No Really ...

The other day I mentioned to a friend of mine that I keep a spreadsheet of the boys’ clothes, and she looked at me like I was some strange, hyper-organized, control-freak supermom instead of the mostly ordinary, fairly messy mother of two she knows me to be.

“No really,” I told her, “it makes life so much easier and it’s so much simpler than you’re probably thinking.” 

Here’s the thing. Having too much stuff stresses me out. (Except obviously books. Bring on the books, I say!) Particularly having too much clothing stresses me out. But if you are going to have less, you need to be more organized about it than if you have a lot. Which is counter-intuitive, I know. But it’s not organizing the stuff itself that is important (although that’s always nice), it’s being organized about what you have in the first place. If you have a huge pile of clothes, the odds are pretty good that somewhere in the pile, there is a shirt that will go with those shorts, even if you didn’t buy the shirt with the shorts in mind. But when you only have a handful of things, you need to keep track of what you have so that you know if there are any holes in the wardrobe, so to speak, that you need to fill before the next season.

For instance, at the beginning of the spring, all I had on hand for Munchkin’s summer wardrobe was two pairs of army fatigue pants, one pair of fatigue shorts and three polo shirts. Now two bottoms and three tops would seem to make three outfits, but the polo shirts clashed pretty terribly with the fatigues, so I know that somewhere between February and warm weather, we’d need to come up with some more neutral tops and some denim or khaki shorts. Since I had it all written down in my spreadsheet, it was easy to know what to shop for at the spring consignment sale.

Twinkle wears Munchkin’s hand-me-downs, so when I’m putting Munchkin’s clothes away at the end of a season, I enter all the items that are still in good shape in this spreadsheet in Twinkle’s column in the next year’s spreadsheet. This makes it very simple when grandparents ask what they need for Christmas, or when I feel like sewing or knitting them some things for next season but haven’t decided yet what to make. Instead of dragging down a bin full of clothes and digging through it, all I have to do is check the spreadsheet.

Here’s how I organize it.

(Before going any farther, I should say that the way I use excel drives ‘Stache absolutely nuts. I am not nearly as computer savvy as he is, and I tend to use excel in a rather messy, intuitive sort of way. I am not necessarily recommending that you make your sheet exactly like mine. I am sure there are better ways or programs to do this. However, this sheet works very nicely for me.)

This is the basic format, without any clothes entered:

The “total items” number I enter in by hand. The “projected items” is the sum of all the numbers you see. As I enter in clothing items, I change the numbers to reflect how many items are now needed. The “estimated cost” is the number of items (either total or estimated) times $6.66, which is what I expect to spend on each item. (We buy almost all the kids’ clothes from JBF, a high-quality, high-volume consignment sale that happens each spring and fall. After going several times, I’ve found that I typically spend about $6 + tax on each item if I’m not there on a special sale day.)

Here is the spreadsheet with some of the items entered.

Notice that the projected items and projected costs are now much lower. I could make the cells bigger to show the whole list of “already have” clothing items, but then my spreadsheet would be more unwieldy. I prefer to just click on the cell to see the full list. If I am planning to make something for the boys but haven’t yet, then I type it in bold as a reminder to myself that although I do plan to make it, it’s not a done deal yet.

Some more notes on my numbers of items. I made this list based on how often I do laundry, which is once a week. We go to a church where anything from casual to dressy is considered appropriate, so only one specifically nice outfit is plenty for us. The summers when we’ve had family weddings on the horizon “wedding outfit” was also entered into the spreadsheet. During the summer we often put them to bed in a t-shirt, or even just a diaper, so they don’t need as many pajamas as in winter. The boys don’t go to preschool  or daycare, so if we run out of clean clothes and they spend a day in their diapers, there’s no harm done. The boys don’t wear socks in the summer, because I snatch at any excuse to not have to keep up with tiny socks. I buy nice leather sandals for them to wear to church and crocs or sandals for the rest of the week.

After all this dry talk of spreadsheets, why don’t we have some pictures of the boys in their summer clothes? 

The boys in their "water glasses"

I should plan more than one hat for Munchkin: he's a big fan.

Why do I even bother planning clothes for Twinkle? This is his preferred outfit from May to September.

TODDLER PANTS!!!

Toddler pants are the bomb.

They are my hands-down favorite thing in the whole world to sew, and one of the few clothing items that is immediately, objectively “worth it” to make yourself instead of buying. Because you can buy new clothing so cheaply, often it is only “worth it” to make clothing from scratch if you are looking at it from the emotional side (“I made you this with my own hands! It is a labor of love!”) or the ethical side (“Instead of supporting sweatshops in another country, I’m going to have a sweatshop of my very own right here! Instead of paying a worker a dismal wage, I’m going to work myself for a similarly dismal wage!) or occasionally the aesthetic side (“This is the perfect shade of blue to match Junior’s eyes! I’ve never been able to find a shirt this color; now I’m going to make him one!”) or if you’re really talented, the quality side (“Beautifully tailored clothing costs a fortune, so I’m going to do it myself!”).

But it really is economically worth it to make toddler pants.

Toddler pants still have elastic waistbands, which make the pattern super easy. None of this complicated “fit” business. If they are large enough for the child to get into them and short enough that the child doesn’t trip, they fit. Basically. More or less. Maybe take that last with a grain of salt. But they are supposed to be on the roomy/baggy side because they have to fit over diapers and chubby little toddler legs.

So what I do is, I make pajama pants out of non-pajama fabric. And it’s awesome. Awesome, fast, and cheap. The trifecta of home sewing. Sometimes if I’m feeling fancy I’ll add patch pockets or topstitching to mimic a fly. Sometimes I’m out of elastic and I do a drawstring instead. But the basic pajama pant pattern is 1 pattern piece. Cut out two pieces, sew the hems. Sew the pieces together down the front and back. Sew the leg seam. Fold the top down to make the waistband and sew. Insert elastic or drawstring. Bam! A piece of real clothing. It takes me up to an hour to make a pair of toddler pants, including cutting out. (I am not a particularly fast seamstress.) When I am organized enough to cut out several pairs at a time and make them assembly line-style it’s even faster.

If you pay about $8 for fabric and it takes you an hour to make them, that’s a reasonable “wage” for your time compared to buying a new pair of toddler jeans for $18-$24. And if you reuse handmedown or thrift store adult size jeans, your wage gets even better. You just take a pair of scissors (don’t bother with a seam ripper) and rip the jeans going up and down the inside seam. Spread the jeans flat, lining up the outside seam if there is one, lay down your pattern, more or less centered over the outside seam, and cut them out. If the hems of the jeans are still in good condition, you save even more time. Line up the hems carefully, lay down your pattern so that it extends 1 ¼”-1 ½” beyond the hem, and cut out your pants.  With some men’s pants, you can even get a pair of pants and a pair of shorts out of the same pair. 

I made these pants out of hand-me-down scrubs. The brown and purple pants used to be tops, so I reused the hems, and the green and khaki pants used to be adult size pants, so I reused the waistbands.

Because scrubs are so thin, and I wanted the boys to be able to wear these in winter, I lined them. There was no real need for these to be fancy, so I just laid my lining on top of my scrubs material and treated them as one piece of cloth. Result: sturdy, double layered pants. The brown ones are lined with a large soft scrap I happened to have, and the purple ones are lined with an old dress shirt of 'Stache's that had worn out down the front edges. 

Now, let’s be honest. These are not the be-all and end-all, last word in toddler fashion. But guess what? I’m fine with that. These are basic clothes, designed for non-discriminating little people who have mastered neither the finer points of self-feeding nor the basic tenants of the use of a toilet, and who have only recently started to dress themselves. High fashion is not what I’m looking for. Simple, sturdy, slightly baggy jeans will do just fine.

And if toddler pants are the bomb, toddler pajama pants are truly the motherload of awesome. All those fabulous things I said above about pants, only these are made out of flannel*!!! Soft, so easy to work with, easy to hem, great pattern options … I’m a fan. Also, if you’re going for the drawstring option on the waistband, you can just make it right out of the flannel for the pants! (If you think a moment, you will realize that this is not really an option with jeans. Denim drawstrings tend to be a non-starter. You’re much better off using a wide shoelace.)

Last Christmas I went a bit nuts and made 9 pairs of kids’ pajama pants in one go. This sounds crazy. It was crazy. It makes me sound a bit obsessive (fair assessment) and maybe even neglectful of my kids. What was I doing, churning out all these pajamas? But no, flannel pajama pants are so awesome and so fast that even 9 pairs didn’t upset the applecart of family life too badly.

Toddler pants. They’re the bomb.

(I feel like I might have mentioned that before.)

Munchkin in his purple pants and his fish vest that my mother knit him. He would wear this every day of the week if I let him. The pants are a little long, but I'm sure they'll be the right length by fall.

Ooo, pockets.

Who needs pants when you're this cute?

*For winter pajamas, I like to use 100% cotton flannel, which has not been pre-treated to make it acceptable by the powers that be for children’s sleepwear. All of the children’s sleepwear that you buy in a store must, by law, be soaked in flame-retardant chemicals. Most of the children’s sleepwear that you buy in a store is also made of polyester, aka plastic, which when not treated by the above mentioned chemicals, melts in the presence of flame. This would cause horrible burns if it melted onto someone’s skin, above and beyond the damage caused by the flames themselves. As cotton does not melt when set on fire, I feel like the benefits of soaking cotton flannel in a flame retardant bath are outweighed by the potential hazards of the chemicals themselves, right next to my children’s skin for 8 to 12 hours a night. These are just my reasonings, however! This is a question that you should weigh for yourself and decide what you think is best for your family. My opinion means nothing. 

For T----

Dear T-----,

You are just a picture.

You are not mine yet.

I am scared to love you.

I am scared because one word from a social worker a half a world away could mean I never get to see you, ever. Those two pages of biography, those four darling pictures might be all I ever know. I am hesitant and cowardly, afraid of pouring my heart into someone I might never hear of again. But at the same time there is the tension of “You could be mine.” You could be mine forever. Mine to cuddle and comfort. Mine to answer a thousand Why’s and to clean up a million spilled glasses of – milk? Juice? I don’t even know if you can drink dairy, or if we’re heading into a lifetime of rice milk with cereal instead.

I think about you all the time. I pray for you nearly every night, smiling to myself, imagining you starting your day just as I am finishing mine. I wonder what you had for breakfast, and what you’re doing today.

My heart hurts so bad when I read your story. I pray that that there are people in your life who love you, who are cherishing you. I pray that someone is shining the Gospel-light into your life.

I’m so proud of how you’re overcoming your physical challenges. Several times in your biography the social workers talked about what a great attitude you have, how persistent you are, how you work to conquer the limitations you have. I want to cheer you on, tell you how well you’re doing, how proud I am of you, until you get embarrassed and roll your eyes and say “Moooooooom!” while secretly soaking in the praise. I think you’re awesome, and you’re only 3. (Almost 4!)

 It’s really hard for me to trust God right now. It’s hard for me to accept that his best plan for you might not be in our family. I want to bargain with God. I want to show God – let’s be honest, I do show God all my spiritual growth and spiritual “wins” and sacrifices and say “Look! Look at how much I’ve grown! Doesn’t that mean I get T----? You wouldn’t put me through all this and then not let me have him, right?”

But it doesn’t work that way. (Thank goodness.) I can’t be good enough to “deserve” you. You are a wonderful, beautiful child, made in the image of God, and that God doesn’t do bargains. He bestows gifts. And you are such a gift!

I love you, T----, even though I’m scared. I really hope I get to be your mommy.

Good-Hard, Bad-Hard, Sad-Hard

Several months ago, in a soul-baring talk with a trusted friend, I confessed,

“I just didn’t know you could have peace about something and it still be So. Damn. Hard.”

From the beginning of starting this adoption process, ‘Stache and I have known a lot of things.

We knew we wanted to adopt internationally.

We knew we wanted to adopt though Bethany.

We knew we wanted to adopt a child from Hong Kong.

We knew we wanted to adopt a child with special needs.

So much knowing, so much peace right there. We felt God specifically calling us to these things, and we were in agreement on all four, which felt like such a confirmation. We were a little nervous but still confident. For me, there was a sense of exhaling, like the breath you let out that you didn’t know you were holding. When you’ve been wandering a bit, and then find the path through the forest. You weren’t really worried when you were just wandering, but still – it feels good to be on a path. To know you’re walking in the right direction. We had peace, and it was good.

These are some of the things I didn’t know.

I didn’t know peace could hurt. Or rather, that peace and hurt could exist right beside each other, taking up the same space. I had only ever known peace as a happy, restful feeling. This – was not that. I had a bone-deep surety that this was what we were supposed to be doing, but it also felt like I had a ragged spike piercing my stomach. I was opening my heart up to care about a whole world of motherless children, opening it up to hurt. And it really hurts. Sometimes every day.

I didn’t know how guilty I would feel for saying “no,” even passively. When you’re adopting, you have to say no to so many children. We believed that we should adopt a child the same age or younger than our oldest child, who is 3. Which means we were saying “no” to every child aged 4 and up. We had to go through a list of special needs and check yes, no or willing to discuss. Which meant we were saying “no” every time we decided a medical need or situation was more than we could handle. The weight of millions of orphans’ worth of “no” is soul-crushing. And, I ultimately realized, not a burden that God was putting on me. It is not possible for a human mother to adopt millions of orphans at once. I needed to be faithful to the burdens He was asking me to carry, and to let God be God.

I didn’t realize how deeply loss is intertwined with adoption. Someday, I am going to meet my child for the first time, and that is going to be a wonderful day. But the only way that day is possible is because his mother said good bye to him one day for the last time. Probably the last time of their whole lives. That is an excruciatingly painful reality.

I didn’t know how I would grieve. So much brokenness. So many children from broken homes, so many children with broken bodies. I would be reading a mother’s blog, rejoicing over her beautiful daughter’s new leg prosthesis, grateful that there are organizations like Shriners to help her, inspired by her daughter’s passion for life and can-do attitude. But at the same time I would be grieving, almost angry, feeling this is not the way it is supposed to be.  Life is not supposed to be like this, yet it is.

This is not meant to be a bitter, disillusioned post. Truly. 

These are hard things, terrible things, but God is still bigger than all our hard things. He has carried me when the grief loomed, when the pain of it all seemed to much to lift. He has given me the strength to accept things I would have run from on my own strength. We have been walking down, stumbling down, crawling down this path for only ten months. Ten months of a lifetime. It has been an eon and also just the blink of an eye. And God has done amazing things. He has opened doors we didn’t even know were there. He has changed our hearts. He has made the path clear.

And none of that has really been easy. It’s been really hard sometimes. But God doesn’t promise us that it won’t be hard. He promises that he will be there.  

And the Winner is ...

The Mother's Day Fundraiser is now closed*. The entries have been counted, random.org has been so kind as to generate a winning number, and the winner is ...

*drumroll*

No. 18., Enoch! We will be contacting you shortly to arrange delivery of the shawl. Congratulations!

Thank you so much to everyone who donated. You are helping us to step one step closer to meeting our child for the very first time! Isn't it amazing to think how, across the world, there's a child going to sleep (because there's about a 12-hour time difference) who's never met us, never thought of us, and here we are, with no idea who they are or what they will be like, and yet step by step our lives are drawing closer, until we are family. And all of y'all have been a part of that.

Thank you.




*Although of course if you'd like to give at any time, we'd be overjoyed! At this time it seems the best way to give is by check, made payable to Bethany Christian Services, mailed to us or to Bethany, 930 McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga TN 37403. We are having some technical difficulties with our online giving site. 

fail (verb): to fall short of sucess

This happened months and months ago, but I just discovered the pictures on my phone and they are so funny I had to share.

These pictures represent, I feel confident in saying, my single greatest cooking failure in the history of my marriage.

Now, I know that there are many kind, experienced cooks out there that are wanting to reach out through their compute screens and pat me on the shoulder right now and say, "Don't worry, Libby. Gingerbread is tricky. The cookies are really thin and they burn pretty easily. Don't beat yourself up about it. You'll do better next time." 

But here's the thing. 

Those are SUGAR COOKIES. 

Have a second look, this time thinking, that dough started off white. 

I know. I was a little awed, too. Truly a professional-grade burning job. All you have to do, really, is put a sheet of cookies in the oven, forget about them for an hour, then remember that the oven is on, turn it off, and leave the cookies in the oven til the next day when your son wants you to turn on the oven light and you wonder why you don't remember making gingerbread. It's very simple, although it does take time to achieve this quality of results. 

Munchkin was overjoyed to see cookies ... 

... but when he discovered it tasted exactly like charcoal he handed it off to Twinkle.

Brotherly love, right there. 

Don't forget about our adoption fundraiser! You could win a beautiful scarf and you'd be helping a wonderful cause!The deadline to be entered in our giveaway is May 3rd. For more details, go here.

Easter Overalls

Several months ago, I happened upon a really cute fabric. The dinosaurs were friendly and bright and weren't licensed characters (I tend to be somewhat anti- licensed characters. If my child doesn't know who Barney is, why should he wear Barney pajamas? Anywhoo ....). Immediately a vision sprang into my mind. Dinosaur overalls! I hastily estimated how much fabric a pair of overalls would take, added a smidge for safety, and plopped down my money and forgot about the whole thing. The fabric languished on the "someday" dresser in my sewing room.

And would have continued to languish, long past Easter, had not a friend pinned a free overall pattern to her Pintrest board. It was by LiEr of ikatbag.com, whom I deeply admire and it was a size 3T - exactly what I needed. Also, did I mention, free. Clearly, this Easter overall thing was going to happen.

When I cut out the pattern and studied my fabric, I realized that I had enough fabric for TWO pairs of overalls, which was fabulous, because I happen to have two boys. (Twinkle is only 2, but he is a very sturdily built 2, and is currently straddling the fence between 2T and 3T. Besides, overalls are naturally adjustable.)

I very narrowly avoided making a terrible mistake, cutting out the overalls here. I was all set to cut and suddenly realized that this pattern has a right side up, and a wrong side up. If I had just doubled the fabric to cut out 2 sets (exactly what I was set to do), one of the sets of overalls' dinosaurs would have been upside down. So I cut off some of the fabric and layered it over the other fabric, so that the dinosaurs were right side up for both sets.

I did two things differently from the pattern.

1) I made the front chest piece separate from the bottom front pieces. You can see (maybe) from the pattern above that she has you cut out one big piece (twice) that you join by sewing them together down the center front and then that's your front piece, from the top of the bib to the pants legs. I wanted to be able to put in pockets (both my boys adore pockets, especially Twinkle) but I didn't want to have a sewn-on waistband, which is her solution for the top of the pockets needing to hide under another piece or in a seam. So I took the top straight dotted line as the top of my pants fronts, and then cut another piece for the chest, cutting it on the fold so that it was one piece. I then sewed my two front pants legs together, sewed on the pockets, and sewed the pants part to the chest part, thus "hiding" the top edge of the pockets in the seam between the pants and the chest piece. Capisce?

This was very simple to do and I'm very pleased how it turned out.

2) I made the overall straps several inches longer because they just looked short to me. The boys were sleeping, so I couldn't attempt to measure the straps against their shoulders to figure out if they were the right length, and they're fairly good sized boys. Munchkin has always been the tallest of his friends his age, and Twinkle earned the nickname "Tank" as an infant and has kept it ever since.

I should have trusted LiEr. They're now totally too long. This really doesn't matter, because the extra doesn't show, but I should have trusted LiEr.

A slightly tricky thing with LiEr's patterns is that, coming from a professional background, she doesn't put seam allowances on her patterns. You're supposed to add however much you prefer. 1/4, 1/2, 5/8, the world is your oyster. I comforted myself with the fact that I was making clothes for an active child, not assembling a nuclear warhead, and cut them out with a very approximate 5/8" seam allowance, measuring only occasionally to make sure that I had not strayed too far afield. This I did until ...

I did this. In case you can't tell the grievous nature of my error, that's the hem of the pants. Which I just cut out with a 5/8" seam allowance. Which is way too small. Notice that on most hems, the hem is at least half an inch wide? Sometimes more? That's because a wider hem is a) easier to work with and b) doesn't fold up as easily. A too narrow hem on pant legs is one of those rookie mistakes that just takes the shine off your otherwise well-made, professionally finished clothing item, which is certainly what I hoped that these overalls would be.

(For those of you who are confused and are saying "Isn't 5/8 more than half an inch? Wouldn't you still be ok?" I say: "No. You have to fold over the top edge of the fabric, and then fold it again so that you don't have a raw edge on the inside of your hem. If you just folded it once and sewed it down, it would fray. The making of well-made, professionally finished clothing is really just one long quest to eliminate all raw edges, ever.")

So what I did was this. I took a length of appropriately bright, wide bias tape and sewed it to the edge of the pants, folded it up, and sewed that edge down to make the hem. (Bias tape comes pre-made with folded edges.) This is what they used to do in the olden days when skirts or pants were let down as a person grew. When there wasn't enough fabric left to fold up to make a proper hem, they would use this exact technique, and in fact the reason that I happened to have neon orange bias tape on hand was because I had inherited it from my grandmother, who had bought it for just such a purpose. I think that's pretty cool.

At this point readers like my brother are rolling their eyes and saying "Enough with the technical crap, let's get to pictures of the boys!

OK, let's do.

Early morning selfie with Munchkin, looking pretty unthrilled with his awesome dinosaur overalls. Don't worry, he did cheer up later, especially when there were

BALLOONS.

This may not look like an excited face to you, but that's only because you cannot perceive the laser-like intensity with which he is holding that balloon.

(Yes! Our church gives out balloons to all the kids after the Easter service. Isn't that awesome?)

Again, the look is a little anxious, but trust me, Twinkle is having a good time here.

After church we went to the park and had a picnic with my parents and brother and sister. 'Stache bought the boys real soccer balls for their Easter gift, so most of what I saw of the boys for the rest of the afternoon was this.

Or this.

These are actually with zoom. It's a large park and they really love running.

Munchkin is sitting on Twinkle's ball here, and Twinkle is trying to steal it back. Despite 'Stache's buying IDENTICAL balls, they still knew whose were whose.

My sister and brother with the boys.

I was sneezing convulsively the whole afternoon and it still managed to be a pretty perfect day.