With some help...

...Krassi got to hold his baby sister for the first time today. He didn't particularly *like* it, but didn't dislike it or fight it, either.We'll run with that!

Free fall

Yesterday morning Matt asked me a simple question:

Remember that dream you had a few years ago about the cliff?...have we jumped yet?

I can't remember when it was - I think perhaps the fall of 2011? - I had a very vivid dream about being on a very high cliff - sort of a promontory - with Matt in the dense fog. I knew that God was waiting to ask us to jump, but in my dream it was also very clear that he was going to tell Matt, not me, not only the when, but also the where - which side of this cliff do we jump off of? Also directly clear was that although the fog kept us from seeing where any of the "wheres" would lead us, or how far the jump was going to be, we could be confident that the one who told us to jump would be there to catch us as we fell.


I don't doubt that we've jumped. :) And in more directions that I had thought possible when I first had the vision of the peninsular cliff! Here I'd thought we'd be shown one, not many all at once! :)

And while in many ways it feels like we're free-falling right now - still no idea when we'll feel solid ground beneath us! - Matt's simple light-hearted reminder of this vision from the past has been such an encouragement to me that although this feels like free fall, we are free-falling under the explicit direction of the One who promises to be with us - the One from whom we can expect no less than more than we can handle and it has been so good to re-set my focus on this. The challenges and disappointments and uncertainties that life offers us are each opportunities to "set our minds on things above and not things of the earth." *

My sister, who happens to be an onamastic** expert, gave us this more in-depth analysis of Evania's name. While "peaceful" is a reasonably simple meaning of "Evania," her research revealed this meaning from the Greek: taking trouble lightly. What a beautiful picture - the trouble of this life is not diminished, but the impact that trouble has on our day to day well-being is diminished. With this perspective, it becomes easier to say,

Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. ***


*Colossians 3:2
**In fact, the only reason that the word "onamastic" is in my vocabulary is because my sister is one!
***Romans 5:3-5

Curly and Cally

Yes, it's only been three weeks since Evania arrived, and that understandably takes a bit of adjustment...

...but since the lovely painting blitz, Matt has not had time to get anything done in the addition beyond one small piece of sheet rock in the link (about 30" by 8") one day, and another afternoon when he and Reuben were able to get out and hang the last of the sheet rock in the crawl space.

[Yes, the plan is to work only on the parts of the addition that need to be worked on in order to get Matt's mom moved in by our move-in date of Christmas 2013. Oops. Missed that one. Well, the before-the-baby-comes date then. Oh yeah. I guess we missed that one, too (see photo above!) Although sheet rock in the crawl space does not appear at first glance to be moving us toward that goal, it is in that now having all of the sheet rock hung (with one small exception in the office) means that Matt can work on cleaning out the scraps that we know we will not use. Cleaning out is an important step in preparation for grinding and staining the concrete floors - a very messy/dusty part of the work that we want done before we open up the main house to the addition and before Barb has her things moved in to her spaces upstairs.]

With Matt so limited in what he has time to do recently, partly because he's helping me a little more with things as we adjust to having a new baby, and also because he's had so much "real" work to be doing, we have been so very incredibly grateful for the work that Korey and Kelley (also known by Rinnah as "Curly and Cally" which brings a smile to our faces every time she says it!) are putting in for us. Because Matt is working so much, we have enough extra cash flow to be able to pay to have some of the work done, but more than anything, knowing that work is progressing is beneficial to my state of mind. (One of the many joys of giving birth at home is that mere hours after Evania's birth I was able to lay on one side of the window between the old and the new (with the shade down!) snuggling my newborn baby while listening to the beautiful sounds of "Curly and Cally" mudding sheet rock on the other side of the window. Let the work continue!!)

This seemingly endless waiting for this project to be done has been fertile ground for me to practice waiting. I've reflected before how it is in waiting that God gives his people the best opportunities to learn and demonstrate their trust in his control over all details of life in this world. Hindsight is so much clearer than this thing we call the future. I was made painfully aware of this as we waited (and waited and waited. And waited.) for Evania to arrive. After my water broke, it was just under one hour and 45 minutes before I was holding my baby in my arms. But two hours before her birth I was on my way home from the grocery store still doubting (seriously!) if she was ever going to come. Unlike our all-knowing not-bound-by-time God who does not see time and the passage of time the same way we do, we can not see ahead of time what is going to happen - we can guess, we can watch for signs that things are approaching, but until it actually happens we can not know. 

By the Saturday before Evania was born, I was in a pretty disgruntled state of mind. I told Matt that every day that I woke up and had not had the baby I was not feeling like I was one day closer, but rather that it was becoming less and less likely that it was ever going to happen. And I was letting it have an impact on my attitude. Even worse, as Matt attempted to speak words of truth and encouragement to me, I told him I didn't want to hear it. God wisely chose to give me Easter Sunday as a day NOT to hold my newborn baby, but instead to refresh my soul and shift my perspective from myself (poor me - when will I get to hold this baby??) back to Him where it ought to be. This is, by the way, the God who raises the dead!! And holds every other little detail in his hands as well.


Including house completion dates. As hard as it is for me to get my head around this lately as I am so anxious for the work to be done enough for Matt's mom to be here because for various reasons, at least as far as my little mind can tell, this (as in NOW!) is for sure the right time.

But for some reason God has other plans. And I was reminded through our discussion around our study of Deuteronomy (of all things) yesterday morning that God can have whatever plans he wants, and he is in no way obligated to tell us why those are his plans, either now while we wait to see what they are, or after they are part of the past that we can look back on. These are his plans, and we don't need to (ever!) know the "why" as much as we may want to know.

And as much as I'd like to be able to say I'm okay with that, I'm not sure I'm quite there at the moment. ;) I have been in the past, and I know I will be, but this week it's where my battle is.

Dear God, would you give me the faith to trust that you know what you are doing and give me the ability to wait patiently and joyfully for you!!

MAY 2013: taking down the tree

JUNE 2013 #1: excavating and preparing to pour footings

JUNE 2013 #2: basement walls framed up, waterproofing on (in the mud)

JULY 2013: main level walls framed up

AUGUST 2013: upper level and roof framing, windows installed, pex and concrete in for both basement and main levels, some electrical rough-in beginning

SEPTEMBER 2013 #1: the month for blitzing on the exterior - and a month of so many wonderful friends and family sharing their time to get this job done. Starting with insulation...

SEPTEMBER 2013 #2: ...and ending with siding progressing nicely...and a shingled roof!

OCTOBER 2013 #1: finishing up the siding...

OCTOBER 2013 #2:...and a trip to Europe to bring home a certain tiny boy

NOVEMBER 2013: batt insulation and interior wall framing

DECEMBER 2013 #1: plumbing rough in...

...sheet rock ceilings upstairs, and blown-in cellulose insulation in the roof

JANUARY 2014: more plumbing rough in, mechanical rough in, other nit-picky work

FEBRUARY 2014: fireplace framing and installation, also main level cellulose insulation

MARCH 2014: sheet rock party!...

..."Curly and Cally liked my pizza and cookies"

APRIL 2014: Paint!!!...

...and a baby!

Six small people...

...who make me happy that I get to be a mother!

What we've been up to

I haven't done a very good job of regular posting lately (imagine that!) but thought I'd try for a quick bullet point style photo update tonight.

Krassi is slowly starting to show more interest in his baby sister. I love this moment captured of her with her two smaller older brothers. Reuben is so into babies, as evidenced by his grin and gentle hand on her belly, but you can also see that Krassi is looking at her, which he wasn't doing at the beginning.

I decided to take his moment of interest a little further and rested Evania on his back while talking to him about "his baby" and what do you know - he got a little smile on his face when I put her there!

Rinnah's interest in Evania is frequent and fleeting. She holds her many times during a normal day, but for no more than two or three seconds at a time. She's older than Leah was when Reuben was born, but not so much of the natural nurturer that Leah is!

As I was saying...

...that Leah knows how to love on her little ones!

I'm still getting to spend most evenings doing one of my favorite things...

Late last week we put a fresh (pink!) sheet on the crib and removed all of the baby dolls and teddy bears who had been happily using the space, and now it's all Evania's.

And while I worked on that, Krassi got his first chance to play in the tunnel that goes in front of the dormer room and connects the two under-eave spaces on either side. He was thrilled!

Reuben's presence still elicits Krassi's self-preservation instincts (eyes shut and head pressed against the far wall), but Reuben really did a great job of being careful, and the response was only momentary out of Krassi and didn't at all seem to spoil his fun. No, I was the fun-spoiler when I took Krassi out of the tunnel and carried him back downstairs when we were done, and he let me know it, too, with tears-down-the-cheeks crying. I'm looking forward now to playing up there with him again and adding one more experience to his pool of evidence that tells him that good/fun/interesting things are likely to be repeated in hopes that someday his sense of loss will not be so deeply profound when something he enjoys is temporarily taken away.

Here's Krassi very deliberately looking at little Evania.

Shouldn't every two-week old baby have the experience of listening to The Hobbit read aloud while under the watchful...paw...of a feline larger than she is? We think so, too. :)

Peacefully alert, Evania enjoyed her first "real" bath more than most of her siblings have! (With the exception of Reuben, who has been in love with water since he first laid eyes on it!)

She was well supervised. :)

- You'll notice that there are no photos of the addition. That's because since the work week that my mom so kindly volunteered for us, nothing has been able to happen out there beyond the mudding that Korey and Kelley are doing a few evenings a week. It is very hard to be patient, but it's where we need to be right now.

- Monday's mail brought the official written report from our doctor on an ultrasound Evania had at three days old. Although we'd already heard the results from our doctor over the phone, it's still a pretty neat thing to see it in writing in front of you: intact spinal column and spinal canal contents...no evidence of meningocele or myelomeningocele. After her birth, our midwives noted that Evania has a prominent sacral dimple, which was likely nothing to be concerned about (because she had good use of her limbs, and good coloring), but was prominent enough that it warranted further investigation to rule out spina bifida. How often I find that it's easier to trust God with the "big" things (like a potential birth defect in your perfect new-born daughter) than the "little" things (like slow-moving house additions or slow-to-arrive babies!) She was "perfect" then all through the six days of waiting we had between her birth and when we found the results, and is still perfect now.

- Today's mail brought the results of Krassi's IQ testing (required by the county as a pre-requisite for receiving developmental disability services). Matt and I have joked that the county could have saved some money by just sending one of their employees the mile down the road that it is to our house and spending five minutes here instead of paying for a psychological evaluation, but that isn't what the system requires, so last week Daddy and Krassi drove down for his evaluation. Guess what - he qualifies! The test results came back saying that his IQ falls in the "less than 40" range, putting him at a severe to profound developmental disability. On many levels, that's absolutely where he is. On the other hand, Matt and I both see very subtle levels of intelligence that just won't register on an IQ test, but reveal an intelligence greater than what "less than 40" captures. The psychologist recommended re-testing him in 3-5 years, and I would not be at all surprised if the results at that time are significantly different.

And that's a bit about where things are around here!

Family

Every year we spend the last weekend in April with Matt's dad's side of the family at an 8 bedroom retreat "cabin." This year was obviously Krassi's first year, and I was freshly aware as we traveled down that adoption doesn't just provide a child with a mom-dad-brothers-sisters kind of family, but also all of the family that goes beyond that - grandmas, grandpa, cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, etc, etc.

A year ago this boy belonged to no one.

Look at him now!

Krassimir has a family! Here he is, all lined up with all of the second-cousins from oldest to youngest (with the exception of 2 month old Abram sitting on the lap of the oldest on the far right, and a few adults thrown in to help keep little ones in their places because they either can't (Krassi and Evania) or won't (yes, that's Rinnah with her hands over her eyes and Grandma keeping her from running away!))

I've heard that the first six months home are critical months for bonding for an adoptive family. Krassi has just passed up six months home with us, and it was interesting to watch him over this weekend - he was so comfortable, and at ease, which is such a contrast from other potentially-overwhelming events that he's been to over the last six months. Christmas was celebrated at our house (so even a familiar setting), and was tough for him. We visited my parents house for his first time back in February, and though he did great during the day, the nights were rough for him, with him waking at least once nightly whimpering, and many tooth-grinding hours during the night.

This trip was so different - he was confident and curious, regularly going "exploring" around the cabin, doing just fine with all of the people around, most of whom he'd never met, and sleeping so soundly during the night that we didn't hear from him once.

And so many fun experiences for him! Playing with extended family (how neat for him to learn that it's not just us who like him and enjoy spending time with him, but there are other people in the world who think he's worth their time, too!)...

...or sitting with Grandma...

Don't let his expression fool you - he loves his Grandma, but he's a challenge to hold, so his look is reflecting the effort he's putting in to keep himself in a comfortable position.

...or playing out on the big lawn outside...

(I'm not quite sure how Matt managed to get a photo with no one else in it - usually the grassy area between the play set, where Matt is, and the cabin, is swarming with uncles and cousins playing baseball or soccer, or just running around!)

I don't have photographic evidence, but Krassi got what I'm nearly certain are his first grass stains ever! That's just what every nine-year-old boy should have on his pants, and it's little things like that that surprise me with the thrill they bring - Krassimir has grass stains on his pants!!!

And, because we traveled with a brand-new baby, Krassi also spent a fair amount of time just doing this...

...playing on the floor while I laid on the couch and did "nothing." But even that he seemed to enjoy pretty well.

And I sure enjoyed what I was doing!

I don't think I could ever get tired of holding my tiny little baby.

Introducing...

Evania Hope

Evania (ee VAHN yah) means "peaceful" and is the only name we've ever picked out completely after the fact (of birth) and was simply because this sweet girly is so calm and peaceful despite her busy surroundings!

Hope is pretty self-explanatory! ;) (see Romans 5:1-5)