Birthday Boy

Jonas turned 3 years old this week!

He asked for a monkey cake, so I did my best.

Playing with a new toy. He loves all things cars and trucks lately.

Dare I say we really are finally moving out of the "terrible-twos"? Jonas still has his fair share of temper tantrums, but they are less frequent and less intense now(unless he's tired). His imaginative play is developing, and he can play with his toys by himself for awhile without finding mischief and trouble. He even will occasionally share toys with his sister without first being coaxed to do so. He says the funniest things and cracks us up all the time.

We are in the midst of potty training. We've actually tried on and off for almost a year, and after a day or two I always ended up concluding that he just wasn't ready. But this time we've seen some progress and we're sticking with it. He's definitely ready. Yesterday we made it all day with only one accident in his big boy underpants!

Happy Birthday to my big boy!

There are millions of orphans in Ethiopia. In a country the size of Texas, millions of kids would grow up without parents if it weren't for adoption. I count myself amazingly blessed to be the mom of one of these precious kids. We wanted him. We needed him. He is no longer an orphan. He is my son. And at the same time, in a perfect world, adoption would not have been necessary for Jonas. Gulp. As much as I don't like to think about it, things like disease and poverty would never have separated Jonas from his birth family. But because we live in a broken world, I believe that adoption is the best plan for kids that have already been orphaned. God chose Ray and I to become Jonas' best and I will be forever grateful that He allowed us to be a part of His plan for Jonas' life.

With that said, Ray and I have recently been talking a lot about adopting again. We would like to adopt from Ethiopia again, and we'd like to start the process in about a year. The more we talked about it, the more I started to think about this next child, and the more excited I got. Then, a few days ago, I found out some disappointing news. The Ministry of Women's and Children's Affairs (MOWA) in Ethiopia announced that, starting today, they would decrease the number of adoption cases they review each day from 50 to 5. That's a 90% reduction! MOWA made the decision based on some abuses in the adoption process. They want to give themselves more time to review each case. I have always respected the cautions that Ethiopia takes to ensure that the kids that are being adopted were truly relinquished for adoption by birth families. But a 90% reduction in cases would GREATLY increase wait times for adoptive families, and even worse, it means that legitimate orphans could spend years in institutional care while they wait for their case to go before MOWA. Jonas will be 3 years old soon, and if this ruling had been in effect when he was a baby, he could still be living in an orphanage. That is sickening to me. It seems so unacceptable.

Please pray for MOWA, the orphans of Ethiopia, and waiting adoptive families. Pray for Ray and I too as we try to discern how God would have us to move forward with our adoption plans! I've been reminded that God holds the perfect plans for my life and my family. When it comes to building our family, it never seems to happen the way I envision it (but as much as I can't see it at the time, God's plan is always better than mine!).