Family Zumba...Good Lord!

There are not many times that I have the thought "I wish someone was filming our life right now.  This is incredibly entertaining", but tonight was one of those times.  I swear that our family can not do anything in a normal or inconspicuous way.  We recently joined the YMCA and tonight the girls and I went to a family Zumba class.

First of all let me just say that when I read the name of the class I assumed that the class would be a bit less difficult.  Kind of like how I want to go to a senior yoga class (for real folks, I think I might just sneak in and pretend one of those ladies is my grandma!!).  I am easing back into physical activity since my surgery and knew I was not ready for a full on Zumba class.  Talk about false advertising, good Lord!  This teacher led us down a full on, hard core, exhausting hour of Zumba!  The girls did a good job at attempting to keep up.  Each girl had a different experience.

Caroline LOVED it.  She was grinning from ear to ear the entire time.  Every time the teacher did a new or difficult move Caroline would twist her sassy and expressive little face into the most hilarious looks and kept cracking the teacher up.  She never even took a break to get water. Apparently they did Zumba in her 2nd grade class sometimes as energizers, because Mrs. Speckman is da bomb.

Charlotte was very intense.  She hardly smiled because she was so focused on trying to figure out the moves, and unfortunately the girl has no rhythm and very little coordination.  She was not a fan because she could feel that it was working her stomach muscles.

Celia, oh Celia my dear love.  I was hesitant to even take her since she's five (although her emotional age is more like a 3 year old) plus she finds any excuse to complain about everything...EVERYTHING.  She does love to dance though so I let her come to check it out.  In the beginning she seemed to have fun.  She was making the older ladies in the class laugh a lot when she would shake her cute little booty.  About 30 minutes in she started to cry because she wanted to leave the class and go running around the track.  At this point, for the sake of making it through the last half hour, I told her she could just do her own moves, dance however she wanted.  That helped.  With 10 minutes left she asked me who she was supposed to be watching.  That might explain her look of confusion for the previous 50 minutes.  She's my blonde.

As I said before I went into this expecting it to be lower impact than typical Zumba and am still very out of shape.  I am also recovering from my third intestinal resectioning surgery from Crohn's Disease.  So it came as no surprise to me that about 40 minutes into the class I feel something below the belt that made me panic.  Was it booty sweat or was it something more???!!  Oh good Lord, did I just poop my pants at family Zumba class??  I went to the bathroom and much to my relief it was simply sweat.  I, in fact, was dripping with sweat and, when I looked in the mirror, my face was as red as my red t-shirt I was wearing.  Like, for real, only a shade away from fire engine red.  As I went back into the class I noticed that all of the other women in the class were older than me, like significantly.  All of them were as pale as me, and NONE of them had red faces!  LOL!  Once again, the older chicks were in better shape than me and kicking my butt at Zumba.  This felt very familiar since I had the same experience in a Jazzercise class last year which I blogged about then as well.

Here's another observation I made.  If you've ever taken a Zumba or Jazzercise class, you may have had that moment where you are in the groove, you are keeping up!  You must look pretty good doing this!  You think to yourself "After this class the instructor is probably going to come ask me if I've done this before.  She will probably tell me that I should become a teacher myself!  I am rocking this!"  Then you make the mistake of looking at yourself in the mirror.  OH NO!  Who is that freak looking back at you?!  Turns out that you don't look nearly as cute and coordinated doing it in real life as you do in your head!  I danced competitively for my entire childhood and even was on the dance team of a professional sports team in college, and even I look like a silly fool during these classes!

So in conclusion, thank you Zumba instructor for throwing me into the deep end of getting back into shape.  I may not be able to walk for three days, or shower, or brush my hair, but I know I will be stronger in the end.  It was pretty fun and entertaining to take an exercise class with my kiddos though.  I think Caroline and I will go back again...once I recover!

The Twins' Adoption Story (part two)

The original family was not the right placement for the girls and they knew it.  Many mistakes were made by our adoption agency.  Their first family made the difficult choice to disrupt the adoption knowing it was in the best interest of the girls in the long term.  They needed to be the only children in the family, they had a lot of special needs that needed to be addressed.  It just so happened that the girls fit the description of what we were looking for. Oh, and you know those insurmountable obstacles that popped up during our homestudy?  Yeah, those weren't even an issue now because, since the twins were already in the US, this would be considered a domestic adoption and none of those things were even an issue.  (Props, God!)  So over the next 2 weeks we got to meet them and visit with them everyday and by the end of those 2 weeks they were living with us full time. BAM, instant family!

At this point I felt a wave of calm come over me as I realized that I no longer could give God the silent treatment. I needed him. This was not going to be easy. These 4 year olds spoke no English, they were in diapers, and they had severe behavior problems. It was like jumping into the deep end of the pool without any swimming experience, no life jackets and no life guards. We just had to figure it out.

We spent the next few months in a bubble. We couldn’t leave the house. The girls had to be completely socialized. They knew nothing of being in a family, had no idea of social norms or socially acceptable behavior. The amazing part of it all was that even though they had been through so much in such a short amount of time, they were so open and loving to us. They began bonding with us so willingly. Those months were filled with a mixture of tantrums, dance parties, physical restraints, and hair salon parties, but all of it brought us closer.

Their English became so good so fast, no one could believe it. And, with the help of many professionals, their behavior was improving as well. They began preschool and did wonderfully! We still had many struggles behaviorally and I’m sure the library considered calling Children Protective Services based on what I was checking out at the library! I read everything from “The Rage Free Child” to “The Out of Sync Child” along with any other creative consequences books. According to the books we were doing everything right, but our kids just didn’t fit the molds of these books so we just prayed and did the best we knew how.

Along the way they’ve been diagnosed with a whole myriad of disorders, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and the medications have been an amazing tool for helping them cope with all of the change and trauma. It wasn’t until the summer of 2011 when we were sitting at the table that we really understood the scope of what their little brains were dealing with. At the dinner table we start talking about their life in Ethiopia. They weren’t often open about talking about it, but this night they were. They told us in their broken English, that they lived in a mud hut, with a dirt floor with their mother and older sister. They bathed, drank and relieved themselves in the same river. Once their mother had another baby is when she relinquished them to the orphanage. We later found out in 2015 when we hired an investigator what the whole story was.

As I think back about everything I am amazed at how God works. I know now that losing my job was such a blessing because I got to spend those last precious weeks with my dear Geeta.  I believe God used Geeta to tell me what His plan was since I sure wasn’t listening to Him! The black mold we discovered during our homestudy forced us to move into a beautiful large home with 4 bedrooms, and 2 twin beds that were already there from my childhood. That’s what the girls sleep in every night. The disrupted adoption meant that I did not have to travel to Ethiopia, which was going to be difficult because of my health. It also saved our family a lot of money not having to travel.  God's timing is always PERFECT.  If we had not started the process when we did (when it made no sense for us to do so) we wouldn't have been ready for our daughters.  Listen to God people!

Through this amazing experience I went from being a control freak, to working hard to be an open book for God. I try everyday to soak in everything he is trying to convey to me. I know now that God has wonderful things in store for our family and I don’t want to miss any cues from him!

The Twins' Adoption Story (part one)

In the fall of 2009 I felt very angry with God, in fact I was giving him the  silent treatment. After abruptly losing my job, we had a sudden death in the family and then my dear friend Geeta lost her battle with breast cancer.

I proceeded to spend the next few months wallowing in self pity.  Finally one day I felt my friend Geeta with me. I felt her saying to me “Get off of your butt and stop being sad. It’s time to make your own happiness!” Before she passed away we had had many conversations about international adoption since she and her husband had adopted from Guatemala. So I just keep feeling her nagging me to start looking into it. I had the time, so I researched different agencies and countries and made a nice organized spreadsheet.

I presented all of this to Mike who was definitely on board, but concerned. You see, it definitely did NOT make any sense for us to do this now. I had lost my job (still on unemployment) and he was serving tables at the Olive Garden trying to finish up his PhD. We lived in a small 2 bedroom apartment with not a whole lot of extra income at the end of the month, let alone extra thousands of dollars lying around to be able to afford this! We knew we wanted to adopt eventually because we both have some serious genetic health issues on both sides of our families that we didn’t want to risk passing onto our children. But now? My brain knew it didn’t make sense but my heart wasn’t listening!

Not long after I began my research I got a call from my cousin Kimberly.  We had become closer since the sudden passing of her mother.  She offered me a full time job working for her!  Looking back I see that as soon as I was blindly following God's call for my life, he was providing for our needs.

After Christmas we really began finalizing our choices as far as agency and country. We chose our agency because it was the same one that Geeta had gone through and we chose Ethiopia because the kids were healthy, they were being hyped as not having attachment issues (HA!), and they were beautiful! It was a new program so there was less red tape and less of a wait time.

Now came the issue of financing this. We starting some fundraisers that yielded small profits but realized we were going to have to come up with a better plan. I am blessed enough to have very generous and well off grandparents, so we wrote up a business plan of how we would pay them back and presented it to them. This was a very big chunk of change we were asking to borrow but luckily for us they said yes and we were on our way!

We started our homestudy in mid-February 2010. When our social worker came out to our home, one of the many times, she asked about the possibility of us adopting 2 children. After talking it over we decided that we never wanted only one child so why not go ahead and get 2 at the same time, preferably biological siblings! We figured at least if they are going to look nothing like us, they can at least look like each other! So we got approved for 2 children and when we said we didn’t want to request a gender, we were informed that we would probably get 2 boys then, because most people have been requesting girls. At this information my husband, who grew up with no sisters, says “Wouldn’t it be cool if we got twin girls!”. I said “No! You have no idea the kind of drama that would come along with that! Two prom dresses, two weddings, and let’s not forget the hormones!!”

There were a few road blocks that we ran into during our homestudy process.  For one, when we were married I chose to change my middle name to my maiden name.  I was told at the Social Security office that I could do that and was not informed that any other legal action needed to be taken.  Well, it turns out that I needed to go to probate court to officially change it legally.  Due to strange rules I was going to have to wait an entire year before I'd be allowed to go to probate court for this which was going to set us back an entire year!  My doctors were also NOT fond of me going to a third world country in Africa since I was on so many immune-suppressant medications.  There were some vaccines that were recommended that were live viruses, which I was told I was not allowed to have because of the meds I was taking.  Many tears were shed over these seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

During this process our agency connected us with another family who was local and also adopting from Ethiopia through the same agency. We became Facebook friends and had sent a couple of emails back and forth. When they made their trip in late March to pick up their children, I found myself glued to my computer! I just kept looking at their pictures. I was amazed with the scenery, and the culture and of course, the children. I showed her pictures to everyone I knew. When my
mom saw the pictures of the children this family was bringing home, she gasped and said “Oh Sarah, can’t you just have them? They’re beautiful!!”. My response, of course, was that I was pretty sure it didn’t work like that!

We were moving into my grandparents former house that spring.  On April 30th everything changed. All of our things were in boxes as we were moving the following day. Our phone rang at about 8pm. Our adoption agency was on the other end, asking us how we would feel about adopting twin 4 year old girls. We were in shock! Our homestudy wasn't even finished yet! When we ask when, her response is just “soon, very soon”!  We asked them to give us the night to pray about it.
From their description of the girls’ ages I knew it was the same 2 little girls I had been looking at pictures of over the last 2 weeks. So we logged onto our computer and looked at their pictures again…and wept. These were our daughters!!

Read part two for the rest of the story!