Growing Family

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Part of our family Christmas tradition is sharing our personal goals for the upcoming year. We review what we said last year and anticipate the next. Like our family's communication in general, this conversation in particular often becomes long winded. We all like to ask a lot of questions and we all like to talk. The Captain and I often joke after leaving those kinds of discussions, saying "well that was really great but it would have been better had it ended about an hour earlier than it did!"

Another discussion that we had around the table this year was "what was a quote or idea that inspired you this last year?". What first surfaced in my mind is Small Sun learning to say "MAma" in a little explosion of joy and air has changed my life. It warms me and makes me become just a little more alive each time he says it. Beyond that there is a lyric from a song that I have applied to my conscious interactions with people this year. I'm looking for the song and artist so I can quote it exactly but basically what it says is "let's get out of the car with open arms and not wait to be embraced." That has been my mantra this year - to approach new people, old friends, past friends, family, all with my arms open. I've watched as my group of friends has doubled and tripled and my relationships have grown deeper and stronger. After so many years of being inhibited by past relational disappointments I am ready to move on. I am learning to recognize seasons in friendship. Some friendships are short term and serve a purpose, dissolving after the purpose is complete. Long term friendships wax and wane with the connection growing thick and strong and then thin and tenuous; seldom do they break. I didn't know this when I was younger. Right now most of my close friendships are in a distant season. I sometimes feel lonely in the silence, but I'm recognizing the season and I know it will change. In the meantime I am opening my arms and finding them filled more often than not.

We spent Christmas at my parent's with my siblings in from their corners of the country (San Diego and Boston). The cousins played together (if you can call Small Son hugging the girls and knocking them over on accident and on purpose, playing) and the adults talked up a storm. Conversations were often disrupted by babies' needs but it was fun all the same. We are surrounded by life and little growing beings.

Small Son spiked a 103.8 fever on Sunday when we were celebrating Christmas (my brother and his family had to fly out on Christmas day). He lay weak and hot on The Captain all day. He is all better now - it was a strange thing. I wanted to include a couple pictures of our fabulous presents. I'm cutting back on posting family photos on here but hopefully you'll get the gist of our holiday cheer.

Small Sun's new rainboots

Fabulous earrings my sister made for me

Ditto this clutch

Sis putting up the tree

Part of our family tradition is to celebrate special occasions with a pancake breakfast. It started out with pancakes and syrup. Now we have piles of exotic fruit, and many topings including coconut flakes, ice cream, etc. My sister-in-law used cookie cutters to create this winter scene. A snowman and a penguin wearing a bow tie (or bikini, depending on your interpretation).

The decorated tree and presents

Our shoes. Small Son's are the small ones, mine are the blue and green diesels, and the Captain's are on the far right. Oh, and his "wooden shoe" slippers are there too.

Full Brain

I've got a whole lot going on in my brain. I'm having all sorts of conflicts. Most of them are too deep and murky for me to even articulate right now. I don't know how much of it is hormonal and how much is real. For the moment I'm waiting it out.

One thing I am thinking about that I can talk about is this season of parenting and the challenges it is presenting me. I know that it is normal to go through phases where you love your kids but you don't exactly like them. I went through a stage like that with Small Sun about half a year ago. He was trying to learn to walk and to communicate and he was so frustrated. He whined all the time and it just drove me crazy. Life with him wasn't fun in that phase. Then it passed and we got back to having a happy time together.

Maybe it is the new sibling, maybe the bursting language acquisition, or the beginning of the "terrible twos", but Small Sun is driving me nuts again. We've been actively trying to curb bad behavior for months now. Our goal is to nip things in the bud rather than try to do damage control later. I understand that some things in his little life are frustrating right now. What I don't understand is why he insists on screaming, spitting and hitting to show his frustration after months of careful discipline. We are consistent, we are gentle, we explain the rules with each and every offense, and we stick to our consequences. So things just are not fun with him right now. He's running me ragged with long days of (seemingly) ineffective discipline.

Contrast that with angel baby who sleeps for much of the day, hardly cries at all, and nurses like a dream (most of the time). I like being with her. Nursing her is a reprieve from Small Sun's wild antics. Then when I'm trying to feed her and he is jumping on the couch next to us, I have to try to reign him in without crushing his little spirit. His feelings are very easily hurt these days. When his feelings are hurt he falls apart and misbehaves...and so the cycle continues. Take now for instance- Small Sun has been sent to bed from the table after repeatedly throwing his sippy cup and food on the floor (which has been banned behavior ever since he figured out he could throw things over the edge) and screaming and screaming. The Sprout is sitting bright eyed in her bouncy chair watching me type. Who would you rather hang out with?

I know that sometime in the future (maybe tomorrow?) the roles will be reversed. Small Sun will be giving me kisses and warming my heart and The Sprout will be giving me the time of my life. Still, right now it is troubling me that I'm not enjoying my adopted son while I am enjoying my birth daughter. I know it's not about how they came to the family (unless his behavior is motivated by primal wound issues which I am open to your comments on) but just the season their little persons are in. I think though, that as an adoptive parent, you never want to feel like you're failing. You never want to feel like your parenting isn't enough. You never want your child to be unhappy or ill behaved. When your child lashes out at you (as a toddler or a teenager) it can feel threatening. You want to know that your child will be happy, confident, well adjusted and with a strong identity. (Of course every parent wants that for their child and no one is guaranteed success but I think society assumes that adoptees are less likely to have these attributes.) Transracial adoptive parenting is a big endeavor. Part of me simply thinks "love is enough" and the other part is scared that this bond I've worked so hard to establish just won't be enough. I guess these are textbook adoptive parent fears, I've just never felt them before. I feel insecure with acknowledging to myself that I'm enjoying one child more than another right now and that the child I'm not enjoying is my adopted child.

If any of you have multiple children and have experienced this (adoption element or not), I'd sure like to hear your input. I think I just need reassurance that my kids have two drastically different personalities. That's obvious already. Small Sun is all exuberance and spitfire. The Sprout is content and mild. They are both bonding, they are both attaching. I love them both and one of these days, we'll all be having fun again.

Japanese Story

A week or two ago we watched the movie Japanese Story. I HATED it. And it has made me doubt my desire to move to Australia. Now I know none of you read my blog to hear me fuss about a movie...but I'm going to anyway. I've been thinking about how much I hated it for going on two weeks so I've got to purge the angst from my system. And Carrie, you always enjoy a good media critique don't you?

So the movie is about an Australian woman (a geologist) acting as a guide for a Japanese man who is visiting mines. You never really know what his occupation is, or why he's so into rocks...but there you have it. If you're interested in seeing the movie, stop reading now because I'm going to totally spoil the plot for you. So after getting their SUV bogged down in sand and being stranded in the outback for a day or two the couple, who has up to this point been detesting each other with all of their acting capabilities, becomes strangely attracted to each other as a result of their team effort to survive. Then they begin having explicit s*x.

Reason #1 why I hate the movie: I don't like seeing people have s*x in movies. I'm sure the reason is rooted deep in my psyche - I was, after all, raised in a very conservative home that didn't even have tv till I was safely out of childhood. So movie s*x makes me uncomfortable. But, beyond that gut feeling is my rational mind that agrees with my gut feelings. I don't want to get my ideas of what to do in my bedroom (or wherever else) to come from watching other people. I don't want my life to be the imitation of someone else's, no matter how romantic, exotic, or inspired. I want my experiences to come out of my heart and the intricate interplay of beings. So, I was put off by the drawn out, full shot s*xing.

Reason #2: So the couple is traveling around rural Australia looking at rocks, s*xing (even though she finds out that he is married with kids! oi) and not doing much else until one day they're doing that in a ravine where there's a body of water. I don't know what the Australians would call it. It was clearer than a pond but not big enough to be a lake. So anyway, she runs and jumps in and is having a splashy time. Then he gets up and runs and dives into another part of the water and she goes mad screaming. I'm thinking "oh no, there's crocodiles - I saw on a show that there's freshwater crocodiles in Australia's ponds/lakes/whatevers! No, no crocodiles, just shallow water. The dude breaks his neck diving into shallow water and the girl, after sitting there screaming hysterically for about five minutes (count them, they're long) she begins the looooonggg process of pulling him out of the water, up the side, and somehow all the way back to the truck where she takes about another 20 minutes trying to haul his body into it. All of this is interspersed with her collapsing and becoming hysterical. It's enough to make anyone hysterical. I got short of breath watching it.

The rest of the movie (and there's still a lot to go) involves her driving around with his body in the outback, trying to figure out where to take it, her going back to the city and to her job and collapsing in the bathroom at her office, her meeting the guy's wife who comes from Japan to take his body home, and her making a speech in Japanese telling the wife that her husband is an honorable man. Sheesh... The whole thing is wretched.

Now I don't know if I even want to go to Australia - a country where there are more deadly/venomous/poisonous beings than anywhere else in the world. A country where Japanese men break their necks and die just trying to take a swim. A country where there are freshwater crocodiles in the swimming holes! And freshwater sharks in Sydney Harbor!

It doesn't matter that I grew up in the country with rattlesnakes and black widow spiders...that I swim in the Gulf of Mexico where I've actually SEEN sharks. The Captain keeps telling me that living that close to the water is very well worth having the beaches netted against sharks. He even went so far as to tell me that the Sydney sharks are very polite. They come up and take a little nibble before they really go to eating you and that taste test time is long enough for you to give them a good whack which will dissuade them from feasting on you. Yea...I don't believe him at all.

You may wonder how I have time to write all this nonsense about a movie I hate? Well both babies are sleeping, dinner is in the oven, the house is tidy and the presents are wrapped. Tomorrow I go for my postpartum check up where I learn if I am deranged and all of this compulsive orderliness is a symptom of postpartum depression, or if I am just back to normal.

Hmmm

So my blog has been noticeably (or perhaps unnoticeably) silent lately. I was telling the Captain today that  there are things I want to write about - I'm blogging in my head. The problem is my thoughts become clear and cohesive around 3 am when I'm nursing the Sprout. Or an idea pops into my head while I'm driving the car. There's no way I'm giving up sleep to write (is that a sign that I'm not a real  writer?). So, my thoughts go unrecorded. Life went from 0-60 and my face has that stretched from the speed look. One of these days I'll recover.

So...things I'm thinking about include comparing and contrasting bringing a child into our family through adoption and through birth. I mean, really talking about how each feels. But that's too involved to get into right now. Then I want to record our birth story, but again, that will take some real time to write. One thing I do want to record is the funny things that Small Sun is doing. The things you say öh, I should write that in the baby book" but you don't because it's in its' box in the closet that you hate to open because no matter how many times you organize it, it clutters itself up again.

To help baby girl learn to latch well and to save my sore n*pples we used a N*pple Guard. Unlike the one pictured, ours has a complete circle of plastic. Small Sun has been intrigued by the whole nursing thing, which I think is common for older siblings and not just because he was bottle fed. He's been watching closely and asking lots of questions in his baby speak. So on Friday I'm giving him a bath and he pulls the plastic suction cups off of the tub wall and puts them on his chest. He sits there looking pleased as punch with his very own n*pple guard! How innovative.

He is also very preoccupied with his belly and his belly button. He still wants to look at my belly and asks about the baby. He also shows me his belly and talks about a baby. I'm not really sure what he's thinking at this point. The other day he pulled up his shirt and was standing with his belly touching the wall. Go figure.

We have our Christmas tree up now (and I even got the outside lights up while everyone was sleeping this afternoon) and I was showing Small Sun the star on the top. In response he found a star shaped toy and showed it to me, saying "star".  Then he started zooming it through the air, looking up and pointing, saying "star, star". I don't know who taught him that stars are up in the sky (we don't see many in the city) but he definitely knows they're there.

I hope these don't come across as ÿou'd have to have been there" types of things. I just wanted to write them down somewhere before I forget. And now I have to zoom off to work on dinner of two sorts... Hopefully I'll have something interesting for you soon.

Drives me Crazy

I think I am very gracious when it comes to people asking questions about adoption. When they ask inappropriate things or use terminology that turns me off, I am pretty good at listening to their heart and answering that. There is one thing that really gets me though. Lately, since The Sprout was born, several people have asked how we like being parents or how we are adjusting to being parents.

EXCUSE ME? When exactly in the last year and a half of raising Small Son was I not a parent? Was it the day I didn't give birth to him? I still try to answer graciously and informatively telling them that Small Son came home to us at birth, when he was released from the hospital, so having a newborn is not a new experience. Then it's like a light bulb goes off in their head and they "remember" that Small Son IS our son. They sputter around until I generously offer them a conversational hand up saying "but it was our first time to do the whole delivery thing and we're still getting over that." They smile both with relief and discomfort and say "well that's what I meant."

Freaking remember it people, ADOPTION MAKES REAL FAMILIES. I wasn't waiting around for my "real" kid to come along!