Thursday, July 26, 2012

Thankful Thursday - Dodgeball


Oh. My. Word.

Last Friday our fosters went home.  I have a post waiting about that but apparently you can't post pictures to Blogger from an iPad (that I could figure out) so I'm waiting on that - the pictures are necessary.  I hope they are doing well.  I haven't heard otherwise and I'm assuming they're having a blast.

So are we.  

I've been trying to take advantage of all the stuff that we either couldn't do or I couldn't really attempt having a 1, 2, and 3 year old - the 5 year old usually does that kind of stuff with his cousins nearby and so we have been missing out.  

One such thing is dodgeball.  You read that right...all ages, co-ed, organized dodgeball.  My sister and her family have been going regularly for a few months and have really talked it up but knowing that my littles couldn't participate and my hubby wouldn't be able to go it didn't seem worth it to go just to watch my son play with his cousins, especially because the watching I'd have been doing would have been with my littles, not him.  But now that it's only my son and daughter, and my mom was in town, I was happy to accept the invitation to go play dodgeball on a Saturday afternoon.  Couldn't hurt right?

(Actually, just so you know, yes, it can hurt, both when you get hit and after the games - who knew it took so many muscles that were out of shape to play dodgeball?)

We played match after match of dodgeball from 4:30 until about 7pm.  CRAZY.  Turns out, I'm pretty good at it and I had SO much fun!!!  Logan appeared to be the youngest on the field (court?) by far but he held his own pretty well (in part because people didn't target the little kids directly - they weren't really a threat).  He got hit in the face and then twice in the "tenders", in a row, and he held it together like a champ.  After the first match he would run around the court and try his hardest to throw the balls at the other team.  When his strength and hand size get up there a little bit he'll be a huge force to be reckoned with for sure!  He was even last man standing a couple times which I'm sure you could imagine just made him super proud of himself.  It was also a great opportunity to teach him to be a man of integrity by not cheating and going out when he got hit.  He did a great job.

It really was a blast and I highly recommend it.  If you are in the area, check out Dallas Dodgeball for more information.  If you're not in the Big D, try googling Dodgeball for your area - apparently there are leagues and tournaments all around.  Clearly I'm not cool enough to know these things on my own so a big shout out to Auntie Diane for inviting us to something so crazy fun! (And props to my mom who handled my sister's baby, toddler, and Summer for the whole time while we played).

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Tuesday's Tears - Tied Tubes

A year ago this week my daughter's brother was born.  This was hard.  Extremely hard.  For the most part we've learned to accept what happened - what else can we do.  We wish our little guy a happy happy first birthday from far, far away.

I suppose it's in this light that I received a strange phone call.

Mie: "Hi, how are you?"
Someone else: "Hi it's (insert)"
Mie: "Sure hi!  How are you?"
Someone else: "I'm ok.  I got my tubes tied today."
Mie: "Oh.  How do you feel about that?"
Someone else: "I feel good about getting it done but it doesn't feel good (the body)".
Mie: "Sure, I understand".

Mind you - I haven't spoken to this person on the phone in nearly 8 months.  This is the first conversation I've had since then aside from a few brief texts.  

I'm not exaggerating, this is nearly verbatim.

Someone at work today asked mie if I plan on having any more (biological) children.  I said I didn't really plan on it but I don't think about it much, if it happens it happens and I hope it does but I don't really count on it.  That's the truth.

The phone call I received today kind of felt like a separate instance of infertility (or third, I suppose).  My husband and I can't conceive.  Our daughter's brother is being raised by another family.  Now the other parents who may have birthed potential siblings for our children can no longer conceive either.  Secretly, yes, I'd hoped one day my children would have a biological sibling, if not both of them then at least one of them (raised in our home).  I suppose that isn't going to happen.

I really don't think about having more biological children often but when things like this come up it rips a little bit of the scab so that it never really has a chance to heal into a complete scar, calloused and hardened.

I suppose I don't really want to be calloused and hardened though.

So here's to God keeping us on our toes.