CHOCOLATE-FUELLED THOUGHTS
A Beautiful Mess
A friend had a baby shower the other day as she is waiting to welcome home her new daughter from foreign lands. I sat in a roomful of women who surrounded my friend and we all cried and prayed for her over the days she has waited and the days of travel and transition ahead.
I’m only just now beginning to process the entirety of our adoption journey, but if I could have spoken through my tears, this is what I would have said…
This adoption business is messy. The waiting? It’s ugly. I can look back and see all the weaving of beautiful circumstances that God was doing, but in the middle of it? It just felt BAD.
It felt wrong to wait to rescue my daughter, to let someone else meet her needs, and probably not meet them like I would. In the midst of that long wait, our lives were messy, I cried a lot, and our whole family felt the tension of the Longest Gestation Ever.
But now, I look back at the things I wrote, the prayers I prayed through tears, and I see the Beautiful. I see God at work so clearly, refining and shaping us as a family-in-waiting. His plan was perfect. But it was painful.
Our trip to get Mira was fraught with all sorts of Unexpected Messes. Lousy guest houses, a robbery, stolen passports, and a judge who said, “No.” They make a good story now, but the mess in my head and heart at the time was overwhelming.
And then there’s that time when you get home… The truth is, Mira attached to us well. She knew we were hers. And we knew from the first moment we saw her that she was our daughter. But there’s a big difference between knowing something in your head and feeling it deep down in your bones. We all needed some time for that…
Think about the children you carry in your own body. You learn their tiny kicks, their movements… you’ve had 10 months to surround them with warmth. And when they’re finally in your arms, already, they feel just right. But there’s still some learning that has to take place. That baby doesn’t trust you to feed it, change it, meet its needs. You’ve got to spend months feeding and cuddling before one day, the baby doesn’t cry and scream for food or bed. Because they know it’s coming. Now the baby trusts you. And you’ve learned what all the cries mean, you’ve learned to anticipate the needs beforehand.
It’s the same thing for adoption. Mira needed time to trust us, to believe we would feed her, pick her up, comfort her. And we just needed time to learn all about her, her movements, her likes and dislikes…
But it’s not easy. I’ve spent countless hours in my chair, just holding her, reassuring her that I was Mommy and I would always be there. Normal daily accomplishments were reduced to almost nil while we worked to build up trust between us all. Relationship takes time. And building it is messy.
It didn’t feel like a beautiful process at the time. My house was a wreck, I didn’t cook dinner, we were lucky to get through an hour and a half of schooling before Mira needed my full attention. We watched a lot of Nick Jr., I am not gonna lie.
We screwed up, got frustrated. Mira yelled at us because she was frustrated, too. She was scared and so were we. Parenting an adopted child, no matter the age, means you throw out the rule book and all you ever thought you knew about parenting, and you start over. I cried, Mira cried, and we wondered if it would always feel that way.
But, y’all… it doesn’t.
I see all that now. I see it because my daughter laughs the biggest belly laughs you’ve ever heard. I see it because she dances and sings and doesn’t care who watches her. I see the way she asks her brothers to pick her up and plays babies with her sisters. I see her ride in the van and not scream or throw up. I feel the way she cuddles in tight and feels just right in my arms.
And it’s Beautiful.
Adoption is a perfect picture of how our Heavenly Father, who saved us and adopted us as His own, loves us. Adopted children do not implicitly trust their new parents. And we are not inclined to trust our Heavenly Father, though we KNOW He has our best at heart.
And yet God continues to love us, to call us His.
I’ve told you all that adoption is NOT the perfect solution. It’s the result of brokenness, a fallen world. And it’s messy. But then, so was our own spiritual adoption.
The road to the cross… it was ugly. The wait had to have been painful for Jesus, knowing what was ahead. People let Jesus down, broke His heart. And the ultimate WRONG had to happen, the death of God’s son, in order to make things RIGHT.
Out of that hideous MESS, God brought redemption. He made us beautiful.
So here is my prayer, for all of you, mommies or not, adoptive parents or not… I pray that God would give you the eyes to see His beauty in all the Mess.
I pray that when the days are hard, the tears are many, and the wait is long, that you will be able to see Beauty at work.
Because life is messy. Our sinful world is messy. But God is at work. And His works are good. So embrace the mess, sit and praise in the mess, look for glimpses of beauty in the mess. Because He Is There. And, in His grace, He’s making Something Lovely…
*All the really pretty pictures of Mira are courtesy of Allison Lewis Photography.
All About Reading Level Pre-1: A Vitafam Review
Many moons ago, the lovely people at All About Learning Press were giving away free samples of their new pre-reading program. I downloaded it because I liked their spelling and reading program.
The samples contained about two weeks’ worth of lessons. Ellen thought they were fantastic. She begged to do them every day. She even went through the lessons twice.
I showed them to a friend with older children and asked her opinion. Her response was, “You don’t need a book to tell you to clap the syllables of words. You know how to do that.”
I retorted, “Yes, but my brain is too addled to think of it right now. The trouble is I don’t REMEMBER to teach the little people the alphabet.”
So I wrote the nice people at All About Spelling and told them Ellen was interested in being a guinea pig for their new pre-reading program. They sent us a big box of goodies to review. And Ellen’s verdict is: “It’s Good. It makes me happy. I’m learning my ABCD’s.”
And I feel exactly the same way.
The program centers around a puppet Zebra named Ziggy. Ziggy tends to get his words mixed up or need help counting syllables. Ellen gets to interact with Ziggy and keep him from getting confused. And there’s just something about a puppet that makes us giggle.
You could always make your own sock puppet if you wanted to save some pennies. You could, in theory, just show your child a picture of Ziggy and tell stories about him. But if you can pull off a puppet, definitely do it. Because puppets are COOL, y’all.
We read a silly little poem about our daily letter and then she tries to find her letter in the poem. They’re just little stories that seem kind of dumb, but she finds them funny, especially when Ziggy reads them to her. And she’s looking at the words hunting for letters, so there has to be something educational in that.
We use Ziggy to play our word games. Sometimes that involves using the box of pre-sorted cards they provide. There’s matching games and rhyming games. The concepts seem really basic, but since I’m using the upper levels of All About Spelling to teach my kids to read, I can see where these very basic concepts come in handy. Ellen is already leaps and bounds ahead of where Adam was at this stage because she understands how to break a word down into sounds and syllables.
I think that, just like Adam, she would have picked it up just fine later on down the road, but this extra boost isn’t doing her any harm. (Adam often sneaks into our preschool lesson, too, so I know he would have enjoyed this a year or two ago.)
The last aspect we do is a coloring page. On the back of the page, there’s a suggestion for some other activity to do to the picture to make it a little more “crafty.” I love that they’re very basic ideas that use STANDARD household objects. I don’t need to worry about whether or not I have fuzzy pipe cleaners or buttons on hand. The suggestions are things like toothpicks, aluminum foil, or a piece of construction paper.
That, I can handle.
And, of course, if I’m feeling lazy, I just let her color the page and be done with it. But I think having these simple craft ideas on hand means she does more crafty things than I did with the boys at this age.
Perhaps the most beneficial aspect of doing this is that I have a designated time to hang out with my Little People. Ellen loves the quality time. We’re never alone, of course. Willa, Adam, and Mira all feel entitled to participate. And Sam and Ian are never far behind. But my focus gets to be on Ellen and Willa for a few minutes when I’m not angling to just meet their needs. That’s pretty special stuff.
So, do you NEED to do this curriculum in order to succeed with All About Spelling or teaching your child to read? No. But is it great preparation? Absolutely.
It’s open and go, y’all. No printing, cutting, or thinking involved on my part. And there’s a PUPPET. What’s not to love?
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To show you how preschool looks in our house, I’m swallowing my pride and letting you in on one of our lessons. Now you know the truth about my dopey puppet voice and how many interruptions I field in a four minute time frame. Enjoy!
*All About Learning Press generously provided the materials for this review, but the opinions are absolutely, positively, entirely my own.
*Affiliate links included as of 1/8/12