J5.

a couple of weeks ago we had our monthly visit from our caseworker. {by the way, let me just say that we LOVE our new caseworker. this is our third one, and our fave. she is such an advocate for baby J and i feel like an advocate for stefen and i as well}. moving on - during her visit (friday at 5 pm), she got a call about a little boy who had been sleeping at the DHS office because there were no foster homes and all the shelters were full. since i'm the nosiest person on the planet, i asked what the phone call was about, she told us, and we immediately said we could take him for the weekend. we ended up keeping him for ten days, not two. it was so fun.

his name also started with a J, so i'll call him J5 in this post. J5 came to our door with a walmart bag of belongings. we were able to take him to the consignment store the next day to get him a wardrobe, toys and of course a book (dogs don't brush their teeth - or as he called it all week, dogs don't brush they teeth). it's mind blowing how little these kids come into custody with, especially in oklahoma - because we are the meth capital of the world and when a drug bust happens all items in the home (including little one's clothes and toys) are considered evidence. really sad. for the record: this is not why J5 was taken into custody.

some of my favorite things about J5:

-his sweetness and kindness.
-his amazingly gorgeous hair.
-his appetite. i've never seen a human eat more food in my life.
-his gentleness with baby J.
-his laugh.
-his cute teeth.
-his imagination.

5 year olds are exhausting, but we told his caseworker if his future plans don't work out that he always has a place here.

also, shout out to my church family for loving on him so greatly! he had never been to church before and he was showered with love during his first experience.

thank you for reading!
chelsie

first birthday

my tiny love,

happy first birthday! I'm so happy to get to spend this day with you, you will never know the joy it brings me to see you grow. I pray so hard that we will get to see you grow forever. you are the funnest baby I've ever known. you have the best laugh, especially when I tickle your ribs in just the right place. your smile is perfect. it does something to my heart every time you smile at me, especially in the car when you don't think I can see you. I love your skepticism. you are always slow to inspect everything, with your brows furrowed. I love when you are hyper and you crawl around the house, only stopping to let out a high pitched scream. you are so opposite from me, and I love that. you bring so much to my heart that only you can provide. 

I will never forget the day that we got the call that there was a 3 day old baby needing a home. I called your father, and he said "of course"! they said it would only be for a couple of months. I'm so glad it has been longer. you knew before I did that I would be your momma. my body didn't make you, but my heart couldn't have knitted together a more perfect addition to our family. 

as much as I love you, our God loves you so much more. Jesus died so you could have life, and I pray that you know Him and love Him. you belong to Him. you are His treasure and his sweetheart.

thank you, Lord for letting her spend her first birthday with us. 

in this season

she's almost 11 months old. next month she will be 1. my mommy heart is broken by the fact that i will never get to hold 2 month old baby j again, or stare at 6 month old baby j's sweet eyes. she is so advanced, almost walking, lots of talking: no no (she says this to the dogs) mama, dada, nana (banana), baba (bottle) and wawa (water bottle). she is so ornery and energetic, that's what i love about her most because it's so different from stefen and i. we are low energy (me more than stefen) and i like soft quiet things in life, so a chirping and screaming baby beating a toy to death with a remote control while the victimized toy still sings his sad song is just the most beautiful confusion in my mind. i pray that God allows us to adopt her soon, and i pray that for the remainder of our lives as a family that stefen will be in charge of running all of the energy out of her. we can call it a "daddy daughter date" but  really they will just be doing laps in our cul-de-sac.

i plea to my readers to pray for us. pray for the caseworkers on our case. pray for all the kids involved in foster care. but please, pray for our judge and district attorney - they are the ultimate decision makers. we need to get through to them that if they took baby j from us now, she would grieve, continue to look for us and long to hear our voices. until she doesn't find us, and then it breaks her heart.

simplifying.

i haven't blogged in a while. life has been stressful. a few weeks ago i was talking to my dad and he said "you need to make a list of the things that are getting in the way of your peace, and get rid of them one by one"...so i did.

i won't repeat the list here, because to be honest, i name names. people cause me anxiety, expectations cause me anxiety, money causes me anxiety, marriage and motherhood do too.

i started off by physical distractions that get in the way of me feeling peace. my home. i'm here all the time, and when my home isn't in order, my mind isn't in order. i made a list of 28 spaces that i needed to declutter. and even though i've got 3 left, i've been getting rid of everything we own. gifts that i've kept for YEARS because i felt too guilty to get rid of, gone. wall art that makes my home seem over cluttered, gone. clothes, toys, books, movies, gone.

next were time distractions. facebook, deactivated. i've blogged considerably less. less tv (more reading).

emotional distractions. for me this is relationships. anyone ever feel like they need a sabbatical from people? is that an introvert thing? it takes energy and time to nourish friendships, and it is very rewarding...but the last few weeks i have just needed a break. it sounds selfish, but i have been craving to pour that energy into my marriage and my daughter. i'm spending more energy on my relationship with my parents, and less energy on strangers. i'm nourishing my small circle of family. this phase won't last forever, but i'm enjoying it for now.

why i'm sick of social media.

a couple of weeks ago i deactivated my facebook account. best decision ever. i don't even miss it. and why did i do it? because i'm so tired of seeing super-moms. and people who are trying to let the world know how awesome they are.

you heard it right, and yes i'm looking at you, too pinterest and instagram. you are a feeding ground for super moms to show off their adorable children and perfectly vacuumed carpet (the valencia filter is really good for that, by the way).

things that super moms do and say that make me want to crawl inside my preheated oven and hold my breath until i pass out or burn to death:

blogging- HOW in the WORLD do you women have time to blog about how to be a perfect wife and mom, all while still being a perfect wife and mom? and then you pin pins to your pinterest that link to your blog. and i just can't.

pictures of your perfectly coiffed children- look, my kids hair has a mind of its own. she only gets bathed every day if she's sick or if she decides to run a marathon during the day. she only wears bows and/or anything other than pajamas if we are going to see important people. but your kids? they have the perfectly matching mudpie outfits that costs more than i spend on groceries for the month, with matching bow. and shoes. how do you even keep shoes on a baby? i mean, really.

pinning pins that link to your own blog about how clean and wonderful you are- a part of me really wants to read your blog article (that you have pinned SEVENTY FIVE times) about how important it is to not have clutter on your kitchen counters. really. i do. and then i get side tracked by your other blog post about how to only spend $1.50 on groceries every week and how to freeze every meal ever (i will never be okay with eating food that's been frozen for 6 weeks, i don't care how much money it saves me).

women, is this what really God is calling us to be? aren't we more than HOW-TOs and DIYs? shouldn't we do less pinning and more serving? more human interaction? less cleaning and more kingdom-minded things?

i've vowed to only follow people on instagram that are uplifting, that encourage me and remind me that being a mom to a baby is fun and not perfect. i only want social media interaction with people that i would have face-to-face interaction with. and truly, i don't need to be spending my time checking pinterest, seeing the same pins over and over, and wasting my time. i want my 2014 to be about relationships; about loving on the people who have loved us so well in 2013.

energy isn't a fountain that never dries up. it dries up all of the time. i can spend my energy worrying about why my house isn't perfect, or i can spend my energy focusing on my family. how to better love them and serve them (in my experience, that takes a lot of energy if you're doing it right). and at the end of my energy cycle, if i don't have enough reserve to clean out the pantry like i had wanted to - that's okay, because i used my energy in a much better way.

sweet baby.

one of the most common statements we get from people when we say we have fostered 5 kids is "i don't know how do you give them back" - i totally understand this sentiment and why people would ask how we do it. the truth is, fostering is temporary. you go into with a temporary mindset, with a reunification mindset *eye roll*, and with the knowledge that they will be leaving. but what happens when you have a long term placement that you have no idea how the case will be resolved (adoption, relinquish, termination, reunification)?!

it's kind of like feeling at any moment of any day that someone could take your daughter away.

i didn't grow baby j in my belly and i didn't bring her into this world, but every part of my body, brain and heart feels like she is my own. we have known her since day 3 of her life, and she has lived with us since day 10. 8 months can seem like an eternity (when we're talking about a dating in high school), and it can seem like the flash of lightning when you talk about watching a child grow.

what will i do if they take her away from us? my daughter. the baby who knows stefen as 'dada' (and you guys, we are working on other words but it's just not happening) - the baby who knows this home as her home, and who cries when i leave a room, or don't hold her, or hand her off to someone else. i may feel like she's my daughter, but i know she feels like we are her parents. there is no fostering class that will tell you what to do when fostering turns long term, and from infancy.

the stress that fills my body is just seeping out.

i think it was my friend tina that reminded me that no ones kids are really their own. she delivered 3 beautiful kids, but they don't belong to only her. they belong to Christ, right? they are more loved by God than anyone, right? i love baby j so deeply sometimes my body hurts (or is it my lung going flat again? i don't even know anymore) - so it's so hard for me to imagine God loving her MORE. what a beautiful truth.

so how would that change our day to day lives with our children? knowing that God, or DHS, could take them away at any moment. would it make us more patient, loving, funny, and light hearted? it does  me.

i try to cherish every second. i just breathe her in, in hopes that i will remember how she smells if she leaves. i study her sweet face hoping i will never forget her 8 month old face, as it changes month by month. the way her fat hands rub our faces when she's feeling cuddly, the way she belly-laughs uncontrollably when we bark like dogs, her crooked half-smile.

needing relief.

i'm writing this blog post to completely purge my awful feelings from this week, this exhausting, exhausting week.

4 weeks ago my husband had back surgery. he herniated a disc at work (catching a patient). this has been one nightmare after another. it took workman's comp SIX WEEKS to even get him to a doctor. a few weeks later he had surgery, and now-a few weeks even later- he seems to be in more pain than ever. we are in close quarters since he isn't working. our schedules are off. we are off. we have had a really hard year. 

this week involved a sick, teething baby that at one point i think screamed for four hours straight while we were at doctor's appointments where the doctor was completely incompetent. we waited THREE HOURS to see a doctor who walked in and called my husband "steve". i can't even tell you the frustration that has been welling up inside me this week, flowing out in tears. this is the result of being in and out of hospitals the last six months. a lung here, an appendix there. not to mention the emotional and absolutely insane fostering journey we are on.

i cry out to God and ask him for relief.

and even though we weened baby j off of pacies at 6 months, i found the nearest walmart in tulsa this week and bought this. and no, it didn't work. which is probably a good thing.