Grafting The Family Tree: 107 Days

107 days

2587 hours

155242 minutes

9314553 seconds

This how long we've been a family of three!! This is how long, I've been able to hold, hug and kiss my son! This is how many days we've been on the frontlines of parenting. This is how many days Beau has had to know us as mama and dada.

I've been posting pictures pretty regularly on Facebook but recently realized that pictures don't REALLY tell you what's going on, do they? I mean you can assume things are going well since everyone looks happy in the pictures but what's really behind that still shot?

So I thought I would take a minute to tell what life looks like over here!

As an enneagram 1, I crave perfection. You can imagine my dismay at the quick realization that things in this world are rarely perfect, contrary to what instagram would have us believe! So as we stepped into this parenting journey, I had high hopes of what it would look like and how our days would be spent. No doubt, I assumed we'd be doing educational Pinterest activities. Ha! Oh the naivety!! However, I'm sure you saw this coming, things are NOT perfect and guess what---- it's more ok than OK, it's actually hilarious and makes life so much richer! So allow me explain some of the perfectly imperfect things that have been happening 'round here... Let's just start with today shall we Watson?!

Beau has lately, quite literally, been eating us out of house and home. We completely blame this on our sweet social worker, who asked us recently, "So is he eating 3 meals a day or just kind of grazing throughout the day." We firmly believe that once those words were spoken into existence, they came to be (we LOVE you Heather). After confidently telling her has 3 great meals a day, he was suddenly starving every moment of the day! It's not uncommon for him to have eaten muffins, a banana, 2 apple sauce pouches, and 2 cheese sticks by 10:30 ..... in the AM people!!

Knowing my child is now eating like a ravenous lion cub, I have learned to start packing MULTIPLE snacks whenever we leave the house, which is of course rare these days. Less than an hour trip to grandma' s to drop off food? Better grab animal crackers, apple sauce and a banana (he also ate tater tots on that trip too). However today, this (very unfortunately) slipped my mind and I will live to regret that mistake for a while.

Here's what happened...

To give my running legs a break, I decided to do a yoga video this morning ( AKA child's pose WITH a child literally on top of you, anyone else??). Afterwards, I was like "Hmmm, that didn't feel strenuous enough" (the 1-ness runs deep within this one). So I decided a 3 mile walk would do the trick! I loaded up the boy, picked a route and started out. I blame Melanie Shankle's hilarious book, "On The Bright Side", because I suddenly found it was 45 mins later and I was only hallway through the walk. We in fact still had 1.5 mile to go to get back to the house. The child at this point had already had a banana on the walk, I did at least bring that (50 mom points)!! But it became very apparent that the banana wasn't enough and my child must be simply starving to death because he was screaming his head off saying... "nana...nana..nana". I told myself for approximately 10 minutes he would probably calm down before I started weighing my options. Welp, seeing as how I my 'Go Go Gadget legs' weren't working at the moment, the only choice I had was to call Blaine (AKA the call of shame). "Hey what's up" he said nonchalantly, as if he couldn't already tell I was stranded in the new development close to our house with a child who was NOT happy and getting terrible stares from passing strangers! "Hey...can you come get us?" Yes, friends, this great idea I had ended with my husband coming to pick us up!

But WAIT,

it gets even better because as I see my knight in shining armor coming to save us, I realize something. Something very important. He has brought the Juke.

Now, what's important to note here is that we had many a fiasco trying to find a stroller that would indeed fit inside of the trunk of the Juke. I had even at one point bought a stroller that we realized wouldn't fit in either of our cars, genius move, I know. This stroller I currently had in my sunburned and sweaty hands .....was the very one friends.

Yep, you guessed it, Blaine took the boy and I had to walk the empty stroller back by myself. On the way back,alone in my thoughts, I couldn't help but start to laugh and see the ridiculous, hilarity of the situation!! I smiled to other passing walkers, wondering what they were thinking about my EMPTY stroller and tried to shield it's emptiness by putting the shade down! At that point I was listening Melanie Shankle was talking about how absurd life is sometimes and guess what friends, LIFE IS ABSURD!! Especially in these strange times we find ourselves in today. When I got back home, Blaine and I both laughed at what just happened and it provided great levity to the rest of the day and obviously a blog post!

As you can see, our life isn't perfect, which my 1 heart is still dealing with BUT I wouldn't change it for anything. It's been a 107 days of cleaning food up off the floor, and 2587 hours of wondering "how long until nap time?" BUT it's also been 155,242 minutes of snuggling with my boy and reading books and 9314553 seconds of smelling his "just out of the bath head".

I'm learning to embrace the mess, the imperfectness of it all and be content with all the Lord has done for us. Just remembering where we were a year ago today is so humbling. Just in the month of April 2019, the Lord provided $10,000 for our adoption that we desperately needed. Did you hear that?! $10,000 IN ONE MONTH people. There is no limit to what the Lord can do. When we can learn to trust the Lord and choose to partake in the peace he offers us, we can laugh at the absurdity of life! We are still in awe that Beau is home and are truly loving all the highs and even the lows of parenting. It feels like he's always been here and we can't imagine our life without him! We also know that there are still children in need of a family! Do I know anyone who would be willing to cross the ocean to graft one of those children into your own family as the Lord has done for us? If you are interested in adoption you can visit our agency's website at www.dillonadopt.com

Thanks for your continued support and sweet encouragement of our little family! We love you all and hope you are able to laugh at the absurdity of your own life in light of what God's done for you! Here are some pictures of life lately!

XOXO,

Nat