Hit a wall

Here it is another wall in the adoption world. I don't think I can wait a second longer. I am now jumping everytime the phone rings, checking emails all day long and hoping like never before. I could be because our cordinator is supposed to come back any day now. Well a week, but who is counting. I have been "waiting" for close to three months. I have tried to stay busy and keep away from being nosey about others adoptions and waits as mine is enough right now. But now she, whoever she is haunts me day and night. And I am tired of it. The wait for a referral is like a mind game. I don't know what to compare it to, just imagine always living never knowing. But knowing that something big was going to happen and it could be good, you hope it is good but it could be hard and you know it will be hard. But you want this so bad, more than anything. It is like waiting for a season to change and it never does. It is like summer in Arizona.

Offense

Did you know that when you "offend" a friend you literally put them in jail, you lock them up with iron bars. That is what the bible says in Proverbs, Or if you are the one offended you yourself can spend time in prison so to speak. God came to set the captives free that is the only way to get out of the jail of offense is to believe that God came to set you free and to choose his way. As for God his ways are perfect.

Just a little side note of silly.

I am well known for getting peanut butter on everything, everything!! door handles, air condition buttons, keyboard, clothes. I don't know why. I will hear Gary screaming from the hallway "KIMMMMMM, what is wrong with you?" and I will know it may have something to do with peanut butter on something. Well a few days ago I got all dressed up for one our adoption ministry meetings and it was just a great time we spent hours talking and planning. I got out to the car on my way home and felt something in my ear, I pulled out a huge wad of peanut butter!! how in the world did that even get there? How long did I have peanut butter just sitting in my ear? Why? I think I know, I made peanut butter sandwiches earlier and I was talking on the phone and maybe it transferred, I don't know. I once had a bumble be follow me literally 4 blocks, couldn't shake the bugar. Confounded and exasperated I told my friend it must be my Burt's bees lotion. Nope, peanut butter and honey on my forehead. Discovered that hours later after the walk. Big blog of honey on my forehead. Hey I am not proud of this, I really do want answers.

and just a bit more......

I got in the car the other day, I had on jeans and cotton shirt. I had some lipstick on and some black shoes, I may have had on a necklace. Mason my eldest was embarrassed of me. "mommmmmm, you don't have to get dressed up all fancy we are just going to the store" okay if a pair of faded jeans, stained shoes (refer to paint spill incident in previous blog) and a cotton tshirt is fancy, what in the world do I look like normally? Poor kid he couldn't get over it. To him I might as well been wearing formal.

La Vida Loca

Ahh my crazy life, I haven't been good at blogging at all!! Probably by now I have been forgotten and my words are to the wind!

Where have I been? Launching a new ministry I have dreamed of for two years!! Yes God has finally given the go ahead just when I thought this would never happen.

We are made up of 10 members strong of fellow adoptive mothers and advocates. We are The Grafted Tree, a voice to the voiceless. A ministry to all Gods children. We had partnered with local agencies and are gather resources. There are about 6 of us that are very active in the group. It was all of our dreams and it was like God just put us together with such oneness it is hard to describe. I truly feel I have known them forever!! Anyway we will be getting things off soon here doing speaking engagements at local churches and spreading the word of God's love in adoption. I am trying to prepare my testimony but it is harder than I thought.

We should have our website up and running and we are actively working towards becoming non profit, we have already 2 orphanages in interested in us from Africa and I hope we can raise awareness and tons of money for them. We are an interdenominational group comprised of different christian churches in our area. I hope we will grow and encourage more churches to start their own orphan ministries so that we can reach more kids. Our web site when it is up and running will be www.thegraftedtree.com I am working on it and trust me I am no techie! More later I am so sorry I haven't caught up.

Here's one for the road, Oatmeal in an Afro doesn't easily come out. I learned this a month ago when Abby and Judah disappeared under my dining room table with a container of oatmeal and she showered him with it. He had oats in his hair for well over a week despite washing which was a no no because of his African hair. Poor baby had no oil left on his scalp, we ended up cutting his hair.

Kindness

Scripture reference: Galations 6:9

We must not become tired of doing good. We will receive our harvest of eternal life at the right time. We must not give up!

Memory verse
Ephesians 4: 32
And be kind to one another......

Prayer of the Day

Dear Lord help me to remember that is always my job to treath others with kindness and respect. Make the golden rule my rule and make your word my guidebook for the way I treat other people.
Amen.

I expanded on our daily devotions by showing the kids they are never to young to minister to others. I was having a bad morning and I showed them that no matter how we feel we still come to God. They stopped what they were doing and just hugged me, got water and a pillow and just held me. This type of service went along with our hymn.

"A Beautiful Lfe" I encourage you to read it to your kids. It is on the links on my side bar of this page.

God's song to Mason 5 years old

Mason recieved a song from the Lord while he was getting a drink of water. He said listen mom this song just popped in my head.

"Oh Lord mighty God I ask that you save me"
"Oh Lord mighty God I ask that you save me"
"you are so heavenly you can do anything"
"you are so powerful Oh Lord mighty God"


One wise and simple man told me not to long ago to pour into your children when they are young, let them hear christan music and the word of God at all times. I haven't always been faithful daily with this but I was convicted a few weeks ago and have made family devotions and hymns the first part of our day. I am seeing the Lord grow stronger in the kids every day that goes by. I am using the bible a lot to correct and seeking Gods wisdom with the small things as well as the big things. I am not saying I am not completely fustrated with them and times and watching their behavior at times I blame myself for not doing a "good" enough job. Of course everytime they make a bad choice I feel I had some part in it, and this is not true. The truth is they are going to make bad choices that is how we all learn. I am going to start blogging daily of our lessons and devotions, you can read the hymns that we are learning to the side.

Grateful

Things I am grateful for outside the obvious.

The way my dog brings me a shoe even if I have only stepped out of the house for a minute.
Friends that really care about your life (and can appriciate pulled pork) :)
Watching Nija Warrior and the Dog Whisperer with my husband
Good movies without all the junk that relay a good message (Juno)



I am most grateful for God in our lives
for my family.

I have been given 3 gifts from God and waiting for number four. I am privledged to have given birth to two of them and have experienced the miracle of adoption one time and waiting for number two. I am a blessed lady.

I am back, kinda.

It has been a hard few weeks. I have been just being. I don't even know if that makes sense.

We met with the Doctors and plans have been set in place for procedures to start immediately. Nurses will monitor better, doctors will be more careful etc. That is all I wanted. Because of what happened to Judah several surgery centers will change how they do things. Good.

It's wierd and I am not sure anyone would understand this but in the end there was nothing bad that came from this.

In fact the fruit and goodness that has erupted because of this will live on forever. The surgery center will change and possibly save other children from a worse fate and most importantly I am closer to my youngest son than ever.

He is mostly back to his normal fiesty self and I am happy. He can hear, he can smell, he is sleeping and there is no more apnea.

You know in a moment like this your faith is tested. There is a verse in the bible that says "do not be afraid of sudden fear" well I can't say I was walking in that wisdom. I was gripped and could barely breath. I felt my vocal cords were squeezed to the point where I couldn't even pray. Why? part of me thinks that if I prayed that would mean that what was happening was real. I know that doesn't make much sense. The first time I felt loosed to pray was in the car on the way to the ER with my friend Tara. She went into the house to get her daughter and I remembered a prayer and a promise I lived on when I was going in for brain surgery. My father prayed and the Lord showed him I was to walk in the land of the living. I prayed that over my son, no I didn't just pray it, I declared it, my voice came back to me and I was able to proclaim my sons life was in my Gods hands and I rembered why my boy was brought to me and what his purpose was so I declared he would walk in the land of living and that he would not be robbed of his life on earth when I know God has a purpose for him.

So here we are today. Recovered and stronger. When you give birth you and your child go through something tramatic and beautiful, when you adopt a child the same thing occurs. I think in my case there was something missing. I often said that it felt as if Gary showed up with this baby out of no where, and I wasn't really sure what it took to take him from his orphanage and home land. I didn't experience this as I was the one holding the candle waiting at home. But when I stepped in for my son God allowed me the experience of taking him as well. I brought him home alive and well. He is such a daddy's boy I often questioned if he viewed me as his mom and just days before this happened horrible thought would suddenly pop into my head like "he doesn't think you are his "real" mom" or " you are not good enough for him you are just a stand in" now we know where these thoughts come from and they are not true so I would just shew them away and try to move on not thinking of them or agreeing with them. When this happened all of those doubts where just demolished. Those thoughts will never ever pop into my head again. I am his mom and he is my baby boy. Those nights in recovery proved it to me so many times, he just wanted me, his breathing even changed when I would hold him and he would calm down. I had an affect on his little body he knows I am his mom and I would do anything for him.

Whoo Hoo! antibiotics

Praise the Lord in all trials,

We are to consider it all joy when we encounter various trials and tribulations.

Well I should be one joyful lady. :) We have Scarlet fever. I caught in quickly and now all three are on antibiotics for different reasons.

Mason for Scartlet Fever
Abby for double lung infection
Judah for after surgery/ overdose.

like I said Whoo hOOO!
I have been trying hard to stay upbeat, Judah is recovering fine so that is one very good thing. He ate "real" food tonight. He slept through the night all last night so we are anticipating a full recovery in the next few days. He is fighting with his brother and sister so he must be feeling well.

We will be meeting with the doctors and staff on Monday to dicuss the situation with the morphine and what happened to Judah. The anthestisiologist called and wants to meet with me in person to discuss things. I was told he is punishing himself and feels very bad. I want to have grace in this situation but I must assure that things will change for other families in the future. Everyone is very proactive and they are starting new procedures all ready in effect. For instance longer monitoring for children after surgery and especially after any dose of Narcan. So things are changing and that is what I wanted. The ENT was very empathatic yesterday with me on the phone and we had a chance to communicate. He is very concerned about this and is asking all the questions I have so I know they are on top of things. I feel they are being very proactive. Anyway I will keep you up to date. I have been out of the loop recently as Judah was struggling with some big time pain, after the big dose of morphine wore off he had few days that were hard on him.

My son was overdosed on morphine

I have taken a while to write back because I didn't want to go on presenting false information.
Deep breath.

My three year old was accidentally overdosed with morphine and no one caught it! The anesthesiologist has yet to own up to it, but we have word that he was given twice the recommended dose for his weight. He tried from the beginning to tell me that he was just sensitive to morphine, turns out they dosed him wrong. I knew it.

What we think happened was he was dosed for 29 kilos when he is only 29 pounds. Either way he was admittedly overdosed by accident. They are doing all that they can to really get to the bottom of it so that it doesn't have to ever happen again to another child. This was the first time it ever happened to anyone at this surgery center. I am working with the staff and administration to help them so policies can be changed.

That is what I want, I want new procedures on release. There was a lot of negligence there and I am not done. I am going to write everything down and present it before them. There were so many mistakes made with Judah's life. I am not sure if I can trust again. I also found out some very interesting things about Codeine and how Ethiopians can possibly metabolize it at a faster rate turning it into morphine quicker and in turn having morphine overdose from taking Codeine. For those adopting from Ethiopia I will post a note about that and add the links to my research.

I found out that on the way to the ambulance he stopped breathing a few times. He was just digressing so fast. They tried to intuit him but his airways were swollen. He was given the drug Narcan at the surgery center to stop the affects of the overdose. We were never told this information and while he sat up and ate a Popsicle they released him 45 minutes after the dose of Narcan. When the Narcan wore off in 30 minutes he went right back to his overdose state. At that point we were driving home expecting a sleeping child. I still cannot believe my son was OD by the doctors who were supposed to care for him. I contacted a lawyer just to see where I stood in this and they said unless he died there is nothing I can do. It just isn't right. I don't want money or anything like that I just want justice served for the severe negligence on my sons life, but it looks like the surgery center is doing all that I would expect. So unless they start giving me a hard time and trying to cover this up I will leave it and just wait. If they poo poo it or me I will go to every moms board, local newspapers, TV channels, and hand flyer's at Walmart not use this place until new policies are in place.

Update on Judah

This was Judah in the ER, he was sleeping.

After he woke up, he was awake for about 30 minutes total yesterday.
Today you would think nothing happened. He was talking to his grandmother. He put that shell collecting bag on his head and was all over the place. I cannot believe how active he is.

Today I have been in shock, but all is well physically, just tired. Today could have been such a different day for our family. Instead we spent time just hanging out and playing. Judah's recovery is amazing. He hasn't cried once, he is eating oatmeal and Popsicles and even a string cheese. I cannot believe how fast he is moving through this operation. He was playing on the swings, laughing and just being completely normal. You can't keep a good man down. He has just had 1 tsp of Tylenol and that is it!! He says it doesn't hurt!

Anyway still trying to figure out what happened. The doctor called first thing this morning and said he would get to the bottom of this and it would never happen again. That's good to know but I still want to see the records. I have a theory of what happened but I will wait until I get further information. The fire fighters saved his life and we will bake them some yummy cookies we will go down and see them and say thank you in person. Thank you for all of your prayers and support and prayers.