Diet Zehlahlum

Welcome to the Saturday feature at Zehahlum Family where you get the same great Zehlahlum taste that you know and love, but now with less thought... I mean calories. Presenting: Diet Zehlahlum. You'll never know what you're going to get maybe it will be pictures, maybe it will be funny things that my kids say, maybe it will be examples of my humorous attempts at Parenting, but whatever it is, it should go down nice and easy and won't settle at your hips (although I'm not responsible if it does)!
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DISCLAIMER: The following is an attempt at humor. It is not anything that I actually say to my children. I have not said it in the past, nor will I say it in the future. It is simply something that I say in my head, but that does not mean that I am now or have ever "heard voices", in order for me to find some humor in my daily existence. The presence of this statement on my blog in no way negatively affects the way I parent my children. I respond to my children and explain the rules to them graciously with a sweet voice and a smiley face. Please remember that this is just my humor. It may not be your humor, but it's also not your life. If you have any concerns please submit them to me (not my agency or my husband) in writing within 48 hours of reading this.


So one day I was reminding Peanut who was poised ready to strike a sibling that "if you choose to hit then you will sit". Nothing like a rhyming rule! And since Peanut is starting to read we've been doing a lot of rhyming words and so I have them in my head. The funny/frightening thing was that the "hit" rhyming words all applied to us as well.

It turned out to be rather pithy in my opinion and it made me giggle to myself. In fact, I found it funny enough that I wrote it on an index card and stuck it to my refrigerator at my eye level. I find myself looking at it often as my eyes drift longingly up to the booze...

Ahem. Anyway.

"If you choose to hit, spit, throw a fit, or act like a bit**, then you will sit in the pit." 

For the concerned: Yes, it really does say "bit**" because otherwise it wouldn't rhyme and "the pit" is simply the pack and play and no we don't call it that for real because that would be shaming or demeaning or nonattachmenting or something. I get it. It's just about the rhyme!

For the laughing: Yes, you do have a great sense of humor. You can borrow my saying and put it on your fridge too. Just credit me. And please be sure your children can't read yet. :)

Sinful Me

The seven deadly sins are wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. I'm going to jump right to the good stuff and in typical Zehlahlum style take it totally out of context and  make it irreverent.

LUST, baby.

The following post will be devoted to lusting over things that I would like to have, but do not have. They're in no particular order as you'll see. Welcome to my Lust List!

Lust One: I've decided I needed a corporate sponsor for my life. I'm thinking that The Container Store would be the most appropriate and helpful at this point. If (and that's a big if) I could name all the things in my house that need to be organized I would say: Everything. Closets, drawers, playrooms, under-the-beds, junk in the van, the garage, the storage room, the kids' rooms. My brain. (Is there anyone who can organize my brain?) Anyway, I would let them come in and film my chaos and then film us living in harmony with all their wonderful organizational products. I'd happily sell out on my blog to them (no offense, ya'll) and they could put their slogans over our super cool (and still dented) minivan. The Container Store, are you out there?! Call me!! So my first object of lust is a corporate sponsor for my life.

Lust Two: New shoes, I'd like these Five Finger Shoes. And these Reebok shoes that have me (and my husband!) totally sold by the commercial. And I'm not a Reebok girl. I like me my Nikes. Always. Even my Nike socks. (I have a sock issue.) Anyway, I can justify wanting these because they're playing into my first edition of 30 by 30 by 30 goals number 28. In fact, I don't have Nike shoes right now and everytime I put my feet into my current pair of sneakers I wince. Blech. So, new shoes.

Lust Three: I like and will not/cannot buy myself this wicked cool embroidery/sewing machine. How's that for something I never thought I'd say? A sewing machine. Great. I am the cool beyond cool .


Lust Four: Really. Shemar Moore. There's nothing to say except maybe "please"... (And yes, Andrew knows about us)

 
Lust Five: (Let's just go back and look at Lust Four again and again and again) Okay so the fifth...(one more peek at Shemar. I mean he is just MmmMmmMmmmm) Okay, the fifth... iphone! iphone! iphone! Okay, so I don't know exactly what I need this for and I don't know exactly what they do (besides everything) except that the power button on my phone doesn't really work and our reception has gone downhill lately. Plus, all the other cool mommies have them! Are you convinced? Neither is my husband. He's okay with my Shemar Moore obsession, but not on board with the iphone...

Lust Six: A new dining room table. We have one that was given to us by my dear MIL. We've put this table and chair set through the ringer. I mean, we've moved it eight times, had two puppies who teethed, and three children who have stained and scratched it. The table is just about ready to be put out to pasture. It's never been exactly our style, but it was (was) nice and the price was exactly right (free) and in our house price trumps style just about every time. I would continue using it indefinitely but it's designed to seat two and then has the two "wings" on the side that go up so it can seat four. See the problem? Father, Mother, Peanut, Little Miss, Pickle...equals FIVE. If we had a real house where I had a kitchen with a little room I'd fold the flap down and put it in there for a great breakfast table. Alas, I don't have a real house. So we'll have to get rid of it and get a bigger table. I'm thinking round with seating for at least six. :) Of course, we've zero plans on horizons to buy a new table. Hence it makes the Lust List.

Lust Seven: See this.............(                                                                        ).....that's silence. And not the kind of silence that means my children are doing naughty things, or my husband is so frustrated that he can't speak because he's breathing fire, or the kind of silence that is me holding my breath in a last ditch attempt not to yell. I want the peaceful kind of silence. Anyone know where I can get that?

Book Review: Kinki Kreations

I'm thinking about committing a crime. I do not want to return this book to the library. It's out of print and so it's not like I can just hop over to Amazon and buy one for a reasonable price. I really want it. I'm pretty sure that our library caps fines on books at $15.00. I'm totally willing to pay that. Alas, I won't. I promise because of my moral upbringing my 30 by 30 by 30 goals. I think if I steal from the library I totally get a fail on number 30.

One afternoon/evening/whatever (I refuse to be constrained by this irrelevant archaic concept of "time" or days of the week for that matter. Do you think my kids care if it's Saturday? Or if it's 4:30 am or 3:00 pm? Nope! This could be why Peanut thinks every meal is breakfast...) I took Peanut to the library so that I could browse (and breathe).

I heard about this book from Happy Girl Hair and so when I saw it staring at me in the library I snatched it up. I also picked up "Curly Girl" so look for a review of that later.

I have to start out my review with a serious gripe though. Let's talk about spelling words incorrectly on purpose. I! HATE! THAT! SO! MUCH! SO! MUCH! I have a flaw flaws. I'm sure I do things that annoy some of you like my penchant for crossing words out. But I really just cannot stand it. (Oh, another flaw. I'm not good with the rules of punctuation.) I don't care if you think it makes your business name cute or clever. It doesn't. I guess it's just a sign of our times, right? It's better to look cute than to sound smart. Just shoot me.

The beginning of the book talks about describing African-origin hair in general, the right tools to have, baby hair, and very basic things like that. Then it breaks haircare down very methodically a chapter about shampoo and preparation for styling before starting with styles. There's nothing earth-shattering in these chapters, but it's laid out very smoothly, calmly, and with step by step pictures.

The styles presented are cornrows, two-strand twists, two-strand twist out, two-twist buns, flat twists, and puffs. None of the directions are complex and you can certainly find more thorough descriptions online, but the book is a great reference. Each style is laid out with step by step directions and pictures. It also goes into how to bead, shampoo braids, a little bit about boys' haircare and caring for locs. There's a FAQ section, a section where kids talk about their hair, and a photo gallery.

The book is really a great reference. Aside from my joking at the beginning of my post this is a book worth owning if you can get your hands on it. If you are an experienced stylist (either professionally or in your own home) then I can see that you wouldn't need this. However, I am not. I think that the beginning and the end of the book are a little "fluffier" and there's a lot of talk about not using chemicals and how to transition which we don't need, but the meaty middle section makes it totally worthwhile. The pictures are black and white and color would be a little nicer, but it's not a big thing.

The whole book has a positive vibe that makes you feel like you can do this. I read through it and thought, "Oh, I could do flat twists. No problem." This turns out to be not the case, but the emotional high was nice. It's very encouraging and I think almost every section ends with the exhortation to keep trying and that you will get better with time.

This is definitely one book to steal from your libary find a pre-loved copy for your own home. Just sayin'.

Congratulations to...

MELISSA!

Melissa donated of course as well as posted on facebook.

I'm very happy for Melissa who commented that she "wanted one BAD" and was even leaving me messages on my FB page asking if I'd drawn a winner yet.


It feels great to know that she's excited about the blanket! lol.


Melissa is also in process of adopting and you can check out her blog as well.


Thank you to everyone who donated. I appreciate it so much, I know Kristin does as well, and our appreciation is nothing compared to knowing that you have helped to bring two boys back into loving families.

So Scared

There have been a few moments when I've really able to "see" some of the trauma that Little Miss has gone through in her life. It is just crushing to see. For all the complaining that I do about how hard life is and how much I struggle I do know that Little Miss has legitimate reasons for her behaviors. I get that, but it's still hard. And then something happens and the depth of her trauma just slaps me in my face.

Over the 4th of July weekend we traveled home to visit my family. We decided to try traveling at night to avoid the horrific holiday traffic in this area. We thought that there might be a chance that our kids were old enough and mellow enough to handle this now and you know, sleep at night in the car like every other frigging child in this country does.  That turned out to be not the case, at all, but we missed the traffic. The only screaming that happened was inside the car....

I took Little Miss out of bed around midnight. She was pretty sleepy and I thought it might work. We fastened her into her carseat, gave her her blankie, snuggled a blanket around her and started on our way. I turned around in the front seat (I wasn't driving) after about 60 seconds to look at the kids.

I got a good look at Little Miss. It was written all over her face. Terror. She was terrified. I can't do justice to how forlorn she looked. Her eyes were huge, wide-open. She was breathing quickly. Her little body was shaking. Her teeth were audibly chattering together.

It was awful to see. I felt sick to my stomach just seeing her fear. If she were older or had more language I would have asked her what she was remembering. Instead I just had to guess. The only other time she would have been in a car for a significant trip would have been when she went from Durame by van to Addis Ababa. I wonder if they drove at night. She was in Durame at the first care center for about six month before she was moved. Six months...far longer than the two months she was with us. Six months...plenty long enough to form attachments with caregivers (and yes, her nannies from Durame remembered her when we were there). Six months... a third of her life at that point she had spent in that location. And then she lost it (and all her attachments again) in one fell swoop. Her reaction was so physical, so visceral that the emotional trauma was just right there, it couldn't be ignored. She must have thought that her time with us was up that we were taking her somewhere else again, to start over, again. One more loss.

I unbuckled and climbed back to her. I touched her face, I squeezed her hands, I looked into her eyes, I kissed her. I told her that we were all going together. I showed her Peanut, Pickle, Daddy, and Mommy all in the car with her. I told her that she would be with us, always. I told her she was safe. I told her I was sorry she was so scared.

I don't know if there was something specific that scared her or if was "just" the emotional scare. Was it something about being outside when it was dark? Did something ever happen to her at night that left that strong of an impression? Was it the disruption of our routine? I know that in retrospect I wouldn't have left at night. I would have gotten up and had breakfast like normal and then left. I would have explained more Was it the car ride and that reminder of travel? Maybe it was just a bad night and she would have woke up crying even if we hadn't been traveling.

It was truly one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my life. I don't think that I will ever forgot how she looked that night.

Last Call

I know that my readers are all too generous and compassionate to be tired of hearing about this so I won't apologize. :) This is your warning that you are running out of time to get your MamaEnat Adoption Blanket of your choice! It only takes a $5.00 to help bring home two kiddos who need tucked in at night by parents. Here's the link! Time runs out at midnight!


Do good. Sleep well tonight! :)

Sweet Sleep?

I had the strangest dream last night. So weird. I kind of have a history of strange dreams so maybe I'll share some of those later, if you're all good. :) I'm letting forcing you all to hear about this because it was so weird and my husband was running late this morning and so he wasn't properly appreciative of how freaky it was.

My husband and I were living in a big dormitory style house with lots of other people. Everyone was an adoptive family. Our "real life" children weren't there, but we had other children who were better behaved, I'm sure. We had adopted a sibling group of four or five, but only two of them were actually featured in the dream, one was a babe-in-arms and the other was a teenage girl. ('cause we're handling the issues of a two year old so well we should clearly have a teen!)

We were getting the children ready for school. Our teenage daughter had had her hair braided by me (earlier, off dream), but it wasn't a very neat job. I was rushing around (I can't rest even in my dreams!) getting kids ready and I told her that I would fix her hair before she left. Then I saw her going into the bathroom with an older black woman like they were being sneaky. They tried to play it off like they were being thoughtful about fixing her hair because I was busy. But I knew and told them that I knew that she wanted the other woman to fix her hair because she didn't think I could do a good job. So, there was a small confrontation about hair braiding and attachment between the three of us. I said that I needed to learn how to braid her hair nicely and I knew that it didn't look good, but if I didn't get to practice then I wouldn't be able to get better. So then I went into the bathroom with them and I styled her hair under supervision of the older woman and it was all okay. And then all the kids went to school and I was rocking our little baby.

Then (in that dream like way) everyone from our dormitory-adoption-house were all suddenly sitting in these two sets of bleachers, bleachers that floated in the air. And it turns out we were living on an island. So, we're all sitting in these bleachers and looking down into this field where all these duels are about to take place (because of course, right?). Apparently there is some kind of a "lottery" because everyone has a number. Well, from what I can tell...teenagers and older had numbers, but only the men. So, they would call these numbers and then those people would have to go duel and the rest of us would watch.

Each duel would be one person from "our side" and one person from the other side (like a floating football stadium). They would put on their pageantry: flags, and emblems, and coats of arm, etc. Then they would strap on their jet pack and do all these swoops and loops and fancy flying on their way down to the duel. Whichever of the two of them could do better stunts got awarded points. So then, they'd be flying around the "field" (think Quidditch) hacking at each other with axes trying to kill each other. (Not sure what good the points would do you if you were dead...) And the rest of us are just watching this happen.

So there I am watching this futuristic-gladiator competition with my family. We're tense (go figure!) and I'm holding the baby, but my oldest daughter is kind of leaning into me and hanging onto my arm. We have ourselves a little bonding moment that is very sweet. Our sweetness is interrupted occasionally because every few minutes another set of numbers are announced even in the people currently competing aren't dead/done yet. We do a little cheering and screaming warnings at our team. (I'm so blood-thirsty) And now there are two sets of guys fly-fighting and their guy kills one of our guys and then they kill our other guy and so now the atmosphere is very tense and somber. Their guys get to go back to their side and they call two more numbers.

The number from our side that is called is Andrew's number. I know it's his number as soon as I hear it. There's two sets of bleachers per side one for the families and one for the fighters. Andrew was sitting with the fighters and so now that he's being called he has to go down there. I have to see him before he goes down because he might be axed up into pieces! So, I'm shoving the baby into her sister's arms and the sister is crying that she doesn't want her new dad to die and she doesn't want me to leave and I tell her that I'll come right back, but I have to go say goodbye.

Apparently the jet packs are only for the fighters because for me to get to Andrew's set of bleachers I get into a...floating canoe and start paddling over to him. I'm frantic because I have to get there before he finishes getting himself ready or I won't get to say goodbye. I make it over there and go scrambling up the bleachers. We have time for a moment together and we're hugging and have our cheeks pressed up against each other and we just keep saying, "I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you" and then he has to go fight.

I try to watch his flight down to the field, but now I have to paddle the floating canoe back over to the other bleachers and be with our kids. We all huddle together and everyone huddles around us. Andrew "wins" the flying contest. Yay!

Then the guy that he is supposed to fight gets into place. But instead of the fight starting he takes off his gloves and you see that he's apparently lost a fight before because all of his fingers have been chopped off at the knuckles. And then he's got this tool and he starts shaving his knuckles into points!

And then I woke up. And I have no idea if I was widowed or not.

Anyone else have any strange dreams lately? Anyone care to do a dream analysis of me? lol.