This is so good!

  My E has been back to some sleepless, wet nights.  He's coming home at the end of the day just worn.  I know that it takes every fiber of him to behave, to try to learn, to not do so many things that he's constantly tempted to do.  He is tired from trying so hard and it doesn't help that he isn't sleeping well.  Remember when you had a baby and between late afternoon and bedtime, it's witching hour? Too late for a nap but too early for bedtime? Yah, that's us.
  So we do our strict schedule and it helps.  Mostly, I really believe that God has softened my heart to him in many ways.  I just don't care anymore about a lot of stuff.  Ryan will roll his eyes at me because by 8 o'clock every night, E and I are arguing back and forth.  We both have to "have the last word."  I know my dad is laughing at this right now; this was always the reason I was grounded as a kid.  He gets that from me.
  Today was different.  Today, E came home, did his snack and his exercise and then-wait for it-he went and got his "sight words" and began writing.  It's Halloween, people!  Candy and lack of structure and routine!!  He asked me to help him write his sight words in 10 sentences.  There was no crying.  No quitting.  No whining or pretending to go to sleep.  No thumb sucking.  When he messed up, he crossed it out and started over again.  It was awesome.

  That is what we like to call evidence of God's grace.  

  I had been pretty frustrated.  We have a lot of stuff (mostly really good, see here) going on.  We have a dead beat renter squatter that owes us over a year's rent to our KS house.  I was bummed about that terrible mess.  At work, we've had an "intruder" (think guy with a automatic weapon roaming the halls of a clinic), super young teen moms, mentally ill patients.  Just ugly stuff that weighs on me.

  And then, BOOM.  God shows up again.  At my kitchen table in the form of sight words.  Reminding me of what He is doing in my son.  And in an orphanage in Kigali.  In the homes of 55 (!) families that are matched with kids.  What a blessed, insanely dramatic life we have here.