A Day in the Life

Jin and I had a great morning and early afternoon together.  We usually do, but this "great morning" was well-timed, in light of the crazy that was yesterday.  Okay, maybe it wasn't yesterday that was crazy.  Maybe it was just me.  Entirely possible.  All I know is that by the end of the day, I found it necessary (in a pressing, it's either this or someone's gonna die kind of way) to lock myself in my room and watch NCIS.  A grown-up TV show that is not appropriate for toddlers, which is one of the reasons it was so perfect last night.  A little Team Gibbs was just what I needed.

All good, now, and Jin was fabulously sweet when he woke up this morning, and he was fun and playful and all that.  I snapped a couple pictures of him, in fact.  The first one is Jin under the kitchen table, a favorite place to play for kids of all ages.  Cute shot, right?

 

 

And this is Jin playing with Daddy's freshly laundered underwear.  He started with them on his head, but then I think he wanted to wear them like he wears his own underwear.  Nice.  And a sneaky look on his face to boot.

 



Somewhere in all of this he, once again, ate like a boss.  Twice.  Yes, two breakfasts.  He had a whole plate of turkey slices, Cheerios, and diced apple before we took the kids to school, and when we got home, he went for round two, which included multiple helpings of grapes and pumpkin spice bagel.  Seriously, I don't know where he puts it.  I have learned, however, that the amount he eats is directly reflected in the amount he . . . well . . . let's just say that as often as I've said about his eating, "I don't know where he puts it," I've also said "I don't know where it's all coming from."  Get the picture?

So later on the two of us went on a walk on the nature trail in our neighborhood.  Well, I walked and he rode in his stroller.  I'm seriously contemplating investing in a used jogging stroller for outings just like this one, but not having one yet shouldn't stop me from at least walking to get a little exercise, right?  It was a beautiful day today, so it just seemed like the perfect thing to do.  It made Jin super happy.

 

 

As I chugged along, I went back and forth between thinking this was a great idea and a terrible one, compiling a list of pros and cons in my head.  Allow me to share:

 

Pro - When is it NOT a good idea for me to get exercise?  When is it NOT a good idea for Jin to get out to see the world around us?  Win-win.

 

Con - I don't have a key to the walk-through gate at the entrance to our gated village.  I also don't have a drive-through gate clicker, because it got stolen out of my van a couple years ago and I am WAY too cheap to pay the $25 for a replacement.  So we had to wait a little while until someone happened to need to go somewhere, thus opening the gate.  I really should break down and pay the three bucks to get a gate key before the next walk/jog.  The scene I just described is actually kinda pathetic.

 

Pro - We left our house at 12:07 p.m.  This is a pro for the simple reason that it was NOT 5:30 a.m.  As far as I'm concerned, anything that's not 5:30 a.m. is a pro.

 

Pro - We left our house at 12:07 p.m.  That meant, to my surprise, that Mr. Cutiepants was sound asleep by 12:25.  He usually falls asleep on our way to get Caroline at 2:00ish, and that little cat nap is very important, I have found.  But a nap even earlier??  Bonus!  He slept right through the rest of our walk, which lasted until 1:00, and when we got home, I rolled the whole stroller right through my front door and parked it in our entryway.  If letting your kid stay all sweaty and strapped into his ride so he'll stay asleep for another hour and you can do whatever. you. want. is wrong, I don't wanna be right.  Pro, pro, PRO!

 

Con - We left our house at 12:07 p.m.  Maybe on such a beautiful day in some parallel universe (read "more northern state that is beginning to experience the true beginnings of autumn but I'm not bitter") this would have meant that the late September noonday sun was gently warming the cool air and easing the mild chill on our skin.  But since this is Florida, it meant the late September noonday sun put the temperature around ninety degrees and cooked us like a London broil.  I regretted not having applied sunscreen to either of us.  This whole scenario will play out much better earlier in the morning.

 

Pro - As I made my way up one long stretch of sidewalk, a very young and somewhat handsome guy sped past in his car and couldn't keep his eyes off me.  Oh, yeah.  Maybe mama's still got it.  Uh huh.  You're only as old as you feel, right?  And then I realized that it was FAR more likely that he couldn't take his eyes off Jin because he was sure there should have been another leg dangling out of the front of the stroller.  He draws a lot more lingering gazes that I do.  *sigh*  You know, one of the crappy things about getting old is often forgetting that you're getting old and that you look old, even though in your mind you imagine yourself the way you looked about twenty years ago.

 

Aaaaand now this is totally a con.

 

Pro - A walk with a sleeping toddler means a perfect opportunity to pray.  Have a little talk with Jesus.  I told Him how thankful I was to be outside enjoying His creation while I pushed my new son, whom He had directed me to adopt, in our fancy stroller that was given to us by a sweet friend, in the middle of the day when I would normally be working, but He is somehow providing for our family so I can stay home. . . . And that's as far as I got, because I find it really hard to pray earnestly while exerting myself.  Unless I'm praying I don't die from exerting myself.  Not sure why it's that way, because I know plenty of people who relish their workout time as time alone with God.  But I have a really hard time focusing, and I found myself thinking of just about everything and eventually pre-writing this post in my head.  I do that all the time.  For real.  You have no idea.  I'm doing it right now.

 

Pro - If you go for an hour-long walk in the hot sun, you can justify scraping Duncan Hines vanilla frosting out of the can with Reduced Fat Wheat Thins.  Can't you?  Well, I can.

 

And there you have it, dear readers.  Just a little something from our day, because I decided not to wait until I catch you all up on every little detail of our China trip before I write about everyday stuff.  If I do, then all the good everyday stuff will come and go, and then I won't have written about anything.  But I promise those China posts are coming.  So please do stay tuned.  :-)

 

 

 



Byrds in China - Anticipation

After our first day in China, which we spent in Beijing, I emailed photos and a blog post to my sister, who posted it for me.  If you missed it before, you can read it here, and I've added a couple more pictures from that day.

The following day was Sunday.  Gotcha Day.  The most anticipated day of our trip and, really, of the previous fifteen months.

It's going to be hard for me to describe the feelings I experienced that day and the one before.  They were emotional and varied.  The whole day before, on our whirlwind tour of Beijing, I had so many interesting thoughts.  There were butterflies in my stomach when I thought about the fact that the next day Jin would become ours.  However, I was also keenly aware that it was the last day we would be a family of five, the last day I would be mother to only Caroline, Ellis, and Gillian.  I don't use the word "only" to suggest that they were somehow not enough.  Quite to the contrary, I enjoyed our time together so much that day that there were moments when I found myself wondering, isn't this enough?  I felt so blessed to have three such terrific kids, and it's not as though I wanted to adopt because I somehow felt incomplete, that our family wasn't quite whole.  I felt full to overflowing that day.  How could I not?  These are the faces of unbelievable blessing....

  

And there were moments like the ones pictured below.  Gillian so naturally responding to Caroline's equally as natural compulsion to care for her, the baby of the family, as we navigated streets packed with people.  We wanted Gillian to always hold someone's hand, and her big sister was eager to offer hers, and I wondered will any of this change when Gillian's not the baby anymore?  Will we still let her be little and give her a shoulder ride, even when there's one much younger, or will we suddenly expect more from her?

 

 



  



Now, all of this might be sounding like I was having second thoughts.  I really wasn't.  I knew then, as I know right now, that this whole thing was part of our faithful God's plan for us.  But I'd be lying if I said there were never moments when my ability to absorb what was going on wasn't dependent on my rock-solid belief in that fact.  As I've said before, I was convinced way back in November, when I was wrestling with whether Jin was the boy for us, that there would be times when I would need that confirmation to look back on, to be able to say THIS IS HOW I KNOW. 

 

There were moments like this in China, both before and after we got Jin.  Sometimes those moments were unsettling, but I am comforted in knowing that they weren't unique to me.  I think I can safely say that you could ask most adoptive parents (especially those like us, who already have natural kids), and if they're honest, they'll say they had thoughts that included some or maybe all of the following:

 

I'm so completely excited! 

I am terrified.

Is it just me or is everyone else here totally nervous?

This is the day we've waited so long for!

WHAT?!  It's TODAY?!  I don't know if I'm ready...

I am overwhelmed with how wonderful all of this is.

I already love him/her so much.

Do I REALLY love him/her?  Is that even possible yet?

Who's kid is this?

Are we sure we're doing the right thing?

What in God's name have we done?!

Thank you, God, for choosing us.

This feels so natural.

I always did like babysitting.

I am BEYOND ready to go home.

Oh, yeah . . . we're taking him/her home, too.

This is going so well!

Please tell me it will always be this way.

Please tell me it won't always be this way!

This is forever, and I'm so happy!

This is forever, and that's, well, forever.

What if this doesn't work out in the long run?

I can't wait to start our life at home with him/her!

This is so completely right.

Right?

Right.

 

I hope I'm not compromising anyone's notion of the beauty of adoption.  It is beautiful, and it was beautiful for me that day, and it's beautiful now, and I know it's a God-breathed beauty.  Maybe it's because of its divine nature that we aren't always able to process that beauty completely in the moment.  Our limited human minds can't see it in its entirety all at once, because it stretches beyond the here and now into a far-reaching future with a ripple effect we can't even begin to imagine.  So we sometimes stray toward uncertainty or fear, and it's during those times that we desperately need the assurances God gave us earlier, when He showed us how His plan for us intersected his plan for a little boy in China.  Or a girl in Ethiopia.  Or a brother and sister in Haiti.  Or a baby not yet born to an unmarried teenager in Ohio.

 

It reminds me of something my brother-in-law Jerome said to Tony and me not long ago, as we looked forward to our trip to China.  He and my sister Vanessa have two adopted daughters from China, our lovely nieces Ella and Lia, so he was doubly aware of the journey that was really just beginning for us, and completely in tune with that divine beauty that is a God-inspired adoption.  He said that if you could give people a pill to swallow that would enable them to somehow feel and experience, all in one moment, the indescribable joy and fulfillment that comes from bringing an adopted child into your heart and home, people would RUN to sign up.  Nothing would be able to keep them from it. 

 

That brought to mind something I read when I was praying earnestly for God to confirm to me that we were supposed to adopt in the first place. I had read a lot of stuff.  Scripture passages, testimonials from other adoptive parents, adoption information.  I had prayed and prayed.  One day during an intense prayer time, I read back over some material we had been given at an adoption seminar conducted by America World Adoption Association, the agency we eventually signed with.  It was a letter written by the agency's founder, telling about his own adoption story and how AWAA came to be.  As my heart searched and searched and I strained to hear God's voice, I read the very last line -  a post script, no less.  It said this: 

 

P.S.  If you choose to build your family through adoption, you will not regret it. 

 

And that was the moment of clarity for me, when everything came together and it was "well with my soul."  I knew it was God's plan for us.  I knew that if we built our family through adoption I would not regret it.

 

But that doesn't mean it's always one big walk in the park.  Some adoptive parents have had journeys that truly test their faith and trust in God, more than they could have imagined.  For all of us, adoption is about far more than inserting a smiling foreign face into our family portraits, but for these parents it might be way more.  It might be a journey of immeasurable joy bought with great, limit-pushing struggle.  Like the family we met in China who were adopting their second little girl with multiple serious special needs.  The strength to do this does NOT come from within.  It comes from the spirit of God within.  None of us has that kind of strength on our own.  Believe me, that family's story makes adopting an adorable, spirited two-year-old with only one leg seem like a piece of cake.

 

So I guess you could say my anticipation of the moment we would finally get Jin, and of all that is yet to come, was and is layered.  Multi-faceted.  Complex.  But none of those words should be translated as "not wonderful."  Because it is.  Truly.  When I tell you more about our experience, you'll see just how wonderful.  Each day that passes, another of those thoughts I listed above, one of the scarier ones, slowly fades away, and I think I might forget I even had it (which is one of the reasons I want to write about it now), and everything is increasingly . . . wonderful.  When I think about this boy - I mean really, really think about him and our journey to him and his to us -  I am genuinely "full of wonder."