and then there were five ...

and then there were six ...

2011-03-02T05:58:00.000-08:00

no, we're not adopting another baby, and I'm not pregnant, but I do feel that I have a fourth child at the moment. DOTP, aka dinners on the porch, has taken on a life of its own. It's so exciting and awesome, but like a new baby, it demands time, attention, feedings (of money), it causes me stress and worry, it gets me all hyped up late at night. So, that's a partial, and lame, explanation for my laziness on the blogging front. I am writing on the DOTP blog every week, but it's about food, not my family, so I'm missing writing about the kids, etc.
In the past month, we celebrated Ruby's Gotcha Day, and it's still making my head spin that she has been with us for a whole year. So much has happened that in some ways it seems like it must have been more than a year, but then in other ways it feels like just yesterday that we came home with this new little person. Leading up to the one year anniversary, we had a rough couple of weeks. I have noticed that our relationship seems to have peaks and valleys, and I'm at a loss to understand why, but it's definitely happening. Right now, we're in a great spot, and I can really appreciate the closeness and connection we're sharing. A few weeks ago, I could feel Ruby pulling back, testing, reacting to something that was stressing her out (though I'm still not sure what). It's like what I imagine having a teenager will be like, when all of the sudden your child realizes that it doesn't have to "be" with you for survival. I think that Ruby already understands on some level that she can choose to separate from us when she doesn't like something that is happening, or is angry with us, or feels anxious about something. Finn and Gus have never felt what it would be like to be outside the family all alone, so even when they are furious with us, they don't know that they have the option of pulling away, and they rage and carry on right inside the safe space of the web of our little family. Ruby, on the other hand, seems to understand already that it's possible to go back and forth. She can weigh her options at any given time and decide whether it's worth sticking with us or if she might just be better off going it alone.
Of course, all of it boils down to attachment, and there's no shortcut to getting there. With the boys, I never was conscious of creating attachment, because it's so much easier to do with a newborn. They need you for everything, you are there all the time, they never know anything different. It's only now, going through this new experience with Ruby, that I realize how strong those bonds between myself and the boys really are. With them, I know that there are times when I need to push a little to help them be more independent. And, I am sure, in a few years they will see that they can tear a big hole in the web and walk right through if they want, and it will break my heart. But, hopefully, when children open the door and walk out, the door is left open, and they walk back in and back out over an over again, maybe the next day, maybe a few weeks or even years later. So Ruby maybe is just already there. Certainly I'm so happy that she knows that there is a "here" to come, and she stays in that space alot of the time. If I'm lucky, she'll get all comfortable and safe and attached just in time to turn 13!
Anyway, it's been a rollercoaster year, with more to come, no doubt, and I will try to keep up with it a little better. so we'll see ...

Muffingate

2011-02-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

This week has been so hectic - I am in the middle of a longer post, but don't know when I can get a chance to finish it. One thing I've been trying to work on this week is dealing with tricky food issues that seem to keep rearing up every time I think we're getting somewhere. This adorable little Ruby, so sweet and cute, can turn into a total monster over food from time to time. I am really struggling with how to handle it, and, sadly, I think I'm not doing too well. Some days I think I'll just give her what she wants and that will calm her down - she'll see that food is available to her here and she can always have more if she's hungry. Then other days I decide that I need to be more controlling about what she is eating and help her learn the difference between hunger and desire.
Of course, this is sending mixed messages and probably just increasing her anxiety about food. I try to apply the same rules to her that I have for the boys, but they are so unconcerned with food that I don't think it's working. This morning, I had bought chocolate chip muffins as a treat because today is Finn's Spring Sing, but I told them they all had to eat a banana before eating the muffin. Gus ate a banana and a muffin, Finn ate half a banana and then decided that the muffin wasn't worth having to eat a banana and stopped eating altogether, and Ruby broke her banana into small pieces, hid them all over the house while I was getting dressed, pushed a chair over to the counter, helped herself to a muffin, ate half of it and then sat on the other half the minute she saw me coming into the kitchen. Devious! From the trail of crumbs, smashed banana around the house, and the guilty look on her face, plus the chocolate muffin all over her pants, I was able to piece together what had transpired. So then, childishly, I was angry that she had clearly done something she knew she wasn't supposed to do, and in the process, created a giant mess all over the house. At that point, we were late leaving to get the boys to school, so I just grabbed her and loaded everybody into the car. Being separated from the remains of the muffin was, of course, the most tragic thing that Ruby could imagine, and she spend the whole ride to the boys school screaming her head off bitterly. It was quite the way to start the day.
Anyway, muffin-gate is just a typical, daily struggle over here. Probably pretty much my fault for even expecting a child to not take a chocolate chip muffin that was sitting right there. Some days are better, some worse, and I keep hoping that one day everything will click. I've talked to the doctor, other adoptive moms, a parenting counselor, and any number of friends and family, and gotten lots of really good advice that sometimes helps, so hopefully we'll just keep moving forward and get to an easier place. Ruby's been with us almost exactly a year - Feb 15th is our gotcha day - and so many things have smoothed out so much that it seems ridiculous to worry about this. But you know how you can look back at things you worried about after they have passed and realize that you were being silly - it was just a phase after all? But when you're dealing with something new as a parent - whether it's a baby who won't sleep or a picky eater or a 15-month-old who isn't walking yet - you don't know that it will pass. You don't know that it's a phase, and you worry that it's some sort of indicator that you don't know what you are doing and you are screwing your kid up. And actually, who really does know what to do? Not me, but at least I can be comforted that all of the things that I worry about will probably turn out fine, while the things I haven't even thought about will be the ones hurled back in my face years from now, just the way I used to do to my poor parents. Sorry Mom & Dad ...

A year ago ...: 12 Days to Go: Snow, Baby Shower, Injera & More

2011-02-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

I am so tired tonight, and Matt is at art class, and I have all my little kiddies in bed early and have just had a hot shower and am cozy in my pjs, about to enjoy a glass of wine, and then I realized that our social worker is coming tomorrow for our 1 year home study! Crazy, and a bit of a bummer because our house looks like a lion chased a herd of wildebeests through it this afternoon, and that won't go over so well with the social worker. But, that aside, I can't believe it's been almost one whole year since we were almost, almost ready to go get Ruby. I was doing a countdown to the day we left on the blog, and I remember being so full of excitement and nervous anticipation for the trip and the baby and our new life. So I decided to look back at the blog from this time last year, and it's so funny to read what I was thinking about. It has proved quite prophetic, as I waxed poetic about how eager I was for the excitement of the adoption to wear off so that we could move into the mundane chores and life as a family part. That's exactly where we are now, and, as predicted, it's a time of life that is filled with little moments and lots of work. So anyway, here's what we were up to a year ago today ...

and then there were five ...: 12 Days to Go: Snow, Baby Shower, Injera & More: "This past weekend ranks up there with some of our best ever. For starters, we had a huge, beautiful snow on Friday night - unusual for..."

Messy

2011-01-27T20:40:00.000-08:00

I'm looking back at my last post about my happy mommy moment and realizing that I jinxed myself by writing that. Things pretty much went downhill from that point. Right now I am eating a big handful of peanut m&ms, and that's helping a lot, but earlier tonight I threw a big pot of spaghetti into the kitchen sink and had to actually leave the house so as not to frighten the children with the fit of rage I was experiencing. Not that they were not alarmed with the spaghetti throwing, but I really didn't know what was coming next. I'm not normally all that emotionally unstable, but lately I feel like I'm on edge all the time. I have been struggling so much with Ruby lately, and she with me, and the frustration of seeing so much of the work we've both done over the past year erode away is really stressful. I will probably be able to see everything more clearly when I have more distance, but when I'm stuck in this daily push and pull, it's hard to know exactly what is going on. Ruby is now 27 months, which is the same age I remember things getting really hard with Finn, my oldest. But in that case, that was also right when Gus was born, so I attributed much of his behavior to his displeasure at having to share the limelight with the interloper. Gus at 27 months, on the other hand, was the easiest child in the world. We kept holding our collective breath, waiting for him to hit a bad stage, and it never happened. He's just one of those kids that it's hard to be mad at. So maybe I sort of convinced myself that Ruby would be easy like Gus, or that, being a girl, she would be sweet all the time. Who knows, but I'm all of the sudden plunged back into the fun of temper tantrums, out and out defiance, time outs, and self-recrimination over letting my own temper get the best of me in the moment. I did spent 30 seconds today on Amazon, ordering Love & Logic, which we somehow lost in the move a few years back, and I'm awaiting its arrival with a slightly hysterical eagerness. Perhaps the wise guidance of the love & logic method will shape me into the parent I really, really want to be. The one who does not yell at a two-year old, or throw pasta across the kitchen before storming out of the house. I want to be one who makes my children's lives easier, not be doing things for them or buying them things they don't need, but by giving them the gift of security and of knowing there are people who love them no matter what they do or where they are. There are so many new terms for different types of parents - helicopter parents, tiger mothers, etc. I can't think of a term for what kind of parent I would like to be, but I thought today of an image - actually from the movie Up, of a big cluster of balloons, holding my children up above the world, letting them cut the strings little by little as they find their places in the world. That seems so peaceful and safe, whereas each day falls pretty far short of that little scenario. However, it seems that each day does finally end, and a new one begins again with somewhat of a clean slate. If everything is not erased, maybe it will have receded enough to not feel so raw. Hopefully a better story to be written over the ugly words and missed opportunities of the day before.

Making Soup

2011-01-24T12:25:00.000-08:00

Not a metaphor for anything, I'm just actually making soup all day today. I found this wonderful (-ly easy) dumpling soup recipe, and I've adapted it a little, and all of my diners will be enjoying that tomorrow. The house smells so yummy - ginger, garlic, shiitake mushrooms. Ruby is resting, the boys are peacefully relaxing after school, the laundry is all folded and put away (by someone else, which makes it even better), there's plenty of diet coke and hummus (which I eat massive amounts of every day) in the fridge, and a sitter is coming at 5 so I can take Finn to basketball without losing my mind keeping up with Ruby during his practice. I know, it's not the Four Seasons in some exotic locale, and I'm sure in a few minutes all hell will break loose and I'll regret having cursed myself by writing this, but right now, at this one moment, peace reigns and I'm having a happy mommy moment. Hope you're having one too ...

2011-01-20T06:41:00.000-08:00

Right now I have a million things that I really need to be dealing with. My kitchen is a horror show (since I cook for DOTP on Sunday, Monday & Tuesday, I can't bear to deal with it for a few days after I get all the meals delivered). There is mail in probably 6 different places in my house that I need to gather, sort and deal with. That's on top of the bills already piled in the bill "section" of my desk. There's laundry, there's grocery shopping, emails I have put off responding to for weeks, toys everywhere, a flooded guest-house that needs to be remediated today, and so on and so on. But, thanks to some very hard work over last weekend, the office - where I'm standing right now - is very organized and clean. Pictures are hung on the walls, there is nothing on the floor, notices are hung neatly on the pinboard, and there is a general appearance of good house-keeping. I stay in my computer room for long enough, writing this blog, maybe all of those other problems will somehow sort themselves out.
I actually have been trying really hard lately to be realistic about what I can accomplish with the time I have, and get help with the things that I know I can't. It's been a little hard admitting to myself that I am not just a stay-at-home mom, even though I am still at home. The dinner idea that started out as something I could do in a few hours on Monday has changed into something that takes up at least 20 hours of my time every week, even if a lot of that time is on Sunday or in the middle of the night on Monday. This last week I had 40 orders - which is awesome - but I was basically cooking for 48 hours straight. While all of the cooking is going on, I'm also trying to feed my own kids, keep up with their sports, activities, emails from teachers, potty-training Ruby (at her insistence, over my strenuous objection since she's so young), and all of that other stuff we all do every day. As always, I find myself in awe of women who do all of this and work full-time outside the home - they must be beyond tired all of the time. One of my good friends is getting ready to go back to work after maternity leave with her third child, and just hearing how early she has to get everyone out of the house with lunches packed and clothes on and extra diapers and bottles and changes of clothes for baby and homework in book bags makes we slightly panic-y, and it's not even me! I feel like I would just need to stay up all night in order to make it out the door with all of that done.
Last night Matt and I had one of those (sadly) frequent discussions where I freak out because I feel like I can't handle everything, and he calmly reassures me that alot of the things I am freaking out about are not that important, and I get mad because I think they are important, and then after arguing for 45 minutes over that, we agree on our shared priorities - spending time with our kids, our health (ie, exercise), spending time with our friends and family, etc. I know that those are the important things, and I know that I will not look back 40 years from now and remember that there was always a crumb-layer on the floor of the kitchen (why I am the only person in my house who is bothered by this), but it's so hard to keep all of that at bay from day to day and focus on that big-picture stuff. The little stuff just eats away at the edges until it all but consumes your time and energy. I don't really have a neat way to wrap this up - no insight, so maybe you can share your tips and advice.
In the meantime, here's a picture of Ruby I just took - she is so done with diapers that she prefers to wear them on her head - somewhere in between a fashion statement and a really gross idea. But she's pretty cute even with a diaper on her head!

TMI?

2011-01-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

So, blogging is sort of hard, I think, because it's hard to write openly about things when people you know - friends, neighbors, family members, might be reading. I don't really care if people who I will never meet know every detail of my life, but it gets dicey when I know that someone I do know may read it. There start to be lots of subjects that are off-limits - nothing too "personal" in case my family reads it, nothing related to Matt's work after his patients started telling him things about Ruby that they read on the blog (which is awesome, but obviously means I would never want to write anything about his work situation - which he loves!), nothing too revealing about friends who may not want other people knowing things about them, nothing about my parents or Matt's parents, and on and on. I find it difficult to write about politics or religion, and it's preachy and annoying when people write about the environment or things like that, so I think that pretty much leaves me to choose between writing about the weather or about different cities I've lived in. Fun. I can - and mostly do -write about my kids, of course, but then there's always this concern that I'm misrepresenting them or making it sound like they are the worst kids ever who drive me crazy every second of the day.

A few months back, I realized that I was doing that with respect to my writing about Ruby and her adjustment, because people would constantly refer to all the "problems" I was having with her adjustment. They would ask, very sympathetically, how I was doing with everything. And, of course, I was writing openly about some of the struggles of parenting three kids, one of whom had only been with us a few months. At the time, I felt like I was really struggling in some ways, but there were also lots of great moments and happy days. I just didn't particularly think anyone would want to read about some nice, boring day where everything went really smoothly. I felt like I would try to share this other side of my life, since I think a lot of moms - adoptive or otherwise - have similar struggles and dark moments, and I always appreciate reading or hearing about those since they make me feel better about all of my short-comings and unperfect encounters with motherhood. You know, you see someone at the park or at the PTA, and you see this side they are presenting to the world. I'm always curious about the other side. Whenever that book came out called "Tuesdays with Morrie" (a great book, even if it was super inspirational), my mom and I kept joking about the book they didn't write - "Wednesdays with Morrie" where you find out that he's a total jerk to waitstaff in restaurants or refuses to stop driving even though he has ALS (if we seem like total heartless biyatches, remember that my dad has Parkinson's Disease for 30 years, and we love him, but he has his moments).

Anyway, I tried to find some neutral or upbeat things to write about, and I found that I wasn't really interested in writing about myself and my life in that way - does anyone really want to hear about how I handily solved a parenting dilemma in between taking my kids to sing at an old folks' home and sewing them each a new costume for make-believe playtime (3:30 - 4 pm every day) out of organic cotton that we purchased on a family field trip to a local shearing? No, I didn't think so. That would just make you feel sort of annoyed with me for being obviously more into my kids than you are into yours, and also feel like I was trying way too hard and my kids would probably end up hating me by the time they reach middle school (where they would, of course, not be going, since I would be home schooling all of them). So, even though I did not do any of those things and never would, I do have great days with my kids - or, more often, great moments in days that are both hard and good at the same time. I do have fun with them. I do love them to pieces and think they are obviously the most beautiful, smartest, most talented kids in the world. They are definitely going to be way cooler than your kids, and that's saying alot, because your kids are pretty cool too.

So I have a little journal where I write all of those sappy things down for them to read when they get older. That's where you'd find the Pollyanna version of their childhoods where Finn "was so awesome in basketball game today - could not believe he is so fast!!!" Or where Gus "is getting really interested in reading!! He keeps showing off by spelling the word "h-a-m" - so adorable!!!" Or where we are so proud that Ruby "is totally on top of the whole potty-training thing - she has figured out that she gets a mini marshmellow every time she pees, so she has mastered the art of peeing about a teaspoon of pee every 20 minutes or so!! Hilarious!" This will be where the children learn about themselves as children - how special they were, how smart, how loved, how funny. I want them to know that, and I know it, but I'm betting that you, dear reader, think your own kids are the bee's knees too, so you're not as interested in hearing me brag about mine. It's more fun to share the other stuff, and I think I'll keep on doing that. And then later I'll start some anonymous blog to talk about all my friends and my family behind their backs, and sex, and money and all of that fun stuff!

A "Shining" kind of day

2011-01-12T19:52:00.000-08:00

Isn't it such a big kick in the face to come home after Christmas, get everybody back into their routines, feel really good that you are getting to the gym on a regular basis, start putting the house back together after the assault of having all three kids home over the holidays, and then, a week later, have several inches of snow completely derail all of that? The boys were out of school Monday and Tuesday and went in late today, and Ruby's little preschool seems to be indefinitely cancelled. People, I depend on those few hours when all of my children are under the care of other people for my very sanity.
It's getting a little frightening around here. I found myself taking a very, very long shower today in the middle of the day, while presumably Gus and Ruby were watching Max and Ruby, and even though I was pretty sure that there would be some consequence to pay for my neglect of the children, I couldn't seem to get out. I was just standing there staring into space, scalding my already dry skin and wondering what I could possibly do with the two of them once I got out. Indeed, when I got out and got dressed and went to face the music, there seemed to be water everywhere. Ruby loves to fill up cups with water, then dump the water into other containers and pretend she is cooking. So there was water all over the floor, the couch, pile of single socks that I keep out in the middle of the living room in case the mates show up one day. Except, somehow, the water smelled like pee, so I am a little suspicious that in this instance she might have filled the cup up with water from the toilet (which of course the boys never flush if they only pee in it), but I pretended to myself that that was not the case and just treated it like a regular water spill - ie, lazily allowed it to dry on its own). Anyway, that did take up a little piece of time, and then there was the 45 minutes it took to get Gus and Ruby out the door and into the Y for Gus' indoor tennis practice, discover that it too had been cancelled, and turn around and go back home. Some days are just like that. Time seems to stand still, and everything you try to do just seems like a big dead end. Those kind of days suck the life right out of you, and when they are over, and you are standing in the kitchen eating some enormous leftover cake the neighbor brought over with a big spoon right off of the cake plate, it's just pretty sad. From the cake-eating, I moved to the couch to watch TV, only to find that Modern Family had been replaced by the memorial service for the victims of the Arizona shooting. And, of course, watching the grieving families and listening to President Obama speak so thoughtfully about loss of those lives made me so sad and so grateful for just a normal day with my family. I don't mean to be too Hallmark Hall of Fame, but it is such a miracle that we don't appreciate enough every single day. It's so hard to be mindful of that when there is so much whining and spilling and dirty dishes and shoes tracking in wet dirt and all, but I always feel sick to think that there are mothers and fathers who would give up everything for just one day like that. So I'll get up again and try to do better tomorrow. Right now I have to go deal with someone up out of bed at 11 pm - with pleasure!

Moving on ...

2011-01-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Where to begin? I don't even remember what was going on when I left off blogging, but here it is 2011 and that doesn't even seem possible. Since I last posted, Ruby turned 2, we left the kids at home and took a 4-day trip to San Francisco (amazing!), we drove up to New Hampshire for Thanksgiving with Matt's family, we celebrated our first Christmas together as a family of 5, we flew down to Texas for a week with my family after Christmas, and now we're back!

Finn & Gus ready for Halloween as some sort of Star Wars characters.

Ruby as Cookie Monster with our neighbor Scarlett - guess who loves trick or treating?!?

Me in SF!!

Matt in SF (not sure why we didn't ask someone to take a picture of us together, but you get the idea - no kids!!)

In the midst of all of that, Ruby was on a fun little roller-coaster ride of emotional highs and lows, so from one minute to the next I was not sure what was about to happen with her, and my little business (www.dinnersontheporch.blogspot.com) kept getting busier and busier, and things just seemed to be in a constant state of confusion and chaos.

But now, after a few weeks off from making dinners and with the kids back into their routines at school, I feel a little more sane. Not totally sane, of course, but getting there. Over the past few months, there were so many moments when I wanted to try to summarize what was going on with Ruby, in particular, but whenever I would sit down to write, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was going on. One minute she would be happy and loving, the next throwing a world-class tantrum over something pretty minor. Things seem to have evened out now, and I think her growing vocabulary is helping alot, but she's definitely a willful little person. So independent and determined to do everything for herself - which is great in many ways, but a little dangerous too. I love that even though she is barely two years old she can dress herself, put her shoes and socks on, put her toys away, use the potty with some regularity and lots of other big-girl things that I don't think the boys were doing until they were at least 4. But. Of course there is the other side of the coin. I'm trying to be careful not to let her jump straight into self-sufficiency without a little mothering. I don't want to wind up on the other side of an argument 14 years from now where she can rightfully say that she's been taking care of herself all of these years and now I have no business telling her what she can and can't do. Love those mother-daughter politics!

Anyway, lots of good stuff to work on (always), but in general everything is ticking along. The Christmas decorations are down (I think it counts that I have them in boxes, even if the boxes are still stacked in the living room, right?). I've got another week before I start back to being a delivery girl, so I'm enjoying the relative peace and quiet. It's a snow day today, so we're laying low. After naptime we'll make cookies and hot chocolate, during which time I will try very hard to be patient even when things spill. I will try to start (and finish) a few loads of laundry and I will most certainly wait until 5 pm before I have a glass of wine. And then I'll start trying to think of ways to keep everyone occupied tomorrow, which will almost certainly be another snow day. I'm trying very hard to keep New Year's Resolution #7 - I will only allow myself one Mommy Dearest outburst per day!!

I know we have more pictures proving that we did have Thanksgiving and Christmas together, but I can't find them, so will have to add that later!

So sorry, happy Halloween, Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year's!!!

2011-01-08T17:16:00.000-08:00

I'm coming back - really! It's one of my new year's resolutions, and so far I'm 1 for 1, so I think the odds are good that I will make it back to the blogging world. In my next post I will explain my absence and set forth a new blogging plan. I think that I have maxed out on insightful posts about adopting - or at least as a main topic for this blog, so now I will move on. Freeing and (hopefully) more interesting. At the moment I'm making pizza (heating a premade one) for some kids who came to a party too late to get any food and started crying, so I only have 3 minutes left. That seems to be sort of the way every day goes - 3 minutes is the most time I have before fluid is spilled or a timer goes off or we have to all get in the car to go somewhere "right now!!!" But, I have missed writing and feel that there are new things to explore and opine on, so if you haven't totally given up, stay tuned!!!

Slacker

2010-10-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

Naps Suck

2010-10-01T10:47:00.000-07:00

How much do I hate scheduling my day around naps? I had about two years where I did not have to do this, and it was heaven. Don't get me wrong, I love the "break" from a busy toddler when they go and crash for two hours and I can take a shower or start dinner or reply to emails or, ever so occasionally, write a blog. But. It's so complicated to actually achieve that "break" that it often seems like it rules the rest of the flow of the day. Ruby will still try to take a morning nap if we're in the car or she's in the stroller anytime around 11 am. That would be fine, except that I have to pick up Gus from school at 12:30, so I have to make sure we're doing some activity or hanging out at home between 11 and 12:30. Otherwise, she's determined to fall asleep for 30 minutes, which in turn means that I either don't put her down for an afternoon nap (and she's a cranky clingy baby all afternoon), or I put her down late, meaning that she will then need to stay up later if we don't want to spend an hour lying on the floor of her room trying to get her down. So my mornings are constrained by the need to be finished with all exercise and errands before 11. Then, at 12:20, we leave to go pick Gus up. Most days, like today, she falls asleep approximately one minute into the drive to get him. That is great, because if I go pick him up and come straight home, she'll go right down in her crib. If, however, I do something crazy, like I did today, and go through a drive-thru to get Gus some lunch, when we get home she will have had enough sleep that she wakes up, ready to party with Gus. So that's it. A 30 minute nap for the day. What a great afternoon I'll have to look forward to. I still put her down in the crib to see if she might, possibly, hopefully, go back to sleep. But no. I can hear her in the next room moaning and saying "mamamamama" in a tired but definitely not on-the-verge-of-going-back-to-sleep sort of way. So no shower for me, no emails, no bills, but at least a little blog ...

I miss you

2010-09-28T05:51:00.000-07:00

Blog! I miss you. I have many things to tell you, but can't seem to get all the way through a post lately. I have a few half-posts, which maybe I'll just post and see if anyone can make sense of it! At the moment, I'm stressing over whether my babysitter is going to come this afternoon when I have to go off and deliver all of my dinners on the porch. If not, I'm screwed. She super-secret texted me in the middle of the night asking if I still need her today! Yes, I do. That's why I said I need you every single Tuesday. When I said that, I meant that I didn't want to have to confirm it every week. Ay! Will let you know how it all turns out!

When will September be over???

2010-09-22T19:56:00.000-07:00

This is always such a crazy month for me, ever since the kids started "real" school. I get totally overwhelmed with the volume of papers and sign-up sheets and new committees and all of the other stuff that comes my way at the beginning of the school year. It starts to pile up in little corners and on table tops all over my house, and when I walk by and spy a pile that I know needs attention, it just makes me want to cram my whole self into a bag of peanut M&Ms. I just finished writing apologetic emails to both of the boys' teachers for not returning the parent-teacher conference sign-up sheets on time, because I can't see any time listed that works for me, Matt, and the babysitter where we could do both conferences at the same general time. Achieving this conference seems to be a logic puzzle that is going to defeat me, so I tire of trying to solve it and figure I'll update the blog. With what? Just my ranting about how busy I am. And what better way to solve that problem than to spend some time telling people about it? Perfect.
In other news, things are going well on most fronts. All kids are healthy at the moment, and everyone - including Ruby - loves school. She loves, loves it. When I tell her it's time to go (2 mornings a week for 2.5 hours), she claps and says "yay yay yay" and rushes around gathering her shoes, her backpack and multiple sippy cups (she needs at least two with her at all times to prevent a major tantrum). Very cute. She is in a little class with mostly younger kids, since she has an October birthday, and she goes crazy over babies, so she thinks she is in heaven. Adding to her advanced status, she has also decided to potty-train herself. I'm going along with it, trying not to get my hopes up, but she's pretty determined. We spend quite a bit of time each day on the potty, cleaning the potty, admiring pretty underwear and, occasionally, cleaning up accidents. This is not the way I went about things with the boys, but I'm trying to be flexible and try new things if that's what Ruby desires. So we'll see about that. Her birthday is coming up in a month, and I'm trying to decide what to do - small party, big giant party, something in between? I want to celebrate her and make a big deal, but there's a part of me that wants to keep everything just in our family too, so, typically, I'm not doing anything about it and will have to decide at the last minute, making whatever I do all the more stressful. Anyway, life is good and I feel like I have many, many things to write about, but no time to do it yet. Maybe when the kids are all in college I'll have a little time ...

Bird on a Wire

2010-09-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

Y'all, this morning I went for a little jog - 3 miles - and it was really a grind. Last January, my husband and I ran a marathon - that would be 26.2 miles, and now it's a struggle to move my butt 3 miles. Not too cool. But I'm still doing it, because if I stop, I'll never start again. Have you ever let yourself get totally out of shape and then tried to start again? It's hell.

It's really hell after you turn 30, as I found out when I decided to get back into shape several years ago. I had been pretty fit during my late 20s, and then the day I found out I was pregnant with Finn I decided that I didn't need to bother with exercise for a while. That little honeymoon lasted 4 years, since after he was born I was breastfeeding (love the weight-loss, eat all the cookies you want bonus of that!), then pregnant again with Gus, then breastfeeding again, then just too busy to exercise. When Gus was about 2, Matt and I noticed that we had become very, very slack and could not run a mile even if there was a wild bear coming for us, so we hit the pavement. It was so, so miserable and painful to bring our bodies back from the brink like that, that we have tried to stay somewhat in shape (sometimes more than other times) ever since. With 40 looming like an exam you don't want to study for, I know that the next hiatus I take from exercise will be a permanent one.

Anyway, so I drag my body around, pushing Ruby in the stroller or, very occasionally, on my own, and I actually like it now, so that's a plus. Today, I was alone - Ruby is starting at a little preschool and I had ONE free hour (!), so I got out my Ipod and hit it. Where am I going with this? Well, one of the songs that came up was Aaron Neville's version of Bird on a Wire, and it reminded me of an entry that I wrote on the blog that I kept while Matt and I were training for the marathon last winter. You can read it right here. That was before we had Ruby, and I remember having a very emotional breakdown on the run as I listened to the lyrics of that song. I was thinking so much of my dad, who has lived with Parkinson's for 30 years and for whom we were running the marathon. But it was January, and we had just passed our court date and knew that Ruby was our daughter, but we still had to wait 6 more weeks to go and get her. It was so hard, knowing that she was there, not being loved by us, even though I knew she was being cared for and loved. And I also felt (and still feel) brokenhearted for her to have lost so much already. That's a loss that she will always carry in her life, no matter what we do or how happy and perfect the rest of her life turns out to be. At the time, before knowing her like we do now could balance out the facts of her life up to that point, I think I was more focused on that sad year when she lost her family and suffered so much. I had a lot of trouble with the fact that I could not protect one of my own children from sorrow, even though, obviously, without that sorrow she would never have been mine. The lines of the song where he talks about things having been paid for always choke me up, because, as I wrote then about my dad, that's what we want to do for the people we love. And sometimes we can, and sometimes we can't, but either way, you try and hope, fingers and toes crossed, that it's the effort that counts.
(Now go grab a kleenex and listen to some Aaron Neville! Don't even get me started on "I Bid You Goodnight.")

Football Season Is Finally Here!

2010-09-12T18:46:00.000-07:00

Not that I really care about football at all, but it's a good season for me nonetheless. Matt is a fanatical Philadelphia Eagles fan. When I say fanatical, I mean that he spends vast amounts of time reading information about the team online (does this help the team?), he cannot watch games with other people (in case he has a little baby tantrum if the Eagles are not playing well), and he will do almost anything in order to be allowed the sizable chunk of time it takes to watch an entire football game.

Some women would let an opportunity like this pass them by. They might think, my husband works so hard, surely he deserves to watch a few hours of football on the weekend without having to pay for it. Not me. While I agree that Matt works hard and is a good father, provider, husband, etc, I do not think it is reasonable to spend what actually amounts to one-fourth of the weekend watching car and erectile dysfunction commercials interspersed with a few moments of football. I'm not even anti-football. I think it's fine, and I'll watch a few minutes here and there. I get the team loyalty and the interest in the backstories of the players and all that. But I'm not one to let a golden opportunity pass me by. Several years ago, when Finn was a baby and Matt and I realized that any free time either one of us wanted would have to be negotiated and paid for, I made a deal with Matt that has eternally paid great dividends. The deal is that he can watch the game, or games, if games other than ones the Eagles are playing in are "important" to the Eagles (meaning that their standing in the division might possibly depend on the outcome of said other game), so long as he is dealing with the child(ren) during the hours of play. That means I have at least half of the day, and often the whole day, to do as I please. Sadly, "as I please" today meant dealing with the house, but I was actually very pleased to be able to do it in peace.

Over the years, Matt has become a master at entertaining the children without actually having to engage his brain, which is, of course, otherwise occupied. We think the person who invented Candyland (was Milton Bradley a person?) was either an idiot or a genius, because if you play a whole game and you do actually engage your brain, you might throw yourself out a window before you round into Peppermint Paradise. For a while, puzzles were Matt's tool of choice, and I would come home from a long walk with a friend to find 17 puzzles laid out on the floor, the children clamoring for me to admire each one while Matt sprawled happily on the couch. Now the boys create giant lego things with a little guidance from the father figure, or they bring every stuffed animal they own into the living room and make a practically life-sized zoo for them with blocks and pillows. It's literally the only time I see Matt truly working on his multi-tasking skills, as he keeps up a stream of encouraging murmurs to direct the children in their activity while he keeps track of the main event. Ruby has thrown a bit of a wrench into the situation, but Matt is handling it well. It turns out he can read books without actually looking at them, and it's not like Ruby cares, she's just happy to be part of the football party. So we're all happy on football Sundays, win or lose, because we all have a few hours to do exactly what we want.

Now if only the Eagles could make it to the post-season this year ...

Zen and the Art of Housekeeping

2010-09-10T06:16:00.000-07:00

So, the boys are back in school and happy as can be, and you would think I would have more time on my hands to get organized, update the blog, keep the house clean, and all of that. But, instead, I find myself in a constant state of chaos, with fifteen minutes here and there between dropping off at school, trips to Target to pick up soccer gear, parent meetings, and on and on and on. Plus, now it's just me and Ruby at home, so whenever we are here, I have a little shadow following me around the house getting into trouble. Right now she's sitting on the floor beside me with my coffee cup, eating ice from the bottom (since I can never finish a cup of coffee, I have to convert it to iced coffee halfway through, and as soon as Ruby sees me do that, she starts demanding "i-ee" until it's all gone). So nothing is really getting done, but I'm trying to be at peace with it. This morning in carpool I discussed with the boys (Finn, Gus and our carpool buddy Owen) the concept of Zen. I told them that if we could achieve zen in the morning carpool (rather than the usual mayhem of shoes being thrown about, hair being pulled, threats being made (by me)), we would all enjoy a happier day. They didn't know what zen was, and I admit I'm a little fuzzy on the actual concept, but I suggested that we could only achieve it through quiet, and it actually worked, at least until we arrived at school and all three boys wanted to be first out of the car, meaning they had to pile onto one another to get out. Oh well.

As for me, I don't know if zen would help me not be anxious when I look out into our back yard and see weeds and massive shrub overgrowth taking over everywhere. Or when I walk through the playroom to get something out of the downstairs freezer and see every single lego we own covering the floor in a sea of disorganization. Is this discomfort with disorganization something that just comes on as women age? I know that in college I was a big slob, letting my half of a tiny dorm room go native until either parents' weekend or the end of school was approaching. I'm thinking it must be an evolutionary urge, making women - especially mother-women - crazy at the sight of something out of control the way our playroom or shoe area seems to always be. As if I could finally "get everything organized and keep it that way"(my ultimate desire), then everything would be perfect. I think I like car trips for this very reason - I can get everything packed and organized in the back of the car and, because it's such a small little universe, I can maintain that order by tidying everything each day. Plus, in the case of a car trip, the children are literally restrained in car seats and cannot disrupt the order I have imposed in the car. Ahem. Controlling much? I know, it's true. But I'm just saying that I would like life to be like that, not that I actually achieve it or even try very hard. Instead of cleaning and organizing, Ruby and I spend our mornings on walks, doing errands, making cupcakes or playing with little friends. And then I have a little moment of panic when I think of all the tasks I didn't get done all day, but by that time it's usually too late to do anything about it, so a nice glass of red wine takes care of it. Zen or wine, whatever works.

Labor Day Weekend

2010-09-06T20:07:00.001-07:00

always seems to wear me out. Why do I seem to take the name literally? Anyway, we're tired but had a good weekend, and now I'm going to bed. More tomorrow!

Healthy Baby Dance

2010-09-01T20:01:00.000-07:00

Okay everybody (and self), everything is fine. Ruby is fine (although I did have to rush her to the weekend peds clinic on Sunday when she was gasping for air, but that was a bad case of croup, so unrelated to our near-death experience). I now need to convince myself that danger is not lurking around every corner and move on. I have been having unsettling flashbacks to the whole event, and I keep thinking about what I would be doing right now if something really awful had happened.

Helping with the whole moving-on process is that Ruby is such a funny little doll. We've been out and about so much these last few days with back to school stuff, sports for the boys, birthday parties, and she is such a little socialite. She can be throwing a no-holds barred tantrum in the car, but the minute we get into a crowd, she's all shy smiles and coy glances. After a few minutes of that, she moves on to walking around, checking out new people, and, of course, looking for snacks. I will say that Ruby's interest in food has definitely calmed down quite a bit (and this whole low iron finding has made me rethink the compulsive eating in the first place - could it be that she was like pregnant women who eat dirt and other oddities in an effort to get enough iron - pica?). Now when we're at home she often chews up a bite of something and then chucks it on the ground if it's not tasty enough, so I would say she is your basic American toddler. In new settings, however, she definitely appeases anxiety by trying to eat. Or by trying to drink any juicebox within a ten mile radius. When I had her at the pediatrician with the croup, and she was tossing around ideas of where Ruby might have picked it up, I had a distinct memory of a recent playground party during which I saw Ruby on the make with at least 10 different juiceboxes. I didn't mention that to the doctor, but I think Ruby and I both knew the score. But overall I am so happy that she seems to have replaced her food attachment with her family.

On another note, Ruby seems to have kicked out all of her uninvited gastrointestinal guests, and with the extra iron she's taking, we're down to very few diapers over here. Major plus. She has actually been pretty healthy in that regard for a while, but people keep asking me how she is doing, so I didn't want people to think that she is still having diarrhea constantly - not a very lovely image.

As Ruby's general health has improved, her hair has been growing like crazy. When we wash it, the curls hang down to her shoulders - so cute! I have so many thoughts about the whole hair issue, and I find it interesting that people are so curious about it - as I was. I will write more on that topic soon, but for now I will just say that I feel like her growing hair is such a good sign of a healthy baby.

So, as you can see, I'm ticking off all of these things to reassure myself that "everything is fine." Ruby is okay, better than okay, and we're great. It's just been a long week, and after six months where things happened pretty slowly, a trip to the ER and an acute case of croup within three days of each other was a lot to deal with. I think we're making up for all of the months she wasn't with us, though, and I've been thinking that nursing a sick little baby is definitely a bonding experience. Finn was sick all the time when he was a baby, so there were so many nights of worry and trying to comfort him when he was burning up with fever and couldn't breathe. It was awful, and we were always exhausted, but we also were putting into action the bottomless love we felt for him. When we heard the first lovely croup cough issue out of Ruby's mouth, we realized that we were going to be in for a few sleepless nights, and Matt's comment was, typically, very patient. He said he guessed that we owe her a few nights, since we missed so many. And it was good, because on Sunday night, sleeping on the floor next to Ruby's crib, listening for her to breathe in and out for hours, I realized that we really were "there" with her in ways that I hadn't realized. All of that stuff about adjusting and her hair and language skills and every other little detail that I've thought about in the last six months are these objective things that I can think and talk about, but now, to me, she is really just my child, and I love that. That love you have as a parent is so amazing, because you can see certain things about your child - they are good at sports, or introverted or pretty or not as pretty as the others or they struggle with math or can't ever remember where their shoes are or may have to be held back in school, or whatever, but none of it has any impact on how much you love them. You just do, and all of that other stuff is separate (even though it can sometimes drive you crazy). So it was good to realize that I just do love Ruby like that now, since when someone plops a 16 month old baby in your arms, the details are what you (or at least I) tend to focus on. You know you will love this child, but at first she's a little mystery that you're trying to unlock so you can figure out how to love this child and how to make her love you. Anyway, as with most things, it all happened while I wasn't paying attention to it, so a night or two on the floor or a few hours at the ER is not the highest price to pay for the realization. And now that I've had it, we can all stay healthy for a while, right?

First meeting, six months ago.

Now, just one of the gang, looking for frogs.

Inhale, Exhale, Rinse, Repeat

2010-08-29T19:23:00.000-07:00

I am so glad that tomorrow begins a new week. A week of first soccer practices, back to school nights, planning meetings, play dates, homework and trips to the grocery store. Those are good. In the meantime, here are some good recent pictures of our happy little troop of troublemakers.

Gus' first day of Jr K - Ruby trying to go with him.

Walking in the woods.

Playing peek-a-boo!

Finn tried to teach Ruby & Gus how to play War, but they didn't exactly get it!

Warning: this blog is not even mildly humorous

2010-08-26T22:26:00.000-07:00

It's almost midnight, Thursday night, and since it's almost over I can definitely say that today has been the worst, but also one of the best, days of my life. I don't really even know how to write about this day quite yet, because so much is still zinging around in my head and I keep having little mini panic attacks, but I'll just give the facts now and then maybe once I've processed it I can write a little more later.

So, this morning after we dropped Finn off at school, Gus, Ruby and I came back home to take care of a few things before heading back out to do some errands. While I cleaned up from breakfast and paid a few bills online, Gus was watching cartoons, and Ruby was sort of milling around in the room with him playing with her toys, or coming in to visit with me, or chasing the cats. Basically, just being her little whirlwind self. At some point as I was finishing up, she came in and I detected that she needed a diaper change, so I followed her into the next room, where she had gotten up on the couch with Gus to watch a little TV. I sort of teasingly told her that I was coming to get her to change her diaper, and she gave me an equally funny look that said "not if you can't catch me!" She then proceeded to get off the couch going head-first. The couch is only about two feet off the carpeted floor and she moves pretty slowly, so even as I went to grab her, I wasn't really concerned. However, at some point in her descent, but before I caught her, her center of gravity must have changed and her butt and legs flipped over her head, causing her neck to bend backwards in a very unnatural-looking way. It looked pretty scary, and I swooped down to pick her up and comfort her and make sure she was alright. She cried for a second and then started inhaling before letting out "The Big Cry." You know the cry where they don't make any sound for a minute and then all hell breaks loose and you have never heard someone cry so loud right in your ear? That's what I was waiting for. Except she passed out from holding her breath.

Earlier this summer she had fallen off of a chair, bumped her head and passed out from holding her breath. That time, I remember that she all of the sudden she just went totally limp in my arms, and I was so stunned that I just stood there for a minute, looking at my aunt who was standing with me at the moment. We could each see in the other person's eye the rising panic and the thought that maybe we should be calling 911, but before either one of us could voice it, Ruby opened her eyes and started crying. We were scared, and worried for a while, but then she seemed fine and happy and was eating and playing, and I remembered that I had heard of children holding their breath until they pass out, so I moved on to worrying about other things.

So today when Ruby started her crazy inhale before the big howl, I sort of knew she was going to pass out. I stood there for a minute, waiting for her to open her eyes again and start crying. But then it seemed like a long time had gone by, and she wasn't waking up. I started trying to wake her up, pinching her and calling her name, running to the kitchen to run her hands under the faucet, increasingly frantic. And then her eyelids came up a little, and I could see that her eyes were rolling around all over the place, going all different directions. And then her arms and legs started jerking and her little body became rigid in my arms. At that point, I totally lost it. I was screaming her name at the top of my lungs, grabbing the phone to dial 911 and, for some reason, running into the front yard screaming for help. I have never in my life been so terrified. I knew in my heart that it was too late, that she had broken her neck in the fall and was now going to die in my arms. My mind was doing 100 things at one time - figuring out how to get help, trying to remember any medical information I might use to save her life, imagining the future where I would always look back at that very moment where I watched my child die, simultaneously rejecting that it could actually be happening, blaming myself, imagining having done this to Matt and the boys, disbelieving that I could have let a child die when only 6 months ago we brought her home from Ethiopia in the hope of providing a better life for her. I also sorted out other possibilities, like total paralysis, and had a vision of her as a teen, living in a wheelchair, hating me. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Gus on the couch, watching without comprehension as his mother was transformed from a familiar part of his world to an unrecognizable wild animal, even as Scooby Doo sleuthed on in the background. My body was just acting on its own, with my feet carrying us out the front door to scream for help. Without deciding to do so, I laid Ruby down on the ground and stuck my fingers in her mouth to make sure her airway wasn't blocked (some vestige of CPR training), but I had to wedge her mouth open since her jaw was clamped shut. At this point, neighbors began descending on our yard, and our giant, ex-hockey player neighbor scooped her up in his enormous arms and put her on his shoulder. I was screaming into the phone at the 911 operator, watching her, when I saw her body finally relax, saw her take a breath, felt my own body and mind rejoin one another. The whole thing probably only lasted 3 minutes.

After that, the ambulance came and took us to the hospital since Ruby was still very disoriented and dazed. In my arms, her body kept flopping over to the side, like limp rag. But thank God, slowly, slowly we both came back from the edge. After three hours of being poked and prodded at the hospital, she was back to herself, doing laps around the ER, looking for stickers from the nurses, playing hide and seek with anyone who would take the bait. Unlike Ruby, after three hours at the hospital I felt like an empty IV bag and probably looked like one too. We left around 1, picked up Gus from the neighbor's house where he had been enjoying cookies and more TV, and went home to collapse. Medically, the bottom line was that she has an iron deficiency, making her more susceptible to fainting, which then brought on the seizure. Apparently it's not uncommon, and it does not mean she will have a seizure disorder, but I really, really hope that's the end of it. Also, Matt was involved during this, even though I have left his part out, and he was wonderful and calm and did all of the right things (of course), but he wasn't there for the scariest part, so I don't think he shared my abject terror.

So now here I am, and Ruby is sleeping peacefully in the next room (I just checked), so that's the best thing that's ever happened to me. Obviously, if I had known that she was going to be fine, I wouldn't have been so terrified. But for a little while I really believed and knew in my heart that she was not going to be fine, so I feel like I just got a hideous glimpse of what my life might have been if things had been different. I keep seeing little things around the house - Ruby's referral picture still taped onto the fridge, the poem and picture I posted last night, sippy cups, her favorite little shoes, dolls, thank-you notes with Ruby's name on them, and I can't stop myself from the morbid thought that if something much worse had happened today, seeing each of those little things would bring on a new nightmare.

I once read a quote that having a child is like going around with your heart on the outside of your body. It's true. They take it around with them, when they run away from you at the playground and for a minute you can't see them, when they eat something you didn't know they were allergic to, when they go to a friend's house or when they get on the bus and go to school. They take it when they are 16 and start driving around town with all of their friends, when they go off to college and drink too much and don't realize that people don't always just sleep if off. It's enough to make you not want to have them in the first place, but by the time you realize what they have done to you, it's too late. And then today I was thinking that it's not just your heart they have, it's your entire self. I guess I would go on living, but I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't be all there anymore, and what was left of me would be a weepy mess. Generally, when I hear a truly tragic story about a child, I say things like "I can't even imagine," and I really mean that I am not even going to let myself imagine because even thinking that something like that could happen to me is too painful. And then today I felt like someone was holding my head in a bucket of water, making me go to that terrible place.

But nothing terrible did happen, and we were very lucky, like we have been every single day since our first child was born. But it's not every day that you realize how lucky you are, or how close to the other side of the coin you are at any given moment, and then all you can do is be so, so thankful for the blessing.

Laugh at myself

2010-08-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think that you have just discovered the secret to life? Or maybe not quite so dramatic, but you have a great idea and you think that you had better write it down so that you won't have forgotten it by the morning? Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of a dream and think that it was such an awesome and interesting dream, that it would make a great novel. But then when I wake Matt up to try to tell him about it, it just sounds like garbage. "... then I was in this room, and there were like, chairs everywhere, and yet there wasn't anywhere to sit down, and then ..."

Anyway, I woke up one night while we were at Clear Lake, and I couldn't go back to sleep because my mind was racing with all of these great ideas for blog posts. And, of course, we had no computer or internet connection, so I was really frustrated at 3 am thinking that my amazing ideas might just go back into the void of my brain never to see the light of the blog. So, uncharacteristically, I got up to write down all of these fabulous ideas with the plan of writing about one idea every week or so, sort of dispensing my little pearls of wisdom about little by little, so as not to overwhelm anyone with my genius. Well, just looking over this list here makes me cringe even though no one else can see it.

Let's just say that it appears that my best ideas do not come to me in the middle of the night. I have one idea here that just says "John Calvin." That would be the man who started the religious movement that would eventually lead the Puritans to come to the New World, thereby leading to the life we know today. I am related to him, albeit distantly, but I'm not quite sure what my plan was for the blog. Maybe an interesting discourse on the Puritan work ethic? Maybe a history lesson? No idea. Another entry on my list just says "blogging: throwing food at dinner guests." That seems like one of those logic games where you have to figure out how the two are related - blogging is to throwing food at dinner guests as _________ is to painting your toenails.

So, sorry that my blogs will continue to be silly stories and pictures of my kids rather than life-altering gems of enlightenment. I did, however, write down one thing that I thought was nice, but it was just a poem that was framed on the wall of the house we were sleeping in, so I can't even take credit. It's an adoption poem, but it was uncredited, so I'm not sure if it's some famous poem that I've never seen before or just something that someone made up and put on their wall. It's at least better to share than my midnight flashes of craziness.

Not flesh of my flesh

nor bone of my bone,

But nevertheless,

Still my own.

Never forget

for a single minute

You weren't born under my heart

but in it.

End of summer, happy & sad

2010-08-24T07:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I am going to admit that I lied in my last blog. Actually, I think it was more of an attempt to remain positive and optimistic, but the events of the week unfolded in such a way that it was pretty much a big, fat lie. Here's the real story.

Every summer we go up to the Catskills to stay in the cottage that Matt's parents have had since before Matt was even born. It's a total of about 300 square feet, and it is adorable and tiny and perfect for sunny, summer days when you can swim and run around outdoors all day, grill out for dinner and then collapse in bed at night after a serious round of Go Fish or a stab at the Sunday Times crossword puzzle. We were at the lake, and we were having fun. After a rainy first weekend (but still fun as we were hanging out with Matt's sister, her boyfriend, and Grandma and Grandpa), the sun came out on Monday and we were excited to get down to business fishing, swimming, hiking around and the like. Sadly, by Monday evening Matt's dad was in the local hospital with what we thought were kidney stones. On Tuesday, he was diagnosed with Pancreatitis, but then on Wednesday, it turned out that they had given him the diagnosis of another patient in the hospital, and he did not in fact have Pancreatitis, but they didn't know what was wrong. I wrote that last blog on Wednesday, I think, and I was hoping that things were about to turn around for Grandpa and we would all be back to relaxing at the lake, with Grandpa on grill duty and Matt catching frogs with the boys.

On Thursday, they decided to move Matt's dad to another hospital that was outfitted with actual medical doctors and machines of modern medicine in an effort to figure out the problem. There, he was told that the back pain that was making it unable for him to walk was a spasm, but, also, he had diabetes. The next day, however, it turned out that the diabetes also belonged to another patient, so we were happy that he had beaten two diseases in the course of the week. Hello? Is it so hard to match the patient with the piece of paper that says what is wrong with him? And did I mention that there were only 8 patients in the first hospital?

Anyway, by Saturday his back was feeling better, but he still couldn't go home as they were waiting on some blood tests to rule out an infection that could potentially be dangerous. We left to drive home on Saturday, feeling terrible about leaving Matt's parents marooned in Cooperstown, NY (a beautiful, amazing town, by the way - highly recommend as a summer family vacation). Today is Tuesday, and they are still at the hospital. It turns out that he may have the infection - which has nothing to do with his back pain, which is what brought him into the hospital in the first place, so he has to stay a little longer. The moral of the story? I have no idea, but suffice it to say that we were all exhausted by our lake getaway. Matt spent much of the week in the hospital with his parents, while I spend much of the week at the lake trying to keep up with the three kids, or driving back and forth to visit Matt and his parents. The kids actually had a great week, and we all had some fun together in between hospital visits. Everybody except for Grandpa, of course.

Now we're back at home and trying to get ready for school and Fall and putting the house back together. Whenever I go away for a while, I come back home wanting to reorganize the whole house. Why is this? It's such a bad habit, as I get halfway into it and then loose interest in the project. But I still have taken everything out of drawers and off of shelves and have pieces of furniture floating around the house, inconvenient islands that everyone has to wedge themselves around to move from one room to another. So that's what we're up to. Just life, but after the last week, I'm actually really happy to be back to it.

What day is it?

2010-08-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

You know that great thing that happens when you are totally in vacation mode? Where you have no idea what day of the week it even is? That is where we are right now. We are in the catskill mountains, staying in matt's family cottage on a tiny lake where there is nothing to do but read, swim, eat, do crossword puzzles and look for little critters. The boys are in heaven and ruby is loving her first Clear Lake summer, even though - to be totally honest - keeping up with her busy body is putting a dent in my reading & relaxation time. Every summer when we are here, I vow to try to bring a little bit of the serenity and quiet of the lake home with me. It doesn't work for long, but it's such good medicine for the spirit.
Anyway, with no phone or Internet connection, I'm writing this while in town for provisions on my phone - not too convenient, so I'll write more when we are back home next week. Plus, the boys go back to school three days after we get home! Not that I'm counting...

2010-08-10T20:22:00.000-07:00

I'm typing this on my phone, lying in the bed of a comfort suites hotel in Stratford Connecticut, trying to be quiet and not wake the three kids sharing this little home away from home. We are, once again, on the road. Our trip certainly involves fewer episodes of drug-induced psychedelic mayhem and more juice boxes than the book of the same name, so it probably wont be quite so fun to read.

Anyway, we left home on Friday and drove to Baltimore to visit my college roommate aerie & her two (almost three) boys who are exactly the same ages as Finn and Gus. It's perfect since we can sit and visit while the boys run wild. Ruby also loved aerie. Whenever I take ruby somewhere new, I always wonder if she's worried that the new place is where I'll be leaving her. After so much of that.transition in her life, it must at least cross her mind. Sometimes I can tell that she's not down with it, but at aerie's house, she was all "it's cool with me if you've gotta head out, mom." oddly, that makes me happy as I see how she also knows a kindred spirit when she meets one.

The next morning, we drove down to DC where matt "surprised" us by driving up while I was showing the kids the house I lived in during my awesome three years in that great town. The kids were excited to see him, of course, and we spent the next 24 hours seeing everything possible - the Air & Space museum, the zoo, the monents, etc. It was fun and brought back so many memories ( not that I did so much sight-seeing while living there, as I was too busy running around town having fun). I am really glad we enjoyed our visit to dc, because we paid for it when we left there at 2 pm, heading north on I-95 toward New Hampshire. But of course, to get to New Hampshire, you have to get through New York city. Unwisely, I left DC just in time to be driving through NYC at the same time every new yorker is trying to het back into the city after spending the weeking elsewhere. Which is how a four join drive from DC to new york turned into a 7+ hour tour of duty in highway hell. I had hoped to make it all the way to new Hampshire in one day, but we were done in ny the george Washington bridge and stopped at this motel in Connecticut. Love getting the kids out of the car late at night, rifling through oir junk in the dark to find the absolute essentials, checking in while pointlessly trying to keep the baby sleepy (never works), setting up the pack & play and then laying in a pitch black hotel room with three kids listening to the muffled tv show coming from the next room (and wishing I could hear it better or not at all).
So thats how it went, more to come as we quest on to the North!
(I wrote this Sunday morning on my iPhone & I'm posting it Tuesday night without correction the million typos - sorry! We made it to MH and when matt fets here torrow we're off again, so more from the road, hopefully.)

If You Give a Mouse a Battery ...

2010-08-04T12:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I sat down at the computer ~~a few minutes~~ an hour ago to engage in a little mindless blogging, but it turned out that the wireless mouse's batteries had died (One of the many reasons that I objected to the wireless mouse and voted for the wired version, but I was overruled. Another is that the children - particularly Ruby - make off with the mouse from time to time, rendering the computer useless until the house has been turned upside down to find it. Another is that it was $50, where the normal one was free.). Anyway, after cursing Matt for a few seconds for buying said mouse, I had to fix the problem.

Of course, the batteries are in the kitchen, so I went the long way from the computer room into the kitchen, hoping to avoid detection, but nonetheless, I popped up on the children's radar. They had all three been happily coloring in the boys' room, but as I made my way into the kitchen, they suddenly all realized they were hungry. So I set about making snacks.

Of course, each child wanted something different. Finn wanted a peanut butter & jelly, but I realized that the peanut butter was empty, so I had to go downstairs to the other kitchen to get a new jar.

While I was down there, I remembered that I needed to switch the laundry into the dryer, so I went into the laundry room. Once in there, I realized that I had left the laundry in the washer for so long that it needed to be washed over again (I only do this for Matt's benefit - he recently complained that his clothes all smelled funny, but he didn't know why. I did know why, but it hadn't seem to bother anyone, so I had just been letting it go). So I started the wash again, after making a mental note to go back to scented detergent which does a better job of covering up that left-in-the-machine-too-long smell. But then I noticed that the cats did not have any food in their bowls, so I thought I would just put a little in. Unfortunately, there was no food in the bin, and I remembered that the new bag of cat food is currently sitting in the back of my car, which is sitting in the parking lot of the repair shop, waiting to be repaired. Another mental note to self to go get cat food, but in the meantime, I decided I would give them some tuna fish. So back upstairs to where the tuna fish is, but then I realized I hadn't brought up the peanut butter. As it turned out, however, once the children saw the tuna fish, they all wanted some of that, so I had to make a little tuna salad for everyone.

After snack time, I had to clean up the kitchen a little bit, when the phone rang. Seeing the Baltimore area code, I thought it was my college roommate, so I picked up, excited for a good chat. Unfortunately, it was Arbitron Ratings. Unfortunately they were calling to remind me that today is the last day for the radio listening journal that I've been supposedly keeping for the last week (sort of like Nielson ratings for radio). I have no idea why I agreed to do this, but I knew that I had and in fact had agreed for every person over 12 in our house to keep a journal. I also knew that I had already put the $4 they sent as a guilt-inducing incentive to compliance into my wallet and had used them to buy a latte the day before. So I told the guy on the phone that I absolutely had been keeping the journal, as had my husband, and we would be dropping them in the mail tomorrow. Hanging up the phone, I began hunting around the house for the journals, disorganizing all of my ordered chaos in the process. I finally found them back in the computer room, where I also discovered that I still had not gotten the two AA batteries needed to cause the computer to function so that I could sit down and write a little bit while the house was nice and quiet and the children were otherwise occupied.

So now, obviously, I have replaced the batteries. But of course, the quiet art project is long-forgotten and the boys are jumping from the couch to the ottoman waiting for me to come play Apples to Apples Jr., which will be a total nightmare with Ruby trying to eat the cards, Gus (who can't read and doesn't like games anyway) not playing after five minutes, and Finn taking everything too seriously and yelling at Gus to keep playing.

Damn wireless mouse!!!

Building Blocks for a Perfect Life

2010-08-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, here we go: my patented, million-dollar technique for keeping your life manageable, stress-free and successful in the face of children, parents, husbands, dogs, jobs, that extra 15 lbs, or anything else life may throw at you. Believe me, I think it would really work if I actually would do it!

A few months ago, after we had been home with Ruby for a few months and were settling into a little routine with her, I realized that I had not fully carved out a place for her in my life. That's not to say that there was not a place for her in my heart, or a place for her in the house, we had taken care of all of that stuff. No, it was more like I just really didn't have time for anything any more. Surprise, surprise, Ruby was taking up all of my time. Aren't babies so fun like that?! Between diaper changing, rocking it to sleep multiple times a day, washing its clothes (and yours more often that you could imagine, since there is always something gross on them), washing the actual baby, taking it to the doctor, taking things out of its mouth that shouldn't be there and trying to get things in that should be, playing a little bit with it, researching baby products and buying said products, cleaning up spilled milk, water, cheerios, legos, cat food, pans, folded laundry, etc, a little package of baby cuteness can really eat into a person's day. And that's not even getting into breastfeeding, being up all night, ear infections, worrying that it might be allergic or autistic or too short or too tall. Frankly, it's just a lot of work.

"But wait," you might be thinking, "she knew all of that already!" I already had two kids and was doing all of that stuff already, so what's the big deal? Plus, Ruby was already 16 months old when she came home, so some of the biggest life sucking elements (breast feeding, all night wailing parties, making your own baby food until you realize what a giant waste of time and energy it is) were not even applicable to our situation. And to tell you the truth, not having to do all of that stuff again is one of the many reasons we went the whole adoption route. When we first considered adding a third child to our lives, Gus was already 3 and Finn was 5, and I finally felt that I had clawed my way back from the brink of something very ugly. Five years of sleep deprivation and no exercise and always finding things mashed beneath my toes if I couldn't find my slippers was five years too much. An orphan, I wisely concluded, will not cause me these problems. By the time we bring this hypothetical orphan home, I thought (ever the unrealistic dreamer), she'll be sleeping, eating normal food, close to being potty trained, and walking. This would be good, I thought, because having a newborn or young baby would really put a wrench in my life. I had finally started a fitness regimen that I really enjoyed, I was working on my house and was happy with the progress, Matt and I had more time together to talk and enjoy just hanging out, I was gardening and beginning to think about a future where I might do something creative and productive outside of my sphere as a mother (which I actually find very creative and productive, but in a different way). I had some idea that a new baby would come on the scene and just fit into that picture quite nicely, without jostling all the other pieces around too much. (Note to reader who may be horrified that I would feel this way about an orphan: I also believed that Finn and Gus would just come on board as accessories to my life without causing much of a bump, but, of course, I was wrong. You know how they say that some people never learn?)

Anyway, as it turned out, little Ruby wasn't as much like a goldfish as she was a real person. She actually needed things and attention and nurturing and holding, and, like all little people, she left a wake of destruction in her path that required time and energy (always in short supply) to remedy. But oddly enough, it took me a little while to realize all of that. I persisted in the idea that it was so "easy" even while I kept banging my head against the fact that everything was not going according to my plan. I kept going for runs most mornings, but felt frustrated that I couldn't go very far while pushing the jogging stroller and stopping every few yards to recover the cheerio case or the sippy. I didn't step down from any of my volunteer obligations at the kids' schools and in the community, but I felt guilty every night as I went to bed for things I hadn't done yet that others were counting on me to do. I felt guilty about what I was feeding the kids, how messy the house was, about not reciprocating dinner invitations because the idea of having people over to the house seemed so overwhelming, about how long it would take me to return phone calls, even how infrequently I was sending out updates and blog postings for all of the friends and family who had supported us so much along the way. Basically, everything was coming a little unraveled, but I kept ignoring all of that and trying to do everything I had been doing as well as I had been doing it before Ruby came home.

So, as you might imagine, that didn't really work out. I realized I was sucking at almost everything and that fact was really bothering me, so I started thinking about how I might change things up. I thought about friends of mine who seem to be less scattered than I am, or more content in a way that I never seem to be. I know people who don't seem to feel as much of a tension between how their lives actually are and how they think their lives should be. So I thought to myself, what's the deal? What's their secret?

Anyway, over the course of a few months of reflection, I think I have come up with the perfect formula for a happy life. I will share it here with you, and if you end up using it and having a happy life, I just ask that you mention me on your tombstone, or in some other public forum. I don't really want too much glory, but a little would be okay. So here it is. Imagine that your life is made up of blocks. One block is your job, if you have one, or personal ambition, if you don't. In my case, I was a lawyer before I had kids, but I've been "retired" for a while now, so that doesn't count as a job. I do, however, have personal ambition to start a business (see previous blog post about dinners on the porch). Another block is your marriage or significant relationship. Another is spending time with your children and providing for them emotionally, educationally, etc. Another is feeding said children healthy meals and ensuring that they are generally clean, etc. Another is keeping yourself in reasonable shape by exercise, which seems to become more time-consuming with each passing year. Another is personal appearance, meaning regular haircuts/highlights, clean and attractive, if not necessarily fashionable, clothing, wearing make-up at least some of the time, etc. Another is friendships, which can take time and effort to keep up because, when you think about it, they involve nights out with the girls, a visit and a casserole to a bereaved friend, mailing a package to your best friend's child on his or her birthday, and so on and so forth. One's social life can also fall into the friendship category, although I do know people who would need to devote a separate block to socializing as they are more "on the scene" than yours truly. If you live near parents or in-laws, you know you have to dedicate a block to them because even if they are helping you out all the time, it's a two-way street. General maintenance of the house, laundry, yard will be a block, unless you are someone with live-in help, and in that case I don't want to know about it, so keep it to yourself. If you are active in your church or other volunteer activities, that could be a block.

The point being, you have your own assortment of things that make up your life, different from mine, but, I would argue, similar in the broad outlines. And you build up this Jenga-like tower of your life with all of these different blocks nicely balanced in a way that pleases you, or at least in a way that you can manage, and you think you're doing alright. And then you go and have a baby. Or adopt one, but either way, you add a big, big block onto the stack. But at first, if you're like me, you think that baby block will just sit on top, maybe rocking the tower for a little while, but ultimately the structure will hold. In my experience, however, that is not how it works. You keep trying for a while, pretending that it is working, and then the whole thing falls apart, or you fall apart, consumed with guilt and feelings of inadequacy over all of the things in each of the different areas of your life that you couldn't do well anymore. Basically, you feel like an all-around failure. I always seem to hit that wall after about three months with a new baby, and it's not pretty.

So my theory (untested by actual experience because I seem to be incapable of learning lessons) is that you have to completely get rid of at least one block with the addition of a new baby. (Therefore, if you have twins, you will need to get rid of at least two blocks, and so on.) Baby needs its own block folks, and there's no way around it. But here's why it's so hard: you can't get rid of very many of those blocks. It really is like Jenga, because your choices are pretty limited if you don't want to topple the whole structure. You can hardly argue that getting rid of your marriage or your parents will improve your life (at least I hope you can't). And you can't stop feeding your family or doing laundry or working (unless you choose to stay home, in which case you have a new full-time job) or ditch all of your friends. So that leaves you to choose between things like exercise, personal appearance, having a nice house, socializing, and volunteer activities. All of the things that make life a little more fun. So do you have to go around being an out-of-shape, frumpily dressed, reclusive outcast living in a pig-sty? No, because don't forget, you only have to get rid of one (maybe two) blocks. And not forever, just for a little while (like maybe a year, unless you do too much in the area of maintaining your marriage and end up pregnant again before you've gotten into a new groove).

The key is to eliminate whole areas from your consciousness, so that you no longer feel the pressure of them and therefore don't feel badly that you aren't able to keep up anymore. People always urge new mothers to get more help. What they mean is that you should somehow get enough help - housekeepers and babysitters - that you can keep on doing everything you have been doing up to that point. Like you can have a babysitter come while you go get your hair done, because it's so important that your roots don't show when you're sitting home nursing a two month old baby or tearing up and down the aisles of Target with the rest of high society. But that's just more pressure to keep up. Instead, people should urge new mothers to be realistic and face the fact that you can't keep up anymore. Trying to do so will only result in trouble, because no matter how many babysitters you have, there's just not enough time in the day for a new child and everything else. You've got to just do major surgery on your life.

You won't feel guilty about things you aren't even trying to accomplish. For example, it is a relief to me that I don't have to feel guilty that I've let my piano playing skills go down, because I never had them to begin with. Likewise, I don't feel badly about not taking the children to bring meals to shut-ins, because, no matter how nice that would be, that was never one of my blocks. You could just agree with yourself that you will not go to the gym for one whole year, no matter what. And then, if you did take a nice brisk walk one day, you would just feel like a big winner for having exercised so much rather than like a loser who hasn't been to the gym in a month. Or, you might rather give up trying to keep up with the house and just let people who come by to visit know that you have done so. Maybe you would choose to completely quit your volunteer activities - it's the only time you can do it without looking like a flake, and they will always be happy to have you back later.

Whatever you choose is your choice, obviously, but I think it might really be the key. A friend (mother to several, including a new baby) recently told me that doesn't "do dinner." It was a great lightbulb moment because I realized that you can just decide not to "do" certain things and no one can make you feel bad about it if you don't do it to yourself. How much better to just give yourself a pass until things calm down. Once the dust settles and you start having bits of time on your hands here and there, you'll know it's time to think about adding something back in - maybe one of the things you had to give up or maybe something totally new, like writing a blog.

Okay, enough already, you are welcome. I give you my theory and hope that, unlike me, you will heed it. I think I'm out of the baby business (having or adopting), so hopefully I'll not have to go around this particular merry-go-round again, but it might have made the ride a little less bumpy.

Time Flies When You're ...

2010-07-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

hmmm... Having fun? I guess you could say that. I've had my dad here visiting this week, and that combined with the normal chaos of life around these parts means that I've had nary a moment to brush my teeth, much less write a little bit. I actually have this post that I've been meaning and wanting to write for a while now, about time management, but I seriously have not had time to write it! But when I do, I know you're going to agree with me.

My dad is 70, and he's had Parkinson's Disease for about 30 years. He gets around really well, considering that, but he can't be by himself at home, so when my mom goes somewhere, he usually comes here. The only place my mom ever goes without him, actually, is to take her sister - who is mentally disabled - on a trip every summer. This year they are in Charleston, SC, so they dropped my dad off on the way. Having my dad around is a bit like having an extra child around, except I find him to be less predictable than the children I live with all the time. Maybe it's that, despite his advanced Parkinson's related problems, he is still very smart and can be cagey when he wants to do something he knows I won't like. He has actually behaved very well on this trip, and Ruby has taken a real shine to him, so that's been fun for both of them. He has also been giddy with delight at the fact that our giant, giant fig tree is covered in figs, so he's been spending a good part of each day out there picking figs. My dad is totally compulsive about fruit in general, but figs in particular, and he cannot stand to see the birds get them, so he stays out there working despite extreme heat or bodily injury. Today he had fallen into some figs that were mashed on the ground, and they were all over his legs, but he didn't see the need to come in and clean up at that point. He didn't come in until he started feeling something stinging him, and realized that it was wasps eating the fruit right off of him and then going on to his legs for dessert. We canned them this afternoon and, I have to admit, they are really good.

Anyway, we have been having fun, and then he'll go back tomorrow, so maybe sometime soon I can sit down and explain my theory of how everything can function perfectly no matter how many children you have if you just use my simple system. If only.

Me, venting hot air

2010-07-24T20:33:00.000-07:00

So, this whole summer thing is sort of wearing me out. I think it's a combination of the heat, the fact that my kids have been out of school for so long that they have reverted back to their native, savage ways, and just generally too much of everything. I feel weary, and my back hurts, and I about this time every summer I start to think ahead to the following summer and how I'll do things differently to create a more relaxing outcome.

Perhaps part of it is that this summer I am running around after a toddler who is hellbent on entropy. Some days I decide that it will be best to watch her at all times so that she doesn't wreak havoc in the house, but entertaining her all day is so exhausting. So then the next day I decide to just let her have her way with the house because I can't deal with keeping up with her, but cleaning up the messes she leaves in her wake is so exhausting too. And it's not just messes that you could overlook if you (like me) were comfortable with a messy house. It's pushing a stool over to the trash can so she can dig things out of it. It's finding all of the laundry I've been folding and throwing it all on the floor (why?). It's pushing a chair into the bathroom, turning on the faucet to fill plastic tubs of water and then dumping said tubs on the floor. So, you know, stuff I actually do have to face at some point. I remember that Finn did all of these types of things at this age (Gus not so much), and my solution was to just get him out of the house. We would go to the zoo, the park, the store, the mall - anywhere that he could just be himself without driving me crazy and we were great. But now it's not so easy, since I have three children rather than one to lug around, and often being out of the house, while beneficial from the mess point of view, leads to angry outbursts (me) and tears (the boys) because it's just hard to keep everybody in line out in the world. It makes me hoarse just thinking about it.

Plus, I believe I mentioned the heat. I mean, I expect this type of thing in Texas, but I feel a little cheated that we're here in the hills of North Carolina and the weatherman is doing the whole "92 degrees, but it will feel like 99" bit. Buddy, that kind of language is not welcome here. It is welcome in Texas, because it's so damn hot there that it's a source of pride to folks, so if it's going to be 100 degrees, they'd like to be able to let you know that it actually feels like 110, whatever that means. But not here, where the air conditioning is not all is could be, you can't get from place to place via underground, air conditioned tunnels.

Anyway, this blog is no fun, so sorry about that. I will feel better tomorrow, after Gus' birthday party is over. Inexplicably, I agreed to host it here at the house, just like he wanted. We normally do Finn's party here in April and I go all out with creative activities and such. From the couch the following day, I declare that we are never having another child's birthday party at our house, and I make calls around to find a place that will accept birthday bookings for a July party even though it's only April. Do I feel guilty dialing it in like that for the second child? Not really. I mostly feel that I should not have spoiled the first one by going to so much trouble for him. He is destined to be disappointed by life, whereas Gus will find the world to be a pleasant place, filled with people who do things for him that he didn't expect them to do. As proof, I give you the fact that Finn cried for over an hour a few nights ago because he was worried that he was not going to get an acting part in the little play they were doing at his camp. Not that he had already not gotten a part, just the horror of the possibility was enough to lead him to the valley of tears and misery. He actually said that it was the worst thing that could ever happen to him. And it hadn't even happened yet. Nor did it happen, and he came home all smiles the next day. That's a kid who has yet to taste the bitter pill of true disappointment.

But anyway, I did have a weak moment and agreed to let Gus have his party here, and now I'm remembering why I usually don't do this. I'm hoping that by October, for Ruby's birthday, I will have recovered, because I will make a huge deal out of her second birthday - her first here with us (further creating a middle-child complex for Gus). For now though, I must go to bed, because in the morning I have to blow up a million inflatable light sabers, so I should stop writing and save my proverbial breath.

ouchie!

2010-07-21T08:33:00.000-07:00

This is one of Ruby's favorite words now, but far from her only one. She says "kitty cat," and "baby" and can sing a pretty convincing version of Happy Birthday. At 21 months, she's come a long way in terms of language, to the point where I think she understands most of what we tell her. If I ask her to do something, she usually will do it (unless I'm asking her to spit out some little treat she's managed to shove in her mouth, a silly band or a handful of coins, for instance). And she sort of "gets" things - like if she spills her water (all the time), she knows it's an uh-oh and will get a towel to clean it up (shocking to me, since the boys still have no conception of cleaning up messes they have made), or this last weekend we were visiting Matt's brother and family at the beach and she would rush over with a pacifier anytime the baby whimpered. She's such a little mama, taking care of real babies and doll babies alike. She even worries about the boys when they are crying and is quick to give a gentle pat to help them feel better. So that's her sweet little self.

Ruby's other self, however, is all terrible two, even though we're not even there yet. As I said, she's come a long way in language, but she's still pretty far behind for her age. She really can't communicate as well as the boys could at this age, for obvious reasons, and I know that's so frustrating for her, so she unleashes it in torrents of rageful shrieking. Perhaps she wants to put her shoe back on after taking it off, perhaps she wants to finish the pizza crust she pulled out of the trash can, perhaps she is angry that she can't have the knife out of the dishwasher that I'm trying to load. Whatever the cause, the dramatic hysteria that she throws down is almost enough to make me give in, regardless of the inherent danger or disgusting nature of whatever it is she wants to do. Luckily, like a summer shower, her mood passes quickly and she can be cajoled back to sweetness with a hug or a toy or a cracker.

Below are some recent pics. We had a great time at the ocean this last weekend. It was Ruby's first time, so it was fun to see her reaction to the sand and waves. Every time I would say, "here comes a big wave," she would wave her little hand at the water with a confused and doubtful look on her face. I think she kept waiting for the person I was making her wave at to come bobbing up out of the surf. We also celebrated Gus' 5th birthday there, so he was excited to have a big deal made over him. Of course, he's having a Star Wars party this coming weekend ("just like Finn's"), so we're gearing up for that. I mentioned that this week at home with just Gus and Ruby would be very different from last week when I had Finn and Ruby while Gus was at camp. Indeed, it is much quieter, but it's hard in its own way since Gus can't figure out anything to do with himself in the absence of Finn's ~~dictatorship~~ brotherly guidance. Right now he and Ruby are lying on the floor in his room eating bananas and looking at the ceiling. Fun times!

Ruby and Cousin Johnny (at 9 months, he's pretty much the same size as Ruby!)

Gus & his crazy birthday hat, and Ruby with Cousin Ashley!

"Hey! Where's my cupcake?"

Finn became a Parrothead at Margaritaville!

Matt, his brother Jon and nephew Johnny, the little one, looking suspiciously at Matt.

The whole gang.

Brain Drain

2010-07-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

This week has been really unusual for me, since Gus has been in a little camp at the school he will go to next year, and Finn and Ruby have been home with me. It's so rare that I spend time with Finn when Gus is gone, and I'd forgotten how it can be. It can be great, on the one hand, because when he's not working on antagonizing his brother he sometime tries really hard to be helpful and sort of Eddie Haskell-ish. He helps me with Ruby, or he reads, and going on errands is much, much easier with just one of the two boys (for some reason, when we all go on an errand together, the boys end up wrestling on the floor of wherever we are). Plus, Finn is really interested in almost everything, so he is a good companion in a way, because he will listen and ask appropriate follow-up questions. So that's all great, and he really enjoys having some time without Gus in the picture, which is partly why I staggered their camps in the first place.

However. You knew that's where this was leading, right? I find that the child's mind is a little like a vortex that I seem to be caught in as we go through our days. Every single thing that happens requires so much input on my part that by the end of the day, I'm in a vegetative mental state, yet Finn is still going strong. It's like he's sucking the mental life out of me. Example, "Mom, quiz me." Me, while trying to find an address in an unfamiliar neighborhood, "Uhh, what?" "Give me a money quiz. Three ways to get to a dollar." Me, "okay, name three ways to add up to a dollar." Finn, ready with his answer, of course, since he was thinking about it before I even asked, "one hundred pennies, two half dollars, a silver dollar." WTF? Those are not normal ways to make up a dollar, but whatever. So I appropriately admire his prowess and return to scanning for the street that I can't find. "Mom, ask me more." So I toss off a few more quizzes, and he aces them, and then I totally run out of ideas. After about three rounds, I can barely think of my own name, much less come up with a denomination of money to quiz him with. Hard to believe? I know, but you try it when you're also using many of your other senses at the same time.

So I have to shut down that little fun, and Finn is dejected for a while. But only for a little while. Once he can sense that I have relaxed (having found the address we were looking for, transacted our business, and gotten back in the car), he strikes again. "Mom, how much blood would you say the average ten year old has?" Me, "I have no idea." Finn, "well, does a baby have less blood than a grown up?" Me, "Yes." "How does it grow?" Now, here's where I should have bowed out with my customary response, "hmm, your father knows so much more about stuff like that, we'll ask him when he gets home," but I didn't. I was distracted and started down a lame explanation of red blood cells and how they live and die in our bodies. "But where do they go when they die?" "Mmmm, just back into your body, sort of, I think." "Where?" And that's when I realize that I really have no idea how that all works, although I did at some point in my life (8th grade science, maybe?), but I have become a person who cannot answer the questions of a 7 year old. "You know what, Finn, let's find out all about that from dad later today." Finn, "okay. Mom, wouldn't it be funny if you could fold up a car when you don't need it?" "Mom, what are they talking about on the radio when they were talking about bombs in Uganda?" "Mom, who were you talking to on the phone?" "Mom, have you ever been to Japan?" "Mom, do you think we can buy the next book in my series today?" Me, finally, "Finn, Mommy's head hurts, so we need to take a break from talking for a while and just look out the window." "Okay. Mom, did you see that car over there? It had a really funny-looking thing on top. Remember when we went to the art car museum in Houston? Do you think we could ever decorate our car like that? I think it would be cool to do it like a shark, and then there could be like a person's feet coming out where the mouth is. Wouldn't that be cool?" Me, drive car off the road into a tree.

So, next week Finn heads off to camp and Gus will be home with me, which is a much different phenomenon entirely. I'll let you know how it goes.

Big Day!

2010-07-13T15:05:00.000-07:00

Friends, if you're local you may already know, but if you're not, I'll tell you my fun new thing. Finally, after years and years of thinking of ideas for starting a business, I have finally actually done it. I usually think of some idea, but then (as I explained before) someone else has already done it and it's way too late, or I don't want to invest the time/money to get it going, or I just realize that I'm not interested in doing the actual thing that I've come up with (like I have this idea that you could be a personal assistant for a bunch of different people for just a few hours a week each, because I need that kind of help, but I couldn't actually run that type of business). Anyway, my new biz is called "dinners on the porch," and basically I just make dinner and then take it to whomever wants one. You can check it out at www.dinnersontheporch.blogspot.com, right next door, blog-ishly speaking. (The name is supposed to convey that your dinner is actually waiting for you on the porch, but also the rare treat of a relaxing dinner outdoors, maybe with cocktails. What do you think?) Anyway, today was the first delivery, and it was so fun! I kept waiting for some nightmarish scenario to unfold - guacamole all over the inside of the car, or Ruby somehow getting into the enchiladas and eating them/smearing them all over the house, but none of that happened. It went, basically, according to plan. Shocking.
Anyway, as Matt suggested, I could be making more money crafting coffee drinks at Starbucks, but it wouldn't be so much fun and, plus, the uniform. I've done my time in jobs requiring uniforms (frozen yogurt server, waitress, camp counselor, etc), and I think I'm done with that.
At the moment, I'm drinking a very strong gin & tonic and trying to ignore that the rest of the house is total chaos (since I let the kids run wild while I made all these enchilada dinners!). It's working ...

Routine things

2010-07-12T21:22:00.000-07:00

Note to the reader: it's almost midnight, I really, really need to be in bed as I have many things that must be accomplished tomorrow, and yet, here I am, lying on the floor of our bedroom in the dark, trying to be quiet (Matt has been asleep for several hours and he would certainly grumble at me if I wake him up with typing noises), struck by the need to update the blog to let everyone know that I really don't like routines. I just thought about it while I was in the shower, so instead of going to bed, sensibly, here I am, wide awake. But that's just the thing: I hate to have a bedtime. I hate to feel like I "need" to go to bed because I "have" to get up at a certain time every day. Instead, I suspend the knowledge that my children will wake up, as they do every day, at 7 am, wanting me to do things (get breakfast, change a diaper, mediate arguments, be readily available) right away. Maybe, I tell myself so convincingly, they'll all sleep in tomorrow and we'll wake up at a more reasonable hour, like 8:30, and Matt will have started the coffee before he left for work, so I won't even have to get through that terrible half hour before the coffee can be made when I am doing the aforementioned odious tasks (odious because they are being done pre-coffee, not because I hate doing things for my children, mostly). But that won't really happen, and that gets me down, the routine-ness of that part of the day.

There are only a very few routines that I really enjoy, like my weekly routine of getting a mani/pedi every Friday. What? Did I really say that? No, that's not on my schedule, but I guess I meant that I would like that kind of a routine. I would probably like a routine where we always spend Spring Break in Hawaii, too, but unfortunately that, also, is not yet on the annual rotation. And I really can't make myself stick to routines, even if I would like to for the betterment of myself or my family. I can't tell you how many times I have wished and then actually decided that I am going to absolutely begin a strict regimen of getting up at 6 am every day and going jogging in order to ensure that I will get to exercise every day. And I might even do it for one or two days, but then I fall back to my slack ways, snooze the alarm, and just admit that I am not cut out for early morning activity. Or I wish that I had a laundry "day" like they used to whenever Laura Ingalls Wilder was a girl. They were so disciplined then; they had to be for survival. Pa couldn't just be bringing up water from the river any old time, since he had a routine of hunting and smoking meat for the winter that he had to stick to. I would not have survived in those grisly times. Unlike the cheerful and efficient Ma Ingalls, who washed, hung, pressed (with an iron heated over an open fire), and put away all of the laundry every Monday, I just let laundry pile up at some point in the process, until (as has happened tonight) I am forced to wear uncomfortable underwear because none of the good ones are in the drawer.

Okay, Matt did just wake up, grunt at me and then fall back to sleep, so I think that should serve as a warning. I must go to bed, or maybe read for just a few minutes ...

goodnight!

Love Little Ethiopians (and their families)

2010-07-10T07:25:00.000-07:00

Last night we had the best afternoon/evening with a bunch of little people racing all over our house and having a madcap time together! We have a great group of about 30 families or so that live in the "Triad" of North Carolina (that's Winston-Salem, High Point, Greensboro and everything in between to those of you who may be confusing it with the slightly more well known triangular geographic area of the state known as the "Triangle"). We have big get-togethers every few months, but this time we just had a little late afternoon moms & margaritas playdate. I think maybe the acoustics in our house are sort of funny, but it was really loud in here for about 4 hours. Between 7 moms, I think we had about 20 kids between 2 and 7, so it was chaos - but awesome. Ruby loves the crowd - she's little shy with a new person when it's one-on-one, but with a bunch of kids, she's so happy to run around pretending like she's one of the big kids. This morning, it's all quiet and empty again. Actually, that's not true, since the children are racing around fighting with light sabers, but it's a little quieter!

Is it just me,

2010-07-07T14:18:00.000-07:00

or is it really annoying when you tell someone a story where your kids are total monsters, and they sort of string you along, nodding, sympathizing, and then when you finish, they tell a story where their kids were acting in a similar manner, but because of what great parents they are, or how awesome their kids are, it all worked out great? That's irritating, right?

This afternoon, following a morning of taking my kids to the science center and then to Five Guys for lunch - basically, a day filled with happiness and treats, the boys came home and were complete jerks. I had put Ruby down for a nap and then I lay down for a minute to overcome the headache that came on sometime during the third hour of our visit to the museum. I sent the boys down to the basement to clean up Legos (knowing that they would not do that, but at least I thought they would not bother Ruby down there). Plus, I told them not to wake Ruby up or else they would have a "really bad punishment" - that's my fallback when I don't have a carrot left to dangle. Fifteen minutes later, they were both in my room, lying on my bed, complaining they were bored. So I told them they could just play instead of cleaning, so long as they were quiet. So they were really quiet and sweet and went back downstairs and cleaned up the whole basement. Just kidding, but that's what I would say if I were trying to annoy you after you told me something really awful about your kids. What they actually did was go downstairs and start fighting right outside of Ruby's room until she woke up. So then I told them that they would have to go to their rooms and that we would not be going to the bookstore later (see what I nice mom I was planning to be?), and then all hell broke loose. They both started bawling and thrashing around like I had thrown acid at them, saying that today was "the worst day ever" and wondering if it could be possible to have a worse "pennishment" - that's how Finn says punishment, and it kind of cracks me up when he is so upset but saying words wrong, so I never correct him. But then a great thing happened: Ruby fell back asleep and the boys both apologized and said that they would accept the punishment because they knew they should not have been fighting loudly outside of Ruby's door and told me how much they love me and went downstairs and really cleaned up that basement - they even cleaned the cats' litter box for me! Just kidding again, but see how if that was what had happened, then the whole story would have actually been a way to brag about my kids and would make you want to throw up? No, what really happened is that they cried and carried on for a long time while I went to get Ruby up and then I finally lost it when Finn shouted that he "hated this house," and I told them that if I heard another sound out of either of their mouths they would really hate this house because it would become their prison for a few days. (My mom thought that was sort of mean, but she wasn't here, so I can't really accept her judgment on the matter.)

Both of the boys fell asleep after about five minutes in their beds, and now I've been playing with Ruby (who is very cranky from lack of sleep) and cleaning up after her constant mess-making rather than accomplishing the million things I had planned to do this afternoon (okay, writing a blog is not really that productive, and while I am doing this, I can hear Ruby working on her favorite project, which is going through the recycling and drinking the last few drops out of all of the soda cans, but I'm trying to block that out.)

So I'm still sort of mad at all three of them, and also vaguely mad at Matt, even though he wasn't any part of the problem, but he's not here, so he's not part of the solution, either. And it really doesn't make me feel better to hear that someone else (who shall remain nameless, or course) would have turned the whole situation into something less than traumatic for all involved. Something really awesome, as a matter of fact. I know I've done that myself to other people (and on this blog I'm sure), sometimes in a genuine effort to give constructive advice, but sometimes just to make myself feel better. It's really annoying and self-serving and, basically, pointless, because it doesn't make the other person think you're a better mom or that your kids are better than theirs, it just makes them think you are a jerk. But sometimes I guess that's the only thing parents have in the way of a pat on the back: self-promotion to other parents who don't want to hear it anyway. If parenting were more like a real job, you might have someone paying attention to your better moments and telling you "nice job on that!" Like, you might have a little plaque on your wall or buried under a stack of mail that said that you got your kids to school on time 90% of the time. Or it might say that you had never let your kids get a peeling sunburn (I would not receive that award), because we all know that takes a lot of effort. Maybe even one that said that you were "most improved in the area of patience when trying to get the kids in and out of the car." You get the idea. I could think of a million categories, but the point is that at least someone would have noticed. Then you wouldn't occasionally slip into conversation that you potty-trained your kids "well before three," or that you were worried because your 4 year old has "stopped liking kale, no matter how many times I have presented it to him. Now his favorite food seems to be grilled asparagus." That just makes me start desperately trying to think of something terrible about your kid so that I won't feel like such a crummy mother. I realize that's shallow, immature and petty, but when I've just had a parenting failure, that's how I feel. Now, on the other hand, I would be more than happy to attend a black tie party where they are handing out awards to all my friends for being awesome moms and dads, because in my heart I know they are, even if I don't always want to hear it from them!

It's all in the details ...

2010-07-04T20:41:00.000-07:00

Ruby's first 4th of July as an American (although technically still Ethiopian, but who's counting?). I didn't really think about that until my mom pointed it out, but it is sort of momentous. The kids actually did not make it for the fireworks (and, therefore, neither did we), because after a day of playing with friends and swimming at the pool, they were crashing hard around 7:30. Plus, Matt is on call and had to go in to sew up somebody's eye, so here I sit, celebrating the 4th by folding laundry (perpetual state of affairs), and catching up on emails, blog, etc. But it's all good and we've had a fun weekend, so I'm pretty content to be home just hanging out.

So, last week I got a new cell phone. The reason I ended up getting it is a little embarrassing, and the incident made me think that maybe other people don't see me the same way I see myself. Maybe I'm not as nice as I think I am. And then that made me think about other things that I think about myself, and I realized that I persist in thinking of myself as the person I may have been at one time, but am no longer. For example, I would think to myself that I am the kind of person who likes to go out and have fun. Kind of a "fun" person. And, in fact, I did used to be such a person. Now, however, I am actually the kind of person who enjoys a good night of sleep and has recently been extremely hung over from over-indulging in white wine. Not too cool. Also, I tend to think of myself as a person who feeds her kids healthy meals. And I do remember that I used to make the boys eat their vegetables before they got the rest of their food. Lately, however, I'm definitely counting spaghetti sauce as a veggie and hot dogs as a healthy dinner meat. Similarly, I previously was "the kind of person" who would write nice thank you notes promptly upon receiving a gift. Or "the kind of person" who would insist that her children wear clean and neat clothing when leaving the house. However, when I reflect on reality, I see that most of the boys' clothes are stained, so that they appear dirty even when they are actually clean, and I really don't care. It would seem that the evidence is pointing towards my being a boring, lazy, dirty unappreciative person. Ouch!

A friend was recently telling me how annoyed she was that a friend of hers sent a really nice thank you note to her. I could totally relate. The fact that other people are still doing the things that you used to do when you were a more with it person can really be a buzz kill. Isn't that petty? Also, realizing that you maybe are no longer one kind of person and maybe have not been for a while leads you to wonder what kind of a person you really are. Am I now the kind of person who wishes they wrote thank you notes right away because I really do appreciate when people do nice things for me, or the kind of person who thinks feeding my kids healthy meals is a good idea, even if I don't usually do so? The worst part is realizing that I used to think those things about myself were really part of my fundamental make-up. There were all of these absolutes - things I knew I would never do - let my 4 year old child watch Star Wars, for instance, and things I could always be counted on to do - read the book club selection before attending the meeting. And now, as you may have been able to guess, Star Wars is our favorite movie around here, and I can't remember the last time I made it to book club and had read the book (either I've read it but can't go to the meeting, or I go but haven't read).

I realize that those are little things, but I really felt like those kinds of things made me who I was. I guess it's because the big facts about most people, myself included, are so generic and overwhelming. Yes, I am a married, stay-at-home mother. So are a lot of people. I have three kids, I went to Middlebury, I am from Texas, etc, etc. But all of that stuff wouldn't tell a person who I really am in the same way that one little detail sometimes can. You know when you have a good friend, and you're trying to describe something or someone to her, and you can just say one little thing to convey the whole picture. Like you might say, "let's just say that my brother's new girlfriend is the kind of person who would send food back in a restaurant if she didn't like it." And your friend would totally understand that this girl is not a keeper. So, I'm guessing that people did not used to sit around saying, "Claire is the kind of person who really stays on top of her book club reading material," but I will admit (nerdishly) that it was something I thought was cool because I love to read. And mostly, we can fool other people by revealing select details of our lives or telling only the stories that leave the impression we want others to have of us. But then there's this big disconnect where I'm not quite sure what details would give people the full story about me. And maybe I am secretly afraid that a few details would make a person think I'm a hypocrite, or a bore, or self-important, or flaky. Well, actually, I am sometimes those things some of the time, but hopefully not all of the time.

So here's the cell phone store, and even though it points towards me being spoiled and indulgent I'll just tell it anyway. I lost the charger for my cell phone last week on our trip (predictably, I left it sitting in the motel where we spent the night on the way home from Texas), so I stopped by the Sprint store on the way to the grocery store to pick up a new one. If you've had dealings with the delightful people at Sprint, you know the drill. One guy takes your name and problem, types it into his computer, and then you see your name up on a screen behind the 50 or so other people who arrived before you. But I'm in a hurry, plus I have all three kids with me, and, really, all I need is a cord. So when I realize that the guy is going to toss me onto the computer list, just to buy a cord, I freak. At first I tried to make him see reason. "All I need is a cord, I don't really need to see one of your "experts," you could just get the cord for me and I could give you my money." Have you ever read the book Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus? I was the pigeon. As with the pigeon, my tactics failed. Didn't I see all of the other people waiting? Did I think it would be fair for me to go ahead of all of them? I didn't yell, but I wasn't very nice either, as I informed the guy that I thought it was ridiculous that they would make me wait to buy a cord and I was going to cancel my Sprint contract and never do business there again. I stormed out and hustled the kids back to the car. Once back in the car, Finn said, "Mom, you weren't very nice to that man." My very mature response: "that guy was an idiot." And off we went to AT&T.

Almost 37 ...

2010-06-30T19:59:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my birthday. July 1 was also Princess Diana's birthday, but, I can't leave out, it is Pamela Anderson's birthday as well. So, as with most things, it's a mixed bag. Anyway, I'm not too one way or the other about 37. It used to seem really old, but now, not so much. The only thing I really don't like about a birthday - mine or one of the kids' - is that it just seems so unfair that life just keeps moving on, inevitably, towards the end. It really doesn't seem like 17 or 27 were very long ago, so I know that 47, 57, 67 and so on (if I'm so lucky as to live that long), will seem to have arrived in the blink of an eye. I watch Finn try to act older than he is, and then Gus trying to be just like Finn, and I remember feeling at that age like life seemed to be taking a terribly long time to get started. And now even seven seems like just yesterday. I guess it's like a roller coaster chugging uphill for so long that you can't stand the anticipation another minute, and then the fun, thrilling downhill part flies by so fast you can't even think while it's happening. The only thing you keep thinking while you're speeding around out of control and screaming your head off is that you will never, ever do this again and it was a horrible mistake to get on the roller coaster in the first place, and you get off all queasy and telling your friends how you thought you were going to die or vomit. But then after a little while you start to think how that ride was so awesome and it makes you want to stand in line for the ride all over again. Thus, that age-old question is finally answered by me: life really does imitate a carnival ride, even if the prizes are a little better.

Avoiding unpacking ...

2010-06-29T09:14:00.000-07:00

Well, we're settling in at home once again, and I am realizing how much I hate unpacking and putting things back together. The house is a mess, I haven't made it to the grocery store yet, I have 22 messages on my home phone that I haven't had the strength to check yet, and my lovingly planted vegetable garden is a jungle of weeds. And what am I doing about it? Not too much. It seems like much more fun to look at vacation pictures, catch up with friends on the phone, go to the pool and, as you can see, catch up on the blog. I found that I really did miss blogging while I was gone. While we were there, I kept thinking of little things I would have liked to write about, but once the moment passed, it was gone. The computer situation at my parents' house was much better when we first arrived, as they both have new computers, but, unsurprisingly, about a week into the trip their internet stopped working completely. I really feel that their house is a black hole where technology cannot exist, but scientists can't explain why.

Anyway, now that we're home I thought I would write about all of these interesting and funny things from the trip, but I find that when I sit down to write, there's nothing there. Lately I feel like my whole life is so like that though, that all of these really remarkable things happen every minute of the day, but then when someone asks me what we've been up to, or what we did in Texas, I draw a blank. My responses are so boring: not too much, it was really fun, we were really busy. I guess it's because now we're on to the next thing, and since my mind is so full just keeping everything together from one minute to the next, I can hardly remember what I did an hour ago.

Mostly, friends keep asking my about the car trip part of our three week trip. They're like, "I can't believe you drove so far by yourself," while thinking to themselves, "wtf?" I know, it seems either crazy or just really cheap. Probably both. I will say, in my own defense, that it was oddly satisfying to be on the road for two days with nothing to do but drive. In my regular life, I often find myself wishing that there was a way to stop time for a little while and just see everything clearly for a minute. Just appreciate where we are and who my children have become. And during the car ride home, in between the misery of having to take everyone into every nasty gas station bathroom and trying to think of a way to keep Ruby from soaking herself in juice (she refused to use her sippy when she saw the boys drinking from juice boxes, so she would shriek until she got one too, but then half the juice would invariably end up on her, resulting in more shrieking), I had a few little glimpses. At one point, when Finn and Gus were playing a game they had made up with each other and Ruby was babbling at her baby doll, I realized that I was really, truly happy with my children, and, consequently, with my life. That's so rare for me, since I'm usually annoyed with someone for making a mess or hitting someone, or exhausted with the effort of keeping them all fed, clean-ish, and well-rested that it's hard simultaneously to appreciate the big picture. But in the car, at least for a few minutes, I was like, you know what, self? these are great kids. you just spent three weeks with them, and 75% of was really fun. the boys dealt really well with being tired, moving around alot, not sleeping in their own beds, and mostly just having each other for company, and Ruby was so outgoing and funny with all of these new people that I really got a chance to see how far she's come since we brought her home. you are incredibly lucky to have these little people in your life.

So that's it, that's probably the best moment of the trip, among many other great ones. We had so much fun with my parents and my brother and his family - their little boy Jack is almost 3 and he is a wild, hilarious little kid. Ruby really loves seeing him and he is so sweet with her. She also loved meeting her new baby cousin Abby, 2 months, and was surprisingly gentle with her. I kept expecting her to treat "baby" the same way she treats pretend "baby" - a loving hug followed by being slammed to the floor, but she seemed to apprehend the difference between living baby and plastic baby. I also got to catch up with my oldest girlfriends and their kids in Austin for a few days, and that always makes me happy.

Here are a few pics from the trip.

Finn catching his first crab. Cousin Jack is impressed with the feat.

Gus takes a break from the heat at the zoo.

Everyone loves paddle boating (at least for the first 10 minutes or so).

Dad came for a long weekend, and Ruby was so happy to see him!

A very rare, quiet moment.

back from texas in one (or five) pieces

2010-06-27T17:21:00.000-07:00

The kids and I arrived home from Texas tonight, tired but happy to see Matt, the house & the kitties. It was, no surprise, a long trip (almost 1200 miles). We left Saturday morning around 10 am, drove for 10 hours, stopped for the night, slept very little due to Ruby's excitement over being in a giant bed with me and the boys for the night, and then got up and drove 9+ hours today. I feel like a shell of a person. Our trip tally included 4 movies watched, 10 juice boxes emptied (many onto Ruby's lap, causing her to cry and me to curse), many nasty bathrooms visited, excessive amounts of peanut M&Ms and doritos consumed by me (why do I feel that when I am on a road trip, I can just shove thousands of calories into my body and think they won't count?), 25 fights that had to be broken up with threats of throwing prized possessions out the window, 0 speeding tickets or accidents (yeah!), and countless moments of wondering if "that smell" was coming from inside or outside of the car. Fun times. But, actually, the whole three weeks were awesome & worth the hassle of the journey, so I would do it again in a minute (or, maybe not a minute, but probably next summer). More on the trip after I recharge ...

We Made It!

2010-06-12T03:33:00.000-07:00

And it really wasn't that bad. Really. Yes, it was two full days of driving and that was boring for everyone, but nothing dramatically bad happened. No breakdowns, no two hour tantrums in the car, no major instances of getting lost. Just alot of hours in the car with each other, listening to the quiet hum of the DVD player (not quiet, actually, because for some reason I have to have the radio at full volume in the front for the boys to be able to hear it in the back at all, so I can only tolerate one movie every 5 hours or so). It was really a very long way and a very many hours - like 20. Also, I remember that at one point in driver's ed I learned that on a long car trip, it's best to stop ever two hours or 100 miles, whichever comes first. I will have to say that we were averaging more like 15 minutes or 15 miles, whichever comes first, during parts of our trip. Like we would get in the car, drive a little ways and then I would realize that I had to have coffee. So we would stop. Then I would think that since we were stopping anyway, maybe we should hit the bathroom. So we would all get out, cram into the handicap stall of the ladies' room, which elicted a protest from the boys each and every time, and use the bathroom one at a time while the others tried to keep Ruby from touching anything on the floor (unsuccessfully, for the most part). All set, 20 minutes later we were back in the car. Drive 45 minutes. Realize that we're all hungry. Stop to eat. And so on and on and on until we finally arrived in Texas.

Since we've been here, we've been swimming, hanging out with my brother and his family, eating lots and trying to keep everyone from getting sunburned. Gus was sidelined yesterday with strepp and a lovely scarlett fever rash - thank God for the Minute Clinic, but he seems a little better today and is determined to go crabbing with us this morning. My parents used to take me and my brother crabbing when we were little, and even though it was never my favorite pasttime, it seems to be an activity that little boys can't get enough of. I mean, what's not to love about dangling a chicken neck off of a string while you stand in the blazing hot sun beating off flies and mosquitoes? Ruby will not be crabbing with us today, as I don't think she's old enough yet to appreciate the thrill of the catch. Next year for her.

More to come ...

T Minus 2 hours!

2010-06-06T05:29:00.000-07:00

We're about to take off for Texas, and I'm nervous - about the drive, about leaving Matt alone (I recently watched him stumble around for a few minutes in the kitchen before admitting that he has no idea how to make TEA!), and just about how the kids will do down there for so long. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep it all in my head and write about it later - what doesn't kill me at least makes for a funny blog! In the meantime, here is a bonus guest blog from my friend Tara, who recently took her two kids camping (not recommended by me!). If you are thinking that camping might be fun to do this summer with your kids, read this first!!!

The Great Outdoors

I’ve never been a huge fan of camping. I lived in Denver for a while, so there was the occasional obligatory weekend camping in mountains when friends came to visit, but I much preferred staying in the cleaner and carpeted world of a condo. Camping in Texas is a whole ‘nother matter. It’s hot, there are large bugs and snakes, and then there’s the half-insect/half-bird otherwise known as a Texan mosquito. I think my fear of bugs started way back when in the 6^th grade when our class trip took us to YO Ranch. We had a long slide show in science class the week before to show us what copperhead snakes and scorpions looked like. Mrs Johns did a good job of putting the fear of God into our hearts, right Claire??

A few weeks ago, we packed up the kids (age 10 months and 3.5) and half of our house to embark on a cabin-camping weekend to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Oh, the packing. Bottles (both baby and wine), formula, toys, linens for the cabin, every food group stuffed into a cooler, camp chairs, so much drinking water you’d think you could bathe in it, matches, the list goes on. Packing for camping is rivaled only by the resulting unpacking and washing.

I gave Gage the old don’t-touch-unknown-bugs speech, and he was off! So funny how Gage will find stuff to play with that you’d never guess. I thought he’d be in the lake the whole weekend. Even bought some silly battery-operated boats for him to enjoy--total waste of money. Turns out, the spigot by our cabin was a makeshift “carwash” and much more fun. I thought he’d want to stay out in the canoe for hours. Turns out, he wanted to stand by the loading dock and watch fishing boats being put in and taken out of the water.

Ever been camping with a crawling baby? Whew, talk about exhausting. It’s like a good boxing match. In one corner: dirt and grime; in the other corner, the Reigning Champ: the 10 month old who has it in mind to explore each last surface on earth on her hands and knees. Yes, after enough kicking and screaming, you finally put her down and let her diaper slowly fill up with various leaves, campfire debris, and sand. And there’s no way you’re taking her into a disgusting, only-would-go-in-there-with-Crocs-on, public bathhouse for a shower. I took her in once and had to sling her over my shoulder so she wouldn’t touch anything as I took care of my own business in the stall. Gross.

We learned a super-cool trick from the cabin next door for when the sun goes down. Try this! You take a flashlight, hold it between your eyes pointing forward, and all the spiders around you reflect back as little, shiny diamonds. I guess it’s their multiple, beady eyes…There are so many more spiders out there than you would ever imagine. Like I said, cool, but not really something I wanted to know right before I went to bed.

The first night went off without a hitch. Even Calla “slept like a baby,” and Gage was especially thrilled that I had ported in his Bob the Builder sheets all the way from home. The second morning, I woke up at my usual 7ish hour. I listened for stirrings…everyone was still asleep. Sweet! I’ll go back to sleep. So I roll over onto my left side and feel the sting of my life on my thigh. I reached down, brushed whatever it was off, and woke up the whole cabin. I knew just what it was: a scorpion had slithered its way into my bed! Mrs. Johns was right, “it’s like a bad bee sting, only worse.” Oh. My. God. I’m writing this 2 weeks later, and I still have a mark where it stung me. I’m fully recovered now, physically at least, but I think it’ll be at least another year before I venture out to camp with the kids again!

School's Out for Summer!

2010-06-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

So summer is really here. Yesterday we picked Finn up from a half day of school, and now he's done with first grade and we're on our own. I had meant to plan a special day to celebrate Finn being finished with school, since we did that last week when Gus finished preschool, but as it turned out, I did not. When my brother and I were growing up, my parents would always make a big deal at the end of the school year. We would get to pick out a fancy restaurant and we would all get dressed up and go out to celebrate. We always chose either Benihana (hopefully everyone has been to one of these and knows the joy of having a shrimp flipped onto your plate from 10 feet away) or Vargo's, a great restaurant in Houston with peacocks and a beautiful garden to stroll around while you wait for dinner. While we ate, my parents would exclaim over our academic successes and express pride in our general character development and just generally make a big deal out of us. Those are such nice memories for me, and so I strive to provide similar happy memories and traditions for my own children. So, even though I did not have anything super-special planned for yesterday, the kids and I did go out for lunch to Finn's favorite restaurant The Olive Tree, but it was a bit of a disaster because there were - surprise - no high chairs, only boosters. This meant that Ruby was free to stand up and try to grab at anyone's food that looked good to her. We were all racing to finish our food and get out of the joint, so it wasn't exactly a special moment. Not too much time for reminiscing on all that Finn learned as I stuffed my sandwich into my mouth with one hand and held Ruby's legs down under the table as she screamed at me to let go so she could get Gus' spaghetti. The only thing I was saying to the kids between bites was "hurry up and finish so we can get out of here!"

By the time we left, everyone was pretty cranky, so it seemed like a good idea to enforce a little rest period as a sort of restart button on the day. While Ruby slept peacefully, I could hear the boys (via the baby monitor) wrestling and making noise in their rooms. Ignoring them, I closed my eyes for a few minutes and fell into a delicious sleep. A mere 10 minutes later, however, I awoke to hear Ruby crying after being woken up by the wild rumpus in the boys' room. Rage welled up within me, however unfair, and I ran downstairs to really let everybody have it. Extreme punishments were handed out, lectures were delivered but not heard, tears were shed, punishments were modified before being lifted altogether, and eventually everyone was happy again. We ended up going swimming next door and then grilling salmon - another of Finn's favorites, so it was sort of a special day if you take away the middle few hours. So, day 1 of summer down, many, many more to go!

Bonus video (now that I know how to do it!):

Don't have enough fighting in your own house? Here is a funny video that Matt took of the boys engaged in their favorite activity - light-saber fighting. Finn has created a new Star Wars character - "orangy torangy" and he is working on what he calls Episode 12: The Transport is Finished. We're not sure how much of a commercial success this will be, but he loves to try to get Gus enact battles in a specific way and then he wants us to film it. I will almost never do this, but on the weekends Matt sometimes obliges him. As you can see here, he does take on quite the directorial attitude, although he may also be alienating his talent. As an older child myself, I feel his frustration over trying to get a younger sibling to do your bidding, but at the same time it makes me crazy to hear their constant arguing when Finn gets mad at Gus for doing it "wrong." Anyway, I love that Matt captured this little moment in our lives, because it clearly illustrates so many things about us: 1) I look hideous first thing in the morning, 2) Finn is always "acting" as can be seen by his first tantrum directed at the camera, 3) Gus is usually happily doing whatever he wants to do, as seen here when he ignores Finny's direction and tries to stab him in the neck, 4) Matt is a patient parent who will get out the video camera when the kids want to do something like this, and 5) I am not patient in the same way, and often punish everyone when it seems easier than sorting out who is at fault.

(I just watched this video on the blog, and the right half of it seems to be cut off, so you miss seeing Finn's dramatic expressions as he delivers his speeches. Trust me, you're not missing much!)

Memorial Day Dance Party!

2010-06-01T05:58:00.000-07:00

While I slept in yesterday, Matt and the kids had a little pajama dance party. Notice that in the video, Ruby keeps saying "Cheese!" - anytime she sees a camera or anything that looks like a camera she elbows her way into the action and says "Cheese!" It's a good thing she likes to be in front of the camera though, because with these dance moves she's destined to be a star. The boys, on the other hand, will probably die of embarrassment about five years from now if this video ever comes to light. At the moment, though, I think they are pretty impressed with their own bad selves!

In other news, we're less than a week away from our first summer trip. Next weekend, the boys, Ruby and myself will being a long, long car ride down to Texas. We're spending a few weeks there visiting friends and family, so I thought it would be nice to have the car. And when I planned to drive down, it was still quite a ways in the future. (Incidentally, this is how I ended up running a marathon - the registration was like six months before the actual event, so it seemed really doable from that distance. As was the case with the marathon, each day closer to departure I get more nervous, and the actual drive will probably be almost as painful as the marathon!) The boys are seasoned road-trippers, as we drive to New Hampshire at least once a year and we take other 10+ hour trips with some frequency. They get excited to watch movies in the car (they still believe that the DVD player only works on long trips), and they will sleep here and there. Of course, there will be some bad moments, as on a trip home from New Hampshire last Thanksgiving both boys were crying their eyes out when the McDonald's we pulled into was out of "boy toys" and could only offer us Strawberry Shortcake items with our Happy Meals. I'm embarrassed to report that we drove away from that McDonald's and proceeded to the next highway exit to find a McDonald's that would make our kids stop crying. And then last summer, as I drove the boys home from a lake trip by myself, our air conditioning broke about an hour into the trip, forcing us to either suffer the heat inside the car or keep the windows down as we rolled down the highway at 80 miles an hour.

So those were not some of our finest moments, but all in all, they have proven to be pretty good kids to go places with. But, of course, this will be our first such adventure with Ruby. I have to believe that even though it will be 18 hours, it cannot be worse than the 3 hour flight I took with her to Houston several months ago. At least there will not be that element of public condemnation involved. Whatever struggles we have, we will have them within the close confines of the car, not to be witnessed or judged by angry co-passengers. It's going to be just fine, maybe even fun. I'm almost convincing myself of this as I write it! So anyway, that's what I'm going to be getting ready for this week. We leave on Sunday and will hopefully get there on Monday. Either that or we'll be back home later on Sunday. I will certainly report on the adventure once I get to Houston. (Internet capability at their house is only recently possible because my parents finally have a computer that was assembled in the 21st century. Up until a few months ago, I would have had to say that the guest house we stayed in while we were in Ethiopia had much better computer and internet access than my parents' house in Houston.)

Bye' for now!

I did drink too much ...

2010-05-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

but the day was fun once it was over. By the time I dragged myself down the street to our neighbor's house yesterday at 5:30, I was exhausted and had logged many hours in the car. As predicted, my presence at Finn's picnic went largely unnoticed, but it was still good to see him in his element with all his buddies playing and having fun. We had a great time at Gus' picnic, where Ruby discovered a new passion - the slide. The rest of the afternoon was a bit of a haze of driving and making food for the party, but we made it to everything relatively on-time, and I was rewarded for all my hard work with a very strong cocktail that involved gin, blackberries and muddling. In full disclosure, I did do some yelling during the day, and Ruby did not get a nap all day except when I carried her on my shoulder as we rushed through a grocery store to buy the shish kebobs I was supposed to have made for the party. But hey, learning to be flexible is all part of the adventure, right?

Here's all the evidence of the fun:

Finn (in green shorts) celebrates a good beach volleyball move.

The thrill of the slide!

Going back for more ...

And more!

Happy cake face!

End of School Daze

2010-05-27T06:08:00.000-07:00

Just a few more days until school will be a thing of the past, at least for three months. Finn will be a second grader, and Gus will be moving up to Jr Kindergarten at Finn's school, which he is very excited about. I think he thinks that he will be in class with Finn, and I can't seem to make him understand what will actually be going down. Anyway, even though I am excited about summer in some ways, I am also a little sad that this Spring is winding down. It's been so full of changes and I've had so much time to just be with Ruby, getting to know her and watching her open up to me. When the boys are around, she really only has eyes for them, so our dynamic will be a little different. But good too, since my ultimate goal is to get them all raised up and out the door one day with a sense that they can always call their brother or sister at 4 am if they need to. As long as they're not calling me.

So, the end of the school year is always full of school events, and today it seems they are all happening at once. I have been going to a weekly playgroup for Ruby every Thursday, which has been really fun for her, and today is the last one for a while, so we will go to that at 9:30. But then we'll leave early to drive about 30 minutes to Finn's end of school picnic, where we will stay for about an hour (even though the event lasts several hours, and Finn will probably be annoyed that I am leaving early, even though I am sure that my presence will go largely unnoticed while I am there). Then Ruby and I will drive 30 minutes back into town to pick up Gus from school and take him to his end of the year picnic at a different park. When that is over, we'll head over to pick Finn up from school and drive carpool home. Once home, we will dust off and turn around to take Finn to a birthday party and then back home to get ready for a dinner with neighbors to say good-bye as they head off for the whole summer. By this point, I will undoubtedly be annoyed with everyone, so any good-parent points I earned by attending all of these events for my children will be erased when I send them all to their rooms for driving me crazy.

And what will anyone even remember of this relatively ordinary, busy day? Not too much, probably. Will the boys appreciate all of my crazy driving and scheduling? Definitely not. If anything, they might later reflect that I was always rushing around in a bad mood. But hopefully, when we all fall into bed tonight, we will be tired and will sleep well. And hopefully the kids will have lots of tiny moments tucked into brain folds - many to fade away forever into the abyss of childhood, but maybe one or two to savor later on. And I will too - maybe some I'd like to forget (since at 8 am I can already tell I'll be a crazy ogre at some point today), but some really good ones as well. I'll let you know though - there's potential for total meltdown ...

Ruby, the Kissing Bandito

2010-05-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

Well, hopefully not so much anymore. Today marks three months since we arrived home with her, and, of course, we have had so many adventures and changes and things to learn about each other in a short amount of time. To be sure, we are far from finished, but I guess you never are, so I'm feeling pretty happy and zen with things at the moment (at least, this very, tiny moment when Ruby is napping, Finn is at school, Gus is watching cartoons and I am in a room where I can't see any dirty diapers, laundry or dishes).

But something funny happened today that made me think about something that Ruby did for the first few days that we were home, and I'm now realizing that my interpretation at the time was way off base. So, when we got on the plane to fly home with Ruby, I had a few magazines in my bag in case I had a few minutes to zone out on the airplane. Needless to say, I did not, but I was glad I had them because I pulled them out and let Ruby look at the pictures and rip up the pages for entertainment on the trip. During the flight, I noticed that she loved to look at pictures of faces - particularly all the ads with close-ups of models and the like. And, of course, most of these beautiful ladies were white. She would look at the page for a few minutes and then start madly kissing the picture, which I of course thought was adorable. Even after we were home, she would find discarded magazines in the trash and take them out to kiss the faces in them.

At the time, I attributed this behavior to her being a girl. Having raised two boys who never once glanced at pictures of real people, but rather preferred books with pictures of lizards and dinosaurs and tractors, I thought this to be a sign that girls and boys really are different. Girls, being so relational, would naturally be drawn to the human face. Boys, not so much. I rejoiced, happy to know that I really would have someone to talk to about the important stuff of life in a few years. After a few weeks maybe, I never saw Ruby do that again, but I didn't think much of it since I was so busy noticing all of her other cute little habits and developments.

So today, I was sitting here at the computer checking my email, and Ruby came over from whatever little mess she was making and started madly kissing my leg. She is really affectionate, and loves to come over for a little kissing session from time to time, so it wasn't so strange or anything, but it just made me remember how she used to do that with the magazines and realize that she doesn't do it anymore. So, naturally, I can't just let something like that pass by totally unanalyzed, or what kind of obsessive-compulsive person would I be? I have come up with two possible theories, although maybe it was something totally different that I haven't thought of yet. One thought I had was that we had sent a little photo album over with a traveling family for Ruby to start looking at us and getting used to our faces. I could imagine the caregivers over there showing her the pictures and teaching her to kiss our pictures, as they were generally the most demonstrative people I've ever met. And then, since she was used to kissing the pictures, even though she now had us in the flesh, the pictures of random white ladies in a magazine probably seemed more familiar to her than our tired-looking mugs in person. (Also, I look alot like a model, so clearly I can see why she was so confused!).

So that theory kind of makes sense, and it makes me laugh that maybe she really couldn't tell the difference. But then I was thinking about how babies engage in all sorts of attachment-promoting behavior such as being cute, crying, and, as they get older, hugging and kissing. Babies are no dummies - they know where their next meal is coming from, and they know they need to keep our attention to get it. So then what about a child who has not had one particular person there for them to develop that give and take with? When a baby has had lots and lots of different people coming and going in her life ever since she was born, would she perhaps be a little confused about where she needed to direct her love in order to make her way in the world? I'm not sure (although I am sure there are probably books dedicated to this subject that I could read, but I most likely won't do that), and it doesn't really matter, since now she's all about kissing my leg while I'm writing emails, so I think she sorted it out. Ruby's a smart cookie, and those girls may be pretty and all, but I haven't seen any of them at our house cutting up bananas or making their famous spaghetti a la Ragu. Now, if they do start coming around, I'm definitely putting them on diaper duty.

Every rose has its thorns ...

2010-05-20T20:23:00.000-07:00

Since we've been home from Ethiopia for three months, I figured it was time to share a side of our time together that has not been so pleasant. I didn't want to mention it before because, well, it's pretty gross and I don't want anyone to think of sweet little Ruby as a germy kid. But I've decided that it's just another part of the whole experience, so I'll just give you a peek at the dark side ... or, as I think of it, the diaper side. (And then after you read this horrifying tale, be sure to check out the cute pics of our day at the park below!)

***************

Ah, the joys of having a child in diapers. I know, I know, we signed on for this, but I have to say that it's really no fun at all. The boys have been out of diapers for years, so I had sort of blocked out the whole experience. But I figured that at least Ruby would be old enough where there wouldn't be so many diapers every day, and maybe, I hoped, she would be close to being ready to be potty trained. And, I will admit, I'm pretty old school when it comes to potty training. In most other areas, I'm pretty laid back, but when it came to potty training the boys, I was like a drill sergeant. My mother-in-law happened to be visiting around the time I decided that Gus was ready to leave diapers in his past, and I think she is still traumatized by the experience. Gus, on the other hand, seems fine, but we'll probably hear more about this when he grows up and robs a convenience store and blames it on unresolved control issues. Sorry about that, Gus. I just couldn't take the diapers anymore.

Anyway, back to my current problem. Not only is Ruby nowhere near ready to be potty trained (she is only 19 months, after all), but she arrived home three months ago with a lovely companion, giardia. For anyone who is unfamiliar with this disgusting parasite, it causes diarrhea, gas, and stomach pain, among other things. In Ethiopia, I think pretty much everyone has it and just lives with the symptoms that can flare up and then go away from time to time. Some people don't have severe symptoms, and they can pass the parasite out without knowing they have had it. Before we tested Ruby, I didn't really connect the dots, and I figured that any of her bowel issues were probably just her getting used to American food and the like. I think I even made an early reference to a mysterious stomach pain that was making Ruby scream and writhe around, and we eventually discovered that it was the bug. And while the illness is not pleasant, the treatment for it is pretty rough as well. The medicine kills (or at least tries to kill) the parasite, but at the same time it kills everything else in your intestines, so it's hard to digest anything.

Anyway, poor Ruby has been through three rounds of treatment and it looks like the big G still has the upper hand. Lots of diarrhea (4-6 times) every day, gas, and stomach pain that gives her little fits. I have to say that overall she's doing really well - she's happy, eats great, sleeps well, plays and gets into everything like she is supposed to be doing, so I don't want to give the impression that she's huddled in a corner holding her tummy all day. But after three months, I think we're both getting really, really sick of it. Of course, I hate to complain (you know what a mature and patient person I am), but I feel almost as sorry for myself as I do for Ruby. Not only do Ruby's diapers smell like something that died two weeks ago, but they are messy and she hates (with great passion) having them changed, so she kicks and screams while I'm doing it, thereby causing alot of collateral damage to the changing pad, Ruby's clothes and, often, my clothes. And since I've already said too much about laundry elsewhere in my blog, I'll just say that I'm doing many loads a day on the sanitary setting. And I really don't want to make you feel too sorry for me, so I won't go into detail about the sanitizing and lysol-ing I engage in to prevent anyone else in the house from catching it. So far so good on that score, so maybe I'm a better housecleaner than I had suspected (doubtful, as I can see the evidence to the contrary from where I'm sitting typing this).

Anyway, I know you're all busted up crying your eyes out for me at this point, and I really appreciate that, because I'm trying to be strong, but it's really hard. I mean, of all of the "issues" an orphan from Ethiopia could have had, is this really so bad? No. I know that. However, it has not been great, but I feel like I have not wanted to talk about this particular issue with anyone because I worried that they wouldn't want to be around us (even though you really can't catch it unless, as previously stated, you actually get poop into your mouth somehow*), or they would have a negative feeling about adopting children from Ethiopia. In fact, I think that in general I have that urge to paint a really positive picture of the whole experience, especially to non-adoption people, for that reason. Friends and sometimes strangers ask how it's all going, and I only discuss all of the great things about Ruby and Ethiopia - and there are plenty to discuss, so it's not like I don't have anything to say. But when Finn and Gus were little, pretty much all I ever talked about were things like sleep issues, eating issues, aggressive behavior, doubts, concerns, petty annoyances. Because as much as I might complain about my biological children, it's not going to deter a person from having a child if they want to do that to hear that there are (many) times when I want to lock them both in a room with a bag of Cheetos and come back a few hours later.

But adoption is different. People are curious and they may have heard stories about adopted kids that were difficult or dangerous or never fit in with the family. Those kinds of stories circulate around as fast as giardia in a mountain stream. I couldn't even count the number of times someone has relayed a story to me about a person they know who adopted a child and there were "problems." People rarely suggest that a non-adopted person's bad behavior might stem from him being kept in the family. Like, maybe if this idiot lacrosse player who murdered his girlfriend at UVA recently had been put up for adoption, he would have turned out much better. Or maybe not, but my point is that people ascribe things to "adoption issues" when a child is adopted because it's easy to point to that and say, well that must be what is wrong with him. Obviously, every child and every situation is totally different, and I'm not trying to make some larger statement about adoption vs. anything. I wouldn't even call myself an advocate for adoption, because it's so complicated and it's not the right thing for every family, but I hate that there might be people who would consider adopting and then get scared off by the stories they hear from friends or in the media.

But back to me (of course!), I think that because I have a child who is adopted, I seem to want to make it seem like Ruby doesn't have any issues. "See, this adopted child is perfect, so all of those stories you have heard are totally untrue." Truthfully, she is perfect. No, but she is awesome and funny and smart and loving, so that's about as close as you get. But are there times when she, like my other children, drives me nuts? Yes. Will there be other problems on the road ahead of us, some perhaps stemming from the fact that she is adopted? Yes. Will Ruby ever be cured of giardia so that I can stop having to use lysol spray on every surface in our house, thereby risking future cancer vs. immediate threat of diarrhea? Ask me in a few months.

*You get it from drinking water that has been contaminated by feces, which evidently all of the water in Ethiopia has been. In the US, people (myself not included) who enjoy hiking and camping know better than to drink water out of streams and rivers due to the risk of contracting giardia from the water (since animals can carry it and, naturally, don't use toilets). You can also get it if you inadvertently touch something that has been contaminated and then put your hands in your mouth - what a lovely thought!

Loving Every Child

2010-05-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

This is a post that I meant to write around the time of Mother's Day, but I got busy and never did it. I know I usually write silly things about my kids or the strange things that go through my head, and in general I to keep things light. And I promise I won't write about things that make my cry very much, but I feel like this is worth it.

A few years ago, I read about a man named Janusz Korczak, and I think about him from time to time, and every time I do, I literally burst into tears thinking of his beautiful life. And I'm not really a burst into tears kind of person most of the time. So I always wonder why more people don't know about him, and I wish there were more people in the world like him. I wanted to summarize the little bit I know about his life because it is inspiring to me and moves me every time I think of it. Some of his writings on children are collected in a small book called Loving Every Child: Wisdom for Parents, and I highly recommend it as a gift to new parents, old parents, adoptive parents and anyone else. There are so many pearls of wisdom and just plain parenting advice in this tiny book that I keep it by my bed and read a page or two whenever I feel like a day didn't go the way I had hoped, or I worry that I'm screwing up my kids, or I just need to remember what I'm doing all this (driving, laundry, yelling, cooking, counseling, etc, etc, etc) for.

Korczak was a Polish Jew born in 1878 who became famous in Europe as a pediatrician and author of several books about children. He became the director of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, and spent his life living in the orphanage and caring for the children in a way that was revolutionary at the time. He believed that children deserved to be listened to, respected and encouraged to express themselves. His orphanage was a place of happiness and light, where children without families were not considered worthless, but rather encouraged to learn and grow and be someone in the world. In his books, he writes eloquently of the lessons he learns from watching them, playing with them, and listening to them.

Reading his observations reminds me of the best parent I hope to be, although in the midst of busy days I often fall short. One of my favorite quotes is this: "As a parent, you say: 'The child cries very little, she sleeps through the night.' She is good-natured; she is a good child. A bad one is one who makes a fuss and a lot of noise and one who, for no apparent reason, evokes more unpleasant than pleasant emotions in her parents. One must be careful not to confuse a good child with an easy one."

After the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Korczak and the children of the orphanage were ordered to move to the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, where disease and starvation were the norm. There he started the Orphans' Refuge for dying children, trying to give these children dignity where there was none. Because of his fame and connections, Korczak had various opportunities to leave the children and escape Poland, but he refused to do so. He wrote to a friend who urged him to leave, "You wouldn't abandon your own child in sickness, misfortune, or danger, would you? So how can I leave two hundred children now!"

In 1942, Korczak and his two hundred orphans were marched through the streets of Warsaw to the train station. They walked quietly through the silent streets, four by four, behind the orphanage flag, with each child carrying a special toy or book. That train carried Korczak and the children to the gas chambers in the death camp at Treblinka.

That's all I know. I haven't read any histories of Korczak's life, just the few pages at the end of the collection of his writing. But it says so much. Here was a person who did not have to care for these children. They were not his own, and no one would have blamed him for saving his own life. But I imagine that he knew that they would need him. He knew that the train ride would be hard, that the children would be scared. He would have known where they were going, but he would not have wanted the children to know, so he would have made it into an adventure for them. He had written that "If a child has a life where cruelty has become the norm, what a powerful effect would be the memory of that person - perhaps the only one - who showed kindness, understanding, and respect. The child's future life and sense of his self could take a different course, knowing that there was one person who would not fail him." For those two hundred children, he was that one person. I just find myself in awe of his bravery and his capacity to stand up for those two hundred children, even at the cost of his own life.

Celebrity Blog Post!!

2010-05-17T05:33:00.000-07:00

I am so lucky! I have a very famous neighbor, Paige, who voluntarily wrote up this blog for my and emailed it to me to post here on my blog! (Actually, don't tell her this, but she isn't really famous, but she really wanted me to call this a "celebrity" post rather than just a "guest" post, so I will humor her and make her rainy Monday a little more exciting!)

She actually sent me this last week, and I didn't know whether to post it, due to the fact that she had a big paragraph about how cool Matt and I are, and even though I know that having a blog is pretty self-absorbed in the first place, I didn't want to come off as a total head case. "Here's my blog, all my ideas, pictures of my kids, and, oh, by the way, here's how awesome my friends think I am!" However, after a little tactful editing, I really wanted to share it, because it was interesting for me to read this from her perspective.

I could go on and on about how awesome Paige and her husband are and how much they impact the world for good. She is an awesome mom, a camp director, and one of the most positive people I know, and she is always setting little goals for herself to be even more so (but not in an annoying, goody-two-shoes kind of way). They were both so supportive of us during the whole adoption process, and they love on Ruby all the time, but I never knew that they had considered adoption as a possibility. And maybe still do. At the time we started the adoption process, we were a little nervous about doing something so outside of our experience, and we didn't have any close friends who had adopted from Africa (although, happily, now we know lots of wonderful people who have!). I remember thinking that, of all the people I knew, Paige and Andy might actually be able to be convinced to do it with us. I jokingly suggested it to her, even while at the same time realizing that you don't just adopt a baby to have a fun adventure with a friend. And I really never thought about it after that, so it was funny to read that she chewed on it for a while. Two years and one baby later, I selfishly am happy that they don't have a new baby and therefore can shower Ruby with as much love and attention as her highness deserves. We really are lucky, and that's no joke!

That's Paige, surrounded by good-looking men, as always!

*************

It's hard to believe that it's nearly been two years since Matt and Claire shared their big news with us. We were standing around the kitchen at a little "summer's ending" get together, and I was talking about my idea for starting a "Happiness Club*", when Claire announced in an excited but "oh by the way"-casual way "we're adopting a baby from Ethiopia" and then she added "you should do it with us" as if she had just said "Hey, I'm going to go get my nails done. Let's get yours done too." Part of me (the part that had already had a little wine) was ready to just jump in with equal enthusiasm. After all, I never want to miss a good party, and getting a baby from Ethiopia sounded like fun. Of course, a bigger part of me thought better of it. I have two kids who are finally in elementary school and are becoming more and more independent each day. I'm just getting used to being able to be somewhat independent again myself.

So, obviously I didn't rush out and file adoption papers,but the thing is, from time to time I really considered it. I looked at adoption websites and casually asked Matt and Claire probing questions about the process and expected outcome. I thought seriously about how adopting would change my life and how adoption would change someone else's. We all want to make a positive impact on the world, and as I told my husband Andy, we're pretty good parents. Maybe adopting was something we could do to help. But not now.

I know from talking to Claire and from reading her blog that she doesn't believe or buy into the idea of adopting just to save a poor starving child. I know that she and Matt understand the magnitude of what they've done and how they've helped Ruby, but they see it as an equally reciprocal relationship. They really wanted something out of the deal too, and it wasn't just to feel like they'd helped someone or made a positive impact on the world. They wanted a daughter. They wanted another cuddly babe (which she REALLY is), and they wanted to move closer to what felt like completing their family. I also think that they wanted to take a risk and have an adventure (a much bigger one than opening an ice house or putting condos on top of Wal-Mart "Wal-dos").

I'm starting to ramble on a little, so let me see if I can circle back and bring this altogether. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I haven't really known Claire and Matt for very long. I don't think that it's even been three years since they moved into my neighborhood and Matt diagnosed me with Cat Scratch Fever. But in many ways I feel I've known them forever.

Andy and I are no closer to adopting a baby than we were back in September of 2008, but thanks to Matt and Claire and Finn and Gus and Ruby, I am a lot closer to starting the Happiness Club.

* Anyone can be a part of the Happiness Club. All you have to do is laugh with a friend, smile, take a friend (or stranger) an unexpected gift, let your heart feel joy and PASS IT ON!

Update: Not Done ...

2010-05-14T05:37:00.000-07:00

I wrote that post last night all tucked into bed and cosy. At this moment (8:30 am), I am ready to scream at someone after spending 20 minutes tying a million little ties to reattach the crib bumper to Ruby's crib after I had to wash it (over a month ago) when she pooped in the crib and smeared it all over everything. What is the deal with crib bumpers!!? Why so many ties? Can't they apply velcro technology to this product? Does this make anyone else want to pull every hair on their head out? So much for finding peace ...

Also, I head this author being interviewed on Fresh Air on NPR yesterday, and thought it would be interesting for the adoption crowd ...

Rose in Brooklyn

Also, this is Gus at the end of his Spring Music performance at preschool being mobbed by all of his girlfriends. Crazy cute!

Not Done:

2010-05-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

So, my experiment with a pared-down to do list worked really well. By the end of the day, I felt really happy with all that I had accomplished, as I had gone beyond my list to make a nice dinner for my family, fold at least 5 loads of laundry, and get in a quick run. I totally killed it that day. However. The problem with making a To Do list that makes you feel good but fails to capture the volume of things that you in fact need to do is that two days later you realize that those things you didn't write down didn't just magically disappear. They still need to be done.

Well, as it turns out, I can't just start with a clean slate, clear of obligations and duties, even if I really feel like it. And so many of the things that creep onto my To Do lists turn out to be things that keep me tied to my friends, my family and the life I want our family to lead. Sure, a trip to Target to buy a birthday present is certainly not high on my list of fun ways to spend time. And sorting though baskets of toys that have become jumbled beyond recognition makes me want a beer almost immediately, but those are just the little pieces of a big puzzle of our lives that include lots of birthday parties with friends big and small, a house where I can send my kids to play in the basement and figure they can find something to do that will buy me a few minutes of peace and quiet, and good meals together, kids who are happily involved in sports and activities they enjoy, a place to lie down at night that doesn't make our skin itch in the morning. So, yes, laundry must be done, snacks for the soccer team purchased, calls returned, invitations extended, bills paid, closets occasionally addressed. And if I can't get a warm feeling at the end of the day from checking off every single thing on my list, so be it. There's always red wine and sweaty hugs from little people.

To Do:

2010-05-11T05:11:00.000-07:00

I once read that a good way to make yourself feel better about yourself is to make a To Do list everyday that only has things on it that you absolutely know you will be able to accomplish that day. You should never put things on a To Do list like "clean out closets," "lose five pounds," "finish writing thank you notes," because the failure to get through these tasks will just make you feel worse about yourself. Those are "Goals," and should properly be relegated to another list. Of course, it would also be sad to have a list of goals with those things on it, as one would ideally have slightly higher and more exciting goals, but the point is just to keep things off the To Do list that you have any chance of not doing. If, at the end of the day, you can reflect with satisfaction that you have done everything you set out to do that day - and perhaps even more (!) - you will feel like a big fat winner. Does this little self-deception really work? I'm not sure, but it can't hurt.

So today I think my To Do list would look like this:
Get out of bed. Check
Make and drink coffee. Check
Short blog. Check
Deliver children to school.
Change diapers as needed.
Shower. I had to strike that, because there have been days when that is an unattainable goal.
Feed children and self, inform Matt of sandwich fixings if he requires sustenance.
Watch Lost.

See, I didn't even include crazy things like exercise, stimulating activities for the children, reading, cleaning, catching up on email, paying bills, dealing with this one corner of the room I'm in right now where there are several weeks worth of papers and bills and general things I need to deal with piled up before Ruby completely destroys everything in it. And I certainly didn't include anything like try to be a better mother, don't spend money on non-essentials, fold the laundry, organize pictures of the children from the past 7 years, and drink less coffee, diet coke and wine.

So, I'm looking forward to an awesome day of reaching for the stars and actually getting there. I'll let you know how it works and you might want to try it yourself ...

Update at 4 pm:
I'm adding the following to my List, since I've already done them & therefore can feel even better with a longer list:
Fold significant amount of laundry & get most of it put away before Ruby woke up from morning nap, whereupon she unfolded the remainder. Check
Exercise and shower (including shave legs). Check, although this was done unsafely, as I instructed Gus to watch Ruby and come get me if "anything" happened while I was in the shower, but at least I did it.
Help Gus overcome 3 days of constipation by spending a long time with him in the bathroom. Check

Update at 4:44 pm:
Clean up horrifying accident Gus had on the stairs. Check (Apparently, I should not have congratulated myself previously, as I was punished when he called up the stairs to tell me that he had pooped and peed in his pants and it had "fallen out." Yes, indeed, it had.)

Attachment is ... the Texas Two-Step?

2010-05-06T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's circular, sweaty, requires alcohol.

Before I say anything about further about my "attachment theory," let me just share a story with you that will tell you something about me, so that it won't seem like I'm trying to share some kind of wonderful parenting theory as if I know anything about anything. So, I am always coming up with ideas - some good, some bad - for various products or ads or marketing plans for McDonald's, let's say, but since I don't really have a job or an outlet for turning my ideas into reality, I plague everyone I know by talking about them. About 6 years ago, I was visiting my old boss with Finn, and we were driving to go eat lunch, and I shared this really revolutionary idea with him. I felt like it was one of my best ideas ever, and I had really put some time into thinking about it and why it would be such an advantageous product. The idea, my friends, was the magnetic bumper sticker. Without saying anything, my boss pulled into a parking lot, parked, got out of the car and went over to another car and lifted one of those Support Our Troops ribbon stickers off of that car and just held it up. I was a little crestfallen that someone had already come up with my idea, but at least it was a really good idea, as evidenced by the demise of the bumper "sticker" market. Another time, about a year ago, I was called a friend of mine to share another revolutionary idea, but it turned out that my idea was already in existence: PayPal. I had not come up with a catchy name yet. Anyway, just letting you know that I realize I'm pretty out of it, and I don't keep up with things, so anything I "come to realize" has probably already been written about a million times, using better grammar and vocabulary. Perhaps if I would actually read parenting material, instead of perezhilton.com, I would not have to learn all of these lessons the hard way.

Okay, so, attachment. WTF? Was this even a term 35 years ago? I am pretty sure that my mother did not analyze her relative attachment to me and my brother as she waived goodbye to us with her tennis racquet and left us with the Spanish-speaking housekeeper. However, as with so many other things that my mother seems to think that I have made up just to vex her and make her feel that she was a bad mother, such as putting babies to sleep on their backs, not giving them rice cereal when they are 2 weeks old, baby-proofing (not necessary back then due to the approved use of the play pen), we seem to be stuck with it. Not to say that I don't get it or agree that it is desirable in the parent-child relationship. I totally do. It's just that I feel like it is yet another example of a very vague, yet lofty goal that we (I'm talking women) feel we need to reach before we could think of ourselves as "good mothers." It's like a holy grail, especially with adopted children, that you might one day reach - the heavens open, lights dim ... Secure Attachment has been reached.

People lately have been asking me how the bonding or attachment "is going." Well, I guess it's going great. But then again, maybe it's not. Because is there some kind of a test? Can I get an outside opinion on whether this particular child is "securely attached" to me, to our family? What would such a test look like? Who would administer it? The thing is, I'm starting to realize that attachment is a moving target, and what it looks like changes from day to day, sometimes minute to minute. And I'm not just talking about with Ruby. Finn, who just turned 7, is constantly testing our attachment. He asked me when we were in Ethiopia if we would even have to take him to an orphanage if we couldn't take care of him. When he gets extremely mad at me for punishing him for something, he says that he will stay in his bed forever, even if we move and a new family comes to live here. And this is a child who was treated to the Cadillac version of attachment parenting as a firstborn whose parents dutifully read and followed all of Dr. Sears' A+ advice. No "crying it out" for Baby Finn. Never a moment when the breast was not available to the little angel. He in fact did not sleep in his crib until he was two, so happy was he to nestle between mommy and daddy. And yet he tests us, all the time.

Does this make me feel really crappy? Yes. Do I wonder how I will survive the teen years without excessive drinking (on my part)? Yes. However, it also reminds me that attachment is not a destination. If I am still working on attachment issues with Finn, and can anticipate doing so for the rest of my life, can't Ruby and I have a little room to breathe? I love her, and I know she loves us. Some days I feel like she's been a part of our family forever, and other days I feel strange with her, like it's not real yet. It's definitely a bumpy road for me, and I know it is for her too. She had been going to bed so happily a week or so ago, just lying down and closing her eyes to sleep, and now the last several nights she shrieks and cries hysterically if we leave her in her room before she is asleep. So we step back in our little dance. Sometimes I watch her watching the boys with me, and I feel like she's learning how to act in our family. If Gus comes and jumps on my lap to cuddle, she thinks she better do that too. And we cuddle and tickle and love on each other and all feel happy and lovey. But then we go out to dinner, and Ruby reaches out to be held by someone she has just met, and I feel a little sad. It's just a crazy ride we get on when we have children, and they are ours forever. That is such a long time, and there are so many little turns and stops along the way. You might look back one day and remember a moment you didn't even pay attention to at the time and think, "that was really the best time."

So my theory turns out not to have much substance, much like my idea that Wal-Mart should build apartments on top of their stores and allow people to order things via a computer/dumb-waiter conveyance. I don't have any research or practical advice, or really even a case study. We've known Ruby for less than three months, so whatever I would say about attachment can be dismissed due to inexperience. But, I am trying to turn off the thing where I am always keeping track, taking stock of the gains and losses as we move forward as a family. I'm hoping that we will not end up on the parenting version of failblog.org (one of the best ways to kill time, by the way), and since there still is not a Nobel Prize in Mothering, I don't even have to worry about how I'm stacking up against anyone else in the field. I'm just here, duct taping my children to me to keep us all attached and hoping for the best.

Random Things, Part V: Waste Not, Still Want A Lot ...

2010-05-04T10:16:00.000-07:00

I don't have too much to add to this title, which is why it has not made it as a free-standing blog post. I considered trying to connect it with another problem I have, which is that there are days that my house is so messy and disorganized that I just wish I could crawl into a Pottery Barn catalog and live there for a few days. Or I could go live in the sets of movies that are supposed to be about "normal" families, but we have to suspend our disbelief as we watch a teacher and his social worker wife relaxing on their $7000 Crate and Barrel couch.

I think back to our pre-kid days, when we just spent our money on things we wanted, like going out to eat, clothes, whatever. And I know I'm stating the obvious when I observe that life with three kids is crazily more expensive than it was before we had them. I remember before I got pregnant with Finn, Matt questioning whether we were financially ready to start a family. How casually I dismissed that idea - I think I said something like "babies aren't that expensive - it's just diapers and clothes. I'll breast feed, so we don't even have to worry about formula. What else could there be?"

What else indeed? Let's just say that once the must-have bases are covered, there's not a whole lot left over for those things that I used to buy without even thinking twice. And I know, hello, I just went to Africa and saw people happily living with next to nothing, so I really should count my blessings instead of the number of new barstools I want, or the years before we will be able to go on some luxurious vacation without rationing how many orders of milk the children have (but seriously, how annoying is it that some restaurants charge like $2.50 for milk and my kids drink so damn much of it!?). And believe me, I do count my blessings, and they are many, but somehow reflecting on everything wonderful in my life doesn't have the effect I would like it to, which would be making me not even notice that there is a big dent in the side of my perfectly functional car every time I get into it until I decide that I really deserve a new one. And there's that funny word, "deserve." It's a good thing for me that you don't get things based on how much you "deserve" them, because I think I'd be way at the back of the line, behind people who never gossip, or people who actually keep their houses clean, not just for company, or people who have never thrown spoons across the kitchen in a fit of anger. Deserving is a concept that is way too big for me to unravel, so I won't even try, but I'll just say that there are many things in this world that I want, but only a very few that I need, and I'm working on remembering the difference. I'll let you know if I got there in 2060.

Update #2: Pics from Finn's party!

Amazing cake made by our neighbor Cindi - it was so tasty too!

Birthday boy.

The light saber battle begins.

Thankfully, the Jedis won!

Random Things, Part IV: Get with the (ladies) program, Home Depot!

2010-05-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Is This 2010 or 1960? Why is there not lawn equipment made for women? Why do lawnmowers have to be so hard to start with handles that reach up to my chin? I mean, there are plenty of single women who own homes, married women who enjoy yard work, and even teenaged girls who might like to mow yards for pocket money. I would like a push-button start and a slightly smaller mower, a weed whacker with a shorter handle, and a hedge trimmer that isn't so heavy that I can't lift my arms the day after I do the bushes. So, Toro, if you're listening, get on that please.

I really enjoy gardening, and I don't mind doing maintenance yard work like weeding, edging, mowing, etc, but I admit that the equipment wears me out. Lugging around a hedge trimmer, a heavy extension cord, trying (usually unsuccessfully) to start our old lawnmower, leveraging the weight of the weed whacker with my arms - it's just too much. And I'm not a tiny person, but it's so annoying to see how easily Matt can tote all of that stuff around while I struggle with just the set-up portion. I just feel that this is one major area in our society where the products have not caught up with the times. Partner with Susan G. Komen, build some lighter, cuter, pink mowers and whatnot, and I'll be first in line.

Update: Star Wars Birthday Party

It was great. The kids were awesome, so well-behaved even while running wild in the yard shooting water guns at each other, and no one got hurt. That was pretty much my only goal for the party, so I can call the whole event a success. And Finn had fun too.

May the Force Be With You.

2010-04-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

No time to blog today as I am in a frenzy getting ready for Finn's 7th birthday party, a Star Wars themed party here at our house. Not sure what I was thinking when we invited 16 kids over here and the only activity I planned was light saber fighting. I wasn't too stressed until Matt started listing off all of the things that could go wrong, many of which involved someone having to be rushed to the hospital. So, I'm just hoping that the force is with us and we have any major accidents. Matt can be such a wet blanket! I can't believe that my tiny baby, born three weeks early at 6 lbs, is now a huge seven year old!!
I will update with a report on the party - wish us luck.

Finn at two weeks old - so tiny!

GUEST BLOG!!!!! Family Planning

2010-04-28T17:08:00.000-07:00

YAY! I have finally succeeded in twisting my friend Tara's arm to write a guest blog for me! We have been BFFs since 5th grade - so many memories I could write a whole blog about that! She is a supermom to 3.5 year old Gage and 10 month old Calla - both adorable, sweet kids who I frequently despair that I don't see more often. Tara and her family live in Austin, so we try to get together whenever we are in Texas, which turns out to be quite often. As any mom knows, one of the best things about motherhood is having great colleagues, and we have had so much fun on the journey together. Many of my own posts come from conversations I have with Tara, and with other friends, and we talk so much about the highs and lows of all the day to day stuff of life with kids. So lucky to have a friend like that!

So, without further ado, here is Tara's blog:

Family Planning

I’m Tara, the friend in Austin, who is a married, stay at home mommy to 2 and half kids. The half would be a very needy Jack Russell Terrier who demands a surprising amount of my time.

I think back fondly to the days of starting a family and planning out the rest of my days. All the questions I answered with such unwavering confidence: “How many kids are you planning on having?” 2, of course. Maybe 3 if we’re feeling cheeky. “Are you planning on having an epidural?” Yes, just as soon as I’m at exactly an 8, I’ll have an epidural and the rest will be cake. “What are your plans for after the baby’s born—will you be a stay at home mom?” Yes, and I’m gonna be so good at it. Please. Even the term “birth plan” makes me chuckle. That was the beginning of my life becoming unplanned, just as soon as Baby Gage showed up.

Nothing in my life can be planned. I “planned” (ha-ha) a much-anticipated weekend away with Baby Calla in Houston to see Claire at her parents’ house and another friend. I’ve been hearing and reading about Ruby for several months now, along with the rest of you, and really wanted to meet this amazing little chickadee in person! I expended all sorts of mental energy preparing for this trip. All plans were A Go: I was packed a few days ahead of time (requiring that I somehow not wear any of my 3 rotating outfits I live in), gotten Calla bathed and groomed, cut those sharp little talons that seem to regenerate overnight on tiny babies, filled up the gas tank, managed to shave my legs and pluck the unruly eyebrows, went to the grocery store to stock the fridge for the boys while we would be gone, etc, etc, etc. I’d even remembered the tiny little travel toothpaste that usually never makes it into my bathroom kit.

Bam!!! The day before we were scheduled to drive to Houston, she wakes up at 5am with a fever. I’ve learned that when I just want to sit down and cry and feel so sorry for myself, as happens from time to time, I need to just keep moving forward…so I packed Calla up that morning and took her and the four-legged half-child out for a morning stroll to plan my strategy. Here’s the conversation in my head: “Hmmm…Surely I couldn’t risk getting Ruby and my other friend’s child sick, I needed to cancel the trip. Maybe I could super-impose on my husband and he could watch both kids all weekend?? Maybe this is just that old ear infection rearing its ugly head again, maybe I’ll take her to the doctor and get it checked out. Maybe she won’t sleep both nights in Houston and keep our hosts awake. Maybe I’ll never take another trip again?? Why couldn’t this all have gone according to plan??” Letting go of a well-laid plan can be exhausting. It’s like a mental roller coaster.

3 hours later and $80 in the hole: co-pay plus antibiotics for my son, who just rode along with us but happened to have an ear infection of his own (yup, now he definitely needs tubes), I found out from the doc that she would probably be just fine in Houston. Whew, all that what-iffing makes my head spin and wears me out. But I sort of have to smile at the feeling of sweet remembrance of making plans that I was so confident in. I have slight working-friend envy when I think of other women who can plan a 2:00 team meeting in their office and know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they will most definitely be able to show up for the meeting. I’m also slightly bitter that they’ll be sitting down the entire time.
I’ve come to realize two very important points: Nothing can be fully planned when you have young ones at home, and always have all the kids’ ears checked each and every time you go to the doctor’s office.
So anyway, Ruby is really such a doll. Those big brown eyes could melt butter.

So glad I braved the drama and decided to go to Houston anyway. Claire and I are planning another get-together in June. Good luck to us…

Random Things, Part III: Do I have food in my teeth? Maybe something funny going on with my hair? Toilet paper stuck to my shoe?

2010-04-27T17:04:00.000-07:00

Then why are you looking at me?!

I think you can guess what this is about. When we first got home from Africa with Ruby, I felt eyes on me everywhere I went. Two months later, I don't notice whether people are looking at me too much, I just focus on my own thing when we're out in public. But I do find it funny to observe the ways that different people try to look at you without getting caught doing it. There's the double-take, the open stare (most often I get this from African Americans), the kind smile (meant to indicate approval, I suppose), and then the slow glance around the room as if you're just looking around for no particular reason. It's okay, I look at other people like that too. I mostly employ the slow glance method, but sometimes I get caught doing a double take (like when the sales clerk at a store I was in happened to be a midget). It's just something out of the ordinary, and it's almost impossible not to give yourself a second to put it all together. It just gets a little tiring, eventually, even when I know that people are (mostly) genuinely kind and interested in Ruby and her story. But it means I can't really leave the house without brushing my hair. Okay, I still do that sometimes, but I feel bad about it.

(As a little background, we live in Winston-Salem, NC, and it's still very much The South here. We have lived all over, including Texas, New York City, DC and Portland, OR, and I'm absolutely not trying to imply that people more are racist here at all, but it's just a little more out of the ordinary to see white families with black children than it would be in bigger cities. I'd love to hear what people who live in other places think about this topic ...)

The thing is, I felt prepared for being looked at in public. My dad has had Parkinson's for 30 years, and I can tell you that when you are in public with a person who is lurching and falling all over the place, you attract a little attention. Lest I sound cold-hearted, we have begged my dad to use a walker or even a cane, but he is very stubborn and likes to wing it, so we're constantly scraping him off of the floor of restaurants and other public places. In his case, people most often give my mom and me looks of confusion and concern. If you think about it, it's really not all that often that you see a grown man completely fall over just walking around town. It's not a small event, not just a stumble or a trip. He goes down hard, sometimes face first, sometime flat on his back. Strangers are ready to call 911 because they think he is maybe having a heart attack. Or they think he is a drunk, and they are trying to use their eyes to convey that they would be happy to help me get away from him. When my mom and I are nonchalant as he hits the ground and we waive off help, I know folks are very confused by our lack of concern for this poor man who is now bleeding and trying to catch up with us as we continue on our way. At some point, a long time ago, I got over the feeling that I somehow owed an explanation to any of these kind strangers. There is too much to explain, too much history, and no one would understand who doesn't A) know my father and B) have ALOT of experience with a person with Parkinson's. And even then, I'm not so sure.

So anyway, now that I've gone into way more explanation than was necessary, I'll just say that I pretty much feel the same way with respect to strangers who seem to want to examine me and Ruby and try to figure us out. A friend recently asked me if I wish I could wear a t-shirt around explaining that Ruby is my adopted daughter from Ethiopia so that people would understand what was going on. After thinking about it, I realized that I really don't. I don't not want people to know the story, and I'm happy to discuss it with anybody, more or less, but I also don't really care whether some person in Target thinks it's great that I saved a starving orphan or thinks white people have no business raising black children or knows someone who adopted a child from China of thinks I'm a super-star Christian or a million other things that might come to mind when someone sees a white lady toting around a black baby.

Okay, fine, I don't care. We made this choice and are happy and that's all that really matters, but ... But, I am going to care if my child feels uncomfortable or self-conscious as she gets older. I realize that falls into the category of borrowing trouble, and we have at least a few years before Ruby knows what's what, but I do feel that urge to protect her somehow, to let her feel normal even if her situation isn't the same as everyone else's. Yet another issue to tie up in 2060, when we can hear Ruby's perspective on the matter ...

Just looked over to see Ruby up-ending my wine glass to get the few drops I left behind, so while I sit here pondering the "big issues" of parenting, I'm failing to prevent her from drinking wine at the ripe age of 18 months. Nice job.

Bye for now.

My Dad and Ruby in Texas - quite a pair!

Random Things, Part II: "What I Know for Sure ..."

2010-04-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

Not much. Oprah, (if you are reading this) you know I have your back about almost everything (except when you were so mean to James Frey), but I don't really think it makes sense to talk about knowing anything "for sure." The older I get, the more I realize that if I think about anything long enough, there are so many different angles and knotty issues that I can't just issue an absolute judgment on anything.

Having children has made this especially clear, as it seems that all of the things I "knew" I would do or let my kids do or not do have proven to be a lot more "flexible" than I planned. There have been times I have felt smug, or looked at another person's child and thought "never," only to find myself eating my words and thoughts in short order. I seem to have to keep learning the lesson that being judgmental is not a good game plan, because I still find myself doing it all the time. Recently, for obvious reasons, I have also been thinking about adoption and what I thought I knew about that before we went through this process. I have found that even the most basic presumptions that I thought I "knew" - "adoption is a good thing," for instance, have been challenged in different and difficult ways. That's not to say that there can't be things that hold true for individuals, and adoption has been a good thing for us, so I don't want to leave the impression that I regret adopting Ruby, but I have certainly had to rethink alot of things.

There is so much - too much to get into now or even in 2060, that it turns out I was wrong about, that I think I can safely say that the one thing I know for sure is that I don't really know anything for sure. (Actually, I am sure that it's really tacky to wear high heels with short-shorts - even if you have really good legs, and there might be one or two other things like that I can think of ...)

Random Things I Think About

2010-04-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

Now that I have started this blog, I find myself thinking about things to write from time to time. Most of them fizzle, either because I realize I don't have that much to say about them, or because life moves so fast that by the time I have a skinny minute to sit down and write, the idea has vanished from my mind all together. So then I was thinking, I should just make a list of things I'd eventually like to write about, and then when my kids are all grown up and have moved away, I'll have something to do. I see it now - I'll be 85, living with all of the cats that seem to keep being born under our guest house, shaking my head at all the fast ways of the modern world, writing about a bygone era when we had to "switch the laundry" and we all thought that George Clooney was quite the fox.

Anyway, this week I am going to write the teasers - I am going to try to do one a day, but you'll have to wait till 2060 for the full posts.

A Long Day ...
Why is it so hard to find a balance between "not busy" and "too busy?" I know I am a pretty restless person, so I don't like to have too much down time, but on the other hand, I hate rushing from one thing to the next, feeling like chores and problems are piling up in my wake. Yesterday - a Saturday, we had one of those days where we all left the house at 9 am for Gus' soccer game, and we didn't return to the house until 6 pm. We were going from one thing to the next, switching cars, driving, eating out of bags, celebrating 7th birthdays, consoling a child whose hands only touched the ball one time in his flag football game, changing diapers in the back of the car, and on and on and on. And in a way, it was great, but by the time I got home, I was exhausted and irritable. I want my kids to be able to be on sports teams if they want to, and go to friends' birthday parties, and support our neighborhood by attending street festivals, I just wish I could figure out a way to do it all without running everyone into the ground. So hopefully sometime between now and 2060 I can figure out a way to make this happen.

And now for some pictures:

Gus as goalie, Finn as goal-coach

Ruby wants the camera!

Almost there ...

Gus has been refusing to "take a haircut" for several months now.

"When will the football game be over??"

Terror of the Skies

2010-04-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

Ruby and I are back from Texas and back into the craziness that always comes along with going out of town for any amount of time. Since the Matt, Finn and Gus were also out of town on a boys' camping trip, it seems like everything in our house is turned upside down. I did a mathematical calculation when Finn was little and we travelled a lot more, that no matter the length of your actual trip, when you travel with kids, you need a week to get ready and then another week when you get home to settle back in. Therefore, one should never travel with children for less than two weeks, or else you are spending more time "working" on the trip than actually taking it. However, two week trips being expensive and difficult to work out, it seems like two days in Texas is the best we can do.

I think I can now say that it was worth going, since we did have a good time and got to see lots of people, but I have to say that when I arrived in Houston Hobby airport, I was deeply, seriously traumatized. To say that the flight was the worst I have ever been on doesn't even do it justice, and the only silver lining was that at least I was landing in Texas, where I could get a decent margarita within 20 feet of deplaning. So here's what happened. Basically, little angelic Ruby turned into a horrible demon-child on the airplane. We had to fly from Charlotte to Dallas on a regular plane, then from Dallas to Houston on a plane clearly designed for midgets - no disrespect intended. On the first flight, Ruby seemed pretty anxious, but I was able to calm her down with snacks and toys for a while. After the snacks ran out about 45 minutes into the flight, all hell broke loose. The child threw a tantrum that put other tantrums to shame. She was screaming, kicking, arching her back to get away from me, hitting her head against things and generally being the worst-behaved child ever. This went on for close to an hour, and nothing I did would calm her down. At one point, I just put her down on the ground at the back of the plane and let her carry on, since she clearly wanted nothing to do with me. I just really wanted to open the back door and jump out. Finally, I guess she wore herself out and decided I was good enough to hold her again, and she took it down a notch, but she did not totally calm down until we got off the plane in Dallas. I only wish I knew what was going through everyone's mind on that plane. Some people were looking at us with sympathy, others with horror, and others with concern, but everyone was looking.

In the Dallas airport, I felt things were beginning to look up for us. We strolled through the airport, got a much-needed latte, and changed Ruby's diaper. We boarded the next flight for Houston, and I comforted myself with the thought that, no matter how bad it was, it would be over in an hour. I have always found that to be a useful mantra on an airplane with children, very zen ... this too shall pass. Anyway, all was well, Ruby was making cute faces at fellow passengers and they were exclaiming over how sweet and adorable she was. I sort of mumbled that she was cute, but she could be a little crazy on airplanes, but I didn't want to turn them against me before we even took off. The first bad omen was that the horrible Ogre-woman seated in front of me who turned around and asked if I would please stop kicking her seat because it was so annoying. Obviously, I was not kicking her seatback, but Ruby was, and she would not stop. And then the plane started moving. Not taking off, not actually flying, just backing out of the gate. Once more, Ruby began screaming at the absolute top of her lungs, crying and thrashing about furiously. The Ogre turned around once again to suggest (or rather, yell over top of Ruby's screaming) that probably her ears were hurting and I should give her as pacifier. When people suggest something like that to a parent who is holding a screaming baby, what are they thinking? Do they think that you have not thought of every possible way to make it stop? "Pacifier? Never heard of one. What magic device are you talking about?" Anyway, mercifully Ruby completely passed out in a sort of narcoleptic episode about fifteen minutes into the flight, and I was able to recover a little of my composure, if not my dignity. The man seated next to me never once looked at me the whole flight. He just sat there with his noise-canceling earphones. Not that I blame him, it was awkward. As a final hurrah, Ruby woke up when the captain announced that we would be landing in twelve minutes, and those were the longest twelve minutes of my life. Actually, when you could the taxiing and waiting to deplane, it was more like a half hour of more yelling and kicking. And once again, I could feel the waves of annoyance and anger from every single passenger on the tiny plane. As we deplaned, several kind people asked me if I was alright, even though I clearly was not by that point. Other, however, were not so kind. The man walking behind me up the ramp stage-whispered "Jesus F*** Christ, my ears hurt." Thanks for that, anonymous jerk.

As I mentioned, I was able to recover physically from the nightmare rather quickly with large amounts of lime juice and tequila, guacamole and chips. Mentally, on the other hand, I think I'm still a little shaken. In those hours trapped on the airplane and forced to deal with this situation, I really had some low moments. I found myself feeling angry with Ruby, and so frustrated that we can't communicate better yet. And it's such an odd dynamic on a plane where you are forced to be so physically close to people you don't know and will never see again, but you're all in it together, sharing something, for the duration of the flight. I had moments of wanting to make an announcement to the plane to explain that I had only had Ruby for two month, that I have flown with my other two children successfully many times, that I was not abusing her or stealing her from her actual parents. And then I was irrationally mad at all of those people for just sitting there, yet I felt terrible that my child was causing everyone so much annoyance. And I also felt judged, and then angry at myself for even caring what a plane full of strangers thinks about me and my parenting skills.

Of course, the whole weekend I kept replaying it and trying to figure out where our train went off the rails, to use a transportation metaphor. Was it anxiety, physical pain, just a normal temper tantrum, or something else? Hearing the story, Matt thought maybe she had some connection with the flight from Ethiopia, and that was upsetting to her in some way. Maybe I was stressed out over traveling alone with her, and she picked up on that. I really have no idea, and on the flight home, she was a complete dream. I had made a preemptive apology to people seated around me, and then she played, she walked the aisles, she slept, she smiled at everyone. I will say that on the way home I had a whole bag of rice crackers, and she kept one in her hand at all times. My wise friend Tara has suggested that maybe Ruby's compulsion with food is just her way of handling anxiety over everything that is in upheaval in her life, and that makes total sense. The poor kid has not really had any constant in her life, so no wonder she wants something to hold onto in case things get a little rocky.

Anyway, that's how it went down. The rest of the weekend was great - a flurry of visits and eating and fun. Ruby was adorable, and no one really believed me about the flight, but I have the bite marks to prove it.

Long week, but good

2010-04-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

After I wrote last week about losing sweet Lucy, I was sort of drained of all emotion for a while. So that was good, but whenever I thought about writing something, nothing came to mind. Matt and Gus had gone out of town for four days up to Boston where Matt had a conference and Gus got to spend time with all the Giegs, so Finn, Ruby and I were just here on our own all weekend. The weather was awesome, and we basically spent all of our time in the yard, planting things (me), filling buckets with water and mud (Finn), and drinking mud/water smoothies (Ruby). It was a perfectly quiet, lazy couple of days, and even though we missed Matt and Gus, it was good to have so much quiet. They had a great time up north, and came back on Tuesday with lots of stories and pictures of their adventures.

In the meantime, I started trying to write a little update on our struggles with various food issues, since so many people have asked me about it ever since I wrote about Ruby being sort of a crazy person when it comes to food. And then, of course, the more I thought about it, the more I feel like there is to say, so it's going to be a work in progress. As I thought and tried to write about everything, it just became very obvious that I have at least as many of my own hang ups with food and everything that entails as Ruby does. It's always so fun when your kids make you realize how screwed up you are! Love it. So I'll keep working on that, and eventually post something that might make sense, but in the meantime, Ruby is doing so well and seems a little less anxious about food in general. We did backslide a little this morning, however, when I observed her using the palm of her hand to shove two-thirds of a large banana into her mouth in one bite. Next time, slices. Slices people!!

This weekend, Matt is off with the boys for a big daddy/son camping weekend with their Adventure Guides group, so Ruby and I are heading down home to Texas. In Texas, of course, we will gorge ourselves on Mexican food and bar-b-que. And so it goes...

Here are some recent photos of the gang!

Easter Morning!

Finding eggs in the bamboo teepees.

Soccer Gus.

Watching soccer & enjoying a snack - perfect!

Building sandcastles in NH with Daddy.

Joyful Gus!

The boys at the beach.

'Bye Lucy

2010-04-09T22:02:00.000-07:00

Last night we said goodbye to our beautiful Newfoundland, Lucy, after almost 13 years with her. She was very old for her breed, and in the last year had becoming increasingly immobile, and it was just her time. She died so peacefully, and we buried her in the backyard, in the middle of a crazy lightening storm. It was so, so sad, as anyone who has had to say goodbye to a much-loved pet knows. I wanted to write a little bit about her life just for the sake of memory, but it came out a lot longer than I thought it would be, so please don't bother reading this unless you really love dogs or you knew Lucy, because it's really just a biography of my great dog.

If you have known me as an adult, you have known Lucy. I was 24 when I bought her, living in Washington, DC and teaching at The Field School. I don't know what gave me the idea to buy an enormous, hairy, beast of a dog, especially since I was living on the third floor of a crazy group house in the middle of the city. I was also spending most of my weekend nights going out, dancing and having fun into the wee hours. I vaguely remember that my side-kick Carrie and I thought that having a remarkably large dog would be a great way to meet boys, and probably it would have been, except that I was pretty much already destined to marry Matt, even if I didn't realize it yet. Another teacher friend of mine was also thinking of buying a dog, and he was researching breeds since he had two kids and needed a good family dog, and he determined that the Newfoundland would be the perfect breed for both of us. Not having much time for research what with all the dancing and teaching, I decided to trust his judgment and get one too. We drove up to New Jersey one cold December weekend to pick up two girl puppies from the same litter, and we named then Lucy and Lily. The woman who had bred them told me that Newfoundlands are pretty happy doing whatever you want to do, so long as they can just be with you. If you want to go for a walk, she said, that's fine; if you want to sit on the couch and watch a movie, that's fine too, as long as she's by your side she'll be happy. I can't even describe how cute she was, how good she smelled, and I can still remember the feeling of holding her warm, soft body in my arms.

Through that whole Spring in DC, Carrie and I walked Lucy around the Mall almost every week night, planning our lives and scheming about various boys. She bounded along, totally untrained, happy just to be included. Lucy came with me to school events, she came to parties, restaurants, friends' houses, and on road trips. She hated being left at home when I would leave every morning to go teach, and she would bark in my room until one of my housemates would come up to let her have the run of the house. Once let loose, she could be quite destructive, eating books, shoes, purses, wallets (including the contents), and, of course, any food she could find. Being so large, she could just jump up and scavenge on countertops for food left unattended, or eat from the table like a person. Bread was one of Lucy's favorite things to steal, and some of her most impressive food binges include eating whole loaves of bread at a time, or a whole sleeve of bagels, not even leaving a crumb behind as evidence. If you forgot you had bought it, you might not even realize she had eaten it. She would also employ her body weight to her advantage by knocking over kitchen trash cans to find goodies for herself. One bleary Saturday morning, I remember waking up to a wet sensation around my pillow. Upon investigation, I concluded that Lucy had somehow gotten out of my room during the night, run down three flights of stairs, knocked the trash over, found some raw sausage that someone had apparently decided was not safe for human consumption, brought it back upstairs and buried it under my pillow while I was sleeping. It wasn't the greatest way to wake up, but it did make for a funny story.

That summer, I moved back to Texas to start law school, and Lucy and I moved into a house in Austin with my brother, Ted. He had recently acquired a cat in a parking lot somewhere, and I assured him (completely baselessly) that Lucy would be nice to it. As it turned out, Lucy really hated that cat. I actually hated the cat too, but I didn't want to kill it the same way she did. For the three years that we all four lived together, we always had to keep the house divided in two parts - the cat half and the dog half. Every now and then someone would forget to close a door, or Lucy would bust past you on your way to the bathroom, and she would take after that cat like nothing you've ever seen. We always joked that the cat must have been on her mind at all times, night and day, and she was just waiting for her moment. She never did succeed in her mission, and Jill lives to this day, and she's still a pretty lame cat, as far as cats go.

Those years in Austin were so fun with Lucy, since she loved to swim and hike around. She grew and grew - eventually reaching her adult weight of 130 pounds. I ran a few miles with her almost every day, and I would take her to meet friends at Austin's numerous outdoor eating and drinking establishments. We would set her free at the dog park a couple of times a week, where she would establish her dominance over smaller, lesser dogs. Her head was about the size of a basketball, but she was sweet, and playful, and enthusiastic about everything. Many a time she dragged me to the ground in an effort to catch a squirrel, or knocked over half the living room running to greet someone at the door, but it was hard to ever stay mad at her for long. And she was still up to her naughty ways with food. One year on New Year's Eve, Matt and another good friend from DC were in town and a big group of us were going to a party, so we ordered a ton of Chinese food for dinner before the party. There were lots of leftovers, which we stashed in the fridge before going out. When we got home, the door of the fridge was wide open, there were styrofoam containers all over the kitchen floor, and not a bite of food left. We imagined Lucy waiting until we were gone for sure, then having her own little party. Another night, Ted and I were getting ready to have a party, and we had cleaned the house, top to bottom. The house was spotless, and I felt I deserved to sit and relax for a minute in this unusually sparkling scene. As I settled into the couch, I noticed a slightly fishy odor -- a slightly dead-fishy odor. Not immediately seeing any dead fish, I started checking around a little more seriously. When I put my hand in between the cushions of the couch and came up with a wet, dead, whole fish, it was immediately clear what had happened. Ted had thoughtlessly thrown away some fish he had previously caught and frozen but never cooked, and Lucy, realizing his mistake, had rescued this treasure from the trash can and stored it in the couch so as to enjoy later. I never did totally get that smell out of that couch.

After law school, Lucy and I made another big trip, this time moving up to New York City to practice law while Matt was finishing medical school. We were engaged by then, and for the next two years we lived in various apartments around New York. Lucy was a pretty good city dog, and by then she wasn't such a rambunctious puppy, so she was content to lie around the apartment most of the day. On the weekends, we would go for long walks with her, through Central Park or over to the river. Lucy got lots of attention everywhere we went, since lots of New Yorkers wish they could have a dog but are sensible enough not to. From New York we took her up to the Giegs' cabin in the Catskills many times, and she would race around the woods like a wild thing, finally plunging into the lake to swim until she was so tired she couldn't move. Being a water rescue breed, Newfies can't not retrieve things out of the water, no matter how tired they are. She would swim out to bring sticks and even big logs out of the water a hundred times if you were willing to stand there throwing them in for her. If we went in to swim, she was right there with us, watching to make sure we were okay, or circling until we came close enough to shore to suit her.

Me (pregnant with Finn) & Lucy in NCY snowstorm.

When Matt and I got married down in Texas, we drove down so that Lucy could be there with us. The whole trip, both ways, she sat in the back seat of our red Jeep, head on the armrest between us to catch the air conditioning and the occasional pat on the head. I don't think we ever ate in a restaurant on that trip since we couldn't take her in, but we also couldn't eat in the car since she would jump up front if we had food up there. We had to eat standing outside of the car, or wait until she fell asleep and hope she didn't wake up. My mother put her foot down that Lucy could not be in attendance at the wedding (very sensible considering the number of elderly folk and the tempting food that Lucy might go for), but she was part of the whole wedding week, and she drove back up to New York with us, not caring one way or the other that we had just gotten married.

A year later, we brought Finn home from the hospital to our little one-bedroom apartment, and Lucy was officially a big sister. She actually seemed pretty indifferent to the little bean, which is pretty good considering how much he cried the first few months. When Finn was six weeks old, we all piled back into the red Jeep and headed West, for Oregon, where the new doctor would begin his residency training. This time, Finn was in the back, so Lucy was in the way back, comfortable in a little nest we made for her, but probably sad to be bumped from the bosom of the family. And of course, as anyone who has a dog and then has a baby will know, things change. No longer did we tell each other about funny things Lucy had done that day, or plan our weekend around taking her to parks she would enjoy. Now we mostly just talked about how to make the baby stop crying, or how tired we were. Lucy just listened, laying at our feet by the couch or waiting under Finn's highchair for scraps. She did have a big yard and a high front porch where she could wait for passing dogs to greet with her loud barks. Finn and Lucy and I would walk around the neighborhood, meeting people and dogs, going for coffee and dog biscuits at Starbucks. It was a pretty nice life for us, and for Lucy, even if she missed being the center of our lives a little bit.

By the time we moved away from Portland four years later, Lucy had really slowed down. At some point, we stopped taking her on long walks because she would get tired half-way through and lie down, refusing to move until someone came back for her with the car. She didn't come upstairs so often and jump up on the bed with us at night. She might not insist on dragging us across the street to meet a new dog. When Matt drove her across the country to move to North Carolina, he had to help her in and out of the car. But she still had her moments, and she won over many new friends here. Lucy has always been a dog that even people who are afraid of dogs will agree is a great dog. In the case of dog-phobes, it's probably because Lucy didn't move around very much. She was like a giant black dog-carpet much of the time, strategically placing herself where she knew you would have to be in order to get a little scratch or a kind word. But she could also be stubborn, or regal, or playful if the mood struck. And she could just watch you for hours, protecting and radiating love with her giant black eyes.

Over the last six months, we knew the end was coming. She wasn't in pain, but we felt like her quality of life was pretty low because it was so hard for her to stand and walk, and we didn't know if it made sense to just let her live without any joy in her life. But we would often find her relaxing up on her favorite sofa, or sniffing around the dining room floor after a meal, so we knew she still had a little life left to live. Before we left for Ethiopia, we talked about maybe putting her down before we left, but Matt said he wanted her to at least get to meet the new baby, and that seemed right. One of Ruby's first words in English was doggie, or actually "goggie," but pointing at Lucy, so we knew. Over the last few months I kept saying that I just wished there was a way to know for sure that it was the right time, since it felt so weird to have to decide to end a dog's life. And then yesterday morning, when she couldn't stand up or stay on her feet when I propped her up, I knew.

As I write all of this, I feel that it's such an inadequate tribute to such a great dog. For close to 13 years, she was in my life, always with me or waiting for me at home, whether I was gone five minutes or five weeks. Never once did I walk in the door that she didn't bound over, tail wagging, or, in later years, lift her head and look at me with eyes that clearly expressed her happiness at my return. But what does a dog, no less one that is no longer alive, care about a tribute? The only thing Lucy really cared about was us, and we were imperfect in that, of course, but we loved her.

Last night we explained to the boys that Lucy is now in "doggie heaven," and Gus could not understand how she had gotten all the way up there so quickly. He finally came up with the solution that she must have gone in a rocket ship, and we could tell that he was disappointed to have missed seeing it come for her. And now somehow I have it in my head that she did have one last big trip on a rocket ship, and I'm hoping that when it landed there were pizza crusts and cats to chase and a comfy place to rest and keep and eye on us down here. We will miss you Lucy.

The Tooth Fairy Cometh

2010-04-07T11:38:00.000-07:00

Finn, aged 6.9, has lost three teeth now, and it's making me feel pretty sad. Why does he have to grow up? On the other hand, he is very happy with the situation, since he is obsessively saving money to buy Legos all the time, and the Tooth Fairy usually comes through with pretty good cash. So the other day, (remember when I was writing and all of the kids were down for a nap?), one of his loose teeth fell out. But he didn't tell me. When he got up from his nap, he asked me for a plastic bag, because he said that Gus wanted one, and when I asked why, he just brushed me off and said he just really needed to get the bag for Gus. Distracted by a million other things, I gave him a bag and forgot all about it. Fast forward to the next morning, when I come downstairs to see Finny sitting dejectedly on the couch in his room, sulking. Since it was the first day back to school after Spring Break, I assumed that he was making a little point about being unhappy to be going back to school, so I told him to get going, get dressed, etc. He did what I told him to do, but he was still grumpy, so finally I gave in and asked him what was wrong. His response was, "I kept a secret from you yesterday." My heart almost stopped. After imagining and then immediately discounting a million different terrible scenarios, I calmly asked what the secret was. As you, reader, already know, the secret was the lost tooth, which he had put under his pillow the night before hoping to surprise me in the morning with what the Tooth Fairy had brought him. But, of course, the Tooth Fairy hadn't come at all, and in the morning, the little bag was still there with his tiny little tooth in it. For a minute, I thought I was totally busted. I really had nothing. Grasping at straws, I finally told him that the Tooth Fairy only comes to your house if your mom and dad send out a special signal to let her know that there is a tooth to collect. I could see Finny doubting this, since this was information that he had never heard before, and he followed up with the logical question, "why doesn't the Tooth Fairy just know?" "She's super busy" was my awesome come-back. I think he bought it, but only barely.

He was happy today when he found that the Fairy had left him $5, so he'll probably suspend his disbelief a little longer, but I think it's only a matter of time. I'm not sure why it makes me sad for him to be getting to the age where he finds out that all the magical stuff of childhood- Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc, is nothing more than an elaborate hoax. Obviously, part of it is that he's growing up and that means accepting other unpleasant truths about myself (wrinkles, sagging body parts, my eventual death), but it's also just a big disappointment that that stuff really isn't real. I think I took it pretty well when I found out about everything as a child, but as an adult I find myself nostalgic for the days when I really, really believed in magic. Once that door closes, it's closed for good, and you don't even realize that until you grow up and look back at it, by which time you've also realized that "life isn't fair" isn't just something your dad was saying to be annoying.

One of my friends recently joked that she wished the Easter Bunny had brought her some new cabinets, and we agreed that it would be nice if just one of them were for real - we would even accept a visit from a leprechaun, so long as he had a pot of gold and we didn't have to hang out with him.

Last Day of Spring Break ...

2010-04-05T11:22:00.000-07:00

After a great Easter weekend of yard projects, playing in the sprinkler, getting together with friends, and even going to church as a family, we're here at the last day of our wild Spring Break. It started off a little rough, when I went into Ruby's room to get her out of the crib, only to discover that Ruby, her bedding, her new black baby doll (which actually just looks like a white baby doll, but tan - she loves it, so whatever), and the actual crib were all smeared with poop. Big bummer, but thankfully I had already had a few cups of coffee, so was able to handle the whole situation without a major breakdown. Then we were meeting friends at the playground to play and eat lunch, so I spend roughly two hours getting everything ready for that. The playground was fun, and we also ran into other people we know - one of the many benefits of small-town life, and Ruby was relatively composed in the face of the picnic. I kept it all out of sight until it was time to eat, so that went much better than the aforementioned kite-picnic day.

Now, all three kids are in their beds, napping, and the house is so quiet I almost don't know what to do with myself. Of course, it won't last long, but it's nice to enjoy the little moment. Ever since we brought Ruby home, we've been going going going. It's been hard to find time to return emails, look at bills, make phone calls that need to be made, put things away that I keep walking by that I know I need to deal with. I think Matt and I both feel pretty overworked, and we hadn't really stopped for a minute to realize how much our lives have changed. In so many ways, having a toddler is a million times easier than having a newborn, and we wanted Ruby so much and are so happy to have her. So it feels crazy to have any resentment or weariness now that we're home with her and things are going so well. But finally acknowledging it to one another made me feel better. I remember that after Gus was born and we were so exhausted and busy and stressed with two kids, both not sleeping, Matt working all the time, no family around, etc, we didn't even have any time to have proper fights. We would just both go around resenting each other for things - chores left undone, sharp words tossed out in the middle of the night when the other person didn't get the baby back to sleep before he woke up the other one, individual victories that the other person didn't seem to care about. But we couldn't even talk about it, because there was always someone crying, and when they stopped crying, we passed out. One day we just decided that we would just agree not to get a divorce for a year, and call that good enough until everything calmed down. Not that either one of us was even thinking about divorce, but once we decided that, we really weren't so mad at each other anymore. It was like finally saying "yes, this is really hard, and I feel annoyed all the time" made fixing it not so important.

Anyway, things are a million times easier now, even with three kids, but it still took me a little while to realize that something big had happened to our family, and things have changed again. It's funny that we might have gone to Africa and brought home a child and not really anticipated that doing all that might upset the apple cart, but I think that's what happened. So it's all good, not perfect, but really good. But it's hard too.

Now I'm counting down the other way ... 4 days till they're back in school!

2010-04-02T05:07:00.000-07:00

Just kidding, we've had a few good days here on our Spring Break 2010 Extravaganza. Nothing too exciting. Art day was good - predictably, the kids spent about 30 minutes actually painting, but they had fun anyway, and it was beautiful weather, so we set up Ruby's little water table and all played outside. I'm not usually one to be sending shout-outs the Man upstairs, but I have to say that He really hooked us up with the weather this week. Someone in this area must have done something very good to deserve this weather, and we're all getting the benefit of it. It's been incredible and slightly uncharacteristic for NC this time of year.

Yesterday we went for a picnic and kite flying adventure. The boys were so excited to try out the kites they had gotten as presents at one of Ruby's baby showers, and I had been putting them off about them for a long time. You know when someone gives your kid a thoughtful gift that the kid loves - like a complicated craft project or a kite, and your kid is so happy but you are silently cursing them for setting you up for having to spend a significant amount of time helping the child play with it. No, you are not like that? Me neither, really. I was also super-excited to go kite flying, so off we went.

The boys had a great time - I've never seen them run so much or be so happy to succeed at something - why am I not taking them kite flying every day? And Ruby sort of enjoyed watching them fly the kites, but she and I had sort of a battle of wills that cast a pall on the whole picnic element of the day. I had imagined that she would be running after the boys, playing in the grass, rolling the ball back and forth with me, etc. In reality, once she detected that there was food on the ground - meaning she could get at it - that was all she could think about. From talking with other moms with little ones from Ethiopia, I know this whole obsession with food is not unique, but it is really difficult. The other day Finn said, "I know she does love us, but she loves food more right now." True. If food is not around, she can hang out and be pretty cool. However, once she catches the scent, so to speak, forget about it. Actually, I had been feeling better about it, like we were making progress, but yesterday was a bit of a setback. Some days I am patient and careful about not putting her into situations where it will be a problem, but then some days I'm not so good. I don't know what I was thinking with the picnic, but I think we'll be scratching that off our list of activities for a while. If I was helping one of the boys with a kite, I would see her digging through bags to find anything I had hidden. So then I moved her really far away from the picnic blanket, and she just sat there crying and then finally got up and headed straight back to the chow.

Who cares, right? Let the kid eat. Except that it's such an emotional thing for her, and the amount and speed at which she eats is pretty shocking. So she was really, really mad at me because I kept taking food away, and I was kind of mad at her for being so annoying (I know, not too mature of me). I hate being mad at each other because we don't yet have a total base of trust and love under there. I can get mad at the boys all day long and they can be as obnoxious as possible right back, but it never touches our feelings about each other because we have so much history. With Ruby right now, it's still pretty delicate. When I do something she doesn't like, such as remove three chicken nuggets from her mouth, the only emotion I see in her eyes is anger. I know she must feel so alone in that moment, and I feel like a big fat failure that I'm not always a model of compassion and love in these situations.

So, today is a new day, and I'm on top of it. I've just written this whole thing before Ruby is even awake, so it's in the past and we'll start with a clean slate and (I know it's corny) a clean plate.

Spring break - Day 2

2010-03-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Zoo. Such a lovely idea & sure to be a hit with the kids. Right? Well, actually, we did have a great day at the zoo, so I really need to control my sarcastic, bad-mother side and just appreciate that no one ended up in the alligator swamp. But ...

So, our day started miraculously early. I was trying to leave the house by 8, but it was actually 9, which I didn't think was too bad. Especially if you consider that I had fed all the kids, cut up a watermelon, packed drinks and snacks and extra clothes, diapers, the camera - with the battery charged(!), and even had on make-up. So, off to the zoo. Well, right after a quick detour through the district court of Winston-Salem.

Matt had gotten a ticket a few months back for having an expired registration, and then somehow with everything else going on, the court date snuck up on us and he already had a million surgeries scheduled and I think you can see where that is going to end. Yesterday, when Finn, Ruby and I went down to the courthouse to see if we could sort it out a day early, they told me that I had to come back, but that it was a "walk through" court and the judge would dismiss it quickly. Not so much. In hindsight, I realize that I should have known that there would be two hundred people in line with me, but I think I was keeping that reality in a dark corner of my mind. The "judge" - a guy wearing a red baseball hat and khaki pants, did dismiss the ticket, but only after we waited in a horrendous line in a tiny room for close to two hours. I told Finn that he should feel lucky that we weren't at Disney World or we'd be spending alot more time in lines like that. So that made us all feel better. Of course, Ruby was a big attraction for all the good folks down at the courthouse. Since she is still pretty indiscriminate with her affection, she made the rounds to all the other delinquents, holding her arms up so they could pick her up. Everyone was really nice, but it's just a little weird to have your child seem as happy to be held by some random toothless person as she is by me. Oh well, lucky for me we'll never see most of those people again, so Ruby will have to be satisfied with us.

So off to the zoo by 11, arriving at lunch time, beautiful weather and another family to hang out with. Aside from the fact that it's exhausting to lug all the stuff around for everyone and the kids kept trying to crawl into Ruby's stroller, things were good. Finn only asked me one time why I always have to be so mean, so that's pretty fair. And, once I explained why I was being so mean, I think he understood. There are only so many times I can be patient when a certain person leans on the handlebars of a stroller - an empty stroller - and the whole thing comes crashing over backwards spilling everything out of my diaper bag and $2.99 Sprite onto the ground. Yes, it was an accident, but really, I'm not a saint. Ruby was pretty much a dream during the whole day. She loved the otters and the turtles, and she worked on trying to say various words. She napped, she pooped, she ate. Pretty, happy girl.

Tomorrow is "Art Camp" here at the house, and we're ready with fingerpaint, canvas, feathers and glitter glue. I will post pictures of anything that I would consider selling.

Ruby resting at the zoo. Notice her "zoo" dress!

Gus is happy doing anything so long as there are refreshments.

The otters were so entertaining!

Spring Break - Day 1

2010-03-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's here, and we're here, at home. Both of the boys have the week off this week, which is the first time that has happened, and yet we're not going anywhere, just chillin' here at home. We figured that we would want to just be settling in at home still after the big trip, plus there's not too much left in the old bank account after Africa. But now that the week is here, I'm sort of rethinking that and wishing we were on our way to some extravagant family resort with multiple pools and umbrella drinks.

However, here we are. So, in an effort to be a "Good Parent," I decided to really give this whole parenting thing 110% this week, and I told the boys that we would be having Spring Break Spectacular 2010 here at home. We made a little calendar for the week, with a special event for each day. Today was supposed to be picnic and kite flying after Gus finished his last morning of preschool. Unfortunately, there were tornadoes and terrible thunderstorms all night, so our picnic plans were nixed. But I wasn't even worried, because I am so prepared and awesome that I told them that we would just switch Friday morning's activity - Easter egg dyeing - to this afternoon. They were super happy with that idea, and after a fun lunch together at our fave burrito place, we headed home to get started with Day 1 of the Best Spring Break Ever.

As an aside, if you are in my age demographic, and you are a woman, you may find that alot of things in your life remind you of an episode of Friends. This is somewhat embarrassing, because it's not like it was such a highbrow show, but I'm just admitting something that I think at least some of you can relate to, whether you're willing to admit it or not. So, one episode that I find myself thinking of quite a bit involved Rachel teaching Joey how to sail. Somehow, Joey had a new boat, and Rachel was all excited to teach him how to sail the way her father had taught her, and they got all prepared with the gear, the clothes, the picnic, and then within five minutes she was yelling at him and criticizing everything he was doing. The whole endeavor was a fiasco. Likewise, I find that often when I try to do something special with my kids that I think will be fun - like making cookies, craft projects, playing a new game, or ... dyeing eggs, I end up turning into a monster. It's never the rosy, happy event that I have imagined in my mind, because inevitably it's way more messy, the kids fight over which task they get to help with, or someone loses interest halfway through and starts trouble. That's when I usually start yelling and/or drinking (usually and). The lesson here for me should be to start drinking before I begin the project, because then I might not notice that things aren't going that well.

So I boiled up 18 eggs, got all the little tablets dissolved in the colored buckets, showed the children that I loved them so much that I had gotten a Star Wars kit so that they could put Star Wars stickers on the eggs, and explained how to use the flimsy little wire dippers. After some preliminary fighting over who would get which Star Wars sticker, we got started. Now, I know that eggs can be hard to handle, and those dippers are not easy to use, but let's just say that significantly more eggs ended up on the floor than back in the carton. Some were dropped before they made it into the dye, and others went overboard just after they came out of the bath, thereby splattering colored water all over the place. I have to say that I give myself alot of credit for maintaining my cool through most of this. I cheerfully noted that we would sure have alot of eggs for egg salad, and we all enjoyed eating at least one right then (Ruby somehow got a whole egg into her mouth in one bite!). However, I did totally lose it when I looked over to see Gus cracking the last white egg on the side of the table. Why? He wanted to eat it. What about the others that were already cracked? He forgot about those.

Okay, at least there were no major spills of colored water, and the boys were pretty happy with the seven eggs that did manage to get dyed without incident. I just find myself wishing that I had more patience, so that when I do try to do something nice for the kids, it ends up being a good memory for them. I think back on my childhood, and I don't really remember my mom getting mad at us for messing stuff up, and I wish I could just be more at peace with the chaos. To quote another timeless sitcom, "Serenity Now!"

Tomorrow is the zoo, so that should be easier in a way. Will report back.

Cute X 7 = Ethiopian baby playdate!

2010-03-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, Ruby and I entertained some other little people from Ethiopia and their moms, and it was awesome! With the exception of one child, everyone is relatively new to the USA, so it was fun to see how everyone is adjusting and learning and growing. They are all so cute, of course, but it was also fun to see how totally normal they seem - including squabbles over toys, inordinate love of keys and cell phones, and, of course, eating the other half of whatever someone else started. The hallmarks of a good day for a toddler.

Almost everyone was willing to sit still for a minute - unbelievable!

The boys look so over it! One day you'll look back and be jealous of your two-year old selves hanging out with all these ladies.

Ruby and Helen - too cute!

For Your Eyes Only, Adoption Bloggers!

2010-03-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I've been spending alot of time lately reading other people's blogs. Mostly, this is because Ruby has to be rocked to sleep, but I can't just sit in her room rocking her or else she'll suspect that I'm trying to put her to sleep and get super-mad. So, I wander around the house holding her, sometimes talking on the phone, but more often reading stuff on the computer, until she crashes. Then, sometimes, I can put her down. My arms are getting pretty strong, which is a silver lining to the dark cloud of bad sleep habits we're creating (I know, you don't even have to say it).

Anyway, reading all these other adoption blogs has been really inspiring. Families go through so much to bring their children home. Obviously, many people go through hardships to have biological children, but it's a different process, and I'm sure there is a whole world of blogs about that stuff too. Luckily for us, both of my pregnancies were relatively straight-forward - once the bun was in the oven, everything was pretty much on auto-pilot. On the other hand, I felt that adoption was such a conscious process, where you have to make choices and take action at every step of the way. If you just stop doing it one day, no baby. So you keep moving forward slowly - sometimes making a phone call to a doctor's office for an appointment for your physical is all you do towards it in a whole week. But you keep going, and then eventually - a long, long time after you started said process, you get a phone call asking if you would like to accept a referral. And you choose yes or no. And then you might lose that referral, so you can't really get excited yet, but you do anyway. All the while, friends keep asking you if you're still pursuing adoption, or if you have any news. But it's really hard to explain to people who haven't been through it, and you can see their eyes sort of glaze over when you start using words like "referral" and "embassy appointment." Plus, you still have to keep living your everyday life, but no one is giving up their bus seat for you because you don't have a big old belly. But that's okay, because, like I said, it's more a cerebral process than a physical one anyway, so instead of getting hemorroids and stretch marks, you've got a sore neck from holding the phone up to your ear with your shoulder while you spend hours on the phone making plane reservations and paper cuts from filling out yet more forms. You have to keep doing all this stuff, it doesn't just happen to you. All this is not to say that having a baby isn't hard - I've had two babies the old-fashioned way, and it's no day at the park either, but there is certainly not as much paperwork involved.

Then, finally, finally you go get your child, and you come home, feeling like a huge chapter of your life (possibly titled "Waiting") is over. And that's great, because starting the next chapter is what it's all about, but at the same time, that wait was a part of the journey too. I feel it doesn't get the respect it deserves in the world. There are approximately 3 million books about pregnancy on the market, but not so many about waiting during adoption. That's probably because it is so different in each case, and it's not that funny to make witty suggestions about what to wear to cover up your new big butt that you got from sitting in front of the computer researching adoption while eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon since, unlike pregnancy fat, no one thinks that's cute.

I think non-adoption people - meaning most everyone - have no idea what the process is like. They see you with an obviously adopted child and think it just landed at your doorstep. When people I don't know ask me whether Ruby is a "Haiti baby," and I want to yell at them that actually, no, I didn't just rush down to Haiti following the January earthquake and swipe a baby off the street, I don't. I don't tell people that it wasn't "nice" of me to adopt a baby, it was a [expletive deleted] of work and money to get her. I just say "well thank, I am a really nice person."

So, this seems to be veering off into a rant-ish post, which was not my intent when I sat down. My intent was to say thank you to all the bloggers out there who share their adoption journeys. The online adoption community fills in the gap on the shelf at the bookstore. Reading other people's stories during the waiting phase and now that we're home has been at times addictive, at times really hard, but mostly just really helpful. Fellow bloggers, your honesty and humor have kept things in perspective for me, so thanks for that.

It's Your Birthday Matt!

2010-03-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

TO THE BEST HUSBAND & DAD IN THE WORLD!

LOVE CLAIRE, RUBY, FINN, GUS, LUCY, MILLIE & CAROLINE!

Lucky girl!

2010-03-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it, I don't usually like it when people tell me how "lucky" Ruby is. I don't feel like she has been particularly lucky in the game of life thus far, being an orphan and all. BUT, this child is now officially the best dressed girl in town, so I retract my previous statement and wholeheartedly agree that she is very, very lucky! Yesterday, Matt's office in Greensboro threw a shower for Ruby - and she walked out with a wardrobe fit for a queen! I'm pretty sure that she will never have to wear the same thing twice, which is good, because you know how the paparazzi can be so critical when you are caught doing that. Anyway, it was great fun & Ruby had a fab time being the belle of the party - she is getting pretty comfortable in the spotlight! Thanks ladies!

Ruby (with Stephanie) opening one of her many presents!

The spread was awesome!

Earlier in the week, Grandma and I took Ruby to Gus' school for show and tell, and we brought snacks. Ruby was not too into being the object of show and tell, but she did like the snacks - particularly the Oreos - as seen below!

One Month

2010-03-14T20:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Ruby,

We've known you exactly a month now, and it seems like a good time to reflect on your arrival in our family. We can't believe how much you have changed in four short weeks. In fact, every day you change so much that when we go to bed at night, we are excited to see what the next day with you will bring. When we first met you, you were so careful not to show us any part of yourself. You didn't even want to cry in front of us. You were careful to keep everything inside, and I don't blame you. We looked funny, we sounded funny, and we probably smelled funny to you. (We are actually very funny people, but I get that you couldn't appreciate that yet.) We were also in your face all the time, shoving new, noisy toys at you, letting the big boys hold you, and messing with your hair. We also thought you should start walking, and you really didn't think that was necessary since it was easier to be carried.

But we were patient. We kept trying new stuff, until finally Daddy got you to giggle by throwing you up in the air and then letting you hit him in the face. So then we were onto something. We also detected that you really like snacks, and you even became a little demanding in that regard. So we fed you, and you liked us a little better. And then, piggybacking on that success, we tricked you into walking with tempting goldfish and raisins. And that was all in the first week!

Then it was time to take you home, and we were worried that would be so hard for you. We felt so sad for you to be leaving your country, even though we promised to bring you back to visit. But obviously, you didn't really take all of that in, except that you were pretty annoyed by the whole 30-hour extreme plane ride experience. We were really annoyed by it too, so at least we had that.

And then we were home, and you know how fast life comes at you, so we just jumped into it, and you did too. And then little by very little, when we weren't even paying attention, you must have decided that we were not so suspect after all. You learned our names, and you yell for us whenever you feel like it. And when did you start moving so fast? We can't keep up with your little body running around the house looking for electric outlets we forgot to cover, tiny Legos that missed the Big Clean-up, change that fell out of someone's pocket, old floor-food, and, of course, dog food. Which reminds me, you really love to eat! We all were trying to think today, and no one could come up with a food that you haven't liked so far. Cucumbers, tuna fish, salmon, eggs, fruit, sweet potatoes, tortilla soup, and the list goes on and on. For a mother whose two other children have refused to eat many, many things I've lovingly prepared for them, you are a dream come true. Now, getting you to stop eating is another story, but we're very proud of your brave & adventurous palette!

Speaking of brave, we are amazed every day by how willing you are to open yourself up to new people and experiences. You offer a tentative smile to a stranger at the grocery store, allow a new friend to hold you, and play peek-a-boo with just about anyone! You have met all of your grandparents, and you did not hold back with them at all. Maybe you noticed that they were all completely crazy for you, but we were so happy to see their love returned. You make funny attempts to say their names, and you follow them around the house, knowing they are good for a long cuddle and as many kisses as you will tolerate.

Your brothers have learned so much about you too. Finn loves to help with everything - he gets you out of your crib in the morning, he will do absolutely anything to make you laugh if you are sad, he loves to be the one to feed you your breakfast, and he can't wait to get home after school to see you. In return, you seem to trust him not to drop you, you lavish him with hugs, and you sometimes (very rare) offer to share a bite of your food with him. As for Gus, you can't get enough of him. You follow him around saying "Gu-Gu" and laughing at his every silly thing he does.

With respect to our feelings for you, I can't really even put that into words. I don't know when that thing happens with one's children, where all of the sudden you lose your breath for a minute when you imagine losing them for any reason. It seems like right at first, when they are born or, in your case, when I met you, for a little while there is still some separation between myself and my child. The first days that I knew you, you were still yourself and I was still myself. And then now, in less time than it takes to go through a jar of peanut butter, everything is tangled and knotted up together. You could never pick out a moment when it happened, but all of the sudden, it just is. The strings of attachment that connect us to you also connect you, and therefore us, to Ethiopia and to people there who love you too, whether living or dead. In your heart right now, I know you are still suspended somewhere in between these two worlds, and part of you may always be.

So that's the first month. A lifetime more to come. We can't wait.

xoxo

Thinking of you ...

2010-03-11T15:56:00.000-08:00

I am so sad for all of the waiting families who are now faced with traveling to Ethiopia two times. I admire that everyone seems so positive - and it is awesome that you get to meet your babies sooner - but it is hard news. You are in our thoughts.

A Corner ...

2010-03-07T19:52:00.000-08:00

I think we turned one. The rest of the week was much better. It turned out that Gus had strep & scarlet fever, so we got him on meds and he perked up pretty fast. The weather improved dramatically, and, best of all, Ruby is a rock-star sleeper! I know that many of you had read where we really suck at getting our children to sleep, so we were hoping that a child that was free of our genetic taint might behave better in that regard, and I think it may be the case. I don't want to jinx it, but she is sleeping a solid 11 to 12 hours a night. It's nothing short of a miracle. Also, she is adorable and laughing and we are having so much fun with her. She is into everything, chuckles at her own little jokes, and is starting to try to talk to us. So far she knows doggie, cat, daddy and something that sounds like Gus. Finny and I are not taking it personally though, we know she loves us.

Speaking of love, I have had a revelation this week as I have watched Ruby open up and start to reach out to us. All this time that we were waiting to adopt her, I focused on how much we would love her. I would feel sad that she - and orphans in general - didn't have a mother and father to love them unconditionally and above everyone else. And that is sad, so sad that I try not to think about all the children who grow up in orphanages around the world who don't have that. But until I saw Ruby crawl over to Gus the other day while he was sitting on the floor crying his heart out because he didn't want to go to school to give him a hug, I never thought about the fact that learning to give love is as much of a gift as receiving it. Ruby has so much love to give, and once she started trusting us even a little bit, she is so eager to give it. We are far from all the way there in terms of Ruby feeling attached and secure, although we step a little closer every day, but I feel so overwhelmed and honored that we are the ones to whom she is starting to trust her little heart.

Ruby posing for Finn's Teddy Journal for school.

well, the truth is ...

2010-03-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

I am tired! This is not the post I said I was going to write, because I don't have the mental facilities to write what I want to say at this point. But it is, nonetheless, the truth. We've had a long few days here. Not necessarily bad, but just long and hard. We are almost back on the right time schedule, but not quite, so we all wake up really early, and then I find myself falling into a semi-coma state after about 2 pm. So that is not ideal, plus Gus is sick and needing lots of TLC, the cats both got spayed today, Ruby has some mysterious stomach pain (we think) and is fussing and crying more than normal, it's snowing again (so ready for Spring), and I can't seem to get the last few things from the trip put away. Also, I've also been wearing the same clothes for two days (including sleeping in them), so that's sort of pathetic.
Anyway, here's hoping tomorrow is a bright new day here at the Giegengacks'!

Pictures, Finally ...

2010-02-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

It's Friday afternoon, and this has been a long, long week! It's bizarre to think that we started the week out in Africa and ended it here at home in North Carolina. My mom and dad got here yesterday to help out, but I still haven't managed to get my head above water with much of anything. Things are piling up around the house, I haven't returned phone calls and emails, and we're all still waking up at 4 am every day. So, all that stuff isn't the best, but other than that, things really could not be better. Ruby is changing every day - she is so talkative and funny now. She loves to laugh at the boys, and they love to do things to make her laugh. This afternoon it was jumping from the ladder of their bunk beds and crashing to the floor. Don't ask my why this is humorous, but all three of them were cracking up. Ruby continues to be an adventurous eater, although she is starting to express dislikes here and there, like strawberries. She just turns her head to the side and makes a face like a little princess. She loves to look at pictures of people in magazines - right now she is kissing a picture of an Indian doctor she found on a postcard that she dug out of the trash can (that would be the office trash can - just paper!).

Today my parents and I went with Ruby to Whole Foods for lunch, and Ruby sat there in her high chair waiving at everyone. Who is this child who refused to acknowledge us for two days in Ethiopia?! Shy Ruby no longer. So we are having a ton of fun with her. Finn and Gus are doing really well also. They have had fun going back to school and sharing stories about the trip and their new sister. Finn's class had a surprise party for him today, and my mom and I took Ruby. She was dressed up in her traditional Ethiopian outfit - totally adorable - and she was very happy to sit and eat snacks with the big kids. Finn showed off some of the things we brought back with us, and the kids gave him a book they had made while he was gone giving him advice on how to be a great big brother. One of the children advised Finn not to mess with her or else she might "tear him up." Good advice really, for dealing with the modern woman. And Gus came home today with an awesome poster his class had made that counted down the days to leaving to get Ruby, and then the days until Gus came back home. So cute!

So I have finally managed to put some of our 600-plus pictures into a slideshow - click below and it will go the album, and hopefully more will follow. I couldn't post some of them because I didn't want to put up pictures of other people's children online, but I'll just assure you that all of the kids were beautiful. We also were asked not to post pictures of children in any of the orphanages we visited, so that's why I didn't.

Hope you enjoy these!

Our Ethiopian Adventure

(Next post topic: The Truth, or what I should say when people ask, "How was it?!")

Home at last!

2010-02-24T18:05:00.000-08:00

I am totally exhausted, so I'll keep it short, but I wanted to just wish all the families getting ready to travel in the coming week good luck and safe travels!

My goal for tomorrow is to sort out a few of the more than 600 pictures we took to put up here. Probably half of the 600 are pictures taken by Finn or Gus of their shoes, or extreme close-ups of their noses, or pictures that would have been good if they hadn't had their hand over the flash, so weeding those out will cut down on the number of pictures I subject everyone to.

Anyway, we are so so happy to be back home with our new daughter, even though we had a great time in Ethiopia (the coffee, the wonderful people, the friends we made, the coffee, the great food, and on and on). Thanks to everyone who was praying or thinking good thoughts for us as we journeyed - it worked!

Our busy week is almost over ...

2010-02-21T09:19:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday night here in Addis, and our week is drawing to a close. Since I last wrote, we have done many things - some fun, some hard. On Friday, all of the Gladney families had their birth-family meetings, so that was very emotional. We had a wonderful meeting with Ruby's uncle, and it was really nice to have closure and have a chance to convey to him how much we will love her. After that tearful meeting, we spent a few more hours crying as we visited three government-run orphanages. It is really hard to put into words all of the things we saw and felt, but needless to say it was very hard to leave those children. Finn and Gus did great through it all - they played soccer with the older boys at the boys' home, and the let the little toddlers hug and kiss them at the children's home. I think they are probably still young enough to block out most of the bad stuff somehow. At least I hope so.

We also found out Friday morning that we would not be getting our transit visa, so we had our very helpful mothers working as our travel agents to change all of our flights. Sadly, we will now be leaving at 4:45 am on Tuesday morning and stopping about 4 times before we get to Charlotte 30 hours later, but at least we'll all be together. Once we got that sorted out, I felt a great weight lift and have been much happier here in Ethiopia. I think I was probably conflating alot of different emotions onto the transit visa, but I did shed quite a few tears over the course of the week as we kept hitting road blocks with it.

Saturday morning Ruby, the boys and I hung out at Bejoe House and played in the lovely yard while Matt and Katie went to shop at the Merkato. We are having so much fun watching Ruby come out of her shell! In less than a week she has gone from not even crawling to walking, not making any sounds to laughing and babbling, and being completely passive to being very bossy and demanding. I am sure it will still be a bumpy road for a while, but we are just excited to have such a funny little person in our midst.

In the afternoon, the whole Gladney group - including babies - went out to the mountains for a dinner at Dreamland, a restaurant on a mountain overlooking a lake. It was great to get out of the city and see a little of the country, and the air felt much better than it does here in Addis. There were still plenty of rickety vans belching out plumes of black smoke on the road, but it just felt a little more spacious. We were exhausted by the time we got back around 6, so we called it a night and all went to bed early. Just when we are all on Ethiopian time, we're about to turn around and go home!

Today, Matt and I took the boys to the Sheraton Hotel to swim and play for a while. It is a beautiful hotel, and the pool was fun & relaxing for all of us. We were sad that we are not allowed to bring Ruby out on the town, because she would have had a blast in the water. It's very odd to have just adopted a baby and then have to leave her at home when you go out to do anything, but at least the caregivers are wonderful and sweet with the babies. Today Katie stayed home with Ruby, so they had a little party of their own.

After we got home and had lunch, Katie and I went out to do more shopping. Our driver took us to a good area near the Post Office where there are a ton of stores selling everything you might want to bring back for friends. The only down-side to shopping with Katie is her love of haggling - she will argue over what would amount to a quarter just on principle. I know that's the thing to do - and our driver was laughing at me for paying whatever the people asked, but I'm so bad at it! Finally I agreed to try, and I got totally shut down, so from now on, sticker price for me.

Tonight Matt and Kate took the boys out for Italian and I stayed home to put Ruby to bed. If you've been reading my blog, you may remember that we are really bad parents when it comes to sleep training. But so far, Ruby has been a sleeping rockstar so far - she sleeps all night and then just hangs out in her crib chatting when she wakes up. Tonight, I think we started heading in the wrong direction. She cried when I put her down, so I held her until she fell asleep. Then she woke up a few minutes later, so I rocked her until she went back to sleep. Now I'm waiting & hoping this is not the begining of the end of her good sleep habits!

Tomorrow morning we say good bye to Kate - which will be sad for everyone, and then start getting ready to head home. I a little sad that the week is almost over, but I'm also excited to get back to our house and start real life again, now with five ...

More in a few days!

Update!

2010-02-18T12:49:00.000-08:00

So it's Thursday night here, and we've had a few busy days here in Ethiopia. Yesterday we visited the Gladney Foster Care houses - there are four of them, and loved seeing all of the babies and toddlers they are caring for there. There are so many children! Some are so outgoing and funny, while others watched us a little suspiciously. There were babies that had just arrived that were so tiny you couldn't believe it, and then you see how well the women care for them and how healthy they are after a few months. Ruby is good proof of that - 11 pounds when she arrived at 9 months, now at 16 months she's a total chunk! I have no idea how much she weighs, but it's pretty impressive. We met all the women who had cared for her and saw her crib - there were 7 tiny beds crammed into a tiny room, with barely enough room to stand, but everything was clean and bright, and the women had such love for her and all the children that it wasn't sad in the way it might have been.

After the visit to the Foster Care centers, we had a great Italian lunch - since the Italians occupied Ethiopia for five years during WWII, there is a fairly strong Italian influence. While we were in the foster care center, Ruby saw a caregiver that she must have known, and she popped out with a quick "Ciao!" We're trying to learn a few words - she still isn't talking much, but we're trying to get with the program and figure out what she is saying. Unfortunately, Amharic is so complicated and the pronounciation is so difficult that even if someone tells you how to say a word, you will be hard pressed to be able to say it back. I've got "wawa" - water - down, and "hello" - selam. Aside from that, it's pretty sad.

Today we had a tour of an Ethiopian Orthodox church - very interesting, and then in the afternoon we went to the US Embassy for our visa interviews. It was much more intimidating than I had imagined it would be, but ultimately everything was fine and all of the families sailed through with no problem. Matt and I had to rush from that appointment over to the UK Visa Office (Matt's 4th trip to that office) to submit an application for a UK transit visa for Ruby. We have been working on it all week, and after the US Embassy visit we finally had all the paperwork we needed to submit it. Now we're just crossing all of our fingers and toes that we will get the visa back tomorrow so that we can fly out as scheduled on Monday morning. To say that there is alot of red tape involved is a gross understatement, and my only advice to families traveling in the future is to avoid going through a country that requires a transit visa.

While we were doing all of that miserable paperwork, Kate and the boys went to the Sheraton hotel for a swim in their fancy pool. They all came back pretty red despite using lots of sunscreen, which I guess isn't too surprising given that Addis is above 8000 feet. They had fun though, and we'll need to go back before we leave - Kate and I have plans to enjoy the spa there as well!

After a nice nap, we went with all the Gladney families to a traditional Ethiopian restaurant where we ate great food and saw traditional dances from all of the different regions of Ethiopia. Tragically, Matt had to depart mid-meal due to what is probably the same stomach bug that Gus had a few days ago. He's all bundled up in bed now, and hopefully on the mend. Tomorrow we have more in store, so there's hardly time to be sick!

Many things can happen in a short amount of time ..

2010-02-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

So, we're here & we have a new little person in the family! All is well here, and we're having so much fun after a day and a half here in Addis.

We left London on Sunday night at 9 pm after 1) a an angry, tearful scene at the check-in counter at Ethiopian Airlines (in spite of the tears, we ended up paying close to $200 in baggage fees), and 2) almost missing our flight despite checking in over 2 hours before it took off due to our collective lack of time-pieces and all of the distractions of Heathrow Airport. The flight was fine, but neither me nor Matt was able to sleep at all the whole night. We arrived at 8 am, disembarked, and then spent the next two hours in lines to achieve various things, such as getting visas, going through customs, etc. The kids were completely spent, as were we, and the airport scene put us all over the edge. By the time we met Travis from Gladney, I felt slightly hysterical and insane, and then he informed us that he would be bringing Ruby to our guesthouse in an hour! I would love to say that I was overjoyed and immediately revived by this great news, but in reality I almost passed out and was on the verge of tears. I had thought we would be meeting her late that afternoon, so we would have most of the day to rest and regroup. Of course, being me, I had imagined the first meeting in a very specific way, and being strung out was not part of the dream. However, Kate and Matt seemed game, and it was what we had come for after all, so I did my best to rally.

After a quick shower and rest at the lovely Bejoe Guest House (more on that later), we got word that Travis was bringing Ruby and two other babies over in 10 minutes! We got all ready, grabbed the cameras and went out to the lawn to wait. Emotionally, it was very strange. There are so few moments in life where you are experiencing a thing for the first time where you have absolutely no emotional context for it. I remember that about 10 minutes before I walked down the aisle to get married I realized that I couldn't even put into words what I was experiencing, because it was an emotion that I had never had before - some combination of excitement, anxiety, change, happiness and finality that I couldn't put a finger on. Anyway, it was the same feeling with this. Just very strange.

Travis brought one of the other babies out first - beautiful Bereket - and we took pictures of her meeting her parents for the first time. And then he brought out this chubby, sleeping baby and handed her to us! We could not believe this was the same child who had weighed 11 pounds when she came to Gladney at 9 months old. She was adorable, of course, but sound asleep, so we just marvelled at her heft and sat and admired her. After a while, we decided that we might as well take advantage of her sleeping, so we all went to bed for a while.

When she woke up a little later, we took her to meet the boys (they had been sleeping when she first arrived), and we all had fun trying (unsuccessfully) to make her smile. Not only did she not smile, she did not make a single noise, even to cry. She just took us all in with her enormous eyes and let us make funny noises at her and pass her from person to person for hugs. At some point I started to wonder if she might be mute, she was so quiet.

We were all so tired that night that we were in bed by about 7:30, so we weren't surprised when we all woke up around 5 am. We got up, played with Ruby, ate some snacks, before one of us realized that we had gotten the time from Matt's cell phone which was still on US time. So that was 5 pm, not 5 am, which meant it was about 1 am when we got up. Crazy. We finally got back to sleep and slept in till 9 or so, at which point Gus woke up with a bad stomach ache. He proceeded to vomit all morning, but by dinner time was back to his old self and even ate a huge amount of spicy Indian food. I am always surprised that Gus doesn't get sick more than he actually does, since he is always on the floor in public places, sticking his hands in gross places, and is generally a filthy child, but his quick recovery is evidence of his hearty little immune system.

We really just spent most of the day playing with Ruby here at the house and hanging out with the other families here. The boys are having so much fun with her, and she seems to like to play little games with them. Finn is being very responsible, and Gus loves that she seems to like goldfish as much as he does. She is smiling a little now, and Matt got her laughing, and she has said a few words (that we don't understand, but we're just encouraged by the sounds). In the late afternoon, we took the boys to the Lion Zoo (no further explanation needed), and did a little shopping. We had dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant - delicious & cheap, as all the food has been so far. Tomorrow we will go to the foster care center where Ruby has been for the past 6 months and meet her "special mother." Now to bed, and hopefully for the night!

London

2010-02-14T02:10:00.000-08:00

We're here in London! We had a long flight - especially since we sat on the ground in Charlotte for almost 3 hours waiting to be de-iced (I don't really trust that procedure, so I was in panic mode). Luckily for me and my fear of flying, our neighbor Cindi - a flight attendant for US Air - had told our flight attendant to look out for us, so he hooked us up with many little bottles that made the whole fear of crashing seem less pressing.

We arrived Saturday morning, tired but alive, and then had a very Chevy Chase/Family Vacation scene at the airport trying to get into a taxi that could fit all of our bags. Eventually we did though, and we got to the hotel where we met up with Matt's sister Kate, who had arrived the night before. Since our room wasn't ready, we decided to hit the Natural History Museum right away. Very fun - the dinosaur exhibit was awesome. Unfortunately, exhaustion was starting to catch up with us, as I noted that Matt looked in danger of falling into the animatronic T-Rex exhibit if we didn't get him to a bed right away. After a long nap, we went out for Indian food and completely stuffed ourselves, which in turn made us ready to go straight back to bed!

Today we are off to sight-see - the Tower, Trafalgar Square, Buckingham Palace and anything else we can squeeze in before we leave tonight at 9. Our goal is to have the boys totally wiped out by the time we get on the plane. Hopefully it won't backfire - we've already had a few melt-downs related to exhaustion and general crankiness. But overall, so far so good, and we're getting closer and closer ...

1-2 Days to Go, Depending on How You Count!

2010-02-11T20:43:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow is the big day. At the moment, there are seven open suitcases all over the house, countless little baggies of random items I need to pack, and the dining room table is covered with clean laundry (but that's not all that unusual). We leave from Charlotte tomorrow night at 6 pm on a direct flight to London, so basically, we're under 24 hours to go. (As I'm writing this, I'm thinking that home security experts would probably urge me not to be quite so specific!) All of this packing and organizing seems to be taking the place of all of that pre-delivery stress and nesting I experienced with each of the boys, and here I thought I was skipping all of that misery by adopting!

Today was Finn's "Sing" at school - the first and second grade put on a performance they have been working on for a while, and then theme was America. They had learned many patriotic songs, as well as the songs for each of the Armed Forces. It was very moving and sweet, and I was so proud of Finn up there singing his heart out.

There is is getting ready to sing - so cute, and I especially like how the picture captured first graders being so bizarre & funny, as they all are, all around him.

Anyway, so it was a really normal, good day here, but when I was hugging Gus goodnight tonight, I told him that this would be the last night that we would go to be in our beds just the four of us. Next time we all sleep here, Ruby will be in her crib (hopefully, although more likely in our bed). Gus was super-happy with that idea, and snuggled down to imagine his new life as a big brother, but I have to admit that I was a little emotional. For all of our ups and downs, and for as sure as we feel that we're doing the right thing, I feel like we've had a pretty good run of it with just the four of us. I'm pretty used to their little ways, and I know it will take a little while to shuffle everyone around in the new configuration. I remember feeling this way before Gus was born too, like he was going to be a little spoiler in the love affair we had going with Finny, but then, of course, he wasn't. (In full disclosure, for a little while Finny was really mad, and he is still pretty abusive to Gus on occasion, but they love each other to death and play and gang up on us just like brothers are supposed to do, so I think it worked out okay.) It's just that change is a little scary, even good change, just because it's not like it was before. So, I'm just having a little goodbye to our old life before we take off on this adventure. I think that's okay though, because at the same time I'm a little nostalgic, I can't wait one more minute to scoop up this baby and get her back here to start the next chapter.

Here we go ...

4 Days to Go: Consuming Everything ...

2010-02-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

So, I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, What the Dog Saw (I love everything he writes), and there is a chapter in it about what he refers to as "consuming risk." It's all about how there will always be NASA explosions, and car crashes, and other such massive, systemic disasters, because we human beings tend to "consume" risk. That is, we might make a safety advance in one area, especially after a disaster such as a space shuttle explosion when we investigate "what went wrong," but then we go ahead and use the extra safety we have secured to take an equal risk in another arena. Obviously, these are not necessarily consciously calculated risks, but somehow we seem to settle on a level of risk-taking that is comfortable, and then revert to it, regardless of how many safety procedures we have in place. So, for instance, we make many safetly advances in car design - such as air bags, anti-lock brakes, etc, but then we raise the speed limit to the point where there are essentially as many fatal accidents as there were before the aforementioned safety advances. But at least the rest of us are getting to our destinations more quickly.

Malcolm Gladwell explains the whole thing much better and in much more depth, but when I read it, it touched on something that I have thought a lot about in my own life. Quite often I will attempt to get really organized and be totally on top of something, only to let some other thing fall apart. Or I take up exercise, only to begin eating candy like crazy. I maintain a careful budget for some period of time, only to blow a bunch of money on something not even on the budget. So I zero out, not making too much progress. All through school - high school, college, and law school - I essentially had the exact same GPA. It was a pretty good one - not awesome, but good enough for me to feel like I was working really hard but not killing myself. But it takes some kind of unconscious strategy to stay right around the same GPA, or the same weight, or keep my house at about the same level of controlled chaos. So I really do believe the theory of risk consumption - I've been living it all my life.

But, sometimes, progress must be made. It seems that every now and then, when we reverse the model, we get to move ahead two spaces. In other words, if we put the risk first, rather than waiting for some small advance before backsliding into the risk, we can win big. You could call it faith, or stupidity, or a stroke of luck, but sometimes jumping off the cliff is actually how you find out if you can do a thing. (I realize this is starting to sound like a long-winded explanation of the expression "nothing ventured, nothing gained," so I'll wrap this up...) For me, it seems like when it comes time to make a "big" decision - what career to pursue, whom to marry, where to live, whether it's time to start a family - rational analysis doesn't work. The fallout from that kind of decision is so complicated, so completely beyond the power to foresee the future, that I'm not really even making a decision so much as just crossing my fingers and hoping I have what it takes to make it work. (And if something blows up in my face, I can then go back and painstakingly re-evaluate the risk - now with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight - and tell myself that I should have seen X, or that I will never make that mistake again.)

Of course, people ask all the time about how we decided to adopt, or why Ethiopia, and I say things that seem to make sense to them and to myself. But the truth is, I'm not really sure. We just started thinking about it, and then we started doing it, and now here we are. And all along the way, as we filed paperwork, made doctors' appointments, painted the nursery, paid thousands of dollars to Gladney, I'm not even sure I could really explain why we were doing it.

And then one day in November we got a phone call, and a picture, and a little story about Shurube, and that was that. And all of the sudden, it all made sense. The risk was consumed by the lovely reality of a baby; and it didn't look like a risk anymore at all, but just a really great decision we made.

4 Days to Go: Gus' class is adorable!

2010-02-09T11:42:00.000-08:00

Sweet Gus brought home a very heavy bookback from preschool today! It was filled with notebooks and markers for us to take to the children in Ethiopia, as well as pictures that his friends have made for him to bring to Ruby's "friends" in the orphanage! So cute! They have been doing a countdown of their own in class, and it's finally starting to sink in for Gus. I think he still isn't quite sure of the difference between a week and a day, but he knows we're leaving soon. Thank you to the Stars for all of your wonderful art & warm wishes for children on the other side of the world! And thanks so much to Mrs. Hanson & Mrs. Lacey for putting it together!

5 Days to Go: I have started a bunch of posts, but can't seem to find time to finish any of them!

2010-02-08T20:49:00.000-08:00

Today:
I spent over an hour on the phone with an airline adding Ruby to our return ticket
I stressed (and am still stressing) over the fact that we might not get a transit visa for Ruby in time to make our flight out of Addis on Monday
I packed some clothes for the boys
I bought more sippy cups in an effort to have all the sippy cups of the world
I wasted too much time watching the Bachelor
I talked to my bff Tara about adoption, car accidents, whether I needed to take multiple boxes of Wheat Thins, and other such important matters
I steered Finny in the direction of Paul Revere for his "Famous Americans" project (off of a list, not out of any in the world; plus, he wouldn't choose a woman because he does not want to have to dress up like a woman, which I think is a flaw in the assignment, because I see his point, but there were some pretty awesome women on the list)
I started a blog that I want to finish about how "lucky" is a funny word when used in conjunction with adoption

I did laundry (of course)
I got all of our travel prescriptions filled at CVS
I gave poor Matt a piece of my mind about a few things (but he agreed with me, so it worked out)
I went to a meeting at the Children's Museum
I drove two carpools
I talked to a friend that just had her first baby a week ago, and was thankful that my life, while busy, is not that hard anymore - night sweats & lansinoh are so in my past
I drank alot of coffee, but also a beer and a glass of wine (though at different times)
I ate some very delicious veggie chili made by Paige - even though I was previously trash talking & referring to chili without meat as soup, I was just kidding and it was excellent Paige!
I determined that the dog is going to have to go to the vet before we leave for some sort of non-healing wound on her foot that I have been too squeamish to investigate

But Tomorrow:
I must make the vet appointment and get her over there
I must do more laundry (of course)
I must spend more time on the phone with a different airline
I must resolve this visa issue
I must make sense of the massive amount of things that I think I'm going to take to Africa
I must remember to send some forms to school with Gus, but I keep forgetting, so I think I'll probably forget tomorrow too
I must figure out how to program this video game I got for the kids for the plane ride
I must go running
I must not keep spending hundreds of dollars on trip preparations, or we won't have any money left for the trip
I must differentiate between things that are necessary and things that might come in handy
I must sign the children up for soccer

(about 1/4 of the anticipated pile of stuff we are taking)

.......... is that it? maybe. so that's not so bad. I can do all of that. look how much more was on the list of things I did today. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can ...........

7 Days to Go: We Leave Friday.

2010-02-06T20:20:00.001-08:00

Not, two weeks from Friday, or "next" Friday. Just Friday. That's it.