DTC and the summer crops

I guess heading off into the mountains is still good for the writer's soul.  :)  Sometimes blogging is feast or famine, and this week it's a feast of potential blog posts to write.  I have some great news from the Etsy shop, an update about our weekend in Taos (hence the mountains), thoughts from a church service, and the results of our summer crops, amid a few other nascent ideas.

But first, an adoption update...we got the email yesterday that our dossier is on it's way to China!  For me, the wait is still the wait until our daughter is home, but it's nice to reach a milestone along the journey.  Our next big milestone is getting our Log-In Date (or LID), which our counselor said should take around 4 weeks. 

And now about our summer crops...  Our peach tree had a rough spring/summer, so the crop was way down.  I haven't even googled peach recipes once.  :(  We've had upwards of 2000+ peaches in the past, but I doubt we even had a quarter of that this year.  I'm sorry to all those who usually come pick, as it's a pleasure for us to share our bounty.  I canned some of the better ones--thankfully not all of them were rotten--but we're practically down to the end already.  At least this year hasn't had the urgency and pressure of dealing with all the peaches, but it's still pretty sad.

I also tried my hand at canning tomatoes.  It was a lot of work for 7 pints of tomatoes.  When you hear about those people who save money by couponing, gardening, etc., remember that they probably aren't paying themselves for their time.  I'm going to make roasted tomato soup out of the next batch from the garden (http://www.tastebook.com/recipes/1952487-Roasted-Tomato-Soup-Pesto-Mozzarella-Dippers), and I think next year we'll stick with cherry tomatoes and some San Marzano for pizza sauce.

If you've made it this far, I'll end with my resurrecting eggplant.  We bought a bunch of tomatoes and one eggplant, all of which were growing quite well.  I came out one day to find the eggplant had snapped at the base (a cat, maybe?), and resigned myself to store-bought eggplant for the rest of the summer.  Lo and behold, it grew back and is now covered with blossoms!  I'm hoping to get some by the time my parents visit.

My Constant One

Yesterday I canned peaches and tomatoes to an old favorite:  Listen, by Michelle Tumes.  It was released in 1998, and I can still remember how much I loved hearing "Please Come Back" on the radio.  I ended up buying the CD (I say CD because that's how I listened to it--with a CD player), and hearing it yesterday brought back so many memories.  I took it with me on our camping trip to Michigan, and I remember listening to it on the pier when I woke up before everyone else.  "Please Come Back" took me to a car ride in our old Suburban, looking out into an impossible blue sky and marveling at the height of the clouds.  It was the soundtrack to my life that summer. 

As I listened to this song, I was struck by how much things have changed since then.  I hadn't been accepted to college yet, much less met David.  Since then I've moved to the southwest, gone to grad school, flown around the world, and have been married almost 10 years.  I have two little people with my eyes, and one halfway around the world with my heart.  I am thankful God has held me and kept me through it all, and will continue to do so in our journey ahead.  

The True Wait

This summer my women's Bible study did a book on patience.  After all, who doesn't need more patience, especially when it comes to small children?  I was certainly hoping to learn techniques on how to be more patient with my two children, but I came away with a different lesson.  When you look at the verses about patience in the New Testament, they don't usually reference your offspring.  We studied several passages where Paul and James remind the early church to wait patiently for Christ's return.  The early church still had people there who had heard Jesus speak, walked with Him, watched Him die, and saw Him return to heaven.  It must have been hard to listen to their stories and wish for the same experiences.  And as far as they knew, Jesus would be returning soon, hence the apostles' reminders to wait patiently.  

So what does it mean to wait patiently?  Paul and James were reminding the early church that they couldn't just always look to the clouds and ignore their everyday life.  Unfortunately, the waiting part isn't really optional.  I couldn't make David's deployment go faster when he was in Iraq, I couldn't speed up my pregnancies, and I can't make the adoption happen sooner.  It's the patiently part where we have a choice.  Do we get anxious, or do we trust in God?  Do we obsess about the future, or do we focus on what's happening now?  As part of the Bible study, we talked several times about how to live each day as part of the wait, rather than focusing on the waiting itself.  All I have to do is look at Luke to be reminded of how quickly the time will pass.  :)

But this study has also reminded me that all these little things we wait for (like the adoption) are just part of the journey.  Our true wait is for that moment when the glory is revealed in us, when our bondage to decay is released, and we are finally home.  I am excited for the future and all that God has planned.  I try to live each day as God gives them to me, focusing on accomplishing the things he has for me right now.  But woven in among all that is this:  Amen.  Come, Lord Jesus.

Sitting with the Big Kids

When our kids started eating solid food, we found the traditional high chair didn't work well.  Our kids were too short--the tray hit right around their chin.  Since we used 'baby-led weaning' or self feeding whole foods right away, instead of doing the puree/chunky/whole food route, we really needed a tray they could reach.  Instead, we used the little chairs that fasten onto a big chair.  It was a win-win all the way around: the kids could reach the food, it took up less space, and when Katie transitioned to the big table, it worked great as a booster chair.
We just made the same transition for Luke.  I'm still somewhat in disbelief that he's big enough to do this, but he insisted he was ready to sit at the table without the tray.  So far it's been fine, albeit slightly messier under the table.  Here's the proof:

 

(Katie wanted to know why I wasn't taking her picture)


On the one hand, this is great.  I have a few milestones in my head that I hope Luke reaches before #3 arrives, and we're making fantastic progress on them.  We're definitely past the "first response to everything is no" stage.  He's already using sentences, and by the time she arrives, I think he'll be able to express himself well.  Some level of self-sufficiency will make things a little easier when I need to focus completely on our adopted daughter.
On the other hand, my baby is growing up!

The Long View

We're trying to figure out how to rearrange our living room to fit our new couch and loveseat.  It's kind of an awkwardly shaped room, especially since we have a fireplace at one end.  It's gotten us thinking about how we use the living room, how we may want to change that, and how we can rearrange everything to fit our every day lives. 
I've been wanting a new couch for a long time.  The ones we have are great, but the arms are really high--meaning I can't put my coffee down on an end table in the morning.  No coffee table for us, since we need a big clear space for dance parties.  We finally saved up enough in our household budget to go shopping, and we settled on a nice dark brown couch.  They were having a sale with free delivery, but we had to spend a certain amount.  We waffled over getting an additional chair until my sister pointed out the long view:
We will have three children soon (maybe four at some point), and eventually, they will want to sit on a couch too.  Couches last a while--we've had our current one for 10 years.  These new couches will probably hold my children when they hear The Chronicles of Narnia read aloud to them, and where they will watch Star Wars: A New Hope for the first time.  I'm sure there will be a day when one child is laying sick on the couch, and the rest of us will want a place to sit. 
So we bought the loveseat too.  Now to find a place to put everything...

Not Quite Yet

In the middle of VBS week, I got a voice message from our counselor at the agency.  Did I want to look at a file?  You know that moment before the drop, when your heart goes up in your throat?  When I called her back, it got a little more complicated.  She called us to ask because everything in the file matched with our profile except the little girl's age.  Her birthday was three days after Luke's.  This began an agonizing three day process. 
Twinning a biological child is always a possibility in adopting.  Despite what they say about recommending a year gap between children, neither the Chinese government nor the agency has any hard rules about it.  We've definitely heard of people who choose to twin a biological child on purpose.  Although David has always joked about wanting twins, we decided from the very beginning that we didn't want to twin Luke, even if it meant waiting a lot longer.  Most children show up in the system when they are 18-24 months old, so that means we honestly could be waiting another year for the right match. 
Of course, deciding is one thing when you're at the very beginning, another thing when you are looking at a photo of a beautiful little girl.  So we reconsidered.  Asked for advice.  Prayed.  Pondered.  The whole time I felt so anxious--why would God send us this child if we were supposed to decline the match?  Thankfully God has also sent us some wise people who have experience in adopting.  We heard from a family who also had to say no.  The decision was equally painful for them, but it gave them the opportunity to process everything, trust God, and know for sure when the file for their children came along.
Looking back, it's kind of funny that I wrote this post, since I should have gone back and read this post.  We finally decided not to accept the match, praying that God would give us peace about the decision.  And He graciously has.  We trust in His sovereignty for us and for this little girl--He has a family for her, and He has a daughter for us. 

Comfort and Rest

Luke is teething.  If there is one developmental stage I would happily skip, it's this one.  The drool, the nose, the fussiness...thank goodness they don't remember it!  He's always been a great sleeper, but we still have times like today when he cries out in his sleep, fussy before it's really time to get up.  I love that my arms are a place of comfort to him, and that he will rock back to sleep (maybe with a dose of ibuprofen to help...).  Every night I sing to him from the hymnal, and he sits, cuddled in my arms, drowsing towards sleep.  Both my kids are cuddlers, and I like it.  I definitely wonder if our daughter will be a cuddler, and how long it will take for her to find comfort in my arms.  We'll have to take it one step at a time, but I hope it doesn't take too long.