Happy Birthday

It's my birthday.

Ohh, ahhh.

Ugh.

I have 365 days to finish my 30 by 30 goals. 

I'll have an update for you soon.

I am going to kick ass on that too, by the way. Be prepared.

Here's the point. (I always have a point. I just don't get to it quickly.)

Since it is my birthday and birthday festivals are super fun, especially here --

(Actually, this birthday festival has had a surprising and super ungood twist)

--I wanted you to have a chance to share in the fun!

Happy Vicarious Birthday to you!

Happy Vicarious Birthday to you!

Happy Vicarious Birthday dear bloggy friends!

Happy Vicarious Birthday to you!

One of my sweet readers will be getting a birthday present too!

Want to see one of the things I've gotten for my birthday?

It's an Ethiopian Coin Necklace!

I bet you don't have one...yet!

 

I LOVE mine. It is great. It's a very "every day" kind of necklace. It's not on a flimsy chain that I have to worry about the kids tugging at, it's the perfect length for either a t-shirt or a scoop neck shirt, or a v-neck. It's different looking, it's not something plasticky and mass produced from T@rget. Another great thing about it, is that it's not girly-girly. If you have a husband or teenage son who is cool then they would like this too. It's total awesomeness. 

 These are being sold by a family who is fundraising their adoption. They are almost there and we can help them. I wrote this post recently about supporting adoptive families. This is another way that you can help a family! Support their fundraisers. These are people who are trying desperately to be parents for a child who desperately need parents. As a family that fundraised, I can tell you that they are grateful to each and every person that brings them closer to their child. To you it's a little thing, to them it's everything.

Here is Little Miss modeling the necklace that I will be giving away.

She was SO excited to have the same necklace as me. She'd touch mine, touch hers, say "pretty" and smile. She actually cried when I made her take it off. I'm not into the whole mommy-and-me-matching-thing. I find it creepy. However, she liked this enough that I would say it was fostering bonding! Therefore, Little Miss will be getting her own. I will be matchy-matchy if it means attachment!

In order to win the Vicarious Birthday present you need to do the following:

1. Be a follower (old or new)

2. Ask me a question that I can answer in future posts

3. Post this to your blog and/or facebook

Good luck to you all!

Let's Talk About...Anatomy for a preschooler

I just had a conversation with Peanut and now I think I've swallowed my tongue. Luckily, I don't need it to blog. Okay, if anyone is reading this and is uncomfortable with "the birds and the bees" you might want to look away from your screen. Yes, seriously, that would be the conversation that I just had my son. Did you know he's not even four yet? Yeah. Now you know why I swallowed my tongue.

Let's go back in time a few days to when this all began IN. THE. GROCERY. STORE. Here we go...

Peanut: "Mom, do you remember when I was a tiny baby?"

Me: "Yes."

Peanut: "I was inside your body?"

Me: "Right."

Peanut: "Well, how did I come out?"

Me: Leaning in very close to him in the peanut butter aisle. "Mommies have a special place in their body where babies come out."

Peanut: Loudly, not respecting the peanut butter aisle. "Well, what's it called?" We've never actually named any parts of the female body. He knows that he has a p*nis, that's what we call it, he's fond of talking about it, and we've kept it at that.

Me: It's not that I'm stumped, but I mean it's the peanut butter aisle! I can't say THAT in the peanut butter aisle! We want him to know anatomically correct names and not be ashamed of using them, but not NOW! not here! not at three! I continue to think frantically. He continues to ask loudly, "What is the special place called?"

Me: "We'll talk about it at home, buddy."

My reprieve was over at naptime today. He told me that he wanted to talk about tiny babies again. My face smiled at him. My insides screamed.

Peanut: "Where inside your body do babies grow?"

Me: "It's called a uterus. Can you say that?" (Of course he can.) He stops and thinks.

Peanut: "Yeah, but how does the baby come out?" When I asked how he thought it worked he of course thought that babies came out of bottoms.

Me: Much internal wailing and gnashing of teeth. "It's called a V----. Can you say that?" (Clear as a bell. Super. An octogenarian with hearing problems would be able to understand that.) See, this is where I think the conversation will stop. But no. My child has questions. Perfect.


Peanut: "Well, where is the V---?"

Me: Seriously? "You have a p*nis, but girls have V's and they're in the same place. (pause) Kind of." (I mean, we're REALLY done with the conversation now, right?" Nope. He's got more questions.

Peanut: "How does a baby get IN the uterus?"

Me: See my brain start smoking. Wait, what? No, please tell me that wasn't his question. I believe in correct terminology, fine, but this is getting out of control. I didn't really want to answer this and so I asked him what he thought. He thought that the mommy must have eaten the baby. I felt it important to clear that up. We talk about how tummies and bottoms are just for food and not for babies. "Mommies and Daddies make the baby together and it goes in the uterus."

Peanut: Looking very confused. "I don't think that's right. Grownups can't fit inside a body to put a baby there."

Me: RAHHHHH! "Okay, daddies have something called sp*rm inside their penis and that helps make the baby." As I'm speaking I'm trying desperately to end the conversation. Seriously. I'm drawing the line at telling him about sex. That just ain't gonna happen. I don't know what the actual age is that you tell a child about sex, but it should at least be after they don't believe in Santa Claus anymore, right?

Peanut: "Hey, mom?"

Me: I'm absolutely cringing inside, death is imminent. "Yes, buddy?"

Peanut: "Can I see a Vag--a?"

Me: That would be the point where I swallowed my tongue. (I did unswallow my tongue long enough to rehash a previous conversation about private parts of the body.)

Lord have mercy on my soul. And so then I hightailed myself over to Amazon to check things out. I had to know what kind of information was in books directed at his age. Did I give too much information? Is my son hyper-aware? Have I just damaged him for life? Am I damaged for life?

The jury is still out for me, but it turns out that most of the books that I saw went into the same level of "detail" so far as terms given without actual describing sex for the 3-5 year old bracket. And of course there were parents that said it was too much information, but there you have it. Peanut is (clearly) an inquisitive child and so I know we will discuss this again and again with him. Hopefully, we can keep it out of the grocery store though!

I also ordered this book for him/us. It's from a Christian perspective about how God made everyone different. It talks about the differences between girls and boys using correct terminology. It talks about people being different sizes and colors as well and it mentions that while lots of children join their families through birth that some children are adopted as well. (Peanut was able to tell me while we talked that Little Miss did not grow in my body, but she grew in the body of her first mom and he used that term which made me happy.) It's supposed to be very positive with a "you are special" vibe to it. Glossy pages with pictures of people of various elasticities, but going back to simple drawings for anatomy illustrations. It also goes into how a baby grows inside a body. At least that's what it's like per the reviews. We'll see when it arrives!

Also, for the overly concerned the reason that I used --s, @s, and *s is not because I'm so prudish, but because there are somethings that I don't want to show up in Google search results for....

Shortsighted

Sometimes I'm a little bit psych(ot)ic, but most of the times I'm not. Here is a glimpse into my brain from ONE year ago at what is decidedly one of my psychic lows. I was not getting any vibes that my life was about to change so drastically so soon. At the time I was full of gloom and doom because I couldn't see anything happening. Looking back, all I can see is God's hands.  

(I do have a slightly harder time seeing Said Hands currently, but I'm pretty sure that looking back in a year I'll be saying the same thing again.)

July 28, 2009: We are living in California (oh comfortable year round weather, how I miss you). We have our two boys who are 2.5 years old and a sweet little 7 months old. Six weeks before this we decided that we would adopt for sure *within the next five years*. On this day we received our orders to a different duty station, Fort Meade. We are excited about the assignment, but I'm crushed because this means we won't start our adoption processing until January 2011.

July 29, 2009: We read Little Miss' three sentence "biography" on Holt's Waiting Child listing. We fill out the online application and request more information about her. 

July 30, 2009: We see her picture for the first time and the rest is history. You can read it all over my blog.

What a difference a day makes. On July 28th I'm whining because I'm "never" going to be able to adopt. On July 29th I found my daughter and God changed my life forever. What a difference between what I know and what God knows. 

And now?

July 28-30, 2010: I have had my daughter in my house for almost 3 months. What a difference a year makes.   

I think that on July 28, 2011 I'll be able to say the same thing again. What a difference a year makes.  

Let's Talk About...Supporting Adoptive Families

I've been doing a little posting for my friend Chrissy lately.

She's been in Ethiopia.

Picking up her THREE rockin' kiddos.

Bringing them home.

She already has FOUR rockin' kiddos at home.

****A pause for prayer****

Amen.

I cannot wait for them to be home.

Chrissy and I have been talking about fall camping.

We'd be four adults and kids aged:

1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 14.

(Or something like that)

None of that is the point. 

Ignore that whole last grouping.

I could erase it, but that's not my style.

Here's the point.

I wrote a post for Chrissy's family and friends.

It's about what people can do to help out a new family.

People are used to helping families with new babies.

They seem to think it's more complicated for adoptive families.

It's not.

Here's your guide to be a Super Adoption Supporter!

Whassup

I have a lot of people who are scared of me love me and want to know "how are things going NOW?"  We've been home for not quite three months now. I think people (and myself sometimes) are expecting a lot of progress. Or maybe they're hoping that I'll stop complaining sometime and have good things to say about how perfect my life, how completely happy I am, and how grateful Little Miss is that we adopted her.

The problem is that those things are not the case, will never be the case, and I refuse to lie. There has been progress, for sure. But man, let's be honest, we're talking about the difference between "terrible" and "awful". Do you think it's ugly of me to say that? Maybe it is, but since I'm the one living it I'm going to call it like I see it. And the way that I see it is that my life has been exploded.

I am still struggling with WHY?! I can't stop feel like I "deserve" a peaceful and calm life with a sweet and quiet daughter, my two sons who don't have any problems and are well-behaved, and my husband who is adoring and flawless. When I start feeling like that I have to say to myself "Self, where the hell do you get off even thinking that?!" and "Self, are you really so stupid that you think that's what your life was like before?!"

To be sure, Little Miss has added some significant challenges to life that we had never and probably would not have ever dealt with had we not adopted. However, that does not mean that my life was perfect before, that everything would have been hunky-dory if we had "just had another baby", or that we wouldn't have faced even harder situations in the future. Life just doesn't come with those guarantees no matter what my addled martyred brain says. And I know this, I do, I just persist in struggling. I wonder why this happened to us when I hear about other people who adopted and everything just goes swimmingly for them (where did that phrase even come from?)  and I wonder why that couldn't have been us.

What is hardest for me doesn't actually even involve me. I see my husband who is a FANTASTIC father reach out in love to Little Miss again and again and again every day and again and again and again every day I see Little Miss reject him. I see her prefer a stranger. I see her ignore him. I see her intentionally snub him with a look and her body language. I see her look at him like he is someone who hurts her. And it MAKES. ME. ANGRY. I know that this is a symptom of her pain, but it is just shattering. He doesn't talk about it a lot and I'm not going to share his feelings here, but it hurts him because how could it not?

We are still trying to figure how to help the kids manage their relationships with each other. This by itself is exhausting and it has to happen every second that the kids are awake. Little kids are totally mixed up people. They are small in size, but have big feelings. They have big feelings, but they have small amounts of self-control. They have small voices, but huge screams. Seriously, just managing the various behaviors and different needs of three small children is enough, but there's actually still stuff we're trying to do on a daily basis. We've always believed in grace-based parenting, but our parenting skillz are definitely under attack being tested.

We had Little Miss' evaluation through the Early Childhood Intervention people the other day. It was really...humbling. We definitely qualified for services because apparently Little Miss has one of the worst attention spans they've seen on a child her age in a long time. Maybe a more precise way to say it is that she has no ability to focus. (Then you combine that with a very strong will and it's problematic at least for us, I don't think they're worried about the strong will though.) Their concern is that if she can't focus she will make me crazy won't be able to learn. Although she has great language skills right now, even though SHE REFUSED TO SAY A SINGLE WORD during the test. They did believe me that she speaks well at home, but explained that even if she is doing well right now that language will obviously get more complicated as she gets older and if she can't focus that she will have a hard time keeping her language up to age-appropriate levels. Anyway, that's just a brief explanation of it, but it's another dynamic at our house. I have to attend a meeting so they can explain things in more depth to me and then we'll start services.


I think mostly people just need to know that there are no quick fixes to adoption issues. Maybe we're at the 10 week mark, and that sounds like a long time, but really, 10 weeks is just a drop in the adoption bucket. You can't count on having "a transition period" that last 2-8 weeks. It just doesn't work like that. Even the 6 month mark that many people talk about (which we haven't come close to yet) isn't a guarantee and then there's the "once your child has been with you longer than they were in an orphanage". (I do believe that the last one can make a difference in some circumstances.) The things is that these are arbitrary markers that we use as adults to gauge our success as a family, to judge when we think things will get better. It helps us to be able to see some light at the end of the tunnel, to give us some hope. I get that. I want that for my family too. But we need to remember that our child is not is not a light on timer that will turn off at a set time.


It's hard to remember that though. For myself, when people ask me how I'm doing I tell them I'm just emotionally exhausted. I am drained. I just want to know when we can move forward. I want to know that we have X many more days and then my daughter will be friendly to my husband, or we could go out in public without a meltdown. I could handle that even if it was a long time at least we'd know that it would end soon. But we don't have that we just have to keep putting one foot in front of another and stepping on faith. We're still doing our attachment therapy and I did decide to do the Z. We're ready to move from surviving to thriving, but it's tiresome and I am weary.




Let's see...what else is going on in Zehlahlum house? It's my Birthday Festival which is fun and my MIL and niece are coming this week so that's good times. The babies have gotten rid of their giardia, which is fabulous. Ohhh, I've got a rockin' giveaway (hint hint) coming up for my birthday, so stay tuned!