Our Kids Bless My Heart

As I referenced in a previous post, we had a “family meeting” back in November to tell the kids about our plan to adopt a baby.  We began by talking with the boys about how all kids need parents to love them and take care of them and keep them safe.  We went on to talk about how there are many, many children around the world, whose mommy and daddy can’t take care of them for different reasons.  But that God loves these kids so much, and that he wants them to have a family to take care of them.  As I paused to take a breath and plan my next sentence, our three-year-old broke in, saying, “Maybe WE could take care of them.” 

Yeah, buddy…maybe we could.

We talked a little more and told the kids that we were, indeed, going to bring one of these children home and that he or she was going to become part of our family.  We emphasized that this baby would be their brother or sister.  We talked about Ethiopia and about the lives of the kids who live there.  We noted that their new brother or sister would look a little different than us on the outside.  We showed the kids a short video on the computer to give them an idea of what Ethiopia is like and what our child might look like. 

After the video, our oldest asked, with a rather exasperated sigh, “How are we going to take care of all those kids?” 

He has a good heart.

Two days later our oldest was playing with his legos.  He was building a small legion of “hawks” (kind of square-ish looking creatures, but with a minimal amount of imagination you could make them look like little hawks, standing upright on their little feet with their wings outstretched).  Anyhow, he had built maybe a dozen small uniform hawks, and two larger hawks (which he explained were the mommy and daddy).  He had used up all the small square and rectangular legos that we had.  After a while, he set them all up in a circle.  He started talking out loud to himself, saying, “They’re having a family meeting.  They are adopting a new baby.”  Then, he quickly turned and grabed a curvy cactus-shaped lego and popped a “beak” and “feet” onto it.  He said, “Here he is.  You can see that he looks a little different on the outside, but he’s part of their family now.”  J

Sarah