Lucky 13

Anyone who really knows us, knows that Joseph and I are huge Taylor Swift fans. Yes, I said WE. Don't Judge.

In this house...

~ We call her Tay Tay

~ If one of us makes a half hand heart, the other quickly has to fill the gap
~ We know all the lyrics....

~ J. bought US tickets to see her Red tour last year, and sent pictures to his co-workers of our matching butterfly shirts.

We're dorks. Its our little family...and it is what we do. We listen to Taylor Swift and we force our kids to also. I see so many cute videos of other people's two year olds singing along to their music....but I am sad to inform you, the only song I catch my 2 year old singing is "Good morning God" or "Jesus Loves Me." Is it bad I am disappointed? I'm trying to teach her the Tay song "Red" because I figured we are learning colors and she could relate.... A snippet of me trying to brainwash my kid
ME: "T, say 'loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street'..."
 T: " Jesus?"
Me; "yeah yeah, we love Jesus, we can sing his songs too " *sigh*.
Me: "say, MASERATI,....MAS-ER-ATI"
T: "....." "Biiibbblllleee....GO!!" (for the bible tells me so)

Oh, and before anyone says anything about Frozen, we showed her that movie too.  Except she does not watch movies or TV much, she only paid attention when there was actual singing, the rest bored her. For the next week when I would run up to her and sing "do you want to build a snow man?" She stared at me blankly, and shoveled pretend pasta into my mouth. Seriously kid. I play her all types of music..ALL the time, Veggie tales, Beethoven, Mozart, Sigur Ros, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Gaslight Anthem, every musical I can think of, particularly the Newsies...and of course country. I want her to be diverse, well rounded. If she doesn't respond to Taylor though...Lord knows what her favorite type of music will be.... ;-)

She's getting into hand hearts though..... Maybe someday she'll be a fan....

Inferno

The kids have trifling colds. Nothing major, just snot noses and minor coughs. Nothing to sneeze at. Pun intended as they sneeze over everything 10-15x a minute it seems. Today I saw my 2 year old pretend to blow her nose over and over by making the honking noise into the tissue. Obviously the sound was coming out of her mouth, so I was guessing it was fine as the tissue was catching her mouth spit....but then I saw her take said tissue and start to pretend clean/dust the furniture, the floor, her brother saying "scrub, scrub scrub." As I watched her spread her gross tissue over everything I knew I was in my own level of Dante's germ hell. At least its just a cold bug.

Good News

My husband told a co-worker that we had a great day in court last week! His co-worker replied "you're probably the only person in the world who could ever say that!" I got a kick out of this, of course it's not true, but having a great court hearing in many circles is very rare.

Our kiddos are lawyer-ed up I like to say. They share their court hearings with each other and an older half brother. I won't go into details about the half brother, just understand he needs prayer, protection, and will most likely never be made aware of these other siblings of his.

We were not expecting an eventful court hearing, and I guess to some degree it was as expected. The plan for our kiddos still is adoption by their grandmother.  HOWEVER, there is now going to be a "best interest" review conducted in AZ if the grandma gets approved. Essentially saying that, as this family (US) wants to adopt both kiddos, and the relative has seemed only marginally interested in the kiddos, perhaps we will see if it is really in their best interest to move them. We were ECSTATIC. Perhaps I am putting to much weight on this twig of hope. Yet, I feel that when this is all said and done, no matter what the outcome, everyone has done a lot to try. I know I have done everything in my power, I can't say that for sure on all parties, however, I know that my kid's connections in CPS and therapies etc. have really seemed on board with Joseph and I from the start. This is not the case for many foster families. I feel our concerns have been heard and addressed...and that can only be God's hand in this situation.

The Lord's will be done. Amen regardless.

Addendum: ONE STEP FORWARD ONE STEP BACK:  Their adoptive relative has scheduled a visit. a week long visit, where I imagine I will be supervising (EVERY SECOND) in an office somewhere as my kids "get to know" them.... blech.