First Snow

OK, I don't ever remember a year where we haven't had snow permanently on the ground by October 31st. And this year WE HAVE NOT EVEN HAD A SKIFF YET! Poor Mebi is begging for snow every day. I usually look at the forecast, see no snow and say that maybe in another week we'll have some snow. I think I've been saying that for about 40 days now!!

Yesterday was a beautiful, +12 degree day so we decided to go for a walk. We parked our car at the local ski hill and were so thrilled to see that they had already started to build a snow base! We walked carefully on the frozen sidewalk (the shady parts had ice and Mebi was quite interested in sliding on it) and then we went to the snowy field. It was pretty packed down, but was still exactly like snow! FINALLY we could show her what it would be like. She wrote her name in the snow, and had a blast throwing some snowballs. She wanted to take the snowballs back in the car...I'm not sure she's figured out that they will all melt. :-) I usually dread the first snow, especially driving in it, but this year I just can't wait for that day!

After playing in the snow we went for a beautiful fall walk. The girls had a great time with our scavenger hunt. If we distract them, they can actually walk quite far. And we always bring along little candies like smarties so that they get one smartie when we pass a certain milestone (for us it was every time we crossed a bridge). The girls had a blast looking for the biggest leaf, prettiest leaf, most interesting leaf, smallest and largest pinecone, berries, flowers, most interesting stick, etc. It was a great day and we absolutely loved it.

Here are a few pictures of our day...

(Below) She got this shirt and headband from her cousin (thanks, J!), but she didn't quite put the headband on right. I think she liked covering up more of her hair like many Ethiopian women do, so we just went with it. :-)

(Below) Walking carefully on the ice
(Below) Touching the snow - it's cold!
(Below) Writing her name in the snow
(Below) Making a snowball.
(Below) First snowball complete. Ready, aim...FIRE!
(Below) We had a snow kicking fight with Dad. We did girls against boys. Good thing there are four girls and one boy. :-)
(Below) Our nature scavenger hunt.
(Below) We are blessed to have such beautiful walking trails in our city.

Balance

I wrote this post a week or so ago but have debated as to whether I should post it or not. It's kind of like commenting on how well the kids are getting along. No sooner do you say it than they start yelling or crying or there's a big bang. And that's why I've been afraid to post this. It's on balance, and with the crazy season of Christmas coming I don't want to jinx myself. :-) But I'll live on the edge and post it anyway. If nothing else, maybe it will be a good way to hold myself accountable.

Wow - I am shocked to say this, but I feel like I have achieved balance in my life for the first time in at least two years. I was on a continual quest for balance - I read books on it, had balance as a constant prayer request, and tried my best to get there...but found my life to be spinning out of control no matter what I did. What has changed?

In preparing for the adoption, we were told to simplify life as much as we could the first year. So we've taken that advice and have tried to cut out all but the most critical (as we see it). Although many of the things we were involved in were good things, too many good things leads to no good. :-) Now that we are evaluating everything through our "is it necessary?" lenses, we are not booking ourselves up like crazy and are finding more time at home as a family.

I'm generally pretty guilt driven. If someone would lay a guilt trip on me I would almost always give in. And I'm usually the one laying the guilt trip on myself...I should go help at the church for that event. I should have those people over. I should, I should, I should. However, I keep coming back to the same thing...we need to keep our lives simple. All of the adoption books agree, and it is so freeing to NOT have to sign up for everything and realize that right now that is what is best for the family.

The other thing that has really helped is that I'm not working. I am planning on going back part time in March, and, I'll admit, I'm pretty scared of becoming off balance again. I'm enjoying my life so much right now...I'm organizing drawers, keeping the house clean, cooking healthier food, baking more often, working out or walking almost daily, being more intentional about teaching the girls spiritually, prioritizing my quiet times with God, emotionally not stressed, spending lots of time bonding with Mebira and doing English lessons with her, etc....and I really wonder how I'll squeeze work in there again. The good thing is that I really enjoy what I do, and my job is very flexible, and I'll probably only start with 10 hours a week...so that should be do-able.

We've cut out a lot of social activities. We have so many great friends both at church and outside of church. In the past, we were constantly planning to get together with different people and would sometimes be planning months in advance. As we still need to cocoon our family a bit and want to prioritize our immediate and extended family and closest relationships, we have really cut out on a lot of social activities. I am so thankful for our many understanding friends who (hopefully) haven't written us off.

Lastly, I have also scheduled some "me" time in. Like I mentioned, I am trying to work out or walk almost every day, I try to have a quiet time/devotional time every day, I've been getting enough sleep, and I just had an amazing shopping day all to myself. My wonderful mother took Mebira after kindergarten for me (Mebira loved it - they did lots of crafts, English lessons...I really have the best mother) and I spent the day shopping. I was SOOOO happy. I walked through the mall with a smile on my face for almost the whole day. Unfortunately, we are on a tight budget so it was hard to see so many things and not buy them...but I still had a great time.

Anyway, I can't say I'm an expert on this at all...I've struggled with this for years and I've only felt in balance for the last month or so...but I hope I'm learning things that will enable me to stay this way!

Pictures

(Above) We took the yarn braids out after 3 weeks. I loved them and once they were in they were sooooo easy! But I did miss playing with her hair and trying new styles. This is still one of my favourite styles on her. Look at those beautiful curls at the back! But she doesn't like any part of her hair in an afro - she thinks it looks messy and asks for braids...so this only stayed for one day.
(Above) She coloured this picture, and at the top she wrote "I love Mom". Her spontaneous expression of love is coming more and more often and I treasure each one. The other day she said she loved me and I asked if she loved me a little bit or lots and lots? And she replied that she loved me lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots...
(Above) What can I say...our girls have loved the Disney princesses. E decided to draw each one - so cute!
(Above) I decided to try a new style - the veil style. So far it has been in 3 days and looks as good as the first. I think it will get easier as her hair gets longer...I'm having a bit of trouble with adding the last of the first braid into the new braid...it's short and sticks out a bit. I think I'll add a bead next time at each connection and that should make it a bit smoother. I did it around her whole head but may just do the veil style on the top and box braids in the back next time. All in all, I think it's a pretty cute style.

Mealtime

I feel bad admitting it, but I used to absolutely dread mealtimes. Our bio girls don't love to eat, so we are constantly having to encourage them to eat something. (Which, I admit is the opposite problem we're having with Mebira.) Plus, we found they would often get hyper at supper and would talk nonsense so loudly that Arvid and I could hardly hold a conversation. If we thought having two kids was loud, having three kids has more than doubled the noise. And when you add the laughter from the funny things Mebira says (she's a bit of a clown and loves attention) then it can be a recipe for disaster. Plus, the kids would often be up and down getting a different utensil, cup, ice, napkin, you name it. Arvid and I used to eat as fast as we could and then immediately head to the living room for some peace and couch time.

Well, I'm happy to say that things have TOTALLY turned around for us. We've started a new sticker chart (more on that on another post) where they are awarded stickers for certain chores or behaviours. Once they have enough stickers they can choose screen time (DSi, Computer, etc.) or a small candy. And, as you can imagine, one of the ways they get a sticker is for good mealtime behaviour.

The other (best) thing that we have started is question time. At supper, we each take a turn asking a question. Each person answers the question and then the next person asks a question. Some of our favourite questions have been: "If you could travel anywhere right now where would you go?", "What's your favourite Christmas song/number/colour/letter/place to swim/taste/dessert/fruit/supper/condiment, etc." Miraculously, this has completely transformed our dinner hours. We now look forward to it and learn something about each other in the process. We each take turns talking and enjoy listening to everyone's answers, and we always make sure that we ask something that Mebira can answer, or we modify the questions for her.

Arvid and I have also wanted to be more intentional about sharing our faith with our girls (aside from the daily devotionals we do) but haven't been sure how to go about it in a natural way. Tonight, we asked the questions "What's your favourite bible verse and why?" and "Aside from Jesus, who is your favourite bible character?" and it has been really interesting to hear their responses and share our thoughts as well. Every answer Mebira comes up with has to have a baby in it, somehow. It has become a family joke now to guess how she will manage to bring the idea of a baby into the answer. Tonight, of course, she decided her favourite bible character was Moses...as a baby. :-)

We'd love help with this. If you have any questions, spiritual or just for fun, we'd love to try them out!

Backseat Driver

I find it quite interesting that someone, who has probably never even seen a car until a little over a year ago, can be so opinionated when I drive. I'm not sure if I should laugh or get irritated, but for the most part I think it's quite funny. Mebira is definitely a girl who speaks her mind, and she has no qualms about sharing it with me when I drive. She is constantly yelling, "Mom, FASTER!" or "Mom, STOP!"

The funniest is when she sees a green light or red light. She thinks it's like freeze tag. The moment you see a red light you have to stop, no matter where you are. We can be blocks away from it, but she yells at the top of her lungs, "Mom, STOP! RED LIGHT!" The same thing happens when she sees a green light...we can be stopped behind piles of cars who are also stopped, and the moment she sees it turn green I better have my foot on the gas with a high acceleration or else she will start yelling, "Mom, GO! GREEN LIGHT!" from the back.

The same happens when I park..."No, Mom. Not here...THERE!". At this point I'm glad she's still 11 years away from getting her license...we will have lots of training to do before then. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!

Our story

I was asked by the editor of our church newsletter to write an article on our adoption. I thought it might be good to post on here, too since I went to all that work! Here goes...

I have envisioned writing this article for nearly three years. However, now that I’m actually sitting down to do it, I have no idea what to write. So much has happened over the last few years that I don’t know where to start, nor do I know which details to share. I think I’ll try to do it in a question and answer format – we have been asked most of these questions more times than I can count.

Why did we decide to adopt?

This is probably the longest answer so bear with me as I give some background information. We have been blessed with two wonderful biological girls, Grace and Elizabeth. As both of us are engineers, we were thrilled when Elizabeth was born exactly two years, to the day, after Grace. This meant that we could reuse all of the same baby clothes as the seasons were the same, have only one big birthday party, etc. Good planning, don’t you think? J After Elizabeth was born, we decided that we wanted to have another child, and the desire in my heart for this was HUGE. We had no issues with conceiving or pregnancy with Grace and Elizabeth, so we thought this wouldn’t be an issue but that’s not exactly how it worked out.

Our first attempt ended in an ectopic pregnancy. This could have been life-threatening but ended up being detected and treated quickly. I was happy to get pregnant again a little while later, but this pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. By this time I was starting to think that this wasn’t so cool. I was happy to get pregnant yet again, however, this pregnancy also ended in a miscarriage. You can imagine that by the time I was pregnant the next time (my fourth pregnancy since Elizabeth) I was pretty nervous and I begged and pleaded with God to let us keep that baby. I had numerous ultrasounds, saw the heart beating on a few occasions and when we finally reached the end of the first trimester we heard the heartbeat and finally decided to share our exciting news with the girls. You can imagine my devastation when I miscarried that baby only a few days after hearing the heartbeat and sharing the excitement with our girls.

I will admit that it took me quite a while to get over it. I struggled with God and came to a crisis of faith. To be brutally honest, I didn’t understand why a kind and loving God would allow a pregnancy four times, and have it yanked away each time. It changed my outlook on a lot of things, and I admit that I still don’t totally understand it all. However, I have come to acknowledge that God is God and I am not, that this world doesn’t revolve around me, and that He can redeem any situation.

After enough time had passed and I came to peace with God I fully embraced the idea of a family of four. As my brother points out – this world is designed for four. Hotel rooms, restaurant tables, packaged food all seems to be designed for a family of four and I came to appreciate the “simplicity” of “just” having two kids. However, this all changed a few months later when we attended a Haiti Children’s Home fundraiser with our good friends, Randy and Sandra. Many of you probably know that they have adopted their two kids from Haiti, and we went to this fundraiser in support of their family. What we didn’t know, is that the fundraiser ended up being a pivotal event in our decision to adopt. We saw the need and knew of the millions of orphans around the world. And we realized that we could do something to change a life. We had everything in place for a third child – we even had an empty bedroom sitting there. We had also recently received some money after the death of Arvid’s grandfather and wanted to do something meaningful with the money…so after much praying, talking, struggling, and fear, we officially decided to adopt in December of 2008.

Why did we not choose local adoption? Why did we choose Ethiopia, specifically?

There is a huge need for adoptive families across the world. I think that adopting locally is great, and I think that adopting internationally is great. For us, we decided to do international adoption as we felt that these orphans really had no hope. There are no social assistance programs in place, and if they are not cared for they will (and many are) literally dying on the streets. At the time, Ethiopia had the best program in place. The wait was supposed to be relatively short, and the less time in an institution the better.

How long did the process take?

After deciding to adopt we worked like mad to get all of our paperwork (homestudies, fingerprinting, medical testing, etc.) done and managed to have that sent to Ethiopia in May of 2009. Due to a whole bunch of crazy things happening like the Canadian side of our adoption agency going bankrupt, we went through a rollercoaster for 19 months. But on November 22^nd, 2010, we go the news that we had been matched with a little four year old girl, Mebira.

What is Mebira’s story?

There is a natural curiosity that comes with international adoption. So many of the stories are tragic, and people are always interested in hearing what happened to an adopted child’s parents. Based on a lot of reading and research, we have decided to keep Mebira’s past private and will let her decide who she wants to tell, when she wants to tell it. What I can say is that she has experience a huge amount of loss in her life. She has lost the only family she knew, her country of birth, and everything that is familiar. We had the opportunity to see the village where she was born and it was straight out of a world vision commercial. She grew up in a mud hut, had to care for animals and bathe in a cold stream.

How have things been going now that she is home?

We have had a very eventful summer. About one day after we got the official ok to pick up Mebira, we got the unfortunate news that Arvid’s father had suffered a brain aneurysm. We spent every spare moment at the hospital, meanwhile throwing things in suitcases to get ready for Mebira when we were home. On June 4^th we arrived home and were thrilled to introduce her to our family, especially Grace and Elizabeth. We’ve had some challenges over the months due to the language, expectations, changes in family dynamics, etc. but have been so thrilled to have her. She is an incredibly resilient kid – she embraces change and is very easy going and has handled the adoption and move to Canada so well. The girls adore their little sister, and we have had so much more laughter in our house since she has been home. Unfortunately, we’ve had some tears, too, as Arvid’s dad ended up passing away in August.

Will we adopt again?

At this point I would have to say no. However, had you asked me five years ago if I was going to adopt, I would have said, “NO WAY!” I won’t say never, as God seems to like to change those kind of plans, but at this point it is not in the plan.

Should more Christians adopt?

I believe that we are called to care for the orphans and widows (James 1:27) and I would love to see more families adopt as there is such a huge need. Although they tried their best in the orphanage, an institution is not an ideal situation for a child to grow up in. I understand adoptions isn't feasible for everyone, though. I would, however, like to encourage each family to look at how they can better support the orphans of the world – sponsorship is a fantastic way, and smaller things like Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes are great, too.

How can I find out more?

If you have any questions on miscarriage or adoption we would love to chat with you.

One final thought…if you had told me during the darkest days of my miscarriages if that situation could ever have been turned around for good, I would not have believed you. However, looking back on it, I can see that God redeemed the situation and did, in fact, bring beauty out of the ashes (Is. 61:3). Had we not experienced those miscarriages, we would not have adopted…it wouldn’t have even been on our radar screen. Yet through the adoption we have not only been blessed in return, but been able to change a life in the process. I praise God that He is bigger than all of our well laid plans.

Dentist

Well, we had our follow-up dentist appointment yesterday. G is not overly fond of the dentist (to put it mildly) so we had her referred to a pediatric dentist when she needed to get some discing done. We decided to bring Mebira to the same place since we knew as soon as we saw her that she'd need work done on her teeth. And since we had 2 kids there already we thought we'd bring E along, too. G passed her cleaning and exam with flying colours, and we got the news that E had one cavity and Mebira needed work on five teeth.

Considering that we know of a few families who have adopted older kids from Ethiopia who have had to get numerous teeth extracted, I guess five fillings wasn't too bad for Mebira. And, considering she didn't brush her teeth for nearly five years of her life I guess five fillings isn't too bad. Thankfully, she didn't need a needle for two of her teeth (on molars, both sides, toward the back), but she needed quite a bit of work done on her front teeth and definitely needed some freezing for that.

Mebira and E were both troopers - they didn't love it, but they had good attitudes and tried their best to keep their mouths open, etc. This dentist is the best - she is a lovely lady, and the place is totally set up for young families. They have TVs with movies everywhere, and lots of little play rooms with toys and more TVs with movies. The girls watched Tangled and it made the event much better.

Mebira hung in there quite well, but we did decide to give her some laughing gas at the end to keep her relaxed as they worked on her front teeth. I've attached some pictures of them lying in the dentist chairs...two hours and $1,200 later we were glad when it was all over!
(Above) Mebira, breathing in her grape flavoured laughing gas with a slightly puffy lip. She looked like a little elephant - so cute!
(Above and below) Watching Tangled...the sunglasses are to help shield them from the bright dentist light....it almost looks like they're having fun, doesn't it?

Some pics

(Above) First day of school...they were up early and so excited to go.
(Above) We walk to school and couldn't resist the photo op of them with their backpacks.
(Above) Mebira was tickled pink and so excited to be in school like her sisters.
(Above) The girls convinced me to buy these shirts on sale when we were back to school shopping. They co-ordinated their outfits one morning...I wonder how much longer they'll be doing that?
(Above) I let Mebira sleep with her biggest sister a few weeks ago. G has a queen bed, and I laughed out loud when I checked in on them before I went to bed. G was nearly falling off the bed, and M was plastered to her. I had to actually pry her off and move her over, and even then their heads only used up half of one pillow together!
(Above) I told you about the yarn twists. My good friend (thanks, S!) recommended that I part the hair down the middle and keep that part straight when I put the twists in so that I could put in in pigtails after.
(Above) The part was great advice - she looked adorable in pig tails!
(Above) We went on a field trip last week to Safety City. After a few hours of learning about general safety, Mebira was finally allowed to drive a quad around a mini-city. She was SOOO excited and immediately knew what to do. It was quite comical to see a girl who had probably never even seen a car 15 months ago now in total command of a quad!

Christmas music

Well, I have to admit that I've started listening to Christmas music. I pulled it out once in August...I usually listen to it for a day in August each year and then I put it away again. This week the weather has been cold and it's getting darker out so I just had to put it on - listening to Christmas music always cheers me up.

I'm not looking forward to the cold, but I am looking forward to the snow...for one day. Every day Mebira asks if it will snow today...and she keeps saying that she doesn't like it warm out - she wants it to be cold. Ha! She's only experienced about a low of 3 and she screamed and hollered that it was way too cold that day. She is in for a big surprise!

I'm also excited to experience Mebira's first Christmas in Canada. My favourite thing is that she thinks Santa is Jesus...and I haven't corrected her. I figure Christmas really IS about Jesus and not Santa, so for now if she wants to equate the numerous Santa displays with Jesus then that is great with me. I know I'll have to break it to her soon, though. Otherwise she'll be really confused as to why she could sit on Jesus' lap in the mall. :-)

Christmas is for sure my favourite time of the year. There's just something about the decorations, music, food, time with family, traditions, focus on Jesus and His love for us, time off school and work, special parties, games and sledding and skating with the kids, fireplaces and candles, cookies and treats that are so much fun.

This year will have its moments of sadness as well as it is the first one without Arvid's dad. We put candy canes on our tree in honour of Arvid's mom (she did the same), we put crocheted white snowflakes on our tree from Arvid's grandmother to remember her, and now we'll need to think of something that will be a special memory of his dad. Do any of you do anything special at Christmas to remember those you've lost? If so, I'd love to hear it!