February

If one word can be used to describe an entire month’s worth of happenings and emotions, I think February’s word is soup.  Oh, short-long month of pots bubbling on the stove, and slushy muck on the yard outside, I am not so sorry to see you go.  We had good times, yes:
Chilly evenings warmed through with a lovely potato, leek, and dill soup with a side of drop biscuits and homemade jam.  Foggy mornings that reminded me of former ocean- front New England living, and longing for just-a-moment for those old places.  Sunsets that beckoned us to leave the shades open until the last blushing rays of sun were drowned in twilight.  Lovely snowfalls caught in the pools of light beneath our streetlamp.  Familiar hikes to old, sacred haunts that began in dappled sunlight and ended in tiny blizzards and rosy cheeked babes.  Hot cocoa and Fig Newton picnics in the winter-abandoned park bandstand, testing our voices on a stage we would not otherwise sing on.  Sunday mornings and second breakfasts.  Extra trips to the compost pile, with the whisper of spring’s promise just barely audible on the wind if you but stopped and bent to listen.  And always, always soup on the stove, in a big pot, with a side of strong coffee.
We worked, in these February days, to keep our bodies busy and our minds off of, and yet into, winter.  It is both an embrace and a shrugging off.  While winter spins and swirls outside, inside of our home and our hearts there has been a building anticipation of what is yet to come.  There are so many, many plans being made for both these weeks ahead and also the years down the road.  It is funny how much you can plan while lingering over a bowl of steamy soup, and how much excitement can be had over the making of such plans.  It can be exhilarating and giddy and scary and silly and maddening, a veritable soup of emotions.  But with each idea we place with ink on paper the further we get from meager traces of hope, and the closer we get to real, honest-to-goodness action.  There is power in the planning of good things. 
And so, on to better weather and longer days, out of the foggy-soup dreams of February and into the intense planning for those spring-times that are coming faster than we could have hoped for three weeks ago.  Yes! 

Life on the Edge

I just bought a couch via Craigslist that is either the worst piece of pleather coated ugly this side of the Mississippi, or the most funky, awesome addition to our house since my last Craigslist adventure.  Brendan hasn’t come home from work yet, so I guess we won’t know which side of the fence upon which to perch until his face either lights up or cringes.  Good times!  This, apparently, is how you live on the edge once you’re well ensconced in the married-with-kids set. 

Desmond’s Arrival: Part 2

Tuesday morning, December 20, 2011. 

We leave the hotel and arrive at JFK International Airport, find the parking area for our terminal, and start following the signs to where we are supposed to meet our agency’s greeter.  (The greeter is there to make sure the proper child is delivered to the proper family and also handles the brief amount of paperwork that must be signed before you can take your child home.)  When we spoke to her the night before, our greeter told us that the terminal was in the basement of the building, and that we would have to walk down around the building into what felt like the underbelly of the earth.  She was not kidding.  It certainly felt like the sidewalk to nowhere, and it ended up at a terminal whose only sign of life was the tiniest Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk you have ever seen; this is where we would wait to meet her and the other families.  It was a long wait, as we were very early.  We drank some coffee, ate some ridiculously expensive banana bread, took pictures, and checked the flights every five minutes or so:

Steph and soon-to-be big brother, Jack.

Super excited Sara and Brendan.

Fourth from the bottom, Desmond’s flight (Tokyo-Narita) finally landed! 

If you have never waited for an international flight to come through immigration, then you should know that this is a long process.  The sign saying that they had landed was very exciting for about ten minutes; we then waited for what seemed like hours for people to start coming through the gates.  (During this waiting period the abandoned-looking terminal became inhabited by a pigeon eating a bag of Cheetos.  I kid you not.  Steph and Jay have photographic evidence.) 

Finally, the gates opened up and travellers started pouring through.  We found a spot near the railing so we could watch for our babies.  The first baby to come through went to the only family expecting their first child and we were able to witness their first moments as a family.  The second baby, another boy, met his family.  And then we saw them:

Steph and Jay’s Sophie and our Desmond walked off the plane, the tiniest travellers stretching their eager legs after more than a day’s worth of travel induced confinement. 

It took my breath away.  There was an audible “awww!” coming from the crowd around us and Desmond stopped for a moment, perhaps overwhelmed by the sea of faces that had gathered in the terminal.  Then, in what we now know as true Desmond fashion, he started to run.  His escort, the young gentleman in the photo, kept a close eye on him.

One moment a railing and a hundred people separated us, and the next he was in my arms, crying and reaching out for his escort, not too happy to see us, though we were so very happy to meet him.  The airport is a cruel place to meet your child for the first time: large crowds, lots of noise, errant pigeons, and other crying babies make the scene overwhelming.

 

There is no place to sit quietly and gaze at one another and really our only instinct, and that of the other families as well, was to get out.  Sign the paperwork as fast as possible and head for home, or at least the quiet of the car, away from all of the staring faces of curious onlookers.  We said goodbye to his escort, who let us know that he needed a diaper change and change of clothes, and we walked up and out of that basement into the fresh air.

There are those who will tell you that their moment of meeting their child was one of bliss, the magic something that was always meant to be coming together at long last, and that it all went beautifully.  I am not that person.  I will tell the truth, because what, really, is the point of sugarcoating it all?  He cried hard.  He screamed and his head never stopped turning to look for a familiar face.  It was heartbreaking and people stared at us, but having been through this moment twice before we knew that keeping calm and going forward would get us through it.  I whispered to him that it was fine to cry, to scream, to rage; he had every right, given what had happened to him in the last 30 or so hours.  We made it to our car, determined that his being in need of a diaper and clothing change was a huge understatement, and in our first moments alone with our littlest boy we got down to the business of cleanup.  As soon as the first two layers of pants came off, our little guy settled down to sniffles and sighs, his sweaty body relaxed, and he started to take us in.  A fresh diaper made things better yet.  The moment of pure magic happened when I pulled out a cup of Cheerios; he reached for them and knew exactly what to do:

“Feed the lady with the ridiculous grin; she seems to like it.”

And later, “ Feed the guy some pizza; he seems to find it funny.”

And so we met Desmond and began the second leg of his long journey to our family. 

Desmond’s Arrival: Part 1

Let’s back up

In May of last year we knew that our agency in Korea had reached it’s quota for emigration permits (EP) and that our littlest son would not come home in 2011.  Fast forward to November 2011, when rumors started to circulate through the families working with our stateside agency that all of our children had somehow been submitted in the very last EP batch.  It turns out that we were all submitted because our stateside agency is due to close in the near future due to the loss of the agency’s director early last year; our Korean agency submitted all of our agency’s files so that the closure could happen in a more timely manner.  Being submitted held no guarantee of actual travel, but the hope and positive energy of that little bit of news could probably have floated all of our children home in a big happy bubble. 

Emigration permits can take weeks or even months to be granted, with the trend at that time running about four to six weeks.  If we were going to get good news, it would likely coincide with the Christmas/New Year holidays.

What does it all mean?

When the rumors started flying about EP, the speculation meter hit an all-time high.  Would they arrive before Christmas?  Would we even be granted EP, given the fact that the babies referred in Dec. 2010 would not even receive EP before the end of the year?  Should we buy another set of presents to put under the tree?  Honestly, I did not think that he would come home.  I didn’t let myself believe that it could all work out and be true.  Friends and family joke all of the time about my eternal optimism, but on this I could not afford to believe because I was afraid that if I got my hopes up and he didn’t come home I would be crushed.  We had heard nothing official from our agency, who always err on the side of caution and preparing their families for the worst-case-scenarios, so it was truly a huge guessing game. 

Then one day we got a call from our agency’s stand-in director, who asked for our updated email, cell phone numbers and work numbers, because “we are hoping for some very good news to call you with in a day or two”. 

And like the Grinch, my heart grew a few sizes that day, and made room for the possibility of miracles. 

Long Story Short

EP was granted, travel and escort were arranged, and Desmond was due to arrive in the United States on Tuesday, December 20th.  We shopped for more presents, got all of our wrapping done, cleaned the house, packed and repacked the diaper bag, and made about a million excited and nervous phone calls to our friends, Steph and Jay, whose daughter was coming home on the same flight (along with the sons of two other families).  On Monday we headed to NYC, stopping at the Ikea in Paramus on the way, because what else do you do the night before meeting your youngest child?  We stayed in a hotel next to JFK airport, which had a great breakfast waffle station but also smelled ridiculously of Carpet Fresh.  We did not sleep at all, a result of both excitement and the musical group in the room next to ours who insisted on singing and playing instruments well beyond 2 am.  It didn’t matter, though; our happiness could not be tempered by exhaustion. 

Getting ready to head to the airport in the morning was one of the most pinch-me moments I’ve ever lived through, as in Pinch-me, because this can’t really be happening.  We cannot seriously be on our way to meet our son for the first time when he was not expected to come home for another 6-10 months!  For a bit of perspective, families with our Korean agency and the same referral month (March 2011) still have not been submitted for EP as of May 2012. Even if they were submitted today, they might still be weeks away from approval and travel.  To say we were lucky is the understatement of the century; our families had been given the most amazing gift and we all knew it. 

How Are We Doing? This About Sums It Up.

Our mornings are chaotic.  There is never enough time, it seems, to simply get the day started with three children without telling someone to hurry, stay on task, just put on your gosh-darn socks.  Our school day starts early; we must leave the house by 7:30 or we’ll be late, the oh-so-dreaded late for kindergarten and first grade, the very stupidity of which thought makes me giggle and want to take them out for coffee, because who cares if you’re late for kindergarten?  How much does it matter in the grand scheme of things?  Yet I rush them along, but sometimes the universe has other plans for my humility.

Yesterday was one of those mornings of constant hurry-ups; we were running later than our usual standard, and the grey, grey sky and silently falling rain did not help our scheme.  When we finally made it out the door I realized I had left my keys in the locked house and then the sky let loose with rain that fell in sheets.  Since I know myself and my habit of locking myself out, I had long ago hidden another set of front door keys in the garage.  Big kids crouched under the garage eaves while I ran around to the front door with the shoeless baby in my arms, both of us soaked through within seconds, but we got the car keys and started off for school a mere 15 minutes late and in surprisingly good humor.  I firmly believe that being able to laugh at one’s own follies is the most important skill to have as a parent. 

We got to school, parked the car in the very most pothole-filled parking lot on the face of the planet, and ran around the corner toward the school’s entrance.  As we did so, another very-late-parent-type was pulling up to the curb and ran over a seltzer bottle, which exploded in a very loud POP!, spewing its contents and cap directly into poor Emma’s face and mouth, down her shirt, in her jacket hood.  These things only happen to me, I thought.  She burst into tears; we headed to the nurse to clean her up, and she recovered with her usual grace and good humor.  Both kids made it to their classrooms in time to begin morning work.  Phew!  I thought I was in the clear, with the morning marathon complete I could now go home and have that cup of coffee and try to convince myself that the shower I sped through only an hour ago was worth it despite the sweat now running down my back.  But as I turned to leave Emma’s classroom, her teacher turned to me and with a sarcastic smile said as she looked at my beautiful littlest son, “Boy, he really slows you down, doesn’t he?” 

Damn.  That one sentence crushed me in an instant, undid all of the upbeat thoughts and smiles I had managed to be putting forth all morning.  To be scolded by her teacher was a slap I did not need on a morning that had been less than stellar.  Against my better judgment I immediately went on the defense, telling her about the soda bottle and the trip to the nurse, turning it around to make her be the one to feel bad – oh, this was not one of my finer moments.  I will admit that I stewed about it all day long, even called a friend who recently added a nearly two year old to her family and she commiserated with me about how hard this is, how tender and fragile these new family relationships we are building still are, and how not sleeping for a month can kill your sense of humor. 

I let that one comment knock down so much of my parenting self-esteem, and I know better.  So at the end of the day I picked up those two great big kids of mine, threw scooters and stroller in the car, and headed to my in-laws’ house for a walk/scooter in the sunshine, up and down hills, around and through puddles.  I cheered them on when they made a good splash and instead of telling them to hurry up, I cheerfully hollered wait for me and raced them up the road.  We stopped to watch the snow-melt draining in rivers and rivulets down the storm drains, listened to bird calls, and praised the balmy wind that flushed our cheeks.  They giggled at their new brother, he called back to them with his biggest grin, and I smiled at how strong their bond is, how very far we have come already.

Yes, they slow me down, but it is wonderful, it is everything I ever wanted and more.  And I really don’t care if we are late for kindergarten.

Party of Five

It would seem I have some explaining to do:

Sometimes, when you least expect it, life throws you a surprise party.  Six months early and smiley as can be, Desmond arrived home just in time for the holidays and put a pretty great spin on what had otherwise been a really tough year.  I’m still not sure how it all transpired, but I know that our new son is terrific and that his little hand wrapped around my finger is pure magic. 

Shaking my fist at Google+

Have you noticed that when you scroll back a bit in the archives of this blog you suddenly find black boxes that look something like a strange road sign instead of the pretty pictures that used to be there?  Yeah, me too.  Annoying!  It seems that upon signing up for Google+ I hit a snag that many others have unfortunately found as well.  In short, Google+ ate all of my photos from associated accounts, including Picasa web albums and Blogger. 

Now, before you get all computer hero on me and try to save me from my poor blogging self (not that I do not appreciate your valiant efforts, because I do!) I have been in contact with the powers that be at Blogger and there is no quick fix, perhaps no fix at all for the foreseeable future.  Luckily I had a backup of my archives saved to a file on my computer and I was able to export that to Wordpress and basically rebuild my blog from that, sans comments.  It took some time and I am still tweaking it, but once things are up and running I will post the appropriate links and get back to writing. 

All of this to let you know that yes, I also see the bog black boxes and yes, I am working on fixing them.  Go carry on with your last few days of summer and check back here next week.  And whatever you do, if you have a blog on blogger, do not join Google+ until they have this glitch fixed!

The Edge

I made Brendan drive us all out to Wellfleet last week during our vacation in Cape Cod.  It was out of the way and took awhile to get there, but I insisted and he relented and even agreed that perhaps it was a good idea.  I just felt this strange need to be there, in a place where I had once stood decades before; I felt as though my soul needed to breathe in that particular air and gaze upon on that particular stretch of sand. 
While standing at the edge of the water, at the point where ocean meets land, I was reminded of some things that seem important and noteworthy.  Before me the sea spread out, wide and expansive, reaching as far as nowhere and more powerful than anything.  The sand dunes, like mountains, plunge down steeply to meet it and in between the two I realized this: we are nothing.  Insignificant.  A mere blip on the radar that is this time on this earth in this universe.  The feeling that came with this realization was one of immediate and overwhelming peace: no matter what I do in this life, the world is much, much bigger than my circumstances, choices, mistakes, or ideas at any moment in time.  It will all go on whether I am here or not, wave after wave will pound the shore and grains of sand will move in the water and wind and rain. 
Then I turned around and saw this:

and this:

Two shivering kids waiting for their mama to finish with her crazy picture taking so they could run on the open expanse in front of them; one husband, knowing his wife needed to see this for some reason that stretches back in time to another family trip that was clouded with grave sadness, waiting patiently for the time to be enough, for the ocean to soak into her pores and restore her.
Seeing them there, waiting for me, I realized that we are bigger than the sky, our actions are broader reaching than any ocean, more grand than any sand dune.  The connections we have with the people around us are the biggest thing I know; I remembered that as much as we are nothing we are also everything, entirely significant.  All I have to do is look in their eyes and I can see it:  we are bigger than we know.  Being at that edge, on that particular stretch of sand, refilled my soul and brought back to the forefront all that I know about life and family and friends and connection: slow down and be, give each other a little room and time when it’s needed, live with intention and listen with an open heart.  Allow them to grow and change, and bend like the dune grass in the wind when they need me to change and grow.  Enjoy this push and pull of life.  Dream bigger than the ocean, but remember my own insignificance in all of this. 
Perhaps this is why the ocean calls to me, why it calls to so many people across time and religion and state and country and continent: to realize that we are everything and nothing all at once.  Maybe we need this reminder as much as we need food and  water, air and shelter.    Maybe we just need to be able to stand on the edge of something and find an inner peace and a reserve within ourselves that fills whatever emptiness the rest of the world and life carves out.  Maybe we just need that reminder to be human again. 

Their Order

“I will always be the oldest around here!” he declares with a look of superiority sent in his sister’s direction.  She rolls her eyes a little, for this is nothing new, this place of second child that is hers to possess.  She possesses it well, striving, always, to be as good as her eldest brother at everything.  This drive makes her come in close behind him though she is a full 18 months younger, such that she reads better than he did at her age, she climbs higher than he did, swims deeper and further than he did when he was four.  She pushes herself, sometimes to the point of tears because she is, after all, quite a bit younger than her brother.  Hers is the advantage spot, a perch in life that allows her to see how to do something by watching someone else figure it out before her, perfecting her approach before she even begins.  She puts puzzles together in her head before her fingers even touch the pieces; she plans her next move before her turn comes around on the board game.  She, more than any of us, tends to plot.

The first arrived child has it harder, I think.  He has had to break us in, to survive us while we lurched, suddenly, from child to parent in the swift movement of a baby passed from one set of arms to another.  There was no labor and delivery to mark the momentousness of the occasion, no nurse there to show us how to hold him, comfort him, give him a bottle.  We had to learn through trial and error and he bravely endured our many gaffs on the way to knowledge.  His place of first in our family is worn well on his shoulders, but sometimes I worry that the pressure of being first will mark him somehow.  He is, right now, the child that we sit and talk about at night: How will we keep him busy enough but not too busy?  Is this the right school?  Is he getting a good balance of freedom and structure?  Do we know who his friends are, who their parents are?  What is our stance on video games?  Violence in media/movies/television?  How are we going to not screw this up?  It’s not that we don’t worry about Emma, it’s just that the first child somehow requires a different sort of worry, a more intense scrutiny of life and surroundings and influences and decisions.  Our first child knows how to buckle down, to put one foot in front of the other and make his way through whatever comes his way; our daughter follows quietly and keenly in his footsteps, perfecting his moves with her own brand of intuition and authority.

As we wait for our third child, I cannot help but wonder who he will be, how his piece of this life’s puzzle will fit into our family.  And how will we be with him?  With two children safely and successfully growing under our care, how will we approach the raising of our littlest?  I will not lie – this wait seems endless and insurmountable right now, and there are days when I wonder and despair about the possibility that the child in those pictures we so adore might not come home at all.  I find myself thinking a great deal about the past, about the adjustment periods that both of our children went through upon arrival.  The third time around, will these new circumstances in our adoption make a difference in how we, as a family, process each other?  Will Joon, the stoic, sad face in all of these pictures, join our family with, finally, a smile?

 

I wonder if he will be the happy-go-lucky ‘third child’ I see in the families that blossom around us, or if he will have the yearning to always catch up that his sister so acutely feels.  I grow weary of the wondering, and here we are five months in and possibly more than a year to go. 

The time burns by so very slowly.

childhood

Childhood does not come wrapped in plastic, with a million twist ties holding it perfectly in place within its cocoon of specially designed packaging.  It cannot be plucked off a shelf for purchase and it does not flourish in indoor lighting.  Childhood does not care about perfectly matched accessories or safety standards or how fashion forward something is.  Childhood does not adhere to a schedule. 
All of those things are grown up ideas.
Childhood is best found outdoors in the sunshine where the wind can lift its hair, or curled up beneath the sweetest of tiny tents made with the afghan from the back of the couch.  Childhood enjoys messes and mayhem, shouting and quiet whispers, wickedly good secrets told behind a cupped hand.  Childhood flourishes on imagination and wonder.   Childhood flourishes when left, for a little while, to its own devices.
These days, I think childhood is most often found in those moments in between the grown ups’ ideas of what a childhood should involve.  As we make our summer plans, we are striving to leave some time for childhood to flourish  for our little ones.  Remember what it was like to make mudpies?  To stomp in puddles until you were truly soaked through with laughter and muddy water?  Remember the first time you made a fort, or a tree house, or a tent beneath trees?  Remember laying in the grass and watching the clouds go by, with the good earthy smells invigorating your soul?  Remember sitting near a window and knowing that the rain was coming because you could smell it before you could see it? 
Letting time sit still without agenda is not an easy thing from the adult perspective.  We have a lot to do, endless lists of tasks and projects and a lot of the time it is difficult, if not impossible, to let go and go where the day takes us.  I am working so hard this summer, not at projects or task lists, but at letting our children have the kind of summer that I remember having.  I hope that when Emma and Harrison look back on these days later in life, they will recognize and appreciate that we let them have childhood in its most basic form.  I hope that they will not lament the lack of sports and dance and music lessons and endless rides in the backseat of the car while we shuffle them to and fro.  I hope, instead, that they will remember the perfect glass surface of our little lake before they cannonballed into it with a shriek of pure, childhood joy.

Ms. Chilson

The only problem with having best friends visit from faraway places is that when they leave, I feel as though a chunk of my soul has been packed tidily in their luggage and taken away.  The converse of this, of course, is that she left a chunk of her soul with me, for safe keeping. 
The best part of having best friends visit from faraway places is that while we were together, I felt whole in that way that only happens in those odd moments when my adult life slams back together with my childhood, all of the pieces intertwining to a rarely achieved perfection.  The expressions on her face are the same as they were decades ago and I get it, and she gets it, and we pick up the rhythm of conversation and jokes as if a moment had passed, rather than three years, since we last looked into each other’s laughing eyes.  This visit, we had the extra fun of noting that our boys, born on opposite sides of the world and more than a year apart in age, are nearly carbon copies of each other in temperament and nature, and our girls share a daredevil’s spirit. 
It was so, so fun.  Now, if only I could convince her that she should live next door, that would be something. 

The Summer List

“We write things we want to do over the summer.” says Harrison of
The Summer List.  Oh, but it is so much more than that!  The summer list is my saving grace in an otherwise uncharted, weeks long stretch of time that, admittedly, sometimes scares me.  The Summer List has plans to make, ideas to toss around when the inevitable I’m bored! starts to rear its ugly head, and lofty goals that might never be met but are fun and interesting to talk about.  For the past four summers we have brainstormed as a family all of the things we wanted to do over the summer, both grown-up and child friendly ideas fill out the page and we cross off our achievements as we go.  At the end of the summer, we have proof of our escapades and our kids are armed with plenty of ventures with which to answer that classic first day of school query, What did you do all summer?  This is the best sort of to-do list, with only fun things!
Here, the beginnings of the 2011 version, to be updated as we go along:

• go to Crandall Library
• go swimming in our pool
• go to camp (our family’s camp)
• go to the Great Escape (Six Flags)
• another tour of the beaches at different Lakes
• go out for ice cream
• go fishing
• go to the drive-in
• try making hypertufa troughs
• go to the movies
• start a cutting garden for flowers
• dig in Pie and Mike’s compost pile for worms
• learn to ride bikes without training wheels
• go to concerts in the park (Shepard’s Park, City Park, Crandall Park, etc.)
• go to Crandall Park and play
• go kayaking
• go for lengthy after dinner strolls
• Farmer’s Market!
• go to a baseball game
• play tug of war with Ginger (this from Miss Emma)
• go to the ocean…Cape Cod!
• tie dye t-shirts
• make our own hula hoops
• make a worm bin for compost purposes (and little boy worm digging purposes)

Early Birds

We have a new rule this summer: no television before 5p.m.  It’s a good rule, one made because we had slipped into some very bad habits around these parts.  There are days when I’d like to abolish the screen entirely, but then I remember that I, too, really enjoy watching movies and hypocrisy in parenthood is not a good thing.  So anyway, a new rule.  When we arise each morning without slipping into a comatose hour of cartoons, our day is longer and our possibilities are greater.  Today we snuggled down in bed for a few extra moments, getting a head start on our summer list* and making grand plans for our free time.  Once we were fully awake (such a time can be marked by the amount of giggles and general wiggly-ness of small children) we quickly dressed and headed out the door.  Where to?
We hadn’t been to Hovey Pond in awhile.  It’s close enough to home that we sometimes overlook it, but this morning it was the perfect choice.  We were there before the dew evaporated:

We spent some time identifying wildflowers, spotting turtles, and counting birds (turtles are shy and fast!):

We stopped to ‘say cheese’:


We made it home before 10a.m., with the rest of the day’s adventures still waiting for us and some of those wicked wiggles out of our systems. 

It’s going to be a good summer...

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.