Watching my son last week with his new siblings has encouraged me to read up on the sibling relationship. As an only child myself, I don’t “get” the sibling things my husband and his brother share.

The visit last week, though wildly successful, also pinpointed some areas that we can be working on with our biological child before his new brother and sister arrive. Nothing major, but our son naturally fell into the “Big Brother” role, complete with the occasional very bossy tone of voice (and about very minor things, at that). Though we spoke to him when these “infractions” occurred, we also realized that clearly this was a pretty major transition for our heretofore only child!

I... more

I’ve written about the seemingly interminable wait, handling setbacks, and the role of faith and hope, but I think now is a good time to talk about discouragement, the enemy of time.

We know that Satan wants us to be discouraged, but God calls us to something different:

Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do... more

So, we’re back and settling into our pre-trip routine again. But, there’s a different timbre to life these days. The whole family really misses the kids and being home just isn’t the same.

The night we got back, hubby edited our pictures into a cute little slide show with music. The song makes me cry, so I try not to listen to it, but it’s in that commercial where people are doing nice things for each other. Hubby watches the slide show over and over, but I just can’t. I overheard the song this afternoon and I dissolved into tears.

What... more

We woke up at 6:00am to be ready to head out by 7:00am (well, 7:00am-ish … we do have three, ya know!) and we do head out around 7:10! We travel south for an hour and make it to graduation with about 15-20 minutes to spare!

The kid’s foster mom has saved seats for us as close as she could get, but it’s a big crowd. Five Kindergarten classes are graduating! My daughter looks beautiful in her dress as she marches to the ever-familiar Pomp and Circumstance. The kids regale us for around 45 minutes or so, with songs and skits.

Afterward, we head to her classroom to pick up her report card and papers. She has a hard time saying goodbye to her teacher and a couple... more

Upon waking up we had a family meeting where we informed the kids that we are adopting them. Though they appeared quite pleased, it was somewhat anti-climactic. I think, in part, because they had pretty much figured it all out by this point!

However, my daughter, who does internalize and process things, had a potty “accident” about an hour after “The Reveal.” Having had numerous conversations with both her foster mom and social worker over the months, I did know of my daughter’s propensity toward this form of expression and knew it was a great possibility after the news.

I really debated my response. I finally decided that I needed to deal with it head on, just so she would... more

We had really wonky connectivity Day Three and afterward, so I wasn’t able to post “as it happened.” So, three days later, I’ll have to rely on jet-lagged memory to reconstruct the days. So, here’s the recap:

Wednesday was a relatively uneventful day after our scary start. We woke up really early because of my youngest son’s coughing fits. He has a really acute sinus condition, and it produced so much mucus that he threw up. Hello parenthood of three!

After frantic calls to the foster mom, who reassured me this is common with my son, she did call in to his pediatrician and got his other meds, which, she assured me, really do the trick!

It was my uncle’s last day... more

Today has gone smoother than could ever have been anticipated … so naturally, we’re waiting for a little rain to fall. Enter nighttime!

First up: Newly dubbed Mom battles ethnic hair! I have some pretty unruly ethnic hair myself, so I came prepared! And, I knew my daughter had a tender head. We managed to get by with only a few tears. It’s not a perfect job, but it’s just for bedtime anyway.

While I do this, hubby bathes our youngest son. All goes well! Since my daughter hears that my oldest son wants to take a shower, she decides she does too! So, ladies first and off we go to shower! I give her some of my special shower gel, and off we go!

We all meet up in... more

Within an hour of meeting our future children, we’re put to the test! We go out as a group to lunch. Though our social worker and foster mom are with us, clearly we’re the “Parents on Duty!”

My youngest son, continues to shadow my oldest son and sits by him at lunch. It’s a buffet, so we fix plates for the kids, and my daughter parks herself beside me, as advertised! The staff at the restaurant soon learns what’s going on, and all three kids get lollipops and yo-yos. So, we begin the very normal, “How Many More Bites Til I Get My Stuff” game that we take for granted as non-adoptive parents!

My daughter is proud of all her counted bites. She asks my oldest son to teach... more

After A fitful night of sleep, morning finally comes! I say fitful, because our son’s blood sugar continued to fluctuate, and due in part that and in part to the excitement and a new room, he had trouble sleeping. We were on fumes anyway, from the last few days, and being so near and yet so far away, we had trouble sleeping too!

Morning finally came, and we got ready quickly, and checked out. As mentioned yesterday, my son gets easily attached. Since we are due back to Memphis Friday evening at this same hotel, my son really wanted to stay in this particular room again. So at check out he said, “Excuse... more

The middle leg of the journey took a couple of hours. The weather was nice, the flight was on time and I got several inches of sock knitting done. I feel like the Yarn Harlot and her Mighty Traveling Sock! (And I do have pictures of it as she does, which I will have to post).

I spoke to our social worker – she, the foster mom and the kids will all meet us at 10am tomorrow morning! I can’t believe we will finally get to meet them!

After touching down in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and having a very hasty meal (we only had a little over an hour between flights and they were at gates very opposite each other!), we boarded the plane for... more