Little Princess Flower Tells All

Hello to all my most best friends! This is, of course, Little Princess Flower! I could just reach out and give you a chaste kiss right through this silly old computer screen! I am so happy to be here! I just sneaked this blog away from Jamey because Oh Golly Miss Molly, if you'd have seen what she was trying to write...I don't think she mentioned sparkles once! 

I've been reading through 'web-log' business and really, I mean pish-posh, that Jamey is just doom and gloom! My gracious! I wouldn't be a bit surprised that if she got a little love-bite from one of my magical sparkly pet unicorns she'd complain about needing a vaccine! You should just see her stomping about her enchanted castle in the morning, noon, and night always on her way to the coffee pot swatting at my friendly flying fabulous fairy friends like they were mosquitoes! She can be such a Drag-Me-Down-Dolly!

Nevermind that nonsense! My apologies! I'm sorry I got caught up in all that negativity! I hope I didn't offend anyone! It's like I always say, "Reality is nothing that you can't glam up with some sparkles, sequins, and glitter!" 

Lest you take her Crabby-Abby word for it, I wanted to give you a sparkly magical update! She is up for several major honors and she hasn't mentioned a thing about them so I thought I would do the happy happy happy happy honors of filling you in! 

(It is so fun to make a list, isn't it?!)

1. All the emotional eating she's been doing lately has really paid off and she's been contacted by several Rubenesque artists asking if she does modeling! 

2. She's been nominated as "Crabbiest Mom of the Month" for every month since April! She's currently the hands-down favorite for winning the year!

3. She has so many pimples on her nose that she was recently cast as the lead role of Rudolph in an upcoming Broadway play! 

4. She's going to teach classes to actresses about things they can think about when they need to be able to turn on the waterworks in a movie! I personally, don't cry, but I'm sure she's going to give them all some VERY happy thoughts guaranteed to move them to tears of joy! 

5. Her kids are doing so well that the entire family has been submitted to a show called, "Super Nanny"! Doesn't that just so sound uplifting?!

Well, I really do wish that I could stay and catch up more, but it's time for me to get to bed so I can get my 14 hours of Beauty Sleep a night just like Jamey! She just sets the bar so high for all of us! 

I'd just like to leave with one shiny little reminder: When life gives you lemons just add sequins! And maybe some puffy glitter glue! Nothing dresses up a lemon better! 

Love and kisses and sunshine and happiness and giggles and rainbows and frolicking,

Little Princess Flower

Grace-Based Parenting

This is a very real book review because these are notes that I typed up to HANG ON MY WALL, that's how right on this book is.

Here's the story. Right now, at my house...the inmates have taken over the asylum. There are so many reasons for this that it doesn't even matter. We have almost constant chaos the kids are fighting with each other and we're fighting with them. For the record, Andrew and I aren't fighting with each other, but we do absolutely feel like we're going from one crisis to another and there's no joy in that. It's been parenting by "bread and games" for too long.

So the wheels of my head start smoking turning and I decide that it's time to LAY DOWN THE LAW! I'll make a chart! I'll show them! We'll take control! It'll be a reverse coup! We'll batten down the hatches and it will be hellacious for awhile while we TAKE A STAND AS ADULTS! There will be charts! There will be consequences! There will be mandatory happiness! 

And God said it was good and told me to get started, to take a stand, to fight against selfishness and disorder and to stay firm even when it was hard and I wanted to quit because change is hard, but good. Then he pointed me straight back toward my own heart, which is what yesterday's post was. After I wrote that I turned toward what I think might be one of the best parenting books ever written, "Grace-Based Parenting" by Dr. Tim Kimmel. 

Listen, not only do I have bio kids, but I have a bio kid who while extremely awesome is a bit quirky and doesn't fall into a lot of mainstream categories, a kiddo whose little heart and soul could be crushed by a lot of the parenting 'advice' floating around there. This books teaches how to find the heart of that child and hold it carefully. I have a bio kid who seems like he's going to be typical as far as his parenting requirements and this book tells me how to find his heart and hold it carefully because it's not the same as his brother's. Then we have Boohoo and there are precious few mainstream parenting books out there that I recommend for parenting kids who have been adopted. This one is totally safe. Maybe there are a few things I would have worded differently, but that's just from my point of view, it doesn't affect the technique which is to find your child's heart and hold it carefully.

Dr. Kimmel has a website called Family Matters and they have some good online resources over there as well and information about his other books. This is actually the only one that I've read, sadly enough. This is not any kind of post-for-profit. He doesn't know me and there's no reason for me to blab on wonderful about this book except that I really think that it hits to the heart of what I want for my family. I do have my eye on his book, "In Praise of Plan B", but it's just a longing right now. 

I am a huge advocate of respectful parenting, of valuing relationships over anything else in your life, teaching my children to love Jesus and love their neighbors, and in spreading the word that none of us are good enough or too bad  for God but 'it is by grace that you have been saved' Ephesians 2:8, and continuing to stumble my way through bringing these things into my own life.

Here's a summary of my summary that you can read over here.

Three Inner Needs of Your Child: A Secure Love, A Significant Purpose, and A Strong Hope and these can be carried out through Four Freedoms: The Freedom to Be Different, The Freedom to Be Vulnerable, The Freedom to be Candid, and The Freedom to Make Mistakes

So, yes, there will be a chart to help me corral my children, but right beside it, and up on the wall first, will be a chart to help me corral myself.

Scary Flashback

I was going through my old posts the other day looking for something and came across this post. I noticed that it had happened almost a year ago and so I decided to re-post it on the One Year Later date, but I've got something else really significant for Wednesday since that's when I do book reviews and ya'll have to read the post tomorrow, promise? and so I'm posting this a day before it actually happened even though since it happened while I was asleep from Tuesday night it's kind of like it happened on Tuesday. Seriously, quit listening to me ramble and just click the link.

The fact that he (and I) survived to a year later is remarkable. Please, journey back in time with me:

The one where Peanut walks himself to the community mailbox in his skivvies and lives to tell about it

Man, I'm freaking out just thinking about it again. 

A few days ago as part of our Bible time I asked Peanut,

"How does God protect you?"

He replied,

"Well, I've never been in a lava flow and I've never been eaten by a people-eating creature."

And I agree, those might be two of the least used "praise reports" ever, 

but on a serious note,

Thank you God, for protecting my babies!

Fight! Fight! Fight!

‎"Fight bravely, for habit overcomes habit."

                                         Thomas A Kempis

Here's a truth for you.

I haven't been "fighting bravely" recently. I've been giving in to that knot of ugliness inside all of us, particularly it seems, me. It's so deliciously easy to give in, to say it doesn't matter, to justify myself because I could graffiti my list of stressors on every flat surface in my house and then move on house by house down the street. And while there’s truth to the fact that I *am* stressed and feeling myself buckle under the weight of my many grown up worries it is simplified down to this fact: those are my worries not her worries.

Too often lately I’ve let myself be lazy and treated my boys and my daughter, who needs me even more even when it’s easy to think that she doesn’t need me at all, treated them not as gifts entrusted to me by God, but more as playthings that I can do with as I want. Too often I’ve given them sharp words hastily spoken, eyes that aren't friendly, hands that are too busy to be gentle, and a mind that is so fragmented that it forgets to be present with them.

I have a million worries, but (they) she only has one. Am I loved? In this big world that seemingly throws her around like flotsam, that drops adults into her life and then whisks them away again, in an environment that keeps changing, in a life of three short years her only constant companion has been that question: Am I loved?

There is grace and forgiveness and even understanding for some of my less stellar parenting interactions lately, but there cannot be acceptance. I can’t take the measure of my parenting for the last little while, judge it to be okay, and keep going. It’s not what I want for myself, it’s not what I want for my children.  I am better than that. They are better than that.

A lesson that I want to teach my children is that they are more than their feelings. They can feel anger, shame, fear, sadness, and a myriad of emotions, but they don’t have to give in to those feelings. They can feel those things and still choose to act responsible, respectfully, lovingly. They can speak Truth into the lies. But in order to have that right, I have to walk the road first. How can I tell Boohoo that she can choose to love instead of fear if I let myself be overcome by my fears? How can I tell Peanut that he can be angry and still be respectful if I let my anger overpower my kindness? How can I tell Pickle that he needs to obey even when he wants to run in the opposite direction if I don’t stop running first?

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do … For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it … What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Romans 7:15, 18b-20, 24-25

I’m stopping this downhill slide that we’re on because it doesn’t lead anywhere good. Each of us being overrun by our own selfishness isn’t going to do much for family life. It’s time for an overhaul. I’ve written before that I was a better parent before we brought Boohoo home. It’s easy to love the people who act loveable. It’s easy to parent a challenging child before you have a Challenging Child. It’s easy to judge when you haven’t lived this life. I still don’t feel like I can fully express how challenging it’s been since we brought Boohoo home. We’ve had successes and we’ve had failures, we’ve had smooth months and we’ve had rough months. I believe that cycle will continue, but the good months will gradually stretch longer and longer and the bad times will shrink shorter and fewer.

It takes so long. It is so hard. It is. But I have to ‘fight bravely’. I’m calling this past experience our intermission between rounds. And guess what? Intermission is over. I’m ready to fight again.

Romans 6:1-2, 14 “What should we say then? Should we continue in sin order that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ...For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under law but under grace.”

Grace. Is there anything better? I’m going to start a habit of grace to overcome the rest of my habits.

‎"Fight bravely, for habit overcomes habit."

Thomas A Kempis

Not Just a Blanket

** I found this post in my drafts folder. I don't know why I didn't publish it, but I'm going to now. It's a few months old, but the feelings are still there: regret. Regret for the pain of my daughter's story and my inability to fix it for her. But before we dive into that deep pool...I'm having a silly little giveaway on my Zehlahlum Family facebook page! Until 8:30pm (my time) you can "like" my page, leave me a friendly comment on my giveaway post and be entered to win a $15 giftcard to Amazon. Because we're cool like that, you, me, and Amazon. 


I came across further proof recently that I should not ever attempt to clean my house. I was trying to organize a closet, which really, should be a fairly unemotional task. Nope. Not for me, I sat and had a cry-fest because I ran across a baby blanket.

Life is so unfair.

I cried because I want a baby, but we're not in the place to have one.
I cried because my boys are getting so big. How is that possible?
I cried because if Boohoo had been mine biologically she would have been wrapped in that blanket and she'd never have known the hurts that plague us now.
I cried because both my sons had been wrapped in that blanket, but not my daughter. How unfair is that?
I cried because someday she is going to realize that I never held her as a baby, that she was never wrapped in that blanket, that we will never be able to tell her the story about her birth. She'll never know it. She'll never be able to look at me, at my body, and know nothing else.
I cried because someday she is going to cry.
I cried because her mother, her first mother, couldn't keep her baby. Do you know how much that sucks?
I cried because the woman who carried her in her body, who gave birth to her, and fed her at her breast had to say goodbye to her.
I cried because mother to mother that is just not fair.
I cried because that blanket represents how easy it was to love my boys and it pisses me off that I have to work so hard to love my daughter and she has to work so hard to love me. Why is that? It's not fair.
I cried because my boys have spent their lives with full bellies and full hearts, but daughter was born into poverty and massive insecurity.
I cried because I can't do for Boohoo what I did with my boys with that blanket. I can't wrap Boohoo up with that sweet little striped blanket and rock her and sing a song and stop the problems. I can't fix it. I can't undo her pain.
I cried because this life is so hard and so many days the prayer of my heart is still "make it easier, God" instead of "make me stronger, God."
I cried because this is a broken world, full of broken systems, and broken people and as one of the broken I feel so helpless to make anything better, even for my own broken little girl.
I cried because I'm selfish and I'm tired of hurting.

It was the emotional equivalent of standing in line at the grocery store and having the person behind you just randomly punch you in the back of the head. It doesn't make sense, it hurts, it makes you cry, makes your nose run, isn't something you're prepared for, and generally leaves you looking like a shmuck.