I feel it necessary to explain the names in my blog. I decided to keep it anonymous to protect the privacy of those involved. If you know who we are we have a family blog and you know where it is. It is much more obscure and while it's still a public blog I feel (falsely) confident that very few people stumble across it whereas this is so common and so public that I felt like I wanted an extra layer of (false) security. One day maybe I'll bolden up and use names or make it less public and use them, but for now this is what we have.
First of all, "Ma'amba Jamba" rhymes so make sure you're hearing it in your head correctly. The first part of it is pronounced like the word "ma'am" hence the spelling. I am "Ma'amba Jamba" and my husband is "Daddio".
These names came about through our oldest son, Peanut. He went through this phase of calling us by our given names, which we didn't mind, it was just funny. So then we'd tell him to call the other parent by some strange derivitive of mom and dad. He was an obliging little parrot and would always do so and it was just funny. Daddio and Ma'amba Jamba are the ones that stuck for a time being and they always made us laugh. We still hear the sometimes, but not too often. How quickly they grow up! :(
Peanut and Pickle are our sons. They have very nice real names as well, but these are their around the house nicknames and they both happily acknowledge them. Peanut is the oldest at 2.5 and while it's not very original (at all) he was our little peanut because he was such a little guy and it stuck. Pickle is our newest family member at seven months old. His name came about from always being wrapped in green swaddling blankets so he looked like a Pickle.
So while this all makes us sound very strange, I think we're pretty normal, all things considered.
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The first part of this post makes ZERO sense now but for the first three weeks or something my blog had a different name and was secret, so please just entirely disregard it. :)
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Heart for Adoption, part 1
I have *always* wanted to adopt. I don't know when the desire started. It's just always been there. I've always had a heart for orphans.
I remember hearing a lot, I mean A LOT, of missionaries speak over the years of growing up in church and what always moved me where the pictures and stories of the children. Obviously, they weren't all orphans, but I just had a heart for those children who had so little even when I was nothing more than a child myself. There was a conversation with my mom one day and she said that she would have liked it if one of us girls had become a missionary (now, I have a hard time believing that because she is happiest when she has all of us and our families under the same roof and not spread across the country, let alone the world, but had that come to pass I'm sure God would have helped her endure the distance.) She asked me if I ever felt called to missions. I said that I would be a missionary if, and only if, I could work in an orphanage.
That never came to pass. It's still something that I think I would enjoy doing. I'd take my family with me and be a mother to the "babies" without mothers. Years passed. I went on my first out of country experience on a church mission trip. My teenage heart was blown away by what I could never have conceived of without seeing for myself. I've never seen such a blend of poverty, graciousness, need, and joy. It was amazing. Some of my favorite pictures ever are of me in ugly clothes, no makeup, no hair-do (and I mean all of those thing in greater intensity than the awkwardness that was my teenage years) with a lapful of Peruvian kids with all of us smiling until we could smile no more. I had my eyes and heart opened to the cultures of the world on that trip.
More years have come and gone and now I'm in college. I go in as an education major and find out quickly that it's not for me. I want to work with children, I desperately want to "help" as cheesy as it sounds, but teaching was not the angle I wanted to come from. I become a social work major and it's a true fit. I do all my internships with disadvantaged children. I try to get an internship at an adoption agency, but they were only taking master's level students. At this point my desire to adopt is so strong that I wonder if it's God's way of cushioning me for a later blow of infertility.
I remember hearing a lot, I mean A LOT, of missionaries speak over the years of growing up in church and what always moved me where the pictures and stories of the children. Obviously, they weren't all orphans, but I just had a heart for those children who had so little even when I was nothing more than a child myself. There was a conversation with my mom one day and she said that she would have liked it if one of us girls had become a missionary (now, I have a hard time believing that because she is happiest when she has all of us and our families under the same roof and not spread across the country, let alone the world, but had that come to pass I'm sure God would have helped her endure the distance.) She asked me if I ever felt called to missions. I said that I would be a missionary if, and only if, I could work in an orphanage.
That never came to pass. It's still something that I think I would enjoy doing. I'd take my family with me and be a mother to the "babies" without mothers. Years passed. I went on my first out of country experience on a church mission trip. My teenage heart was blown away by what I could never have conceived of without seeing for myself. I've never seen such a blend of poverty, graciousness, need, and joy. It was amazing. Some of my favorite pictures ever are of me in ugly clothes, no makeup, no hair-do (and I mean all of those thing in greater intensity than the awkwardness that was my teenage years) with a lapful of Peruvian kids with all of us smiling until we could smile no more. I had my eyes and heart opened to the cultures of the world on that trip.
More years have come and gone and now I'm in college. I go in as an education major and find out quickly that it's not for me. I want to work with children, I desperately want to "help" as cheesy as it sounds, but teaching was not the angle I wanted to come from. I become a social work major and it's a true fit. I do all my internships with disadvantaged children. I try to get an internship at an adoption agency, but they were only taking master's level students. At this point my desire to adopt is so strong that I wonder if it's God's way of cushioning me for a later blow of infertility.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Intentions and Disclaimers
As a first post in a blog without any readers I suppose I'm allowed to take my time getting settled in here as a blogger and to start with a boring subject. I fully expect this blog in general, not just this particular entry, to be of interest to no one except myself and perhaps some of my family. If things go well in our adoption journey then maybe something that I write will be of use to someone else or at least will offer some emotional support, but that will be just a happy little bonus.
I'm really writing this for myself as a way to chronicle the facts and emotions as we go down this road...emphasis on emotions. I've been told that I'm "free-spirited", which is a nice way to say that sometimes I'm flighty. I'm prone to changing my mind, following my intuition except when I don't and then I usually regret it. It is fully possible that in one entry I'll be fully supporting one course of action and in the next entry I'll be totally against it. That's just what mashes my potatoes.
Writing for me is a cathartic thinking process. I'll figure out my thoughts and change my mind as I write. So, there will be plenty of times where it seems like I'm being driven more by emotion and less by logic. Those times will be correct. :) I also consider mind-changing to be a sign of higher level thinking. (Convenient, but true.) I'm rarely impressed by people who just have entrenched ideas with no room for change so I change my mind when it seems like it needs to be changed and not be bothered by it.
And as writing for me is emotional and I'm free-spirited, let me also tell you upfront that the finer rules of English grammar still escape me. I use punctuation as it seems to suit what I'm saying. It always makes sense to me, but I've had people try to convince me that there are actually rules for when...semi colons, for example are called for and when they're not. I find that bogus. Commas I can handle. They go in lists and wherever else I want them. I punctuate and paragraph as it pleases me. If you are deeply offended by that this may not be the blog for you.
I'm a wife and a mother and I'm just trying to keep it together as we start something very big.
I'm really writing this for myself as a way to chronicle the facts and emotions as we go down this road...emphasis on emotions. I've been told that I'm "free-spirited", which is a nice way to say that sometimes I'm flighty. I'm prone to changing my mind, following my intuition except when I don't and then I usually regret it. It is fully possible that in one entry I'll be fully supporting one course of action and in the next entry I'll be totally against it. That's just what mashes my potatoes.
Writing for me is a cathartic thinking process. I'll figure out my thoughts and change my mind as I write. So, there will be plenty of times where it seems like I'm being driven more by emotion and less by logic. Those times will be correct. :) I also consider mind-changing to be a sign of higher level thinking. (Convenient, but true.) I'm rarely impressed by people who just have entrenched ideas with no room for change so I change my mind when it seems like it needs to be changed and not be bothered by it.
And as writing for me is emotional and I'm free-spirited, let me also tell you upfront that the finer rules of English grammar still escape me. I use punctuation as it seems to suit what I'm saying. It always makes sense to me, but I've had people try to convince me that there are actually rules for when...semi colons, for example are called for and when they're not. I find that bogus. Commas I can handle. They go in lists and wherever else I want them. I punctuate and paragraph as it pleases me. If you are deeply offended by that this may not be the blog for you.
I'm a wife and a mother and I'm just trying to keep it together as we start something very big.
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