xie xie nimen! (thanks, y'all!)

The goal for our matching grant has been met, and then some!!  The grant will give us all the money that was raised, so we are ending up with a very nice help toward the remaining expenses of our adoption.  We praise G0D for his providing hand, and we thank YOU for your open hand.

We've tried hard to send thank-you notes to those of you who gave.  We've already sent out two mailings, and one more mailing will be on its way soon (mailing from here to there is a bit tricky).  For those of you who never end up with a thank-you note, please forgive our not being able to round up your address.  We know ALL of your names, though, and they are going in the baby book!  Jubilee Sue is tucked snugly into our family, to be loved and cared for forever, and many of you had a hand in that.  Thank you so much, and may you be blessed!

why I still bake cookies

I had a hot fudge sundae for lunch.  And a coke zero.

I need not tell you what kind of week I've had.

I will say this, however.  I came to a very important conclusion this week, and I came to it today (right before consuming the sundae). 
My kids are not me, nor are they extensions of me.

No one will ever be able to accuse me of going at parenting half-heartedly, of that I am certain.  And yet, will my children "turn out" perfectly, like cookies from dough made with room temperature butter and placed on a cool cookie sheet and pulled from the oven at exactly the right moment?  There is no way to tell.  In fact, unless you are a cookie-whisperer like my mother, the way our cookies turn out is completely out of our hands.  Thankfully, cookies are not exactly like children.  Thankfully, children have a loving and sovereign Father taking much better care of them than we are.  And thankfully, when it comes to cookies, I have a husband who'll happily eat the first dozen no matter what.  To be honest, Daniel is the only reason I still bake cookies. Being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to give up on the unpredictable little devils at the end of our first year of marriage.

"Please don't quit on them," he said to me back then, "I like them way too much."

a peek into my heart

three months later

Jubilee Rupp has been ours for 3 months now.  We joke that she is more like a butterfly than a child, flitting around, light-as-a-feather, landing on one of her brothers and delivering affection before flitting off to land on another brother, or her mama (that's me!) or her daddy, who she might just be a bit partial to.  For the longest time I think she thought Daniel was perfect, coming home each evening with a big smile and lots of love to give.  She is just now figuring out that he, too, will discipline her if he needs to, though anyone can see it nearly kills him.

She is also just figuring out that dolls can be fun, and that they aren't like other babies she has had to contend with.  They aren't going to cry, and they aren't going to take away any of the attention.  To my utter delight, her favorite doll is the one we brought along when we adopted her.   

She is not quite so bone-skinny (must be all the butter and sugar in her new American diet) and she is saying 3 and 4 word sentences in English.  She is a very verbal child, and sensitive to the feelings of others.  Pair those traits with her sweet disposition, her smarts, and the fact that she is...well, lets face it...ADORABLE, and we are two very smitten parents over here in East Asia, biting at the bit to get our daughter to America to show her off.  Wouldn't you? 

Happy 3-months, baby girl!  We love you to pieces!

being prepared for something

I could write about how home school is going.  I could tell you that if a word ends in "le", the last syllable grabs a consonant to go with it, and if the preceding syllable has a short vowel sound, it grabs a consonant, too.  That is why "apple" has a double p and "dabble" has a double b, while a word like "ladle" has only one d.  I tell ya, I wrote complicated papers on Shakespeare, and graduated with honors from the English department at Hope College, and yet I never learned this.  It turns out that our language has a method to its madness. Huh.

I could write about Brave feeling better, but I am a little tired of talking about my son's bowel movements.  I'm sure you are tired of reading about them.

I could write about my faith in CHR1ST, but I think I've been a bit too wide-open with my heart lately, and so I'll keep that to myself today.

I could update you on Glory, but there is nothing much to report.  No news is usually good news.  She fights for her life every day, and time passes faithfully, bringing new days behind it.  I could update you on Xiao Fu, but again, nothing to report.  Her brother fell into a crag and cracked his head on a rock.  He died instantly, and a piece of his little sister died, too.  We have not heard from her since.

Sometimes life is not like the word "apple" nor the word "idle."  Sometimes we come across a word that has no rule, and we just have to accept it.

So instead of sharing the world's best pumpkin bread recipe that I got from Chad and Kristy last year, and instead of writing about how wonderful my husband is, and instead of telling you that Daniel and I have decided to give our unplanned, 5th child (who we are bound to have in our 40s) the name "Bronco," I will quote a dear friend of mine and leave her name anonymous:

"The days are becoming so difficult.  We believers are being prepared for something."

overdue update

A thousand apologies for leaving our prayer warriors stuck on their knees for a few days.  Our internet here is spotty, and it picks the most inopportune times to choke out on us.  Almost the moment Daniel and Brave got home from Thailand, the internet stopped working.

Grrrr.

The update is, they are home, and Brave is OK, though things looked pretty bleak on Friday.  The poor dude picked up ANOTHER virus while at the hospital, so he is sicky-sick right now again, and is having more digestive problems, on account of his lymph node swelling to fight this new bug.  It looks like this is our new life.  Wonderful.  At least we are keeping him hydrated this time and the urinating problem is staying away.

It boils down to this:  it is better to make 1-2 trips to Bangkok, Thailand each year to be hospitalized for complications from his over-active lymph node, than for him to have undergone intestinal surgery at 2, re-wiring him for the rest of his life.

There is a word in this language, "Mafan," and it means "trouble" in the pain-in-the-neck sort of way.  That's what this is.  Mafan.  Thankfully we are looking at nothing worse.  We contribute this victorious news to our Creator G0D, the Great Healer and Provider, and to all of your conversations with Him on Brave's behalf over the past the 8 days.  Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Sooooo, we are focusing now on getting back to "normal" life, and hoping for a good, long break from our friends on Ward 7.  Our couch at home is a much better spot.  Welcome home, Handsome Ransom.  Stick around for a while now, would ya?!

Iranian Nurse Practitioners and rota virus

The word from Bangkok is, Brave has a rash now on his cheeks, chest, and abdomen, which is a common sign that rota virus is dying out in his body.  Though he has been vaccinated for rota virus, children can still get it, it just doesn't kill them.  They are going to run a test on his stool tomorrow, more for curiosity sake, to see if that was how this started, leading to an enlarged lymph node, causing mesenteric lymphadenitis, causing severe dehydration, landing him in the hospital.  I don't doubt that this did start with rotavirus.  If it has a big fancy medical name, Brave is probably going to get it.

I still cry a lot, mainly now because our family is in two pieces, over the border, and it looks like it's going to be days and days before we are reunited.  The greatest piece of news of the weekend is, his urinating pain is gone, gone, gone.  I could eat a whole chocolate cake I'm so excited.  Thank you GOD, and thank you everyone for your prayers. 

While Daniel has been on his medical globe-trotting tour with my toddler, he has met some interesting folks.  Topping the charts is a group of male, Iranian nurse practitioners, who are peddling prosthetic limbs.  They helped my husband carry his bags, and gave him their business cards, saying, "If you are ever in Iran, call us, and we will help you."

"Hang on to those business cards," I told Daniel.  "You just never know."