Two Months’ Lessons

The last two months have sucked.  There it is, out loud and in print and I am not ashamed to say that is honestly how I feel about that block of time.  
The kids have been endlessly sick with colds and allergies, rashes, high fevers, and strep throat.  They are better now and I am trying to catch up on sleep without developing bad sleeping-in sorts of habits.  Brendan was an entirely different sort of sick and then had an allergic reaction to the medications he was given, winning us an all day trip to the ER.  My husband, in the best health and fitness of his life,  lost 15 lbs. in three weeks…he’s better now, and we’re thinking that the medications that were supposed to help the problem actually exacerbated things, but it was scary to watch him melt before my eyes.  The word “worry” was given new meaning.  As I watched my babies writhe with fever and as I watched my husband’s face unswell and his speech become normal as the anaphylactic shock went away, I realized how quickly and accidentally we could lose it all.  Time is so, so precious and these people I love are so very important to me, my everything.  I will not waste it. 
Our kitchen…oh dear.  We have been waging an epic battle with Sears over a new range.  It’s not worth going into, really, other than to say we lost and now we’re cooking on a propane camp stove propped on an old door from the basement until we can sort things out and find the time to go appliance shopping yet again.  And you should know that Sears does not always think the customer is right, nor will they make grand gestures to help you when they are very badly wrong.  Enough said.  The camp stove was fun for about ten minutes, but now I just really crave some sort of normalcy in our most-used room.  I learned, though, the greatest lesson from this: Shop local, always.  Deal with a company that is in your town, whose CEO is your neighbor.  Deal with a small company that needs your sale, who will defend their reputation because the bad news about one sale gone wrong could sink them. 
School finished up for both children, a huge relief really, but it came with all of those last-minute preparations and gifts for important people and extra obligations that added to an already stressed family’s schedule.  And if you saw my last deleted post*, kindergarten graduation was not the joyful moment we expected, rather laced with anxiety and fear and an unplanned stage appearance.  I learned that my child’s dignity is worth so much more than a teacher’s idea of the perfect graduation performance.  I learned that is it easy to stand in front of a huge crowd when I am aiding my child in avoidance of terrible embarrassment and shame…imagine, the perfect cure for stage fright!
I took a sewing job on commission and got burned.  It was a highly specific and personalized bag which the client raved about, but she also “misremembered” the price I quoted her for the piece.  She stated that she only budgeted for the price she remembered and would not be able to buy the bag if I had to get the price I actually quoted her.  I sold her the bag at her price (cringes) because it was so personalized that I could not do anything else with the bag or materials if I kept it.  I learned, yet again, to always get things in writing.  I learned that I have to value my work in order for my clients to also value my work, and that standing firm on the price I set is a matter of self respect.  I think I also learned that I don’t really enjoy working on commission because to a certain extent I lose creative authority when I am working toward someone else’s goal.  This requires more thought.
I stopped telling people that we are adopting again.  The people we know and love all know, of course, but I’m not telling casual acquaintances anymore.   For some reason it is hard for people to sustain excitement for the addition of a child to our family when they hear that it will take time for our child to come home, and especially when they hear he will be two.  Their faces fall, they cringe in an obvious way, and they whisper questions to us: Are you sure you want to do that to your family?;  Why will it take so long?  Will he really come home?;  A two year old?  I would never do that.  You’ll miss everything!; Did you get your baby yet?  (this one week after I told her we were adopting internationally again). The dentist, the other parents at school, even some friends have said things like this to our faces, boldly questioning our judgment about our family.  It doesn’t hurt so much as it irritates.  I have learned that our joy alone will have to be enough to sustain us through this long wait and we will have to have faith that the others will come around once he is here.  I have learned that other peoples’ fears do not have to be our own.  I have learned, once again, that the general public knows next to nothing about adoption, but I have also reminded myself that I do not always have to be the good will ambassador.  I have learned that I don’t have to share this with everyone, though I want to shout it from the rooftops.  This semi-secret can be so very sweet, if we let it. 
So, two months’ worth of blech provided a few key life lessons and we will be better for it.  We’ll pace ourselves, make better decisions, and I will work hard on that whole creative self-worth thing.  Today is the first full day of summer break and the relief in the room is palpable.  Do you feel it, too?
*deleted because I realized that posting about it would not be conducive to helping our H6 avoid the embarrassment that could have been. 

UPDATE!!!!!

March 3rd:

May 4th (The day after his first birthday):

Oh my goodness, I don’t know where to begin.  We knew that four families from our agency were getting updates and two families got theirs yesterday so I assumed we were out of luck.  I ran to the mailbox today, with the tiniest shred of hope in my heart.  Three business size envelopes lay inside and as I flipped through them I could not believe that one had our agency’s logo!  Tears in my eyes, I ran into the house, found Brendan, and we opened it up to find our little guy’s photos and updates inside.  Hooray!!!!  Our friends, Steph and Jay, also got updated pics of their Sophie (so, so beautiful, that one).  There is much happiness here tonight!
A few notes from our update:

• walks 1-2 steps without help
• says umma, appa, and no
• likes to look at books
• scribbles with a pen
• can drink from a cup
• follows simple errands
• is a good dancer and singer
• a busy, active baby
• is shy of strangers
• has four teeth on top and four on the bottom
• he likes his bath
• he is one year old and weighs 17.4 lbs; he is 28 inches tall

What a peanut! 

Just A Moment

I was having a moment tonight, a moment in which I just needed to stop the world for a second and be still. 
Two cases of strep throat, fevers so high that his little hand seared my leg through my jeans, sad little whimpers in the dead of night that jolted me from my bed.  One case of diverticulitis and an entirely different sort of pain and fear.  A week’s worth of nights without sleep, listening to him hurt beside me while I kept my other ear trained on the doors down the hall, torn.
One kitchen in a state of progress, but looking more like despair.  With everything out of place, piled in the corner: boards full of nails, half of a cupboard, a desk drawer, school papers everywhere.  We move the construction pile to the garage between his pains and there is still an enormous pile of whatnot.  This morning, a slight reprieve from the heat and humidity (can I even complain about this yet?) and I want to mow down the lawn that is now a good 12” deep.  The mower starts, then stalls.  Starts, then stalls.  I wanted to kick it, but turn and walk away instead.
In my email box, happy reports from a couple of families with our adoption agency: they received updated pictures and reports on their children in the mail today.  We did not.  Our pictures and information are now seven months old and our hearts ache just a little more.
This had been our week and tonight I just wanted to cook dinner.  I wanted them all to eat something, to take care of them in the most basic way, but with a fridge being emptied out and dietary needs changed due to new doctor’s orders, there just wasn’t much to work with.  The kitchen was too hot, the kids were overly hungry and tired, each wanted to sit next to the parent they were not next to, and I started to feel myself sink. 
When they all scattered off to various new activities, I grabbed a box fan, climbed over the mound of junk to the banquette, and lay down with the coolest of breezes blasting over me.  Amazing, how a fan can drown out all of the noises in your house, the fears in your head.  I lay there and looked up at the clouds like a little kid on a lazy summer afternoon and I swear to you, every cloud shape was a face, and every face was smiling.  Then a robin, harbinger of spring and late-winter beacon of hope, landed on the wire above my head and turned his plucky head this way and that.
Somehow in the space of what amounted to four minutes, peace was restored to my world; my moment was over.  Calm and patient, I went upstairs, read stories about kindergarten and sea turtles and  tucked my little strep-free sweethearts into their beds.  Tomorrow holds new appliances, an abdominal CT scan, and a lawn mower oil/sparkplug change but tonight, tonight I am ok.  And Brendan will be ok, too.  And someday our littlest boy will come home.

You Look Like A Leg Lamp

My husband, he’s a funny funny guy.

This is the ugly side of progress:

Observe, an island that had to be removed due to poor functionality and because it was built after the placement of the fridge, thus making removal and replacement of said fridge impossible without major demolition.  The holes in the floor lived under our stove, which is being replaced because we were down to two burners and an oven door that had to be propped shut with a stick wedged between the stove and an opposite cupboard.  I cannot fathom why they stopped the sheetrock at a foot and a half in on each side of the fridge hole, leaving an odd exposed gap of brick chimney and plaster and lathe.  Actually, the things I cannot fathom about this kitchen would make a pretty long list, but there is no time for that today.

We are making progress, a small dent in a large kitchen that was poorly planned and pieced together with mismatched parts.  At the end of this phase there will be a new kitchen island with butcher block top, a new refrigerator, and a new stove (sans stick this time, thank goodness).   There will be more storage and less stupid, and stupid in this case is a noun.  We will also saw off a portion of the existing countertop and remove the non-functioning lazy Susan cupboard that lies beneath it.  A new, smaller cupboard will go there and then we’ll move on to the “lipstick on a pig” portion of our program.  With adoption expenses eating a large portion of our current budget, we cannot afford to rip everything out and  start over, but we can make what we have look nicer and so for now that is what we’ll do.  Paint, paint and more paint!  The guys at The Home Depot love me.

And for the fun of it, here is what we started with:



This is from the listing picture, so before we bought the house.  Island is now gone, fridge is out, floor has been thoroughly cleaned beneath the former appliances(Eew!) and desk thing to the left is gone.  We will remove the peninsula (behind the desk).  We already have new windows (fall 2009) and we’ve begun painting.  And we took out the faux Tiffany lights, which were plastic.  And yes, covering up that mustard yellow was soul soothing in a way that is difficult to describe.

Yay, progress!

A Few (Woeful) Things

• We celebrated Joon’s birthday last week.  Without him.  That was hard, but I only cried a little.  You’ve heard of Flat Stanley?  We have Flat Desmond, a picture of our littlest boy that I cut out.  We propped him next to the cake and then we blew out his candle for him.  It was fun in the most bittersweet sort of way.
• Brendan worked nights last week, 6:30pm to 6:30am.  Please, let’s not do that again anytime soon. 
• We all got some horrible fever/head cold/chest congestion thing that has made us miserable.  Or maybe it just made me miserable, working in conjunction with Brendan’s night shift and Joon not being here for his birthday.  I guess I’m just saying that I have been miserable.  And then this happened:
• We found out that our adoption agency’s partner agency in Korea, ESWS, will hit their quota and run out of Emigration Permits (EP) soon, as in any referrals made after December 1, 2010 will not travel until 2012.  This is very bad news.  Long story short, babies must have EP to leave the country.  As So. Korea winds down its international adoption program, they are decreasing by ten percent the amount of EP they give out each year, creating a backlog of babies waiting to go home to the parents they have already been matched with.  The implications of this are kind of huge for us.  When ESWS starts submitting babies for EP early in 2012, the babies from the end of 2010 are all in line before our child (as it should be).  This means ESWS is a full year behind in EP.  Agencies are rumored to be preparing their families for a minimum 15 month wait from referral to travel…if this is true Desmond will be home in July….of next year.  And he will be two. 
• There is a dark side to all of this, which is the possibility that ESWS could run out of EP even earlier next year, in which case our “baby” could possibly not be home until 2013.  (Did you all just feel the miserable meter’s needle screech forward ten thousand notches?)
• I am trying to remain calm.  Keep calm and carry on.  Plant an herb garden, make summer plans, paint a few more rooms.  And update my resume, because I might as well start making a dent in the adoption expenses while both of my big kids are at school all day next year. 
• I’m not really miserable all of the time.  Just when I am alone, or when I think too much, or when I see all of the beautiful babies our friends and acquaintances are pushing around town in their strollers…you know the type, those small babies, the kind that need diapers and aren’t walking and speaking in sentences. 
• At least it stopped raining. 

Walk With Me

We could sit inside during this cold wet spring break.  I could alternate tea and coffee, constantly sitting with a steaming cup between my paws for warmth, and read book after book beneath an afghan wide enough for three.  We could watch movies and have popcorn for lunch and it would be fine, perhaps even lovely. 
Or, we could choose to thumb our noses at Mother Nature’s joke of a spring break and we could get out there.  We could take that trail that I’ve driven past one hundred times and never stopped to walk.  We could wander beneath the trees and in between the tall grasses, listening to the red-winged blackbirds’ and chickadees’ calls against the lilt of the brook and the swish of the wind.
Guess which we chose this chilly morning?

It was grand!  We walked slowly, absorbing the textures and variety, allowing the wind to brighten our cheeks, and stopping not only to breathe deeply the rich scent of the awakening earth, but also to feel the bark, lichens, and soft, soft mosses. 


We explored; none of us had ever been there before and so we were travellers together and it was a relief not to be the adult in charge, just a companion out for a stroll.


We got chased by a pair of nesting Canadian Geese, got rained on just a little, and found a random teapot in the woods. 

We stood on stumps,


and stopped to wonder what kinds of creatures populate the tiniest of worlds:


Despite weather that was dubious at best, we discovered a few signs of spring:


And so I challenge you: do not let spring - no matter how chilly or wet or disappointing it is - do not let spring pass you by.  Bundle them up, put on their rain boots and yours, and get out there. 



 


Delight in the bizarre:



Wonder at the destinations of unknown paths:

Feast your eyes on the small things, the ones we drive past and speed beyond without seeing.  Stop and look when your little ones call to you with their discoveries; see things from their perspective.  Have an adventure!

And when you arrive home, do not forget to perform the obligatory tick check; we found one after our adventure.
___________ 
Today’s pictures from the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail. 

Eye Contact

“…a most useless place.  The Waiting Place…for people just waiting.  Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come, or a plane to go or the mail to come, or the rain to go or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow or  waiting around for a Yes or No or waiting for their hair to grow.  Everyone is just waiting…

…Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying.  You’ll find the bright places where Boom Bands are playing.  With banner flip-flapping once more you’ll ride high!  Ready for anything under the sky!”                                                  -Dr. Seuss, from oh, the places you’ll go!

We’re one month into this Very Long Wait that might be ten months or twelve, or more if we are very unlucky, or less if the hands of fate are kind.  This is a familiar place; we’ve been here before but it all looks different now, like going home for the first time after being away at university and finding your hometown smaller and changed.  We know how to get through this, but knowledge of the road does not equal ease of passage.  Already I feel myself toeing the line of avoidance, trying not to think about him constantly while at the same time I can think of nothing else. 

Who are you, baby Joon?

With our previous adoptions I have found solace in action.  Keeping my hands busy keeps my heart from breaking and this third time is no different: sewing, knitting, painting, upholstery, and other projects are all underway at once and every corner I look to holds some sort of busy work waiting for me.  My quieter hours are filled with books…not the adoption books about attachment and bonding or memoirs of adoptees and adoptive parents that I was devouring at the beginning of the year, but stories that take me away for an hour or two, to someplace far away where lives are filled with other sorts of complications, not the waiting for a child sort.  I have them stashed all over the house and in the car, too.  Keep busy, keep busy, keep busy.  Just don’t think too much.

Have you learned to crawl yet, Joon-ah?

Harrison and Emma make the wait easier, except when they don’t.  When they ask about him or wonder when he is coming, or decry in outright frustration: “Mama, I just wish I knew exactly when he was coming home so I could get myself ready!” (Emma) or “If he doesn’t hurry up he’ll be bigger than me by the time he gets here!” (Harry), at these times my heart lurches because the waiting is hard for them, too.   While I love that they are old enough to understand this process, which in turn helps them understand how they each came to join our family, I struggle with having to witness their sadness and longing.  Waiting for someone as exciting as a new sibling, one who is already born and growing on the other side of the world, is tough.  Impatience gets the best of them, and me, at times.

Do your eyes crinkle when you laugh?  Do you squeal with delight?

I am so impatient to meet our new little guy, not only because I want to get started on all of those important attachment/bonding moments, but also because if there is one thing I know about adoption it is this:  You cannot bond with a baby in a photograph.  You can find him cute, adorable.  You can think to yourself: Yes, this is my child!  You can stare for hours at his chin and his hair and his tiny little fingers, and you can read his social history until you’ve memorized every word, but you cannot get to know that child, the person that child actually is in real life, until you make eye contact.  You cannot know his voice, his temperament, or the softness of his skin until he is in the same room, breathing the same air.  With half a world between Joon and us, my curiosity is killing me.  A million questions linger in the air and the answers can only come some far off day, early next year and most likely not sooner.  The other thing I know about adoption is this: it is entirely possible to miss, with complete heartache, a person you have never met and know next to nothing about.

It is nearly dawn in Korea.  Sleep on, little Joon.  We’re here, waiting for you.

Oh this Waiting Place is a tough place, but with one month down and perhaps (roughly estimating here) nine months to go, we do know how to get through it.  One foot in front of the other, one project following the next, crossing days and weeks and months off the calendar. 

And enjoying life in the meantime, of course, because there is so very much to enjoy, already. 

____________

I’m playing along with Madhouse this week, another way to keep busy!  See the others who are playing along:

Allison – Allimonster Speaks
Barb – Spencer Hill Spinning & Dyeing
Batty – Batty’s Adventures in Spooky Knitting
Dave – Notes from the Field
Eileen - Art Deco Diva Knits
Evil Twin’s Wife – The Glamorous Life of a Hausfrau
G – Not-A-Box
Haley - Aimless Tangents
Jennifer – Ask Poops, Please
JMLC – Daydreams and Ruminations
Kate – One More Thing
LC – LC in Sunny So Cal
LeeAnne - This is the life...
Lisa - As If You Care
Louise – Child of Grace
Marcy – Mittentime
Melanie – usually, things happen
Nikki – Land of the Free, Home of the Depressed
Peri - knitandnatter
Sara – yoyu mama