The Big O

I'm supposed to be going to Orlando the day after I write this, which is probably the same day that you will be reading and thinking, "wow, she is more messed up than I thought she was." I was pretty excited. Now I'm mostly terrified, but still really happy about a weekend that is about ME (me! can you believe it?)

As all these emotions start to creep up on me though I think that maybe I should just to Disney for the whole weekend because Disney doesn't scare me. But these wonderful wonderful strong women that I'm going to spend the weekend with scare me. 

They scare me because I so desperately want to belong with them because they understand, they know, they get it, they live it. They are broken in the same places that I'm broken, but they're muscling through it. Forget Ironman. Triathalon Man. Strongest Man. Whoever they think they are. Let me tell you, they are nothing. That's right, all you musclebound freaks out there (who I'm assuming/hoping don't read my blog) you've got NOTHING on these women. These aren't hoity-toity, fancy pants, tea and crumpets, starch in their knickers, little princess flower poofballs. These are the women that matter, that change the world, that you want your daughter to grow up to be. 

I am desperately afraid that they're going to take one look at me and say, "Hey fat-thighs zit-face, yeah, you with the bad haircut, you. are. a. fraud. Your daughter isn't the problem at all. It's YOU. You suck. Go home."

Because that's what I feel like, a fraud, a faker, a pansy. My daughter doesn't have RAD, we've got no medical conditions, I have a great husband, I've got a lot going for me and I have not suffered for years and years and years like some of these women have. We have a pretty good chance at obtaining a secure attachment to and from our daughter and living out our lives with these hellish months as a distant memory.

On some level it would feel so much safer if the Welcoming Committee was a Screening Committee instead and would just put me right back onto a plane. Because you know what I would do? I'd cry for a few minutes, fix my makeup, and go back on home and do my daily life stuff every day with my mask firmly in place.  It's so much safer and easier to hide, to be brave, to be "fine".

I do know they're not going to say to me that though. Because that's not what they do. Oh, they'll be honest with me and kick me in the pants here or there if I need it, but they will not be the people in my life who say that to me. Others do, others will, even if not with so many words. But it won't be these ladies. They remember what it was like when they were just beginning, when they'd been doing this for less than a year, when sometimes they weren't sure if other people weren't right when they said that they were making it up or imagining it. They know what it takes to keep going, to fight this fight for our kids. And even if I have it better than some of them, even if someday we have no trace of attachment problem left in our lives, they will be the ones who are happiest for me. 

And so I know that this weekend will be hard, the good kind of hard (that's what she said) because the Welcoming Committee is going to welcome me and understand what the'yre welcoming from. It scares me to know that this weekend I will let myself break with these safe safe women to know that I might start crying before noon on Friday and not stop until my plane lands on Monday. I'll cry for myself. I'll cry for these ladies who are becoming my friends. I'll order drinks for myself. I'll order drinks for these ladies who are becoming my friends. They will help me. I will try to help them. We will shore each other back up and we will probably come home and hold on tight to our shattered pieces until next year.

It's scary to know I'm going to fall apart. 

But it's going to be so good to let go. 

I cannot wait. 

Idols

I've learned a lot of things during our adoption so far. Frankly, most of them I could have happily gone my whole life without knowing. Truly, I am slowly and with much forgetting, learning that there is so much blessing in everyday, in what we perceive as "nothing". My lack of knowledge of childhood cancer (for example) is a huge blessing, not knowing how single moms manage is a blessing, my ignorance of the price of residential treatment facilities is a blessing.

The presence of a blessing certainly doesn't guarantee it's future place in your life. I pray not with every fiber of my being, but just because I don't know now doesn't mean that I won't know someday. I think this is another reason that we need to just pour out support, love, peace, and friendship to people who are walking a hard road, who live the life that scares us. We need to love them because one day we could be them, not out of some twisted sense of 'you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours', but out of a sense of solidarity that we're each living this life one day at a time and it goes better together.

We cannot judge people. Cannot. Cannot. Cannot. You think that you would NEVER disrupt an adoption? First of all, how do you know? Have you ever adopted? Have you ever adopted a child with an emotional disorder? Have you ever watched every member of your family shatter and slip through your fingers? Have you ever walked that specific person's path? You haven't. Hug them. Say, "I'm so sorry that you're going/went through this. Let's go get fattening coffee and pastries and you can tell me how awful you feel and I'll just hold it for you awhile." Can you imagine the power that we could wield in society if we'd use our hands to catch each other instead of poke our fingers into wounds? 

Okay, that was all a tangent, a true tangent, but tangent nonetheless. 

Growing up in church (almost literally) you hear about "idols" and the fact that you ought not have them according to God. And frankly, I've never thought I did. Clearly pride was not my problem either.... Anyway, as far as I was concerned idols were a) stone statues you worshiped or things you put in front of God as more important. That sounds like a broad category, but to me that basically meant work or money and I was okay on both of those counts too. See? No idol problem for me.

Then the other day/week/whatever I was quiet and thinking in between screaming at my kids and I was like, "I think my family is an idol." The basic premise was that our adoption was wreaking havoc on my family and my prayer first was, "anything but my family, God", and over time it was, "anything but my family, God". In reality, I think I'm supposed to say, "anything, God." 

I'm still thinking about that and what it means and what it should mean so don't be looking for wisdom here.

Book List

(Okay, as always!!!! screwed up formatting is brought to you by blogspot. My apologies. Ugh. I couldn't even put this at the end of my post because it wouldn't let me put anything after the pictures. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.)


During my time at home we went to the used bookstore, which may be one of the best places in the entire city. I went in knowing that a) I was in a hurry because we had to get out of Dodge early because of impending winter weather and so I had to be fast and b) I had to be cheap because you know, money sucks. Anyway, at least I had to be cheap AND fast (not me personally, you perv) because those correlations should go in the same direction. 

It turned out that I had two separate stacks of books because one, as you will learn, was a series and I wasn't going to buy them if they wouldn't cut me a deal, and I'd just buy the other stack so that I'd keep my costs down, but then my mom at the register just swooped and bought us BOTH stacks so WHOOP!!!!

     


                  
                          Getting the Best Out of Your Kids: Before They Get the Best Out of You
(super excited about this one because I've wanted to read it for a long time)
One Morning in Joseph's Garden: An Easter Story

(My sister bought this one for Peanut when she took the kids to the same bookstore. It's cute. My mom laughed so hard when she was reading this one that she cried.)

(I'm also super excited about this one. So look for a review shortly)


                         





 (This is the one my sister bought for Little Miss. You know, in case my daughter is ever enough of NOT a spaz to be in a wedding...)

 (my version, also from my sister, is English/Spanish)

(Mine is NOT the "I Can Read" series)


                             
(The dinosaur book is what my sister got for Pickle and he is IN LOVE with it.)
                                    
                                                                                
                                                                                           

Okay, and then the set that I'm super excited about in an "I'm raising geeks" kind of way is called, "Blast Off! Let's Explore" and then it's a whole series about space. They are printed by Tick Tock Books which is according to my friend Google, a UK publisher. It says the interest age is 5-7 and lists the reading age 7 years old. These look really well done to me. Each one has actual photographs, as well as nice graphics, charts, and attractive/eye-catching illustrations. The font is bold, and oversized to help early readers. They've got enough facts to be educational and informational without being overwhelming to little ones as well. Peanut is 4, and he'll grasp more of the basics, but won't get all of it yet, so I think their age range of 5-7 is pretty accurate as well. Each book also has a table of contents, glossary, and index.

I don't think that my set was ever even opened. The entire set was there and each one still had that glossy paper in it between the cover and the title page.

                                                                       

Breastfeeding Pics

Christine from Welcome to My Brain publishes a series of user submitted pictures of mommas breastfeeding their babies. I LOVE them. I think they are so sweet and I'm always really jealous of the really cool pictures that people have. Apparently breastfeeding didn't make me any more photogenic than normal so I'll just put my goofy little pictures over here on my own blog.

Ahh yes, nothing like a mother sweetly nursing her skunk child..... Hopefully it's fairly obvious to you that this was at a Halloween party. He was pretty adorable in the custom and won first place in what may have been a rigged competition between Peanut and the rest of the adults at the party. :) He was really cute though! Looking back, I'm not entirely sure why I didn't take the hood off to nurse him, but presumably because if I took it off him then he'd  never let me put it back on again and, hey to his way of thinking, if he could get milk with the thing on it couldn't be that bad.

Halloween would have put this like three weeks before his first birthday, which means that this is probably the last picture that I have of me breastfeeding him. A few days after this picture was taken I got appendicitis (which is a story unto itself) and was hospitalized for surgery which threw a huge gigantic wrench into nursing. We managed to hang in there until just past his first birthday, but by the beginning of December we were over.

This is Pickle's moment of fame. Let's just say that five seconds before this picture was taken I was not smiling. Andrew pointed out how completely ridiculous the situation was and he was right, so I smiled, and we have this picture for posterity now. Yes, in this picture I am breastfeeding Pickle. I am not wearing a nursing shirt or a nursing bra. I am wearing a coat. I am outside. It is raining. All the benches are wet so I have to stand up, hold Pickle, keep him latched on, keep myself covered, hold an umbrella, stay away from all the old people (not pictured), and smile.

Here's the story.

We were PCSing away from California soon and had yet to go anywhere and so we decided that we were going to take the boys and go to San Francisco for the weekend. We had a good time beside it was really cold, even for SF. Anyway, this was the morning that we were leaving to go home. We wanted to go across the Golden Gate Bridge though, of course, and wanted to see the redwood trees in Muir Woods. Right before we checked out of the hotel Pickle spit up on me/my last clean clothes in a major way. So I had to change, but I didn't have a nursing bra or shirt that was even close to presentable so I wore normal clothes. I knew it shouldn't have been a problem which should have been my first clue that of course it would be a problem. :)

We get to Muir Woods about the same time as a giant tour bus full of old people, which was also exactly the same time that it started to rain. We almost didn't get out of the Jeep because really, c'mon. But I wanted to see the damn trees. We've got our double stroller so we load the kids up (Peanut was 2.5 and Pickle was .5) and start booking it down this trail to get in front of 80 billion old people.

It was really neat, we let Peanut out of the stroller and he's running amok, exploring nature, looking at the stream, enjoying the rain through his raincoat, and splashing in the puddles. Pickle is having a less enjoyable time and starts getting fussy. We were trying to keep him in the stroller because it was the easiest to keep him dry there, but he wasn't used to being in a stroller so he wasn't happy about it. Andrew holds him for awhile and chase Peanut around and keep him from tripping old people while I try to read plaques and enjoy the trees. Pickle is not satisfied with this arrangement though and gets progressively louder so that means that he gets passed off to me, of course.

He settles down briefly and we're walking along the path. Then he thinks, "Hey! I know you! You're the lady with the boobs. Let me have them!" And makes squawking noises to that effect. I'm doing the "baby dance" where you're moving your body in 12 different soothing directions at once, making calming noises, trying to cram a pacifier (we call it a "muffle" for a reason!) in his mouth, giving him a finger to suck on, a toy, whatever.

Nope. He's not buying it. At this point, it's raining hard, we've been thoroughly infiltrated by old people and apparently not the friendly kind judging by the looks we're getting. Then we reach this really nice little area where the path ends, but they've got the biggest tree and stuff to read and seats and it's this really cool tree sanctuary kind of a place. It also has a sign.

"Quiet Zone"

I point out the sign to Pickle and ask him to respect the Quiet Zone. He screams loud enough that they can hear us on Alcatraz now. I retreat.  What else can I do? Andrew and Peanut and the old people get the dumb Quiet Zone to themselves. I stomp back along a muddy path with my shrieking banshee son.

I don't go back to the Jeep because I don't want to walk back that far and because surely he just needs a "snack" to shut him up and because I forget I'm not currently outfitted for this activity. I find this one spot where there's enough trees that they're kind of slowing down the rain. And then I have to figure out how to hold the baby, keep him dry, hang onto the umbrella, obtain access to "the girls", maintain a degree of modesty/dryness, get Pickle where he needs to be latched on, covered back up and everything still dry without putting anything down or having anyone to help me.

What's a mom to do? Whatever the hell needs doin'!

I get us situated and this old couple comes into my area. If they have JUST made it to this point from the parking lot then these are slowest old people who are still "mobile". We're talking lose a footrace to a glacier kind of slow. At first they are friendly and smile at me when they think I'm just keeping my baby covered up from the rain like any good mother. And they come over and read the plaque that I'm standing by. Apparently once they're close up to me they realize that there's something unnatural about the way I'm holding the umbrella with the inside of my elbow and side of my neck, and I'm not just innocently keeping my son dry, but something is happening there! They quickly become horrified and start their old person shuffle to the other end of my semi-circle of plaques.

And they stayed there! They must have been convinced that they could truly appreciate the rest of the trees without reading every single plaque along the way and since they've been waiting to make this trip since Methuselah was knee-high to a grasshopper they're not budging. So we had ourselves a little face-off. They stood there and waited for me to.... I don't know what... be smote by God, I guess and they whispered to each other and to other approaching old people about what kind of evil thing I was doing. Those old people watched me like a zoo exhibit. You know, where you see the lion stalking back and forth at one end of the enclosure and all the people stare? That is what we had going on. Seriously.

Then Andrew came back with Peanut, teased me, got a dirty look, teased me again, got a smile, took a picture, and we walked back to the Jeep, with Pickle still doing that.

I never did get to enter the Quiet Zone. This was about 20 months ago so those old people have probably just now reached it. I hope they enjoy themselves!

Knock on wood

Pervert.

I don't believe in jinxes. I don't. But at the same time, I'd really like to not mess this up. Because, holy shit, Batman, do you know what happened?

My daughter quit hating on my husband.

Magically, mysteriously, miraculously, whatever you want to call it.

I'm still hesitant to talk about it because it hasn't been that long and She Will Not Be Named (Little Miss) could still throw herself into reverse and smoosh our success, progress, and hearts all over again.

I don't think I can make you understand how enormous this is. It started on minute one (no exaggeration) of meeting Little Miss that she made it known that she wasn't having anything to do with my husband. She was 100% positive about this. The majority of the time we were in Ethiopia he couldn't touch her without her flipping out. We thought once we had custody of her that she'd warm up to him 1:1. I took ONE shower after we took custody of her and she stood in the corner of the room and did the Primal Rage Scream at him for the duration of my shower, you know, because he was in the same room as her. We thought she'd warm up to him over the duration of a week that we were there. The ENTIRE way home he couldn't touch her. (I still need to write that last travel post. Ugh.) Do you know that is is a very long trip back from Ethiopia?

Once we got home *I* flipped my...ship...and so she had to put up with him because I was zombie-mom. This basically only worked because certain things had to be done and I wasn't doing them. I guess on some level she saw that he could take care of her because he was doing it, but she actively and passively resisted his efforts. We thought that once she got home and saw that our boys worship the ground my husband walks on that she'd warm up to him. Nope. Nope. Nope. She continued to be awful to him. Constant rejection of his efforts to love her. I don't know how he handled it. I'd have gone crazier. What made this even more awful was that he was the one keeping our family together. Him. She wouldn't even smile in his direction and he was the one fighting for her.

This was THE most stressful thing in our house after I quit being mom-zombie. It was just this bitterness and meanness and stress that tainted everything else. My husband had to deal with it directed at him, I was trying to defuse it and run interference between their every interaction to try and make it as smooth as possible. It was just miserable, all the time. This is another one of those things that we thought we were prepared for and then weren't. It was horrifically awful, so much worse than we ever thought it would have been to deal with, just brutal.

We thought it would get better as we kept her world small and she'd start to feel more safe. No. She did get to the point that she would take candy from him, then food, then a bottle, but those were the only times she'd interact with him nicely. During those times she'd be nice as anything, but as soon as it was over she was back to hating on him. We thought it would get better as she saw that some people came and went (a few friends and family) from visiting us and she'd see that Andrew was there to stay. No. Sweet baby Jesus, having people IN our house made it so much worse, on every single level. She would give dirty looks to my husband and then smile at my friends' husbands. She would freak out if my husband tried to pick her up and then she'd try to climb into my brother-in-law's lap and hang all over him. (Those behaviors started in Ethiopia as well. She'd play with the other men in our travel group, but scream if my husband touched her arm.) These incidents were so painful for me to watch that I'd go upstairs into my bathroom and cry. Oh, and did I mention that they filled me with horrible awful rage? They made me so mad I could barely see straight! It wasn't that she was scared of all men, that I could have understood, we could have worked with, would have been a whole 'nother ball of wax. No. She saved this selective behavior for my husband. This was manipulative, on purpose, targeted behavior.

We tried: ignoring her response and just doing what needed to be done, time-ins with my husband, time-outs to our centrally located pack & play, correcting her response, but no consequence, addressing the emotional issue behind it, candy, I'd be the only person to discipline/correct her, positive reinforcement whenever she didn't act like a brat toward him, basically anything we could think of, but it was really to no avail.

In October I went away for a weekend. I wasn't sure she was going to understand when I said goodbye to her. Well, she did, as that was the first time that she hit me in the face.She had a fit for awhile and then mellowed out (to a degree) for the weekend. There were still some trust issues there because he reported that she wouldn't really ask him for anything, she basically just assumed that her needs wouldn't be met. However, everyone made it through the weekend and I think that was the first significant upswing in their relationship.


This was one area that we were really hoping for help with in attachment therapy and were pretty let down. Most of her ideas were things we had already read in the books so that was underwhelming. Her one good idea (in that regard) was the one where I was the only one to discipline/correct her. It took a lot of pressure off of Andrew and Little Miss, but put it squarely on me because it meant that I basically was ON (even more) constantly and that she had to be always within my line of sight, which is counterproductive to getting anything done, ever, and meant that I wasn't getting to do anything with the boys because I was always dealing with Little Miss. We did have some success with it though so I wanted to put that out there.


A solid nine months home and she was still actively rejecting him at least 85% of the time. If we were around other people it jumped up to probably 98-100% of the time, seriously. Our "standard treatment" day to day, would be that we'd verbally redirect her for being rude/dismissive/whatever toward him, they'd spend positive time alone either the bedtime routine, or alone playtime. If she was continually being rude we'd do a time-out to calm down downstairs, and after that a time-in with him upstairs. If we had people over our "Gold Plan" was that I'd be the only one to consequence or redirect her and he'd have a pretty constant stash of candy. It wasn't really anything remarkable, but we were scraping our way through daily life even if no one was enjoying it. Survival isn't sexy, ladies and gentlemen. 

Last week, I took my Three Stooges home to...Cow County, Ohio, let's call it. It was a long drive and a good trip and then a bad drive, but more about all that later. We were away from home and Andrew for six days (or something like that...neither counting nor days of the week are my specialty) and then ever wary of the many moods of Little Miss we came home not knowing what to expect. This was the first time since meeting us that she'd been away from him for any real amount of time. He did a weekend TDY once, but I'm not really counting that.

At any rate, we certainly weren't expecting anything good. I'm going away for another weekend soon (what a spoiled life I lead, I know) and we had talked about how we hoped that would be good for them again. I'd be out of the picture for the weekend and it would be another step forward in their relationship. I mean, we were keeping our fingers crossed about it, at least.

BUT

GET

A

LOAD

OF

THIS:

Since we've been home, she has been nice to him! Whoo-freakin-hooooo! No sarcasm! It's like someone bopped her on the head and she was healed! Dipped her in whatever river that is that's supposed to heal you! Touched by an angel! She drank the kool-aid and is a believer!

Seriously, I don't know what flipped her switch and maybe it will go off again, I don't know. It's been (I'm actually stopping to count here) three nights, so not hardly an eternity, but the difference is crazy. She just quit directing all that hate at him. I don't understand it, but I'm loving it. She'll sit by him on the couch, she lets him pick her up, she talks to him, she looks for him, she hugs him, she's silly with him. It's amazing. She basically put him on level ground with me. He just got an insta-promotion.

This is such an easier place to work from! Now, understand: level ground with me means that there are still attachment issues to deal with. For sure. However, it's an entirely different dynamic. There is still rejection, distance, manipulation, drama, triangulation, and more attitude than any child should be capable of possessing, but it's just different.

Over the weekend when I was bawling at the kitchen table while my mom made homemade chocolate chip cookies she asked me what the hardest thing that we were still dealing with was and I told her that it was the way Little Miss treated Andrew and the stress that put everyone under, our fear for what it meant for our future, and our lack of a working plan to address it.

And now, that's gone and I'm praying it stays long gone.

Hey, maybe the cookies were magic! I wonder how much I'd have to pay her to get a weekly shipment...