Category: family

What are you supposed to do?

What are you supposed to do when your little girl is hysterically weeping and crying for her mother? 

I just sat there on the edge of her bed and rubbed her back and played Creole Christian songs for her off my iPhone; there was no sense in trying to sooth her, it just made it worse.  The only other thing I could think to do was cry with her – and it was hard not to. 

I wish I could know what is going on in her little head.

When Amanda left tonight at the dinner table she started to cry silent but big tears.  I thought of some goofy thing to distract her by talking to myself on my cell phone and home phone all at the same time.  It worked.  Then we all went and played instruments down stairs, she loved the piano and the drum and the electric guitar.  I think she is going to be a musician. 

Getting ready for bed was all laughs and giggles and brush teeth – and then she climbed into bed, one second was giggling with Bella and the very next, without any warning, it was full throated sobs for mamma, wringing of the hands, deep chest sobs, arching her back.

But then it gets even harder because it’s not just one little girl i have to work with.  I have Braeden and Bella both complaining because she is wailing out loud, and they’re telling me “She wants mamma, she wants mamma” – as if I couldn’t figure that out for myself…  But which mamma?

And then Bella decides, just as Chrissy is calming down, that she wants to act up too – she probably just wants attention – I’m sure of it.  But, how am I supposed to react?  She has been living here for almost 4.5 years; she knows the drill, she knows the expectations, but she has been doing really well sharing her room, her toys, her clothes, her space; I don’t want to cause a wedge, but I can’t react to Bella the same way I react to Christella.  It doesn’t seem fair – but life is not fair.

So an hour and a half later, I think they’re all finally asleep; for the most part, I’m still sane – Christella is crying in her sleep, very sad.  I guess i have an hour or so now to try and get some homework done before crashing.

We knew it wouldn’t be easy to have such a large family; even harder under the circumstances.  Do I regret it – NO WAY!  There is something completely fulfilling when walking through the store and seeing our children dance around and play and giggle together. 

We’re going to be financially underwater for a long time to come; I can’t believe that we put almost $6,000 dollars on credit cards over the last three weeks going down to Miami picking up the children and trying to get into a position to have 2 more children in the home.  Money really goes fast!  I try not to worry about the financial side of it – God has always provided for us, and I trust, that in some way, He will continue to do so. 

Time goes fast too – I could never have imagined how epic it would be to get ready to leave the house, to go shopping, to do doctors appointments, to get up in the morning, with so much going on in our house… 

I know we can adjust to the challenges, if I didn’t think we were up to it, we would have never started in the first place – but God told us we could do it – and we have faith in him.

I hope the adjustments come smoothly and soon!

What a week!

I was excited to realize today that our adoption trip is over in some ways. Because our children are now home there is no real reason to blog under adoptions anymore! 🙂

We have engaged with a lawyer in our state and have begun the process of domestic adoption – while the costs are not done yet, I was happy to find out that we are looking at a couple thousand additional in comparison to the over twenty thousand that has been part of our international adoption so far. We are still waiting to hear from our previous lawyer -he has offered to get our original documents back out of IBESR – as they are the easiest way to proceede – not hearing from him in over a week, we are not sure what to expect.

Christella is settling in very well – with the children as if she has been here her entire life – and I am amazed at home much English she knows! With myself she has really opened up to me the last couple days, wanting to sit with me, and talk with me (altough still hesitant). There is still te battle of the will that happens with any 5 year old – and some friends and family want to give in to the battle – so that has been a bit of a struggle – but one that will pass.

JJ has been the challenge. We thought Christella might have the hard time adjusting – but JJ seems to be experiencing the effects of both bad health and trauma.

He has not yet obtained a nomal bowel movement – and they are very very messy and very very smelly – no foods seem to be bringing relief to us or him – at least his ears are healing.

The emotional side is something else. He is needy – no other way to describe it. For the most part he is constantly crying for attention – he needs to be held and touched and reaffirmed non-stop. He is getting better – but it is very trying, and the first week was almost unbearable!

When he is not crying he is hugging my or amandas leg – as seen In this snapshot while I was blogging. He is starting to get down and play though – which is a good sign – but there is clear and obvious signs of the trauma of the earth quake – as he was never like this at anytime that we visited him last year.

I am confident that he will eventually work it out with a lot of love and patience – right now he just needs to know that we are here for him.

On the other front – Our oldest has finally been officially diagnosed with ADHD, as well as anxiety issues and some obsessive compulsive behavior – guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree although we already knew – but great to have it understood. For the ADHD we can now look to medical help – as it has been shown to be the most effective – for the other two being informed parents will help a lot. The doctor provided us with books to read which can help us better understand how to work with hm.

Once we complete Braedens evaluation, with Donovan, Braeden and I all having our ADHD being addressed – I think the level of chaos will finally start to come down in our home – something I am looking forward to! I feel so bad that the medical field did not know about ADHD growing up – I think my parents could have had a much better life.

Anyway this is the first chance I have had to blog since we came home – sleep is starting to come back to normal for our house too.

We still have a lot to learn and adjust too – and I now understand why the screening for adoption is so extensive 😉

Haiti: Making Sense of suffering?

A powerful aftershock today resulted in the final determination that the buildings of the HIS Home Orphanage are no longer safe even to be around. The buildings had to be abandoned. The children have been moved to a local Church down the road.

This afternoon I found this article about a young 22 year old woman who was working with Orphans in Haiti; she was killed when the 7 story building she was staying in collapsed in a “blink of an eye”. Our hearts go out to her friends and family; this story hits very close to home.

I’m sure in the days and weeks to come there will be numerous tragedies like this discovered and reported on. There really is no answer to the question of “why” even when our entire lifespan is just a breath on a cold winters morning. I have to lean heavily on the trust that there is a reason; and all the senselessness of the destruction and death and chaos will someday make sense.

As you probably are; I have been really struggling over the last couple days in trying to make sense in my heart out of all the pain and suffering and destruction that is going on in Haiti right now. I can’t make any sense of it, no matter how I try.

I’m not really sure if there is any way to make sense of it, as we are looking through a small telescope at the vastness of the universe of time, we can only see one small moment in one small area of space.

I was reminded today, in the midst of this agony of heart something I read by C.S. (Jack) Lewis, regarding the problem of pain and suffering in his book, The Great Divorce. I thought I would share.

It really brings no consolation for a broken heart: but it at least can remind us, that there is a God-view that we cannot see – and we must remember to trust and have faith.

“‘That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say ‘Let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences’: little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except Heaven,’ and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.’ – C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34864920/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34879803/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

http://mollyinhaiti.blogspot.com/

Update on our Children & Haiti

From what we have heard so far, both David and Christella are ok.  The orphanage is ‘ok’, the buildings did not collapse, but they are unstable and everyone has been sleeping out on the ground.  Adoptions are at a standstill (obviously), and it’s likely that our paperwork has been destroyed as it was just delivered to the IBESR right before the earthquake.  At a time when the need couldn’t be greater to have these children safe & home, unless God will intervene on all of our behalves, things are looking very bleak. 

We have written letters to Senator Snowe and Senator Collins and the Office of International Children’s Issues to ask for the possibility of Emergency Humanitarian or Refugee Visa’s – but we are not sure if that is even an option.

We know of so many buildings that have collapsed, and some of the people we know and have met are among the casualties – but we do not have much more information than that right now. 

Due to the decrease in food, water, no electricity, likely no working sewage system, and the issues that will come with so much of the death and destruction – the worst is yet to come.

We are working on pulling together donations from local stores of non perishables and money, and we will be bringing them to Boston to fly out with the formula on Tuesday – Pray that we will be able to help make a difference in this endeavor.

l’Institut du Bien-être social et de recherches

As I was about to put down the computer for the night, I received a “blip blip” from our Lawyer on Skype who was down in Haiti working at l’Institut du Bien–être social et de recherches.  l’Institut du Bien–être social et de recherches is also known in most adoption circles as IBESR, and is the “Social Services” of Haiti. 

IBESR is the monumental first step of the adoption process – and we have just entered it!!!!  Our journey has just officially begun; and our most worrisome point is still to come that is the Haitian National Palace where we shall petition to receive a waiver to adopt (despite the fact that we already have biological children, and we are under age 35).

Any parent reading this blog will perhaps understand what it might be like to have your children separated from you and be so far away, out of your loving arms and protection, but worse, that it is not within our power to bring them home.  I’m not sure what it was, but in Church this Sunday both Amanda and I broke down as we started to sing “Knowing You”, we both almost had to leave the sanctuary as we had a hard time pulling ourselves back together.

So – we have just officially, after a full year of preparing with paperwork, started out on the long, long journey of adoption.  Our daily family prayer is that God will empower and guide Clifford (our lawyer) to work efficiently in the legal system to bring our children home, and that God will strengthen Chris, Hal, Junior and HIS Home with the ability to provide the love and protection for our children while we are separated from each other.

And if you have it in your heart, for us, please bring this request before the throne of The Almighty. 

This is the house that Jed built…

This is the mouse that lived in the house that Jed built… but let me not get ahead of myself.

We built a house out in the country in the middle of a great big field – and needless to say we have been fighting the introduction of field mice into our house since we first moved in.

Our house is a two story ranch; the first floor is exposed on 3 out of the 4 sides, and we have always been able to contain the mice to the first floor (at least neither we nor our cat have found evidences of mice on the second floor).

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However, over the last couple weeks we have been seeing indications from our cat Zia that there could be mice in the upstairs part of the house now. 

As a quick aside, Zia is another animal all together; we warn all friends and family that come over that she is a little schizophrenic; she can be sweet and loving, and begging to be pet one second; and then the next second she will dig her claws into you and claw & bite.  No one ever believes us; until after they have been hit.  Zia is a royal pain in my rear – even though I’m the only person in the house she doesn’t dare to attack – however; she still has some value as a mouser apparently.

Anyway, yesterday was the first time we actually saw signs of the mice upstairs (mouse poop in a drawer) so the war began.  While we believed there was more than one mouse, we only had one trap – and so we set it.  Here is where the story really begins though.

This morning we were woken up to Braeden saying “Oh that’s cute, Zia has a toy mouse”; and it was then followed up with something to the effect of “Bella throw Zia her mouse” (I couldn’t quite hear, because I sleep with earplugs on mornings that I don’t want to wake up at 6 AM by our children).

Scrambling out of bed we found this:

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That was the most lifelike toy mouse we have ever seen.  We didn’t have the heart to tell Bella that she was tossing around a dead mouse though.  🙂

Are animals aware of their own mortality?

If you had asked me this a couple weeks ago, I would have said no.  However, I also realize that most of the pets we have had over the last 10 years, we either did not have until they died, or they were too small to have much interaction with.

Today, our pet rat of two years died.  She had cancerous growths that started earlier this summer; but over the last week we found that she was getting really, really bad; emaciated, loosing some hair, not moving much, not eating much.  We started giving her crackers with peanut butter on it for the last two days, as she would actually eat it – but would eat nothing else.

Today, when I went to give her the food, she took it, put it aside, and then dragged, and pulled her tired body down one cage flight, out onto the door and up against my chest.  She continued to start to climb up onto me, which she had no strength to do.  She hasn’t tried to climb out onto me in a long time.  But today, despite almost no strength she made the unbelievable effort, and she was determined.

I helped her up onto my shoulder which was her final aim; and she tried to climb into my shirt, as she had always done as a baby rat.  I couldn’t let her into my shirt, because she was very sickly and it kind of grossed me out.  However, I stood there for about 15 minutes petting her.  And she started to brux – a sound rats make when they are very happy – they grind their teeth together.  Eventually she stopped bruxing, until Donovan came back over, and started petting her, and she started bruxing again. 

Donovan was upset because she seemed to be crying – he was right – either it was the amount of effort she put into climbing on me, or she was actually crying.  After she got on my shoulder she sat there for a short while, and tears started to come from her eyes – but just a short while later, her eyes were dry again.

It was time for me to go back to work; but I knew she wasn’t going to last the rest of the day; Amanda held her for a while, and then let Donnie hold her.  It was unbelievable to see how calm she was (apart from her very labored breathing) once she got into our arms.

I let Amanda know that she should have the kids say goodbye, and a short while later, stormy died in Donnie’s lap.

The kids of course are devastated; they have never experienced death for something they were very close to.  Amanda told Braeden that we would bury her and she would turn into a flower.  Braeden kept saying to me, “Papa, I don’t want a flower, I want stormy” – a couple times he said “Papa, can’t we pray to God and ask Him to give stormy back to us” – “I know God can bring stormy back, why don’t we just ask”. 

Wow – it was really hard as a father to experience the sorrow of my children from their lost…

But Stormy’s death had a profound impact on me; she knew she was dying and she wanted to spend her last moments with her family – rather than in her cage… profound….

Christmas Irony

There is nothing that brings out my nature as a fallen human more than being dragged out shopping around Christmas time.  If you want to cure a humanist – send them Christmas shopping with me.  It becomes very obvious very quickly that I’m not “inherently good”.

And that’s the most ironic part of Christmas, I think.  The weeks leading up to the celebration of the birth of our Lord, seems to make the most obvious, exactly why I need a savior.  

I think I just heard an amen coming from at least one other person in the crowd… it must have been another Logiodice.

When they passed out the brains…

So this morning I awoke to a sound similar to the sound of someone dumping a bucket of legos down a set of stairs – very loud crashing, followed by very loud crying.

“Braeden, are you ok, are you ok Braeden?”

Well, I’ll save you the drama except to find out that Braeden had taken the whiteboard, put it on the top of the stairs and slid down on top of it (and rumor has it Bella was on it too – because I heard her say “I didn’t get hurt”, to which Braeden replied “that’s because you’re feet didn’t stick out”.. 

Amanda had decided to let them watch Dennis the Menace this morning without parental supervision.

I am so used to our children’s dangerous antics, that I lay in bed thinking:

“Well, if he is crying he is still alive.  If Donnie isn’t screaming, then there is no blood”.

Braeden came wandering into the room crying:

“Donnie said it was safe.  Donnie said I wouldn’t get hurt.”

So, I said to Braeden:

“Braeden, you have to learn to use your common sense.”

To which he replied:

“What is common sense?”

I said:

“Braeden, if Donnie told you it was safe to jump off the roof, would you do it?”

He replied, “No”, between sobs.

“And why  not”, I asked?

“Because I would get hurt” (whimper).

“Well, that’s what common sense is”, I replied.

Braeden went quiet…

A few minutes later he said “But Pappa, how would I get on the roof anyway?”.

OMG! I thought, he sat there the last couple minutes thinking about jumping off the roof, and his only concern was how he would actually get up there.  This boy is scary!

 

As my mother always used to say to me; “When they passed out the brains, Braeden thought they said drains and said ‘Give me a little one with a lot of holes in it’”!

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