Shared With Permission

This is today's post from a blog I love to read.  E, the author is Mom to eleven great kids and I find her story (and their combined stories) to be very inspiring.  I can't share the link to her personal blog because it is password protected, but she agreed to allow her readers to share today's post because we all thought it was so moving. 

March 27, 2008

Kids and Moms (and Dads)

I have been thinking a lot about kids lately... kids who don't have moms (and dads)... kids waiting for moms, and what life is like for kids who do not have parents. I have been thinking about the transformation that occurs when a child realizes he has a mom, a dad, a family...security, love and somewhere to belong.
With some of our kids, that "realization" that they have a Mom and a family, that they have someone to belong to, someone to watch over them, someone to care for them and someone to love them, has been gradual. With some of our kids, there has been this "a ha!" moment, where you could just see that they "got it".
There was baby Maggie... almost four months old... laying on the bed in our hotel in Vietnam on our first full day together (I had been visiting her for days at the hospital before this point). Before her hospitalization she had lived in a government orphanage where the babies had their names written on their legs in black magic marker so they could be told apart, and got very very little personal attention. She didn't cry when she was hungry or when she wanted something. She was quiet and tiny, but I could tell she loved being held and loved the attention I was giving her.
I walked away from the bed where she was laying to get a bottle for her, and she made this teeny tiny pitiful (feeble attempt at a) cry, and I rushed over and picked her up and offered her the bottle. She got this look of amazement on her face with a little smile that seemed to say, "Holy cow! You mean that crying thing WORKS with you??" and after that she did not want anyone but me and always wanted me close. She got it. I was there for her. I was her mom.
With Mercy, she was nine years old. She had had a mom before, who did not value or respect her role as a mom. Mercy knew neglect and abuse and loss. Despite that, she came to us with an open heart and a surprising amount of trust. At one point during our first week, Des needed her hair washed (and Mercy had been the one to care for Des up until that point, even though she was only three years older). Mercy told Des to go into the bathroom so she could wash her hair, and I gently told Mercy that I could wash Des's hair, and reminded her that that was the kind of thing a Mom should do. The social worker had warned us that "letting go" of being the caregiver of Des might be hard for Mercy and we might have some power struggles over it... but Mercy looked at me and looked at Des and looked back at me and said, "You wash all the other little kids... You  would wash Des's hair too?" and I said, "Yes". And she said, "And then what would I do?" and I said, "Well, you could go play." And she looked at Des again and then back at me, and then she got this huge smile on her face, and you could almost SEE her letting go of the responsibility of caring for her little sister. She ran over and gave me a hug, and then took off to play. She got it. I was there for her and for her sister. I was their mom.
With Solomon, that moment came when we left AHOPE for the second time together. We had spent  two days together, and then we had gone back to AHOPE to visit. As we walked through the gate and the kids called out his name and came running to say hi to him, he sat in my arms with huge, silent tears running down his cheeks. He would not make eye contact with anyone (including me, the kids and the nannies) and just stared ahead with this heartbreaking acceptance of the fact that he thought he was being left. Again. It hurt me so much that he had come to accept this from life... that nice people came and went, but he did not truly belong to any of them. I couldn't imagine how his little heart felt and how he had endured all that he had already. I comforted him and held him close and told him over and over again in his ear that I would never, never, never leave him.
He started to relax a little the longer we were there and I stayed with him, but he was not his usual self. And then it happened. I put him in the sling, we waved good-bye, went back out through the gate and headed back up the road towards the hotel for some lunch. He got this HUGE grin on his face, and was bouncing up and down in the sling laughing, and then grabbing my face and kissing it over and over as we walked. He was so happy and joyful. He got it. He was not going to be left again. I was HIS. He was mine. I was his Mom.
Since then I have watched him blossom with love. I have watched him learn how to expect and look forward to being held often, comforted when he cries, rocked to sleep, having his needs met,  getting individual attention and being smothered in hugs and kisses often. As I crawled into bed last night, a few hours after I had put him down to sleep, his little body turned towards me, and without waking up, he put his arm on me, snuggled in close and let out a content sigh.
All kids deserve that knowledge, that peace and that comfort. All kids deserve to know that they are loved and that they belong to someone.
I believe with all my heart that our Heavenly Father did not send us down here to go at life alone, to worry about ourselves and to focus our lives on material and trivial things. I believe with all my heart that we are meant to live in families... mothers, fathers and children together, focusing our lives on loving, enjoying and serving each other.
We have several reasons to believe that Solomon most likely spent very little (if any) time with his first mother. And yet even after multiple changes in caregivers and "homes", multiple losses and lots of suffering without a mom to comfort him, he KNEW what a Mom was for from our very first days together. His heart and soul reached out to mine and grabbed on firmly. He knew that he wanted a mom. He knew that hugs, kisses and rock-a-byes were something he wanted, deserved and needed. The other kids we met in Ethiopia knew it too. They knew that they belonged with parents. They knew that something big was missing from their lives.
My heart rejoices for my kids and others that have had their lives changed so drastically...who were once alone, and now live with love, security and family. Watching Solomon over the past few weeks has reminded me of what an incredible miracle adoption is.
And at the same time, my heart aches for the so very many kids who are living life alone right now. . Even the very best orphanage is no comparison to a home and family. It is wrong that these kids must wait and yearn for a family. They deserve, as all children do, the peace and security that comes with the knowledge of knowing that they belong to someone, that they are being cared for and that they are loved.
This is why I support adoption...because I have seen the sadness in the eyes of the children who wait for moms, I have seen the amazing transformation in children once they have been "claimed" and loved, and because I believe, with all my heart, that that love and belonging is what our lives on this Earth are supposed to be about.

Boring Rainy Days Call For Impromptu Photo Shoots

First, there's me with my new haircut:


Then with Ems, as Harry calls her:



And then with Mr. Harry:


At this point Miss Ems was crumbling under the pressure of sleepiness and too much camera, so we sent her to bed and got out a big white blanket to take some studio style pictures of Harrison:







It's only 12:45.  What are we going to do with the rest of the day?

Happy Johnny Appleseed Day!

I love that calendars remind us of all of those quirky honorable mention days, don't you? 
I would love to be able to tell you that my absence here is due to great works, vacations, dinners out, and wonderful books elsewhere, but the truth is we are mostly sitting around waiting for spring to finally arrive, for this blasted snow to leave, and for life to pick up it's vernal pace again.  The good news is that spring begins this week, and so even if there is still a blanket of white outside my window for a week or two more, I will find it within myself to be patient and calm with the knowledge that spring has, indeed, arrived and we are on our way to better weather.  I don't know why this winter in particular wore on me so, but if the blahs arrive again next year I think it will warrant the purchase of a light box.
If not for Harry and Emma I surely would have dried up and died waiting for Brendan to arrive home from work each day, such was my boredom with snow and ice and cold.  But my children, the little kicks that they are, heroically saved each day and kept me in stitches with their silly ways.  It's been awhile since I've shared Harry's funnies with you, so here are a few for you with which to beat down the very last of the winter blues:
In the car, on the highway. 
Harry: Mommy!  Daddy!  I have to go potty!
Brendan:  Can you hold it until we get to Grandma and Grandpa's house?
Harry: Ok.  Faster, Old Chap!  Hurry, Old Chap!
I am babysitting Isaac and Isabelle, and Isabelle stands by the door through which her dad has just exited, crying sad, forlorn little sobs.  My attempts at consolation have not worked, but Harry walks over to her, plants a kiss on her cheek, takes her hand and says: It's ok, Isabelle.  You come with me.  She smiles and they walk, hand in hand, to his bedroom.  Jeremy and Michele, I assure you I will not be so nonchalant about such things when they are older!
Emma is sitting on the toilet, working on her mad potty skillz, when her big brother barges into the room.  It is quiet for a moment, and then he shouts to me, although I stand mere inches away: Oh no, Mom!  Where did her penis go?  Did it fall off?
With many of our friends and neighbors happily expecting new bundles of joy, Harry has become fascinated with pregnancy.  When I am a big boy I am going to grow lots of babies in my belly, he tells us.  I honestly thought it would be awhile before we had these conversations, but alas, no.
Emma, Harry's ever-faithful sidekick, is more of the silent type.  She can yell and scream in pitches that could shatter glass, but when she talks her words are barely a whisper.  Rather than allow his sister to attempt speaking at audible decibels, Harry speaks for her.  She will whine and cry at my feet, I will be completely perplexed as to what she wants or needs, and Harry will look at me and say Mom, she wants a cracker in the exact tone of voice a bored seventeen year old uses.  Sometimes he even rolls his eyes.  I am doomed.
He just crawled into my lap and asked me to read the words on the screen to him.  I read, and when I get to the words Emma and Harry, he looks at me a says Me, Harry?  Those words are me?  And Ems?  It's a story about us?  When I explain that the story is indeed about them he starts to giggle, begs me to read more, and then laughs uproariously at the funnies I have just written, as if it's the best comedy he's heard in a long, long time.

My days are filled with the counterpoints of laughter and frustration.  Frustration because some days, like a beginning skier who doesn't yet know how to use the edge of her ski to cut the hill and turn, I feel myself flying full speed down a very big hill and I simply cannot find the edge I need. And then in the next moment, the laughter of my children buoys me and I am flying, not needing my skis, or the mountain, at all.  This family that Brendan and I have, it is the best.  Even on the days that I can't win for trying I find moments that take my breath away, that make my eyes well with grateful tears, and I find that I would not change a thing about any of it.  Parenting is precarious and wonderful and awful and exhausting and uplifting and worrisome and hysterically funny and I love it. 

Thirty One

1.  I don't have a favorite color.  My favorite color to wear is red.  But it has to be the right red, or I will look like death warmed over in it.
2.  I have brown hair and brown eyes.
3.  My brother's wrestling coach used to call me "M&M Eyes". 
4.  I asked my husband out on our first date.  Sort of.  It was the first week of August 1994, and I was 17.
5.  We went to a concert: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  Or maybe not Young.  I'm not sure.
6.  Neither of us was really sure that it was a date at the time, but looking back it definitely was.
7.  I drink a lot of tea.  This is our tea drawer:

8.  My favorite teas are Constant Comment and Earl Gray.  Yum.
9.  I also like this tea a lot.  I bought it in Korea and I have no idea what it is:

10.  Before I had kids I was a morning person.  Now I sleep as late as I can.
11.  I miss the quiet of the early morning, the simple thrill of being the only person in the house who is awake.
12.  When I cannot fall asleep at night I imagine myself walking or driving through cities I have visited or lived in, trying to remember the proper streets to take in order to reach a favorite coffee shop, book store, or beach.  It works every time.
13.  The hardest trade-off for living close by our families was leaving the ocean. 
14.  I think that fog is one of the most interesting aspects of living near the ocean.  When the fog pours in off the water on late-winter mornings, the whole world goes milky white and everything familiar disappears.  Sometimes you can even see individual water droplets float by your face, but you can't see your fingers at the end of your outstretched arm.  That is cool. 
15.  I used to work in daycare and I hated it.
16.  I currently work in daycare and I (mostly) love it.
17.  It would be the perfect job if I didn't also have to worry about housework, cooking meals, and letting the dogs in and out 300 times a day.
18.  I wrote my first book when I was in grade school; it was about my teddy bear, who currently resides next to my son's pillow on his bed.
19.  I still wind him up and listen to the plinking tune of Teddy Bears' Picnic when I am sad.
20.  Someday I hope to write my second book.
21.  I am hoping I will have something more universally interesting to write about than my teddy bear.
22.  Yesterday I found two old, junky paintings in the basement and let our kids finger paint over them with acrylics.  I hung them in the living room when they were dry, and I secretly think they are better than any of the works I produced when I went to art school. 
23.  Watching them paint inspired me to try it again, and I have been sketching all morning. 
24.  When I went to college I spent far too much time worrying about the cost of my art supplies and far too little time worrying about my subject matter and technique.  I had all of the time in the world to paint back then; now I have the money for good supplies and lots of ideas, but very little time to paint.
21.  I once dropped a class after two weeks because I hated the way the professor wore her glasses on the end of her nose, such that she was always looking over her glasses and down her nose at us.  My last boss wore hers the same way and I tolerated her for a year and a half.
22.  When I was little there was a field of ferns behind our house that were taller than me, and I used to like to sit beneath them and pretend I was living in the jungle.  They aren't there anymore, but I can still close my eyes and remember what it felt like to sit there and listen to the woods around me, watching the fern fronds sway and lift in the breeze.
23.  One day I hope to visit an actual jungle where the ferns seem just as tall as they did then.
24.  I want to see the world, but if I don't start soon I fear that I will never get beyond New York.
25.  I don't like breakfast foods for breakfast.  I prefer soup, a salad, or leftovers from dinner.  I also think that breakfast foods make a perfectly acceptable dinner.
26.   Yesterday I spent an hour looking at pictures of birds on flickr.  It never got boring for me.  Really.
27.  I want to build a tree house in our backyard for me our kids.  I think every child should have one.
28.  When we do build the tree house I will try really hard not to cringe every time they use the ladder or lean out of the window.  I will also try not to hog the tree house the way I hog the building blocks.
29.  When people ask me how old I am I often have to stop and think about it, because I still feel like much the same person I was when I was twelve, or eighteen, or 21, or 25.  I wonder if everyone feels that way to some extent, like they are still their 5, 7, 15, and 23 year old selves just quished into an older, perhaps wiser body?
30.  The sound of Harry and Emma laughing together is one of my two favorite sounds in the world.  The other is the door opening at the end of the day, which means Brendan is home and we are all together, the four of us.
31.  Today is my birthday.  I am thirty one.

Soon To Be Sold

Remember this house?  It is under contract, and has been for some time.  Every time we drive past it we see cars in the driveway, and one can only assume that work is being done on the inside before the closing takes place.  I drove past today on my way to the pediatrician (three doors down) and saw that the outside, which had been a wreck when we first looked at it, has gotten far, far worse with winter weather. 
And if I am being completely honest I would also have to report that I am so, so glad we didn't get foolish enough to make an offer.  My goodness, what were we even thinking?

Record Keeping

We had well child check-ups for both Emma and Harrison today.  It was the first time I had taken them both for appointments at the same time by myself, and I have to say that my Mei Tai carrier is invaluable.  Harry had tagged along for one of Emma's check-ups once, but today was the first time they both had to be seen, which involves undressing them both, keeping them both in the room, and keeping one occupied while the other visits with the doctor.  I am feeling very accomplished that I did it all by myself!
Harry went first, and after a few seconds of extreme shyness, his curiosity won over and he was agreeable and helpful for the rest of the visit.  He grew an astounding 4 1/2 inches in the last year, and if he maintains his current growth arc he will be 6'2" tall as an adult!!!  He gained nearly 6 lbs, which my arms have certainly been feeling.  He is not color blind, and he has 20/20 vision.  Dr. Anderson wondered if he is already in pre-school because he was speaking in such clear sentences with big words, drawing letters with a paper and pen I had given him, and was counting the different the items in a picture on the wall.  We must be doing something right.
Emma had to have two shots, her final DTap (diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) and her final Pneumococcal Conjugate (PCV7)...whatever that is.  Ear infections, maybe?  She cried when the stethoscope came out, and it was downhill from there, but we survived it.  I am glad her appointment was second in line because Harry was really upset with the nurse for "hurting his baby".  She certainly has a tough job, standing up to the accusations and glares of big brothers all day long!  Emma weighed 22.1 lbs and was 34 1/4" tall, and is by all accounts developing as she should be.  The doctor told me that we have smart, healthy, well adjusted kids, and there is nothing a mom likes to hear more than that!

The Week In Pictures