He's just Ryan!

For a while now Ryan has been going into the bathroom each morning before school and fixing his hair. Today was no different except for the fact he insisted on me hair-spraying it for him. I told him I needed pictures and these are the 4 I got before he hopped in the car to go to school.

Ryan has come a long way from that tiny little 6lb 11oz baby we had a little over 5 years ago.

He sure has kept us on our toes! At five months old I caught him climbing a bookcase in our living-room and he's only gotten more active!

He's finally made it to 30lbs though so we are super proud! He's also 3ft 5in. tall now too!
He's growing!!

A little boy who didn't sleep more than 45 minutes at a time until he was 11 months old, ate non-stop from birth(and still does). A little boy whose growth was so slow that he sent Dr.s on a wild goose chase to find out why. A little boy so active that I still get up each night to check on him to insure he's still safe in his bed. A little boy who has the ability to melt hearts with his smile! - He sure is a blessing!
Sure do love this little boy!

Following Blogs - Adoption

I know I will probably make a few upset by this post, but oh well. (If it upsets you maybe there is a reason, maybe your heart is in the wrong place too!)

This has been heavy on my heart for a while now, even to the point of dreaming about it last night.

I love reading blogs. They are pretty much books about real life. I have quite a few families whose blogs I follow and just love it. There are so many amazing people in this world most of us never get a chance to hear about.

I especially enjoy the adoption blogs. I have a couple I follow of families who have adopted either from over seas or through their state and have adopted older waiting children. Really following Gods direction and bringing home orphans who need families, children who are waiting, children who pray every-night for a forever family who will love them as if they were born there.

Reading some blogs make me sad though - the ones who sit and wait for months or years handing out tons and tons of money waiting for a newborn saying they feel this is what God wants for them. I have no right to say whether God has truly called them for this purpose or not, but to me it seems more like a selfish act. Like "I know God is calling me to adopt, but I WANT a baby so that's what I'll get!" I think it's kind of like saying fine I'll do what you've asked God, but I'm going to do it MY way! Millions of children die in orphanages around the world while families wait for a perfect baby then these families act like they've done this super special thing by taking this newborn who EVERYONE wants - what about the children who NO ONE wants?? What about them? What about their tears? What about their loneliness??

Over and over on adoption blogs I read "God sets the lonely in families" - Yes he does, but are those newborn really lonely? The babies who have 100+ people waiting in line for them? No, they aren't! The children in foster care and the children in orphanages are the lonely ones.
Of course families who have no children of their own I feel a bit different about. I think every family should be blessed with the joy of parenting a new baby, the first snuggles, watching first smilies and first steps, but I think those who are fortunate enough to be blessed with their own children and then fight the families who have no children for the newborns are selfish. They are robbing blessings from others. Then upset when the family without children is chosen! Really?How selfish can one be?!?!
I almost feel jealous in a way and yes I know this is wrong, but I would love to have the money to adopt. I would love to be blessed to be the Mommy of a "child of the heart". I would love to go pick up a child who sits waiting, bring them home, hug them and tell them God's promise to them was real, tell them they are forever ours and we are forever theirs! Instead they will probably sit in a bed until they finally fade away - while someone who has the funds to do so ignores them and instead waits on a perfect little newborn.

Don't get me wrong, I still pray for these families daily. That they will be blessed with the love of a child who needs them. I pray God's will be done in their lives and the lives of their whole family. I know God has plans for them or they wouldn't be were they are.

I also understand these newborns need families too, but I think with so many people in line they aren't going to be forgotten....like the others.

God has given me a heart for orphans, the love of children and the desire to be a Mommy! This has continued beyond the 4 blessing we've received so far(that includes our 1 in Heaven), so I hope He still has more plans for our family. I hope someday to be blessed to receive the joy of an adopted child - until the time God gives us the go ahead we will wait patiently on direction from Him and what He wants for us.

I think the real turing point for me on my desire for adoption came twice actually. The first time was when Ryan was younger. He wasn't growing like other children. He wasn't getting bigger, he wasn't gaining weight. The Dr.s started testing him for everything they could think of because something had to be WRONG with him because he just wasn't "normal".

^-(Taken while we waited) The week we waited on x-ray results of him possibly having Progeria was the worst of my life. I was so worried that my perfect baby wasn't perfect and he was going to die. I stayed awake for days just starring at him - they even had me questioning what was "wrong" with my baby. After the 3rd or 4th day it hit me - there was NOTHING WRONG with MY baby. Even if he had Progeria he was still perfect - he was how God made him therefore he was PERFECT! The x-ray results came back and Ryan did not have Progeria. The only thing they could find was that he had an incredibly fast metabolism - otherwise he was just Ryan.
The second was while I was pregnant with Aydan. I developed shingles while pregnant with him. The Dr.s freaked out making me come in for more appointments and sent me for many level 2 ultrasound to check his development. I kept asking what can it do to my baby - not a single Dr. could tell me what they were looking for. They just kept searching so hard though they just knew something would be "wrong" with him. I didn't really care if anything was wrong, the only thing I wanted to know was if he would need help breathing after birth. Would his heart work, would his lungs work - would his brain tell his body what to do? As long as all of those were yeses we really didn't care, he was our baby and we didn't care as long as he was safe. Turns out the only thing shingles could cause was bone deformities. Something so shallow as deformities.
I realize most of the world is shallow like that as to think something like Progeria or bone deformities is to be made "wrong". My children would have still been my children though, those things would have never changed my love for them at all. So now I have a strong desire to love the children who everyone else thinks were made "wrong". God made them so how can you say something is "wrong" with them. Every person in the world has a purpose. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not there!
Take time today and look at the world a different way....the RIGHT way!

It is so incredibly sad.... An orphan dies every 2 seconds(if averaged out) - so just in the time it took me to type this possibly 900 waiting children faded away, with no one to love them, no one to call their own, lonely - probably no one even noticed and will just come in at some point to find them gone. Yet these families who are waiting on a perfect newborn could have been blessed with the love of an amazing child, but missed it...

These children sit and wait on you while you are busy waiting on perfect and new. Seems a bit twisted to me when two people are waiting and need each other only one can do nothing about it and the other is too clueless to care.

It's been over a year!!

Amazed that Dylan has now made it a whole year with no HSP (Henoch-Schönlein Purpura) event! You know that thing we were told it was rare that he got it twice(we were told this the second year) - that he ended up getting 5 years in a row! Well we have now been an HSP free house for over a year & I couldn't be more excited. We were informed that the more times he had symtoms of it the more likely he was to develop kidney issues later in life - so needless to say I'm one happy Mommy that he seems to have finally outgrown it!

• Year one he got it was when Ryan was born and we were told he just had hives due to stress of having a new sibling. Really?? Kids get hives from the birth of siblings??? Okay...
• Year two he got it we were down in Southeaster OK for my Grandmothers funeral and he got it BAD. He just cried because he hurt so bad from the swelling around his joints. So we loaded him up and took him to the ER. There we ran into a Dr. who knew exactly what it was because he had seen it while working at a children's hospital in Texas.
• Year three we went to his friends birthday party about 2 1/2 hours from our home. Shortly after leaving the party Dyan started crying in his car-seat saying his ankles hurt. So we pulled over and sure enough the hives and swelling where back..again. I had noticed him getting little spots on his legs during the party, but thought they were just mosquito bites which most of the kids had a few each of. Of course that was NOT what his were.
• Year four Dylan got in Pre-k. He had gotten the flu and they started him on Relenza (the inhaler kind) after the second dose his HSP broke out FAST!! This was the year we realized his trigger was upper respiratory stress. This includes colds(year 1), allergens(years 2, 3 & 5), AND medications! (year 4) Luckily we realized very quickly the Relenza had done it so we stopped and he sadly just had to ride out the Flu symptoms.
• Year five took place in late summer/early fall when local farmers began cutting hay. It was his lightest one yet with very minimal swelling and joint pain.

Luckily he hasn't had another event since. Hopefully he wont!

Dylan getting so big! It's hard to believe he's 7 already!
He is doing AWESOME in school so far this year. He's begun having spelling tests for the first time and has gotten 100% on all 5 he's taken so far(17 words on each test)! He's doing really well in reading and math also! He's not a book worm, but does enjoy reading. Right now he's into Nate the Great, Scooby Doo & anything exciting that is chapter-ish. In math he's learning the first steps to algebra and is pretty far into multiplication. He just got done with a couple weeks of lessons on balancing and measuring which he had a blast with!
His favorite things to do these days are look for insects of course (he's getting ready to start learning how to pin them!), and LEGO's!! The child loves Lego's! A couple weeks ago together as a family we all went through and re-organized his Lego's back into sets because he had just a few pieces missing. He now has over 5000 Lego's. He does come by the Lego love naturally though because J.D. & I both have a large number of them as well. It has become a fun family activity for us.

I think there is a reason I was given a house full of boys! Lego's are just more fun than barbie dolls! :P