Precious boys

Reuben's seizure disorder is so unpredictable. A week and a half ago he ended the longest seizure-free stretch he's had in over three years, ending at 19.5 days without any seizures. Since then they've been kind of hit or miss - nothing really big, but a tonic/clonic here and a smattering of partial seizures there. Today he had a partial seizure that lasted for 20 minutes before we chose to administer his rescue meds (which essentially slow his whole system down enough that the brain can't rev up enough to seize). The partial was ebbing and flowing, impacting more or less of him as it cycled from just a mild off look in his eyes, to moments of full tonic-clonic seizing and the whole range in between.

I was holding him through this on the couch in the living room, with his Blue Blanket (Ba-Boo) and his Bible close at hand. After about 10 minutes in there Krassimir made his way over (belly crawling on the floor), picked up Reuben's second Ba-Boo which was laying on the floor near us, lifted it up in his hand and held it out toward me and Reuben.

That made me cry. I still don't know enough to truly know how much capacity Krassimir has to understand about the world around him. But he seemed to really know that Reuben was not well, and had put together that Reuben finds comfort in his Ba-Boo, and was trying to bring that comfort to his brother. The smile on his face while doing it was so sweet.

Photos in the middle of those situations don't happen, but here's Reu all knocked out afterwards, sleeping off his meds with his cat, his Bible, and two little blue blankets.

That moment with Krassi fills me with awe. This child was essentially thrown away, counted as worthless soon after his birth because he was premature and had hemorrhaging in his brain. Those caring for him at that time decided he would never amount to anything, and proceeded to take steps that would ensure he never would. I marvel at this simple act from my oldest son, and I cringe as I re-read the original medical papers we received about him which state his condition as, "severe mental and physical retardation, caused by the intracranial hemorrhage in the early neonatal period (prematurity) and the formation of cerebral palsy." There's no arguing the severe mental and physical retardation, but the cause is where it stings. I am firmly convinced that the cause is that this fragile little boy was never given the opportunity to grow. This very broken, severely handicapped, and multiply disabled little child is now becoming a young man who is learning to reach out to those around him and do what he can to ease the hurts of others.

Krassimir's never going to achieve great things in the areas that this world measures success in, but it's not an accident that over the past school year he came home with an "Empathy" award! Ever since coming home, he's been very aware of other's emotional state - crying, even sobbing when someone else is crying, and also learning rather quickly that Reuben screeching or crying wasn't as big of a deal as the other kids crying because it's a more normal part of Reuben's every day way of being.

What we saw out of Krassi today is a glimmer of growing maturity - instead of just becoming upset about someone else's distress, he made a plan and took deliberate action to try to do something to make a difference for his brother.

Wow.

Finally...something

We got news this morning that yesterday, on the actual six-month deadline we were given back in January when our commitment documents were approved, our dossier has been submitted to the MOJ. Six months to the day!

The next time they're meeting to approve adoption requests is August 4th - next Thursday. We should know soon after that if we've been approved to travel, and then hopefully soon after that what our travel dates will be!

God at work

It's often when things work out easily, or quickly, or in time with *our* preferences that you hear people talking about God being behind it, or answering prayers.

We are seeing God at work in a completely different way with this adoption! With plenty of reassurances along the way that this is the right path to walk in, the process is taking pretty much absolutely as long as it possibly can to get completed!

We've been patiently waiting to hear that our dossier was submitted to the MOJ, and having not heard anything for a few weeks here, were thinking that maybe, just maybe they'd submitted it and not told us, and we were going to wake up any morning now to an email saying we'd been approved and would we be ready to travel in a few weeks!

This morning I emailed our US agency to see what they know about the status of our dossier, and the first surprise was that we didn't get a nearly immediate reply back to our email. Our contact person is VERY timely - sometimes I think she must sleep with her phone so she can get back to emails at any hour around the clock! So when it took over twelve hours to get a reply, that in itself was quite the wait.

But get this - it turns out a few dossiers all came in to our Bulgarian agency at the same time, and she's been working on translating them in order of priority related to their deadline, and ours isn't done yet!

We sent our commitment documents on December 31, 2015. They were approved by the Bulgarian MOJ on January 27th. From that date we have six months to get our dossier submitted. It's been over a month ago that we sent our dossier, and we're now sitting here with five days to go until it needs to be submitted. Phew.

So what does this have to do with this post's title? Well, back in November when I was very pregnant and Matt and I both heard God directing us to begin the adoption process again, we both, but me in particular, thought that was a pretty stupid time to be starting an adoption. Sure, it's one thing to find out you're expecting a baby by birth when you're in the middle of an adoption, but the other way around doesn't just *happen.* But we've learned enough to know that it's not our job to decide when to obey - as I tell my kids, obedience is 1) doing what you're told 2) right away 3) with a good attitude. So we did.

Watching this whole thing slog along like a sloth on a bad day has been incredible to me to watch. We are doing everything on our part to keep things moving as snappily as we can, but it's not in our hands. As we wait, we are getting to thoroughly adjust to life as a family of nine, and it's looking now like Gloria might even be weaned before trip two, meaning she could stay here in the States for the second trip, greatly simplifying caring for the girls for that week and the flight home.

Just like everything else that's under his control, God has this, too. And apparently one of the miracles he's working here is stretching out this time gap to the very longest it can be. It will be interesting to see how this happens.

Silly boy

Sure doesn't look comfortable to me, but he was soundly out! Silly boy. ;)

(He still after nearly three years doesn't have any clue about using a pillow! I guess old habits die hard.)

Jury Duty

This post could also be titled, “One of the things that I love about the United States,” in a belated 4th of July tribute.

 So, last Monday I was summoned for jury duty for the first two weeks in August. Although it’s looking more likely now that it will be the END of August that we’ll be traveling to meet our girls, it’s not impossible that the jury assignment would conflict with trip one. Besides that is the simple fact that wherever I go, Gloria goes, because nursing is still her only means of nourishment. We’ve never done a bottle with any of our children, partly because we’ve never needed to, and partly because I’ve never had success pumping. By the day after I received my summons, I had a letter returned explaining my situation:
1) Gloria is nursing. I can only report for jury duty if she can come with me and I can be excused as necessary to nurse her when she needs to nurse.
2) we may be out of the country at some point in August that is yet to be determined.
3) although one is allowed to postpone one’s jury assignment for up to nine months, I don’t really want to do that because by the time Gloria’s done nursing (January), we’re expecting B and T to be home, and for bonding reasons, I don’t want to be gone, particularly for T, during her waking hours for the first six months that they’re home, and especially important during the first three months of that time.

 I suggested in my letter that October might be a good time for me to come, if we could make arrangements for Gloria – she won’t be 100% nursing by that point, so would have some more flexibility in getting along with solid foods. And then I waited.

A mere week later I got a notice back in the mail with my new assignment: August 2017. How beautiful is that!?! Although I could have gotten a medical letter for the nursing, adoption isn’t one of the things that is listed as an acceptable excuse. So I am thrilled that I get to fulfill my duty in the system that supplies a fair trial with a jury of peers, and that we have a government that listens to my request as a mother of a nursing baby and soon-to-be-mother of a very needy child, and will postpone my time out for a year.

Barreling Turtle

Looking at that title, it's probably too late at night for me to be blogging. ;)

Oh well. Here I am. Matt's running over to help our neighbor start her truck, so I might as well do something!

It's hard to believe it's been two weeks since my last update on the blog! It feels like life's been barreling along since then, and even with that, things are only moving along as quickly as, well, a turtle.

Last Monday we heard from our primary agency that our dossier had been received and reviewed by our Bulgarian agency (yay!) and that we needed to send over one additional and one corrected paper. Phew. The additional one was easy — just an addendum to the contract that we needed to sign, but no notary, no apostille. The other one required getting a new one-page document from our local home study agency because the one we'd sent only referred to the "children adopted by the Glewwe family" whereas it needed to have both our full names and the girls' full names on it. And that one needed the notary and apostille, so one rainy morning Reuben and I drove to the agency, picked it up, drove it downtown for the apostille, and got it stuck in the mail. It only took about an hour and a half (Gloria was home with Dad and slept the whole time! Yay!), but Reuben was having a rough morning, and was screaming for roughly 40% of the trip. Phew.

But we got it off that afternoon...and then realized I'd forgotten about the "easy" paper in my concentration on getting the complicated one. So that one got out the next day.

Thankfully, we were able to send a digital copy of the new paper to Bulgaria for her to begin translating, so this shouldn't delay things TOO much. We're still waiting to hear, though, that the dossier has been submitted to the MOJ. Once that happens, we're anticipating about six weeks before we travel to meet the girls!!