A Musing Maralee

January 11, 2015
by Maralee
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A Life in Status- November #1, 2014

Come join the conversation on Facebook or Twitter.

Nursing the baby in the bed with you in the middle of the night is a really sweet and precious time. . .unless your baby is a projectile vomiter.
‪#‎everydayislaundryday‬

Sign you are sleep deprived: When sending your child out to the bus, you blow a kiss to your child and then accidentally blow a kiss to the bus driver instead of your usual wave.

I’m finally figuring out how to do life with six little kids. . . as long as the phone doesn’t ring, nobody comes over, and I don’t have to leave the house. So basically, I’m living in an introvert paradise if the introvert really likes changing diapers, opening fruit snack packets, and being cried at.
‪#‎livingthedream‬

It’s not that I like doing laundry, it’s just that I prefer it to replicating the Island of Sodor out of train tracks for the 15th time.
‪#‎mommysbusy‬ ‪#‎momconfession‬

So now TWO of my kids have shaved patches into their head with my leg razor. I don’t recall any wisdom about this in the parenting books.
‪#‎needtowritemyown‬

If I were writing a piece for The Onion it would be titled, “Woman Breastfeeds in Local McDonald’s, Nobody Cares.” It would include insightful quotes like, “I was sure I would be ostracized or asked to leave, but pretty much nobody noticed and they left me in peace. It was a major disappointment. It’s hard to be a lactivist when people don’t acknowledge what you’re doing.”
‪#‎yourewelcomeOnion‬

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January 9, 2015
by Maralee
2 Comments

Thinking about having another baby? Don’t.

Sometimes I think our word choices reveal more of our hearts than we intend. And then sometimes they’re just word choices with no particular deep meaning. Only the person speaking knows their real intention, but there’s a phrase I’ve heard a lot that I keep ruminating on:

“We’re thinking of having another baby.”

Photo by Love Equals Photography

I understand the desire for more babies. I have had six babies and each experience has been uniquely wonderful and terribly challenging. Babies are dependent, helpless, loud and messy. Their smells are addictive, their coos are adorable, and those big eyes in tiny faces just melt your heart. The reason that phrase bothers me isn’t because I don’t understand the desire for more babies or because I don’t think people should have large families. It’s because babies grow up.

If you want to have a baby, there are some ways you can be involved in loving a never ending supply of babies. Do orphanage work. Become a foster parent. Do cradle care for an adoption agency (where you can care for children during their transition from biological family to adoptive family). Work in the church nursery. Provide childcare in your home. All of these are great options with pros and cons, but the big pro is that you can love a baby and when they are no longer a baby, you can hand them back.

We have had six children not just because we really love babies, but because we wanted to raise people into adulthood. We wanted to instill our values and provide a safe and loving home for children who would use the foundation we’ve given them to become productive adults. Obviously, who they become as adults is their choice, but we want to give them the best springboard we can. We don’t want to make the decision about who to add to our family based on our desire for a baby, but on our ability to devote ourselves to the lifelong care and nurture of another person. This is a perspective we have to remind ourselves of when (as foster parents) we get the call about a baby needing a home.

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January 4, 2015
by Maralee
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Calculating Your Worth

2015. A number that brings with it a lot of focus on other numbers that are important to us. This is a time we make resolutions to change the math of our lives. We use many numbers to determine how we feel about ourselves. How fast we run a mile (or 5), the amount in our bank account, how many ounces of breast milk we produce, how many hours we work in a week, our GPA (or the GPAs of our kids), the square footage of our house, our volunteer hours, the number of events we’re invited to, or the number of Bible verses we memorize can all be numbers we use to evaluate how much our lives matter. In a season of resolutions it can be easy to focus on changing our numbers with the conscious or subconscious belief that those numbers are what’s really important— that we ARE our numbers.

photo by Love Equals Photography

As a mom with a new baby, that number on the scale has become pretty important to me. It’s a temptation for me to see the numbers not as just an indicator of my current weight, but as a judgement on my work ethic or my discipline or my beauty. And then there’s the other scale. The scale at my pediatrician’s office that seems to indicate if I’m a good mom. Is my baby gaining weight like the doctor thinks he should? Am I somehow failing at motherhood if he doesn’t conform to the growth curve?

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December 31, 2014
by Maralee
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Your Kids Need “Annie”

I’m going to tell you why you should take your kids to see “Annie” (your black kids, brown kids, white kids, foster kids, adopted kids, bio kids, etc.). And I’m going to do it in two words: Punky Brewster.

Maybe you don’t remember Punky Brewster, but I do. It was one of the few shows approved by my pretty sheltering parents (an example of how sheltered I was— I didn’t know the song “Little Girls” existed in “Annie” because my mom was so offended by it she edited it out of our recorded off of TV version) and featured as a main character a girl about my age who was a foster child. I loved her. She was feisty and had an unusual fashion sense. She was brave in all the ways I wanted to be. She had a grumpy foster dad who had a secret soft side for her.

I can’t remember the plot line of a single episode. I can’t tell you if I’d still support that portrayal of foster kids or what might offend me if I watched it as a foster parent now. All I can tell you is that the 7 year-old me incorporated that into her mind about what it meant to be a foster kid. It became part of a burning passion in my heart that continued to be shaped by watching the original “Annie”, reading the “Orphan Train” series of books, growing up around relatives who were foster parents, and playing orphanage with my dolls. I was a loved child from a stable family and my heart was burdened from the youngest ages I can remember for kids who needed family. My morals were shaped by a Biblical ideal of orphan care, but my curiosity was engaged by these portrayals of orphans and foster kids from the books, the movies, and the TV shows I was exposed to.

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December 19, 2014
by Maralee
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Christmas at My House (audio)

This month for my radio interview we talked about what Christmas and New Years looks like at our house. What are our traditions? How do we keep it focused on Jesus? How do we handle differing expectations? If you want to listen and do some voyeurism via radio about what it’s like at our place these days, here’s a link. And beneath it you’ll find my written thoughts because there’s always something I forget in the moment or want to clarify later. And this time I’ve added some useful links! Enjoy:

-Stan said something nice about me. Moms who are faithfully being moms, I’d like you to imagine that was being said to you, too. What you’re doing matters and I don’t think you hear that often enough.

-It’s easy to dread holidays because it feels like there’s so much pressure to make them picture perfect. As Queen Elsa has been begging you to do for the last year, LET IT GO. A stressed mom does not make for happy memories no matter how many Pinterest projects you accomplish.

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December 16, 2014
by Maralee
17 Comments

Birthday Cake for Jesus

I am bad at baking. This is an established fact. How do you establish such a fact, you ask? You become a bonafide “Pinterest fail.” For proof, you can go here to see how I managed to ruin a fairly simple brownie recipe and turn it into a horrific Peep battlefield. So I want to give you an idea of something significant you could do this Christmas to help your kids understand why we celebrate this day, but I also want to not ruin it. So I have delegated.

If you knew Katrina, you would totally delegate all baking duties to her, too. You probably already know Katrina even if you don’t know you know her. She wrote a cookbook. She has had recipes featured. . . well, everywhere. She is going to be sharing a holiday recipe on the Today Show. Pretty much, if you’re clicking through some internet list of “best food bloggers” or “most awesome Super Bowl desserts” or “cookies that will make you rethink your life”, Katrina’s stuff is there. I knew Katrina before Katrina was cool. . . except she was cool then too because she was an RA in my dorm— super cool if you’re the rule following, responsibility-loving type, which I am. So since I have a rockstar baker as my actual friend in my actual life, I asked if she would actually bake (and photograph) something for me that I could share with you.

I make this recipe every year. . . and by “recipe” I mean, I open boxes of cake mix and a can of frosting. This is easy enough for ANYONE, or else I wouldn’t do it. You can make this and make it work for your family without too much effort during an already stressed season. I’m going to go out on a limb and say if you are too busy to make Jesus a birthday cake for his birthday, you are TOO BUSY. If I can do it and I have six kids and one of them has a birthday on December 24th (which requires an entirely separate cake because apparently people with December birthdays are scarred if their birthday parties get combined with Christmas), you can do this.

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December 14, 2014
by Maralee
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A Life in Status- October #2, 2014

Join the craziness on Facebook or Twitter.

You can have your CGI Thomas. I will always prefer what was essentially Alec Baldwin reading a book while some guy filmed his model train set in action.

I would like to get family pictures taken while the new baby is still a sweet, squishy, lump. Sadly, this also means getting family pictures taken while I am also pretty squishy and lumpy.
‪#‎fourthtrimesterproblems‬

I asked Joel (age 2) to show me how high he could count. So he reached his hands as far as he could above his head and counted to five.
‪#‎toddlermiscommunication‬

Brian: We forgot to do that tour of the hospital with the kids before the baby was born.
Me: Um, we didn’t forget, I just thought maybe we shouldn’t.
Brian: Why?
Me: Remember at the end of the tour we took before Joel was born when they gave the kids dolls and had them practice how to change a diaper and swaddle and all the kids on the tour were being really sweet except ours who were whacking each other with the dolls and all the other parents and nurses were looking at us weird?
Brian: Oh right. Never mind.

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December 11, 2014
by Maralee
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“Foster Child” Doesn’t Mean “Unwanted Child”

Our first fostering experience was a baptism by fire into the world of child welfare. It was a NICU infant. It was an ICWA (Indian Child Welfare Act) case. The family had a lengthy history with the court system. There was a case plan and paperwork and visitation and court dates and that was all just in the first few weeks of our life adjusting to a preemie in the house. While we had had a hand in parenting lots of boys through our group home work and the adoption of our first child, we had never had an infant. There was a lot to learn, but in all of that, one thing became very clear to me.

This child was wanted.

Rebecca Tredway Photography

I wanted to be his mom for today, for tomorrow, for as long as he needed me. He had a biological mother who wanted him. She was going to do what she could to convince the state she could parent him. He was wanted by the parents of his biological siblings and by his biological grandparents. Each of us had our role to play in his story and we knew the ending would mean only one of us could be his family, but there was no lack of “wanting” involved in his life.

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December 3, 2014
by Maralee
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Rocks for Arissa

Yesterday I shared a story about a little girl named Arrissa who had a profound impact on our adoption journey. Today I’m honored to share with you a view of Arissa’s life from someone else who loved her deeply. Anna Kathryn was Arissa’s mentor and spent many hours pouring love, attention and affection into her soul. It was an experience that changed both of their lives for eternity. Anna Kathryn has spent the last ten years continuing to invest in kids who need love and family and I’m thankful to get to walk that journey with her. Here is her story:

She walked into my life when I was 21 years old. I was fresh out of college and I thought I knew it all.

I was wrong. I didn’t know very much at all, actually. She was quick to teach me that and multitudes more over the course of the three months I worked with her.

That was ten years ago. She was ten.

I’d like to know who she would have become, how she would have loved the world the way she loved me in those three brief months. I believe I will know one day, when I meet her again in eternity.

Until then, I like to remember who she was and who I became because of her.

She loved. She loved so hard. And it always intrigued me because she had been so hurt by so many of those she loved. But that didn’t stop her from loving anyone or anything.

She used to have these rocks. She kept them by a post outside of the school because I wouldn’t let her bring them inside. Oh, why didn’t I let her bring those rocks inside?? That question plagues me to this day.

She loved them. They weren’t smooth, there was nothing fancy or colorful about them. They were rocks. They had been walked on and run over for years. But to her they were perfect. She checked on them every time we walked past the school.

It occurred to me one day… maybe she loved them so much because they were so much like her. Maybe she knew they needed to be loved because she knew how very much she needed to be loved.

This little one… she was rough around the edges, she had truly been walked on and run over for years. She was a ten year old in a six year old’s body due to years of neglect. Anger and fear ate at her soul every moment of every day.

…until one day it didn’t anymore.

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December 2, 2014
by Maralee
2 Comments

For the Love of Arissa

In each adoption journey I think there are turning point moments. Moments where your ideas about adoption change or you feel the pull in a particular direction. There were a couple of those pivotal moments during the years we were researching and waiting, but one of them has been occupying a lot of my thoughts recently. Her name was Arissa. And November marked the tenth anniversary of her death.

Arissa’s story belongs to her and her family. There are many details I can’t share and even more that I don’t know. I do know that she showed up at the children’s home where we worked with a lot of quirks. She had been wounded in many ways, but that child had enthusiasm and emotions and questions and love like you wouldn’t believe.

We were in our second year houseparenting in a boys’ home, but Arissa would seek us out during those times when the boys and girls were together. She wanted to sit at our table during lunches. She wanted to be close to us during group devotions. The view of Arissa I remember best is during those devotional times. Brian and I led music for the kids. Because of how the sound system was arranged, we were behind the kids and they faced the front to see the words on the screen. While every other head was facing forward, Arissa would stand up on her chair (because she was too short to see) and would turn around and watch us. I spent many mornings just singing right to her as she smiled and waved at me. She was just that kind of kid— when the world was heading in one direction, Arissa would look the other way, always searching for smiles and relationship.

Arissa was not a child with any sort of boundaries when it came to the questions she’d ask. She asked questions about why we didn’t have kids and I did my best to frame answers about infertility in a way she could understand. She asked a lot of follow-up questions and then one day at lunch she just said, “You could adopt me.” It wasn’t a statement as much as it was a question. I was really taken aback. I reminded her that she had a family and they would probably be pretty sad if she wasn’t part of their family anymore. I told her that adoption was kind of complicated. I told her that I loved her and we wished she could be part of our family, too.

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