I found this list on the FamilyLife website.  It’s followed by 11 rules for marriage you won’t learn in school and yes, you will be seeing those soon.  For now, I’m trying to figure out how to embed this list in the brains of my teenagers.

Here are the 11 rules of life that you won’t learn in school:

Rule 1: Life is not fair—get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 per year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping—they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault.  So don’t whine about your mistakes; learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes, and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “find yourself.” Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

I’ve had lots of people ask me why I haven’t blogged more about Sofija lately and I’ve spent quite a bit of time in prayer and deep thought about what’s okay to put out there for the whole world to read.

Just before Christmas we interviewed behavioral therapists and decided on a man/woman team.  The woman develops the therapy plan and does oversight and the man is with us for forty hours every month.  He’s amazing and we are extremely hopeful and grateful for all that he is doing with her.  Sofija’s feelings toward the therapy situation aren’t quite in alignment with the rest of the family.

We were warned that her attention-seeking behaviors would escalate and that she would regress for a while before we would see the bad behaviors begin to disappear.  So…it came as no surprise when she began to pee all over us and the furniture, and make every attempt to torture the dogs.  The one thing I wasn’t quite prepared for was seeing her self-injury return.  It’s been months since we’ve seen her actually hurt herself and she’s gone back to biting her arms in the middle of her tantrums.  It may sound heartless, but watching her do it is not so bad.  Usually by the time she’s doing her best Cullen impression, she’s already broken several things in the house, screamed every defiant term she can muster at us for fifteen or twenty minutes, and urinated on a couch or a rug.  The biting is usually a pretty good sign that she’s at the end of her meltdown.  Bath-time, bed-time, and any time she’s changing clothes are when it punches me in the gut.  It’s bad enough that her arms are completely covered with scars from her teeth.  But the scars look so much worse when they are covered with brand-new mouth-sized bruises.

Marky-Mark is her therapist.  (His name has been changed to protect his innocence.)  When he steps in our house he gets his own personal “funky bunch”.  Hah!

Marky-Mark is amazing with Sofija.  He never loses his cool and he never waivers on his expectations.  And….he’s teaching us how to do the same.

Today I feel free to share because today I saw a little glimmer of light at the end of her bad-behavior tunnel.  Yesterday was a different story.  Yesterday I got to hear that her attention-seeking has increased at school and I even had the joy of receiving a phone call from Seth’s school saying that his “pretend” has increased and gotten louder in the last few weeks.  We’ve witnessed it at home too.  He is very upset by Sofija screaming and throwing tantrums and right now we’re dealing with that for two to three hours/night.  He tries to block it out by making louder noises himself.  Chase just complains about it all and Kira just tries to stay away from home as much as possible.  Thank God for ipods and noise-canceling headphones!

Today’s glimpse of light came in the most unexpected environment.  Marky-Mark is working with her in several different areas right now, all of which require her to “keep her hands to herself”.  Our biggest priority right now is to stop her aggression towards others.  On Saturdays the indoor pool on Ft. Belvoir has free swim for special needs children and their parents.  We haven’t been for a while because the last visit left me wondering how many parents out there think that brat is a disability.  I listened to a little worship music, did some writing and took my girl to the pool.  As we walked in I thought it was our lucky day.  There were only three other children in the pool and they appeared to be siblings who were there with their divorced Daddy.  I could sit on the bleachers, get a little reading in, and Sofija had a huge pool to explore with little competition for space in the water.  My reading lasted about five minutes before the oldest girl in the sibling group started jumping all over Sofija.  I put my things away and prepared to apologize for the brutal attack that she was about to dish out.  As Sofija whipped her body around and got in her attack stance I reminded her, “Sofija, I need you to keep your hands to yourself.”  I repeated that line two or three times.  Guess what?  She backed up and then swam away.  My heart slowed to a somewhat normal pace, but it was only a few minutes before this bratty girl was jumping on her again.  This time she jumped on top of a foam noodle that Sofija was playing with and then ripped it out of her hands.  Divorced Daddy swam in circles and said nothing.  Parent of the year award goes to…..DD!  I stood up and reminded her again to keep her hands to herself and I offered to get her another noodle.  She said, “No float, Mama.” and then swam away from the bratty girl.

The obnoxious behavior continued throughout Sofija’s swim.  Once when Sofija was slapping the water with her hands and stimming pretty hard, the girl came up to her and asked (with a scowl), “What’s wrong with you?”  This girl was probably nine or ten years old and I have to confess, I wanted to get in her face and put her in her place.  I kept looking back and forth between my beautiful little girl and this big kid who got uglier by the second.  God, please forgive me.  But she was ugly.  And everything in me wanted to say that to her when she continued to antagonize my child.

I just wrote a little piece today on things we’re told as children that damage us as adults.  I kept hearing what I had written and seeing the written words of Romans 12:2.  The English Standard Version says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

I didn’t want this little girl to grow up and need a renewing of her mind because some mean lady at a pool told her she was ugly at age ten.  It wasn’t easy, but I bit my tongue.  I walked out of that place with a clear conscience, a happy daughter, and big ol’ smile on my face as I grasped just how huge it is that my happy daughter was able to “keep her hands to herself.”

I thought about inserting an old Calvin Klein ad or the video of Georgia Satellites singing “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” in this post, but settled for this……Enjoy!

This weekend will be wonderful.  After last weekend, the wonderful bar is set pretty low.  The whole weekend wasn’t a wash, but there was a big huge absence of marital bliss in this house.

Without completely throwing myself under the bus with all the details I’ll sum up my fault in the matter in as few words as possible.  On Saturday afternoon a dear friend offered to stay with the kids so that Chad and I could go on a date.  While cleaning up the kitchen and talking to my wonderful husband and dear friend I apparently said, “…..I’M going to move MY children…..”.  I realized a short time later that my husband was not speaking to me.  I asked what was wrong and got a response that went something like, “You said, ….’I and MY children’….  You have no respect for me and you don’t trust me to make decisions for our family.”  ~Insert loud growl here~  A very large, angry, hungry tiger overtook my body.

For the next 24hours there is nothing that came out of my mouth or his worth bragging about or even repeating.  We got down-right nasty.

The saddest part of the whole situation is that on Monday he had to fly to San Francisco for the week.  Yes, folks.  We managed to throw away an unexpected and much needed date-night and the limited time we had together between our travels.

At some point Sunday night, after the kids were in bed, we were done.  The tiger in me was tired so I walked across the family room, sat next to my husband, and laid against his chest.  As we both sat there crying, you know what he did?  He started kissing my hair and then praying over me.  He thanked God for all the things he values in me and he started claiming all the things we wants to see God fulfill for me.  I love him 🙂

I have to be honest though.  I was just tired of fighting.  I wasn’t ready to admit fault.  I said I was sorry, but I couldn’t actually even remember saying the thing that he got mad about in the first place so I had no clue how I was going to learn from this fight or try to avoid a similar one in the future.

After dropping him at the airport on Monday I came home and started cleaning off the kitchen island.  The children’s ministry at our church uses the Kidmo curriculum and sends home these nifty little paper booklets each week called the MAP (Mission Action Plan).  As I picked up this week’s map and walked towards the trashcan I did something that I rarely do.  I opened it and began reading.

If you’ve followed my blog since last June, you know that I kind of got stuck in Deuteronomy around my thirty-ninth birthday and the onset of my fortieth year of life.  The first thing I read in the little mapbook was something about reading Deuteronomy 1.  No need to read it.  The whole book has been my theme for the year.  It’s the one that says that the Israelites set out on an eleven day journey and forty years later they had gotten nowhere.  It’s the chapter where God has Moses tell them, “You have been on this mountain long enough!  Go occupy the promised land!”  It’s the one where Moses says countless times that the Israelites screwed themselves over (pardon my language, but come on…FORTY YEARS to make an ELEVEN DAY journey) by not trusting God.  And….it’s also the one where they are constantly reminded that they have the power to CHOOSE whether they, and the generations after them, will live a blessed life or a cursed life.

Next thing on the M.A.P….”When Moses was leading the Israelites, they chose not to….”

a. trust that God would help them.

b. eat what was provided.

c. exercise and get healthy.

d. go into the promised land.

So technically both a and d are correct answers, but I think the mapbook creators were looking for that big TRUST word.

My eyes then skipped to the bottom of the page.  Just for the record, I have never read an entire page of the M.A.P.s we’ve been collecting or throwing in the trash for the past few years.  At the bottom of the page I found this….”Read Joshua 1:5-9.  40 years later when Joshua was leading the Israelites, they did something right.  What was it?”

a. learned how to make pancakes

b. They imagined what God could do.

c. They believed God was with them so they had strength and courage.

I guess the creators wanted to make sure I got this one right since they narrowed down the answers to only three choices.

If you guessed c,  DING, DING, DING!!!!  You win!  “The prize?”, you ask.  A big ol’ healthy dose of conviction.

In the same moment that I read that third choice, I heard this question.  “Are you a Moses follower or a Joshua follower?”  I immediately went to my knees on my kitchen floor.  The picture I saw was painfully clear.  One of those crystal clear revelations that you can never erase or pretend you haven’t seen.

The Israelites forty years of slavery (bondage) and misery was not just about a lack of trust in God.  It was because they didn’t trust Moses as their leader.  They didn’t trust that Moses was actually hearing from God.

Forty years later (theres’ a theme to that big 4-0), Moses dies and God speaks to his assistant Joshua.

Here, read it for yourself….

After the death of Moses the Lord’s servant, the Lord spoke to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ assistant. He said, ² “Moses my servant is dead. Therefore, the time has come for you to lead these people, the Israelites, across the Jordan River into the land I am giving them. ³ I promise you what I promised Moses: ‘Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you—⁴ from the Negev wilderness in the south to the Lebanon mountains in the north, from the Euphrates River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, including all the land of the Hittites.’ ⁵ No one will be able to stand against you as long as you live. For I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you or abandon you.

⁶ “Be strong and courageous, for you are the one who will lead these people to possess all the land I swore to their ancestors I would give them. ⁷ Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the instructions Moses gave you. Do not deviate from them, turning either to the right or to the left. Then you will be successful in everything you do. ⁸ Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. ⁹ This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1 New Living Translation

Just in case you don’t know the rest of the story….

The Israelites trusted Joshua.  They trusted that what he told them came from God, actually did come from the one true God.  They followed his instructions and because of their trust and obedience God was able to carry them across the Jordan River into the land that he had promised to their ancestors.

Their trust in Joshua’s leadership brought freedom and prosperity not only to themselves, but to their children and their children’s children.

I don’t know about you, but I kind of like the idea of living in freedom.  I also like the idea of being prosperous.  I loathe wasted time! I have written it before, but for emphasis I will repeat myself.  I NEVER WANT TO TAKE FORTY YEARS TO MAKE AN ELEVEN DAY JOURNEY!!!  And with everything that I already have on my own plate of responsibilities, I’m warming up to the idea of trusting my husband to lead me.

So here’s my own multiple choice question.

Are you…..

a. a Moses follower?

b. a Joshua follower?

c. a purple toad?

(hint: the answer is not c)

Um, remember how I said that God’s handprints were going to be evident all over this trip to Dallas?  Well….

Jeremiah 22:1-3 “God’s orders: “Go to the royal palace and deliver this Message. Say, ‘Listen to what God says,….”  “This is God’s Message: Attend to matters of justice. Set things right between people. Rescue victims from their exploiters. Don’t take advantage of the homeless, the orphans, the widows. Stop the murdering!”

Isaiah 6:8 “After this, I heard the LORD ask, “Is there anyone I can send? Will someone go for us?”

“I’ll go,” I answered. “Send me!”

In my little blogging-break over the past two months things have taken place in the Serbian adoption world that I can’t really write about.  But trust me.  They’re HUGE!  They’re the kind of things that make you slap your thigh and laugh out loud as you’re declaring that, “God is so freaking amazing!”

So Friday night, January 7th (I want to make sure that the date is documented), I climbed in a car with my BFF and her hubby and made the trek from their home to the trafficking awareness town-hall meeting.  It just so happened that we drove right past the turn to Texas Stadium and watched the crowds of LSU and Texas A&M fans making their way to what turned out to be a great football game.  Under ordinary circumstances I would have been disappointed that I was so close and not attending the game.  But this weekend has been far from ordinary.

Before the meeting began I helped with setup and then stepped to a quiet place to take care of a few real estate related phone calls.  With more than four hundred people present I did not have one single conversation before nor immediately after the event.  This may not seem strange if you do not know me, but for those who do, you’re probably going, “What?!?!”  I was asking myself and God that question.  I knew I was SUPPOSED to be there.  I knew I was SUPPOSED to make connections there.  It’s kinda hard to make connections when you don’t talk to anyone and I hadn’t managed to engage one single person in anything more than a, “Hey. How are you?” Before I could answer the, “How are you?” part, they were gone.

Note to self: Don’t ask people how they are unless you plan on actually listening to how they are.

The meeting consisted of eight panel members who represented several anti-trafficking groups and law enforcement agencies.  From my seat in the back I found that I kept focusing on this one particular woman and hearing three words over and over again.  “Go meet her.”  “Go meet her.”  “Go meet her.”  When this woman was introduced I didn’t hear anything that made me think I needed to connect with her, but those three words were playing like a broken record.  She gave a brief spiel about being a flight attendant and witnessing child trafficking on mission trips to Cambodia and the Dominican Republic.  She talked about training international flight attendants to look for trafficking since the airlines are the arteries of the international trafficking industry.  Cool speech, but I still didn’t see any connection.

As we prepared to leave and meet friends to watch the last quarter of the football game I told my BFF that I’d like to meet her boss.  Turns out that her boss was engaged in conversation and as we waited I looked to my left and saw “her” packing her things up.

I approached her and said, “Do you have any contact information?”

Her, “Are you coming to my training on the 31st?”

Me, “I don’t live here.  I live in DC.”

Her, “Me too!  I just moved there.  What do you do?”

Me, “I’m a realtor.”  And then I knew I had to tell her about Sofija.  “My husband and I adopted our daughter from Serbia this past April and I’m going back.”

She then slaps her thigh and says, “I just hung up the phone with Princess Katherine!  You know?  Princess Katherine and Crown Prince Alexander?  The royal family of Serbia?”

Me, “Sure?” (I’m quite certain that the scrunched up look on my brow gave away my lack of knowing who they were.)

Her, “I know!  I’m gonna train you to be my mission director and we’ll go back together.  You said you’re going back this spring, right?!  Princess Katherine wants us to do something for the orphans.”

Me, “Of course she does.” (with a hearty laugh at God’s coolness)

(somewhere in the midst of this she grabbed my hand and the BFF & I found ourselves bouncing up and down with her as she said, “Can you believe this?  God is so amazing?” ~ Why yes He is!)

Her, “She has a huge heart for children.  I know!  We can throw an Easter egg hunt on the palace lawn…..”

and on and on it went.  All before she even learned my name.

And….we live about ten minutes away from one another.  And….she asked me to go with her before congress on Tuesday.  And…something at the Kennedy Center that night.

And….GOD IS SO FREAKING AMAZING!!!    And….my Tigers spanked those Aggies’ butts.

Well there’s no apple pie up here (that I know of.  Because I can usually sniff them out a mile away), but this 1st blogpost of 2011 is coming to you from high in the sky (34,000ft to be exact) & it’s packed w/hope.  (If you don’t get the song reference…..She’s got hi-igh hopes.  She’s got hi-igh hopes.  She’s got high apple pie in the sky-y hopes.)

Today I packed my bags and climbed on board a plane heading for Dallas, Texas…..ALL BY MYSELF!!!

Yes, I know I shouldn’t sound so excited about it, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten to bathe or even use the bathroom without an audience in the past eight months.  The alone time is not really why I’m so excited about this short little get-away.  A few months ago I got a message on facebook from the husband of a lifelong friend (my BFF).  He said that he would love for me to come out for her 40th birthday and that even though he wasn’t certain yet of the plans, he knew the date wouldn’t change. Oh yeah, it was supposed to be a surprise.  So I started looking for tickets that would get me to Dallas for January 8th, 2011.  About the same time I started looking at tickets, my BFF accepted an education position with an anti-trafficking organization called Traffic 911.

So the week before Christmas I send a message to the BFF’s hubby and tell him that I’m in.  A few hours later the BFF calls me screaming, “My husband CANNOT keep a secret”.  And then….”I’m so excited!  The anti-trafficking townhall meeting is on Friday the 7th.  You’ll be here for it!”  I didn’t bother to mention that I still didn’t have my flight booked and that I wasn’t sure that I’d be there in time for the meeting.  I spent a couple days looking for tickets before I realized that the 7th also happened to be the night of the Cotton Bowl, which just happens to be in Dallas.  And oh, by the way.  My LSU Tigers are playing her hubby’s A&M Aggies in that game.  I knew I was supposed to be there that weekend for all the reasons listed above and additionally because the literary agency that I believe is going to have me published this year just happens to be located in Dallas.  (More on that as it unfolds.)

So on Tuesday of this week, two days before I hoped to fly out, I still had no ticket and everything I looked at was ridiculously expensive.  I read a few travel blogs that suggested looking at travelocity’s flight+hotel last minute deals.  One said that you can save an average of $250 off of booking the flight alone.  And…I did.  And….I did.  And…I got non-stop flights both directions at the exact times that I hoped to fly out.

So now I sit here on a plane, at 34,000 feet, heading into what will (without a doubt) be a weekend covered with the hand-prints of God.

Isaiah 60:1 “Arise, Jerusalem (feel free to insert your own name, but I’m replacing Jerusalem with Kaci)! Let your light shine for all to see.
For the glory of the Lord rises to shine on you.

This is my verse for 2011.  I am filled with hope for what’s to come because the glory of the Lord rises just to shine on me.

2011, Show me what ya got!

On Friday I was shopping with Sofija and came across a huge selection of candy-scented lip-gloss, lip-balm and nail polish.  There was a box with eight different Nerds scented lip-balms.  Really?  Don’t get me wrong.  I love chomping on oddly shaped clumps of sour sugar as much as the next girl.  But I can’t really tell the difference between the smell of the grape or the watermelon and I had no clue that they actually come in eight different flavors.  I couldn’t get the box open so I bought them out of my stocking stuffer budget.  I’ll let you know on Christmas morning if there’s really any difference between wild cherry and lemon.

Speaking of….

Yesterday morning I woke up early and made breakfast for Chase before dropping him off to take the four hour entrance exam for Thomas Jefferson High School.  TJ is one of the best schools in the nation, but we’re totally leaving it in God’s hands as to whether or not he will go there.

I came home from dropping him off and began making breakfast for the rest of the family with Seth pacing the kitchen floors behind me.  I kept hearing “my wife” in his pretend, so I asked him who he plans to marry.  This question has always led to interesting answers so I found myself a little surprised when he responded with, “I don’t know.”  Seth ALWAYS has an answer.

I started going down the list of potential mates that he has vowed to wed over the past two years.  I would say a name and he would explain to me why he was certain that person just isn’t for him.  At the point where I was getting pretty impressed with his rationale “She’s not so nice to me.”  “She’s not so nice to other people.”  “She’s not a very good friend.”, I mentioned a girl from church that was the object of his affection some time ago.  Me: <girl’s name>  Seth: “I don’t know.  I’m not sure what she’s gonna look like when she grows up.  I mean, I want her to be smart and wear glasses, but I don’t want her to wear weird clothes.  You know.  I hope she’s not gonna be a nerd.”

I stopped stirring, turned to look at him, and said, “Seth, you do realize that me and Daddy and Kira and Chase are all nerds.  Don’t you?”

Seth: “WHAT!?!?!  But, I’m a cool kid.”

He then ran off for a couple of minutes.  I could hear him ranting about being stuck in a family full of nerds.  When the rant was done he returned to the kitchen and declared, “I’ve seen the light!  It’s no fun being a cool kid any more.  I’m gonna be a nerd like the rest of my family.”

So…I proudly introduce you to Nerd Mama, Nerd Tata, Nerd Kira, Nerd Chase, Nerd Seth and (future nerd) Sofija….

Isaiah 43:18-19 “¹⁸Forget what happened in the past,
and do not dwell on events from long ago.
¹⁹I am going to do something new.
It is already happening. Don’t you recognize it?
I will clear a way in the desert.
I will make rivers on dry land.”

After many weeks of assessments and meetings and tears, Sofija started her new school today.  She had her clothes on before her feet ever hit the floor and for the first time since we brought her home, she didn’t ask for food as soon as she awoke.  She said, “Let’s go to school!  Come on!  Let’s go ride the school bus!”

After rushing through her breakfast and getting frustrated over how long it took me to comb her hair, she camped out in the bay window in anticipation of the number one item on her life list.  The bright yellow school bus.

I was helping Seth pack his backpack when I heard the screeching of the bus brakes.  I have to confess that I love that sound myself.  My beloved Maw Maw drove a school bus for thirty-six years.  Screeching bus brakes are as comforting to me as mac & cheese or pot roast.  Before the screeching stopped Sofija had run down the stairs to our front door and swung it open.  Before I could catch up, she was on the front seat of the bus, clapping and squealing with delight as the attendant buckled her in.

When I picked her up from school at 12:30 I was told that the day went well until she realized that she doesn’t get to ride home on the school bus.  She was not so happy with me when I told her that she had to ride home in Stan the Van.  I however, was quite content.  Nobody looked frazzled or overwhelmed and I realized very quickly that Sofija knew that she belonged there and she understood what is expected of her there.  Without a doubt, she’s in the right place.

The afternoon was spent interviewing behavioral therapist.  Our river is flowing.  We have three to choose between and right now I’m just praying that God will make the choice so evident that we don’t really have to think about it.  The crazy part is that all three options are pretty spectacular.  One of them comes with a sidekick who is working on HIS board certification as a behavioral therapist.  It is so much easier for men to establish a role in Sofija’s life just because she has had every type of dysfunctional female relationship.  So option 1 has that going for it.  Option 2 is married to a Serbian and understands the culture and the language.  Option 3 has spent her career working with post-institutionalized children.  Like I said.  Our river is flowing.  Thank you, God, for amazing options!

Can you recognize that something new is happening?  I can feel it in the depths of my soul.  I am bursting with anticipation over what I’m about to witness in the life of my child.

And I have faith that God already has the details worked out.  He’s already chosen who will be a part in this chapter of Sofija’s story.

Deuteronomy 31:8 “The Lord himself will go ahead of you. He will be with you. He will never leave you. He’ll never desert you. So don’t be afraid. Don’t lose hope.”

I awoke this morning, vomited, chewed up two pepto pills and prayed that I could make it through a three hour meeting without puking on anyone with the power to negatively impact my children’s educations.

Half an hour later, I repeated the cycle.

I dropped the stemmers at school at 9am, ran home and repeated it a third time.

At 10am I arrived at the school and joined the room full of people who had gathered to decide where and how Sofija should be educated.

She will attend the school we prayed for.  She will be loved (They already love her :)).  She will get to ride a school-bus every morning (She’s ecstatic about that part).  Her current school will anxiously await her return as soon as she’s ready.  I did not cry alone in that room and there’s something about seeing other people cry over the future they see in your child that brings unexplainable peace.  As I arrived home, I became once again aware that my belly was still burning, but it didn’t really matter.  The glow in my spirit was burning much brighter.

God’s handprint was on every second of the morning.  As I sat to reflect on this fact,  Sofija came skipping into the family room.  She turned and skipped out as quickly as she had entered and in the process, without ever looking up, she shouted out, “Love you, Mama.”

Before I exited the building at the end of the morning’s three hour meeting, I saw Seth carrying his lunch tray through the office with a counselor.  He winked at me and said, “We’re having a lunch date.”  When I picked him up from school and asked about his day, he told me that he had an amazing day except for the part when his friend told him a very bad joke.  That’s why he needed a lunch date with a counselor.

Me: “What kind of bad joke?”

Seth: “The kind you don’t want to hear.”

Me: “Seth, tell me what you heard.” ~ I then prepared myself to hear something vulgar come from the mouth of my precious baby boy.

Seth: “He said something bad about you and then he frettened you.  He said (long dramatic pause with head bowed, eyes closed and in a much quieter than normal voice), “Step on a crack, break your mama’s back.  You stepped on a crack and broke your Mother’s back.  Now your Mom is gonna die.”

Me: “Seth, did you know that’s ju…” ~rude interruption

Seth:  “MAMAAA!  Did you hear me?  He was trying to make a joke about hurting and killing you.  Somebody needs to teach him that it’s not a joke.”

Me: “Seth, did you hurt him?”

Seth: “No, Mama.  But I did a great job of protecting my family. Huh?!”

Now you might think the day just couldn’t get any more entertaining.  But you’d be thinking wrong.

We learned earlier in the week that there is a potluck dinner for families with special needs children on the last Friday of the month at our local military installation.  The director of our local Army Community Service center left a message this morning asking us to attend because there was another mom that she really wanted me to meet.  I had managed to keep down a bagel so I thought the experience might not be so bad.  For me and the stemmers, it wasn’t.  For my dear husband and teenagers, it was torture (Although they let out some pretty hearty laughs watching a group of the kids doing Wii dance sensation) .  Waaaay too many women for the husband.  Waaaay too many stemmers for the teenagers.

On the way out the door, Chase (the 13yo) was complaining about Seth’s “pretending”.  For those of you who don’t know.  Pretending is Seth’s word for his stemming.  A common phrase in his vocabulary for several years has been, “AGGGHHH! Stop! Interrupting!  My pretend!”

He is like a little sound machine.  If you’d like to see for yourself, he can be seen on any afternoon pacing the walk between our front door and the driveway while making sound effects and sporadically bouncing or swinging his arms in the process of  slaying dragons or acting out whatever scene is playing in his head.  It is NOT normal pretend.  It is loud and it is constant.  It is filled with twitching and jerky movements and shrill awful noises.  And it can make Chase crazy.

So there was Chase complaining about his brother’s pretend and how the noise was physically hurting his ears when Kira says, “Chase, your autism’s showing.”)  This is a common phrase in our house.  When you live with two children on the spectrum, you start to notice that everyone else in the house could probably fit on it somewhere.)  Chase’s response: “I know.  I have ASD.  Annoying Sibling Disorder.”

Ten minutes later we’re in the car riding home and Seth says, “I was born to pretend.  It’s just what I was mostly made to do.”

To top off the wonderful wit of my children, I got a phone call to arrange an interview with an in-home ABA therapist who just happens to be married to a someone from Serbia and who understands the language AND I got a personal, in-depth email from THE Dr. Federici suggesting another ABA therapist and giving me his input and a suggestion on Sofija.

I’m sure that there are other moments that I missed, but that’s officially the end of the entertainment.

It’s been One Fine Friday.

I have two blogposts that I’ve started in the past two weeks that both still need to be completed, but I feel like I need to quickly document the happenings of today.

Sofija is changing schools.  We will have her IEP meeting in the morning and she will likely start her new school on Monday.

I visited the two potential new schools today and I’m just a big ball of emotions at the moment.  The first school is right behind my office and less than a mile from Kira’s high school.  Since I’m gonna have four kids in four different schools, the idea of keeping her in the neighborhood is highly appealing.  Not only is the school very near to us, but they have an autism program with thirty students spread between five or six classrooms and there are 2-4 adults in each room at all times.  I got warm fuzzies just walking in the building and to sweeten the deal, the psychologist who has been working with Sofija, is shared with that school.  This is a HUGE deal to me.  This wonderful woman would actually provide some continuity in her day if Sofija is placed there.

The second school is a HORRIBLE fit.  It is far enough away that if Sofija was assaulting a student, I could never make it there in time to offer any assistance.  In fact, it’s far enough away that I would rarely make it there at all because my other three are all in neighborhood schools and do not receive transportation.  It is designed for students with profound disabilities.  Almost every child I saw was non-ambulatory and I kept having visions of Sofija whacking one of them or pulling them out of their wheel chair, hopping in and saying, “Let’s go for a ride!” (She actually said to a gentleman two weeks ago, “Get up!  Sofija go ride.”)  The kicker came when the director tells me and the assistant principle from her current school (who kindly drove me around town) that the average cognitive level of her students is “9-18months, but we do have a few who range up to 24-36months”.  What???  All of Sofija’s assessments were done in English and still she falls somewhere above the 3yo range.  But…they do have an indoor pool.  Sofija would probably try to drown one of those non-ambulatory students, but she would be able to go “swooming”.

I had to write about all of this because decisions are being made as I type as to where she will attend.  Please pray for wisdom on the part of the administrators, for peace for me and the Tata, and for our baby girl to be comfortable and accepting of this big transition.

Thank you!

I found myself telling Seth tonight that he shouldn’t give halfhearted apologies.  In an instant, I became my Mother.  Which got me to thinking.  What on earth does halfhearted mean?

halfhearted – adj Exhibiting or feeling little interest, enthusiasm, or heart; uninspired

Which got me to thinking about what a wholehearted apology looks like.

wholehearted – adj. Exhibiting no reserve or reservation

wholeheartedly – adv. Marked by unconditional commitment, unstinting devotion, or unreserved enthusiasm

Half a year has passed since the day we signed a piece of paper that made Sofija legally ours.  In some ways it seems ridiculous that six whole months have passed, but in some ways it seems ridiculous that she’s only been our daughter for six months.  We love her wholeheartedly.  Without reservation, we are unconditionally committed, undeniably devoted, and unreservedly enthusiastic about being her parents.

If you’ve followed our entire adoption journey, you know that our Gotcha Day was not one we choose to commemorate.  However, I did take a moment today to stop and skim through my memories of April 27th in search of some humor..

It was refreshing to realize that there were several moments in the day that I can now laugh out loud over.  As we left the adoption ceremony in a mad dash to get her new birth certificate, passport and visa in two short hours, our lawyer flagged down two cabs on the side of a very busy thoroughfare.  In the middle of our effort to climb into the vehicles as quickly as possible, Sofija lifted her dress and squatted to pee on the curb.  She didn’t bother to pull down her tights or panties and she was close enough to the doorway of the taxi that the driver began screaming at her and shaking his hand in the air.  At the time, I was horrified.  Six months and several urine-scented outings later, it’s pretty funny.

The last leg of our mad dash was from the police station (where we applied for her passport) to the American embassy.  The walk was two short blocks, straight up a hill.  Sofija had decided at the police station that she was done walking.  I think I wrote about how many times she would do the rag-doll thing and just go limp as we walked down the street, holding her hand.  About half-way up the last block of hill that lead to the embassy, she dropped to the ground.  To be honest, we were all tired and I was wondering if it would be totally inappropriate for me to just drop to the ground and take a rest next to her.  I didn’t have long to wonder.  She had no intentions of just resting.  She started flailing all around.  In her attempt to kick every one of us as quickly as possible she began spinning around on her back in a form that closely resembled break-dancing.

The sidewalk we were on had about thirty-six inches of space between the building to our right and the busy street to our left.  The seven of us (our family and the lawyer) were taking up all of those thirty-six inches of sidewalk.  The dozens of pedestrians using the sidewalk at the same time of us were all a little bewildered by the scene we were creating.  Most of them stepped into the street in order to keep as much distance from our little break-dancer as possible.  One brave gentleman chose a different path.  Wearing a nice business suit and shiny leather shoes, he clenched his briefcase tightly in one hand and a folder tightly in the other as he attempted to step over Sofija.

Big mistake!  I think I tried to warn him, but I was screaming in English and I’m sure he just thought I was an obnoxious American.  One foot lifted off the ground and landed safely on the downhill side of her.  The other shiny shoe only made it half the distance.  We realized at that moment that our daughter has lightning fast reflexes.  She went from thrashing all around to holding his shoe in both of her hands and his ankle in between her teeth.  As I sit here typing I can’t stop laughing.  He shook her off!  It was like a picture of a postman with his arms full of mail and a little dog nipping at his ankle.  Except it wasn’t a little dog.  It was my child.

Oh, well.  We all survived the day (including the brave businessman) and right now the visual is pretty stinkin’ funny.

Phew….I’m still laughing wholeheartedly.

I can’t say this half-year has been all belly laughs.  In fact it hasn’t even been full of laughing halfheartedly.  But it has been full of the same kind of wholehearted love for all four of my children as I have for my God.

Deutoronomy 11:13-14 “If you carefully obey the commands I am giving you today and love the Lord your God and serve him WHOLEHEARTEDLY, then he will send rain on your land at the right time, in the fall and spring, and you will be able to gather your grain, new wine, and oil.”

I kinda like that promise.  And after the huge harvest we’ve seen in the past six months, I can’t wait to see what we’ll reap in this next wholehearted half-year.