Growing Family

The First Day of School 2013

The torrential rain eased up long enough for me to take Small Sun and Sprout to school this morning. We met their new teachers, found their desks, greeted friends with enthusiasm, kissed goodbye, and I turned towards home with two little  boys and an armload of exercise books to cover.

I've spent some time over the summer trying to think of ways to work out the kinks in our weekly schedule. Things always start out so organized before gradually disintigrating to chaos, so I want to remember this moment when two little boys are napping, the house is clean, and the dog sleeps at my feet while I blog. 

The chore chart is going well. After going store to store and failing to find any cute frames, and having a basket full of frames I needed to paint, and spray paint, and hardware to hang them, and the proper hardware to insert into our finicky walls, I walked by the dry erase boards and said "hello easy, jump in my basket and let's go home together!" 

Each child has their own column of responsibilities. Each other time I've tried this it has been more hassle than help, but they must be that little bit older because they are actually doing the jobs to my satisfaction, and HELPING me! Even before school has started, I am feeling such a difference in the hairy parts of the day, and they are enthusiastic as well. Win!

Yesterday I planned our week's menu and The Captain did The Shop. He even took two kids with him so I could work on some deep cleaning without little helpers. Have I mentioned how amazing he is? I wouldn't volunteer to take little people shopping if I was offered chocolate!

I whipped up some zucchini muffins and bread for this week and to toss in the freezer. I also made popcorn and divided it into snack containers for lunch boxes. Lunches this week will be easy for The Captain to make. Yes, he does that too.

I found these magnetic white boards at IKEA. A pack of three was only a couple dollars. In addition to using them for my menu, I have these up for the preschool/school lot to double check that they've done what they need to do before heading out the door.

Now that I've layed the groundworks for what I hope will be a smooth week, I can just chill with the dinosaurs Finch left out for me. When I ask him what makes him happy he said "Dinosaurs...and Twelve Dancing Princesses (a Barbie movie)." 

He also told me he won't miss me when he starts preschool this week. So, no worries there. B has a new contact schedule with his parents, and Small Sun starts T-ball on Saturday. Ballet starts back this week as well. I'm sure we'll be happy to see Saturday come!

Postponing Transitions

B's crib is gradually breaking. Because B came with his own crib, I gave our previous crib away on Freecycle, in the spirit of anti-hoarding. Now I wish I had it because B's crib is breaking.

B is 2.5 years old. I have a perfectly good toddler bed sitting in my garage (that no one on freecycle wanted). Wouldn't the logical thing be to put B, who is old enough, into the toddler bed instead of looking for a new crib? Of course it would be.     

With foster care I am always looking ahead, wondering which parts of the year this child will be with us? Will he be here for Christmas? Should I buy Christmas presents? Will he be here for Easter? Do I have matching shirts for the boys for Easter Sunday? What should we do about booking our plans for the spring school holidays? Can we go somewhere more adventurous that our three are big enough for, or do we need to plan a nap-friendly schedule for B?

It's all up in the air. Christmas came and went, obviously.

I don't think ahead to things like transitioning from a cot to a bed, or potty training, or applying for preschool because it's not likely that I will be the one making those decisions.

Except now I am, because the cot is breaking, and I have a perfectly good toddler bed in the garage.

Another reason I hesitate (other than the tiresome parenting work these transitions require), is that as an adoptive parent, I am very aware that each of these transitions is a significant lost first for his permanent family. A chubby toddler in diapers, who sleeps in a cot, is still a baby for whatever family he is with long-term. A big, almost preschooler baby, but a baby still.

A child in a bed and out of nappies (diapers) is more of a boy. There will be more that they've missed, and they've already missed a great deal. 

I find I'm always stumbling like a drunk trying to walk a straight line when making these decisions. I stagger over onto the side of "most immediately convenient", then fall headlong towards "best for his future family". I take pictures like any sentimental parent, not knowing what scrapbook/baby book/forgotten file folder they will end up in. 

For today we'll try to keep the cot together  and decide what to do next.

Thanks

I just want to take a moment to thank each of you who left a comment on my blog about our family's current challenges. In my real life there aren't many people who can understand the dynamics of being an adoptive parent. I come here discuss the things I have no opportunity to discuss in my day-to-day interactions, and to feel heard and supported here really means so much to me. 

I've spent many years listening to different perspectives on adoption, and in a way demonizing the adoptive parent's perspective because of how they/we have perpetuated some of the unethical practices that exist in adoption. I am uncomfortable being in the position of privilege in adoption. Because of that I haven't really given myself permission to own my own feeling because I've been the one to gain everything, while others lose out. 

In this situation I am just deciding to acknowledge that all our feeling are valid and worth exploring, mine included. 

Small Sun's first letter to his dad, along with pictures and a letter written by The Captain is winging its way Stateside. I guess we just wait to see what happens next. Thanks for being along for the ride.

The School Run

I feel like I can hear the sound of crickets chirping after writing that last blog post. I expected some questions and comments and...nothing. So, moving right along! No intense family transition to see here, keep it moving!

With Small Sun and Sprout returning to school, and Finch starting preschool two days a week, and B in daycare three days a week, the mom taxi will be back on the road.

Four days a week I will have double drop off and pick ups, and one day I will have triple. That's right, school - preschool - daycare, rinse and repeat. 

Then there is ballet and Small Sun's sport of choice to add in. It is not unusual for me to spend up to three+ hours in the car on some days. Did I just say that out loud? Lord, help me!

I'm not going to whine about it. Until B goes, there is no relief from this necessity. What I DO want is a plan. How can I make this driving more fun?

I am planning to get the Chronicles of Narnia on disk for us all to enjoy, and I think looking for some other audio to keep the kids occupied (and not bickering) would be helpful.

For myself, I think getting some books on disk/an audible membership, etc would help. I can listen to sermons, podcasts, etc, which I really enjoy doing. For me, actually getting those things off the net and onto my phone/ipod is the part I struggle with. Those things take so much time for me to navigate that it is not easy and I need easy!

What else? In cooler weather I like to make myself a cup of tea to take in the afternoon to enjoy as I go. The only problem with that is by the time I'm getting to the end of the school run I am just about peeing myself! Silly post-baby bladder.

So, what am I missing here? How can I make all this time in the car a positive? I need your ideas!

 

 

 

Walk Careful, Now

Sometimes the biggest moments in life come as surprises, changing everything in a blink.

Not long ago a letter arrived in the mail. A letter from Small Sun's first dad. 

We have never had any contact with Small Sun's dad. I won't go into how or why on the internet, but we just didn't. Actually, we have known so little about him, we haven't had much to satisfy Small Sun's growing curiosity.

Now, out of the blue, Small Sun's first dad knows our full names and adress, and has initiated contact. We have made every effort to make ourselves available, should contact with him ever be an option but we didn't know if it ever would be, and the decision was out of our hands.

To be honest, I am having trouble processing this turn of events. It is also rocking Small Sun in a pretty significant way. 

Not only has his fictitious image of his first dad just been confronted with a real first dad, he is also processing some details about his placement and first family situation that we didn't anticipate him knowing until later on. When the letter showed up and he started asking questions, we decided to answer him honestly, and go from there.

Small Sun is seven and a half. Aside from developmental readiness, how do you ever know when your child can handle intense life experiences? Naturally, he is imagining a future that heavily involves his first dad. He imagines us all living together somehow, and his first family forming a cohesive unit that does not exist in reality. 

He presses us, eagerly, and often, about when and how we will spend time with his first dad. When can he come to our house? Can they go biking together? 

Our relationship with Small Sun's first mom is built on history and mutual trust. We don't have a relationship with his first dad. I was actually shocked that he contacted us directly instead of through the agency somehow. 

I don't know how to convey to Small Sun how much we support him knowing his first dad, but that he is also essentially a stranger that we have to get to know over time. It's not like we will just drop him off for a father-son camping trip at the first opportunity.

I also struggle with parts of the letter, and the way I feel personally when I read them.

There are just so many dynamics of the situation that are extremely challenging. Again, details I won't outline here, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Small Sun has a caring, devoted, and amazing father - The Captain. At the same time he carries the wounded heart of a child who was abandoned by his dad. It is a bizarre combination to see in a person. He idolizes and admires and loves The Captain, but I know he identifies with his first dad in a very deep way.

We are doing our best to walk him through this season, processing new information, and working towards a future relationship, but it is all so new and surprising. We're trying to walk things out well, nurturing Small Sun and honoring his first family, and it is not an easy task.

 

Chores

One of the reasons I have been enjoying the summer holidays so immensely is because I don't feel stressed. In my regular life, I often feel stressed, and my days feel like endless to-do lists. I am always trying to work more efficiently, doing so many things at once I confuse myself!

The Captain has an insane work ethic and I feel like I need to be able to show him proof of my productivity at the end of the day. Silly? Maybe, I don't know.

Getting everyone out in the morning is the most stressful, but the afternoon/dinner/homework witching hour comes a close second.

I've been thinking about how to improve these rough patches in our day, and I realize that my kids are capable of doing so much to help with my long list of to-do items. Our kids help around the house, but I've long put off a formal chore system because it seems so complicated, and then there's the questions of allowance, chore rotation, chore frequency...taking the time to come up with the system seems challenging.

Don't even get my started on Pinterest and people's hand painted wooden chore boards with hooks for individually painted chore tags!

Let's start simple, is my motto. I sat down and wrote a short and realistic list of what I would like to outsource to the kids 98% of the time.

During the witching hour it always seems like I'm trying to oversee homework and make dinner, while the compost bucket is overflowing, the sun is setting on the laundry outside, and the dish drainer is full of the afternoon's clean dishes, and I just can't do what I am trying to do because I have to sidetrack in so many different directions.

I found a website that said to simply have three columns, one for the chores, one for deadlines, and one for check marks. Simple! I plan on getting a dry-erase type board so that I can change things around as I need to.

I'm not going to tie the chores to allowance at this point. We do give our kids the opportunity to earn pocket money for extra jobs. Some times they are motivated, and some times they dissapoint me by not wanting to do the job for the amount I'm offering. So, for now, these chores will just be their responsibility, with no monetary reward. 

I want to start the new system as soon as possible to help them get used to it before school starts. 

How do chores work at your house? What advice would you give a newbie chore chart maker? Help!

Summer Continues

It turns out that eight weeks of holiday is a really long time. I mean, a really. long. time.

 The first five weeks we were giddy with the sheer absence of obligations. We had parties, we had playdates, we got out there and did things. We also slept in and lazed around the house all day.

Then were was Sinterklaas, and Christmas, and New Years. Melbourne was awesome, and we enjoyed our house guests the week after our trip.

Now the dust has settled, the post Christmas house purge is complete, the Christmas craft activities have been completed with enthusiasm and we still have three weeks to go.

Three weeks to go.

All the North American blogs I read are talking about how to beat the January malaise. Short daylight hours, grey skies and bleak landscapes, houses dishevelled from the holidays, you know, shaking off the gloom.

Here we are blue skies and heat waves requiring new colors to be added to the temperature maps. Code purple! is not what we yelled while we lay languishing in front of the air conditioner as the temperature reached 43/109 degrees yesterday. We ate popsicles and played in the sprinkler before bedtime because it was too hot to do it during the day!

The house is dishevelled from sand and twigs being tracked in from the backyard, and blanket forts being built at every opportunity. The toys are getting more play than they do all year, and when Small Sun asks to ride his bike right before dinner time, The Captain shrugs his shoulders and says "if a kid isn't out riding his bike late in summer, what kind of summer is it?"

The kids are playing with the dog who is alternately a villain, a spy, a dangerous dingo, and a wild beast. They are spending endless hours in the garden making sandcakes, and giving each other rides in the wagon.

It is fabulous, and we have three more weeks to go!

When B goes back to childcare in a week, I want to take his daycare days to take the bigger kids to the beach, or the city, or the pool, things that I just can't seem to manage with B in tow. 

What do you like to do in the dog days of summer when activities start to run dry? 

 

 

 

Loving the Unlovable

It's common knowledge that when children have routines and boundaries, they feel secure and safe, and if they are safe they can feel loved and happy and respond in kind. For a child that has not always had their physical and emotional needs met appropriately, lack of routine can feel like the floor has fallen out from under them and they don't know what will happen next. That anxiety kind of overules everything, and their behavior reflects their anxiety.

As long as we were in the midst of a bustling holiday schedule with a big trip underway, and then a week of houseguests, B was excited and fine. Now we are in the tail end of the summer holidays where we have very little planned, B's daycare is closed for two weeks, and his contact schedule has been rearranged and conflicts with his naptime. Add to that a new contact worker today, a caseworker transporting him because my car is in the shop, and a re-arranged contact room, B came home ready for a fight.

He was scowling when he came through the door. He started taking swipes at me as soon as I set him down to make his lunch. Then, with one of his caseworkers as an audience, he put on a full show. Rolling on the ground, mashing his food, nearly tipping his chair over by throwing himself against his high chair buckles, screaming at an absolute hysterical level, and then from his cot, trying to throw himself over the rails.

I almost cried. He scratched me on my legs, arms, chest, and pulled my hair out of a bun. 

I used to think about how as Christians we are supposed to love the "unlovable". In my mind that meant a homeless person who is unnatractive because they are dirty, or someone who has a mishapen body...somehow in my mind it was about attractiveness.

Right now I am in a battle to love one unlovable little person. It is a fight. I am coming to see that in my real life, unlovable looks like a toddler who is angry with me when I am being kind. It is loving a child who is physically aggressive towards me when I am trying to take care of him. It is persisting in trying to be affectionate to a child who is screaming and hitting me. When B is raging, he is very hard to love.

The last couple days have been very hard. Last night I couldn't sleep, after a particularly long and emotional day. I just begged God for grace to get up again today, with a cheerful heart, to try again to love better than I did yesterday.

I am living the lesson I am trying to teach my older children. "It is okay to be angry, but we try not to sin (or make poor choices) while we are angry."

When I get so flustered I just look for the next thing in front of me that I need to do. While B raged in his cot I washed a couple dishes. Then, at a pause in the screaming, I scooped him up and held him on my lap and fed him his lunch like a baby. He ate every bite, said "done!", and hopped down to play happily. He had proof in his belly that I would take care of him, and reassured, he was ready to move on.

I feel like I've been through the carwash after these sessions. Sometimes I just want to curl up and take a powernap to recover! But there are three other kids that also need my attention and affection, who are also rattled by B's outbursts.

Sprout asked me "why is B do unhappy?" "I don't know." I said, his shrieks bouncing off the walls, drowning out even the thoughts in my brain. "I think it's because he misses his family." she said. Yes, she's right.

This week Finch has started saying, with conviction, "I am B's brother." One of the older kids will correct him and say "you are B's foster brother." Today he responded "I am B's brother until he goes, and then I will be a baby again."

Yes, loving the unlovable is a sacrifice. I never imagined it would look like a gorgeous little boy who could be part of Benneton ad, but here we are, giving it our  best shot and praying for tomomorrow to be a bigger success than today.

The Great Purge

If there's anything I like as much as digging through shops to find that perfect! little! something! it is de-cluttering and getting rid of heaps of stuff.

Back in Nashville we lived across the street from a sweet little thrift shop. I would leave a bag or two of stuff on the steps every couple of weeks. I would also take a bag or two of newly purchased treasures about as often, so basically it was a constant cycle.

De-cluttering with kids is tricky. You have to run the operation in stealth mode.

The Captain got the kids set up with a time-consuming and absorbing craft activity. While they were cranking out hand-assembled and painted wooden trains, we were eliminating bag after bag of toys and an unimaginable amount of straight up garbage that lived amongst the toys.

We also have a vast amount of children's books. Well, books of all kinds, but our children have an impressive library. I dragged out a full box of books that didn't make the cut leaving hundreds still on our shelves  and in massive tupperware containers that we rotate throughout the year.

Then there was the baby/kid/outgrown stuff. I tend to be a person who keeps lots of stuff for "just in case" until I feel for a moment that I am a hoarder. I may hoard things in clear plastic boxes with labels of the contents, organized in stacks...but it's still hoarding isn't it?

I have decided not to keep Small Sun's outgrown clothes for Finch if they aren't nice and I don't like them. My personality is a struggle between being a person who loves to get something for nothing, and someone who likes to dress well and have my family looking smart. Oftentimes the scrounger wins.

Actually, having foster children has changed that for me. I always buy them new clothes if I don't have very nice things on hand, because having a foster child wearing worn out hand me downs is just wrong! Learning to part easily with money for their clothes had made me realize that I don't have to use the hand me downs for Finch either!

The next step is to go from buying WalMart (Big W) value clothes to something that will last more than a couple months...baby steps.

Just like we distract the kids to get rid of their stuff, The Captain also tries to distract me to get rid of more stuff. "Honey, I set a cheese plate up on the counter, can you try the Edam to tell me if you like it?" He knows I'll be gone for quite some time!

That husband is sneaky and I have to keep a close eye on him. Once his mother told me that in a purging frenzy he once convinced her to pitch heaps of sentimental things she had been saving her whole life...and she still regrets it. I know I'll find my wedding dress in the Salvos bag one of these days.

After hours of organizing, I thought I would browse Pinterest for some refreshingly creative ideas. It seems everyone else in the world is also organizing, making meal plans, eating healthy, coming up with 300 simple ways to be less cluttered, you know, New Year's kind of stuff. I didn't realize I was such a cliche, but the bags of maternity clothes piled next to me tell the true story!

 

 

 

January

If I eyeball 2013, there is a curve, and I can't see round the bend. Each time I try to sit and write I get distracted. Blogs to read! Facebook! Post holiday online sales! 

The Captain bought me a ChromeBook for Christmas to facilitate my writing. He is my technology pusher, nudging me beyond my comfort zone. I used to be all pen and paper and landlines and bit by bit he has pushed me. First it was this blog (His idea. I said, "aren't blogs just for self absorbed over-sharers? Get a journal!" the way you'd yell "get a room!"), then came the picture phone ("if I want to take a picture, I can just use my camera!"), then a smartphone, then a reader on my phone, and now I'm writing on a laptop listening to Pandora, and learning how to embed video links. Where will it stop? Bionic occular implants? I just don't know!

Anyway...

Our holidays have been amazing. Fantastic. Spectacular. Everything I dreamed they would be.

There was the road trip to Melbourne and reconnecting with heart-friends there. Christmas day found us by the pool with shrimps on the barbie, the kids alternated swimming and eating. The rest of us just kept up a pretty steady graze without bouts of exercise. A real highlight was a spontaneous call to Small Sun's first mom and their resulting conversation.

Boxing Day was picture perfect at Bell's Beach on the Great Ocean Road. I explored rock pools with Sprout, rocked a hysterical B to calm while watching ocean swells, and enjoyed a full day in the sun with the immensely blue Australian sky smiling down in adoration.

New Years Eve found us back in Sydney at our favorite location for the fireworks. We gathered with friends at Clarke's Point and stayed for the 9pm Family Fireworks and the 12pm show extraordinaire! They were truly breathtaking!

New Year's Day we gathered with dear friends for a pool party and for once the water was actually warm enough that I wanted to swim! My favorite thing was watching Finch bask in his newly discovered (from the bowels of the garage) float. He lay with his cheek on the warm plastic, entirely content for hours on end. Watching him, I could remember that feeling - the heat of the sun, the distant noise of the kids in the pool as your eyes drift open and closed, and the occasional cold splash startling you from your reverie.

The holidays have been everything I had hoped for.

Now the house is quiet, and I am the last one up sitting by the glowing Christmas tree. I am taking one last loving look around at the house decorated for Christmas. Tomorrow I'll pull out the boxes and start putting the sparkle and the flash and the holiday books and the cookie cutters away. I'm glad that here in Australia we are still celebrating summer, even after the holidays have passed.

When I look down the road of 2013, there is a curve and I can't see around the bend, so tonight I will just look at the twinkle lights, instead.