15 Things You Can Do to Support an Adopting Family

It's adoption month, and we aren't adopting, or starting an adoption, or paying off an adoption, so I feel like I can post this without anyone thinking it's about me. Actually, all of the below are wonderful things that people stepped up and did for us when we were adopting, which is how I came up with the ideas in the first place. All Christians are called to care for the vulnerable, and as James reminds us, this means orphans. You may not be called to adopt (or perhaps you are, consider praying about it this month), but you can provide for an orphan by supporting a family in the process of adopting. Here are a few ideas:

1. Pray! Pray for the child being adopted, pray for the family adopting them, pray for the family and friends the child is leaving behind, pray for the process, pray for the child's birth country. Just pray.

2. Offer to bring a meal or watch kids when the family is preparing to travel. Those last few days are exhausting and crazy.

3. Make a "new baby" meal when they come home. Adoptive parents are physically spent from travel and jet-lag, all the kids have adjustments to make, there is unpacking to do, relationships to form, and all the regular demands of running a house/family. A meal helps more than you know.

4. Offer to babysit so adopting Mom and Dad can have one last date before they travel - most families are hesitant to leave newly adopted kiddos with babysitters for the first few months (it's standard adoption/bonding advice), so getting that last night out before the new little one comes home is crucial.

5. Offer hand-me-downs during the adopting process. Adoptions cost loads of money, much of which has to be scraped together and paid out in large chunks, and many adopting families save that money by cutting back on normal expenditures. Your hand-me-downs could save another family that extra few hundred they need to pay for their homestudy, their visa, or their plane tickets. Seriously, they help so much.

6. Offer to lend or give hand-me-down baby gear when they get home. Most families are still paying off the travel costs that they put on their credit cards last minute. Have a stroller you aren't using? A baby swing to lend? Not having to purchase those items is a lifesaver. Just be forewarned that any family who is still being scrutinized by the state has to check everything against recalled product lists - so they may need to ask you the make/model before they say yes (and it isn't because they are picky or rude).

7. Depending on your comfort level (and that of the family) and the age of the child coming home, if you are a nursing mother with a good breast pump...offer milk. We were so blessed to have a few month's of breast milk donated to us when T first got home. Since you can't buy it this is literally priceless.

8. Do you have the a gift for photography? Offer to take pictures! You could provide the shots for the birth announcement, or do some new family photos. Adopting families often don't have enough pictures of their child's early years and are thus scrambling to make up for lost time.

9. Each adoption starts out with a homestudy that includes a home inspection. Offer to help clean things up the day before the inspection - families never know whether their social worker will be glancing in every room or searching the cupboards...so they have to be overly prepared.

10. Host a fundraiser for them. Most families don't have $30k lying around when they start the adoption process. Shocking, I know. And most of us don't really enjoy constantly talking about how much adoption costs, or how much we need money. Really, it isn't fun at all. Trust me. It is such a blessing when someone offers to help you raise money. Hosting a garage sale on their behalf is great, throwing a craft boutique, or selling whatever cool thing you have the skills to make on their behalf, all of it helps.

11. On the subject of money, you could also consider just donating some to an adopting family. We all spend loads of money on plenty of things that don't have a fraction of the value that adoption does. Consider giving up a "luxury" in your budget and just giving that money to a family struggling to raise funds to bring a child home. I know the costs of adoption seem excessively high, but they are usually almost entirely out of the adoptive family's control, and for a waiting child they are the difference between a life in an institution and a life with a family.

12. Host a prayer meeting right before they travel. It feels so good to leave for a trip knowing that you are covered in prayer.

13. While Mom or Dad (or both) are gone, plan a play date or special time with any siblings left at home. Their world has just turned upside down, and it is about to get much crazier with the arrival of new kids in their family. A little special time for them is a good thing.

14. Host a baby shower for the new little one, especially if it is the family's first child. Chances are that Momma has spent many years attending baby showers while longing for a baby, and would really appreciate the time to celebrate the new addition to her family.

15. Write emails, FB comments, blog comments, etc while the family is in-country, especially if it is a long stay. It's always nice to get a note from home, and encouragement is always needed!

16. Pray! Pray for the adoptive child, pray for the family, pray for the family and friends the adoptive child is leaving behind, pray for the process, pray for the child's birth country. Just pray. (Yep, this is first and last, because it's the most important and warrants repeating).

A great video on how to come alongside an adopting family:

And a post about fundraising and adoption: http://ordinary-time.blogspot.com/2012/11/orphan-sunday.html

Proud Mum

Today I attended Tommy's first parent-teacher conference, and as you can deduce from the title of this post, it was a success.

The child loves school AND school loves him right back. He's doing fantastic academically, is on track to begin reading, and loves learning and sharing his knowledge. His teacher described him as a leader and as well-liked by the other children. He also is impulsive and can get a little too excited, but, we already knew that. Other highlights include descriptions of him as self-confident and independent, able to engage appropriately with his peers and adults, and is eager to contribute to discussion. Most importantly, he will be ready for Kindergarten next September.

Things I have observed since he started school that have warmed my heart:

He brings home "class books" that the parents are supposed to comment on, and he always wants to dictate a very long comment worded as if it is coming from me and aimed and encouraging the kids in his class. For example, "What lovely children in this class. They all work so hard."

He adores his teachers and wants to go to school on Saturdays just to make sure that they aren't there.

He is very proud of the art he does and loves to display it on our fridge or hang it around the house.

He has also been doing some cooking lately, and I got a request for the recipe for a soup he made recently. He doesn't do the prep, but he does do all the cooking...not bad for four. I figure at this rate I should be getting a really nice meal by the time he is ten or so...

Kale and White Bean Soup

Olive oil
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrot
1 cup chopped celery
10 oz Kale, washed and coarsely chopped
2 cans great norther white beans (15ox each), drained
5 to 6 cups chicken broth
salt, pepper, and seasonings (we use Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning)

Sauté the onion, carrot, and celery until soft. Add the kale, stir until it wilts, add the beans and broth, season and heat up. So easy a four year old can do it!

Our Trip To Springfield: Saturday

On Saturday we went to the Abraham Lincoln Museum. This museum is absolutely worth the trip. The story telling in the exhibits was captivating, the use of artifacts, manuscripts, and historical scenes engaging, and the narrative they constructed of Lincoln's life was more nuanced than other presidential libraries I have visited (cough, Nixon, cough). If you go you will be pleased that you did. It is an extraordinarily high-quality museum, and arranged very well to manage the flow of people through exhibits and to allow you to learn new and fascinating things about Lincoln's life.

Our guide-book said to allow 3 1/2 hours to view it, so we didn't rush there first thing in the morning. That was a mistake. There is so much to see and do there. We saw an exhibit on Lincoln's early years, one on his White House years, one on weapons and medicine in the Civil War, two Lincoln shows, a kid's play area, and a collection of Lincoln "treasures." I am fairly certain we did everything there was to do in the museum. It was a lot, but the kids were champs. Nic got a little fussy at the end and fell asleep in the stroller, but Tommy was absolutely fascinated by Lincoln and his family. He is still talking about Lincoln, drawing him, asking about his kids, and discussing his death. If you are going to go to the museum be forewarned that there is a significant amount of death involved in Abe's life. He lost his mom when he was nine, buried two children, and of course, was assassinated. The museum does not mince words, so be prepared to answer some hard questions. This is also true in regards to slavery. Tommy has not quite connected all the dots on this one. We have explained it in a simple way and begun to teach him about it, but he is too young to understand all of the implications of slavery at this point so we didn't have to answer too many questions about it, but I imagine that if he were a few years older the trip would have brought up even more difficult discussions.

Now, I know some of you may be a little doubtful about my assessment of the museum. You might be thinking, "of course you thought it was good because you love history." It is true that I love history more than probably 99% of the population, and that I enjoy myself at some pretty terrible history museums (ask my siblings how many times I have forced them to visit the museum in Kernville), but trust me on this, the Lincoln Presidential Museum is excellent. If you have ever enjoyed yourself at a history museum, you will be happy at this one.

The long day wiped us out and made us hungry. We tried to find someplace to eat near the museum, but Springfield is basically a ghost town on the weekends, so we ended up at Cracker Barrel, which was at least a novelty for my parents. We wrapped up the day with some special pool time for Tommy, and football with Papa time for Nic.

Six Months

Our littlest guy is now six months old. I'm not sure how that happened! He is the sweetest baby in the world. I am not joking. He goes with our crazy flow, he cuddles, he smiles, and he adores his big brothers and puts up with almost everything they dish out.

We tried his first solid food - bananas - today. Well, first if you don't count the tootsie roll that a very loving brother allowed him to suck on, but that was months ago so we have almost forgotten the incident. He did not eat much of the banana, so we'll try again tomorrow along with something else, maybe pears? He has been trying to get solids for the last few weeks, but I was holding off until after his six month check-up today. Of course, while there I learned that Kenny has lost ground in his weight percentile (but maintained height/head), so it is certainly time to start getting the boy a little more food. Of course, if his metabolism takes after Jeff's no amount of food will help him gain weight and I may as well give up now. If he takes after me it will be a different story entirely.

He did awesome on his sitting test and on all the other checks except rolling back to front. He doesn't do that yet, and I will not be encouraging it because as soon as he starts rolling I have to start worrying more. I will also not be encouraging crawling or walking. It may be really fun to do that with your oldest child, but after that you wise up and realize that the faster they walk, the faster you will have to run to keep up with them!

And a little story from dinner tonight:

Tommy was apparently having some serious thoughts, at one point interjecting, "Let me get this straight. Some dinosaurs ate salad, and some dinosaurs ate other dinosaurs, but ALL the dinosaurs got killed." Yep. This led into an intense discussion about how disappointing it is to find out that dinosaurs had feathers and not scales. Feather are just not tough at all!

And from Halloween:

I told Nic he could have one piece of candy after he ate his dinner. He responded, "No! Two!" When I related the story to Jeff, in front of Nic, Nic laughed at the end of the story and shouted, "No! Three!" Nic volunteering information like this without any prompting is huge progress. He is really turning a corner in his speech.

Our Trip to Springfield: Friday

I started writing one post about our trip to Springfield and realized it was far to long, so I'm splitting it up...

When Mom and Dad were in town we decided to make a trip down to Springfield to visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. I have been wanting to do this since the museum opened years ago, and I knew that my Mom and Dad would really enjoy seeing it as well, so we decided to take a mini-vacation together. I am so glad we did.

We had an incredible time. Everything went so well, and we had so much fun. I was ready to move to Springfield, but Jeff says we can't because his job is here (what a killjoy). Also, we got stared at a ton while we were there...so maybe it wouldn't be the best environment for the boys. Which is weird, right? Because it's the town of Abraham Lincoln, and his face is everywhere, and everything is about how great he was and how he ended slavery, and so on, so one would think that people might be a little more accepting of a family with both white and black members and not gape at them...but I digress. No one said anything directly negative to us anyhow, just lots and lots of staring.

But you should still go to Springfield. I was so impressed with the quality of family activities they have, and how many opportunities there were for the kids to be engaged and learning. Here is the list of things we did: Illinois State Museum, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum, State Capitol Tour, Lincoln Home National Historic Site, and the Dana-Thomas House.

We left for Springfield on Friday. We had great intentions of leaving the house early and getting down there to see things, but we all woke up late and it took forever to get things together, so we arrived around two and decided to go straight to the Illinois State Museum. This FREE museum (or at least, Free to those who don't pay IL taxes) has the most amazing children's museum area. Certain adults (ahem, Jeff, ahem, Mom) may have had an even better time than the kids as they played with a huge microscope. I had a good time assembling broken pottery puzzles in the archaeology area, and of course, digging for dinosaur bones. Tommy packed up a jeep and went camping in a cave, while Nic banged on a little computer. Dad examined his wrinkles in the aforementioned microscope and chatted forever with the volunteer about California. Seriously, it is the best children's museum area I have ever been to. The rest of the museum was well done. The exhibit on how the environment changes was interactive and appealed to all of us, kids included. The upstairs exhibits on the homes of Illinois residents from different communities and time periods was also well done. The only exhibit that looked in need of some TLC was the very random and dated exhibit on the first peoples of Illinois (i.e.the Native Americans or Amerindians, whichever you prefer). We spent our entire afternoon in the museum and didn't leave until they kicked us out!

We went and ate horse-shoes as recommended by the visitor's center. Mom and Dad were not impressed. Jeff and I were, but a piece of Texas toast topped with meat, french fries, and cheese sauce is not for everyone...but since cheese fries are a junk-food favorite of mine that I almost never eat, I was a rather happy girl.

The only aspect of our trip that was less than perfect was the hotel. We didn't anticipate that it would be particularly nice, but the last time that Jeff and I had stayed at a similar type of hotel (different chain. same idea) we had been pleasantly surprised. Trip adviser gave the hotel we chose the highest ratings for the value, but failed to mention that the floors were constructed out of some kind of amplifying material. Either that or a herd of elephants had the rooms above us. Also, the doors were very thin and the hallway was not quiet because the manager apparently personally delivers wake up calls by banging on people's doors. However, it did appear clean, and that counts for something. And it had a pool, so Jeff and I took the big boys for a "late night" swim at seven o'clock and racked up lots of "cool parent" points.

Family Photos

We finally got to see the results of our family photos! I am so happy! Check out the rest on my friend Julie's blog.

Yummy Fall Granola

First, my Dad is out of the hospital and doing great. Many, many tests have led to the conclusion that he is very healthy and what happened was a fluke. Mom made her flight home last night so that she could make chemo this week, and Dad followed today. We had a nice day with him that included playing at the park, reading, and some football in the backyard. While he read/played I got to start the clean up on our apartment and do a little cooking. I made some cinnamon cranberry walnut granola, which not only tastes awesome but made the apartment smell like Fall is here...even though it was a glorious 75 degrees today!

I love this granola recipe which I concocted one day when I felt like having some granola but had fairly limited supplies on hand. I've made it again and again because it is so absurdly easy and it makes a really filling breakfast (half a cup with milk gets me through to lunch without a growling stomach).

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

5 cups oats (the slow cooking kind)
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/2 cup real maple syrup
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt

Put all of the above in a big bowl and stir it up really well. Be careful that the brown sugar is mixed in thoroughly and not lumpy.

Dump mixed up granola on a rimmed baking sheet and cook for 15 minutes. Stir and rotate pan. Cook 15 more minutes. Stir and rotate pan. Cook 10 minutes. Check to see if your granola is brown/crisp to your liking. If not. put in for another 5 to 15 minutes. When it is light brown and the oats are crunchy remove from the oven and let cool.

Stir in one cup dried cranberries (I use Craisins because the massive bag at Costco is cheaper than buying off-brand).

Store in an airtight container and enjoy!