What an exciting day!

So many things that make it exciting, but the one that I'm just beside myself over is that EMMA SIGNED EAT!!! I sat her at the table and her food was a bit away from her (we don't let the kids start eating until after we've prayed so she's learning to leave her food there rather than be told no LOL). She sat there while I went to the other side of the kitchen, and today since we were all eating in shifts I was going to let her go ahead and start. Mike was outside still cooking burgers and K and B were eating in the other room at a little table. I asked her "Emma, do you want to eat?" while signing it and she signed EAT! Not only that, she signed it exactly right with her fingers together, not even an approximation!!!!!! YAY EMMA!!!!!!!!

Earlier this afternoon we went to the Special Olympics Young Athletes meet and we happened to be the ONLY ones there! We've missed the last 2 weeks because of other obligations, but we did the entire 30 minutes just us, our kids, and the two 'instructors'. Oh, and grandpa too :) I have no idea whether it's because we were the only ones there and my kids didn't get distracted or play 'shy', but oh my, they did great!

We brought in Emma's Pony Walker (gait trainer) that she usually only kind of uses correctly... but she decided to use it right! She usually pushes off with both feet together but no... today she was walking :) She 'fishtails' in it, swinging the back end back and forth as she shifts her weight, but hey... she's trying! The first things they were doing were running to the other end of the room and getting a scarf, then a ball, then a bean bag and running back between. Emma and I "ran" down and twice (we let the rest of them go ahead because it was taking me some time to convince E she wanted to walk again after a minute of doing it LOL). She did so well!

Then, they were doing kicking a ball down a straight line, and Kristopher did it fine. The other three weren't quite so sure what to do, but by the 4th time through the 'line', Brianna was kicking the ball just with a hand held for balance, Micah was doing it with just his hands held to keep him from picking the ball up instead (to lick it nonetheless), and Emma even managed a kick on her own!

They had hula hoops to crawl through and all four kids crawled through those as well!

We also did some jumping over sticks, but none of the three of mine jump. Kristopher showed them all how and we did some pretend jumping with Emma and Brianna and mostly worked on just walking over them with Micah :) We let Emma sit out on the other jumping activity since she was pretty worn out from all the time on her feet already.

SO PROUD OF MY LITTLE YOUNG ATHLETES!!

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This definitely doesn't fit on the exciting day post, but it's the other part of our day. After the SO YA program we went to Wal-Mart. Not a big deal, just needed a few things and a dr's appointment for 3 kids is going to keep me from my regular grocery day so we decided to stop. As we were getting the very last item we needed a lady stopped, counted the children in the stroller (3) then made a few remarks about "three at once" and such... no, they're not all the same age is all I replied with. Then she took another two steps to literally be RIGHT against my face and said "A baby too?? What, are you trying to overpopulate the Earth or something???"

Seriously, this lady had some GUTS to say that, but what in the world??? Was she really that outspoken in a generation that doesn't really accept people with disabilities that she has an issue with my three that have Ds? Or does she think I'm actually 18 and have birthed 5 children through different fathers and haven't figured out how that happens yet (Tho Mike was with me)? Whatever her reasoning, she judged my family IMMEDIATELY without knowing a single thing about us except that we have 5 children.

I have NEVER gotten so outwardly RUDE of a comment (tho we've had many that come close) to my face. But my response was "no, actually we brought two home from Ukraine." Then turned around. Kristopher said "What mom? We have to send them back??" LOL I said no, they're ours forever and he replied with a nice comment about wanting them to stay. This entire time the lady is standing there staring at us. We turned to leave.

"Well, God bless ya with all those kids," a sarcastic reply came down the aisle.
"He sure has," and we left. But she wasn't done. Somehow my reply at the end took her off guard. Wait, someone that recognizes God, adopted kids from overseas, and has multiple disabled children... maybe I've unfairly judged? Seriously, it was as if this whole toll of thoughts ran across her face in a 2 second time as I turned and went around the corner.

"Wait, I didn't mean any harm when I first commented," she said.
"I understand. You're fine." And I turned and walked away. She stood saying things like "I was only kidding" and such as we walked away. We weren't rude or ignoring her, but we were done.

I do wonder, though, whether she is one of those people, you know, the ones that call themselves a Christian and go to church. The ones that have good intentions, but they know all about other people's intentions too. The ones that act high and mighty thinking that someone else is in the wrong. Then when they learn that they've misjudged they try hard to make it look like they did nothing wrong. They don't apologize, but instead they make excuses for their behavior. They weren't wrong, they didn't judge, they have no fault.

It's a sad reality. And unfortunately we all, at times, put the wrong 'label' on a person that we shouldn't be labeling in the first place! We sometimes treat people differently because of something we assume about them, then find out we were all wrong.

And sometimes it's not the wrongly assuming things that is the worst offense. It's the inability to admit to faults, admit when we're wrong, and apologize and ask forgiveness.

If this woman had said she was sorry, mentioned that she felt remorse... I would have felt like maybe she 'learned' not to judge too quickly (or not at all!). I might have thought she'd had an actual change of heart. But no, there was no remorse, no apology, just an excuse and an explanation. Yeah, she thought I was some "lesser person than she is"... but WHY should she treat any person actually IN those circumstances that way either?????????? It's simply WRONG!!!!!!!!

Ok, all that to say, please consider how you treat others :) Because though they may seem irresponsible or unfit to parent or too young, or they may seem to not have their morals in a good place because of something in their life according to YOUR expectations of them... there's really still no reason to treat them as a lesser person or comment rudely to them. There's no reason to judge them. And if you find you've treated them unfairly... be big enough to fess up to it and make things right.

Off my soap box :D