another quote, another thought...

Time and experience have taught me a priceless lesson: Any child you take for your own becomes your own if you give of yourself to that child. I have born two children and had seven others by adoption, and they are all my children, equally beloved and precious.
-Dale Evans

i love hearing about other families who have adopted. each story is uniquely special.

God is so good to bring families together like this! and i'm so thankful that because of His love for each of us, He adopts us into His family as His children when we accept His gift of grace.

the language of adoption

Natural Child: Any child who is not artificial.
Real Parent: Any parent who is not imaginary.
Your Own Child: Any child who is not someone else's child.
Adopted Child: A natural child, with a real parent, who is all my own.

~Rita Laws, PhD.

i like looking for good quotes. this one struck my fancy as it is about adoption and really makes a statement about the language we use about adoption. in my adoption experience, i have learned that the language of adoption is slowly changing: most birth parents don't "give up" their babies. rather, they make an adoption plan for their child. adoptive parents are just as much the child's real parents as are the child's birth parents. biological children are children who share your genetic code. so in my case, i might say that i have a biological son who is 9 and an adopted son who is 2. of course, both boys are 100% MINE (or rather, to be fair, ours since my husband is very much a part of this family!)

here's an adoption creed i really love because it also tells how i feel:

not flesh of my flesh
nor bone of my bone,
but still miraculously my own.
never forget for a single minute,
that you grew not under my heart,
but in it.

being both a bio mom and an adoptive mom is such a joy and a privilege. in many ways i know i'm blessed to have "the best of both worlds" so to speak. and i'm so thankful for both my boys. it matters not a bit to me that i only birthed one of them. when our youngest was about 3 months old, i had a friend from church ask me if i felt the same toward him as my eldest. i knew what she wanted to know was if i loved my new baby as much as i loved his big brother when he was a baby. i think she was also curious as to how it feels to be an adoptive mom. my answer was and still is "there are days i seriously forget i didn't give birth to him!" it's true! that's how i love him...it makes no difference how he came to be part of our family. yes, he has a birth family and some day he might even get to know them too.

but this fact remains regardless: he is and always will be my son.

my grown-up art

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." ~Pablo Picasso

this quote speaks to me personally because it has been really hard for me as a grown-up, a wife, a mother, and a home-school teacher, to do art like i did when i was in college. i was sort of late in discovering my artistic side and it wasn't until i took my first ceramics course my freshman year of college that i started to see that not only is art fun, but i have some natural ability as well. after that, my college path took a slight turn. i found that i had a love for ceramics--turning clay into pottery gave me a sense of expectancy as well as a creative outlet. i liked painting and drawing. and i enjoyed learning about the history of art. by graduation (after 4 years), i had enough art credits to afford an art minor. i even considered taking another year to complete my art major, but quickly decided i was happy to be done with formal education and i really didn't want to add more to my student loans!

alas! these days i don't have the equipment necessary for making pottery or the time and energy to try and create beautiful paintings! i think that's, in part, why i've enjoyed knitting so much. knitting (and crochet) gives me a means of being creative. through it, i can express myself artistically. and it doesn't interfere with my day-to-day life very much. {except, of course when i'm so close to the end of a project that i just CAN'T put it down till it's done!} i use color, texture, and pattern to make something pretty and useful--and we all know the best art is art you can use! *wink*

socks are wonderful projects. they're relatively small, don't use a ton of yarn and you can practice or learn new techniques depending on the pattern you choose! i've learned a technique for making both socks at the same time on one long circular needle from a book called 2-at-a-time Socks by melissa morgan-oakes. i've found it a valuable resource since i love knitting socks, but typically have disliked finishing one sock and then having to start all over for sock #2. so, for me, this is definitely the way to knit socks!

to make a pair of socks, first, i must have yarn. i love sock yarns! and there are so many to choose from! {this can be both good and bad!} usually, i have to consider how much i can afford to spend and that will help narrow my choices a tad. so once a yarn is decided on (and shopping for yarn is half the fun!), then i get to choose a pattern. here's where it gets a little tricky for me...gauge. i currently only have 1 long circ for knitting socks. this means, for now at least, i can't just change needle size so my gauge will match the pattern's gauge. sometimes i'll knit a swatch first and try to find a pattern that has the same gauge as mine. sometimes i'll pick a pattern, then knit my swatch and try using math to adjust my stitches for it to work. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. but that's okay, because i'm doing something i love. for example, the socks i've got on my needles right now were a real trial. i picked a pattern that i thought would look nice and decided to change the cuff from a rolled to a ribbed one. it was working fine, but after a few inched of knitting, i could tell that it was going to be a tad too small. so, i frogged it (which is knitterly talk for ripping out every stitch of a project). attempt #2 ended up too large. at this point i decided that it was the pattern, so tried a different one. got a few inches into it and decided it looked awful. finally, i realized that a plain, no-frills sock was what the yarn was telling me. yes, just like paint, yarn speaks to the artist! it's crazy, but true!