I write a number of posts, on my personal blog, about adoption each November, Adoption Awareness Month. This is the last one for ‘08.
Maybe your family doesn’t have a member in it who has been adopted. Maybe you don’t feel the least bit drawn to adopt a child. Maybe you do know someone who has been adopted, but find that it is a non-issue because the person is just living their life and the reality of adoption simply fades into the background. Maybe adoption is not connected to your life in any way. Maybe your thoughts run along the lines of, “So what’s the point? Adoption awareness month, okay, another “awareness month” big deal!”
Why should adoption matter? People adopt or they don’t, good for them, but really, why the big deal? Well it is a big deal because people need homes. Babies and children need families. Adoption provides an avenue for this to take place. When people are in need, it matters, even if you aren’t the one to directly meet the need, it still matters.
Adoption is a pretty amazing concept. We, as human beings, all long for acceptance and connectedness with other people. Family is the ultimate in connection. No matter what your family relationships feel like, there is something about family that taps us in the inner parts of ourselves. When we say, “That friend is like family.” it is a huge compliment! It is a compliment even if we come from a dysfunctional, difficult family background. It is a compliment because somewhere inside of us is a hope for good, right, lasting and deep connections with other people. Therefore, whether adoption touches your life through an individual who has been adopted or isn’t something that really matters to you. I want to challenge you to stretch your thinking on this and to look for a way to make it matter to you a bit more.
Some ideas:
Talk to your kids about adoption so that the word is not foreign to their ears and the concept is not foreign in their minds. Talk about how cool it is that people who need a family have a way to have that need met when their birth parents aren’t able to meet that need. Talk about adoption as being the good thing that it is.
Check out books on adoption from the library. That can be a wonderful way to familarize youself with adoption and can be a conversation starter for families.
If you know of a person who has been adopted, as is comfortable being open with that, share that person’s story with your children. Share how great it is that a family can grow through adoption.
*This post, is posted with the full content on my blog. In that post I make references to the spiritual connections that can be found in considering adoption. Here, I chose to edit this post so that it is more applicable to those who may come from a different faith background. Why? Well, because adoption matters to all of us, whether we come from the same spiritual background or not. So, I decided to link to my blog for those who would like to read the full post and to post an edited version here.
Laundry, the bane of my existence. Once someone said to me that they didn’t mind doing the laundry, that it was actually one of those chores they liked to do. She went on to say something about seeing progress, i.e. clothes come out clean, they get folded or hung up and put away. That you can see that you have accomplished something. I did not want to be a bubble burster (is that a word?) but I was totally rolling my eyes to myself. Obviously, this said person must not have a 5 year old princess that changes her clothing at least 4 times a day, I know I could stop her but she is just so darn cute! Or a 10 year old son that only thinks he has to take the clothing out of his room once a week or so. Note to self: Why did we ever give said boy his own room!
Over the years I have tried everything to tweak my laundry schedule and help out the mountains that accumulate in the blink of an eye. I have tried only laundry on weekends, ummmm nope, I have tried doing 2 loads a day. Not so much. I thought about letting my kids do their own laundry and while I know that works out wonderfully for some, I get heart palpitations just thinking about it. Do you have any idea how much clothing that I would have to replace?
The first thing that we did was turn our laundry room into a family closet. This might not work for some but we are blessed with a larger than average laundry room. You can see some pictures and read about what we did here, since that time it has evolved, more hanging space, dresser for Emersyn, but the gist is pretty much the same. The only things that come out of the laundry room now are, sheets, towels, and my and Brian’s clothing. That, by itself, makes laundry much more pleasant.
The other thing that I know do is certain days of the week are for certain people. If you do not have your things in you bucket by that day, you are out of luck.
Mondays: Emersyn and all her “stuff”
Tuesdays: The Big Girls, Brenna and Alainna
Wednesdays: The Boys, Griffen and Kieran
Thursdays: Brian and I
Fridays: Socks and Towels/Sheets/Extras
Saturday and Sunday: I don’t do laundry!
It has worked out pretty well for us so far, this way only certain kids clothing needs to be folded and put away which makes that task much faster.
I do ALL of the socks together and they go into a big tub that gets sorted when we get to it, otherwise it is a free for all!
The one load of laundry that I let Brenna and Griffen do is their soccer stuff. The have been coached on how to do so. Now it is their responsibility to have clean uniforms come game days.
I usually do 2-3 loads a day, unless it is Emersyn’s day then it is usually turns out to be just one. I know that will change when the new little man gets home, because I will be pairing him up with Emersyn.
It is by no means a perfect system but I think short of sending out my laundry to be done or have some amazing person come in and do it for me, this is the best I can do right now. And I love not having to spend my weekends doing laundry!
Jillienne
*cross posted from my main blog www.imminent-chaos.blogspot.com
As a mom of four boys, I’d given up on the idea that my body might ever produce a female. So you can imagine my initial response yesterday, when the ultrasound technician told us that the baby currently inhabiting my belly is, in fact, a girl.
In case you can’t imagine, it was something like this: “Wait–what?? A GIRL? Really?”
We’re all excited, but I’m feeling more than a bit shell-shocked. And I have to admit that the addition of a female to our boy party is going to complicate the way I run our finances and home organization. When will she (or will she?) need her own room? Will we have to buy “girl” toys? (I’m not worried about clothes–thanks to a slightly-older girl cousin we’ll have plenty of hand-me-downs.) Will we need more space than I’d anticipated? What about bathrooms? (after all, a little girl isn’t going to be able to use the toilet at the same time as her brothers the way they currently do).
I’d love to hear from parents of larger mixed-gender families, especially when it’s much heavier on one gender than the other. What do you do about sleeping and playing space, privacy, hand-me-downs, and the like?
Also: any advice on raising girls much appreciated…I feel like I’m starting all over here!
In honor of National Adoption Awareness Month I put up an adoption related post on my blog each week throughout the month of November. The following is the post for this week:
Typically adoption is talked about when someone is pursuing it (“Oh, how exciting!”) or when a child makes poor choices and happens to be adopted. Then the “Well, he/she was adopted.” starts to run through the minds of people and at times is voiced. As if children who aren’t adopted don’t make poor choices or wrestle with challenging circumstances. Which brings me to a sometimes overlooked aspect about adoption and that is the opportunity it brings for discipleship/mentoring.
Parenthood is an opportunity for mentoring whether children arrive through adoption or other means. From what I have read (I don’t know Greek!) the word mentor comes from a Greek word meaning enduring. Isn’t that beautiful? Don’t we all want enduring relationships? In parenting we ought to be mentoring our children, we ought to be enduring with them, we ought to be walking side by side along the road of life with them.
Pouring into the lives of our children is no small thing. And, yes, sometimes things do go differently than we had hoped. Sometimes things go terribly wrong. That can happen whether a child is adopted or biological. And what every person, young or old, adopted or not, needs is enduring relationship. It is mentoring. It is discipleship. It is what parenting is all about.
“Put your hand in mine and let us help one another to see things better.” ~Monet
I am regularly on the lookout for products that fit the following profile:
- Natural and environmentally friendly
- Well-priced
- Make life easier
- Of high quality
So, one can only imagine how thrilled I was at the discovery of Prairieland Herbs! I recently ordered one of their shampoo bars and some facial care products. I have not been disappointed. You can read my complete review here.
For this post, I want to briefly highlight the shampoo bars. They sell for $5.50 or you save fifty cents per par if you order three or more. Not only is that a good deal for shampoo, but when you consider that you really don’t need to use conditioner as often when using the shampoo bars, it makes them an even better deal. Plus the quality of these bars is quite good.
Those of us with larger families know how cluttered the bath and shower can get with all the bath toys and products. Older kids may want more products, but younger kids and mom and dad may really appreciate one product for total body cleaning.
These shampoo bars are perfect for
- Busy moms and dads.
- Stocking stuffers.
- People who travel-they are a solid, so not worries about spillage or airline requlations on liquids.
- Streamlining the bath routine for larger families-one bar can clean from head to toe.
- People who like natural products.
Check out Prairieland Herbs and consider doing some holiday shopping with them. It could hardly be easier. You can shop online, purchase high quality products made by a small business and have unique, fun and useful gifts to give this Holiday season.
People often wonder, out loud, how those of us with larger than average families manage it. While sometimes I believe people are just being downright rude, there are other times when I believe that the person asking the question truly wants to know the answer.
There are those of us out there that grew our families slowly, one child at a time. Or families like Jon and Kate plus 8 that just kind of blew up over night, or families that through the miracle of adoption added two, three or even four kiddos overnight. No matter how it happens the answers are not right there magically in front of you! It is a learning process that never stops. You just keep trucking along until you find the thing that works for you and your family. Over the years here are some of the things that I have found work for our family.
Meals: Personally this is one of my weaker areas. I can cook, I will cook, I don’t enjoy the day to day cooking. I do however enjoy, baking, or making something new.
Breakfast during the school week: EASY EASY EASY, I don’t like mornings and I am over pretending that I do! Cereal, bagels, slim fast, frozen waffles, extra batch pancakes, hard boiled eggs. I do not make breakfast for my older two. I do however make breakfast for the 7 and 5 year old. This is the one time a day that they have a choice in what they eat. Since we keep it simple it is not hard to make a few different things.
Breakfast on the weekends: We get a little bit more creative and usually Brian makes a full on breakfast one of the days.
Lunch: I have 3 kids in school full time now, in our family you must pack your lunch until you are in Junior High. There are the occasional pizza days or whatever but for the most part they bring their lunches. In our schools, we have major peanut allergies so we are peanut free, it made it harder to pack, until I discovered thermoses! These are wonderful. Soup, pasta, Ramon noodles, left-overs! Even my husband asked for one after he saw the things that the boys were bringing for lunch. Lunch always consists of a Sandwich or Thermos, fruit, something crunchy, and something to drink. If I send anymore than that it doesn’t get eaten. For the little one that comes home after a half day, she gets the same thing.
Dinner: I cook ONE meal, period. If you choose not to eat it, you are also choosing no after dinner snack. I used to give peanut butter and jelly or cereal as an option until my oldest was big enough to make herself something other than what I made. Then every other kid at the table wanted whatever she was throwing together. I do try to stick to what I know that they like, mostly, but not everyone likes the same things. Usually, pasta, hot roast beef sandwiches, swedish meatballs, we do a lot of mexican type meals, and I have discovered you can cook pretty much anything in a crock pot. I only cook chicken in the crockpot now because it makes it so moist and easy to shred, I like it much better that way.
Snacks: 2 snacks a day plus an after dinner snack if you eat your dinner. I try to have something together for all of the kids after school that they can just pick at. My kids come home a 4 different times so it eliminates the need to get 4 different snacks. Cut up fruit with yogurt, fruit salad, veggie tray is a new one that I want to try, cheese and sausage, pretzels and dip, blah, blah, blah.. We do kool-aid, I know that it’s bad and I didn’t do it for years but I caved, water and milk! I have juice boxes on hand only for school snacks and lunches. There are also Gatorades for the ones that play sports.
Also, I keep a basket of snacks on the table of things that they can grab thinkgs like, muffins, cheese and crackers, single serving bags, etc.
Another thing that really helps me out is after grocery shopping I come home and prepare everything that I can prepare, while unloading, that way there is none of the “I’ll get to it laters”. Boil eggs. Grapes come out of the bag, off of the stems and into a bowl, and become an easy grab snack. Strawberries are topped and put in bowls, carrots out of the bag into a bowl. That way most everything is easy grab and more likely to be eaten before it goes bad.
On the weekends I always make up one large pot of soup or chili or spaghetti, so that for the rest of the week when I don’t feel like cooking or we are too busy for a full meal, I know that there is something on hand for dinner. I like to bake something on the weekends too when I have the chance. I am not big on freezing meals, I know that it is a great time saver for most but once it’s in the freezer I hate taking it back out, I just can’t make myself use it, what if I need it tomorrow!
These are some of the things that work for our Larger Family mealtimes. Some of these things I have come up with on my own through trial and error and some things I have “borrowed” from other large families and incorporated into my family. I think that is one of my favorite “tricks”, using what works for others in my family. What works for your family?
Jillienne
*cross-posted from my blog www.imminent-chaos.blogspot.com , Part II (Laundry)
It’s November, and at our house, that means the annual mad dash to get all the leaves bagged before the snow flies.
I decided that this year, I would take a break from the rake, and force encourage my 13 year old son to get the leaves up.
So we’ve been fighting with the leaf blower. First we ran out of machine oil. Then gas. Meanwhile, the weather has been in the 70s, and the leaves have been begging to be dealt with.
One afternoon, I coaxed my 16 year old daughter out to rake while her brother used the leaf blower. She grabbed the camera.
And then the babies ran outside, because leaves are for jumping in, right?
Now it’s snowing and we have yet to put one leaf in one bag. Happy days.
