Christmas eve Eve

Made Chicken Broccoli Divan to freeze and a Dave's Fave casserole is in the oven...plans to make Texas Tortilla Soup, reindeer cookies, peppermint bark and almond flour cookies tomorrow. Last minute but doable.  Shopping today...some knitting and sewing and wrapping.  I am the head elf here!  The papa does his share too for sure!
We framed child art for one of the uncles for Christmas today. (Pictured)

Merry Christmas eve Eve friends!

Adoptee::update

First writing, sometime in early October:
I have had many more phone conversations with the social worker since my first post on adoption in June linked here.  And I have enjoyed and embraced reading this book, Being Adopted:The Lifelong Search for Self.  The book follows normal developmental psychology through the life cycle from birth to the age of 80 or so.  It has helped me in my friendships, with my relationship with family and even with my oldest son.  I did not know how much it would help put perspective on things for me as an adoptee but it has been tremendous.  I wish I could record every thought and break through I have experienced by reading it but I have not.  I only will have these brief writings and my feeble memory in time.

The social worker called today and told me their names.  Joshua age 39, Shelby age 35 and Bradley age 32.  My sister's letter to me will go out in the mail tomorrow so I will have more from her and a real letter to respond to by Wednesday.  I can call the SW to walk through the letter on Wednesday if I need to but today, as usual, brought tears as I was processing what it is like to have a biological past before me and a biological future at my feet.  My "half" siblings in my past, my children in my home.  I feel so connected to things for the first time in reality.  It feels good and it feels overwhelming.  My sister will have a unique perspective.  She is a birth mother.  She is a mother too.  She did not know about me when she gave up her first baby.  And now, she will meet me, a baby who was given up.  Will she project what her baby will be like by my behavior and my questions?  My biggest question of all, why did our mother give me up?  Joshua was born just two years after me and the SW says that it is typical for a birth mother to conceive again soon after the first one she gave up and then really struggle with whether or not to give up a baby again.  I am happy, my birth mother, did not do it again and hope to learn details of the reasons why she gave me up first.

The SW thinks that Joshua and Shelby share the same father but Bradley does not.  She found my birth mother, whose name I still do not know, with the same last name that Bradley uses.  These details are interesting.  I am not judging choices.  I am filling in holes.  There.  You know about as much as I do.
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Update, October 26th

Still waiting to hear from my birth sister.  I mailed my letter, five weeks ago.  The SW says I am anxious, with good reason.  This biological family, has only me but, I have the siblings, their children, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. out there.  I don't expect to feel a sense of easy knowing when I finally meet them but I hope for it too.  Many a culture has put a high value on blood ties.  Maybe when I meet my siblings, it will, in the words of Tom Hanks from "Sleepless in Seattle"  "feel like coming home, only to a home I have never been to"  Anticipating, anticipating, waiting, writing, laundry, dishes, handwriting lessons, a good book, knitting, nursing, waiting.  The SW is going to call me when she speaks to Shelby.  She says she is going to "give her permission" to not answer all of my questions.  I like it.  We have to file these three letter exchanges.  We need the slow exchanges for emotions and processing but I feel kind of up to speed now.  We need to have a chat over coffee, face to face.  Any ideas for where we should meet the first time, my half sister and I?  A quiet neutral place.  The agency is an option but that sounds so, clinical?

A Prayer for Bloggers::Ann Voskamp

Ann Voskamp and a real struggle to be needed, to focus on self and, she turns it to prayer...beautiful!
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A Prayer for Bloggers


I am no longer my own blogger, but Yours.



Refine me with each post how You will, rank me how You will.



Put me to service, put me to suffering.



Let me be a follower — instead of seeking followers

Let me post for You — or be put aside for You,



Lifted high, only for You, or brought low, all for You.



Do with me and each post whatever You will, because You alone know best.



Let me not strive but submit

Let me not compete but care

Let me not desire hits but holiness



Let my blog be full of You, and let it be empty of me.

Let me crave all things of You, let me care nothing of this world.

Let my words be focus only on the greatest of audiences: You.

And You are enough.



May I write not for subscribers… but only for Your smile.

May my daily affirmation be in the surety of my atonement not the size of my audience.

May my identity be in the innumerable graces of Christ, never, God forbid, the numbers of my comments.

May the only words that matter in my life not be the ones I write on a screen — but the ones I live with my skin.



I freely and heartily yield every sentence, every title, every post, every comment… or no comments… all to Your pleasure and perfect will.



My only fame is that I bear your name

My only glory is the gift of Your Grace

My only readership, Your eyes that seek to and fro to find

Make this so. Lord…



Yawhew, you alone are my God, not Google

Jesus, you alone are my Savior, not sitemeters

And Holy Spirit, you alone are my Comforter, not comments



So be it, today, yesterday, and every post to come.



O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

thou art mine, and I am thine.



This is my prayer I have made on earth, over this keyboard…

let it be ratified in heaven.



In Jesus’ Name…. Amen.

Maybe I will be a President

He said with a sheepish grin, waiting to see my reaction.  He said this after asking me, "Mom, are there any girl Presidents?"  He does mean in the sense of a President to the United States.  We are quite interested in this election and he hears us talk, read and listen to talk radio news very often.  So, I told him no, not yet, there has not yet been a girl President.  I said that there likely would be in his lifetime though.  Then he said "Maybe I will be a President".  Yeah, "a" President.  I said..sure!  Of course you can if you want to be one.  Then, I am not joking, he says, "I would tell the IRS to give people back their taxes!"  Martin said I would vote for you and I sided along,..me too. 

He crawls!

Its official...making moves from where I leave him on the floor.  He can make a full five foot radius from the area where I leave him on the floor now.  Pick up the Legos!

First sock!

I wanted to do a better post on this but, have an appointment this morning so this quick post will have to do....Ann Norling and Stacy Perry, one on paper, one on You Tube and, my little hands and needles, knit my first, real live, not a baby bootie, not a novelty, to be worn, house sock!  Planning more in smaller gauges and in pairs(my first is just a single)...it is way t o o o o oooo  e x c i t i n g!!!!!!

For seven month olds

Sandwich a crinkly empty cereal, chip or baby wipe bag in a leftover scrap of cloth, stitch down..instant baby toy!