tomorrow has to be better

because today involved...

three shots for my big girl.

a finger prick for her and her brother.

the inhumanity of being taken to the exam room with no dinosaur border on the wall. (the boy was not pleased.)

the need for my big girl to pee into a cup.

my big girl's inability to pee into a cup the first time she tried.

my boy's ability to pee on me when I didn't realize he was trying to pee into the cup, which isn't necessary until he's a couple years older.

my big girl's ability to pee in the cup after I forced her to chug the juice in my bag. (why, yes, I did have college flashbacks. Chug!Chug!Chug!)

my failure as a mom when I accidentally poured part of my daughter's urine specimen on her.

my conversation with our new pediatrician in which we realized we were friends from college. (and during which she might have decided her choice for med school was better than my choices, given that both I and my firstborn were wearing urine.)

all this occurring while holding my littlest one. who has a cold.

(yes, you can feel free to laugh. I would probably chuckle at you if this had been your day.)

oh, how I love them! even after days like today.

my boy's ability that I envy the most

Sleep.

I'm not a great sleeper, but this guy is.

I was going through old pictures from the past year, many of which had never been posted.

And I realized a common theme in many of my boy's pictures,

Robs loves sleep.

Even if it's in the front seat of a car while we're at a friend's ranch in Texas.

Or, during the same road trip, on the couch of another friend's house.

Or today, while sitting upright next to my bed. (Note the drool on the blanket from one time when he fell over and slept there a moment.)

My dear mother-in-law tells stories of Lee getting tired at the playground, climbing into other people's strollers, and taking a nap. Or falling asleep into his spaghetti.

Yep, I'd say Robbie takes after his daddy.

How about you? Are you like him - able to sleep anywhere - or like me? 
Anything else your kiddo(s) - or a kiddo you love - can do that you wish you could?

my EEG torture {a guest post from Zoe}

Yesterday, Mom took me to something called an EEG. I didn't know what that meant, except that I had to leave my big brother and big sister at home. I didn't like that part.

Then we got to the doctor, and they did the torture procedure. Here's how I felt about that.

Yeah, it wasn't cool.

We arrived and rode the elevator to the second floor. Then Mom filled out some forms while holding me.

A lady who looked nice came to get us.

We sat in a chair, me on Mommy's lap. The lady who looked nice got out a measuring tape.

As she used it to measure spots on my head and make orange crayon marks on my forehead and scalp, I decided that she might not be nice after all.

Then she put goop on my head, put a little thing Mom said was an "electrode" on the goop, added a tiny piece of gauze, and then slapped on a piece of paper medical tape to keep it in place. (Okay, okay, she didn't really slap it on.)

Then - get this - she did the goop-electrode-gauze-tape thing again. 28 TIMES, for a total of 24 electrodes. (Those four extra applications were thanks to the Tao Kwon Do skills my big sister taught me... the ones I used to tear a few off before she finished, just to show her who was really in control.)

Yes, I'm a little proud of that.

She tried to calm me down with a Barbie movie and an obnoxious animal noises toy. I would have none of it.

Then she - the lady who looked nice but really wasn't - wrapped my whole head in gauze so I couldn't yank any more off.

Why's the picture so dark? Well, because the next thing we did was go to rest on a comfy bed in a room that Mom said looked like it belonged on Pinterest. The lighting wasn't so great in there.

Well, except for when the not-nice lady thought it was a good idea to make several strobe lights go off in my face. (Mom says it was necessary for the test. Something about stimulating seizure activity if I have an undiagnosed disorder. Whatev. It wasn't cool.) The lighting was great during the strobe show. That is, at least every other millisecond or so.

After gooping and electroding and taping and gauzing my head and flashing lights in my face, can you believe that the lady wanted me to calm down and even go to sleep? I fought it. Hard. Screamed for 20 minutes straight. That'll teach her. I wasn't planning to give in to her evil demands just so that her EEGinator could check out my brain, but then Mom sang some songs to me.

And I gave in.

I napped for about 35 minutes and then woke up and cuddled with Mom for 20 minutes. 

I forgot about the junk on my head for a bit, so I thought we were done when that lady came back. She had warm water and a washcloth. Thankfully, the paper kind of medical tape comes off with water so she didn't have to pull my hair (though, evil as she was, she might have enjoyed that), but she still wet me down and took everything off and left me with goopy crazy hair (thus the style in these pictures).

Yeah, I needed my paci after that.

Mom got some smiles out of my back at the car, but I was just humoring her.

Mom smiled some real big smiles today, though, when we got the news that my EEG results were completely normal.

Which I think means that I never have to go through that torture again.

Thank God!

(Note from Shannon: The nurse really was a nice lady, even if Zoe didn't understand why she did what she had to do! From my perspective, the test went just fine... and, of course, we love the results.)

links I'm loving in disability ministry: God's sovereignty, Down syndrome angels?, mental illness, & a new school year

Disability and the Sovereign Goodness of God: This e-book from Desiring God, by John Piper and Tony Reinke, is invaluable... and free!

My kids have Down syndrome - but that doesn't make them angels! This post is in line with a chat I had yesterday morning at church with a mom about how her son, a precious little guy with Down syndrome, is a sinner in need of loving discipline just like any other kid.

Where is God in mental illness? "While I can’t honestly say I’m glad to have a mental disorder, I do feel grateful for the way God has used it to enlarge my view of Him as He replaces my simplistic and moralistic childhood faith with something far more substantial: Trust in a God who has promised to complete what I cannot."

Where are you headed as a special needs parent for school? It's that time of year, the start of a new school year. Here's a post to remind us that families affected by disability have more concerns than their supply lists and class assignments.

~+~

Thank you to all my readers here who also visited the post I wrote in response to Pat Robertson. For the follow up to that post, click here. 

why I'm neither brave nor gracious

I've been called a lot of words I don't deserve in the past week: beautiful and obedient and gracious and grace-filled and sweet and honorable and passionate and amazing and courageous and inspiring. (In case you missed it on Friday, here's the post that prompted those kind words.)

You want to know the word that best described me the night before I posted our adoption news?

Terrified.

The week before, I sat trembling in my Bible study group because I knew God was moving in us to do something about this orphan named Jesse who would be renamed Zoe Amanda. I just didn't know how to tell anyone. I didn't know how to explain myself.

I thought we would be called crazy. (And a little part of me thought that we'd deserve that.)

I thought our friends wouldn't stand by us. (How I misjudged you!)

I thought our choice would be considered reckless, when we already had two young children and when I was still recovering from knee surgery and when I seem to collect chronic health problems. (No one brought up any of that.)

Friends knew we planned to adopt someday, but we had no homestudy started yet, we weren't on any waitlist, and we hadn't narrowed down a country or special need or age or anything else yet. We were caught by surprise, so we knew other people would be too.

I'm smiling in this picture, but I was so scared of how y'all would respond to the news.

the picture we shared to announce the news!

A little blond girl who is wise beyond her years was the one who gave me the words, days after our announcement.

We sat with my brother-in-law's family, and they asked why we were doing this. I tried to answer, and I stumbled over my words: "Well, this wasn't the country we expected, or the special needs we expected, or the age of child we expected, or the timing we expected, but..." I couldn't find the words to finish that sentence.

Jocelyn, who now dotes on her sister with more love than I thought she was capable of, jumped in. "But God said to do it, so we're doing it."

oh, how I love her!

You see, the reason I don't deserve any of the words at the beginning of this post is that I know myself. I know that I am as damaged and weird and hopeless as any of the orphans Pat Robertson dismissed last week. I, too, am broken by life in a fallen world, fractured by my own sin and by the sins of others along the way. I know my sin too well to boast of any of the words used to describe me since my post went live in the wee hours of Friday morning.

I can boast of the Savior who rescued and redeemed me, turning my broken places into cracks through which His light can shine. He does make all things beautiful in His time, in the words of Ecclesiastes 3:11, and I'm both humbled and thankful that He has allowed us to be part of His plan for bringing beauty out of the brokenness that began Zoe's life.

in our hotel room in Taitung, on the day she was discharged from the hospital in our arms. (that was six weeks ago, and she's three pounds heavier now than she was then.)

Oh, how I love being her mom!

P.S. - Zoe has an EEG this morning at 8am Eastern time to check out some possible seizure activity. She hasn't had any as far as we know, but her kind of brain damage increases the likelihood that seizures could occur, thus the test. Please pray for clear and conclusive results!