christmas with her, we're living it up...and documenting everything.  :)

Trusting in His Timing

It’s a theme of ours really.  Our timing is NOT God’s timing.  To us, He seems to moving way too slowly.  We’re exhausted and we’re ready to have our daughters, our permanent, legal children in our arms and to move forward with our lives.  We don’t know how the next six months will unfold, but here are a few things we’re muddling over lately…

1.        Bella has yet to be matched with a family.  We’re not exactly sure why.  It’s possible that it takes a while for all the documents to be translated into English to be sent to a family.  The government will let the orphanage know when she’s been matched and then they’ll let us know.  We have no idea when this could be.  Weeks?  Months?  Half a year?  Only He knows.
2.       We had to say no to our last referral.  So this means again we are waiting to discover who our children will be, waiting to be matched with the ones we’ll adopt.  Only He knows who these precious ones will be.
3.       The timing of how one and two will collide is just in His hands.  It’s possible we’ll adopt our children first.  Just one of them?  Both of them?  Only He knows.  It’s possible we’ll be able to bring them back here for a time and we’ll be parenting three.  It’s possible we’ll need to head back to the States with them before Bella’s future family comes.  And then what?  She needs to stay here.  Where will she go?  It’s possible she’ll be matched first and then we’ll have an empty home again for a time.  There’s just so much we don’t know.  Only He knows.

For someone who likes decisions, likes closure, likes to be in control, all of this is an extremely uncomfortable position to be in.  Yet I know it is good for my soul.  Trusting in the One who holds me and my future, and holds all these babies and their futures in the palm of His loving hands…that’s right where I need to be.