A Belt is a Magical Thing

Time is not my friend. Before my very eyes my little boy, John Owen is becoming a little man. It's like the dawn of every day brings some new growth or change in him. He has always been highly verbal--quite the talker. Usually he's used up all his word allotment by mid-morning. This does not deter him though. Never fear, he does not run out of things to say or ask. For months, he's been asking for a belt like Dad's and mine's. He hasn't really needed a belt until recently when he's in that awkward stage of not really being a size that you can buy in the stores. This perplexes me because I know he's not the only child to be like this--in between sizes. I just don't understand why retailers don't make some in between sizes. Not just 3t, but "No longer 3t, but not quite 4t" size. That's what size he is. So we go up a size and the 4t pants are too big.

I bought him a belt yesterday and brought it home to him. He promptly tried it on and learned very quickly how to loop it through his pants and fasten it. It's still too big for him, but there's no way he's taking it off. Except for the hundred times that he did unfasten his belt for the fun of it.

What's funny is that he'd say, "I have to poop", head off to the bathroom, unfasten his belt and not poop. He just wanted to undo his belt and fasten it back. He's so funny to me because he doesn't just do that, he has to actually go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet and then fasten his belt again.

It's brought lots of laughs today and I'm sure tomorrow it will be round two of "Breaking the Belt In".

I wish you all could be here for this. It's quite comical and eventually I just made him take the belt off.

Between John Owen fastening and unfastening his belt and James climbing on everything and jumping off of things, life is never dull around here. 

We're coming up on five months home with James Melaku. Can you believe it? It feels like always--you know that feeling of something or someone always having been in your life? That's how it feels with James. I remember life before him, but only in my head. My heart doesn't remember that time. I think a lot about Africa and Ethiopia in particular. I wonder when I'll see it again. I wonder about my friends there. About James' birth family. I wonder if they think of him. It's been fourteen months since anyone who knew him before he was Melaku have seen him. I wonder what his birth name was. What did his mom call him? But those are questions I have no answers to. I trust I don't need to know the answers; otherwise, I know I'd have them. For now, I just wonder and pray for those faces that I only have a glimpse of when I look at James'. When I look at the way his hair curls, or his eyes crinkle when he smiles. His bowed legs and narrow feet. I think about his time in the orphanage and how different his days are now. How different his life is now and how his future took a radical turn almost five months ago. 

God is good and faithful. Adoption is hard, for many reasons, but God is faithful and it is worth all the hard. Just like parenting in general is hard, but worth the hard.

Have a great weekend friends!