Life Around Here

There was some talk around the table the other day about children and M pops off, "Why do we have so many boys?" and T without missing a beat or even lifting his head from his activity profoundly says, "Because boys rock!" So true.
Elizabeth and T piled on me this morning while I was still in bed and T wanted to get Elizabeth to play pat-a-cake. So I hear, "cr@ppy, cr@ppy, cr@ppy, cr@p" and then he keeps repeating it! Slightly shocked, annoyed and trying not to laugh, I calmy start the pat-a-cake song. You gotta love kids trying to say the "tr" sound, yep we heard THAT for quite a while when our older ones were younger. Now we are into the "cl" sound... Never dull!
I am trying to be a grace filled parent, but today Mr. T earned a swat because of his pokiness- he's extremely pokey sometimes. We needed to leave and so I wasn't going to take care it until we got home. As we were going out the door, I hear, "How can I unearn the swat?" in his sweet little voice. Made my heart melt. Maybe I could let this one slide?!?

I added a new song to the play list. I love music and so that is why the play list is there. (If the play list ever annoys you, just mute or turn down you computer OR pause the play list. )
Anyway back to the song... love is powerful.
When we first opened our hearts to opening our home (to foster/adopt), I was under the impression that love could conquer all. In all my hours of training through the state over the years, it has been drilled in that love canNOT conquer all. You need ABC and 123, etc. After some years of being on the fence, I will gladly recommit to the camp of love conquering all. True love that is, not what society says is love. See 1 Corinthians 13. We are seeing the effects of love in Mr. M and Elizabeth's lives in a dramatic way lately.
No love doesn't heal a hearing impairment, but love pursues options so that the impairment is not a disability. What I mean by that is we have taken Elizabeth to doctors, had tubes put in her ears, adnoids removed, had two audiograms, done 18+ hours of speech with therapists, work with her everyday on speech and vocabulary (probably in the 100's of hours now) and are preparing for an ABR. All this to help improve her hearing and communication.
Love doesn't work overnight, but applied consistently works. Mr. M could be a holy terror if left to his own devices or simply given over for a school to train. Because of our love for Mr. M we are making the sacrifice to homeschool him- it's hard enough to homeschool "normal" kids, but to deal with everything that Mr. M has going on and homeschool him is taking a whole new level of dedication. But because of our choice to give him that one on one attention he is making HUGE strides and can now read short vowel words. This did not happen overnight, but has taken years to help him learn to focus, control his body, going over letter sounds and finally we got the last pieces of the puzzle with medication and OT and ST. He was the one child I DIDN'T want to homeschool. (I must confess. I was looking forward to being able to keep the house clean and picked up for just a couple of hours everyday with him at school.) and it took the doctors saying that he would be in special need classes and probably spend most of his day in a corner for me to see past my selfishness. I am so glad that I was willing to let God work on my heart. Has Mr. M arrived? No. Still a long way to go, but progress in the right direction is a good thing.

Love sees a need and helps. It doesn't leave someone lying in the pit that they are in.