October 2013 — Page 3

My friend Erin at Life with the Loraines gave me the Liebster blog award! This was such a wonderful surprise and I really thank Erin for thinking of my blog when she passed on this award. I have to answer some questions that she asked — which will be hard for me — and then pass this award on to two other bloggers. So, I will try to answer all the questions — here goes.

1. What is your favorite post on your blog? I think that my favorite post is “More Alike Than Not” because it describes how I feel about my girls with Down syndrome. They are just kids — just like all my other kids and I think that is important to remember.

2. Why do you blog? Well, I started blogging when we committed to Sophia (then called Allysen) and someone at Reece’s Rainbow suggested we start a blog to help with fundraising. I continued blogging after both of our girls came home as a kind of journal of their first weeks and months here and just never stopped.

3. What is your favorite book and why? Ok, so this may sound strange but my favorite book is The Pink Maple House by Christine Noble Govan. This is a children’s book, but I have always loved the book. I read it to my children usually once a year in the fall and so far they have all loved it, too.

4. What is your favorite thing about each of your children? Well, since I have 20 children I am not even going to try to answer this question. I don’t think anyone would want to read about that many different children and my favorite thing about each so I will just let this one go.

5. You have three wishes. What are they?

· I would wish that Bethanydidn’t have cystic fibrosis.

· I wish I loved to home school — I do it because Bill and I know it is the right thing for our family, but I definitely don’t love doing it. I want to be one of those women that loves the planning and teaching and all the projects.

· I wish I was more outgoing and that I was a more confident person.

6. What do you think is the best and the most challenging thing about adoption? One of the best things is seeing a child that had little hope for a future blossom, grow and learn what love and being part of a family really means. The challenge is that you never really know to what extent the child has been physically and emotionally damaged and you must be prepared for this. Sometimes this can be very difficult.

7. What do you like to do to relax? Read a book or read a few of my favorite blogs.

8. Something you are proud of… I am proud of the way our older children have been loving and accepting and even excited over the adoptions of our special needs children. There is no hint of resentment among them. In fact, they express only love and acceptance. They take them swimming, out to lunch, to the movies, to the store with them and sometimes will just come over to watch a movie with them and have a snack — the snack is really important to Sarah. Adopting so many children does take up a lot of our time, energy and money, but our older kids have never complained or been resentful — quite the contrary. When we were adopting Caroline, our daughter Megan was 16 years old, and she insisted on getting a job to help with the adoption expenses. When we were adopting Sophia and Bella our daughters Katie and Abigail had the opportunity to travel to New York and play at Carnegie Hall with the American Youth Harp Ensemble. They had auditioned for this trip and were accepted. But, the cost of the trip was not really in our budget since we were saving everything we could to go get our girls. Both Katie and Abigail willing gave up the trip without a single complaint. Then our son, Michael, gave a Benefit Concert to help raise money for our adoption of Bella and Sophia. Meredith came over to our house daily to check on the kids while I was in Bulgaria (even with terrible morning sickness) and Emily went with me to meet her new sisters. They are all supportive of what we do and that means the world to me.

9. What is your family’s favorite meal? With so many kids this is a very hard question. I guess one meal that quite a few of my younger kids like is barbecue chicken, peas and mashed potatoes — simple but most of the kids like it and it is hard to find something they all like.

10. What is your favorite room in your house? Some people may not consider this a room, but I am still going to choose it — our front porch. I love my porch. Bill and I have coffee on it early in the morning before any kids are up and then when he goes to work the kids will sometimes eat breakfast out there. We read on the porch, sit and talk, visit with neighbors, the kids play games, we sit and watch the deer and we even have our little squirrel that comes up every single day and will sit at my feet until I feed him. When we built this house the one thing I knew we had to have was a porch and I think everyone in the family loves it.

I now need to pass this award on to two more bloggers. I choose two that I started reading while in the process of adopting Bella and Sophia. Both were adopting from the same country and pretty much in the same time frame. They are Blessings Eternal and I Will Go Before You .

Here are the 10 questions for them.

1. Why did you start blogging?

2. What post on your blog is your favorite?

3. How did you choose your blog’s name?

4. What are your hobbies?

5. What made you decide to adopt a special needs child?

6. What is your favorite book?

7. Approximately how many blogs do you read each week?

8. What is your favorite room in your home?

9. What is your favorite season?

10. What is one of your favorite movies?

Sophia

I wanted to share something very quickly that happened on Tuesday that was pretty exciting for us — especially me as I was the one that witnessed it. As most of you may remember, Sophia was very lethargic when we first met her and though she seemed more alert and active as the week went on, she has never really made us feel like she noticed us or paid any attention to what we were doing or saying — we always said that she seemed to be in another world.

After she arrived in the states, and we saw a neurologist, we realized that her problems were much greater than we originally thought. She has had a massive stroke and basically half of the left side of her brain is missing. According to the neurologist, there is no way to tell how much she can learn or communicate — if at all. So, Sophia is kind of in a little world of her own, it seems. She hardly ever makes eye contact or joins in with any of the kids when they are laughing or playing. She usually just sits and stares out into space. The kids still play with her and if they bounce her up and down she will laugh and seems to enjoy it. But, she never really engages much with us.

Well, Tuesday she had OT and when we got home I sat her in the floor and talked to her a little. She actually seemed to listen — just a sense I had. She made brief eye contact with me and watched what I was doing. So, I hid my face with my hands and wondered if she would pay any attention — she usually doesn’t even look when I do this. She briefly looked and then looked away. I hid my face again, and then as soon as she looked at me I uncovered my face and said, ” peek-a-boo!” She seemed to smile so I did it again. She burst out laughing! I thought maybe it wasn’t related to what I was doing as she will sometimes just laugh for no reason as she sits on the floor. I did it again and she laughed hysterically! Then she started watching me and actually getting playful. It was amazing to me, as she almost never pays attention when I play with her — unless it is rough housing. It is almost like she woke up and joined in with me. I can’t tell you what it felt like to all of a sudden feel like she was there with me paying attention and enjoying our activity together. She came out of her own little world and joined into ours for probably 30 – 45 minutes. She laughed and played and was a participant for once. It didn’t last that long, but how wonderful that time was.

After a few minutes, I realized this was real and we were playing together, so I ran and got my camera — I just had to document this day. This girl played — really played!