The days are quickly dwindling until arrival day is here! We are down to 18 more days!! Life has been very busy lately and it is helping to make the days go more quickly.
I have been picking up needed items here and there and bought the supplies for V's welcome poster we bring to the airport. Each step makes the very soon arrival of V more exciting!
We have been trying to get different things out of the way prior to hosting. Eliza had some food allergy testing done last week and then today she had a little eye procedure on a clogged tear duct. We have been working on a fire pit relocation project in the backyard. Adria went from snaggle tooth to gappy mouth when she lost her front tooth on the top. Amelia and Adria started swim lessons at the beginning of this week and will have one more week. Perry Township Learn to Swim program has been around for eons! The girls were shocked that mommy took swim lessons in the same pool they were. This is my third summer of being at swim lessons as a mom. It is such a normal thing. Even this evening, when we went to our neighborhood pool another mom was there with her son and we had chatted at the pool before and she remembered us talking about the girls getting ready to start lessons. She asked how they were going and then made the comment that it is an important life skills for anyone to know in order to be safe in the water. Thinking about her comment brought me back to my little break down on Monday morning.
The first day of swim lessons this week, I was looking around at all the moms and dads who were bringing their kids to swim lessons. I recognized a few people I knew from high school and swim lessons in previous summers. As I was sweating profusely in the upper level bleachers at the Perry Meridian HS pool, I had a mini break down (thankfully I held it on the inside). Tears filled my eyes as I looked out at the children and around me at the parents. I guess ignorance can be bliss sometimes. I look at situations through a different pair of glasses now that I am aware of a fraction of what an orphan's life looks like and about the statistics for these children. This was an autopilot kind of activity for our family, signing up and taking the girls to swim lessons wasn't really something I thought about deeply but just something that needed to be done. Those simple ways we care for our kids everyday without really thinking about it.
Last summer L enjoyed swimming but wasn't a very good swimmer. One evening when we were swimming, she got a cramp in her leg while she was down in the deeper end and she started to panic and yelled MAMA! I had to grab her and bring her to the side of the pool. She was scared (so was I). She never had the opportunity for a mama and daddy to thoughtlessly sign her up for swim lessons because it was just something that is an item on a to-do list of what needed to be done for her. How many other small things like swim lessons will L and V miss out on because they don't have a family?
I think this is one area that is hard for me to overcome and that I come back to so often. We have so much and they have so little and miss out on so many simple things. An acquaintance and what I would like to consider a friend through kindred hearts of loving orphans, recently brought her son home from Ukraine. She has given updates and we have chatted online a few times and she has repeatedly said how her heart hurts for all the things she will never get to do as a mother for her son and all the milestones she has missed in his first 15 years of life. These young children sometimes have gone so long without a parent and parenting it is hard for them to give up the independence they have built within themselves and allow a parent to do their job.
So I am trying to ready my heart and my mothering skills for a heaping six week dose of loving and parenting the heck out of V, just like I continue to try to do for L. It is why I got teary eyed at swim lessons. Pray for our family as we spend these last couple of weeks filling up our love tanks and carving out special time to pour into our bio kids before we are pulled in another direction. Pray that Josh and I find time to strengthen our marriage even more as we will have a decrease in our time alone over hosting. Pray for V that she will be open to our love and our parenting. Pray for L as she ends her school year at the trade school. Oh, and praise the Lord that He provided a soft and giving heart in the dentist who is once again donating her services to care for V's teeth. 18 more days!!!!
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