Calendars...

Keely pulled out the calendar at lunch today. We have lots of countdowns coming up. Kenley turns 14 in four weeks! Then a couple of weeks later begins Chinese New Year. Then we should only have about 4-6 weeks before travel.

Kenley is growing up so wonderfully. Our family is incredibly lucky to have such a sweet, cheerful, helpful (on and on and on with the good things!) girl with us. She is a sister that everyone should have. One of the things that I am really happy to see is that, this year, she is not dreading the birthday. She loves being a child and is learning that being a young adult is also pretty cool and that even being an adult has some advantages!  I just have no words for how proud I am of her - 14!

Chinese New Year is one of the things that we are trying to bring into our family in a more-or-less traditional way. It is very structured and goes on for about 2 weeks with different things happening at different times. The first rule is to clean, clean, clean, before New Years night. Cool - that gets us a timeline to finish all of the projects that are started. Then, the kids get to stay up and eat and play all night long (Kenley and KG will check me on this, but I believe that the longer the kids stay awake, the longer Keely and I will live - so here is for a looooong night). We did it a bit differently last year and woke the kids up at around midnight and stayed up until about 6. Lots of fun! Then there are visits to neighbors and friends, some gifts to each other and cooking (and a few days of no cooking). All good, fun, and cheerful.

We are also looking ahead to travel. It looks like late February/early March which fits in with my work schedule, so (fingers crossed) we should not have to split up for the travel. So maybe we will all go. This has some complications emotionally and financially. The former we are looking at and working towards. The latter is also beginning to come up more and more often. We are pretty near the end of the money we had set aside. We are not getting any of the (many, many) grants that I have applied for. So we are starting on some fundraising. Kenley is making the cutest turtles that you have ever seen - we will be posting pictures pretty soon. Keely and I are teaming up to make felted balls. I can do a decent round object and Keely (surprise, surprise) is astoundingly good at making felted scenes. These are really awesome and as soon as she finishes the one for Kade, we will post some pictures and start seeing if anyone is interested. Mostly, I am not worried about it though. We are doing the best thing possible for our family and that is the most important. We have so much more than so many people in the world and are just really, really, peaceful about what we are doing.

So, as the days start getting longer slowly, and we begin the slow move into the depths of winter and on into spring, it is good to have plans and schedules. Realizing, of course, that these are only our plans. And by no means the end of the story!

How to live a life

We just got back from a trip south. We went to Tampa to pick up Karwen's new braces. She had totally outgrown the old ones (the ones with butterflies). We were so excited. She picked ones that have kitty cats (so now we have kitty-cat shoes). They are taking a bit more to get used to which is a bit of a bummer. I think this might be something that we will have to get used to - new things require a bit of adjustment. She is a trooper though and there are definitely some things that will be better this time around.

After Tampa, we went south to see our good friends the O'Briens who moved to Naples a while ago. As we went further south and it got steadily warmer, Keely and I talked a lot about the many, many ways there are to live a life. Naples is an incredibly different way of living than we grew up knowing about. Most of what you see is very new, very expensive, and designed primarily for people who live half the year there and the other half in the north. We saw a car dealership with 14 DeLoreans and more BMW's than we could count.

For the most part, people were quite friendly although it is good to remember that what is polite changes a lot depending on the area of the country! My Texas background felt that people tended to be pretty rude in general. But, it is an interesting place to ponder living in. It is warm, there are so many, many beaches nearby. You can grow almost anything (except apples I suppose). So we talked about how we would do it. It would change my work a lot. Then Kriste also has been struggling finding as supportive a homeschool group as we have in Tally. Could we afford to do all the fun things? Probably not. So what about Tampa? It is interesting. Warmer. Bigger. Some cool parts of town. Maybe we should look even further south and move to Miami? Go back to the mountains? Texas?

As we drove home it was interesting to think about how much life changes. Keely and I have lived in Texas, Montana, New Orleans, and Florida. I could see being back in all of the places. It would just mean changing how we live from day to day. In our house, not much seems different. Maybe some different foods come and go. Different gardens. But our home does not seem to change all that much. Okay, the number of people in the home has changed a lot! But in retrospect, it seems like we had a place for all of them already picked out.

Balance

Today was a great day! We have been very busy (duh!). We are finishing painting our bedroom - which has taken about a month, even though Keely and I are total pros now. We are also putting storm windows in most of the house to try and control some of the humidity and keep the house from melting. We are also shoring up (ok, really re-building) a bed that will become a small couch/bed for our room for whoever needs it.

So today I got to run some errands with Kolya. She brought a couple of Christmas books are read them to me during the drive. Then we had a feast at Costco - funny how a little piece of cheese and some juice is so cool when it comes from a cart in the food isle. Having time alone with Kolya made me think a lot more about balance and getting lost. Adoption rocks the world. It is so huge, so important, so fun, so scary, so ... just big that everyone is off balance for a long time. The cool thing about my family is that we can all help balance each other when one of us does lose balance. During last year, there were times when everyone of us tottered and was lost for a while. It happened to Kolya - it is so hard to be the littlest and have to take care of your big sister a lot. It obviously happened to Karwen. Even Kenley lost balance for a while. But to me, it was scariest with Kolya. She has been the light of the family for so long. Always happy, always ready for an adventure. Kolya has a light that shines so bright! And when she lost balance, it felt as though we might be headed in the wrong direction. But all the kids came together. Karwen has found her place. KG is turning into the big brother that everyone needs. Kenley is the able bodied, second in command.  And Kolya. She is our little light! You have to watch her every minute. She will adopt little rocks. Stuffed animals. Marbles. Anything. She just loves the world and everything in it! When she gives a Kolya Special Hug, you know that there is a little bit of heaven, right here in this world.

Looking back on last year, it is amazing where we have come to. I cannot even begin to imagine what I will be thinking this time next year! Maybe we will be in balance again? Will there be more lights shining bright in our family? Or will we still be searching for somebody and helping them balance all the many things there are to balance?

Being radical

Last night we were looking at a pair of shoes that we got for little Kade. They are so small! Getting ready for the boys has been a lot of fun. Fortunately we have enough bedrooms that we can all fit pretty easily.  The little girls (Kolya and Karwen) are already sharing a room. They have become such unbelievable friends - truly amazing. It made sense for KG to share with Kai to encourage bonding and give Kellin some of the joy and responsibility of sharing so much with Kai. That leaves one bedroom. But really? Put little Kade in a room all by himself? After being alone for so long? Maybe he could squeeze in with KG and Kai? But then Kenley looked a bit sad and thought she might like to share. So, we played a bit of musical rooms (which is very familiar in our house) and Kenley will share with Kade and we will have a family room down the hall. At some point Kenley will probably move back there.  All in all, this really feels balanced and right, somehow. Of course, if we have learned anything through parenting our children, balance comes and goes and often the things that you expect to be simple are not. So we make our plans and I think about all the things that will have to change. Fortunately, the kids are unbelievably awesome about working with the changes and embracing what we joyously call radical ideas.

Being Grateful

In adoption language, we have received LSC (Letter Seeking Confirmation). This is a major step on the adoption journey - it means several things. It is one of the official places where you step forward for the particular child, it is one place where you can be denied a particular child, it is the end of one set of paperwork, it is the beginning of another set of paperwork...

One of the cool parts about this mile-marker is that we can now send care packages. I think this varies from institute to institute and agency to agency, but for us - now is the first time we could do that. Well, at least for the youngest, Kade. Kai is in Beijing and they do not accept care packages (This in itself is more complicated than it seems - one of the things that we are finding about the second time through the process is that it is not easy to decipher motives for some of the players in this story... but that is an entirely different post).

So, we are putting a care package together. Actually, we are putting three care packages together: one for Kai when he gets here, one for Kade now, and one for when he gets here (with the same stuff in it since odds are he won't come back with much of it). What should we put in the package?  Many, many waiting children have nothing. They might share a toothbrush (if they want to brush their teeth), maybe there is a single closet of clothes and once a week all the kids get in line and grab what they can (age order? pecking order? who knows?). This means the last child may wind up with clothes that aren't warm enough (Beijing is cold in the winter), don't fit or whatever! This is also not true for all institutions. The temptation is to send everything. But really it is not a good idea for all sorts of reasons. It can make it hard on the children if they receive a lot of gifts while none of their friends do, some orphanages don't pass along the things to the kids anyway, it can just be too overwhelming, and it all has to fit into one small box.

But this time of year it gives a very natural place to talk to our kids about how many people in the world don't have anything. We love doing Angel Tree and Operation Shoebox with our church anyway, but thinking about all the kids in the world who don't have enough food to eat, much less a special toy (much less a roomful of special toys) has tremendous impact when you start packing a small box for one special child at a time! So we start packing a small box for Kade: a coloring book, a stuffed animal, maybe a blanket, a photo album with pictures of our family (thankfully Kenley and Kellin can help us label the photos in Pinyin and characters).  I cannot imagine the thoughts that will go around in this little boys head at the sight of our family! Joy? Fear? Relief? Excitement? All of that I guess. On top of this our perspective towards the care packages changed when Karwen was able to talk about her experience.

But really, how cool is it to think about what an impact one little stuffed animal will have in a child's life? How grateful should we all be about what we have? How much more beautiful would the world be if the joy of Christmas was for others! The kids really get it and have so much fun trying to think about how much these little things will mean. One thing about this whole process is that it really does help you think about life outside your family. When we go shopping for groceries the first things we get are for Manna on Meridian. When we say grace before meals, we start to really think about how thankful we should be to have warm food. When we say a prayer with the little children and kiss them goodnight, we can also say a prayer for all the little ones who are alone. We can look forward to the day when Keely and I have six little foreheads to kiss goodnight!

This Thanksgiving...

We had so much to be thankful for this again year!  We are truly so very blessed!  Nick has a job that he loves.  I have the best job in the world homeschooling our four fabulous kiddos.  And the day before Thanksgiving we were blessed with a call saying that we have full approval to bring home two amazing boys! 

Now, you are probably thinking “Oh, those crazy Cogans!”  You would be right!  We are crazy in so many ways, but this isn’t one of them. 

We always thought that we would adopt again.  Ok, we didn’t think it would be this soon, but life happens!  The three previous Cogan children were ready to hop back on the plane almost as soon as we got home.  They were so moved and overcome with the enormity of adopting Karwen.   Within a few months, Karwen was asking whether we could adopt again.  Her heart was so very heavy with the ones that were left behind with no family.  She knew that we couldn’t bring them all home, but to make a place for one more was deeply important. 

We are definitely what they call a “conspicuous family”.  We catch people’s attention because we’re crazy folks who do crazy things, we have a multi-cultural family, and we have a daughter with unique characteristics that are immediately visible.  Two of those put Miss Karwen in the direct spotlight every time.  Adopting again doesn’t make anyone here less special, it just spreads the special around.  Karwen is also loving seeing the process from this side, bless her sweet heart!  The other three?  Well, they’ve been through the ups, downs and paperwork before and, while patient and helpful, could absolutely live without this part of it.

So, we decided to see what it would feel like to think about adding to the family again so soon.  We were blown away by a precious little guy who had the same Journey of Hope as Karwen and was met by the same person at our adoption agency.  He was born with arthrogryposis like Karwen and we already had everything in place to handle everything that comes along with that.  In his video, he reminded us so much of Karwen!  We saw the same little sparkle in his eye.  He was a bit younger than Kolya and that was perfect.  Kolya was hoping to be a true big sister this time and that is what is recommended.

And then we received a picture of a handsome young man that I recognized immediately.  His picture was four years older, but I knew him at once.  Most of our close friends and family don’t even know about one of the downs that occurred during Karwen’s adoption process.  There were many ups and downs, of course, but this down was the worst.  Karwen was “locked-in” to our family, we had gleefully sent our acceptance letter and gone on for months getting our hearts and home ready for our new daughter.  Then the call came.  She was gone.  She had disappeared from the list, the agencies, she hadn’t been adopted, but she was nowhere to be found.  They looked for weeks calling everyone.  Finally, with heavy hearts and assuming that for some reason she just wasn’t meant to be ours, we asked for another file.  A sweet little boy the same age with a shy smile was sent to us.  So, we started the process again.  Several weeks later, we got a call that Karwen had just popped back on to where she had been before.  No one would say why and her update said that there hadn’t been any changes.  We had to make a very difficult decision.  We had come so far in our preparations for Karwen.  We had felt that she was already a part of our family.  Now, back to the picture of the handsome young man.  In the new updated picture he was 9 and in the old one 4, so he had changed a lot, but I knew him instantly.  Here we were, thinking about adopting again and here was the little boy that we had worked for when Karwen disappeared.  He had updates and was particularly desperate for a family.  He was on the Wonderful Waiting Kids site page run by amazing Annie who had been so extremely helpful many times during our journey to Karwen.  He and Karwen are really close in age, but after many prayers we knew that he was joining our family.

Only we couldn’t get that other little face out of our hearts and minds.  Now, there are many little faces constantly etched in our hearts and minds that we pray for each day as they wait for a family.  This is different.  It would be like we were leaving our child behind.  So, we jumped and asked about the possibility of bringing both boys home.  We were told that it was possible, but that we might not get approval.  After all, we were asking special permission to adopt again so soon, close to our daughter’s age, and now, for two.  We prepared the family for any news.  Then we waited.  Finally, we got the call and they had approved us to bring both boys home!  Crazy?  Ok, I'll admit it, yes.  Perfect?  Yes.  Difficult? Yes.  Worth it?  YES! 

We wanted to wait until we had full approval before shouting it from the rooftops because, we have learned, all kinds of things can happen.  

So, without further ado, our boys!