shout out to my moms

just ten of the hundreds of reasons i love my mom:

  1. she let me get from point A to point B by going through all the other letters first.
  2. she taught me that it was positive to stand out from a crowd, that being unique was good and that if i dressed different, or acted different, or thought different than everyone else... i must be really special.
  3. when i refused to embrace my curly hair, she forced me to get a perm so i couldn't straighten it anymore and actually had to learn how to do curly hair.
  4. she showed me how to see things from the other perspective.
  5. she genuinely believes she has the smartest, most attractive and talented children and grandchildren on the planet.
  6. she raised my sisters and i to select only the finest husbands.
  7. she spoils her grandchildren with all the things that they could never possibly need, and would never receive from their parents... like feet after feet of synthetic rapunzel hair.
  8. she had a color-coded calendar with every single game, school dance, tournament or event... and she went to pretty much all of them.
  9. she makes the best lemon pound cake either side of the mississippi. but you have to be very sick, or very sad to guilt her into actually making one.
  10. she is a true mama. she has seen four children into this world, and seen one out. she has loved us, spanked us, cleaned our faces with her saliva, and never let me forget who i was meant to be.
happy mothers day, mom, i wouldn't be nearly as obnoxious if anyone else was my mother. i love you so much. lara

london claire.

i am coming out of what was, arguably, the longest 12 days of my life.

over the past 2-3 months, our little ladybird, london, has not been feeling great. her appetite has been touchy, she has had waves of fussiness, and her coloring has gradually become more and more pale. over the past few weeks though, she has been almost constantly pale and clingy.

at her 15 month check -up i shared all these concerns with the doctor. these symptoms (combined with the fact that her growth had been slowing for some time, and now had dropped off significantly) caused our pediatrician enough concern to send me right to a lab for a very comprehensive list of tests, including 7 viles of blood and a chest x-ray. when they strapped her tiny body down to the table to run the tests... i thought that this would be the worst part of my day.

sadly, i could not have been more wrong.

almost as soon as i walked in the door, my pediatrician called saying that some of london's blood work had already come back and that we needed to take her to the emergency room at the children's hospital immediately.

after multiple tests and more blood... the doctors determined that london had stopped making red blood cells and was severely anemic. (most anemia is caused by iron-deficiency and is easily corrected.) however, in london's case, she was simply not even making red blood cells any longer. her blood count had dropped to a dangerously low level (less than 40% of what it should be) causing her heart to work overtime to circulate the oxygen she needs throughout her body. in addition to that, the overworking heart may have caused fluid in her lungs, or she has pneumonia... but that that piece has yet to be determined.

the hematologist explained that without treatment, london's heart could eventually "wear out" causing heart failure from constantly pumping such a small amount of red blood cells throughout her body. he recommended she have two blood transfusions. we stayed overnight at the hospital, and it took a total of 7 hours to get that much blood into her little veins.

after arriving home, london was pink, energized and had a great appetite! we were so excited to see her in her usual form again. unfortunately, she started throwing up that evening and 12 days of explosive diapers have followed. the grand crescendo of diarrhea was today upon arriving at church, wearing our easter best, when suddenly i realized that london and i were both covered and we were still in the parking lot.

it has been an exhausting (almost) two weeks. she is still eating very little, is constantly feeling sick, and is continuing to slowly lose weight. we will continue to check her blood count on friday, then again in 2 weeks. the plan at this point is to continue working with the pediatricians and the hematologist, as we also consult with an endocrinologist, a gastroenterologist and a geneticist in an attempt to fit together the many seemingly unrelated symptoms (poor growth, inability to make red blood cells, and change in demeanor and appetite, and now the continual diarrhea.)

in another month, if she is still not making red blood cells on her own, we will likely do a bone marrow biopsy to get a better look at what is actually going on in there. if no red cell production in two months time, we will have to do another round of blood transfusions.

i have vacillated between extreme gratitude that our kids have been healthy all this time, and that london is strong and feisty and is so resilient... and feeling sheer terror that they will never know what is wrong and can't fix it, or that we will figure out what's wrong... and still can't fix it. i so badly want to be one of those people you see on tv in a news interview that have lost their whole family in a car accident and they still praise the lord and say "it is well with my soul." i want to be like that. but, i don't think i am.

i feel like i am in a dream where i am being chased, only i can't run fast... i can only be slow, and lead-legged, and pathetic and useless. and i want it all to be "well with my soul," but i secretly fear that instead of being like those well-souled people... i'm more like those people that turn to street drugs when the going gets rough.

please do not feel free to share about the dangers of street drugs, or how as a christian i should/should not be doing something. i am surviving. i am usually nose deep in my kid's pants, checking to see if i need to change diaper #46 for the day. i am lead-legged. and i am not doing street drugs. unless you can give me a serious shout-out for that, just maybe judge me silently this one time. fair?

in the meantime, i am trying to believe God for my sweet baby's life. and for mine.

italian eyebrows and appetite..jpg

London fed herself tonight... It went well. My nephews are in town visiting from michigan, and we spent dinnertime answering "would you rather" questions. Harper's answers are usually the best. One example: if you had to choose one season to be year-round, would you rather have spring, summer, winter or fall. Harper choose ice skating.

I think london would go with spaghetti... Since apprently anything counts as a season.

in case you tried cutting cheese on your t-shirt...


so, in my last adoption update i made a mysterious remark about "people coming out of the woodwork, with their woodwork." since, i am certain, many of you are on the edge of your seats waiting to find out what i was referring to... i will now reveal the deeply mysterious meaning behind said remark.

ok, so as most of you know, i am not in love with asking for help. but, i am also not in love with having to sell one of our current children in order to adopt a future one. it's simply counter-intuitive. so, instead of ebaying london... we, decided to succumb to the wild world of adoption fundraising. (feel free to support us here.) :)

as i have said before, the fundraiser was not what i bargained for. of all the unexpected emotions and experiences that have arisen during this journey... the most surprising has been in the form of a cutting board.

yes. cutting boards. what, you seriously didn't see that coming? well, neither did i. thanks to my brother-in-law and almost-saboteur, brandon, an unexpected connection was made after he posted a link on facebook to our etsy site (feel free to not ignore my previous plea, and take this second chance to support us here.)

so, here's what happened.

bran posts a link to our store, and a mysterious woodworking man, pat flint, and his passionate and studious girlfriend, megan, saw what we were trying to do and decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to be unnecessarily generous with both their time and money, and bless almost-strangers with their support by making gorgeous, hand-crafted cutting boards, donating them to us to sell on our online store (last chance people). they sent us a video-email explaining how they recently got into woodworking and had gotten a huge response from the cutting boards they had made for family members for christmas gifts, and how they would love nothing more than continuing to make these cutting boards, and giving them to us to help raise money to go toward our adoption.

it was so overwhelming, first, because i did not know that you could send a video-email. and second, because i could not wrap my mind around the fact that these people (who i did not even know) could believe in what we are trying to do enough to sacrifice their own time and money to support us.

tom and i have felt so blessed with every purchase of a shirt or dress... we have felt loved and supported by every word of encouragement, and every promise of a prayer sent up for our journey. but, when pat took emailing into the future and sent us that video, words really can't describe how blessed we felt. it was so touching that there was somebody out there who believed in adoption, and wanted to support us... and not just in theory, but by taking an actual action.

shortly after receiving this news, we had the privilege of having pat and megan over to our home for dinner. they dropped off their first batch of handmade cutting boards, and we got a chance to get to know them a little better. it was sort of intimidating, because i kept thinking "what if they decide they don't like our parenting style and they withdraw their cutting board support? what if our kids act up because they are on a sugar high from the ding-dong cake they brought us, and they think we aren't really equipped to handle another child? what if they think we don't have enough room in our house for another one? or what if they see my new curtains and think that we could afford to pay for this adoption if we would just stop buying curtains all the time?"

i seriously considered explaining that i bought my curtains with a gift card.

then i came to my senses and realized that they are just sweet, generous people who want to help out a couple who is just trying to give one kid a family. i don't think they really cared about my curtains at all. i think that they are just that rare breed of human, the kind that does nice things for people because they believe in something bigger than themselves.

so, that is where we are at. we are plugging along with the fundraiser, and are super excited and proud to announce that these beautiful cutting boards are now available to purchase at our online store. 100% of the proceeds go directly to pay for our adoption fees. (and not for curtains.)

Harper explaining the menu

I overheard harper looking through a picture with london, from the other room this is what I hear:

"Yeah, london, that's a cookie! Yummy cookie! but, we can't have cookies, beacuse we have to only, ever, always eat salad and black beans."

I would like to say, while there is a little truth to that, they had a cookie last night! But, I did deny the cookie for breakfast, wretched mother that I am.

the 1000 view update

we have officially hit 1,000 views on our etsy site! my friend, amanda, suggested that there has to be some way to figure out the views:sales ratio. so, i think 1,000 views is a pretty good litmus test. so, here are the stats:

for every 1,000 views, the following things will happen:
  • we will sell approximately 60 items!
  • a tall man will partially pay for 2 items, and then disappear.
  • we will sell 1 item to my oldest childhood friend, thanks brooke!
  • we will sell 1 item to a perfect stranger from new york city.
  • people will come out of the woodwork, with their woodwork. (more on the cutting boards later...)
  • one sweet and generous friend (eh hem, abby) will throw a pampered chef fundraiser event to raise money for our adoption.
so... not too shabby! we are making a lot of progress and have been very blessed by some of the most unexpected people. while we continue raising funds, we also continue to spread the word about how wonderful we believe adoption to be. my most recent experience with this was an opportunity to share in annalee's first grade classroom.

this was a bit of a challenge, because it opens up a whole world of questions that i am NOT about to answer for other people's kids. i thought that by explaining what adoption is, and how a child is born "out of another mommy's tummy," it would raise questions like "well, how does a baby get out of the tummy?" and "how did the baby get in there to begin with?" so, i tried to prepare for those questions... along with heartbreaking questions about orphans and children being born with "no family." so, i prepared for those questions too.

what i could not prepare for was the questions they would actually ask. after completing my whole talk, then reading a book called "a family is forever" the hands started going up. i called on one little girl and she said "do all girl scouts have mothers?"

ummmm... yes, even girl scouts have mothers.

then, my personal favorite, "do dinosaurs adopt babies?"

seriously!? what, are you in first grade or something kid? oh wait, you actually are... "umm, well, have you seen the tv show called dinosaur train!? that show is about a family of teranodons who have a mysterious egg hatch in their nest. when he hatches, he is a different kind of dinosaur, but he is still part of their forever family!" booya. (shout out to pbs for that one...)

it also opened up conversations about blended families, the foster care system and how all families are different. after our discussion, each of the kids got to illustrate a booklet and write about their own family. some of the pictures and words were actually super sad, and others were really cute. but, as i was walking past annalee's desk i saw her first line:

my family is speshul! soooo speshul!

so, there you have it. our family looks a little different than the average family... but, we're gonna keep pluggin' away with this fundraiser because someday, somewhere a precious little baby is is going to be born and will need a home, and will eventually join our family. and, as lucky as we will be to have him or her, they will be pretty lucky to have us... because i've heard we're pretty speshul.

jaws of life

when in doubt, my sweet son harper tends to err on the side of being terrified of things. last night, after tucking him in... he called for me repeatedly to come in and make the "woof" go away. there was (obviously) not an actual wolf in his room. when i mentioned that there was no wolf he replied "yes there is! he's pretend and he's right there!"

this is not the first run-in with imagined predators in harper's room. one night a while back, after tucking harper in with his blanket and little stuffed shark, i closed the door and stood outside his room to see how the scene would unfold. here is what i heard outside his door:

upon the click of the door, harper instantly began saying "oh nooo, mama... oh nooo." he sounded desperate and heartbroken that i would ever leave him alone to nap. as if that wasn't enough for me to feel awful, the scene escalated. his "oh nooo's" quickly turned to "no! no! NO! NOOOOO!!" he was screaming as if he was literally being eaten alive by something with very sharp teeth. i thought that something had actually gotten in his room and he was actually in danger... his screams were so real, and so urgent!

then i opened the door.

sitting on his bed, harper had streams of tears pouring down his face. his eyes were shut as tight as he could squeeze them, and his chubby hands were wrapped around his little stuffed shark, which he was holding up to his throat, mid-shark-attack. he had opened the mouth of his shark, pushed it up against his throat and let 'er rip.

when i went in, it took him a few yells of his name before he realized that i had even come in. he was, obviously, quite busy being eaten alive and didn't hear me come in. i calmed him down, banished the shark to the playroom and forbade him from using his imagination during naptime ever again.

whenever i give my mother an inaccurate account of my childhood, she always says "if that's how you remember it, it might as well have been that way." i think of that sometimes with my own kids. i think of what they will report back to me someday about their lives, about me as a mom, and about how they felt growing up. what will be my failures in their mind? what will be my shortcomings? the injustices they endured in this house? who knows... but, their fears, their experiences (real or imagined) can be pretty traumatic.

i am keenly aware of my faults and shortcomings as a mother, trust me on that one. but, in spite of a million weaknesses, i know of one strength i have for sure: i will fight for my kids. come hell or high water, i will take them back from whatever it is that has them by the throat, and i will fight for them.

the other night, my sweet friend sam gave me a bit of encouragement about this whole adoption process. she said, "if you were adopting internationally, would you feel just as guilty about doing a fundraiser? if you thought of it as raising a ransom for your child, would you still have such a hard time asking people to buy a t-shirt?" she also said to me, "when this is all said and done, and your child looks at you and says 'mama, was i worth it?' what will you say?"

ugh. friends like her are so obnoxious with all their conviction and rightness. but, the girl's got a point. i don't care what it takes, i will fight for my kids. even the one i don't have yet. so, while it may take me a year or even two... i am going to grab the shark and tear it away from the throat of this kid. whether that shark be expenses, or self-doubt, or fear... in the name of jesus, i am going to tear that shark a new one.

London's new surprised face. don't be fooled, the fork is just for show... she is still using her hands to smoosh food in her face, the fork is apparently to comb her hair.

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@laracapuano