on National Adoption Month

So it's November, which means, amongst other things, that it is National Adoption Month.

There has been some talk around the interwebs/blogsphere/twitterverse/Face-dominion about the merits of "celebrating" adoption, the harm that positive-only language can do to adoptees who maybe don't feel 100% positive about their adoption, and how it might perpetuate some of the terrible adoption myths now received as wisdom here in America (and probably elsewhere).

My thoughts on National Adoption Month aren't completely formed but they are growing, as usual, in the gray areas.

One the one hand, it's always lovely to have "National Month of" that honors your particular family.  On the other hand, we don't "celebrate" adoption around here. Adoption is how our family came to be, but it's not something we bake cakes about. And, just as February's "Black History Month" isn't the only time of year we teach our children about their African heritage, adoption is a topic all year round.

Baby Lily, not so certain about this whole adoption thing.

Here are my wishes for November's Adoption Month:

1. That it teaches at least 2 or 3 more people that families formed through adoption are Families. Yes, I love my kids just as much as you love yours. Not more ("The trouble! The expense! All those shots you had to get to travel to Ethiopia!") Not less (I could never love a child who wasn't mine biologically"). Just the same.  Adopted kids are just kids.  We have to love them like crazy, don't we, or we would never tolerate them. They are terrible house guests. Imagine having someone to live with you who regularly, and sometimes purposefully, pees anywhere but in the toilet?! And then calls for you to help them clean themselves up! In the middle of the night! No, you wouldn't stand for it. So, obviously, we love our children like crazy.

2. It helps a few more families who are struggling to help their children heal from childhood trauma, attachment struggles or other challenges common to children who have been adopted.  The most damaging myth in adoption is that the simple act of signing the paperwork and bringing the child home will "fix" them. Everything is rainbows and unicorns afterwards. It's not, and most families will need support, therapy, special parenting techniques, extra help from schools and a life long commitment to growing and healing together.
      Sometimes the adoption itself is the most traumatic thing that happened to a child. It's long past time we as a culture stopped expecting adoptees to be grateful for being "saved" by a "loving family." My own children would certainly laugh at this preposterous idea. This family! They hardly ever let us eat candy and play video games!

3. It leads to at least one more child in foster care being adopted.  The original intent of National Adoption month was to shine more light on the terrible dark secret in our country that we don't properly take care of our children.  We have an orphan problem. More than one person has told me how wonderful it was that we adopted our children from 'impoverished' Ethiopia.  Little do they know how ashamed I am that we didn't have the guts to adopted from impoverished America. In 2012,  23,396 children "aged out" of the foster care system here in America. 23,396 people who will never have a family. No home to visit on Thanksgiving, no one to call "Grandpa," no one to call for advice about car repairs or that first home purchase. This is a tragedy on par with the thousands of Russian orphans confined to their cribs, or the millions of African families who are broken apart by war, poverty or disease. America has an orphan problem, and if "celebrating" adoption one month a year brings some awareness to it, then break out the balloons and cake pans!



Kristen Howerton at Rage Against the Minivan does a beautiful series highlighting children who are in need of families here in America. She often writes about foster care and adoption.

Scoopy at Scooping it Up wrote passionately about how she is against celebrating National Adoption Month.

Our own adoption agency, Spence-Chapin, now works exclusively to find homes for older children here and abroad.

More national and global adoption statistics here.

a few random things about money.

This afternoon we closed the sale of our apartment. After what seemed like hours upon hours of signing and passing along reams of paper*, we gave the new owners the keys and cracked open some bubbly. (We're not moving til next week, but we trust the owners not to prank us in the middle of the night.)

Which means that we have a little bit more cash on hand that we usually do. The bank teller started in on a speech detailing the options of "premium checking". I interrupted her and said, "we're renovating", and she stopped. That cash is going to be flowing out of our pockets quite quickly, and soon.

The other day, driving the kids to camp, an older man approached me while we were stopped at a red light and asked me through the window for some money. I shook my head and drove on.  Daniel questioned me for days about this. Why didn't you give the man money? Doesn't he need it? Shouldn't we give money to people who need it? 

And I was completely stumped. I tried the "Let me think about it. Ask me again tonight." Which translates to: "I hope you forget to ask me about this again."

I should know my son better.  He will forget to put his pajamas in the hamper every. single. day but he'll never forget to ask me a question related to money. **

Shouldn't we give money to people who need it? 

I tried explaining to Daniel that mommy and daddy give to lots of charities and organizations that help others (which we do). I tried to say something like, "he might use the money for drugs." I tried, "I can't just give money to everyone that asks for it."  None of that makes sense to my Ethiopian 7 year old. He saw me refuse to help an old man.  And he knows that is wrong.

And he's right.

I've been a New Yorker all my life. I've been asked for change/quarters/spare snacks/help thousands of times. I almost always say no. But why? Because that is what everyone else does? Because that is safer? Because the person asking might be a drug addict? Because a quarter won't really help them?

There are 20,000 homeless children in our city. 20,000. That is a mind boggling number for a city so wealthy.

It's hard when our kids ask us tough questions. I've been wrestling with this one for a couple of weeks now and I don't have a good answer yet. For him or for myself.

I could tell him stories. I could tell him about the man who begged for change on our street corner growing up. Day in and day out. We never gave him a dime until one day my dad gave him $20 bucks.

About the tiny child in South Africa who raised her arms up to me (a 19 year old college student). About the time I went into a store in South Africa and bought a bag of apples and a bag of bread and handed it to the woman sitting outside the store with her 5 children.  Because I still felt guilty about not picking up that baby.
About the children who beg in Addis Ababa, in his home country. Who have scars and oozing sores and broken, useless limbs and who know three English words: Help. Mommy. Money. 

Daniel found some Ethiopian money (birr) while we were packing. He excitedly said he's going to keep it and when we go to Addis Ababa next year he's going to give it away.

He doesn't know that if you start giving away money on a street corner in Addis Ababa you will soon be mobbed by beggars. You would drown in the people trying to get help from you.
I once gave a beggar a 1/2 a piece of granola bar and within moments 10 more children appeared, hands outstretched. And I was out of granola bars.

I really don't have any good answers yet.  I just know that I either need to start carrying around a lot more change or a lot more granola bars.

Do you give to beggars? Where? When? Why? Why not?

* You would think that in this day and age we could all just pass an i-pad around for a retinal scan or something, but, reams of paper it was.

** I should start charging him a quarter every time he leaves his dirty clothes on the floor. That should get him motivated!

On Gratefulness: A Guest Post by Daddy

Last week, as we were leaving a Brooklyn Botanic Garden chili festival event, tired, sweaty, and glad to be out of a larger than expected crowd, Daniel turned to Becky and said, "I had a good time, mom." This was highly unusual; in fact, it was unprecedented.

We had asked Daniel many times before if he had enjoyed himself at some immediately preceding event, and he had always answered "no" very quickly. Or if we asked if he had fun, the inevitable answer was "I didn't have fun," no matter how much we had just seen him smiling and laughing moments before.

My first instinct when he started doing this, after I was able to satisfy myself that he knew enough English to understand the question, was to be a little annoyed.  Because it seemed he was saying that he didn't want to deal with the question at all. Becky had told me that it was normal for Daniel, especially as an adopted child in a new family, to be very focused on the schedule. What am I going to do next? And what will be expected of me? So I interpreted his answers about the immediate past to be something like "I don't want to talk about what I just did! What else have you got for me?"

But then I thought about it a little more, and a different interpretation came to me. "Mom and Dad," he seemed to be saying, "you seem just a little too hopeful and needy when you ask me if I had fun. It is not my job to validate your choices of what we do by giving you a little thumbs up at the end.  I showed up, I participated, I reacted. Isn't that enough for you people?"

In other words, he was rebelling against gratefulness, something which is a very touchy subject for adoptees, as any tour through blogs written by adoptees will quickly reveal.  Of course the desire for an occasional morsel of gratefulness is something all parents feel, whether you are adoptive parents or not, just because the job of being a parent is so damn hard.  However, gratefulness is an especially difficult subject in the adoption world, in that there is a very thin line between desiring gratefulness for the hard work you do, and expecting it because of the adoption itself.  

"Your mother and I spent thirty thousand dollars and went halfway across the world, just to..."STOP RIGHT THERE. You see, everything you can possibly say before, during, and after that includes an element or two that totally sucked for the kids themselves.  It sucks to be removed from your home, even if your first parents were part of the decision to do so. It sucks to have to fight for attention at an orphanage, and it sucks to lose all the friends you made there, and lose your country, just to travel "halfway across the world" to god-knows-where with people you just met. 

The more I thought about this, the more I realized that it's totally natural for Daniel to have a problem with gratefulness, and totally healthy for him to deny it to us, even after a fun day at the park. If we want to know if he's having a good time, we have to pay attention to him *at the time,* which is what we should be doing anyway.

All that aside, when he's 25, he had better call his mother, or I'm gonna have a few words with that young man...

Attachment: Challenges

August 2011

Attachment: What adoptive parents read lots and lots of books about.

The term attachment describes the connections that keep a family bound together. Attachment is the net, the glue, the bond.  For most biological families, new babies begin to form this bond with their moms and dads from birth (and some say, before birth).  New parents hold and kiss and watch and listen to and admire their infants for hours at time. New babies get lots of time smelling and tasting and hearing their parents. Their first sight is of their parents' faces.  All that time holding a newborn, playing with an infant, cuddling a baby, and chasing a toddler is the foundation of what keeps families together.

So for adoptive families, there is often quite a bit of catch up to be done.  Most adoptive families don't start at birth, even in newborn domestic adoption.  All international adoption is done when children are older, often toddlers or school-aged children.  Most children adopted from another country have experienced a major loss, some kind of trauma and some period of living in an institution. All those are major factors is how the attachment process will go. For some families, it is really rough going.  It can take years for children to feel safe and whole in their new families. This is why adoptive families read lots of books about attachment (or was it just me?)

Our family attachment process has had its challenges, but for the most part the kids are doing really well. (Which saint do I thank for this?)

By far the biggest challenge was simply that we adopted two children at once. My sister, God bless her, has twins.  Once she left me in the room alone with them, and they both started crying.  It was the longest hour five minutes of my life.  Who do I pick up first? Who will calm down first? Can I hold them both at the same time safely? OHMYGOD please just stop crying!

There have been only a handful of times when Daniel and Lily both needed me desperately at the same time.  Those few times have been the most heartbreaking and terrifying of the past year.  I can't hold them both at once; I can't meet their desperate needs right now.  Who will calm down first? Who needs to eat something first? Who can I safely hold while I talk calmly to the other? Those were tough moments. Lucky for me, my kids tend to tag team their tantrums.

Two children at once was a great blessing for our family (no more adoption paperwork! hooray!)  However, having two children to bond with made our attachment process a bit... jumpy.  Three steps forward, 2 steps back.  Daniel, who came home at age 5, heading off to Kindergarten just weeks after we came home. So bonding with Lily went on the back burner while I made sure Daniel was secure enough to spend all day at school.  Rounds of sleep issues put Lily on the front burner, then trying to explain holidays and birthdays made Daniel the focus of our bonding.

The best decision we made was for me to take a maternity leave (unpaid- ouch!) I stayed home with Lily for 3 months.  It was great for our family, and for Lily and I to become closer. The fact that I missed the first few months of school made going back to work really challenging.  And we are still digging our way out of the financial hole we fell into without my salary. But, it was the best thing for our family and our attachment process.

The other thing we did to promote our family attachment was to prioritize our family time.  We spend our weekends together- at the park, visiting family or friends, having fun. We try not to drag the kids around running errands or over schedule ourselves. We make sure that the weekend is simply the four of us, together.  We keep to the same schedule as the week. We don't stay up late or skip naps or have meals at odd times.

Routine=structure=predictable=safe=attachment.

Evenings are the same. At this point we are nearly religious about our evening routines.  Even Lily can recite it now: home, bath, dinner, TV, books, bed. When Daniel was first home and learning English we would go over our daily routine each morning. It became a litany for him; it helped him ground himself in our family life. Dinner, bath, books, bed.  Wake up, school, park, dinner, bath, books, bed. 

Are our kids completely and perfectly attached to us? No. That takes years. In "family time" they are both just over one.  We've been family less than 1/2 of Lily's life, and only slightly longer than they lived in an orphanage.  Maybe in 4 years, maybe in 10 years. But are we growing closer every day? Yes, most days. :)

August 2012

Sleep. Arghh...

Well, wouldn't you know, the night after I post a big long piece about sleep issues- Lily keeps everyone up for 3 hours. At 1AM she woke and ran screaming around the apartment until I caught her, and then tossed and turned and cried until 4AM. The fact that this was also the night before the first day of school made for a very grumpy mommy, and a backslide into all the pitfalls of our previous sleep battles. Namely:

1. We didn't have a game plan before nighttime.

2. The fact that we didn't have a pre-determined strategy meant that we got into a fight over what to do, while also dealing with a screaming toddler at 1AM.

3. The stress of Mom and Dad being at odds with one another only added to Lily's stress at being awake and being unable to fall sleep.

Having Lily transition into a toddler bed has been difficult, but not more difficult than our previous sleep issues.  It doesn't help, however, that while I try to get her back in her bed over and over again, old episodes of Super Nanny replay in my head.  The horrors!

Wow, I miss the crib, so, so much.

We still don't have a strategy worked out. We are naively hoping that Wednesday's sleepless night was a fluke. We are also hoping against hope that she will go peacefully to sleep in her bed without us present, despite much evidence to the contrary.  Somehow I imagine that I can have a rational conversation with my toddler that will go something like this:

"Lily, I know that sleeping in a big girl bed is a big deal. It may take you a little longer to fall asleep at night while you adjust to this new freedom you have.  But, you'll feel sooo much better in the morning if you've had a good night's sleep. So let's lie down and have a good night, okay?

"Okay mommy."

"Great. Goodnight darling!"

End Scene.

Instead, last night went something like this:

"Night night Lily."

She opens the door. "Mommy boo-boo" Points to her perfectly healthy elbow.

I put her back in bed. "Go to sleep. Good night"

She opens the door. "Mommmmyyyyyy".

I put her back in bed. The Super Nanny nightmares begin.

She opens the door. Says nothing, just stands there waiting for me to see her.

Back in bed, slightly more forcefully.

I hear thumping and rattling. Go in to find she's up and has taken everything out of her drawers.

Close drawers loudly. Put her back in bed. Cursing under my breath now.

Lock her room from the outside.

"Good night Lily."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Moooooommmmmmmyyyyyyyyy....."

This lasts about 20 minutes.

Go in to find every single item in her room tossed on the floor, the lights on and her sitting in the middle of the mess screaming.  Now know what inspired The Exorcist.

Calm her, rock her, sit with her on her bed til she falls asleep. 2 false starts towards the door. Baby girl is now sleeping with one eye open and is trigger ready to tantrum. Finally get out at 9PM, two hours after bedtime.  Fall asleep on the couch 20 minutes into Project Runway.

End Scene.

I couldn't bear to take a photo of the unholy mess that we found in her room this morning. (She woke up at 5:30AM) So this post will remain bereft of redeeming adorable photo. Sigh.

She's taking a nap now. Fingers crossed?

Summer Reading

gratuitous photo of the kids "reading".

As a teacher, I always look forward to summer... to sleeping in, to days at the beach, and mostly to being able to read as much as I want. I'm the type of reader who gets consumed by books. I'll read until my head is aching and my stomach grumbling. I think I lost a few pounds reading the Harry Potter series; I was so engrossed in the books I forgot to eat!

As a mom, I don't get to sleep in anymore, in any season, and a day at the beach requires waaaay too much equipment (plus I'm terrified of one of them drowning in a rip tide.) But reading, yes, I did get to read a lot this summer.  I even overcame my hatred of "e-books" and read a few on an old Kindle.

I started with The Hunger Games trilogy- I may have been the last human to read that series, or maybe it just seemed that way.  Although diverting, I found that the violence level was too high for my taste.  Avoxx's?... shudder.  So Katniss did not end up being my new Harry Potter.

Next on the Kindle was Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. Wonderful, eye opening book about our misconceptions about children, childhood and teaching/parenting.  I need to re-read it and take notes, that's how much it opened my eyes to some of my habits as a teacher and parent.  As a person with a degree in Child Development, it brought me back to my studies as an undergraduate.  Humans are just amazing creatures, and children the most fascinating (to me).  I was reminded of why I found studying them so incredible. And in the (many) years since I graduated developmental researchers have learned so much more about how humans acquire language, morality and racial identity.  If you are a parent, teacher or coach, this is a must read!

The funny thing about a Kindle is that it enables dabbling.  So I read pieces of some Ethiopian history books and bits of a couple of forgettable novels. Kind of like browsing the books stacked on my bedside table, without having to carry 10 books around with me.

Right now I'm reading a book I should have read 15 years ago, and still can't believe I didn't. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen is a remarkable book with a terrible title. It has prompted me to compose a thousand (thankfully unpublished) Facebook posts beginning with "Can you believe...!" or "Did you know that...?!"  I think I would have lost more than a few friends for my overly enthusiastic history lessons.

But seriously, did you know that Woodrow Wilson was openly racist and segregated the Federal Government? (which had been de-segregated by Lincoln!?) Did you know that some of the first "discoverers" of the Americas were African sailors?

This book is blowing my mind, over and over again.

I was motivated to start writing this blog to research, preserve and compose history for my son.  I wanted to create a resource for my children, and for other adoptive or trans-racial families, to give the gift of Ethiopian/African history.  "Lies" has convinced me even more of the importance of this.  Daniel  is certainly not going to learn Ethiopian history in school, and he is more likely to be given the same watered down (and sometimes just wrong!), "preserve the status quo", devoid of ideas and passion version of American History that most of us learned.

As we were going through the security check at the Addis Ababa airport, one of the guards, a young man, questioned Daniel somewhat sharply in Amharic and then spoke to me.  He said, "Take care of him! He is one of the Lions of Africa you know!"  I assured him and pulled Daniel closer to me.  I wish I could go back to that man. I wish I could sit with him for a few hours. I would question him about his country's history and culture. I would ask him to write down for Daniel the key things he needs to know about his heritage, his language, his history.  I wish I could reassure him that I would do everything in my power to raise my children as Lions of Africa.

James Loewen- if you are reading this, please do me a favor... can you write a "Lies my Social Studies Teacher told me about Africa" book. Thanks. :)

Here are a couple of wonderful children's books we picked up this summer:

There are just two more weeks before school begins! Any books to recommend?

a year in review

remember when you took photos and then waited a few days (weeks?) to find out what they looked like? And most of them came out like crap? Yes, me too...

I've been working on making a photo album of the past year, and I've been finding it a very overwhelming task. Maybe because someone in our family (Andrew) takes sooooo many photos. Maybe because it was a Year of Firsts. Maybe because I get sidetracked by admiring just! how! cute! my babies were when they were "babies".

Anyone else make photo albums/scrapbooks online? Any tips or tricks to share?  I need help!

Here is my attempt at a "Year in Review"...

July

August

September

October

November

December

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

brother cousin

One of the things we brought to Ethiopia with us was a family album.  It was one of the most useful things we stuffed into those gigantic suitcases. That, and the millions of diapers.

During the few days we had custody of the kids, but were stuck waiting at the guest house for our Embassy documents and flight back home, Daniel and I poured over that album.  He memorized all his new family members' names, and tried to figure out how everyone was connected. The photo he was most interested in, immediately, was of his cousin M-------.

In most of Africa, there are no "cousins", "uncles" or "aunts".  All your male relatives are fathers or brothers, and all your female relatives are your mothers or sisters.  This has translated to some parts of the U.S. like the South, where it is common to have non-related "aunties", or to called older woman by the title, "Mama" or "Nana".  So it was hard to translate the word "cousin" for Daniel.  But words didn't seem to matter to him.  He felt an immediate kinship with my sister's son and since the moment they met they have been, brothers.

My nephew, M------, is brown, or "mocha" as he likes to describe himself- the son of my (white) sister and his father, who is from Ghana and "dark chocolate" as M----- likes to say.  His beautiful brown skin is unusual in our family, and one of the multiple reasons we choose to adopt from Ethiopia. (I mean, if we were going to have kids who didn't look like us, they may as well look like someone!)

These boys, these brothers, are a year and a 1/2 apart, but were exactly the same size when Daniel first came home. (He has now outstripped his littler cousin by several inches.)  They first met at the airport.  M------ had brought several coins to give to Daniel. They sized each other up. Daniel exclaimed, "Same!" when they measured their heights.  They played with the coins on the floor of the JFK international terminal, and within minutes were lifelong friends.

This summer the boys got to spend a week together in heaven: Grandpa's house at the beach. They were true brothers... eating, sleeping, playing, wrestling, reading, talking, walking, riding bikes- they behaved so much like twins I bought them matching outfits.

Recently there has been a debate/conversation in the Adoption Blogsphere about ethics in International Adoption, particularly in Africa.  International Adoption occupies a very uncomfortable spot at the crossroads of poverty, religion, international politics, race, history and cultural differences between the "First World" and the "Third World".  It is a spot only few visit: those few thousand adoptive families, the adoption agencies, and of course, the first families.  And the spot keeps shifting about due to new regulations, wars, disease and politics.  Safe to say about international adoption: it's complicated.

Although it is true that, as in our case, sometimes children need parents and parents want/need to adopt the children, the equation isn't so simple.  The children might need a parent, but in getting one, they lose all their other fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.  No wonder my heart broke a little when we left Ethiopia. I knew, although the children didn't at the time, how many people we were leaving behind.

I tried to get a quote from Daniel for this piece. I asked him why he loved his cousin M------ so much. He just looked at me like I was crazy.  What a silly question, mom! He loves his cousin M----- because he is his brother: one to fill the void left when he lost his Ethiopian brothers. And because, he's M-----!

 (He didn't say that, of course, but hey, it's my blog. He can correct me when he's learned to read well enough to edit me.)

This morning a woman working at Daniel's camp exclaimed to him, over and over, "How lucky you are to have such a wonderful mother!"  He rolled his eyes, which I thought an appropriate response to basically being told he's so lucky to have lost his first family/country/be forced to live in America! been adopted. When he's older, maybe he'll learn to say, "Mama, it's complicated!"

her story

The kids are wearing traditional clothes given to them by the care center staff.

Some nights when I'm putting Lily down to sleep she asks to see a family photo we keep near her crib. It is of the four of us on the day they said farewell to the orphanage and we became a family.  Andrew and I are sporting wide grins, Daniel has a quiet smile on his face and baby Lily is chewing a finger.

Helping our two children understand, grieve and process their adoption story is very different for each of them. Daniel was old enough to be very aware of the events happening around and to him. He remembers his first family and the death of his mother.  He understood, as well as a 5 year old could have, what happened.  Why? is his big question.  And as he grows older, he will keep asking it, and keep adding to the layers of his understanding of his story. The essential What Happened, he lived and remembers.

Lily, on the other hand, was an infant (and a very sick one at that) during all of those drastic changes.  She has no memories of it and little understanding.  She doesn't know what happened, and she is too young and has too little language to ask us.  But sometimes... sometimes she looks like she is trying to figure something out, something big.  Sometimes she wakes up from a nap and is inconsolable.  Sometimes she seems like she is looking for someone that she only instinctively knows should be here.

So some nights I tell her a little story: her story.  And this child, my wild, impulsive, active, busy toddler, stills and listens.

I say,

 "Lily Tagessech, you were born in Ethiopia. Your father's name is G-----, your mother's name was A------.  When you were just a tiny baby, your mother died.  Your father decided you needed a new mommy and daddy, so he brought you and Daniel to an orphanage.  Then mommy and daddy flew on an airplane all the way to Ethiopia to get you, and we all came home to America together.

And here you will stay, forever and ever, and always and always.

The Beginning."

And then she falls alseep. What does she dream of? I wish I knew.  I hope. I hope, she dreams of home, all the versions she's known.

Siblings

I've always been very grateful to have a sister.  When we were young, we always had a playmate. When we were teens, we always had someone to complain to about our parents. When we were in our twenties, we always had someone to complain to about our parents, and our boyfriends/husbands/in-laws.  Now we are both mothers, and we have someone to gripe to about our children.  Who else will allow me to say, "I'm going to kill them!" and not remind me of my years of longing to be a parent, but instead recommend I refill my wine glass.

Only a sibling has that special connection and family memory- only a sibling knows the wealth of data behind the simple moan, "Mom, ugh.!"

There is plenty of research, literature and theory on sibling relationships.  I'm sure there are whole books about how to foster sibling relationships.  My completely unproven theory is the "Shared Enemy" one: siblings are close when they have a common cause, usually "mom is so crazy/dad is so annoying!" That worked in my case, anyway. (For the record, my mom is not crazy and dad is not annoying. Hi Mom! Hey Dad!)

When we received our referral for siblings, we did lots of preparation.  We put together lots of IKEA furniture and read lots of blogs and books. We planned: sleep strategies, holidays, transitions, media, race/heritage, hair, and on and on. But we didn't plan how we would raise siblings.

However unplanned, I seem to be doing really well fostering a close sibling relationship between Lily and Daniel.  I'm fulfilling the "mom is soooo crazy, right!?" role very well, thank you very much.  I've already caught the across the dining table sympathetic eyeroll, the conspiratory whispers, the "come on, let's go to our room" escape from mom strategy and the sibling translation of parent-speak.  And one of my children is still in diapers.  I can only imagine that sibling created shenanigans that will happen here when someone learns to talk properly and no longer needs help climbing stairs.

How are you raising your siblings, if you have them?
Are you close with your own siblings? Why? Why not?

Injera time!

Every Sunday at 5:00PM you will find our family at Ghenet, eating our favorite: veggie combo for three, sometimes with a salad, sometimes with doro wat.  Sometimes we have the most amazing cafe latte in the world afterwards, and if we haven't stuffed ourselves to the gills (which is rare), we order a tiramisu to share. Yum, um, um.

We've been eating at Ghenet every since we started down this Ethiopian adoption road, I even had a baby shower there. The first week we were home with the children we went, stumbling in with our sweaty, jet lagged, overwhelmed selves. I said, almost embarrassed, "Do you have any injera for two hungry Ethiopians?".  And thus the folks at Ghenet became our Ethiopian family, here at home.  They welcomed Daniel and Lily with open arms, offering to help find babysitters, translate, offering advice on hair and discipline.  Since that first week we have come (almost) every Sunday.

At first Daniel would shyly answer the waitresses and cook in Ahmaric. After a few weeks, we all noticed that he didn't seem to understand.  Now they are trying to teach him his country's language (with very limited success, sadly. He's more interested in learning the games on their i-phones.)   Lily walks around the restaurant like she owns it. She asks for and receives private tours of the kitchen, has long "conversations" with the dishwasher.  I'm sure the other patrons are extremely amused by her dance moves and gymnastics in the dining room.

Every week we fill ourselves up with injera, wat, Ethiopian beer, coffee and a little taste of home. Then they pack up a big bag of leftovers that sustain us for the coming week.

Traditional food: everythingis served on one big platter

Here are a couple things I've learned about Ethiopian leftovers (should you be so lucky to have some in your house.)

1. Native Ethiopians (like my son) will eat leftovers the traditional way- all mixed up into a mash and heated (one serving is piping hot in about a minute in the microwave).  He gobbles up a big bowl every day after school.

2. Injera can be dried into chips.  Just leave it out in the sun (as they do in Africa), or dry it till crispy in a warm oven.

3. Injera pizza! I take a triangle of injera, sprinkle it with berbere (Ethiopian spice mix- hot!), and some cheese and fry it in a pan with butter. YUM!

4. If you are just re-heating injera on its own, wrap it in a damp paper towel and microwave for just 10-15 seconds. It will get rubbery very quickly, so be careful.

5. Ethiopian leftovers freeze pretty well.

Baby Lily shows off her Ethiopian finest at Ghenet for New Year

Relapses...

Well. That didn't work.

How many times as a parent (or as a person? co-worker? partner? teacher?) do we have to admit to ourselves that our attempts have just... well, they've outright failed?

So it was with our "big girl bed".  Two nights, and the crib is back together.

inside an urban child's bedroom

Lily was so excited to see her new room, her new "big girl bed", but she's just not ready. She needs the crib confinement for a while longer.  We learned this the hard way, over two sleepless nights.  A lot about adoption and parenting is learned the hard way, I find. Or maybe it's just my preferred learning style.  I don't know, but it was very bittersweet having to put the crib "prison" back together. Good thing I'm handy with my IKEA allen wrench.

We'll see what her reaction is when she comes home today and sees her "baby bed".  Are toddlers old enough to have regret? Will she think, oh wow, I really should have tried harder to stay/sleep in my new bed? Probably not.

So much about parenting these kids is just a big mystery. How was Daniel as a baby? How did he sleep? What was his relationship like with his first parents? What was that last day like? How much of Lily's behavior is her expressing grief and confusion about her past and how much is just her (crazy toddler) personality?  I often wonder, "What would (birthparents names) do?"  Since their daily lives are so, so different from ours, it's often hard to even translate the question. There are no IKEAs in Ethiopia.  Their family slept all together on a mattress. Allen wrenches, bedtime routines, white noise machines, nightlights, toys, good night books, stuffed animals, alarm clocks, cribs, toddler beds, bunk beds.... None of these exist in rural Africa.

What would they do? Shake their heads at me and my crazy questions, probably.

inside a rural Ethiopian home

Glimpses

I just got Lily to sleep, finally.  This is her first night in her very own room, in her very own "big girl bed". (Well, her crib with the rails taken off.)  She may not be quite ready for so many big changes. She had a hard time falling asleep. A hard time knowing that it was time to stop opening drawers and playing with her dolls. But, it's summer and I have the time it takes to paint, put furniture together and relocate toys and dolls and clothes, so it had to be done.  Sometimes we are just not quite ready for the big changes in our lives, but those changes happen anyway.

As I watched her fall asleep, looking so "grown up",  I found myself imagining glimpses of her at older ages... her as a taller, thinner 4 year old, her as a pouty teen, her as an exhausted young mother, falling asleep face down on her pillow.  Sometimes it's as if all the ages of herself are already there, locked inside her. Perhaps because she has already seen so much of the world, perhaps because she looks so much like her older siblings and birth family, perhaps because she has such a Personality.

But I think we can see glimpses in all children.  Sometimes I look at my students and for a moment I see them as adults... the cop, the doctor, the business woman, the professor. (I love to dream that my working class/immigrant students will attain those positions.)  Sometimes I can see glimpses of a darker nature... who might be the one arguing with the cop, or needing treatment from a doctor.

In my son's face, I can see two glimpses. In his smiling, running face I can see a young man, powerful, joyful to be learning to drive, handsome and proud to show off his muscles to girlfriends.  My son so longs to be grown up. He constantly asks at what age he can drive, at what age he can buy a motorcycle (never!)... I plead with him not to rush his already (in my experience) shortened childhood, but he would jump through time.

The other glimpse I see is when he is angry or frustrated and his face sets into a stubborn scowl, and I see him as many others would, and perhaps will; an angry black man, a menace. Will he learn to soothe that scowl, to show that he is not dangerous or threatening, even when angry and frustrated?  Will the scowl remain on his heart, shortening his temper and his vision?

When my children first came home, their very different personalities quickly emerged.  I used to explain to friends just meeting them that Daniel looks tough on the outside, but is in fact very sweet.  Lily looks very sweet, but is tough as nails.  Slowly their inner selves are being to match their outer ones.  Lily has some tough looks, and Daniel's young sweetness is growing up... into what, I'm not sure yet.

Tonight my children are sleeping in their very own rooms. The crib is dismantled, the high chair is on its way out the door.  This weekend we'll be buying big boy bunk beds.

I am totally not ready for this change.

Yes, Chef!

My writing has been sidetracked a bit lately due to all the reading I've been doing. (ah, summer!)  Andrew gave me the new Marcus Samuelsson book for my birthday (while we ate at his restaurant Red Rooster- ta da!)

I highly recommend it to everyone who loves:
1. Ethiopia
2. Food
3. Cooking
4. Traveling
5. All of the above

Just a few pages in his memoir Samuelsson (I call him Marcus in my head, but I'm trying to be cool here.) reflects on his adoption to Sweden from Ethiopia, and the few memories he has from his early childhood in Africa.  He jokes kindly about all the adoptive mothers who come up to him to share their children's stories.

Ahem.

Here I am, a Marcus, I mean Chef Samuelsson stalker.  When Andrew and I went to Red Rooster for our anniversary this winter the Chef was there, and graciously agreed to my request to look at photos of our kiddos.  He sat down on the booth next to me, and taking my phone from my hands scrolled through my photo album.  He asked about them, their ages, etc.  Sigh. It was a marvelous moment (for me).

There are so few Ethiopian adoptees in America, and very, very few grown up ones. I think we adoptive moms have latched onto Samuelsson as a role model for our children, and his Swedish mother as ours. In Yes, Chef he is wonderfully affirming of his adoptive family, while honest about the complications and joys of reconnecting with his Ethiopian family.  He talks about the very different memories and experiences of his sister, who was 5 years old when they moved to Sweden.  Most movingly, he reflects on the ways in which his Ethiopian, Swedish, and international travels have combined to make him who he is now: a chef and business man with a family in Harlem.

If you live in or visit New York, I highly recommend eating at the Rooster.  (You'll need to make a reservation exactly one month in advance to get a table.)  The food is interesting and delicious, the service is warm and attentive, and you never know who might come in the door.  On our first visit we ate next to a former Governor!

Of course, Samuelsson is a chef: most of the book is about food.  Food preparation, food culture, tasting, traveling, discovering food.  If you like to cook it will make you want to go shopping at a farmer's market and pull out your big pots.  If you like to eat it will make you want to explore a new neighborhood or spice family.  I've found re-newed energy for perfecting my own doro wat.

And after you eat the doro wat or catfish at the Rooster, you might as well read the book too. It will make you hungry all over again.

The Wait. Part 2.

Look at that wide eyed happy couple without any gray hair! Awww....

I have three champagne corks in Daniel and Lily's "Treasure Box."  They are nestled there along with Lily's 'baby' shoes and the t-shirts they came home in, and the little gifts that the Care Center gave us on our last day in Ethiopia.

One cork is from celebrating our official entry into the waiting family list.  We'd been filling out paper work and reading books and going to classes for months, and now we'd finally jumped through all the hoops,  fulfilled all the requirements of our adoption agencies. Yeah! Now we get to Wait, Officially!

The first wait was the trickiest for me, because I had to learn so much during it.  I'm naturally a pretty impulsive, quick to action person. I don't comparison shop.  I decided to marry Andrew after just a few weeks of dating.  I picked the very first wedding dress I tried on. And so on.  So having to sit, and wait, and wait, and not go crazy was very hard.  It required a lot of learning and a fair amount of growing up.

During this time I regularily got the following comments: "Aren't you, like, adopting? What happened?"  "I'm just sure you'll get pregnant now!". "Did you hear ___________ (every single person of child bearing age I know) is pregnant!?", and "Are you still adopting?".

I was tempted to get a t-shirt that said, "paper pregnant" with a big blow up belly, but that seemed immature.

So, I learned to wait. I learned that some days are easier than others, and some days are harder.  And that either way, I was going to be okay.  I learned that sometimes I needed to avoid baby showers.  I learned that whatever I was suffering, it was probably nothing compared to what our future child/children's family was suffering.  And that turned out to be the truth.  While I was sitting around trying not to twiddle my thumbs, our children's family was enduring illness and loss and hunger.  I've read that some adoptive mothers remember feeling extreme anxiety or pain on the days of loss for their future children.  (Those smart cookies that kept journals.)  I'm not sure if Daniel and Lily and I were connected in that way.  But I do know that I thought of them,  a lot.

I really don't like going to the dentist (who does, really?).  But I remember walking home from the dentist's office on a freezing cold December evening, thinking, "Hey, this is one of the easy days. I'm doing okay. Look at those beautiful stars."  When I got home, there was a voicemail from our social worker waiting for me.  And the First Wait was over, just like that.

And the new wait, the much harder one, was just beginning.

To sleep. Or not.

We're on vacation right now, which has been lovely. Especially when the grandparents are around to play with, distract, chase, cuddle, read to and help clean up after our two balls of energy. I am missing our small apartment, with its baby proofing and door locks and my ability to see or hear them wherever I am. This big beach house we are in has so many doors! Lily, especially, finds this highly amusing. I don't know why I packed any toys, when they mostly just want to open, run through, and slam doors all day long.

Chasing Lily through a big house is one reason this first summer vacation with children has proven vastly different.  The other is our (is just mine?) children's different ideas about vacation sleeping.  Andrew and I love to sleep in, especially on vacation.  Or as we say now, "sleep in". (because 6:30AM is not really other people's idea of sleeping in. Except maybe fishermen or farmers.)  Our kids, on the other hand, normally get up early, and when we are on vacation they get up extra early. I mean, there is just so much to do! And what do you mean we can't go to the beach at 6AM?  Lily's record this week is 4:30AM.  Vainly we tried to get her to snuggle in our bed with us, read a quiet book, maybe whisper a quiet song... nope. She's up! And she wants everyone else to be UP!

Which means that we are putting our exhausted, sandy, grass in the hair, mosquito bitten, tired and happy kids to sleep while the sun is still high in the sky and the heat shimmering in the windows.

I've gotten a lot of raised eyebrows and laughs, even criticism from others when they found out our kids' sleep schedule.  I brush them off, because, really as parents we need to stop being so critical of each other, and anyway... you don't live in my house, so what do you care?!

When we first planned for our adoption and did our required reading, sleep was a big concern for me. I like and need my sleep, and don't function well when over-tired. I read horror stories about traumatized, newly brought home adoptees who screamed and cried through the night.  We were prepared to sleep on our kids' floor, set whatever schedules they needed... we braced ourselves for the worst.

Lucky, lucky us. Jet lag worked in our favor. The first day we came home we bathed, fed and settled the kids in, and they were both sound asleep at 5:30PM.  Slowly we inched our way into our own time zone, but we never made it much further.  Daniel sleeps from about 7:30PM to 6:30AM, and Lily sleeps from about 7PM to about 6AM (plus a 2 hour nap), give or take a few horrible sleepless nights around daylight savings time or illnesses.

"What!?" You ask, "they sleep that much?!!!" Yes, yes they do. Because being adopted is exhausting.

Hearing and learning a brand new language all day is exhausting. Being with and learning a whole new family is really, really, exhausting. Navigating a new culture and social norms is exhausting.  Daniel, especially, sleeps like a rock. He once fell out of his bed, and (hearing a thud) I picked him up and tucked him back in and he never even cracked an eyelid.

So enjoy your late night dinners, your sunset cruises, your moonlit walks. We will continue to pull our light blocking shades all the way down and get some rest.  We've got an early morning alarm clock and she doesn't have a snooze button.

Unplugged...

When my sister and I were kids, my parents convinced us that there was "no TV in Maine". Not just that we weren't allowed to watch TV while on summer vacation, but that, in fact, there were no TV's in the entire state of Maine.  They used to sneak into our rental cabin and hide the TV in the closet before we came in (this was easy for them, as Meg and I usually raced to the ocean as soon as the car stopped.)

The charade was ended when a local babysitter, frustrated by our endless games of Memory and Clue, searched through the cabin and found the hidden TV.   In the following summers, we continued to play Memory and Clue, as well as lots and lots of cards, but eventually we got a TV in the summer house, and then cable, and then a DVD player.  A couple of years ago I realized, we never play games anymore.  


So this year, the first year we brought our children to the summer house, we decided to re-institute the "no TV in Maine" rule.  We asked my parents to hide the TV, but we were honest with Daniel. We said, this is our special time for us to spend as a family, so we aren't going to watch TV, or play with our i-pods.  We are going to un-plug.  Then we crossed our fingers.

Our son loves TV.  I mean, loooooovvvvves, TV.  Any sign of disobedience or defiant behavior can instantly be curbed by the warning, "you don't want to watch TV tonight?"

I thought, before we had children, that they wouldn't watch TV.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!  A few weeks ago I punished Daniel by taking away TV for TWO NIGHTS.  Who suffered more? Me. Now I have to make and clean up dinner with two kids underfoot? Now I have to entertain you at the end of long day when nobody has any patience left?  It was not pretty.

We have accepted that TV has a place in our daily lives. We try to keep it under control, we try to limit their exposure to obnoxious cartoons...

"Mommy, why can't I watch SpongeBob? "
 "Because Mommy doesn't like that show, that's why."

... and commercials. The first time Daniel watched commercials was in a hotel room with no children's channels.  He kept yelling at me because he thought I was changing the channel on him.

Through the miracles of online streaming, on demand, you tube and DVR our kids have been coddled in the warm, wonderful waters of TV that doesn't drive me crazy: Shawn the Sheep, Curious George, Phineas and Ferb, Pixar movies, etc.

So TV serves a purpose in our "regular lives"... it is a nice quiet ending to sometimes noisy, always busy days.   But, we needed to unplug. We needed to prove to Daniel that he can have a wonderful day without cartoons, that he doesn't need TV to distract, amuse or console him.

TV is a great escape... who hasn't distracted themselves from chores, paperwork, or a bad break up with hours in front of the magic box. I certainly have (hello, summer I watched 5 seasons of Lost.)  It is easy not to think, it is easy not to feel when the TV is on.

So, for our son, who in a short time has suffered so many losses, transitions and challenges, TV is a great escape. The problem is, after too long in front of it, the return to his real life is extremely jarring. Everything is so much harder when he has to think, and feel and pay attention, instead of being transported into the TV screen.  The worst meltdowns he's had have been after extended periods of TV time.

It's been over a week since we unplugged our son, and I'm very, very happy with the results so far.  He's calm, engaged, responsive, and he hasn't asked to watch TV once.  Of course, there is so much to do here... grass to run on, rocks to climb, beaches to explore.  Our country boy is in heaven.

We'll see, when we return to our little city apartment and our busy city lives, how much the TV comes back on...

Love is not enough...

Today we took the kids to their first Country Fair.  All the way there, Daniel asked lots of questions, "What is a fair? Will there be games there? Will it be fun? But what is a fair?!"... After a while I said, "Daniel, you're going to have to trust me."

To which I got a well deserved eye roll.

There is an ongoing debate about whether it is okay for white families to raise black children.  In the 70's the black social worker association came out against it.  Our own adoption agency has a special department, formed decades ago, aimed at increasing adoption of African-American children into Black families.  Every time another celebrity is spotted with an African-American newly adopted child the media goes at it again: race, adoption, racism, heritage, white privilege, and on and on.

Most of us adoptive parents would probably agree: it is better for a child to have a family.  Would it be wonderful if all children were raised within their own cultural/racial group? Yes.  It would also be wonderful for all children to be raised by their first family. It would also be wonderful if poverty, disease, fear and religious intolerance didn't cause children to be relinquished and families torn apart.

When Andrew and I started pursuing our African adoption, we got some interesting comments from folks about choosing to raise Black children.  (I'll spare you- use your imagination. Polite racism, anyone?) We read some, we reflected a lot, and we tried to come up with a plan to help our children learn about their ethnic and racial identity.  We knew that this would be one of our biggest challenges (and it is), not because there aren't lots of challenges in adopting and parenting, but because we, as white folks, were the least prepared for this one.  We felt guilty (and still do, sometimes) about taking our children from a proud country (Ethiopia was never colonized, the only African nation to escape that fate.) in which they were the majority race, to America, where they would not only be in the minority, but have a low status- unknown in Africa.  The shooting of Trayvon Martin shook me to the core, as I realized that not only would we have to educate our son about his position in our society for his own safety, we would have to do it soon. Way too soon.

So here we are at the fair! Tra-la-la-la-la.  We had a lovely time.  They rode ponies, we saw a steer pull, we ate fried dough.  We got lots of stares, not only because my children were 2 of the 3 black people there, but also because this is Maine and everyone knows each other, so as strangers we got a lot of looks.  What were these people doing watching a steer pull?! (If you've never been to a country fair, you need to.  I'm just sorry we missed the pig scramble.)

Daniel now knows what a fair is. And, maybe he learned to trust me, just a little bit more.

The truth is,  Love is not enough. Love does not overcome racial stereotypes, the loss of a family, the loss of a culture and a language.  Love is not enough to make a family. Not even love and lots of injera will work.

Trust is the thing we need. Trust is the thing we work on every single day. Trust is the thing we will need in order to help Daniel and Lily navigate this crazy world.

Every morning I go over what our day will be like with Daniel. I tell him, sometimes 2-3 times, our schedule, and who we will see, and what we will eat, and what will be challenging, and what I hope will be fun, and what I expect him to do.  At night we talk about our favorite part of the day, and then we go over what will happen tomorrow. If I'm not sure that we will do something, I say so, or I just leave it to be a surprise.  It is too important that Daniel learn to trust that what we say will happen, does happen.  This child has had too many nasty surprises in his life, it is understandable that he hates them.  It's understandable that he doesn't trust us, not yet.

Every day we live up to his expectations, every day we don't let him down is another day to build that trust.

So next year, he'll know what a fair is.

Wordless Wednesday

Gratitude on Family Day

One year ago today our family of four landed in America, at last.  We were exhausted, smelly, grimy, over burdened and shaky but immeasurably happy.

One year later I offer some belated Thank You's....

to the flight attendant who filled bottle after bottle with warm water for Lily's formula with nary a complaint (maybe just one eye roll)

to the airport driver who let us ride in the "mekina" (car) through the terminal, fulfilling one of Daniel's (newly formed) life-long dreams.

to the flight attendant who let me stand up, holding a sleeping baby against my chest, even though the seatbelt sign was on. Because we all knew that if I sat down, the crying (ok, screaming), would begin again.

to the passengers to gave baby girl high fives and wiggled their fingers at her, over and over again.

to the other mother in the looooong, hot, immigration line who said, "Would your kids like a lollipop?". I am eternally grateful for your perfect timing and enormous kindness.

to whoever brought Andrew and I steaming hot cups of coffee in the airport terminal as our children met their extended family for the first time.

to the man at the long term parking lot who cheerfully and calmly fixed Lily's car seat for us.

to my mother and sister, who left macaroni and cheese in the fridge, and cookies in the pantry.

to our children, for sleeping through most of the flights, and being amazing, resilient troopers through that whole 24 hour trip.  We were, and continue to be, in awe of you.

to all the members of our church, and the co-workers and friends and family members who gave to our children so generously. We had such bounty and such kindness all around us.

It does, indeed, take a village.

Who would you thank, if you could, today?