Parenting through chronic illness

I'm still navigating the world of parenting a child with a chronic illness. It's a new world and some days are great and some are terrible. Here are just a few things I have learned and I'm going to keep it simple because lets be real, if you are a parent of a child with chronic illness you're dog tired and have the attention span of a gnat. 
1. Grieve what you have lost
This is important. What we lose as parents of these children is huge. We lose everything we dreamed of for them. And if like me you adopted and knew ahead of time what was coming you still need to grieve the life you had, the life you think your child deserves. It's painful and gritty. There is no way around it and your heart needs to grieve in order to move forward. 
2. Find support groups
One thing that has kept me going is the huge support of friends that have children with the same condition as my son. My particular support group is for adoptive moms only, which binds us even closer as a group. Ask your local hospital if they have groups for the specific illness you are dealing with in your life. Get on facebook and look for a good group there as well. 
3. Keep a good sense of humor
Life is crazy. Learn to laugh at it. Remember to find humor wherever it happens to land. Sometimes I get a good giggle when my son's iv of benadryl kicks in and he starts bobbing off like a bobble head. Some days it makes me cry but on the days when I feel a giggle in my throat I let it burst forth. The very sound can be shocking in an oncology unit, but I enjoy seeing others smile back at me. Together we find a small bit of sunshine in an otherwise 
long day.

If you have people willing to help you in your life, take it!! If someone offers to bring you a meal, take it, eat it and be grateful. None of us are superhuman and we all need each other to survive this life!  

Welcome the Solecki Family!

This is so special for me to be able to introduce this family! When my family started the adoption process for Uganda, I was blessed to be connected with Melissa Solecki who had just recently gotten back to the states bringing home the one who was supposed to complete their family. Melissa is an encourager and a prayer warrior and a great friend and one of a few God used to help me feel comfortable committing to international adoption and... well, you get the point. Okay. Now, back to our regularly scheduled blog post.
 

Welcome the Solecki Family!!

 

Michael, Melissa, and their four b-e-a-utiful daughters. Their story pulls at your heartstrings. God calling them to Bridget in Uganda. Raising funds. Sacrificing to make it happen. Watching God bring it all together. Then, they go to the orphanage to bring her home and there. he. is. Their son. A 12 year old boy with a heart for the Lord and a contagious joy.

She shared with us a few words about how it happened...

"We never considered adopting an older boy - or really a boy. With four girls at home, we were pretty content with glitter, princesses, and pink - I can only describe our connection with J as God sent." 

... and then later...

"We weren't going to be the Solecki 6... ironic because in the Bible, 7 is a number that represents completion - so, in a way, that trip did complete our family - we just didn't know we were missing a piece."

Here is that missing piece with his arm around me. Looking at a photo of his beautiful Mom. Thanking me for showing him. Asking for more photos. Calling his friends to come look. Telling me to tell his family that he loves them. It was only ten or fifteen minutes that I spent talking to him, but you don't need more time then that to see the love and connection this young man has with his family... his family that is trying to bring him home. Without further ado, here is that family's video!

Want some good news? They should be traveling in April or May! Want more good news? They have been awarded a $5,000 matching grant!! That means your $1 turns in to $2 or your $5 turns in to $10 or your $10 turns in to $20. For people like me who like to find good deals (I'm a sucker for 50% sales and BOGO deals!), this is money well spent.

And now... DONATE HERE and share it with the world!!

Check out their blog for some giveaways and, also, if you want to save them the fees for using Paypal, go to alifelivedmessy.blogspot.com for directions on how to mail your donation directly to Lifesong for Orphans.

Desiree

Creative Fundraising {Guest Post by Chantel}

Hey friends, I'm Chantel and blog over at A Harvest of Blessing. My husband and I are in the process of adopting from South Africa and I think the only person that is more excited than us is our three year old daughter, she keeps asking for a brother AND a sister.

When we decided to take the first steps forward in our adoption nearly two and a half years ago, we knew that it wouldn't be financially possible for us to do this on our own, which is probably one of the reasons God asked us to step forward - our trust needed to be in Him. That being said, I don't think that gives us license to just sit by and ask God to move - we need to be willing to put work in too. Over the last few years we've done a few different things to help fundraise for our adoption, some of them have been official fundraisers and other things have been unofficial (like when we sold our kitchen table and chairs, we didn't tell the people that bought it that the money was going towards our adoption).

Since most couples I know don't have savings accounts of $30,000+ already waiting for them, I am excited to share a few of the things we have done to raise the money needed. We haven't had one huge fundraiser that brought in $20,000, we've raised it $100 here and $100 there, and over time it adds up to $1,000 and then $10,000.

• extra work – since I have my teaching certificate I am very fortunate to be able to work as a substitute teacher. I’ve been getting a few days a month and we have been able to use all that money towards adoption expenses. My husband has also been doing some web stuff on the side in the evenings and on the weekends. For us this brings in about an extra $500 a month (except in the summer when I don't teach). 

• arts and crafts – I have seen many people turn their creativity into something they can sell (Beth Cupitt is the master at this and the one that totally inspired me). I made canvases for a few months and was able to raise around $1,000-$1,500. I have also made and sold some herb planter boxes and wooden growth charts, that was about another $800-$1,000. Each year shortly before November our town has a craft and bake sale, this year there were a few families that are adopting that were selling baking and I was there selling some crafty stuff, right before Christmas is a great time too because everyone has someone to shop for!

 

• photography – I had a photography business a few years ago and decided to use those skills. Two years ago I booked sessions over the course of a few months and did the shoots by donation. This last fall I set aside two weeks and advertised 30 minute sessions (again by donation), I had about 12 sessions and made about $1,500 during those two weeks. (I know not everyone is a photographer, but if you know someone who is, chances are they would be willing to donate their services for a few sessions.) I also have a photography workshop I teach, both in-person and online which has brought in just over $1,000 in the last few months. 

• selling stuff – we have gone through our house and purged a lot (like the aforementioned kitchen table) as well as clothes, other furniture, books and videos. Most of it I've sold on a local Facebook buy and sell page (in our area that's the easiest and quickest place to sell stuff). 

• affiliate programs – there are a couple different affiliate programs out there, we were able to fundraise through Ordinary Hero and Once Was Lost. 

• furniture restoration - last summer we were able to find some awesome vintage pieces at garage sales and thrift stores that we repainted and then sold, like an awesome vintage ladder, wooden chairs, night stands and old school desks turned into chalkboard desks. We even have a couple projects sitting in our basement now, waiting for the weather to warm up so we can start working again! (Just a tip if you go this route: most of our paint we were able to buy was mis-tinted so it was quite a bit cheaper than buying new paint off the shelf.) 

In the last two years we've been able to raise about $20,000 through our various avenues, a HUGE help! There are so many other ideas out there as well, these are just the ones that we have done. I hope this has helped to inspire you a little. Even if you don't think these are things you can do on your own I would always recommend asking a friend to help. Furniture restoration not your thing? Ask a friend who would be great at it to help, you can purchase the supplies and they can donate their time!

Kitui Baby Home

Hey guys!

We've got something a little different for you this week, we're not featuring a family, but a project that we'd love for you to partner with us on, I'd like to introduce you to the Kitui Baby Home

The Kitui Baby Home is located in Kenya, and was started in 1978.  It is designed to house up to 44 babies, and has 13 staff members serving at the home. 

This home needs $50,000 to stay open..yes that's right, you totally read right $50,000, but these littles are worth it! Usually we ask you to give $1, and that is still totally an option, but I'm also asking you to pray about considering looking at some of the others options to be involved, whether that means you sponsor a half crib ($30/month) or a full crib ($50/month) or heck, just give them $1 and share share share! 

You visit this link to donate...so go! Go donate! This baby home needs to stay open! 

Love, 

White Family Update

Happy Thursday! Time for an update on our family of the week! Guess What?!! We have donated $690 to help the Whites bring Alric home from China. Please keeping give $1 if you haven't already, and share on all your social media!

Click here to donate $1 or more via PayPal.

Don't forget to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway that includes 2 winners - one for a Noonday Collection bracelet and the other for some Rodan and Fields microdermabrasion cream.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Hosting & Adopting the Older Child {Guest Post by Erin}

I am so excited to share another guest post with you today! In June 2013, we featured the Johnson family on Give1Save1 Europe and raised $2,166 for them to adopt a sibling group of three boys from Ukraine. On November 14, 2013, D (age 11), N (age 9) and E (age 7) came home from Ukraine and joined their forever family. Erin has written an update for us about their adoption journey. I thought it would be encouraging to pre-adoptive and post-adoptive families and families considering orphan hosting!

We hosted our two oldest boys for a total of 3 times before adopting them all. I am a volunteer for our hosting organization and I can't say enough about how awesome older kids can be BUT also how I think hosting first is important if you have other younger kids in the house. Its not really an "interview process" for the kids, but a chance for you to get to know them and them to get to know you. The older kids in Ukraine have a choice if they want a family to adopt them. They have to write a letter saying they want to be adopted. We didn't go into hosting with the intent to adopt older boys. We just wanted to give an orphan a summer away from the orphanage. What ended up happening was we fell in love with them. We had three little kids already. Our two boys were 6 and 4 and our daughter was 5 when we hosted N for the first time in the summer of 2012. We decided to host D and N for Christmas mostly to prove to ourselves that what every said was true; you cannot adopt kids that much older than the ones you already have. Well, they were wrong. A few days before the boys had to go back to Ukraine, D asked us to adopt them all. We started the process a few days after they left. We hosted D again for the summer while waiting for our paperwork to be submitted to Ukraine. It was a great chance to bond more with just him, and for him to learn English. The first time we hosted D, he stayed zipped up in his jacket almost the entire time. He was so hurt and withdrawn. When he came back for summer, he was a different kid. He walked out with the host group up on his tip toes looking for me, asking where our other kids and the dogs were at!

We had to wait and wait and wait for our boys to come available for international adoption. When we FINALLY made it to Ukraine and walked into their orphanage it was like something out of a dream. The facilitator was telling us how the boys still had to agree to be adopted and he thought that they would probably say yes, but we had to ask them anyways. We sat down in the director's office and in came our boys. Every time we hosted, we met the boys with huge welcome signs at the airport that said, "Welcome to America!" They came in to meet us with welcome signs of their own that said, "Welcome to Ukraine Mother & Father." I cried. The director said, "So do you want them to adopt you?" "DA!!!"

We've been home for 3 months now and while we're all still adjusting, it has been amazingly smooth. With the two oldest having been here so much, it was like they just walked back into our house like they never left. They had beds, clothes, toys, and knew where everything was. The youngest boy (E) is the sweetest little guy and happily followed his brothers to America and a new life without ever looking back. We have had our share of the kids working through the new dynamic of additional siblings, and there have been fights, but nothing really mean spirited. Mostly we've had some frustration over our new kids feeling like they have to write their name on every.single.thing. that is theirs and wanting to start WWIII over someone else touching it or always always always wanting to be eating. These kinds of things are to be expected though and have been pretty easily addressed. Our boys started school within 3 weeks of being home and are doing really well. They were in school in Ukraine so it made for an easier transition to just enroll them here with our other kids as well.

The things I hear the most from people about hosting are, "I would host, but I don't think I could send them back. It seems cruel." Well, to them I like to present a question. If you died, and your kids were in an orphanage and someone had a chance to love them but only for a little while, would you rather they just left them and did nothing at all? Or would you rather they loved on them, got them dental care, bought them glasses, fed them, prayed over them, clothed them, taught them, and sent them back as they cried because they loved your child? Yes, its easier to do nothing, but I don't think our hearts do much good for God if they aren't breaking for what breaks His. An orphan's life is already cruel. Hosting offers hope.

The other thing I hear is, "I'd adopt, BUT I don't have the money." To them I say, neither did we! We started the process by sending a $200 check and a prayer with our application. The prayer was, "God if this is what we are supposed to do, You have to bring the money." Eight months and $40,000 later we were in Ukraine.

If you are interested in orphan hosting, please check out Children's Cultural Connection and New Horizon's for Children.

Thank you to Erin for sharing! Erin blogs at The Johnson Journals.

Welcome the White Family!

Alex and Mia White have dreamed of adopting for years. They are elated that their dreams are about to come true. In a few weeks, Alex and Mia, along with their daughters Audrey and Arwyn, will be traveling to China to adopt a son, Alric. Alric is 18 months old and has a corrected cleft lip and an uncorrected cleft palate. (He will need surgery when he arrives home.) Audrey and  Arwyn are excited to become big sisters. Follow their adoption story at their blog.

    

Let's rain blessing down on the Whites! Please give and share on all your social media!

 Click here to donate $1 or more via PayPal. 

Carly, a friend of the White family (and former Give1Save1 mom,) set up a Rafflecopter giveaway that includes 2 winners - one for a Noonday Collection bracelet and the other for some Rodan and Fields microdermabrasion cream. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway