Truce

My kids do this thing that makes me bonkers-stupid-crazy. Here's an example:

Peanut: "I see a bird!" 
Boohoo: "No, I see a bird!" 
Pickle: "Not you! I see a bird!" 
Peanut: No!!!! I see a bird! "
Pickle: "No! I see bird."
Peanut: "Mooooom! Pickle and Boohoo said they see a bird and I was the one who saw it. Tell them I saw it!" 
Boohoo: "Mooooom! Peanut, Pickle see it bird no! I see it bird!" 

And do you know what I'm doing now? It's a two step process. First, my brain (luckily not my mouth so far) says, "CONGRATUFLUCKINLATIONS! WE ALL SEE THE DAMN BIRD. IT'S A DAMN BIRD! WHO THE HELL CARES?" And then when it continues I start to glaze over into a dissociative state and my brain floats away above my body and suddenly I am the damn bird flying away....

The stupid truth is that I don't think that Boohoo and I do much of a better job of navigating our relationship some of the time. Lots of the time lately. I've been told I'm hardheaded. I know my daughter is hardheaded. And we are spending most of our energy these last few days knocking our heads together. 

I think our subtext goes like this:

Me: "I want to love you."
Boohoo: "No! I want you to love me."
Me: "No, I want to love you." 
Boohoo: "No!! I want you to love me, but it scares me so I'll act like a jerk."
Me: "No! I'm scared so I get to act like a jerk."
Boohoo: "I want to feel safe in this family."
Me: "No, I want us to be a happy and safe family." 

Do you see where I'm going with this? We're fighting each other over the same objectives. We're taking each other down with friendly fire. And the truly craptastic part about is that skirmish makes each of less willing to throw down our FIGURATIVE guns and less easy to respect those white-flag moments. 

It turns out that I'm still the adult in this relationship too. Suck. So I have to be the first one to wave that white flag, to cease fire, to shut up, to be nice AND TO STAY THAT WAY (that is the hard part).

Boohoo, I'm sorry we've had such a rough/rotten/awful/very bad string of days here. I found the lyrics to this song (albeit strange) and I know they don't really apply to a mother-daughter relationship, but I found myself thinking of us when I heart it anyway. 

"Stuck Like Glue" by Sugarland

I'm stuck on you
Whutooo whutooo
Stuck like glue
You and me baby we're stuck like glue
Whutooo whutooo
Stuck like glue
You and me baby we're stuck like glue

Some days I don't feel like trying
Some days you know I wanna just give up
When it doesn't matter who's right, fight about it all night
Had enough
You give me that look
"I'm sorry baby let's make up"
You do that thing that makes me laugh
And just like that...

[Chorus:]
There you go making my heart beat again,
Heart beat again,
Heart beat again
There you go making me feel like a kid
Won't you do it and do it one time
There you go pulling me right back in,
Right back in,
Right back in
And I know-oo I'm never letting this go-ooo

I'm stuck on you
Whutooo whutooo
Stuck like glue
You and me baby we're stuck like glue
Whutooo whutooo
Stuck like glue
You and me baby were stuck like glue

Whutooo Whutoo

Random

This is a post full of nothing, so if you're feeling high-powered today and raring to get things accomplished you should probably just discretely leave. I get it. I'm ambitious a lot, frequently, sometimes, every now and then. I have been known to be ambitious before.  I will be ambitious someday. Maybe.

I've got so much on my mind right now that I can't seem to focus to do any of it. Easily distracted? What?

• I totally bombed on my Lent Bible reading yesterday and I think that the results of my day yesterday proved it
• I'm changing the name and the way that I run my MamaEnat Blankets business. It's not currently working for me, but I certainly don't want to give it up so I'm going to try and reorganize.
• I've got serious stomach paunch. I need to exercise, but I don't because what if I did exercise and then I was still fat. It would be like failing and I've recently realized that I will do/not do just about anything to keep myself from being perceived (even by myself) as a failure. 
• I'm seeing heart issues in my boys that need to be addressed that are probably related to my Zombie Mom Act of the last 10 months and my Inability to be Self-Controlled.
• I'm trying to figure out what I can do to create post-adoption support for families. 
• I'm kicking around ideas for a novel and for the adoption book that I want to write, but not actually doing anything for either of them.
• When I think about the adoption book it has a working title of "WTH?!" I'm pretty sure that won't be the final title. 
• I hate my haircut.
• I have a bunch of emails that I need to respond to some of them are very old. Be patient with me. 
• My family is featured over on The Happy Housewife today. No, not in a "check out the awesome things this woman is doing" way. It's more of a "help a sucker out" thing. We all do what we can... :)
• I do laundry on Saturdays so that means I'll be doing laundry tomorrow. I still have our clean clothes all over the floor. I'm good at washing, bad at putting away. 
• Did I tell you we got a kitten? Dillinger JawsPaws. He's adorable. 
• Pickle knows some of his letters. I didn't teach him that.
• I ordered our first Sonlight curriculum last night.
• I started using the Instagram app and I LOOOOOOOVE it. You can follow me if you want and then you'll be able to see pictures of my darling (?) children. 
• We're waiting to see how our adoption tax credit thing works out. It seems like it's not going to be a problem and they're not actually going to ask for additional information, but we've got our fingers crossed just the same. 
• I tried to do some online clothes shopping the other day and it turns out that I'm so old and fuddy-duddy that I'm only not appalled by T@rget prices. So much for turning into a walking fashion plate in my middle age.
• I did a veil style on Boohoo's hair yesterday and I'm surprised at how well it's holding up. Most of her styles don't last through one sleep. 
• All my kids need summer clothes, especially Peanut & Boohoo.
• Peanut has entered the phase of Super Hero Adoration. I'm trying to decide if I want to let him watch the corresponding cartoons. I'm not crazy about animated violence. 
• I need a new phone badly. Mine just refuses to work sometimes. Super annoying. I want an iphone. Too bad for me. 
• On the show "Jake & the Neverland Pirates" why does the girl pirate only get pixie dust as her "power"? 
• When was the last time I showered AND did my hair? 
• I have so many posts that I need to write. I keep putting them off until I will have time to sit down and really think while I'm writing. Apparently I will publish them after Pickle graduates from high school. 
• We don't have Pickle's stomach issues figured out yet, but hopefully we're getting close.
• It's been a really disorganized month. My brain is just not regulated! :) 
• I was thinking about taking the kids to the park, but I'm not looking quite ready for a public appearance this morning so the backyard will have to suffice! 
• Many apologies about all of this! :)

Spring

Top 10 Things I'm Looking Forward to This Spring

10. Shedding my winter whale weight 

9. Trying to plan a super fun, budget friendly, family vacation

8. Moving bedtime to 8:00 so I can enjoy some summer evenings with my 3 Stooges

7. Allergies
7. Learning how to sew summer dresses for Boohoo

6. Spending a lot of time at our favorite (fenced-in) park

5. Meeting Chrissy

4. Getting Out of Debt

3. Writing My 90 Day Novel

2. Our One Year Home Anniversary

1. Sending the kids to Boading School

1. Enjoying this slow, but steady unthawing and blossoming of my heart again.

Wait. What? Huh?

Series: Wait. What? Huh?
Topic: Shades of Reactive Attachment Disorder
Part 1 of 2


A lot of people ask me what I wish I would have known before we adopted, what I could/should/wish I would have been more prepared for or even aware of on any level.

Here's a great big one. What I have gleaned over these last ten months is that YOU NEED TO EXPECT YOUR CHILD TO COME HOME WITH AN ATTACHMENT DISORDER. Bam! There it is, from me to you. I'm not joking. I'm not over stating things. I'm not just extra bitter because of our experience. I think this is legitimate and I think that it would well serve BOTH the parents and children in these newly formed families.

There is not one instance that I can think of that would be reasonable to expect a child NOT to have an attachment disorder. They are many times coming from poverty and neglect. More times than we know they have come from abuse. These hard backgrounds set them up for attachment problems, it is the brain's way of protecting itself, it is the normal response to these kinds of traumas.

Even if your child comes from "better" circumstances and had a loving attachment to their first family, their foster family, their orphanage nannies with a low-ratio that isn't enough of a buffer against what happened first.  Not only that, but everyone touts the "she had strong attachments before so she'll be able to rebuild strong attachment to us" line and that does make sense in the fact that the child will know how to attach. But the flip side of that coin, that isn't talked about, is that "the higher the fall, the harder the landing".

I believe that the majority of kids available for adoption are attachment disordered and I think that as adoptive parents we need to recognize that it is their right to be in that place. What happened to them sucks and sucks hard. We need to allow them all that space to be true to that hurt (yes, while trying to help them heal), but what I often see looks more like this:

DENIAL. DENIAL. DENIAL. DENIAL. DENIAL. DENIAL. DENIAL. 


I'm sure many people think I'm crazy by now and if you brought this up to your adoption agency they would firmly DENY that most children have attachment disorders. Do you know why they say that?

Because if they didn't? No one would adopt. If they stood a group of ten PAP families up in a room and said, "If you go through with this adoption your child will have long-term attachment issues, not just a 'transition period'. And if you don't want to deal with that please sit back down." I'm betting that eight couples would sit back down. If they gathered up a roomful of those couples who remained standing and said, "If you go through with this adoption your child will have Reactive Attachment Disorder, not just long-term attachment issues. And if you don't want to deal with that please sit back down." I bet that from from a roomful, you'd get maybe one or two couples that would be willing to face down RAD.

Attachment issues scare people. And, they should. They are scary! And this is only from my measly ten month perspective as an adult. What I think though, is that with most deep dark secrets, they are the scariest when they are hiding under the bed. And that is exactly where we as adoptive families leave them. We leave them in the dark, where we don't talk about them, acknowledge them, or seek help for them. We let them grow and get scarier and scarier because we don't know what to do or what we did and we certainly don't know what to do now. So we sit, huddled in the corner, shaking, and alone. We shine our little wimpy-ass penlight around in the dark trying to keep it at bay.

Instead we deny. Deny. Deny. Deny. Deny. Deny.

"No, everything is fine. No, all kids do that. No, girls are just more moody/emotional than boys. No, boys are just like that. No, she's just a terrible two. No, you know how tweens are. No, she's just the oldest. No, he's the baby. No, she's the middle child. No, it's just a phase. No, it's just a bad habit. No, it's just a transition."

NO!! IT'S AN ATTACHMENT ISSUE! (and it should be! Look at the stuff they've been through. Of course, it's an attachment issue. It's not an indictment of you or your parenting or your child. It's just the fact that sometimes life is craptastic and we have to work through the fall-out.)


The vital information that we're being denied as potential adoptive parents and as adoptive parents is that attachment is a spectrum! 


w-x-x----y----y-----y---y-----y--y-----y-------y-----z


W: This is for the Sweet Baby Jesus, perfectly attached, no problems, it's all God/Good
X: This is for the rest of us, healthy attachment, this is your typical well-tended child, who was planted in good soil, watered at regular intervals, got the proper amount of sunshine, and was pruned as necessary
Y: This is for children who have what is commonly called "insecure/anxious attachment", "attachment problems" or what I'm lovingly calling, "Shades of RAD". These are the kids who are wild vines. They're taking what they got and trying to make it work for them, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes they got pruned when they needed sunshine, and now as new families we're adding extra fertilizer, tweaking their pH balance, and helping them to grow UP instead of tying themselves in knots. These kids can also use their "host" as a parasite and cause more harm than good, the can choke out the very life that is trying to sustain them, but they can be taught to go the right way. This is not just for adopted kids either. You know your screwy cousin that you always shied away from at family picnics? These could be her kids too. Sometimes these are kids that didn't have it "too rough", but it was too rough for them which is all that matters. There is a huge spatial area that these kids can occupy, they can be closer to RAD or closer to attached, they can bounce back and forth between the two. I truly believe that these are almost all of our kids and they need special handling.
Z: These are the kids with RAD. They have been hurt deeply and are often willing to inflict that hurt upon others to protect themselves. It's as simple as self-defense and as a complicated as broken hearts and shattered trust. On a whim, I'm going to call them the Cactus Kids. They are prickly and you MUST learn how to handle them, they need a special environment, but they have water inside them just like any other plant, and they can and do bloom. 


That's the end of this post for today, but I will be back probably tomorrow to finish it off. I'd love to hear what you thought about it: agree or disagree.

Steady Yourself

I'm going to tell you something that

is cataclysmic

(if you have a very small world)

so please brace yourselves

because I'm not looking for a lawsuit 

because you fell down while reading my post. 

There are some big changes coming to our family.

Sort of. 

Little Miss is going to be renamed. 

(Not officially because do you really think that we're on the ball with things like that?

Never mind that 10 months probably doesn't count for most people as 

'on the ball'. Not the point.) 

I'm going to start referring to her as something else. Here's why:

1) The whole 's' and then the apostrophe thing is a pain when I'm blogging. I'm a busy woman on FB and don't have time for things like that. 

2) We don't call her that in real life. We sometimes call Peanut "Peanut". He at least knows that we're talking to him. We call Pickle "Pickle" constantly, more than his real and very nice name. The poor child is going to need therapy someday. But 'Little Miss' is the anomaly (in so so many ways...) because we don't call her that. 

We started using it before she came home as opposed to referring to her as Girl-Child. I've tried a few times to call her that in real life, but it kinda sticks in my throat and seems super weird. My husband agrees and on his blog he doesn't call her that. He calls her by her other nickname, the one that we actually use. He said that "the only time he plans to call anyone Little Miss is if he's talking to a stripper". And that's the vibe that the name gives me too, I just hadn't... spent enough time thinking about strippers apparently.... I ran this past some of my Orlando girls and while there were a few dissenting opinions most agreed. 

So, "Little Miss" is figuratively gone. It's out with the skanky and in with the funny. 

This is your official reintroduction to..... (drum roll, please)........

Boo-hoo!

And yes, I'm serious.  We started calling her Boo-hoo pretty early on, maybe at month two or three. It flows very well with her actual name and came about because she.cries.all.the.time. We say it very nicely, even if it is a little tease-y. 

In case anyone is having a hard time tracking:

Andrew, Jamey, Peanut, Boo-hoo, & Pickle.

Little Miss = Skanky Stripper my husband might talk to

Boo-hoo = My daughter

Empowered

I want to tell you an anti-secret. And then you can tell everyone else and eventually everyone will know and that will make things so much smoother.


You are not alone.
You are not alone. 
You are not alone.
You are not alone. 


I was blessed with the opportunity to go to Orlando and do you know what? I came home different. And no, I did not get a tattoo. It's also not (entirely) because I can blog name-drop now..."Well, when I forced myself into a picture with Christine from www.WelcomeToMyBrain.com..." 

 pic by Christine and taken from Corey's blog!

or "When I kissed Corey at dinner..." . Nope. Those aren't (entirely) the reasons why although, let's be honest those things multiplied my coolness factor by about 200%. It's also not because I've got Christine on speed dial. Especially, since she's probably regretting that since Peanut called her at like 5:30 in the morning, "to ask someone to tell Daddy to give me candy" and so she's probably regretting that move now. Give me your phone number only after great prayer and deliberation. 

But seriously now, I came back different because I came back knowing deep down to my toes that I AM NOT ALONE. And that, my friends, that is empowerment. 

I came back different because I came back knowing that someone else has my back. I came back with phone numbers: Christine, Lori, Heather, Gala, Sally, Kristine, and Jenni. (Corey remaining as a very wise holdout) And maybe you think that's not very much, seven phone numbers. Big whoop. 

To me, that is seven people I could call at the drop of the hat and they get it, they get it, they get. I don't have to explain. I don't have to preface. I don't have to fake it til I make it. And on top of that we have a secret cult club online. I would be willing to bet that I could go on there and say, "I have to talk to someone NOW!" and within 10 minutes I would have at least three phone numbers, even people that I didn't really have the honor of connecting with in Orlando. I bet within one hour I'd have the numbers of ten people who would drop their plans for the day and talk me off the edge. If you gave me a day, I bet almost every single person would offer to talk to me because they get it. These women have my back. Absolutely. 

That is what being EM-POWERED is.

It's not just that they tell me how great I am or how strong and tough and beautiful I am. Empowered is not the same thing as having sunshine blown up your skirt. When I don't have any more power of my own, they put their power into me. I am em-powered. And then later, when they call me and they can't do it on their own power any more then I will empower them. I will give them what I have to keep them going and from there it's just a beautiful cycle. 

It's like rescue breathing your way through life! 

I am not alone.

You are not alone.

We are not alone. 

We are replacing the negative cycles of fear and alone-ness with a positive cycle of encouragement, empowerment, and plain ol' strength in numbers, baby! 

On a related, but different note: Being by yourself sometimes is a good thing, but a continual state of aloneness  is not a good thing. I think that people tend to retreat into being alone when they are scared, when they are ashamed, when they think that they are the only ones who are in their situation and no one can understand them. People tend to push others into aloneness if they are hurting them because it's easier to hurt someone who is alone. Abusers want their victims to think they are alone so that they can continue to hurt them. Children from trauma want their parents to think they are alone because it's easier to control and pull someone into their drama if they are alone. Listen to me, sweethearts, YOU ARE NOT ALONE. There is nothing new under the sun and you are not the first one to feel like you're drowning in your own life. Reach out and let yourself be shocked that there are people reaching back for you. 

 You don't have to do it by your own power. 

We will empower each other.

You are not alone.