awesome.

Saw this on youtube and was just so moved...

Happy Birthday baby, maybe.

Lately I have been working through the fact that our child will probably be around two years old by the time we meet him. Oliver, my youngest is turning two next week. I look at him and he seems so old to me. He loves to say his name and tell me who loves him. This next child will already have a name, and may know someone who loves him - but doesn't know any of the many people that are about to love him. It also feels eerie to me that along with him be about two at our arrival into his life, this process is said to take about two years. Therefore I wake up each morning thinking - is today the day? Is this your birthday? Or perhaps you will be born tomorrow. I won't know for a long time, but Happy Birthday baby. Any day now, happy birthday.

My Fancy Family

I had a dream a couple of days ago that has really stayed with me. In it we had a family made up of children from different nations. One of my children was talking to me about it, asking why our family looked so different from other families. In the dream I said something to the effect of "I guess God just got really fancy with our family. He brought us together from all these different places and we have all these different needs and all these different gifts to meet those needs and we just fit. But no doubt about it - we're pretty fancy." As I've thought about it these past couple days, I've come to realize that God is the parent in that dream, and I'm the child with the questions. He's slowly answering all of the questions in my child heart. I'm just grateful that He adopted me into His fancy family and has given me all eternity to learn His love.

Hi, we're the Cleavers. I mean, Pabens

On Friday we signed and initialed our contract, wrote a check that felt a little painful and put it in the mail. It should be arriving at our home study agency today. For those of you who don't know what a home study is - it goes something like this. A social worker makes a few visits to our home to spend several hours checking us out, checking our children out, checking our home out. A trifle intimidating. Though I know that these people are for us and for adoption, it is still hard to not want to appear perfect...or whatever that means to an adoption social worker. In the end though,we trust that as flawed as we are, we are "good enough" for this thing that is in essence, loving a child.

i heart amazon

Really. It's a little bit sick. I hear the doorbell ring and my heartbeat increases. I hope it's my amazon order arriving. It must stop or I will spend all of our adoption funds reading about adoption. I must get a library card. The problem is that when you have small kids it is far more enjoyable to hit click, click with children yelling and thrashing in the background then head into a silent library with children thrashing and yelling in the foreground. Do you see why I love amazon? Here are my purchases and opinions over the past few months:





The Complete Book of International Adoption by Dawn Davenport : Very Helpful







Love in the Driest Season, a memoir: by Neely Tucker.
Excellent whether or not you plan to adopt





CultureSmart Thailand: Sean is reading it now, I'll keep you posted






"Are Those Kids Yours?" by Cheri Register, Chapter 1 - so far, so good.


Please feel free to leave a post of books that you recommend - I love reading and I love research. Also if you have any insight into the amazon/library dilemma...

HIV - AIDS Quiz

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Thailand is actually considered somewhat of a success story in the education & prevention of the spread of AIDS - click here if you are interested in learning more.

April Fool's

I emailed Sean at work this morning and told him that the Thai Government had officially put all adoptions on hold for the time being. He called a few minutes later and was not amused when I said "April Fool's!". I thought it was so clever. Guess not.