Now One of the Girl-Child

My New Favorite Picture

Blank canvas

This is what the garden looked like last week after my handy, handsome man rototilled it all up for me. (with plenty of poultry compost worked in of course)

A blank canvass. I have wasted far too much time since then staring out the bathroom window, planning bed placement and crop rotation. Imagining this growing here and that growing there. (weeds don't grow at all in my daydreams)
Why through the window? Because even though the calendar is creeping towards June, the cold and rain have yet to let up here on the Wet Coast. It's enough to start a girl dreaming of greenhouses and cold frames. Last year the garden was well started when a mid-June frost killed off all the tender plants. Mid-June!!! Seriously, if anyone had mentioned global warming to me that week, I would have hit them. Maybe with a dead tomato plant.



Anyhow, one of the things that requires planning is how to incorporate a kid's area into the garden. Last year I devoted the front section of the garden to Caley. She wanted to grow peas and beans and carrots and sunflowers, so we made an A-Frame structure for the peas and beans to grow on, and a carrot bed all bordered by sunflowers. My brilliant plan was for the A-frame to make a tunnel leading under the plum tree so she and her cousins would have a cool place to hang out in the hot weather. I could just picture it being like a leafy clubhouse stocked with juicy plums and crisp fresh peas. What I hadn't counted on was that by the time the weather warmed up enough for the peas and bean to grow up the poles the tree would be overrun with swarms of cantankerous wasps after those same juicy plums. We couldn't get within 10 feet of the tree for fear of being stung.

Caley, nevertheless, enjoyed her little garden. This year she has decided on sunflowers, chives and pumpkins for her patch. All very far away from any fruit trees.

Added to the list of things I never thought I'd be doing..

...preparing a sermon.

Oh my.

There's that moment..

That moment where the hairdresser takes a step back and with her head cocked to the side says "Do you want me too...." Leaving the rest unsaid as she waves her hands vaguely in the air.

"Oh sure. Please" I say, while thinking "yes, yes. anything so I don't walk out of here looking like this."

And she continues to cut, looking less and less satisfied with each snip and lock that falls to the floor.

Thankfully she must have realized that we were getting dangerously close to "bald" and stopped.

On the plus side, I'm thinking that I would have made a not so bad looking boy.

On the down side....I really, really look like a boy.

~ Sigh

Choice

Today, instead of focusing on all the little things that are going wrong; the little things that normally have the power to completely undo me, today I'm focusing on the positive. Which includes these two little camera hams.

Ham #1

Ham #2

I've heard it said so many times, that you know you are on the right path when everything starts falling apart.

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On Monday we have our (hopefully) last homestudy meeting. All our homestudy paperwork, excepting the one form from Alberta (a whole 'nother story) is either sent away or done. We are just waiting on our HIV test results, which take 3-4 weeks, to complete our physicals AND we finally got through the hundreds of pages of educational material.

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Adoption wise things are going great.

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Everything else?? Well.......let's see.

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- My two year old is in the running for most challenging child of the millennium. Every waking moment of the day is spent either whining, crying, trantruming, breaking something, or whining, crying, and tantruming because I won't give him the something he wants to break.

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-A person close to me, who I normally would consider a close friend, is lashing out at me and my parenting choices. Unfortunately I'm related to this person by marriage and she is the Queen Bee of the family so things are....interesting.

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-My house is falling apart. Not really, but with so many little things breaking and leaking and "oh crap is that water coming in the living room ceiling?" it sure feels like it.

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-My normally very even-tempered, easy going husband is irritable!? I don't know if he's just extra tired from work or if it's because the Dr. told him he has high blood pressure so he's trying to give up coffee. Since he's put up with years of my cranky moods, I'm cutting him some slack.

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-There has been a complication with our homeschool funding which, if not resolved, would mean that we would be out $400 in funding. I've been paying for lessons and materials out of pocket since Christmas hoping that the issue would be resolved.

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- I hurt my back

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- Caley has always been a child with high attachment needs. She had been moving past this, but has regressed in the last few weeks. Which means that she is constantly hanging off me, trying to climb me and generally not helping my sore back.

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-She is also missing her two best friends, the daughters of the "friend" who is lashing out at me. This makes me feel like crap.

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Just little things. Many, many little things. It's a good thing I don't have to be strong enough to deal with it all. It's sure a good thing we've got Someone in our corner.

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Otherwise, I'd go nuts!

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Whispers and Dreams

Praising God for good news out of Ethiopia!

Hopefully now they will receive the support and help that they need to ensure that there is no exploitation of birth parents or children in the adoption process without closing the program.


Since I was a child, I have had the image in my mind of parenting an African child. When Brad and I were married, we joked that I would have to give up that dream, unless our mailman turned out to be black. It was all very light hearted and then, when we started the adoption process, it was something that stuck in my mind.

Obviously right now, we are not pursuing an African adoption, but the image is still there. Like the whisper of a promise.

Before we ever conceived a child, we know we would some day have a son named Matthew. When our first was a girl, we were thrilled, but still convinced that someday, there would be a Matthew.

It is the same feeling. Just as our family wasn't complete without our Matthew, there is a spot waiting for another little boy with big brown eyes and chocolate skin. In God's prefect time.