Stephanie Bennett Update

Remember the case I blogged about earlier this year? Remember Stephanie Bennett? Remember how the adoption agency got her to sign preliminary relinquishment papers on their FIRST MEETING with her? Well, unfortunately, she and her family are still fighting her case. Here is an update at AmyAdoptee, if you’re interested. Please keep praying for this situation. It must be a nightmare for the Bennetts, really. I’m sure they wish they could wake up and find it just a bad dream.

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Half-way to Five

Yesterday was B’s half birthday. We had a special dinner of home-made pizza and salad, with cookies he had picked out at the grocery store for desert. My folks had sent him a Veggie-Tale Half Birthday ecard that he’s viewed several times, now. For weeks he’s been informing us that he’s “almost going to be five.” Guess now it’s official – he’s almost going to be five in just six more months. This time next year we’ll have a kindergartner in the house.

He has matured so much in the last six months. He has developed an interest, lately, in babies and how they get here. Don’t you just love that one? 🙂 This has given us several opportunities to talk about J and how he was “borned in a hospital.” We talk about how he did not grow in mommy’s tummy, but in J’s. That is as far as his interest goes for now. Well, other than recently wondering how the babies get out of the tummy! Ha! Guess I have some refresher reading to do. 🙂 How do you explain that to an almost five year old?

Hm-mm, it just occurred to me that I could query J on how she would like us to talk about some of this with him. Things like, should we talk about his sisters? I mentioned before that I’m not sure if they know about B. That could prove awkward in the future in the event he wants to meet J – which I hope he does. And I hope she will be willing as well.

I lean towards open and honest, and so wish that B’s first family would be involved in some way in our lives. Oh yeah, I was supposed to let go of that, huh? Sometimes I pick it back up again and hope and pray. I guess that’s OK. Perhaps someday those prayers will be answered. Well, since she’s on my mind, I should go write a letter.

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Help . . .

I’m blogging and I can’t stop!

I really gotta go to bed. Why on earth am I still sitting at this computer?!

Good night!

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Why was that important?

I didn’t really get into why it was so important that we find that diversity in our lives in that last post. Funny, I hopped over to catch up with fellow transracial adoptive mom of Sandy Cove Trail and found this post about legos. I was just thinking we needed to upgrade B to legos pretty soon. sigh.

One thing she mentions was how easy it was to ignore back before becoming a transracial family. That’s so true. My own awareness of these issues heightened tremendously after B came along. So I can’t fault folks, really. We just don’t realize how self-segregated we are.

That diversity I wrote about in our new church is an act of God. Pastors from other churches come to them and ask how they did it and the leadership just shrugs – It was God, nothing they set out to do. Segregation, racial divide, racism – those are not of God. Those come from fallen, broken people. As Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it in The Jesus Storybook Bible -our hearts don’t work properly. We don’t love God, and we don’t love each other, as we were meant to. Kind of makes me wonder what God’s up to out here in the middle of Texas in this one little church.

While I’m on the subject, B has been noticing that people are different colors lately. At first, some time last year (while we were in EP) he declared that he is brown, mommy is pink and daddy is green (army uniform?). Cute. Well, recently while I was visiting with someone from our new church (they had us over for dinner) B, who had been playing quietly on the floor for some time, suddenly crawled into my lap and said, “Mommy, did you notice (pointing to himself) black (pointing to our new friend) black, (pointing back to himself) black (and pointing back to friend) black.” We both nodded and said, “yeah, that’s right.” Then he went back to playing, and we went back to our conversation.

I don’t know where or when this past year, but he has definately picked up that folks with his skin color are called black, and mommy and daddy’s skin color is called white. Regardless of what we choose to teach him, what’s out there will be discovered. He is very observant. And, someday he won’t be cute adorable kid. Someday he’s going to be a black young man. That my friends, is why finding diversity in our inner circle is so important.

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Me of Little Faith

We Will dance on the streets that are golden
The glorious bride and the great Son of Man
From every tongue and tribe and nation
Will join, in the song of the Lamb     (from “We Will Dance” by David Ruis)

That is the chorus from one of my favorite songs. When it comes to praise and worship in song, my favorites are songs about heaven. That concept of every tribe, tongue and nation worshipping God together comes from Revelation 7:9. What an awesome picture of God’s design – His beautiful created whorshipping Himself in unity.

That is what God set on our hearts to find here on earth. A place of worship full of diversity, the diversity that God Himself created. Ahhh, but not just that. The teaching needed to be centered on God and His Word, not on man – that high view of scripture I had mentioned last year when we found a church in El Paso. And, a body that encouraged families to worship together, but that also provided a place for younger kids that weren’t yet able to sit through the sermon. All of that together, along with emotional health of the body, presented a rather tall order in my book. I did not believe we were actually going to find that church.

Ahhh, but God is much bigger than anything I can think or imagine. We actually found exactly what God placed on our hearts! And, much to my surprise, it’s a Southern Baptist Church! If I remember correctly, over 40 nationalities are represented in this one congregation. Right here in central Texas. I can just hear Jesus, “Oh ye of little faith.”

Now, being a church full of human beings, I’m quite certain it is not perfect. You’ll not find one anywhere that doesn’t have it’s issues. And the worship style is a bit more traditional than we’re accustomed to, having worshipped with a BGC church plant in Virginia, and a Sovereign Grace church in El Paso. They actually have a worship choir, with a choir director, rather than a worship team. But it is refreshing to see so many young people involved in both the choir and orchestra. And that has not hindered in any way my ability to worship freely.

Now we are trusting God for new relationships that will be built within this congregation and in our new community with people of color. And can I say people of different colors? After all, those of us who are “white” are not lacking in color. We have malatonin, too, you know. God created color and He created His world in color -all kinds of shades and tones. “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” Genesis 1:31a

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And Other Stuff

The whole first week of school went very well. The only issue was that I kept forgetting the Bible time. I would remember it some time later in the day and then ask the question and recite the memory verse with B. That’s really all there is to that, so no biggie.

On Monday, we used Starfall to work on letter recognition/sounds, and B didn’t want to quit! He asked several times during the week to play the letter games again. I finally let him play again on Friday while I got a picnic lunch ready for the park.

Tuesday was music day and he really enjoyed Bosco and Kitty’s Piano Magic, a Robert Pace book. Like the letter games, he asked to do that again several times during the week.

Wednesday was park day with the homeschool group. We went to a really cool sprinkler park. And it was free! 🙂

 Thursday we sorted out all the coins from his piggy bank and then distributed them between the piggy bank for saving, a jar for spending and a jar for sharing. On Sunday, he’ll take some coins from the sharing jar to church for the offering. Next week, we’ll count up what’s in the spending jar and talk about what he wants to spend that money on. If he needs more, we’ll make a chart to save up for the item he wants to buy.

Friday we did not go out to observe a construction site as I had planned. We had received an invitation to join some other moms & kids at the park. Since B is an only kid and we’re working on making new friends, I decided that was more important. He has a couple of construction videos and had checked out another one from the library, so I thought we’d be OK skipping that field trip. B had a wonderful time playing with some of his new friends at the park.

I am very pleased that everything I planned was as relaxed and enjoyable as I had hoped. And the structure really helped our days to run more smoothly, which was why I decided to take the plunge to begin with. The chore schedule is really helping, too. Although I kept forgetting the afternoon chores, until the last couple of days. This is the biggest house we’ve ever lived in, so it is helpful to break up the daily chores into small chunks each day. Then it’s not so overwhelming.

So, there’s a report on our first week of school. And now B is looking forward to next week when we will “row” Katy and the Big Snow.

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Our First Week of FIAR!

Check out my Flickr for full descriptions of the photos.

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Taking the Plunge

We’re starting “school” in the morning! We’re both pretty excited about it. B and I have both been in dire need of some structured routine. B asks pretty much daily to have some school time, so I decided it was time to get down to business. Here’s what we’re doing:

• Five in a Row, Volume 1 – It seems I can find most of the books at the local libraries.
• A Baptist Catechism for Girls and Boys (Bible)
• Mondays: Letter and number games (computer, file folder, and others)
• Tuesdays: Pace Piano for Preschoolers
• Wednesdays: Park Days with our local homeschool group
• Thursdays: Thrive by Five money lessons (for eight weeks, anyway)
• Fridays: Field Trip or play dates

FIAR and Bible will be daily, and then one additional activity each day. FIAR has it’s own lessons/activities stemming from each weeks story: Social Studies, Language Arts, Art, Math, and Science (one per day). The Bible catechism will be a new question each week with a related memory verse. I picked up the booklet at our church. There are 145 questions, so we’ll be at it a while. 🙂

In addition I have put some of the daily chores on a schedule to help me do a better job of keeping up. Ask me in a few weeks how that’s going. On second thought . . .  🙂  I’ll post how we did later in the week. maybe I’ll even put up some pics of B’s notebook. We’ll see how he does with that. Have a great week!

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Oh, yeah, I have this blog.

I haven’t been on in so long that my stats page lists posts and comments under “A while ago.” 🙂

Actually, I’ve thought about posting many times. But, G had been attending the 1SG course the past three weeks. He was home for a couple of days and is now off on his new unit’s AT (annual training). Let me just say that this past year at the Sergeant’s Major Academy spoiled me good. On top of that, G hasn’t worked with a reserve unit for many years.  For the past 12 years he’s worked admin, pretty much. All that to say that having 1SG course and AT back to back really stinks!

Alas, I really can’t complain knowing so many with their soldiers deployed over seas for a year or more. Buck it up, right?!  And I really think these next few weeks will be much better as B and I are starting to learn our way around and get to know some folks. That’s what was hard – brand new place with NO support network. Can I just talk to another adult for a few minutes, please???

Well, that is becoming a possibility now. We were invited to a playgroup this past week by someone we met at church. Bryan had a blast playing with the other kids and I got to know some other moms. Big sigh. We’ve also connected with a local home school group and will attend our second park day this week. Oh, and Tuesday is National Night Out, and one of the neighbors came by to invite us to a block party! Yeah! We’re going to be OK.

I have lots more to write. We’ve found the church of our dreams. I’m starting “school” with B on Monday. And we have lots of home projects – don’t you just love those. Guess I need to get back in the groove here before my brain boils over.

So, how’s life in blogland? I’ve missed you guys. 🙂

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