I Just Wanted A Shower!

That's all.  Just a shower.  Not a baby shower.  No, no, no.  The kind that involves a spray of {preferably}warm water, some pink Dove soap, a little squeeze of shampoo and definitely a razor! 

So, on Friday morning, feeling my children were sufficiently occupied and supervised, I stepped into a steamy pour of warm water.  Approximately 1.3 minutes later I hear screams.  Screams or joy?  Screams of terror?  Screams of annoyance?  I didn't know.  So I?  After a brief pause to notice the ensuing silence {which was actually more unsettling than the screams}, continued to lather.

Is that wrong?  I just wanted a shower. 

And, knowing my kids, those were benign screams anyway.  Right?

Well, I guess that depends on your definition!

Because 3 seconds later I hear-bam, bam, bam, bam {child running up stairs}......bang, bang, bang {same child trying to knock the bathroom door in}

Me:  WHAT?
Parker: I need to come in!
Me: Then come in!

So now I'm starting to get a little flustered.  Because maybe the house is on fire, right?  What kind of mother am I taking a shower while my babies need me?!?!

Silence

More Silence

Door knob jiggling as boy picks the lock!  He rushes in......

Parker: THERE IS A MOUSE IN THE SUNROOM!
Me:  A WHAT?????
Parker: A MOUSE!

I won't even go into why he could not have told me that from the other side of the door! 

Me:  Well, what's going on?????
Parker:  Noah got the fishing net {Huh?  Is he planning to catch it for a pet?} and I got the pool stick, but it climbed up the wall and jumped past my head!

It climbed the wall?  Okay, I think I need to see this.  Shower is over!

Parker:  Can we take our BB guns out there?

Me: Oh, no!  {You'll shoot your eye out!!!}

I don't say that last part, but I'm thinking it.  Seriously, people.  Because I don't have one 13 year old boy.  I have two.  Can you just imagine two 13 year old boys in a closed space, WITH a moving target??  Can you?  Surely I don't have to tell you how that might have ended!  That's right, with someones eye missing!

At this point I did what any good mother would do.....I jumped out of the shower.  Well, after the boy left.  Because, ya know, I don't really want to be paying that therapy bill. 

I threw on some clothes and then ran for my camera!  What?  You wouldn't have done that?

Whatever.

So, I arrived in the sunroom to find my sons hunting mouse.  Where was the cat I wondered?  Isn't this a job for a cat?  Well, well.  Not our lapdog of a cat!  Oh, no.  She ran and hid under a bed at the first sign of commotion!  She wanted no part of it!  The actual dogs were going nuts though and had to be held at bay.  But only because the boys were doing enough to totally dismantle the room without adding the dogs to the mess! 

After climbing around boxes and toys I managed to get to the area in which they felt they had him cornered.  Nope.  No dice.  But, it didn't take the boys long to find flush him out again.  Only that stinker did it again.  He climbed up the vertical blinds and sat at ceiling height looking down at us!  At which point Noah ran for his nerf crossbow. 

Hold the boat!

At this point our story had to take a little intermission.  See, Isabel has Ice Skating on Friday morning and it was time to leave.  Sorry, but no mouse is going to keep my baby from her lessons.  Hello!  Disney on Ice could be calling any day.  Did I tell you she got moved up another lever?  Did I?  Well she did!  And so, maybe she is my retirement plan! 

Can you let me have that dream? 

Hours later and one frantic phone call to the hubby and we return to the house to find that hubby has set glue traps!  And cornered the rat so that he can't escape without going into a glue trap.  Only, this bad boy jumps!  And once Paul and the boys grew impatient of waiting on him to come out on his own and decided to force the issue, that sucker jumped right over the trap and climbed the wall again! 

So Paul used the bb gun!  Shot it!  I screamed, and the rat fell.  But did not die.  This fun game went on for an  hour.  I gave up and went it.  suffice it to say, 3 bbs, some goof off and 2 pellets from the pellet gun later, the mouse is dead.  And hubby got to scrub up the mess he made! Ewwwwwwww!

 Rest in pieces peace little mouse.  Okay, maybe it was a rat.  I don't care what it is!

I just want a shower!

This Is What I Know

Everyone wants to know what I know about Asher.  The truth is, not much.  When we saw our little guy, he had a few pages of information attached to his pictures.  Five pages to be exact.  That's it.  So.  This is what I know....

I know that he was born on xxxxxxxx!  But do I really?  No.  Because he wasn't found until April 6th, 2008.  His birth date was decided on by the civil affairs bureau where he was found.  We will accept that date as his birth date.......well, because what else can we do? 

I know that about 11 months ago he weighed in at 26lbs and was 34 inches tall!  But, I don't know how big he's gotten since then. 

I know that he has a congenital heart defect.  Acleistocardia to be exact.  Also more commonly called patent foramen ovale.  Sounds scary!  It's not.  It's a small flap like opening between the left and right upper chambers of the heart.  It's there in all normal fetuses and would normally close sometime after birth.  In most people, it's closed by the 2nd birthday at the latest.  But, it is still present in one out of four adults.  It should not cause him any issues and he may still outgrown it.  Could his heart defect be worse than that?  Well, this is international adoption, folks.  Yes.  It is possible that something is not in his file. 

I know that he has G6PD deficiency.  What does this mean?  Well I'm still learning, but the reaction of all three of the doctors that have been told this was, "Oh, don't feed him Fava beans!"  Hmmmmm.....what is a fava bean anyway?  Turns out it isn't anything we eat.  I've never even seen one!  But, G6PD deficiency means that he lacks a certain enzyme needed so the red blood cells can function properly.  What that has to do with the fava, I have no idea.  But, this deficiency can cause hemolytic anemia.  A severe anemia triggered by certain medications, foods (fava beans) and even infections.  Most people with this condition live normal lives and never have a symptom.  At his exam in May of last year, Asher was slightly anemic. 

I know that he'll need to learn to sleep in a little!  'Cause right now he gets up at 6:00am and that is unnatural, people!  I know that, thank goodness, he knows the meaning of the word no!  And, I know that his growth report was marked "obstinate sometimes".  I think he'll fit right in! His favorite toy is a car and his favorite thing to do is play games.  He eats a lot of rice and has a good appetite.  Still fitting in here! 

That is about all I can glean from his papers.  Trust me, I went through them with a fine toothed comb!  But, that is not all I know.

I know that he is my son.

I know that it doesn't matter to me if he was born on June 9th or June 13th or May 1st or July 30th.  He is my son. 

I know that it doesn't matter if he outgrows his heart defect or needs a blood transfusion.  He is my son.

I know that if he gets up at 6am, I will get up at 6am and he eats rice, I'll make rice.  He is my son.

I know that if I think about the fact that he's an ocean away and I won't get to see him for months and months I may go crazy!  I know that I pray for his safety and his health every day and every night.   I know that I want to hold him and check him over from head to toe and count his fingers and toes and squeeze him and smell him (after his bath...definitely after the first bath!)  and look into those dark eyes and see those lips form a smile and hear his tiny voice for the first time.  Even if it's crying at first.   

He is my son!

Sigh

I really am working on some posts about adoption and about Asher and some posts about adopting Asher....but, it's crazy trying to do school, do housework, do holidays and do an adoption! Alas, blogging is not at the top of that list.

*sigh*

At least I had some time to upload a few pictures from Easter.

We usually do Easter at home so we can go to our church. Last minute we decided to go to my parent's instead.  Mom was finally out of the hospital so I thought it would be a nice treat for us to be with them.  Besides, we've found a church up there that we enjoy so it has become our "away" church!  We are perpetual visitors.  I hope they don't mind!

We hung out with family and just ate and talked and played.

And took silly pictures!

 

And sweet ones too.

Very sweet ones.

We did Resurrection Eggs and read the Bible and the Legend of the Robin.

And went to Church

With my sister's family.

We had baskets of candy and trinkets.

Isabel got her first real Big Girl Bible. 

 She memorized the books of the Old Testament on the way home!

Then we headed to Columbia for more family visiting.

And then there was the race.

I mean the hunt....for eggs that is!

But it looked more like a race!

Even the boys played....'cause there was candy and money involved. 

Duh!

I hope you had a happy Easter and enjoyed your family as much as we did ours!

Playing

Just playing around with some new toys I have!

What a handsome subject!

Parker

It's a Boy!

In May of 2008, Paul and I wrapped our arms around our (then) youngest child for the very first time.  She'd lived for the first 21/2 years of her life in China, and it was time for her to come home!  As we bonded with Claire, we grew attached to her country, her first home, her culture.  At one point during the trip, we both looked at each other and one of us said what we were both thinking....we will be back, there is another child here for us. It was kind of like feeling the air and knowing that rain is on the horizon. 

We just knew. 

I spent over a year imagining another little girl coming into our lives. A playmate for Claire.  But, God has made it clear that He has a different plan for our family. The Holy Spirit kept nudging me towards a boy.  It was little things.  And, one day a name popped into my head.  A boy's name. And try as I might, I could not come up with a girl's name! 

I am a girl that relies on my gut (Holy Spirit) feelings.  Things just turn out better when I do.  Go figure! Those feelings lead me to my career choice, my husband, my church, adoption and lead me to finding Claire in the last possible place I should have been looking! 

Most recently it lead me to looking around the waiting lists of agency we haven't used before. 

We first saw his face months ago on a waiting list.

We prayed about him and several other little guys that were waiting.   We sent medical records to doctors that might help predict what life with each child would be like.  My heart was broken for one little guy when a cardiologist revealed to us that he most certainly needed a heart transplant.  Even if we could handle that, we would never be able to get him home soon enough.  The little guy disappeared off the list within days of being placed on it.  Did he get a family?  We will never know.   

The other two waited.  And waited. 

We prayed.  And prayed.

Paul felt pulled in one direction, I in another. So I prayed that the child that was not meant to be ours would find his family and leave the list.  The next day I pulled up the list to find my son's face.  Only my son's face! 

The other boy was no longer on the list. We requested to know what had happened to him and were told he was locked for another family!  That was all the confirmation we needed to know that this guy was our son.  That and the fact that when we called the agency about those files months ago, they realized that they had two boys named Noah on their list and needed to change one of them.  Since they had us on the phone they asked us to pick a name for the boy and the only name that came to my mind was the name that had popped into my mind months before....Asher.  Name him Asher.  Little did I know that I'd just named my own son!

 

On March 8th, we sent a letter to Chin@ and asked that they allow us to be the parents to this beautiful baby boy.  On March 19th we received word that they had accepted our letter! 

We put the cart before the horse this time, so now we have to put a dossier together within 90 days!  To say it will be crazy around here for a few weeks is putting it mildly.  In fact, I have two packages to get off this morning so we can get the ball rolling.  And my kitchen table looks like a paper tornado!  But, I look at this sweet  face....

And know that I have to do this as fast as I can.  Because he's so totally worth it!