Our Rehoboth

Every Song a Swan Song

2011-05-19T19:50:00.004-04:00

When I was between the ages of 17 and 23, I was a songwriter. Political. Emotional. Generally rhyming. My songs were limited to melodic formulations that fit the handful of chords I could play on the guitar and piano (a number which has dwindled rather than growing through ensuing years). Let me dwell a minute on the love songs (and all of them were love songs, to some degree....if vengefully, DiFrancishly so). For years (even after we were married), Josh seemed bothered by the fact that he was never the subject of one of my love songs (though, with their limited musical value and questionable appeal, he should have thanked me, daily:). One day, in explaining it to him (and that is how most of my epiphanies come, WHILE I'm voicing an explanation, not before), I exclaimed (probably with great force) "I only write love songs for people after the love is dead or the people have left me!"

It's true, insofar as I can remember my love songs.

My last post cost me like a love song! AND, it seems to have been a eulogy, as well! Ever since I posted the tangle of confusion that surrounds my submission to food (which seems absurd, but couldn't be more palpable), I have....been.......REMARKABLY.....freer! I've faced down the newly named spectres (don't ask me why I spell that word Britishly -- I just do, I always do), and paid them due homage like past loves.....

What an interesting change!

I love it (though not enough, yet, to write a song about it:)

(Thank you to all of you who offered your friendship in kind thoughts and prayers. I have no doubt that God, whose prompting led to the post, is the catalyst for this freedom, and I know how he works through our lovers, far and near. I appreciate you ---- sincerely).

Tari's Questions

2011-05-16T03:02:00.004-04:00

Over the past several weeks, Tarikwa has taken to presenting me with questions. Not her usual peppering of sweet, thoughtful, helpful inquiries, or even those of the repetetive, insistent variety (for which she has a particular knack). These are new. These questions, bald as they are, seem oddly rhetorical -- by that I mean conversationally strategic, designed to engage me in adultish back-and-forth that her (now 3-year-old!) toddler mind must somehow crave. (I remember slipping into my parents' room one night with just such an agenda, determined to have a conversation of the ilk I imagined them having together and with other grown-ups. When they asked what, specifically, I wanted to talk about, all I could come up with was one word......"Squirrels." I'm not sure why). Tari is infinitely more creative than I was at her age. She asks, "What are hands for?" and "What is a mouth for?" or "Why is pizza?" Normally, I slip her a portion of the "honest and enough" brand that has carried me through some awkward parenting moments (and ushered me into others!). Hands are for playing holding and patting. Mouths are for talking and tasting. Pizza is.....dinner? Two nights ago, she caught me dozing and splashed the frigid bucket full of this one in my face: "Mama, why do you eat?" Honest. Enough. My reasonable truths -- nutrition, enjoyment, subsistence -- seemed altogether dishonest and insufficient. I don't eat for those reasons. I did once (maybe, though I can't remember when), but I don't.

How should I answer my little one, though? The answers came, fast and hard, but none of them utterable. "Mama eats because she's scared, honey." "Because I'm afraid of getting sucked under by the insensible tow of this life at home and need to be reminded that I still have volition." "Because I need a secret to be in charge of." "There's some chemical endorphine explanation that keeps me coming back for more....in a word: self medication." "Because if I eat and eat then the offending food will be out of my house and will no longer exercise control over my every thought by its very presence." (And you should see the insatiability of my efforts to this end! I astonish myself. My son has a friend whose allergies to gluten and dairy make snack selection a chore. When he wanted to invite his friend to a birthday party, Josiah said: "Tyson can't eat glutton," yep. He said glutton instead of gluten. "So we have to buy special food. I have seen brownie mix at the store that said Glutton Free Brownies on the box, so maybe we could buy those!" Dear sweet Josiah, if only global innovation and enterprise could yield a glutton free brownie. But.....alas.....) "Revenge." (Now I'm back to the answers that common sense forbids me from offering to my three year old, but her wide eyes compel me to face.) "I find self-destruction more accessible than self-discipline." "Because I am unlovely and, thus (love this insidious illogical lie?) unworthy of love."

Honest?

Enough?

I remember being ten and writing out this phrase on a note card, "Your body is God's temple, keep it thin," and pasting copies of that note card at the foot of my bed and on my vanity (nice) mirror. I can't remember a time when I didn't exchange that truth for a lie.

And now, my beautiful daughters.....one innocent and one increasinly desparate.....ask, "Mama, why do you eat?" And I have to face the answers or face the consequences.

Honest.

Enough.

Do I have a Right To Homeschool my Children?

2011-04-13T13:49:00.000-04:00

I love my children. Let's begin there. I don't always love them well (though I always want to), but I love them fully. For the past ten years, I have filtered all of my parenting choices thorugh the sieve of my ultimate goals: that I should contribute in every way possible to my children loving God and loving others. Because I love them, I steer them toward love -- love that costs. Love for enemies. Love for difficult people (and sometimes I know I am one of the difficult people).
Preschool seemed a natural choice. Olivia was reading some and writing pretty proficiently by the time she was 3, and gravitated toward learning new things in the ravenous, touching way that all three year olds do. I studied, visited, popped in on, and otherwise scoured all of the preschools in our community during the course of her second year until I found a montessori-based Christian preschool that didn't rock our financial world. I stood in line (in alternate shifts with my mother, who stood in my stead while I went home to nurse my baby Josiah) from 4 until 8 in the morning --- blizzard notwithstanding! -- to enroll her. She screamed every morning for 9 months, sometimes only leaving the car after the teacher peeled her arms from around my neck. She couldn't start a zipper. She wanted to peek in on other kids' projects during rug time. So many ways to fail. My beautiful, social, brilliant baby girl was a Montessori flop (and, by extension, so was her mama).
When I informed her teacher that I wasn't reenroling her for pre-k, she warned me of the social deficit she would face in coming years. She stayed home with me the following fall, and we preschooled at home three mornings a week, with field trips every Thursday. (When my big kids were still little kids, they told their dad that they knew mama loved them because of field trip Thursdays === we really had a blast). The spring before kindergarten, she was reading well, writing well, able to understand basic computation, and socially amazing. I chose one of the few half-day kindergarten programs in town because I thought I could continue with some homeschooling after she got out of school mid-morning, in case school didn't challenge her enough. It didn't, and I didn't. During the day, she often got assigned to struggling learners as a kind of peer tutor, and the teacher remained unaware of the extent of Olivia's abilities for most of the year. I, having outsourced my daughter's education and intimidated by the fact that I taught her to write using the wrong alphabet script (so many ways to fail!), left schooling to school and retained only field trip Thursdays.
After much prayer, I decided that public school (which was also the catalyst for Sunday night trauma during the entire year ---- tears, tears, tears) was out unless she was chosen to attend a magnet school that promised project-based learning and multi-leveled, technology-rich learning environments. We didn't get chosen, so I amassed a curriculum that seemed to suit us, and threw my hat into the homeschooling ring. Then her name was pulled from a waiting list -- we accepted. Then we were chosen to parent infant triplets. So it all seemed like a gift, this school, these five, this year of hanging on together with professionals educating Olivia, encouraging her to grow and learn. Our teacher was sick --- on and off for nearly six of the nine month school year. They never had enough notice to call in a certified teacher, and I have a hard time putting my finger on anything she learned during first grade --- apart from what we learned as a family as we were newly grown.
But Josiah. Josiah didn't hate preschool. He struggles with some schoolish skills, and his teacher was solid, encouraging, playful, and sweet. So we headed toward his Kindergarten year optimistically. The babies had grown enough that Grandma could watch them one morning each week while I volunteered in the kindergarten and second grade classrooms. Remember, my goal for my kids was never to be as smart as they could become. Homeschool would have seemed an easy answer then. My parenting goal was to support them as they learned to love God and others --- especially the people who were difficult to love. Where else can you find such a high concentration of difficult to love people upon whom we could exercise love skills besides public school?
But have I equipped them to love difficult people (and aren't I often difficult? and aren't they?)? Second grade was an academic wash, but Olivia led her class in a campaign to put a well in Africa, a successful effort for which she openly (and rightly) gives God all the credit. Kindergarten inspired my son to offer his "personal best" every time. (We, gratefully, enjoyed the best teacher in the district for his inaugural year of public school.) Helping my children see the pathway to love with bullies, clubs, inclusions, exclusions, angry friends, and bad choices sent us to the Word and to prayer (two excellent places to head with your children). We got to observe, first hand, prayers answered as ways to love the people who hurt us became more apparent. But....it....has.....been......hard. And this year, I have felt extremely nigh unto a breaking point! My daughter confesses, every day, her shortcomings for at least 20 minutes on the ride home from school. She loses sleep to worry. She has stumbled upon filth during online research, despite the school's copious filters. She and her friends traded thigh measurements to see where they "fit." Each day I feel like I spend the entire evening wiping crap from her face and her heart with a gentle cloth and filling her tiny bucket to send her into tomorrow's thirsty, blazing world.

But she isn't mine. And we have so much water here. And the world is so thirsty. SO thirsty. How can I justify a family water party when there are so many parched babies in public school classrooms.....with no water....anywhere. And the call of the kingdom is higher than the call of maternity (right?). Though they are not at odds, when the choice stands between serving His priorities for His family or my priorities for mine....well, there doesn't seem to be a choice. (That verse about hating mother, father, children, etc. as prerequisite fitness for Kingdom service comes to mind). Furthermore, they are not my children. They are His. And children drink fresh, clean water because my little ones share (literally and figuratively), every day. That's why they often come home so empty.....and so parched. (And perhaps the sacrifice to love people, face up -- not just far away, is their inheritance.)

But I want to bring them home, in my heart. To let them learn; learning and teaching alongside them.

How can I when Jochabed and Hannah go before me? Consider Moses and Samuel. First Moses: to protect her second son from the scourge of persecution, Jochabed places him in a river in a basket in God's hands. Miriam (his big sister) follows him until Pharaoh's daughter pulls him from the river, and at Miriam's suggestion, allows him to be nursed by Jochabed and returned to her upon his weaning (which, according to Hebrew custom would have been around 3 years old). Then comes, what I consider one of the most heart-rending faith leaps imaginable (made more tangible to me in the three children entrusted to my care by another): Jochabed returns him to the palace. Knowing that he will be raised to worship idols, to participate in sacrifices and oracles and palace privilege built on the broken bodies of slaves --- of her own family --- she turns him, again, over to the care of God. Surely, if the voice of God can make its way through the clamour of Pharaoh's palace, it can pierce the din of public education.

Right?

What about Hannah? Persecuted by her husband's other wife and by the whole of Jewish society for her childlessness, Hannah prays for a child whom she promises to give back to the Lord, in his service. Eli accuses her of drunkenness as she prays. When she confesses her heart, he prays for God's blessing., and so enters Samuel. When Samuel is weaned (again, presumably around three), she returns him to the temple for a lifetime of service, seeing him thereafter only once a year during a ritual visit and to bestow upon Samuel a coat into which she wove a twelve months of loving handiwork. But to whom did she entrust her toddler? Certainly not to Eli, whose prior forays into parenting yielded two of the most heinous exploiters of the priesthood in history. Hopni and Phinneas caroused with worshipers in the temple court, ate the fat off the sacrifices, and generally desecrated and mocked the holy things of God -- with no apparent reproof from Eli, whose only appearances in scripture paint him as mostly gluttonous, lazy, and short-tempered. She turned him over to the care of her God, who raised him into a prophet and lover of God and God's people. Surely, if God's voice can call out to Samuel over the cacophony of carousing and neglect, then He can handle public school.

And the gift to my kids of faith in a God that can stand and heal and fill and feed, again and again --- doesn't that outweigh my instruction and their insulation? Doesn't it?
But I long to bring them home. Just for a rest. To learn and drink and go strong. But when will it be enough? And how many will succumb to thirst in the meantime?

(The encouraging points in Hannah's and Jochabed's story, and they are many, bolster up my enjoyment of the early years I share at home with my kids. Apparently, the first years, the nursing years, lay a foundation. And maybe they teach a love upon which God can reach through years of mess to build. Hopefully I haven't screwed that one up too much!)

Do the wounds our children receive in loving have greater purpose? They did for Mary's son. When it looked like the brutality of the world stole Him away --- there were divine arrangements being made for LOVE and eternal HOPE. But my children aren't Jesus, right? (Right!) But they have been chosen. And so have the 27 others in their public school classrooms. They just may not know it yet. And what if no one ever shows them --- shows them that they have been chosen to be loved?

Can anyone (please!) come up with an argument for homeschooling that is more sound?

Santastic

2010-12-23T12:07:00.002-05:00

Although Tarikwa refused, tenaciously, to smile, and though Taye would only get as close as Olivia's lap, I'd say this year's trip to the mall North Pole was a success. It certainly turned out a far....cry....better than last year!

Merry Christmas! We are all healthy and growing this year -- in more ways than we ever thought possible. I hope the same for all of you.

An Adoption Story

2010-10-12T21:46:00.002-04:00

I ran across this video through another friend's blog and thought I'd share it with you.

God Story: The Howerton Family from ROCKHARBOR on Vimeo.

Did you enjoy it? So did I!

Three's a crowd! Five's a pack! Seven's a Family!

2010-10-08T23:38:00.004-04:00

Today, we hit the park after picking up O and Jo. (These nicknames only apply to our pickup line chant. We don't call them O and Jo -- we just yell it out gleefully while we wait for teachers to march them to the car line:) A baby girl at the park (maybe 16 or 18 months old) took an interest in Girum, Tarikwa, and Taye, alternately. Tarikwa has a funny ambivalence about small kids outside of her triad. She's VERY nurturing. Very small babies, cousins, or children that seem unincluded get her full onslaught of empathetic tenderness. Other kids, though -- big kids or kids unfortunate enough to want a toy that Tarikwa has in her possession -- see a different side of sweet Tari...a silent, square-shouldered, eyes-averted tenacity that defies description. The little girl at the park was dancing on the line between compelling sweetness or stoic territorialism until Tarikwa played a little peekabo, and softened when it made the park baby laugh. I commented on their sweet interaction, "I think that little girl really likes playing with you Tarikwa." Tari smiled and then looked at me, confused for a moment, before asking, "Mama, where's her brothers and sisters?" It really struck me how much Tari's universe coalesces around her place in a constellation of family. Right now, she has only a limited understading of how intricate and peopled her constellation is. I'm just so grateful to be a part of it.

Our Life is a Fairy Tale....(Guess which one!)

2010-10-07T23:29:00.003-04:00

The other day, I grew frustrated with my two-year-old triplets. (I'm not sure why, but that sentence makes me laugh:) I'm not sure which scheme they were executing at the time of my frustration --- and they certainly know how to execute a scheme --- but it was something on the back porch, involving all three of them. Here's the part I'll never forget: After halting whatever danger may have attended their mischief, I launched into a moderate, but no doubt intense, lecture. (Let me characterize my toddler lectures, for clarity: pursed eyebrows, voice louder than normal -- though not generally a yell --, firm, punctuated hand gestures, etc.) Then, I turned away, and started to walk out into the yard. I turned back when I didn't hear six feet following me. They were all standing stock still with wide eyes and startled expressions. They, Taye looked over at Girum and Tari, began to stomp, slowly, with arms and legs stiff, wrinkled his eyebrows and said in a growly voice, "Feee, Fie, Fo, Fum...."

The other two stared back, and looked, then, at one another -- like they were agreeing with his assessment.

I cracked up.

It's good I can laugh at myself, because I never seem to run out of material!

Two Days of Famiversary Fun

2010-09-07T02:04:00.003-04:00

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Love and Support, Josh style

2010-06-29T22:53:00.003-04:00

Years (and years....and years) ago, I stared down the barrel of the biggest exam of my life. Pass it, and I would move on to candidacy toward my Ph.D. in English Literature. Fail, and the years (and years...and years) of coursework would fizzle into a post-MA trail of trials behind me, cheapening a million family sacrifices that had carried me so far. [One semester, when my work load was huge and Olivia (then just under a year) wanted no one but Mama, I often played on the floor with our baby while Josh read Jane Austen aloud (with character voices!) from the couch.] My amazing husband took my exam day off of work to care for our then toddler and baby, Olivia and Josiah. I woke up from a fitful sleep, dressed in "appropriate" clothes and a pair of shoes that I purchased for the occasion just because they said "Faulkner" on the sole. (Clearly, I was grasping for any edge I could get my shaky white knuckles around.) Just before I headed out the door, Josh stopped me, sat me down, and pushed play on our VCR. And this is what I watched:

Then, I walked out the front door while my husband and two babies clapped, slowly at first and then more quickly....until my car was out of sight. SO, as I crawl toward defending this dissertation, I run up against countless uninspired moments. Each meeting with my advisor becomes more critical, and I find my husband tagging inspirational speeches in his spare time...often. Tonight, he found one that I really enjoyed.

You can watch the original if you like, but I'm sold on the remake!

Anyway, if he doesn't have me screen Randy Pausch's entire last lecture (which he just might), I'd say the Miracle speech is an excellent contender for parting words before my next long walk to the car.

Father's Day Bonus

2010-06-22T06:27:00.002-04:00

Some of my best friends moved away. This is sad. Their whole family still brings me such joy from so far away. This is wonderful. Check out my friend (and former bandmate!:) Scott and their FANTASTIC son Miles rockin out in their ultra-popular garage band! You'll be so glad you did.

P.S. The gorgeous woman in white as the audience gets panned (you know the one I mean!) is my friend Mary, and although I never caught a glimpse of their sweet Annalee, I smile just thinking of her and the hours we have all spent playing together. Thank you, Mary, for the lifetime of friendship that we've shared in a few short years.

Father's Day

2010-06-20T03:18:00.001-04:00

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Don't worry, Girum. Mama and Daddy are coming.

2010-06-11T22:24:00.002-04:00

While Dad and Josiah went on a birthday celebration outing this evening, Olivia asked that we watched the babies' videos. (Our agency put together two amazing video versions of the story of their lives before we met, one of which includes our first meeting at the care center.) Girum was adamant about watching the one with Mama and Daddy in it, and so we watched the video together. The babies love to watch the video, though we only do it a few times a year. They love to identify themselves and each other (and some mystery baby they always call "Coco."). Tonight, though, Girum was less interested in finding himself and more interested in the story. He watched intensely (which is how he does everything). At one point, when tiny, little Girum was crying in his bed on the screen, my just-turned-two-year-old Girum sat up and said, "Girum is crying. Girum is sad. Don't worry Girum, Mama and Daddy are coming."

And we did.

Hand, Foot, and Mouth

2010-04-28T00:15:00.003-04:00

Hand, Foot, and Mouth is a disease, not a Dr. Seuss book, and my children have it (the disease -- but they also have a couple of Dr. Seuss books). It's just as gross and uncomfortable as it sounds but not as serious. 72 hours of fever, a few days of blisters (on.....as you might have inferred, one's hands, feet, and mouth), and the virus expires. At least that's the prognosis. From where I sit, among blistered hands, feet, and mouths, and blazing foreheads, 72 hours feels long. But, I'll take it. I know I've spent three days in worse ways.

My life as a Mistint

2010-04-21T12:42:00.006-04:00

Fact: I shop at the back of the store -- not a particular store, mind you, or any special store during sales or seasonal clearance -- every store -- all of the time. As a result, my walls are painted with other people's mistints, my favorite couch relocated from someone's front curb, my kids and I run around clad -- almost exclusively -- in other people's discarded clothing. My face wash, fancy shampoo, and hair accessories all came from either thrift stores or garage sales -- half-empty or expired. I buy torn things (because I'll likely tear them within a wear or two anyway) and stained things (because I'm the grossest person I know ....seriously......think: just months ago I had three babies in cloth diapers --- gah-rOHs). I splurge on snacktastic foods only when they're nearly expired and therefore half off. I buy ALL of the dairy-just-beyond-sell-by-dates, because, first of all, we consume more than 10 gallons of milk per week....but second, and more to the point, because it's cheap. Because I'M cheap. The walls around me gleam with the sheen of someone else's high-gloss not-quite-taupe, my dumpster-salvaged bookcases are crammed with thousands of children's books that have other peoples' names scrawled in the front cover, and my floors are littered with other peoples' discarded toys -- my kids' Christmas haul. This is not a political statement. It is a disease. And today, I realized while picking through overripe fruit, that I am sacrificing nothing to cater to my symptoms -- mistint is, and likely will remain -- my very favorite color.

P.S. Don't mistake my....mania....for a morality or martyrdom. I'm not frugal (frugal people buy only what they absolutely need at the lowest possible price -- I buy things I don't need just because they scream "low price!" I am the demographic targeted by the As-Seen-On-TV marketers -- I just don't call because they all involve "clubs," which I am notoriously bad at quitting (due to extreme laziness). And a martyr enjoys suffering -- I enjoy --- I THRILL at -- the procurement of extreme bargains -- no martyr here -- just a cheap-stuff junkie trolling store backs and ebay for my next fix.

Amharic for Olivia

2010-04-01T13:43:00.003-04:00

I have ordered a couple of books for my Amharic-hungry 8-yr-old! I picked them up on the site www.amharic.com, and I can't wait until I can go back and order more! She's been teaching herself phrases from our travel phrase book, and we all watch our Tsehai video (from www.tsehai.com -- and from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas:) together. The babies can count to ten, and my big kids can make it to 20. They've also incorporated as many words and phrases as they can understand into our everyday vocabulary. Olivia, though, has taken a particularly avid interest in learning Amharic (and in all of the traditions of Ethiopia, for that matter). She is directing our celebration of Fasika (Easter) this weekend and is already making big plans for Meskal! We gathered with other Ethiopian and Ethiopian adoptive families last month, and I think the experience has had a profound effect upon her appreciation for a culture that she has adopted as her own. Ameseganalu, Olivia.

Ethiopian Song and Dance

2010-03-29T16:03:00.006-04:00

This is a song we found on Youtube that we've been enjoying. If you know anything about the lyrics or game, I'd love for you to comment!

Zoo Story

2010-03-21T01:04:00.005-04:00

I love being out with my whole family!

No, no, no! Scary Christmas!

2009-12-19T10:39:00.006-05:00

This is the first year that the babies have been healthy enough to share in the glorious, much-coveted chance to sit on the lap of SANTA! Girum talked about the coming event with glee all day yesterday. He's crazy about "Sinta" and walks around in a Santa hat saying "Ho, ho, ho" and "Merry Christmas" a LOT (I should really post a video of that, shouldn't I?....Given my awesome gift from my little brother a few weeks ago, I ought to be able post one soon!). Tari and Taye were also excited, an excitement that only escalated when we came within view of Kris Kringle himself! Everything was fine, in fact, until the drop. Apparently, Santa's enchantment demands a three-foot viewing parameter...the magic turns to panic when that threshold is breached. So, for your holiday amusement, here's a photo and a little Christmas Quiz: Which of the people pictured below was most traumatized by Santa's Lap '09?

Here's a hint: We've had the same Santa -- a now retired Santa -- for 7 years running. This Santa is new. I believe this was his first foray into the world of jolly old St. Nick.

Did you guess Santa himself? If you did, you were correct! The minute Santa's helper whispered the word "triplets" in his jolly old ear, St. Nick began to look frightened and truly nauseous. As we approached, all semblance of character and mythology eroded, and a genuinely frightened old man told my children where to sit, whom to hold, and just how many pictures he was willing to try (2 shots). After we removed our screaming babies, Olivia's sweet letter (I wish we could have kept a copy...it was so sweet) and sparkling personality returned him to his moderately-Santabulous self (Josiah didn't stick around long to chat), but he kept muttering (seriously) for several minutes about the pitch of the screams and the number of children...and the volume..."the sheer volume." He was truly quivering...like the fabled bowl full of jelly. So if your house gets missed this Christmas, chalk it up to Post Traumatic Stress disorder and send your best wishes to the north pole for a quick recovery.

On an upside (and there are a lot of upsides here), all of my children were smiling and fully enamored with Santa Clause by the time we walked through the exit gate of his....lair. And this morning, we've had an absolutely wonderful Christmas. I hope you and yours enjoy the same this year.

Merry Christmas.

Still sick, or sick again? Tom(ae)to, Tom(ah)to.....PLEASE call this whole thing off!

2009-11-04T08:31:00.002-05:00

I'm sick. But I'm getting better. But I'm sick. We seemed to have kicked aside our H1N1 long about last Monday, but Josiah came down with a formidable fever a couple of nights later, and I soon followed suit. (Thanks to our wonderful friends Christine, Kenji, Maika, and Reina for including Olivia in their trick or treat outing and to Grandma's candy run and Daddy's amazing energy and Netflix movie selection for redeeming the holiday for my housebound son). The consensus among medical professionals is that we (Josiah, Girum -- whose ears are infected, and me) have residual infections and not a resurgence of the virus. SO I'm being treated for pneumonia, and Josiah seems to be moving toward better health, and Girum appears to have conquered his ear infection. I will say that I'm spending larger portions of my day upright and alert than I was through the weekend, which is a good sign! Hopefully, we're all on the mend.

Now for some context: In the last week, our drier has broken, our cabinet broke, Taye's head sustained a stitchable (but ultimately glued) cut on the edge of the hearth, our vacuum belt broke, and -- most notably -- the pump, bladder, and pipes of our house-supplying well had to be replaced, leaving us four days without water == all icing on the swine flu cake. How about some input on this one!

I don't know how to create a survey, but if I could, I would ask: Do you think our strange rush of misfortune is:

A. A sinister attack by the forces of darkness to derail us from good?

B. Kharmic retribution for the choices I made and people I hurt between the ages of 16 and 21 (sorry, mom)?

C. Not actually misfortune at all.....seriously, consider the list of things that did NOT go wrong and people who did NOT end up in the hospital and jobs and relationships and hopes that were not lost, crushed, or otherwise mutilated and STOP YOUR WHINING!

I vote C! All things considered, life is pretty fantastic! Consider this the spring thaw in the winter of my discontent! My next post will be BLINDINGLY sunny:)

7/7

2009-10-24T09:23:00.002-04:00

That's right, seven out of seven of us have the bug, in various stages. I've moved two steps back from death's threashold to his front stoop. Josh shares the step with me. Josiah lags half a step behind us with Girum a half step behind him (both of those boys still struggle with coughs and fevers on and off). Tarikwa and Taye are in uncharted territories. Haven been treated prophylactically (it just means protectively, in medical terms) with Tamaflu, a dosage just upped to full strength since they've produced symptoms, I have no idea what their run will look like. Hopefully short and not so debilitating. Did I mention that Olivia is off the porch completely and playing in death's front yard? (This is, clearly, where the whole metaphor begins to break down...but you get the idea). She's not well, as evinced by her nagging cough, but she is not, by the standards of this household, sick any longer. Yay! Four kids a day are receiving breathing treatments right now, four times a day, and, thankfully, they seem to help a lot. We're holding on and holding together....and watching a lot of TV.

Update

2009-10-20T11:03:00.002-04:00

Five of us down, now, with the pig plague. Tarikwa (whose tender lungs are always my greatest concern when ever respiratory illnesses take hold) and Taye remain active and feverless. The rest of us.....suffer. I think this disease and its impact on our household is best expressed in the following mathematical equation:

(7-2) x 7(days)/103.4 = H1N1

I'm not including the fraction of stomach symptoms/two bathrooms, because my math's not so good, but you get the idea.

Take care, everyone, and avoid contact with cute snouts and curly tails. (I totally get that the illness has nothing to do with actual pigs, but how often do circumstances allow you to implicate farm animals in matters of personal dispair? Not often enough.)

Days of swine [flu] and [stuffy] noses.

2009-10-18T21:07:00.003-04:00

Yep. The fevers and the coughs and the weakness and the achiness and the plague flag flying above our home all come together in two letters and two numbers that never before seemed quite so menacing: H1N1!

A few days ago, I talked to an overworked but polite nurse, who, after listening to my description of Olivia's illness, offered this assessment: "It sounds like she has the flu that's been going around."
My (eyebrow raised) response -- "By 'that flu that's been going around,' do you mean the one that I keep reading about and seeing on television?"
"Her symptoms are consistent," she replied, followed by instructions on how to "treat the symptoms" and "watch for warning signs" (i.e., dehydration or respiratory distress -- neither of which we're seeing to any concerning degree, gratefully).

I'd like to quip, now, about the overblown, overexposed virus that has infested the airwaves almost as insidiously as it has infested our bodies....I'd like to joke about the bright side of sickness and the quiet of a household besieged....I'd like to offer you a candid glimpse into the lives of the two sweet, couch-ridden big kids whose travels abroad (to school and such) have underpinned those letters and numbers with such meaning....I'd like to, but I feel....a cough coming on. So I should sleep.

So far, no sick babies! Barring some seriously thick snot (which is only to be expected this time of year) seeping from their otherwise perfect noses, Girum, Tarikwa, and Taye seem to have staved off the scourge of '09! Let's hope they keep going strong!

What a MESS-kal!!!

2009-10-10T11:03:00.005-04:00

THE DREAM: Each Meskal we will celebrate the holiday by purchasing daisy seeds to be planted the following spring, daisies that will be harvested during the following Meskal as representative decorations in keeping with the inclusion of Meskal daisies as traditional decoration during the important Ethiopian celebrations. Each year we will enjoy time around a backyard fire talking about new beginnings and the cross of Christ, correlative to the Meskal fires in Ethiopia that -- topped with crosses -- blaze across the countryside in celebrations of redemption and rebirth. (We won't, however, top our bonfire with a Meskal cross, as burning crosses on the lawn....just....doesn't....translate...culturally.) We will copy the family DVD that we create each year to send back to Ethiopia, for viewing by the adoption-related government officials and by our children's birth relatives, and distribute it with a Meskal letter to family and friends, in keeping with the tradition of our childrens' birth region to honor and celebrate milestone achievements during the holiday (elected officials and newly married couples are "presented" to the community during Meskal in the Hadiya zone. We will mark, like other families often do in Christmas letters, major transitions or milestones in the lives of our members in our Meskal mailings). We will, since our Meskal celebration and our Famiversary are so close in time, share memories, videos, pictures of, and gifts we purchased for our children in Ethiopia and will remember the people in Ethiopia with whom we are indellibly connected during the holiday season. Etc., etc., etc.

THE REALITY: The daisies we planted last spring grew beautifully in their starter containers but never made it into the garden and thereby wilted and died. We never obtained a firebowl in which we could legally light a Meskal blaze, and the law prohibits a lawn fire within city limits. My brother made an absolutely beautiful video of our family, which was sent to Ethiopia as a part of our Post-placement documentation this year....but it takes a while to make copies of that video....and we don't really keep DVRs around the house. Maybe we'll send a few out in the coming months with a late Meskal letter. I hadn't decided on gifts for this year, so the kids probably would have missed them altogether if Olivia hadn't insisted on wearing her Ethiopian clothes. Last year's clothes are altogether too small. I had figured on these outfits working a year or so from now, but I pulled them out at her insistence and am so glad I did! They fit well and would clearly be too small next year! We planned a trip to an Ethiopian Evangelical church service in Indianapolis. We made that trip. We arrived to find out that the service time had been moved back by several hours, and we had missed it altogether, so we played on the adjascent playground until we felt comfortable strapping our kids back into their carseats for the long haul home. Just before we strapped them in, dejected by our many failures to realize the Meskal dream, Josh mused, "so this must be the part where I say...in voiceover....'and that's when we realized, that the true meaning of Meskal is just being together'."

So here we are, together on the Meskal that almost wasn't.

P.S. I'll try to find a link that describes the Ethioipian holiday of Meskal for a future post, but here's my understanding in brief: "Meskal" translates as "cross." The people of Ethiopia believe that they possess a fragment of the true cross of Christ, but the holiday itself, which corresponds to the mass blooming of millions of bright golden daisies across the countryside, extends its celebration to the rebirth and new beginning that the cross engendered and implies. In Ethiopia, it is marked by a gathering of family and time of celebration around a table and around Meskal fires (and it is the sole holiday that we were asked to honor and remember by the babies' birth father). I love it, and will try each year to honor it more fully.

Until then, happy belated Meskal!

Super Duper Soccer Man

2009-09-17T23:38:00.005-04:00

I'd like to inaugurate a new Superhero in light of my husband's recent two-kids-playing-soccer-on-the-one-day-a-month-when-mom-teaches (note: it was also soccer picture day, and both kids played at the same time on fields a mile apart). GRACIOUSLY, my awesome mom made her way down to help field the insanity, but that terrific help in no way diminishes Josh's Superhero valiance.

Here's my mom's charge for the morning:

And here (by his own insistence) was Josh's:

Never, in the history of time, has a man looked hotter.

Joshua, you have my heart.

Little Babes on the Prairie

2009-09-17T22:37:00.004-04:00

We ventured to Conner Prairie earlier this week with my sister and her two beautiful children. Jonah is just a couple of months older than our babies, and my kids ADORE Jonah and little baby Ruth. What a terrific family! (Note: my parents gained seven new grandchildren over the course of the last year...seriously....when we get together, diaper companies rejoice, bus boys cower, and our kids have a ridiculously good time!)

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I'm not much of a montager -- I have no idea why this download cut off half of the montage.....clearly, I have no idea what I'm doing in general. But sometimes, a girl just has to montage.

Isn't she lovely?

2009-09-09T05:06:00.006-04:00

Tarikwa tolerated my first attempt at a hairdo this week....well

my first vaguely successful attempt. Efforts one and two could

hardly even be called "attempts" because their results lasted a

total of three combined minutes. A VERY sweet friend brought

over some supplies on Friday and gave me the confidence to try

again. I don't know what I'd do without her.

SPEAKING of VERY sweet....

Our first try.

The secont attempt.

And through all of this, Tarikwa was SO patient. She sat quite still

through multiple fingerplays through the first effort and part of

a Your Baby Can Read video during effort two.

(Thanks for the videos, Grandma! They have helped me shower,

cook, breathe, and now hairdress!)

Enter Anne

2009-09-03T22:19:00.005-04:00

Two nights ago I made an introduction I've been anticipating since the first weeks of my first pregnancy. Olivia.....Anne....Anne....Olivia. Red braids bouncing, eyes alight, she swooped into our evening and stole my daughter's heart as she stole mine a zillion years ago. Welcome, Anne...with an E. We were in the depths of despair without you, and now you've brought us such scope for imagination. (Josiah's not swept away, yet....but he has croup....so perhaps when he is able to process a little more oxygen......)

Well....

2009-06-03T21:52:00.002-04:00

I am well. Josh is well. The kids are well. All is well.
Olivia's at her first sleep over with some very good friends after a wonderful last day of first grade.
Josiah's snuggled up on his dad's lap watching "How it's Made" on TV.
All three babies are sleeping soundly after a very full, fun day.
I just turned in my grades.
Sweet breathing in the bedrooms, comfortable laughter in the basement, a living room full of fun a few blocks away, and no further entanglements!
Poetry!

2009-06-03T21:50:00.001-04:00

Photos Phrom a Phamily Phriend

2009-05-19T00:31:00.008-04:00

These pictures (above) were taken by a friend of my family and wonderful professional photographer, Angie Jackson. She was so comfortable with my kids and so easy going that no one even noticed all of the fantastic work she was doing during our visit! As soon as I have a web address for her, I'll link it here. Until then, look up Angie Jackson in Southern Indiana if you want phabulous photos like these! (I know I get a little....excessive....about the ph/f thing. It's just PHUN!)

Easter Pictures

2009-04-18T12:23:00.006-04:00

My mom took some pictures of our family. The kids are decked out in outfits that My Mother-in-Law picked up for them, and I think the kindnesses of both grandmas make these pictures a lot of fun. So, I'm sharing them!

Where IS tall man?

2009-02-03T23:27:00.005-05:00

Each morning, a nice Episcopalian minister I met in the park stops by our house with his three daughters to take Olivia to school (one of the zillion kindnesses strangers have shown us since the triplets came home). Generally, I juggle babies, breakfast, and books while we scramble to make it to the driveway on time. A few weeks ago, Olivia and I had a rare seven minutes of alone time before the minister was scheduled to arrive -- no babies or brothers awake -- just bagels, fruit, milk and time together...

"Yesterday, my friend said that your middle finger is dirty."

Pause.

"She did?"

"Why is it dirty, mom?"

Seriously, Olivia? Just seven minutes until the good reverend pulls up in his minivan, and you want to dig for the mother lode?

"Well, it's not...dirty...really. Not by itself, anyway"

"It's not?" Middle finger goes up. Further explanation NECESSARY. CLOCK TICKING.

"Let me think of how to explain this." P A U S E.

"Okay. The devil doesn't have any power to create...." Internal voice screams, You're bringing up the DEVIL?!? In all of Olivia's seven years, I cannot recall mentioning the devil.....ever.....until this moment....."And he's bent"...I forged forward...."on confusing people about right and wrong and good and bad....in fact...his whole job seems to be convincing people that bad is actually good and that good is actually bad. But, since he has no power to create, he"....apparently he's a 'he'...."accomplishes this confusion by mixing up the way people think about already created things. And since everything God created is good, he has a very big job. So, the best he can do is try to make the special, precious, and private things from God's creation seem....regular. For example, you know how it kind of annoys me when you go on and on about your 'butt'...and how we have always called it a 'bottom?' Bottoms are private and kind of special, and the word 'butt' seems so....regular....that it makes it seem rude."

"But we don't get in trouble for saying 'butt' at school."

I realize that I'm sounding very denim jumper at this point.....my kid just gave me the span of a commercial break to explain the denigration of physical love by a broken culture......which will INEVITABLY lead to the full blown TALK.....and THE CLOCK IS STILL TICKING.....

"Right. Because bottoms are just kind of special...in a way. So making them seem regular with a word like 'butt' doesn't really seem that dirty...just annoying. The more special and precious something is....the more dirty and bad it seems when a word or a symbol or a hand sign makes it regular. Okay, so the middle finger....which is not dirty by itself....is a sign...a kind of symbol....that stands for a word that makes something SUPER precious and special seem really regular.....and so people think of it as really.....REALLY dirty"

Then, I proceeded to tell her the story about when I first learned that the middle finger was dirty -- I was in first grade and an older kid on the bus told me to stick it up. I got called to the front by the bus driver, who, once he figured out how my vulgar gesture came about, snarled, "ask your parents," and let me off with a very confusing warning.

Two minutes to go.

Confusion on her face.....staring with wrinkled forehead at her upswung middle finger.

"Don't ever stick it up."

How's that for cutting to the chase?

Internal voice scoffs, there's no way that's going to work.

Internal voice is right.

"So what's the word?"

"What's that, Olivia?"

ONE MINUTE TO GO!!!

"What's the word that the middle finger stands for?"

Parent, woman, parent like the wind!

"I'll tell you when you get home from school." Nice. "Mr. Bob will be here any minute" I'm using a pseudonym for Olivia's ride because I'm not sure that an Episcopalian minister would be comfortable with the theological liberties I've taken. "Get your coat, and grab your backpack. And don't stick up your middle finger today. We'll talk about it more this evening."

She turns to wave on her way to the van with all fingers extended.....except her middle finger.

(I call Josh.....)

That night, she asks. "So what's the word?" She didn't forget.

"What word?" Neither did I.

"The word that the middle finger stands for! I thought all day about asking my friends, but then I decided to wait since you told me you'd tell me. So what is it?"

"Okay, Olivia....let's go to another room so that we can talk privately"

Deep breath. Look at my daughter. "Olivia, the word is >>>>"
Yep, I said it.

">>>>?"
And so did she.

"Yes....and never say it again."

"Really, I can never EVER say >>>>?"

"Never EVER"

"Can I say, 'Please don't ever say >>>> to me.' to someone else?"

"No, Olivia. You must never say it. No matter how you're using it, people will begin to think that you don't believe that the special and precious things are truly special and precious if you use that word."

"But can I at least say >>>> to Grandma? She KNOWS that I believe special and precious things are special and precious, and she would never think anything bad about me."

Which is true....but if Grandma heard this kid throwing around the BOMB like I was hearing it in this conversation....she might wonder (or at least laugh).

"No, Olivia. You cannot say it to anyone. Because it refers to something SO SUPER special and precious, people think of it as VERY VERY dirty. In fact, if you said it at school, you would get in a LOT of trouble."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Just for saying the word >>>>?" Now that one was purely gratuitous, Olivia.

"Yes, just for saying that word."

Big pause. Internal voice starts congratulating me on my golden moment of mothering.

"So what's so special and precious? What does >>>> stand for?"

Internal voice chokes.

"You know, Olivia, I will tell you. And I'll tell you right now, if you really want to know right now. But this thing is so special and precious that I've always wanted our conversation about it to be special as well. I have always thought that I could take you out to a special dinner and talk with you and answer all of your questions when you turned seven." This statement is mostly true. The "seven" age was chosen on the fly because we were only four days from Olivia's seventh birthday....making the occasion momentous but not remote. "If you want to know right this minute, though, I will tell you. But if you're willing to wait just a few days, I'd like to take you out for a special date, just the two of us, and tell you all about it."

Long pause, "I'll wait."

"Good. I'm glad. And I'll look forward to it." That statement was also mostly true....

(I talk to Josh, again. He thinks we will probably be getting a call from her school about her foul mouth within the week. He's glad I'm the one taking her on the date. He thinks she seems very young. She is, I concede, but I'd rather have school friends competing with MY version of the truth than run behind them trying to convince her of it after she has heard theirs. Besides, I assure him, she already really knows most of it....I'm just filling in the logistical blanks.

Which is true. Both of my kids have a good grasp of their own physiology, the growth, development, and exit path of a new baby, and a general idea of the exigencies that demand the involvement of both a man and a woman.....they just don't know....exactly....how it all......fits together.....

Until now.)

A week or so later, I sat in the backseat of our car outside of the Mexican restaurant Olivia had chosen (I hadn't really thought through the private nature of our conversation when I designed the "date"....which is why we ended up in the back seat......please, no jokes) and filled in the blanks.

And I was, as I am ever, astonished by her depth of understanding and maturity. After she had worked out the logistics of the process, she was most concerned with understanding how to go about choosing a husband.

We took that part of the conversation into the Mexican restaurant, where, I whipped out two containers of play-dough....blue and yellow, I think....and did this object lesson they talked about one week at Mops while we waited to eat. She mashed the colors together while we talked about why I chose to marry her Daddy, at which point I asked her to put the blue play-dough back in the blue container and the yellow back in the yellow. When she looked at me like I was nuts (a look I was surprised she forestalled until THIS point in our talk), I told her that the same thing happens when two people come together....which is why this special precious thing is so worth keeping special and precious...(I did not go into the disgusting, nondescript color of playdough that has been mashed with a lot of other colors....or the way it gets crusty and dry if it's left exposed.....I imagine I'll bust the playdough out again when she gets ready to date and we really get down to business with THE talk:)

This post is a whirlwind, isn't it? So is parenting Olivia! While I was standing in our basement, hurling the Mother of All Curse words back and forth with my daughter, I kept thinking back to her tiny little voice singing "Where is thumpkin" and to the innocence of tall man. I miss tall man.

Incidentally, Olivia now waves comfortably with her WHOLE hand...all fingers extended. We worked through all of that...on another day.

Hallow-rewind

2009-02-02T00:12:00.008-05:00

My friend Christine (usually not a cat.....except every Halloween....when she usually is a cat:) shared some of the pictures she's taken of our kids together this year. When you look at the pictures, you'll find (as I have.....again and again...) how much more she has shared with me -- with my kids and my family -- than pictures. Every day (EVERY day), I am grateful for this friend whose heart inspires me, whose kindness overwhelms me, and whose gentle, ready, authentic smile makes me feel relevant and for her tremendously creative, fun, gorgeous girls who bring so much joy into all of our lives.

And since she shared these pictures with me, I thought I'd share them with you!

SO, here's the crew, ready to hit the streets for tricks or treats.....

And here are Olivia and Maika, Gabby from High School Musical and a Jasmine-whose-mom-makes-her-wear-a-t-shirt-to-cover-up-the-otherwise-scandalous-and-cold-places-revealed-by-this-costume deliberating over our route.

And one of my all-time favorite Halloween pairings: Reina/Cinderella, who sweetly and secretly revealed to each of us at some point during the evening that her fantastic hair was ACTUALLY a wig, and my sweet, sweet Big Bird, who (following a months-long stretch of constant fear for Josiah, fear....of everything, marked by spontaneous but brief -- but loud -- screaming) decided to overcome his run of anxiety by dressing as the most frightening creature he could conjur. First, that creature was a vampire, complete with lots of blood. Then, it was a supervillain. Then, a supervillain DRESSED UP as a superHERO (because, according to Josiah, "what could be scarier than that?"). The frightening creature evolved through the week, but the determination to scare remained constant. We have an enviable collection of costumes, thanks to the generosity and sewing prowess of fantastic grandparents, aunts, and uncles, which allows for a great deal of Halloween flexibility. So, when Josiah hit the dress-up closet with plans to emerge as something bloody and horrifying, I was braced for anything from the long list of possibilities he had accumulated throughout the week. I was not prepared for Big Bird. Big Bird with a raised eyebrow and resigned half-smile that told me Josiah was not quite ready to terrorize the neighborhood. He would rather be chasin the clouds away, on his way to where the air is sweet. I love Big Bird.

And how about these cuddly little cuties!? Tarikwa and Taye seemed to enjoy the walk and (at least for awhile) tolerated the fuzzy costumes like troopers.

And my wonderful Girum, who -- though he didn't get one of the plush garage sale costumes -- really works his puppy hat, I think.

And....the blowout! In the faces of these angels you may catch a glimpse of the intensity that accompanies a night of as much candy as you want to eat. At our house, we have a bucket of candy that the children get to choose one piece from every day -- it's the very creatively monikered Candy-for-the-Day Bucket (I'm trying to teach them indulgence in moderation....it will probably land them all in therapy -- a statement that could probably caption most of my parenting inspirations). On Halloween (and a handful of days throughout the year), the Candy for the Day restriction is lifted, and they gorge themselves -- no holds barred. It's a very intense time.

Especially for Josiah, who goes on a tearing, tasting, twitching, crashing sugar trip each year on this very special day of days.

Someone is waking up, so I've gotta run. But just so you don't forget how sweet life really is -- Happy Hallow-rewind!

Some Christmas Miracles

2008-12-15T23:26:00.008-05:00

Well, I'll probably get around to writing the posts that I have mused over this week someday (one on the fact that every person is absolutely exotic, and one that I can't remember right now -- which means that I probably never will [I just remembered it -- note to self "tall man"]), but for now, let me share my day. First of all, you should know that "It's a Christmas miracle" is one of my husband's favorite phrases to throw around during this season at bizarre (and often inappropriate) times [be advised, we are talking about the Hallmark movie of the week/nightly news feature story "Christmas miracle" that he's mocking -- not the actual birth of Christ. He's a very good man, my husband.] So, in keeping with his bizarrity (not a word, but should be), I'm going to share three of today's Christmas miracles.

1. Josh's passion for the song "November Rain" seems to be ebbing! Each evening, he plays and sings for the kids for an hour or so -- they love it (and he's actually kind of awesome now, after all of that practice). For the last month, however, about HALF of each music hour has been occupied by the Guns 'n Roses song "November Rain".......seriously. I cannot tell you how unproud (not ashamed.....just unproud -- this should also be a word) I feel when my four year old walks through the kitchen belting (Axl Rose growl notwithstanding) "I guess you need some time....on your own....oohhhhh, everybody needs some time....on their own......" etc. And as of today, I am almost positive that we have migrated back to a welcome cocktail of Bob Dylan, folk, classic rock, and whatever random tabs he has stuffed at the bottom of his case ---- along with some beautiful new chord progressions all his own! This fantastic turn of musical events is truly a Christmas miracle.

2. Two of the teethers teethed! Four of my children are in the process of cutting teeth right now. Olivia's smile is an endearing, captivating melange of baby and adult teeth, just making their way to the surface of her grin, and the babies, of course, still sport shiny gums in every radiant, wild peekaboo laugh. Today, however, Tarikwa and Girum BOTH cut bottom left incisors, quelling, I hope, some of the obvious discomfort that has disturbed their nights (and continues to plague Taye --- come on Taye teeth!). Another Christmas miracle.

3. The brilliant Aunt Katie and fabulous (generous, magnificent....imagine, here, a long string of effusive adjectives --- all appropriate and ultimately understated) Grandma L. managed to get all seven members of my family, dressed up, gathered, and awake for a Christmas picture! In spite of the insanity that ALWAYS attends our family photos, they took a handful of pictures that I will cherish, and managed to walk away with only minor evidence of post traumatic stress. Thank you thank you thank you for these wonderful pictures!

Find a way to make all seven of us smile all at once for a picture, and I will believe in Santa Claus!

Match Point

2008-12-06T09:20:00.006-05:00

Josiah loves to match the people he loves. He loves to love the same things they do, wear the same color, or share the same opinion as Josh, or I, or Olivia, or a friend. Like my husband (and my father), Josiah does all of his worrying on the front side of change, and during his delliberation about his new baby brothers and sister, still unknown, not "matching" bothered him...a lot. I first learned of his struggle after a free swim session at our public pool.

Josiah had played with a little baby sitting in a stroller near where I was changing. In vintage Josiah style, he had the little one cracking up at his ninja-warrior dance moves. When I took his hand to leave, I told him how proud I was that he was so gentle and fun for babies. He said, "I love babies." [Big pause.] "And I really like light-skinned babies best."

I said, "It's okay that you feel that way, Josiah. And I'm so glad you told me. Can you tell me why you like light-skinned babies better?"

"Well....they just seem more.....powerful."

Powerful? It took me a minute to reign myself in from the vortex of white privelege/white shame and race theory that "powerful" dragged me toward, but Josiah's reference point for power, of course, includes none of that language. Power, for him, involves the force, and web-slinging, and super-human strength. I quickly realized that, at four, he might well me that white babies can fly, so I asked: "What does powerful mean?"

"Powerful....you know.....like me. We match."

Matching, for Josiah, is so....powerful.

We had just received the pictures of the triplets, and (despite the fact that we had spent hours looking at pictures of people from Ethiopia together) I think the fact that our babies would have skin that was different from his hit him kind of suddernly.

"Are you worried, Josiah, that you might not love the new babies because you won't match them?"

"Yeah"

"I can totally understand that. You know, I used to worry about that, too."

"You did?"

"Yep. But I'll bet we'll find lots of ways that you match them once we're all together. One thing that will match right away is that you'll both be in our family.....you'll be brothers and sisters. And, after awhile, we'll probably find other ways that we match. Maybe they'll like Ninja Turtles."

"Do you think they'll like Ninja Turtles, Mom?"

"Maybe, or dinosaurs."

"I could share my dinosaurs with them!"

"Exactly, so it's okay that you feel the way that you feel about light-skinned babies. I think that you'll find lots of ways to match your new brothers and sister once we're together as a family. When I was a little girl, I wanted to bring a dark-skinned baby home from the hospital after my mom had our little sister. I just liked the way she looked. But you know how much I love Aunt Karen. She is my sister..."

"Do you still?"

"What's that Josiah?"

"Do you still like dark-skinned babies better?"

AHHHHHH, now we're at the heart of it.

"I love my children. I LOVE your light skin, Josiah, because it's on you, and I love you. And I LOVE our new babies' dark skin because it's on them, and they are my children. Your skin is absolutely perfect for you. You make your skin beautiful. And the new babies' dark skin is perfect for them, and they make their skin beautiful." ....on and on.....etc., etc..

So he was satisfied....for that day.

A few weeks after we were home, I overheard him run into the kitchen where Girum was playing in his exersaucer. (I was changing someone or feeding someone in the adjascent living room) whispering, "Girum, I prayed and prayed for God to make one of my new brothers look like me, and God gave me you" (people often comment on the fact that Girum and Josiah sort of resemble each other. I guess he sees it too)......I started to smile....matching solved, right? We've arrived. Josiah left the room and then scurried back in to add, "but I still like light-skinned babies better...." So, maybe a little more ground is left to cover....

I write ALL (ALLLL) of that as background information for a conversation that happened last week. Josiah bolted up the stairs (he bolts everywhere....I think that's part of being "powerful" :), ran over to where I was holding Girum, laid his cheek against Girum's so that both of their faces shown up at me, and said, "Look, Mama. Girum and I match perfectly. We both love you!" And then he scurried off.

I can't get that moment out of my mind.

Both Girum and Josiah are particularly attached to me, in their own ways. Both boys calm in my arms and look at me with a disarming adoration that NO ONE deserves. And now, Josiah thinks they match.....with a force stronger than superpowers.

Overwhelming.

And, now, I keep thinking of the ways that all of us match because of Whom we adore-- in various shades and flavors of adoration....we powerfully match.

What's in a name?

2008-12-01T21:17:00.008-05:00

I'm too tired to plunge as deep as the Shakespeare passage that I pulled my title from tonight, but I keep talking to people (wonderful family people, mostly) who are interested in the origins and meanings of my kids' names. SO, I thought I'd share. Here they are, in the order of their birth:

Olivia Anne

Olivia -- We didn't name Olivia until two days after she was born, just before we left the hospital. After jostling around Zion, Elizabeth, and Olivia, we chose the name that seemed to suit our beautiful daughter. A name that, with its nod to the Olive tree and (by extension) branch, symbolizes peace, hope, and victory. Also, I was drawn to the name's "Ya" sounding suffix -- the same "from God" sound affixed to the names of the prophets. If my daughter's life was to embody prophesy, I wanted it laden with hope, peace, and victory -- messages, also, that still spill from Jesus's time on the Mount of Olives. So many layers to that one, no?

Anne -- Another biblical reference (Anne is a modification of Hannah -- Two great Hannah's came immediately to mind -- Samuel's mother, whose mother-prayer got answered, and Hannah the prophetess, who immediately recognized Jesus as the Messiah in the New Testament). More specific to Olivia, though, Anne draws upon the middle names of her grandmother (my awesome mom) and her magnificent Aunt Katie -- and later, though we didn't know it at the time, she would bear the middle name of her inimitable Aunt Valerie. THIS is profoundly good company to be among! We chose to spell it with an "E" because -- well -- because of Anne of Green Gables.

Josiah John

Josiah -- Josh actually picked this name. He liked its singularity and its consonance with his own first name. Josiah was also one of the few good kings recorded in Israel's Old Testament history -- taking the throne at the age of 8 and revolutionizing his failing people by turning everyone's eyes back toward the law. Not a bad heritage, eh? (Note, please, the "ya" suffix on this one, too -- an emergent pattern? perhaps.)

John -- John is my Dad's name. If you could only meet my father, then you would need no further explanation. If you know him, then you are wondering why I even needed to explain this much.

Girum Samuel

Girum -- Girum means "Amazing" and "Surprising" in Amharic (the national language of Ethiopia). Birhanu (the triplets' birth father) chose this name because he identified the birth of triplets (a first in his region) as both amazing and surprising!

Samuel -- Samuel is my paternal Grandfather's middle name. He bore a quiet integritiy and patient wisdom that I hope will translate into similar gifts for my own children. He is well worth being named after!

Tarikwa Rebekah/Rebecca/Rebekah/Rebecca --

Tarikwa -- Tarikwa means "This is her story" in Amharic. Like Girum, Tarikwa's name reflects her father's astonishment at the miracle of the triplets' birth, an event that impressed him as integral to the life story of this little girl. So much love is inscribed in her still short story already!

Rebecca/Rebekah -- Can you tell that we still haven't settled on the spelling for this one yet? Tarikwa gets her middle name, first, because of my little sister, Karen Rebecca, whose impact upon my life could never be measured or recounted in words. Also a person well worth being named for! I also have two wonderful aunts named Rebecca, whose love for this little girl will always be a part of our family's fabric. But how to spell it? I really like the biblical transliteration of the Hebrew Rebekah -- I like the way it looks with the name Tarikwa. "Tarikwa," however, is spelled a number of different ways on our paperwork, and I conjoined this Rebekah spelling to a different Tarikua spelling --- with the "kwa" ending, I'm not sure which spelling flows best. ......hmmmmmm....

Taye Stephen/Steven/Stephen/Steven

Taye -- Taye means "He has been witnessed," or, as one Ethiopian friend explained, "His life is an event so important that it cannot help but be witnessed." Again, Birhanu gave Taye this name because of the overwhelming miracle of his childrens' birth. His beauty and joyful spirit certainly bear out all the significance ascribed to his lovely name!

Stephen/Steven -- We struggle with spellings, don't we? Steven reflects the names of Josh's wonderful father and the middle name of his amazing big brother. The love and the spirit of these important people have helped my husband to become the fantastic father and man that he is, and the same love that nourished my husband continues to encourage all of us -- every day. A wonderful name with a wonderful heritage.....now if we could only settle on a spelling:)

(I think we have to solidify the spellings this week -- the kids' green cards are in, and we are preparing to file all of the stateside paperwork to confirm their citizenship and change their names).

Here's a fact about the babies' names that we didn't know until we met Birhanu -- Their names, in the order of their birth, form a grammatically correct sentence in Amharic. "Girum Tarik(ua) Taye" means "I have witnessed the most amazing story" or "An amazing story has been witnessed here (by me)."

Interestingly, on the day we received their referral, while we were still months from knowing about the sentence their names actually formed, Olivia and I worked all of the kids' names into a family sentence that we walked around saying for the entire "referral week": "I have witnessed the most amazing story of hope, peace, victory, and a boy king!"

What a great first sentence in the story of our lives together!

Tagged!

2008-11-17T21:44:00.004-05:00

I'm it! My friend Dani "tagged" me (that's blog lingo for a fun, circulating post prompt). I have been asked to post the fourth picture from the fourth file on my computer so here goes:

It's Josiah! We must be at a children's museum somewhere -- I'm not sure what adult is attached to the arm that's playing with him, but I have no doubt that everyone involved was having a blast. Thanks for tagging me, Dani! I would like to pass this fun along to my entire travel group! If you travelled with us, consider yourself tagged. Fourth picture. Fourth file.

The Election

2008-11-05T22:21:00.008-05:00

Yesterday was the election. Grinning broadly, nervous hands poised to display their photo IDs, my kids approached the poll. As they neared the door, a man (my husband) disrupted their path with bags of pretzels and an exhortation to "Vote for the jungle gym! A vote for the jungle gym is a vote for exercise!" This in spite of the fifteen crayon clad posters on notebook paper throughout our house urging us to "Vote for the Pop-up Camper!" "Pop-up Campers ROCK!" Some with fabulous artwork to boot! In conjunction with the campaign speeches from the night before and Olivia's spontaneous Halloween candy handout on Sunday, punctuated with "Vote Pop-up Camper!" and "We appreciate your vote for the Pop-up camper!", the campaign itself might have deterred a lest ardent polster, but not Josh! He was at the door in full force! The vote would have been unanimous, too, were it not for my voting booth conversion to the Jungle Gym camp. (Contrary to Josh's probable supposition, it was NOT the pretzels that swayed me -- I just wanted to mix things up....and I thought a jungle gym might be fun:).

The vote was spurred by two factors: 1. Our involvement in the whole process (campaigns, primaries, debates, etc.) of the OTHER election, and 2. The undecided Grand Prize in our family reading program. For various reasons, I put together a project (complete with a giant wall hanging of a flower whose stem we will climb toward the grand prize blossom......you should have seen what I IMAGINED it might look like!) to keep everyone excited about reading. Each family member maintains individual point breakdowns [i.e., Olivia gets 10 points for a picture book, 50 for a chapter book, etc.; Josiah gets 20 points for letter sounds, 30 for three-letter words, 100 for easy reader books, etc.; they both get 10 points for every sibling listening when they read their books (more if the book is longer); Josh and I get smaller point values for books we read to the kids, 500 points for books we read to ourselves... (which almost never happens anymore), and (this is a rider proposed by my husband, who, I think, is getting a little anxious over my project) I get 2000 points for every chapter of my dissertation that I finish. Everyone is rooting for mom, now! (Even more than before!)] We get a family fun day at 3000 points (leaf #1), a membership to something at 7000 points (leaf #2), and a grand prize that was subject to such debate that we decided to cabbage onto family election hysteria (we are a house divided, which makes for constant conversation) and vote on it, formally.

THE POP-UP CAMPER WAS VICTORIOUS! In spite of Dad's lobbying, the kids stuck to their guns and voted their consciences. So the center of the giant construction paper flower was adorned today with a picture that I found online of someone's father in front of a random pop-up camper. If I've estimated appropriately, I should be able to put $10 per week in a jar to significantly offset the cost when the point total is attained. However -- they've been reading like mad, so I'm anxious to see what the Saturday tally reveals! (Anxious in every sense of the word!.....Better start finding ways to fill that jar early, I think!).

You should have heard the victory speeches. Josiah noted that "With a pop-up camper, I would never have to be homesick!" and Olivia walked us through a series of "Can you sleep in a Jungle Gym!? (Well, maybe you can...but...) Can you cook over a fire next to a jungle gym (maybe, I guess....but....) can you take a jungle gym with you? No! And does a jungle gym have beds!? NO! Pop-up CAMPER WINS!!!!!!!!"

And then (my favorite), Josh's concession speech (which I will botch horribly, I know, but even if I got every word right, I could never capture the spirit and intensity with which it was delivered...or the uber-political hand gestures that accompanied it). "We fought a good fight...ran a good campaign for the jungle gym. I want to thank all of our supporters, my staff, and everyone who voted for the jungle gym. We congratulate the Pop-up camper on its victory. It was a well fought race. And rest assured, we will be back. This is not the end of the jungle gym." No. I'm sure it's not:)

After the vote, the tally, and the celebratory hooplah, we grabbed popcorn and watched blue and red Rorshach blotches coagualate across a giant map...as a family.

What election did you think I was talking about?

Rock of Ages VS Philosopher's Stone (Steele cage grudge match of the millenium)

2008-11-05T21:57:00.005-05:00

I've blogged a million posts in my head this week, but nothing actually made it to the screen. This moment is one that I MUST not forget, though, so I might as well share it while I record it for posterity (and for my deplorable memory). A few weeks ago, I realized after Sunday service that we discussed a question I had never brought to my kids: "What do you know?" As a lifetime student of philosophy (with the papers to prove it!), I could have kicked myself for letting this one slip by! So, over a backyard picnic, I sprung it, ready to pounce with a little deconstruction and immaterialism (maybe little cognative science just for flavor). Here are my kids' responses, in order:

My question: "Is there anything that you KNOW, and how do you KNOW that you KNOW it?"

Olivia's reply (looking a little annoyed at the question's apparent condescention):

"You can't KNOW anything, Mom. You can only choose to believe. Everything anybody thinks they know they are really just choosing to believe. For example, I choose to believe in God because it's better, but not because I KNOW. No one can KNOW anything."

As I wound my immaterialist tail back between my legs and prepared to limp home with a weak, "Very interesting thought, Olivia. How did you know that?" (This time, a sincere question rather than a provocative one), Josiah jumped in with his reply. [Be sure to imagine his Rs as Ws and his Ss as SHs....I love the way he talks but trying to write his sweet particularities is....annoying).

Josiah's reply: "Well, I believe in God....because...if I didn't, He might not KILL me.....but He might WANT to."

Now there's a boy who's been to Sunday school! That's material I can work with! But who wants to? At this point, I was bested, laughing, and ready to dive with my kids into the waiting pumpkin pie. What great kids!

Ethiopia Montage -- Katie's Present

2008-11-01T22:59:00.006-04:00

As if her friendship, her love of our children, and the gift of her time and energy in journeying with us to Ethiopia were not enough, Katie (Josh's sister) made this beautiful montage for us! Thank you, Katie -- for everything! There are no words to express how much the sacrifices you made, the encouragement you offered, and the loving arms that you shared with our tiny babies on that trip meant to us. You are a fantastic sister, sister-in-law, aunt, and friend. And we LOVE the montage, too!

(And thank you, travel group, for allowing us to share this excerpt from such a pivotal week -- and some of your pictures, as well. No one ....NO ONE...has ever experienced the emotional whiplash and euphoria of meeting their children for the first time with a better group of friends. Thank you for a lifetime of memories.)

As promised.....

2008-10-28T20:49:00.006-04:00

Here are the awesome pictures that a friend took at a cider pressing get together with a bunch of people from our church. Please note: our kids are awesome! They bob for apples with such vehemence (even Olivia, despite her obvious five tooth handicap)! Josiah loves his friend Autumn with such tenderness! We love them ALL like crazy! Thank you, again, to our fantastic picture taking friend and to those of you who have waited patiently to see these pictures posted (i.e., my family:).

Zoo Crew

2008-10-22T17:31:00.007-04:00

My husband thinks I'm some kind of nut, but the truth is that I'm a much better get-me-out-of-the-house-before-I-go-crazy mom than a stay-at-home mom. I don't have all of my domestic inadequacies glaring at me from the overfull sink and the brimming hamper to impinge upon my time with my kids -- maybe that's why. Whatever the reason, while my mother-in-law was here (thank you, Grandma:), we headed to the zoo the first chance that came our way. I'll share some of her pictures, and then I PROMISE I'll post the raft of family pictures from the Autumn-fest:) Included in the background of the goat-petting pics (for you, Adam, I said it for you) are my gorgeous sister and her beautiful brilliant son, Jonah who joined us on our zoo story. Karen, of course, looks fabulous. They are VERY unflattering pictures of me. I post them because I love her:) Also, I am including a couple of pictures of the lorikeet feeding extravaganza. The babies wanted to eat the birds, Josiah was very unsure of the birds, and Olivia is clearly an old pro. I left the shark petting pictures out, but the babies loved the aquarium and the older two are endlessly fascinated by petting sharks -- and Grandma loved it, too! We have an awesome zoo. And the one with the animals in it is pretty great also.

Random Pic(ture)s

2008-10-21T17:30:00.004-04:00

I have a minute before the quesadillas burn, and I thought I'd post a last round of random pictures from Grandma's visit before catching up with a more recent group. And if you like the Indonesian sling....wait until you see the FANTASTIC carrier that my Mother-in-Law made for me (and the awesome one she made for my carrier-shy husband). She took the Mei tai to the next level! For now, here goes:

P.S. Burned the quesadillas....

Daddy's got the gang downstairs...

2008-10-20T17:15:00.006-04:00

SO, I'm gonna post some more pictures!!! (Isn't it great that Grandma wields a camera!?) These pictures, taken shortly after we arrived home in September, chronicle the Spa Day Olivia insisted upon having with her baby sister. At six, Olivia loves to "beauty up" with sparkly lipgloss, various lotions, and REALLY obnoxious creamy kid versions of eye shadow and blush -- all gifts. I figure if I let this phase ride, she'll lose interest eventually and understand where real beauty comes from (blah, blah, blah...etc., etc.. We'll see.). ANYway, I don't wear make-up, generally, so I don't have to worry about her using mine. I DO occasionally borrow hers! In the absence of any grown up lip treatments, I often go to church looking mighty sparkly. It IS rather fun. I get the attraction, Olivia, and hopefully Tari does, too. (I should probably mention that no obnoxious gels or creams were applied to the baby -- just some FANCY jewelry and innoccuous lotions). One thing I know for SURE, Josiah is quite grateful to be relieved of his brotherly beauty up duties (though he can work a tutu and nail polish with the best of them...He is a magnificent brother-- patient beyond belief with the whims of his big sister -- much like my own brother was when I forced him to comply with the vagaries of my bizarre imaginary worlds). Okay, on to the pictures. Aren't they sweet?

This is how we roll...

2008-10-20T11:01:00.005-04:00

Well, before I post the more recent pictures from Autumn-fest, I thought I'd share some shots that my awesome Mother-in-Law took when she visited in September. Thanks, Grandma!

FIRST, check out the handy triplet stroller that I bought off of Craigslist. My parents-in-law picked it up for me near their hometown (once again, thanks, Grandma!). It's been helpful on treks to the bus stop and the park, though I generally strap one baby on and push a double stroller for trips that require car rides (and yes, I do take those occasionally. I even took all five to Sam's Club by myself a week or so ago! With the two best helpers in the world by my side, what can't I do!?).

Captivated by Autumn

2008-10-12T21:28:00.003-04:00

If you find yourself enamoured by my clever double entendre blog titles, prepare to be wooed once again. (If, as is more likely, you find them groan worthy -- even irritating -- brace yourself). First, I chose tonight's title because I am -- captivated....utterly....by Autumn. I love everything about it -- leaves, smoke, school, sweaters, windows open -- everything. And my son, who, I am sure, also loves the season, found himself sweetly captivated by a little girl named Autumn tonight at a cider pressing party at a friend's house. Sweet Autumn is much younger than Josiah and followed him all evening, calling his name intermittently. I think Josiah relished the hero-worship and responded in kind with his signature style of chivalric sweetness that never fails to make me grin. When kids make friends, they do it without contract -- without expectation or insinuation. They just enjoy one another. Sometimes, of course, they don't (and then there's the pushing and the pulling and the ninja fighting....etc.), but mostly, small children are content to be exactly who they are and to let others do the same. A friend (the inimitable Autumn's dad, in fact) took some pictures of our family this evening, too, so you can expect to see an updated peek into how we roll very soon. You will be amazed! Let me just say that the babies have each put on nearly a quarter of their body weight in the last two weeks! At their adoption clinic weigh-in, they were 13 (Girum), 11 (Tarikwa), and 14 (Taye) pounds respectively. A week or so ago, I weighed them here at 18, 15, and nearly 20 pounds -- weights that we have no doubt exceeded already! (And, by the way, you should have seen Olivia bob for apples tonight with all FOUR of her front teeth missing -- well worth the trip to the country!) Well, that's enough topic whiplash for one evening. It all comes of drinking 4 cups of Ethiopian coffee to start my day. I love the taste; I enjoy the buzz; I don't make any linear sense for the next several hours.

This Big Life

2008-10-04T00:21:00.011-04:00

It's 12:23pm. Asleep in the room directly adjacent to this computer wall are three of the most important people in my life: a man whose hand I have held and whose heart I have relied upon for nearly ten years, a little girl whose unsettling wisdom and whiplash laughter incinerate my pretenses, and a tiny little boy who chose me with his eyes and captured me, liquified me, with his smile just 5 short weeks ago (read: a lifetime). Across the hall lay three more of the most important people in my life: a little boy who has never, ever given up on his mama, a tiny little girl who has owned me with her eyes since before I knew her and has delighted me with them ever since we met, and a sweet smile of a person who makes everyone feel pertinent -- special -- especially me -- when his hair and eyes and face and mouth erupt in unmatchable laughter. Thank you all for your prayers and your patience. We are home. Home indeed.

Wanna know what you missed?

2008-07-31T01:47:00.005-04:00

So, I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but I didn't blog for several months. The reasons are all tangled up in the red tape of international adoption, one family's horrifying experience with confusion about that red tape and an entry on their blog, and my confessed inability to discern what kinds of things are "appropriate to discuss" (ask anyone about this special character trait of mine....it's one of my most identifiable and longstanding eccentricities!). Therefore, I abstained (from WRITING blogs, but not from reading them....I was a crazy ravenous bloghound for four months). Here's what you missed:

One day, I went into Kroger to buy deodorant. I was met with one of the great uncomfortable shopping interruptions == a store worker was shelving exactly the item I intended to purchase, placing her awkwardly betwixt my stuttering reach and the chalise of Secret that I sought. After several lifetimes (read: probably a second or two) of peering alternately over her shoulder and under her armpit (gross irony, right?), I finally abandoned any hope of "Selecting" my deodorant, and made a wicked mad (you know, wicked, as in NKOTB "wicked awesome" jargon....not mean or vicious. If you know what NKOTB stands for.....you ROCK!!!) grasp for anything in that particular shade of powder blue and dashed away (I think I really did dash, too. When I make up my mind to remove myself from an awkward situation....I usually do it with a kind of twitchy fervor). The next morning, as I prepared to slather the concoction that I bought with my dignity onto my underarms (graphic, no?), I glanced at the label to see what scent I had snatched (I'm not even sure what punctuation to include at this moment to illustrate the eyebrow-raising "huh" moment inserted here....how about a colon?): Vanilla Chai Latte. I think that's really what it was called. Like, the drink. Anyway, after a likely audible "huh" of surprise, I put on my deodorant, and headed out for the day. I can't tell you how upsetting it is to smell tea whenever you grow nervous or anxious and then realize that that smell is emanating from your underarms!!! While all the other women at the crowded, sweaty park smell vaguely of Morning Mist or Fresh Spring Blossoms, I smell like Starb*cks! Not even Starb*cks, though, really....because it was more of a weak Earl Grey than a broad coffee smell. Just enough to make people look around for the absent cup. "Huh." Each day, the smell became more and more annoying to me, to the point that I began to wonder if body odor wasn't just a better option than Vanilla Chai Latte. It isn't. So it's tea for me until I've exhausted all two dollars and seventy eight cents of this deodorant and can move forward with a clean conscience and powder-fresh armpits.

And, one day (maybe even the same day. That would be weird! It all kind of runs together), as I was driving to pick up a friend, I approached potentially the most unwieldy intersection in our city. Three lanes rapidly move into two as they approach a four way stop. None of the lanes is marked for a merge, and the lines aren't clear as the merge occurs. I was half a length in front of the mini-van behind me when I merged (chose, really...it's hard to know who did the merging) into the "I'm going straight" lane. This move made the man driving the minivan really REALLY angry. I offered the obligatory glance-in-the-rearview-mirror-and-wave-remorsefully, but he CONTINUED to flail about screaming at me! For several miles! And when I turned onto another road, he honked a bunch of times to let me know that he was still displeased. Seriously. When someone cuts me off (assuming I DID Indeed cut him off, which I am not wholly willing to concede), I generally have an instant or two of indignation, and then I think "Oh, I've had that happen to me. No harm done. Whatever" and move on, and if they give the obligatory remorseful wave! Well, my affrontery melts instantly! I feel that we have already become friends, and I somehow sympathize with their merging difficulty --All ill will gone. But not this guy. I can only imagine that somehow he felt I had launched a two lane assault on his manhood or that I was resolving a personal grudge against his family by insisting on reaching that intersection first. I just kept thinking "Buddy," (this is a word that should only be used in conversation with very small children or when anomously addressing other drivers), "you are already driving a minivan! Let go that uber-masculine machismo!" But he did not! I had to suffer a whole lot of potentially rude gestures (I have no idea) and a series of sustained honks before his vengance could be appeased. It actually took me awhile to get over the mingled humiliation, frustration, and self-righteousness of our encounter. In fact, I'm not. I'm not completely over it. I'm weirder than him. He muttered for, what, maybe an hour, and I'm sitting here, untold weeks hence, blogging about him! I wonder if he has a blog!

I think I've filled in all the important stuff from my blogger sabbatical.
Have a good night.

What I learned from the 70s

2008-07-30T23:54:00.003-04:00

In the meantime.....during all of the uncanny perfection of this family building, I have had so many moments when my two kids at home have gotten the worst of me. I've hung up the phone with our caseworker, dissappointed with news that didn't fit my timetable, and turned to snarl at the beautiful faces around my kitchen table (granted, those faces were wide-mouthed mid-bicker, but no body deserves the snarls they've been subjected to these last few weeks). SO, another BIG lesson being re-taught to me: If you Can't be with the Ones you Love.....Love the Ones you're with! I DO love ALL of my children....I just haven't been loving them all very well lately. So I'm finally going to curl up in this Zen learning curve and do exactly and only and all of what's right in front of me. Same lesson.....snappier tune:)

Wonderful Update -- Delayed Post -- Postponed Joy

2008-07-30T22:23:00.005-04:00

Five days ago, an Ethiopian specialist confirmed that we have been assigned a TRAVEL DATE. We immediately booked seats on a flight to Ethiopia leaving August 27th and arriving in Addis Ababa on Thursday night, the 28th. On Friday, we will meet our children. In spite of the new mom muddle of anxiety and joy that I should have been wallowing in these past five days, I have been wandering around this desert, nostalgic for Egypt, bemoaning the banality of manna from Heaven!

During our conversation, the specialist described the "series of impossible things" that came together in making our family. "So few people are open to three siblings," she said, "and even if a couple requesting two siblings were to open their hearts to triplets, the revision of paperwork that would have to follow could take so much time. So when the triplets' file came up...and your names came up at the exact same time...and you had already completed all of the provisional paperwork for three siblings...well, I don't know what you'd call that. So many impossible things, things that just never happen, happened when we called with your referral."

You don't know what to call that?

It's a MIRACLE! I am living in the middle of a miracle.

Without clobbering this dead horse, let me just recap a handful of the truly IMPOSSIBLE things happening in Indiana during the months when God was building this family.

1. The choice. [Wow! I just searched through my archives, and I couldn't find ONE post about how we came to the decision to adopt...and then adopt internationally.....and then, specifically to adopt from Ethiopia! Let me check one more time. Okay.....I found it.....see the link for "the deliberation"....I elaborated both together.]
2. The deliberation.
3. The transportation. [I don't think I've ever actually shared this crazy turn of events. Last December, we were approaching the first of the "We could get the call any day now" months, and panic about the logistics of adding another child to our family (yep, child...this was before the sibling revolution and well before the triplet explosion....just imagine....!:) seeped into many of our conversations. Specifically, we were beginning to wonder how we were going to get our family home from the airport. The fairly compact back seat of our family car would likely not accommodate three car seats, and our already extended budget was set to be stretched to the finest fiber of its limits with adoption expenses alone. Then, early, out of the blue, Josh got a promotion at work. No raise, just one very....impossible....perk. He got his choice of a company car to be used and driven by his family -- so, we picked the minivan, and HE filled the seats:).]
4. The revolution.
5. The inundation.
6. The consumationn.
ETC.

And yet somehow, when the travel date we were assigned seemed a week later than the one I had hoped for in my heart, I got some kind of spiritual OCD.....like surely MY timing...the timing that I had planned for and expected was infinitely more RIGHT than this late travel date. Here's a woman being carried in the palm of God's hand toward an unspeakably beautiful life trying to shout directions with her back turned toward the future! The Red Sea just split clean down the middle, I've had water from a rock and food from the sky, and all I can do is whine about the lack of menu variety on this road to the promised land!!!

Incidentally, I've been through this very same lesson a time or two before. Why can't I just LEARN!

No more. This sweet manna is more than enough!

Something to Share

2008-07-24T02:23:00.003-04:00

I've borrowed this link from another blog. As a mother bouncing on a trampoline of inadequacy right now, I appreciated the renewed hope. I think I might need a REALLY big piece of cardboard if I went to their church, though!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvDDc5RB6FQ&eurl=http://devenougesfamily.blogspot.com/

NEWS!!!

2008-07-20T15:01:00.005-04:00

Wonderful news!!! Friday we received BIRTH CERTIFICATES for all three of our babies in Ethiopia. Pragmatically, this news is good because it means that we are one GIANT step closer to bringing them home (we should be assigned a travel date during the early part of next week). Emotionally, this news is good because the birth certificates included recent pictures, which have encouraged all of us (although seeing the dynamic changes in their beautiful faces makes me ache for the weeks that we have spent apart during their time at the care center). Here are three of the five most beautiful children in the whole world: Girum, Tarikua, and Taye. (See photo at the top of the blog for a recent picture of Olivia and Josiah, the other two most beautiful children in the whole world!).

My New Maxim

2008-07-16T21:02:00.003-04:00

Today, I saw someone I did not want to talk to -- I never feel fully myself when I run into her...I feel somehow smaller. I bucked my instinct and spoke to her, and she welcomed me -- really -- and I didn't feel so small. Just goes to show -- life works better for me when I think "what do I FEEL like doing right now?".....and then DO the opposite.

All I have to say tonight...

2008-07-15T00:08:00.003-04:00

I'm so sleepy, but lest my blog become too syrupy with all of the wonderful news and annoying personal insights, I thought I'd share with you my bad day. After a call to our caseworker this afternoon (following many hours of anxious calls abandoned mid-dial and "refresh" hits to our email accounts, just in case), I am less optimistic about being able to bring the kids home this month. Although a raft of Birth Certificates has been received and more are expected this week, ours may be another week, still, in coming. Because of the influx of Visa applicants looking to travel over the next several weeks, our caseworker estimated that our travel may wait until mid-August....at the early end.

uuuuuhhhhhhhggggggg......

I so wanted it to be sooner than that.

While I was struggling to pull myself out of the funk that this news plunged me into (which, by the way, never works....I can almost never pull MYSELF out of a funk because, secretly, I believe I somehow deserve to be there), my Dad told me about his upcoming sermon on praise -- which briefly summarized will underscore the point that God is good even when things around us seem to be falling apart, and therefore, He deserves to be praised no matter what. Some people do this so well -- almost instinctively, even. Sadly, I was not among them today!

Do you know, I say this very thing to my son nearly every day, recently!? (If I could learn half of the lessons I try to teach my children, my life would be almost completely free of crud and interference!). Whenever I ask him to pray (before bed or a meal or whatever), he always says, "Thank you, God, for everything. Amen." Obviously, if you are in the room you are clearly aware that his motivation is more expediency than simple reverence. Josiah likes to cut to the chase -- get to the meal -- move on to the bedtime story, etc. The other night, he asked me (and now asks me sporadically throughout the day) if I've noticed that he always prays the same prayer. I told him that I had noticed (I wonder, sometimes, what they must think of us...) and that I thought that if he could learn to pray that prayer with his whole heart and soul and self every day of his life he would have lived more fully and figured out more about love and life than most people ever begin to learn.

I am tired. I am headed to bed. With everything inside me, I hope that I can lay down this day and pray, "Thank you, God, for everything. Amen."

Open the Eyes of My Heart

2008-07-12T11:51:00.003-04:00

For the last several days, a weird optics, a backward way of seeing, has come up again and again in my conversations. SO, I figured I should write about it. (when life hands you themes -- make theme-ade). When we first began thinking about adoption two and a half years ago, I ran across an anti-trans-racial adoption website that asserted the position that -- loosely quoted -- "the adoption of black children by white families is a reinscription of slavery -- an opportunity for white people to own black people with impunity." What a kick in the chest! Initially, my heart-yearning to mother to gush that mothering toward the heart of someone who needed a mother was renamed violence! My love was renamed hate! [If there is a Devil, I'm nearly convinced that his whole function is to rename bad good and good bad....and that's all]. I wrestled with the assault of his position for a week or two (and with other arguments in his support). Finally, I reached two conclusions that unraveled the meshy threads that had me all tangled.

First: parents do not own children. No one who has ever worn a path between bedrooms anxious to watch her baby breathe or sat in a steamy bathroom trying to quiet the cough that threatens to arrest that sweet breath would misname parenting as ownership. No one who has laughed for days at mismatched knock knock jokes or cherished the genius of amorphous fingerpaintings would ever invert the roles of sacred responsibility and unspeakable cruelty. No one who has agonized over the mistreatment of his child by a teacher or plunged into the vertigo of panic in the silence that follows the call of a momentarily missing child's name at the park or exploded with pride at the stumbly dance moves of the most graceful grey mouse in the Nutcracker could think that we own our children. If anything, they own us! In fact, love is, I think, the choice to let onesself be owned -- to submit our OWN needs and desires to those BELONGING to an-other.

Second: He is wrong! At the most basic level, the distinction that the website purveyor draws between one person and another remains forever erroneous! Although we have botched the job horribly, people were created to carry out the harmonious worship of love as a multifarious, unified family. The notion that certain qualities could erode such a basic unity, that the beauty of harmony could COMPLICATE the thoroughgoing melody of love is backward. [Once again, if there's a Devil, I think he gets the credit for such a destructively clever perversion as renaming harmony noise and noise harmony].

Most recently, the (very important) issues of ownership and difference surfaced on an adoption forum, and a heated discusion about possession and parenting erupted between a number of people I both like and respect. Ultimately, intentions were clarified and wrinkles, to some degree, were smoothed, but one woman's assertion that the child she was adopting would be her "OWN" led to a pretty raucous debate. [I rather like wrinkles]. I mentioned, once, how much the word "our" has stretched during the course of this adoption process. Let me say now that, maybe, we should think of OURselves (all mothers and fathers included) as belonging, by choice, to a common child -- rather than wondering to whom our child belongs. [Think of the two mothers at Solomon's feet.]

Perhaps, the pronouns have all been inverted as well!

The Great Fable?

2008-07-06T20:35:00.004-04:00

What if life is an allegory about Heaven? What if all of our loves and complications stand for something? Would that lend them weight? Would it lift all weight so that the whole story pointed toward one great love in a single, metaphorical gesture? And who am I in this story? The fox or the crow? Fox for some.....crow for some, maybe. Sometimes, I think I trick myself into singing just so that I can scramble after the cheese that had been in my beak all the time.

The Architecture of One Family

2008-07-06T00:39:00.003-04:00

Our town is famous for its architecture. Apparently, we sport works by several well-known (not Mich#el Jord$n well-known.....but well known if you know about that sort of thing...which I do not) superstars in the architectural cosmos. All of this style and elegance is pretty much lost on me (pretty much -- I enjoy a big witch-hat church as much as the next guy, and -- although I have no desire to investigate the aesthetic resonances that elicit such a response -- I am vaguely pleased by the curvy lines and asymetry of most of the buildings around here), I can be impressed by the effort, if the intentions are explained to me.
More often, though, I leave a building by winding my way out of its artistically complicated corridors after some completely pragmatic errand or other a little annoyed at the cumbersome exit route. And when I reach my car (which sometimes takes me awhile), I glance back at the building and finally "get" it. The weird twists and turns built into my unwieldy walk were part of a larger design that looks... at least planned if not exactly awe-inspiring. I usually say "oh" or "hmmmm" (I'm nothing if not audible) in that dull-girl-just-getting-the-picture sort of way, and then get into my car and drive away nodding (the nod is gratuitous -- it's just what I do).

Last week, I looked back through my early adoption blog entries. (I am -- in many WONDERFUL ways, on the "walking toward my car" leg of this journey, and I guess I wanted to scan the building one more time). Almost nine months, to the day, before OUR (and until this adoption, I never had an imagination for the enormity of the word "our") babies were born, I wrote this letter to their distant but suddenly and absolutely un-anonymous mother. Shortly thereafter, I posted this message about our decision to open ourselves to TWO babies with its prophetic little tag about the paperwork we filed that certified us for a sibling group of three.
Joshua was out of the country when THE referral call came. For days before he left, I had dreams of three babies. Finally, just before taking him to the airport, I said, "If she says three, I'm saying 'yes!'" He reminded me of the height of the emotional and spiritual ledge he crept onto with our decision to stretch our parameters from one to two and asked me to keep that decision in mind. I did. And then I answered with my heart. And so did he!
After two hours of falling in love with Girum, Tarikua, and Taye, I FINALLY made contact with Josh. He had received the same electronic file that I had (along with a half-a-dozen emails from me urging him to READ THAT MESSAGE) and found a way to call me from Germany. After hedging around the question pressing against every cell in my body for a sentence or two ("Hi! It's YOU! So what do....you....think?" "I think.....wow." etc.), I asked: "Do you think we should accept this referral?" To which he responded: "If this is what God has for us, then...this is what He has for us....and I am so honored that He would choose me for this responsibility." And then, "Aren't they just so beautiful, Amy?"
And they are.
So we accepted the referral...
And then we made it through court! On June 25th, my caseworker said, "I am calling to let you know that, as of yesterday, you are officially the mother of FIVE children! Congratulations!"
And now,
after a long walk through such complicated corridors,
we are waiting to travel to bring our children home.
What a magnificent building!
What a Brilliant Architect.

So, so beautiful!

2008-07-03T01:53:00.003-04:00

I had a chance to peruse my own last blog entry (could anything on the planet be more self-indulgent than perusing MY OWN blog entry!?), which I did....and then did again....because my children are so beautiful! From the top of the blog, where I get to see the sweet faces of Olivia and Josiah (minus the more recent gap-toothed smile and supercool mohawk), down through the only pictures that I have (and hold, and carry, and memorize) of my three, tiny new babies -- isn't my life so, SO beautiful?!

News!!!

2008-07-01T06:19:00.005-04:00

I'm going to let these pictures speak for themselves (if I can figure out how to post them:):

INTRODUCING OUR SPECTACULAR SON GIRUM!!!

AND OUR DAZZLING DAUGHTER TARIKUA!!!

AND OUR MAGNIFICENT SON TAYE!!!

I hope you kept scrolling because the blessings roll on and on. On Tuesday, May 27th, I received a call from our agency caseworker. I had heard that referrals were on the verge of surging forward during the weeks surrounding Memorial Day, so I was prepared (although, once again, life proves that no one is prepared for important things. Unimportant things are easy to prepare for, but kids, marriage, death, impossible hope -- these things catch us when we aren't looking. They always interupt us. I swing along, now, from interruption to interruption, holding my breath, ready to be blindsided) for the possibility of some kind of news (READ: I was a jittery, distracted mess). I was on vacation with family in California, and Josh had just flown out on Monday night for a work trip in Germany. I was reading to my kids (the ones I had met). My brother walked in, and I knew from his greeting to our caseworker that this was OUR CALL! When I answered, I asked (SOOO casually) how she was doing, and she said, "I have a possible referral for you." I (shaking) said, "Okay." After we finally communicated that Josh was not going to be able to be a part of the phone call, she said, "This referral is a little different from what you requested" [2 siblings, up to 30 months old]. "Okay," I said...again...I was out of words....down to just two letters...O and K! "Would you be willing to consider" drum roll please "triplets?"

I said, "YES!"

There's more (a lifetime more, in fact), but I'll have to write later.

Thank you for your prayers.

A Smile worth it's While

2008-04-15T19:22:00.005-04:00

Take a look at this, when you have a minute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CCs_ZZHanQ#

Shoot for the moon....hit the rain gutter

2008-02-18T23:10:00.004-05:00

It is in the spirit of this post's title that I'm writing tonight. I have, for a number of reasons, avoided blogging for the past month or two. Very low on the list but still ranking in among those reasons is the impulse that continues to secure the corners of the frame within which I paint every blotchy, blurry portrait of myself -- the impulse to hit the moon.

When I was 8, hitting the moon meant creating a body-stocking diagram of the blood circulatory system for "be a part of the body day" at school. I wore a trash bag with a big red paper heart taped to the front.

When I was 13, hitting the moon meant going to the junior high formal (whatever) at my new school equipped with countless fly moves (read: Kid n' Play kickstep, Roger Rabbit, Running Man, Cabbage Patch, and that nameless grab-your-heel-jump-over-your-leg move --all in various alternating sequences -- that had to make all of the cool people notice just how much I belonged!), moves I had gleaned from TOO many hours watching Yo! MTV Raps. So,working my three tiered skirt, cropped jacket, silky turtle neck, and black flats with white clip-on bows, I hit the 7th grade cafeteria floor like a house-a-fire. I came home aglow, sweat eroding the shellac from my fully perpendicular x-y axis of bangs and side-wings into my bleary, stinging eyes and tan pantyhose running at every toe (because of the clip from the bow...and, no doubt, my very athletic dancing), fully convinced that the wide swath of space that the other, um, dancers alotted me along the side of the floor signified, for certain, my arrival at the epicenter of cool. In retrospect.....you get the idea. (Sadly, as 10 or so years has finally given me the same perspective on my college experience, I am just now realizing, as I type this, that the costume has changed but the character -- and so many of the dance moves -- have remained the same).

Now shooting for the moon means planning a full-scale archeological excavation in our backyard, complete with grid ropes and tools that culminates, instead, in a trip to the rubberized dig exhibit at the Children's Museum's Dinosphere. It means planning a 13 page art-book program-making activity (one page per species) for our outing at the symphony where we will enjoy the fully narrated Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saenn (I have no idea how to spell that name). After a few sessions of dancing the animal parts around our living room while listening to the CD, I realized that, with the concert so rapidly approaching, our DIY concert programs were not going to happen. Then Sunday came, and everyone looked at me with those "please, no symphony" eyes, and I buckled. We came home and watched ALL of Fiddler on the Roof.

Do you see the pattern?

If only my psychosis were confined to big events like symphonies and circulatory systems, but it seems that the minutae of my life also bob and wilt in font of the searing backlight of my, what would you call them? ambitions? My meal plans, my phone conversations, and, yes, my blog, also wind up like shadows on a sheet after that light hits them. I have about 500 very profound, nay, earth-transforming blog entries that I have dreamed of posting in the past two months.

But I'm writing tonight. I'm out here getting my groove on in front of the whole dance floor, paper heart plastered to my garbage bag and dig tools at the ready.

The thing is, if it weren't for the body stocking, there would have been no heart-on-a-bag. If it weren't for the archeological site, there would have been no dino dig. If it weren't for the paper programs, there would have been no hillarious interpretations of the 13 animals all over our living room (or worse! No fiddler on the roof!). And, if it weren't for Yo! MTV Raps, there would not have been a single day in the 7th grade when I felt remotely cool.

Same goes for our annual Birthday party for Abraham Lincoln (paper hats and beards are better than no hats and beards, and one day I WILL rememorize that Gettysburg address so that I can do a full-blown performance rather than a dramatic reading), our "baking days" (I don't even know where to begin to describe what my kids and I pull out of the oven --- ask my parents; they always have to eat it...and smile), our plan for getting out the door in the morning (my kids manage to get it together....with a LOT of cajoling....but frequently we only get there on time because being late would mean I would have to escort Olivia to the tardy desk at the office, and on so many days, I am not even reasonably clean).

And sentence that follows is excellent example -- I am sitting here working out an insightful yet obscure allusion to Don Quixote, but it keeps slipping through the words I come up with. Do I say something about setting out to build giants but at least walking away with a few windmills. That makes no sense at all. Do I say, "I may chase a lot of windmills, but like the book and the awesome 90s dork-band turned kids' music moguls noted, They Might be Giants, right?" (I'm partial to that one). Or Quixotic or Psychotic....how is one to know?

And if I had never tried to write that sentence, then I would never have come up with that paragraph.....okay, very bad example. But I don't think I've marred the point too severely. You see, if I didn't throw my head back, raise my voice and aim for the brightest, highest point I can imagine, I'd never get off the porch. And the rain gutter looks pretty fun from down there (just ask my kids -- I can't count the number of tennis balls, toys, and frisbees they have launched on the roof in hopes of being vaulted up to get them out of the gutters by their dad).

Thanks for not giving up on me!

Nun Sense

2007-12-30T02:46:00.000-05:00

So, if you've never checked out the Ask Sister Mary Martha link in my sidebar before, do it today. Her "take" on Christmas is.....just like everything else on her blog....straight to the proverbial point. Here's a link, lest my annoyingly long and cumbersome sidebar deter you.

www.asksistermarymartha.blogspot.com

Right Headed

2007-12-30T00:59:00.001-05:00

I've never heard or read a more accurate description of my daughter's approach to reading than the one I will link here. Yes, I'm reading the homeschool blogs again.....who knows where it may lead:)

http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2007/06/understanding_t.html

Map Quest

2007-12-29T06:24:00.000-05:00

In my search for a wall map of Africa (which is still underway), I ran across this awesome site. It's an online puzzle; you're timed while you click and drag country outlines onto the Africa map. Try it. If you're like me, you'll be surprised (and if you're like me, surprised in this case will be composed of equal parts dismay and ambition) by how much you really don't know! (Except for you, Dave, and you have an unfair advantage......being Dave. [for elaboration, see prior posts which reference my brother, superhero Geo-Political Dave]).

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/africa-map-puzzle.htm

I'll post this link to my homeschool curriculum list for future reference

Useful Waste of Time

2007-12-17T18:48:00.001-05:00

A friend sent me the link to

http://www.freerice.com/

a few weeks ago. They donate a certain alottment of free rice to a U.N. hunger relief program for every vocabulary word that you can define correctly. I learned a lot of words. As far as I can tell, the vocab-bee has no official end -- you can quiz till you drop if you'd like. Dave, I think you'll really like it! (hint: you can deduce a great many answers just by matching parts of speech).

Link for today

2007-12-17T16:18:00.001-05:00

Valerie, this link is especially for you and your specialty (one of your many specialties!). It's also interesting because I ran across it on The West's blog, the very blog (connected to our church) that inspired us to consider this journey for ourselves. Honestly, it's mid-day, so I have only scanned the letter that she posted, but it struck me as very special, so I am passing it along.

Have a great day, everybody.

http://www.westhavenkids.com/node/1445

My Kids on Our Adoption

2007-12-13T23:55:00.000-05:00

Today, another mother mentioned how well-spoken Olivia and Josiah seem to be, making them seem so much older than the ages I quoted her. I couldn't help but think about the ways in which this adoption has aged us all. We care more....and so we are older......about more people.....older again......we have millions of anonymous loves all over the world, all of us, and we are prepared to be named family together with any two of them at any time, and they don't know us, and they may not have anything to eat, and every day, we love them......so very old. And so my kids talk the way they do (and you should hear how they talk!).

A long time ago (months? weeks? decades?) I began to consider, for the first time, the impact of our newly adopted childrens' grieving on ALL of the members of the household; Josh and I have done our homework (okay, mostly me...I read, I bring issues before Josh, and he, intuitively, responds much better than the experts.) regarding attachment and grief and have learned so much about hope and loss in the process, but Olivia and Josiah could be faced with a brother or sister who screams and cries for hours with no discernable explanation, and I haven't done a thing to prepare them for this possible eventuality.

So, just as I was mulling over my best approach to the situation, that VERY week, Olivia stopped me mid-laundry and asked me to play with her. I said yes (laundry....Olivia.....laundry....Olivia,......hmmmmm...) of course. She said, "I want to play orphan."

I said, "Okay...." visibly thrown off-balance, I'm sure, but this is a posture she's accustomed to seeing from her mother, so she was unshaken when I haltingly asked, "how do you play?"

"I'll be the orphan," she said. "And you've adopted me, and I'm glad. I like you. I might even love you. But sometimes I get really sad because I still miss my mom, and I'm sad that she's gone, and I don't know how to tell you that. I don't want to make you think I don't like you. And sometimes I get sad, and I don't even know why I'm sad. So you have to show me that you're going to love me even if I get really sad sometimes and you don't know why."

Thank you very much, sweet Olivia.

Fast forward through countless prayers for the "new babies"....earnest, honest prayers.... to this week.

A couple of nights ago, I was home late from teaching. I still had some work to do on the computer, so I didn't make it to bed until VERY late. My usually night-comatose husband woke up almost immediately to tell me that he and the kids had had a "big night." "I think you should know about it," he said, " in case it comes up tomorrow."

"Okay," I thought, blank-brained.

"We talked about the adoption," he went on. "I'm not sure how it came up, but when it did, I asked Olivia if she was getting excited about the new babies....."

Let me interrupt to let you know how deeply invested she is in this whole process. In trying to save for the completion of this process, we eliminated virtually all extraneous memberships/activities from our lives and the lives of our kids. That meant that music classes, dance classes, etc. were all suspended for at least several months until we could be sure that our resources were sufficient to complete this process. Olivia was with me when I stopped by the ballet office to pay the last bill from last spring. I hadn't planned to "announce" the no-ballet edict at the actual ballet studio, but the question was posed, and I stood trying to explain my reasoning to a lovely administrative ballet person while my daughter melted into sobs at my side. Mother of the year I was not. After we left, I talked to her about the choice. Then I decided to try something, committed to affecting whichever outcome my experiment solicited, whatever it took. I told Olivia that I hadn't planned to stop ballet without talking to her first and that I still had time to enroll her in classes. I told her that we, as a family, were trying to cut out a lot of extra costs this fall so that we could bring the new babies home as soon as possible. ...sometimes giving up things we really enjoyed. I told her that, no matter what, the new babies were coming home and that we were going to find a way to make it happen.....that we were making these small sacrifices just to make sure we are absolutely ready when it happens so that there aren't any delays. Then, I let her choose: she could do ballet or she could forgo ballet, and we would include the money that we would have spent in our provision for being ready to bring home the new babies as soon as possible. The Nutcracker is this weekend. We aren't going because she thought that would make her very good choice feel just too sad.

SO, back to the conversation with Josh...

"She said, 'yes, I'm excited....well maybe...' and then she burst into tears. She said 'I'm just afraid that you won't have room on your lap for all four of us.' I scooped up her and Josiah and showed them how my arms stretched so far that there would always be room...that I could hug, and cuddle, and tickle...and I reached around and tickled them....four kids with no problem. We talked about that for a long time. I told her that no matter how many kids we had, she would always be my only Olivia and he would always be my only Josiah and we talked about what it meant to be completely special. Then, I thanked her so much for talking to me because my greatest sadness would be in thinking that she had to be so afraid and so sad all alone...I told her that, even after the babies come home, I want her to always tell me whatever she's feeling so that, no matter what, she doesn't have to feel it alone."

"It sounds like you handled it really well, Josh....You're a great da.."

"There's more. I asked if she had anything else she wanted to talk to me about. She said that she and Josiah were worried about something. She and Josiah, and I looked at him, and he nodded. Like they've been talking about this together, just the two of them, for awhile. She said that both she and Josiah were worried that you and I were going to catch whatever sickness might have killed the babies' mom and dad while we're in Ethiopia. And they are afraid we are going to die too. "

"Wow"

"So we talked about AIDS"

"You talked about AIDS?! You had a HUGE night!"

"I told them that there are a lot of sicknesses in Ethiopia that we don't have in America because there are medicines in America that stop people from getting sick. They know about vaccines, and I told them how you and I are getting vaccinated for everything we possibly can so that we won't catch any of the sicknesses that lots of people die from because of those American medications. Then I told them that one virus that a lot of people die from in Africa called HIV can only be caught in certain ways, and I told them that you and I aren't going to be doing any of the things that can cause someone to catch that virus while we're in Ethiopia."

"Perfect answer."

"You should have seen them. It looked like a 40 pound weight was lifted off of both of their shoulders after we finished the conversation."

How about that father and those kids!

To date, the biggest worry that Josiah has expressed about the new babies is that they will bite or hit him. Who knew he had such heavy concerns? And such conversations with his sister!?

We're all a little older.
I'll be glad when we can be older all together.

Livin' the Dream

2007-12-12T16:23:00.001-05:00

Check out this family's blog -- a play by play of their Ethiopia trip. I'm not sure how they were able to upload posts from Ethiopia, but I'm so glad they did! If you'd like to know a little more about the process in-country, this blog is an excellent resource.

http://ehrmanadoptionjourney.blogspot.com/

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2007-11-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

Here are a few videos of some very thankful people. (Tip: keep tissues close.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twmS_2kTGto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVIhiVnQ3UY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qly3VCw1YNQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrl3XS4Bk_g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B04B2BJ-IFo

Tooooo tired.

2007-11-20T01:57:00.000-05:00

I just checked my own blog to see if there were any updates. (Oddly, there were none:) I need sleep.

Bring Eden Home

2007-11-14T00:12:00.001-05:00

As a mother whose heart spans continents right now, I ache for this family. Please visit their website and help in any way you can. (They tell their own story much better than I can, so I'll leave the details to them...).

http://www.bringedenhome.com/

Oh Whattah Night!

2007-11-13T23:35:00.000-05:00

Do you know the word "nemesis"? My kids do, thanks to a 7th grade basketball legend passed on by my husband (the protagonist) at our 2 hour dinner tonight. TOOOOONYYYYYYY MUUUURRRRRRPHYYYYY (must growl and scowl for proper pronunciation) menaced Josh's middle school basketball career with his evil antics. I'm not actually sure who came out on top of the rivalry [at the final showdown, Tony's (TOOOONNNNYYYYY's) team won....on his birthday, and Tony apparently put up pretty good numbers of his own] but Josiah and Olivia appropriately rally around their Dad and his Schwartzenegery "You're mine. I have not forgotten," Jedi speech during a key play in their much-lauded last matchup. We listed all the nemeses we could think of after Daddy's story (apparently Olivia has a nemesis in her kindergarten class....his name is EEEEEAAAAAASSSSSSTTTOOONNNN -- don't forget to squint and scowl.) --- Luke and Darth (or is it the emperor?), TMNTs and Shredder (or is it really Crang). We talked over the roots of the term in Greek mythology and then moved on to my stories of a cross country nemesis in high school. You know, cross country never drew the crowd that basketball did in my high school....or in any high school, I'd venture. And my kids' forced interest in my painfully dramatized story about KKKAAAARRAAA WIILLLLHEEELLLMMM only served to salt that wound. But we will likely be scowling about TOOOONNYY MUUURRPHHYY for years to come. And, although I'm confident that Tony has evolved into a kind man, probably a caring father and productive member of the workforce...I think we'll hang onto that 7th grade snapshot because it's pretty fun to have a family nemesis!

Here's One I Forgot...

2007-11-12T20:13:00.000-05:00

My kids unloaded this moment on me several weeks ago, but I thought I'd mention it. We read a crazy picture book about a couple who wins three wishes in some fairyland twist of luck, and somehow the woman winds up with a sausage stuck to her nose (if I had a nickel...). We (my mom and I) asked the kids what they would use three wishes for, and here are their responses:

Olivia: "Let Josiah go first."

Josiah: "I would wish for a toy that doesn't cut you or hurt you or break." (Good luck with that one, Josiah! Have you seen the recall list lately!?)

Olivia: "Okay, I would use my first wish to wish for wisdom to know how best to use my next two wishes." (Seriously.)
"Then, I would wish for 100 more wishes." (100:Olivia, A Zillion:Amy)
"And last, I would wish to have a baby when I grow up."

There, I wrote it. Now, when I inevitably forget to remember it, I might accidentally stumble upon it during a blog day update....Whew.

Some Sweet Things My Kids Have Said This Week

2007-11-11T21:16:00.000-05:00

This has been a big week for sweet-isms in our house. I'd call them "unforgettable," but I have been inclined to forget the most important things lately, so I thought I'd archive them here....in nowhere...the mysterious gap in the world wide web where my blog hovers. In a world where the mouth of my life puckers almost daily against somethinger-other bitter, I thought we all might do to sample a little of this sweetness.

Here goes: Yesterday, we were standing in line at the all-you-can-eat buffet/Thanksgiving Dinner with my wonderful family-by-marriage. I struck up a conversation with a woman toting a baby (one of my favorite pasttimes...), and we talked for several minutes about our kids and the general paraphernelia of our lives. At an appropriate pause in our conversation, Olivia respectfully interjected "Excuse me." Then she floored me, "I think that you are very lucky to be talking with my Mom." Brief pause while the mother of three boys smiled and responded with polite indifference. Then Olivia finished, "because she is the very best Mama in the world." I was silenced.

Number Two: The other day in the car, Olivia and I were talking about something, I don't remember what, and I told her how happy I was that she had done or said (or maybe had not done or said....can't remember) something. Olivia said, "That's what I like best." I said, "What do you like best, Olivia?" She said, "Making you happy is my favorite thing, Mom.....and King's Island."

Third Times the Charmer: Tonight, my mom asked the kids to pray for a little girl from her church who is having extreme health difficulties. Olivia prayed their nighttime prayer tonight...mostly about Grandma's being able to smell, which she prays near tears almost every night (my mom can't smell....weird but true.) Anyway, she finished, and Josh started their new nighttime book. Then Olivia interrupted (don't you love her interruptions!? I do!), "Oh no! I forgot to pray for grandma's friend!" At which point she launched into a prayer for the little girl. After she was finished, Josiah said, "Oh daown it! (He still says about a third of his "r"S as Ws....so sweet!), I fowgot to pray for hew too!" This is BIG for Josiah. He NEVER volunteers to pray. We never push prayer. We do it, and respect their opportunities to pray whenever they feel compelled, and we offer them chances to participate in our prayers whenever they're around, but it's not something that Josiah usually does out loud. In fact, the last time he volunteered to pray, he asked if he could pray a song, which each of us does from time to time. Then, he launched into a very meditative....head bowed, eyes closed....rendition of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themesong....both verses....Amen. this time, he prayed that "Gwandma's friend would get bettew and that she would have a chance to gwow up."

I love my kids. They are two of the best people I know.

OOOOoooops, I did it again!

2007-11-09T16:35:00.000-05:00

As most of you know, I have two kids. (Scroll up...there they are.....Very sweet.) During Olivia's pregnancy, I ran across the book Your Pregnancy Week by Week, which was awesome because I didn't have the patience for the month to month updates in What to Expect when You're Expecting. The downside of the week-to-week format -- I read ahead....WAY ahead....and then I convinced myself that I was further along than I actually was. I thought I was 14 weeks when I was 12 weeks.....corrected at a doctor's visit.....read ahead again....then thought I was 27 weeks at 24 weeks.....corrected at a doctor's visit......etc., etc. Instead of getting the clue and patiently enjoying my pregnancy with Josiah (or switching books), I was WORSE. I remember being crushed at 32 weeks when I had convinced myself that I was 36 weeks along and nearly ready to deliver......corrected, of course, at a doctor's visit.

Last night, I was sitting at my computer looking over the informal list on my adoption agency's forum (a few referrals this week have bumped us up a notch or two), and I looked at the column that noted "wait time for a referral." We were listed at 3 months waiting. "That can't be," I thought, amused and appalled (weird combination, I know, but you cannot believe how many days find me walking around in exactly that state of offballance emotional upheaval and mild amusement). I, of course, having been telling people for weeks now that we will arrive at our 5 month waiting mark (the magical mark, as it's the front end of our agency's projected 5-7 month wait time window) on December 3rd, having submitted our paperwork on August 3rd. HMMMMMMMmm, August 3rd, September 3rd, October 3rd, November 3rd, December 3rd......4 months....not five. I was....again.....crushed. Worse than before this time. Very hard.

By the way, the fact that the title of this post is a Britt***ny Spe$rs song is not lost on me. Although I have never heard the song in its entirety (and yes, I am bragging), I haven't been able to get it out of my head for the past 2 days. And, the title seemed, sadly, appropriate. At least my doctor didn't get to deliver the news this time! I read it on a list, in the privacy of my own living/computer/music room...so I could look as amused and appalled as I wanted without fear of mortification or medical intervention.

The Empire Strikes Me

2007-11-01T10:07:00.000-04:00

For the last few nights, we have been engaged in the first phase of a six night Star Wars family marathon. (Don't worry, we plan to screen Episode 3 before we share it with the kids and skip the skippable parts when advisable). Actually, before we took a two night Halloween Hiatus, we had just gotten underway with Star Wars and The Empire Strikes back. The LOVED Empire, and we spent a good deal of the morning after checking out You Tube contributions to the world of George Lucas, including this link, which features Olivia and Josiah's favorite character:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPyxstgk8oM

I was wet-eyed through my whole viewing of this video the first time I watched it. I'm not sure if my emotion stemmed from memories of Empire Strikes Back, the first movie I ever saw in the theater, or from the hours (and HOURS) David and Karen and then later Adam and I spent in our rooms rewinding and listening to (and rewinding and listening to and rewinding and listening to) every song on Dare to Be Stupid. I had forgotten how much fun it was to be kids together...simple, fun. I remember the exileration of learning all of the words (or all of OUR words....as I've grown older and begin to understand more of the jokes, I realize that some of the words we made up have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual lyrics) to any of the Weird Al songs so that we could perform them for Mom and Dad. Funny, too, that as I watched Empire Strikes Back for the first time in 20 years, I could hear my Dad's laugh in all of the places that I remember he found funny.....like when Leia declares her love for Han just before he is immersed in Carbonite and he earnestly replies "I know." So many places in the movie made me smile thinking of my Dad.

Anyway, here's another link that is absolutely not from my childhood, but as long as we're talking Yoda, I thought I'd share a laugh I had with my own kids....an new generation of Jedi laughers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpqutjeVFTc

And for Karen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAH1oEPaILw

And for Grandpa and Grandma:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoaQYL8ylms

Apparently, there's a Yoda for everyone:)

May the farce be with you!

Donatello Found! (With Feet!)

2007-10-29T09:53:00.000-04:00

...As I was saying....if you try, sometimes, you just might find....you get whatcha need!

Another great coloring page clearing house:

http://www.my-family-fun.com/Coloring-page/Coloring-page-home.htm

Coloring Pages to Print

2007-10-29T09:46:00.001-04:00

Josiah and I are surfing the web right now, looking for printable coloring pages of Donatello and a Wookie with feet (they must have feet so that we can cut them out and play paper dolls with them....the feet are crucial). I ran across this clearinghouse of coloring printables that I thought I'd share....very helpful! (links to Chewy Chewbakah....but no Donatello....Oh well, you can't always get what you want, but if you try, sometimes...:)

http://www.csuzberry.com/csuzColoringLinks2.html

As always, I'll link it to the sidebar for future reference.

HMMMMMm.......

2007-10-23T14:37:00.000-04:00

Here's an idea for a MOPS conversation starter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Thanks for passing this along, Kimberly.

huh.

My Response to the MOPS Debaucle: Loving my Kids is a Walk to the Park

2007-10-23T12:58:00.000-04:00

I joined MOPS (Mothers of Pre-Schoolers) this year. I remember my first invitation to join, some 4 years ago or so. A woman in the library talked about a preschool-like atmosphere for small children while mothers congregated in another room to (and these were her exact words) "discuss a topic." I bristled (visibly, I'm sure...I've never been very good at bristling on the sly) at the idea of joining a melange of women circled around buffet-style breakfast foods to "discuss a topic," and I graciously (except for the bristling part which I had no control over) declined. Years passed, and with them 8 or so more invitations to join MOPS, each of which I turned down for one pitifully contrived reason or another. Then, last year, a friend asked me to come for a free visit to a MOPS openhouse. Well, if you've even given a cursory scan to my prior posts, you know how I feel about free things. So I went. And the women were kindhearted and authentic and vulnerable and helpful and funny, and the childcare rooms were orderly and fun and well-thought-out...and....well....I joined!

So far this year, the "topics" have been limited to introductions on the first week and design and decorating on our second (because of which I have moved a couch away from a wall and plan to rehang my drapes!)...so far so good! Last week, our third week of ...topic discussing....I stayed home with two sick kids and missed a presentation/discussion starter entitled "Christianity 101." I cannot comment on the presentation at all, as I was enjoying the day with my children (illnesses notwithstanding), but I clearly missed the most hoppin MOPS day on record! More than a couple of other mothers from our group have made a point of talking with me about the scant discussion of material that they have all described as "heavy." Aside from some doctrine (dogma?) -laden talking points, the salient issue that everyone keeps mentioning is the speaker's insistence that we must, as mothers, evaluate whether or not our love for our children supersedes our love for God....hmmmmm. (I think that's a fair parsing of the point; I'll steer clear of the various illustrations he used to elucidate it since I wasn't there to take them in first hand.)

When my friend talked to me about the presentation and, in particular, this point, I must have looked.......stupid. That's the look I get when I'm processing. Here's how it works: I take in the incongruous statement (eyebrow curls downward), I try to comprehend it generously, giving full deference to the speaker and his overall intent (head tilts back, eyes widen and focus somewhere to the left of the person telling me the information), and then I formulate a response (eyes narrow, head shakes vaguely...almost imperceptibly): read, I look stupid.....worse, disinterested. WORSE, like I tacitly agree with the declaration at hand! In other words, my friend probably walked away from telling me about the speaker at MOPS believing that I was one of the following: a genuine ignoramus, not at all interested in what she had to say, or in agreement that a mother must somehow choose between her love for God and her children, which exist in some sort of artificial hierarchy!

SO, I'm clearing the air with this response, which it took me until later that evening to formulate and which it has taken me a full week to articulate in this post.

First of all (isn't it nice that I can't interrupt a several-screen post with a phrase like "first of all"?), let me say that I have NO problem with anything offensive. The MOPS presentation has, more than once been described as "mildly offensive" or at least "intrusive." I ache (probably visibly again....you know how I am....) over having missed it! I love mildly offensive, intrusive things! In fact, no real transformation in my life has ever occurred without having begun as something that I had previously labelled at least mildly offensive, and I am always hungry for another transformation (my husband is not......he's good....I on the other hand....). So I began my assessment of this idea by challenging myself with it, since it grates so dissonantly against the web of philosophy and faith upon which my mothering tenuously hangs.

The thread upon which his proposition keeps snagging is this one: any assertion that loving God and loving people are opposed to one another seems either heretical or begs a redefinition of the word LOVE as I understand it. Worship, perhaps. Honor, maybe. But loving God and loving people cannot be opposed to one another. The one contains the other, like the concept "Mother" contains "woman."

If Josh came home and asked me, "Would you like to go to the park or go for a walk this evening?" I would get that stupid look on my face. I would respond, "Why don't we walk to the park?" I know there are lots of ways to get to the park; we could ride bikes, take a car, roller skate, run -- but my favorite way remains walking. I'm best equipped for it, by both inclination and ability. ............ If someone asked me "Do you love God or your children more?" I would doubtlessly look stupid (if not mildly offended!:), and I would say that loving my children is my favorite way to love God. I know there are lots of ways of loving God -- appreciating and preserving the world He created, singing in the choir, serving meals at the Waffle House -- but I LOVE loving my children. I'm best equipped for it, by both inclination and ability. It's my favorite way to love God in much the same way that walking is my favorite way to travel to the park. The one accomplishes the other; the two do not oppose one another.

If only loving my kids and finishing my school work reconciled so easily!

Apart from the fact that the speaker directed his objectionable comment to an audience full of women who have elected to occupy themselves fully with the care and training of their children at the expense of other daytime occupational or avocational interests (which doesn't seem.....nice), I think his intentions were probably good....although I wasn't there to hear the "good" part, so I can only comment on the one or two things that made their way back to me after my kids had fully recovered.

Hooray for MOPS, though! The discussion hour last Wednesday may have been flat, but the last several days have been carbonated with its repercussions. I'm not sure what this week holds, but I for one, am hoping for something REALLY offensive.....like "The Art of Censoring Objectionable Material from Your Children's Books," or "The 2008 Election: Vote Libertarian or Don't Vote at All." I hope the art project isn't too distracting (yes there are art projects....there was tote painting....a little stamping....and I missed mug painting...I'll not comment further.) because I'm overdue for some transformative conversation! Bring it on, MOPS!!!

By the way, I think that November may be National Chemistry Month, so Carey, if you're reading this, know that I'll be thinking of you!

Family Perspective Week: Final Thoughts

2007-10-16T23:51:00.000-04:00

You are all wonderful. Allow me to elaborate:

David: Your thoughtful responses to this week and to my capacious posts made me so grateful for your friendship and so proud (again) to have you as my brother. Thank you for taking the time to care about every aspect of our family (and OUR family, as it grows and grows and grows). The future for Josh and I and our kids seems much less intimidating because of your consider-ate support and unflinching....um....support.

Josh (AKA Anonymous): You are the most wonderful man in the world. Did I mention that?

Mama (AKA Deleted Post and Subsequent Comment): It is BECAUSE of your love and not in SPITE of it that I have grown up to love other people. Thank you for being exactly you.

Karen: Thank you thank you for "hosting" this week. You and Jeremy are going to be magnificent parents. I can't wait to mother alongside you and to continue to learn from you.

Kimberly: Thank you for being in my family. Your insights and your friendship are indispensible.

I love you all! Thanks, again, for taking time to engage in Family Perspective Week (our first annual? Shall I make t-shirts this year?), proving, once again, that I have an unmatchably wonderful family.

I will respond to those of you who shared your responses to me privately via email. Please consider yourself included in the taxonomy of thank yous, however:)

Have a great night, and please, feel free to chime in with your various perspectives whenever you have time/feel moved/can't find anything good on TV. I LOVE hearing from you.

Family Perspective Week Part 2: Okay, here's what I think...

2007-10-06T00:19:00.000-04:00

Weird, isn't it, that I always seem to end my titles with elipses? Elipses may be the defining punctuation of my life, now that I think about it! (Weird, isn't it, that I'm thinking about it?) I lapse into elipses (how's that for a grunge/alternative band name) constantly when I write (when I'm not writing parenthetically....which is a whole OTHER pathology), and if I were to choose an end punctuation for my life, I think it would be elipses... 10 years ago, I would have said exclamation point; 15, I would have said a question mark; now, it's elipses...hmmmm.

But this post is about Transracial Adoption (though I can't imagine how anyone would guess that from my title or introductory paragraph...see why my journalism major only lasted a semester?), so I'll get right down to it. In the last post, I described the evolution of my feelings about parenting, race, and this adoption journey of ours. Now, I'd like to share some ideas that I have about the same sorts of issues. I like to divide things up, break them into smaller parts so that I can look at them more closely (see Homeschool vs. Public School, for example). I have come up with two concepts of race that hold perfect tension on the tug-of-war line between confusion and truth in my mind. I'd like to share them with you, but the caveat for embarking on this post is that if you read only part of it, the tug-of-war sways grossly out of balance. So (if you can tolerate all of the self-indulgent parenthetical asides), read the whole thing in a single sitting. Otherwise, you'll be choking on dry cereal one morning and drinking silty milk from a bowl the next.

First off,
Race is a CONSTRUCT: One of the last classes I took during my last run at school spent a lot of effort in examining the ways in which people create ideas, especially socially significant ideas like race, culture, and gender. We talked about the fact that categories that seem pretty discrete and concrete actually exist along a much more fluid continuum than our conceptions would allow. Gender was, during that course, the example that impacted me. Our professor walked us through reading and class discussion that shook apart the dividing lines between categories so broadly accepted that stick figures in skirts or slacks almost universally symbolize their preeminence. But what makes a man a man and a woman a woman? Biology? That answer seems most obvious, but consider the biological qualities that we accept as identifiers. Hormones? Some self-identified women have hormone levels more saturated with testosterone than most culturally identified men. Chromosomes? What about Jamie Lee Curtis and the better part of a women's Olympic shot-put squad, all of whom have been dramatically affected by their ambiguous chromosomes, which include the decidedly male Y attatched to their pair of Xs? That's not to say that men and women aren't different, but it does illustrate the fact that the words we use to meen "male" and "female" are more pliable than we might normally recognize, that they actually represent some combination of a whole slew of factors that may or may not come into play in every instance to which they are applied.

Did I mention that this post is about Transracial Adoption? (7 right turns do, indeed, make a left.) All of that to say that if categories such as male and female represent loose amalgamations of expectations that we drag around without realizing it, then certainly already ambiguous categories like race and tribe slip their fences.

Did you know that people who are from India living in England are considered black? Most American people don't use that word in the same way. What about the word "Indian" in America? At least two stridently distinct ethnic heritages carry that label in our country. And are Russian's Asian? Are Haitian's African? Do you see how the words we use to describe other people leak like sieves? None of the categorical qualifiers that we might stuff in the bottoms of our language are sufficient to plug their holes. Complexion? Language? Family History? Many people who would check the box next to "Black" or "African-American" on a survey line have lighter complexions than other people who identify themselves as categorically white. People from several different continents all speak Spanish when they talk to their great grandparents, friends, and business associates. And while we're on the subject of great grandparents.....consider the flexibility in your family tree. Most of us don't know our great great grandmother's maiden name, and we know even less about the minutae of her daily life or the person she perceived herself to be. Some people's worlds are rocked when their family tree changes color or shakes off its leaves. My husband's German family is actually Danish. My grandmother's mother was Scottish and not Irish. My patrilineal ancestor snuck over on a boat from England and not Ireland. What about Carlos O'Kelly? Where's that guy from? Where are any of us from? Cultural heritage and ethnically rooted traditions can bind families together, but they cannot be regarded as racial signifiers. They don't have the stickiness to do the job. They're like a pencil-scrawled post it note, passed down from generation to generation: the writing has faded, and the back just never holds.

So what is race? Just like gender (only moreso) it is a conglomeration of labels that have slowly saturated our ideas about one another. Some of those labels were scribbled on the back of the post it note passed down to you through the generations. Some seeped in between the worksheets in our kindergarten classes. Some, we made up to explain the vague trends in our own experience. Who knows? I didn't know that "Jewish" could be used as a racial identifier until recently. Ten or twelve years ago, when I went to college, I think, I first heard someone say something like "He looks Jewish" or "That sounds like a Jewish last name." I had absolutely no idea what that person meant. In my arrangment of seives, Jewish was the religion of Moses, Abraham, and Jesus, and the people who observed Purim and Yom Kippur in my high school were white, like me. They just went to a different church. There was no special look, no identifiable last name in my construct of that "race."

Add to that (or add that to) the fact that I am committed, by a lifelong faith, to the absolute particularity of every person and his or her crucial importance to the heart of a loving God, and you have nothing but a shattered reflection through which to sift for any remnants of what you (or I) once labelled "race." In such light, the CONSTRUCT, simply cannot hold.

My children will be (are being) raised in accordance with that truth. Their indispensable voices, their irreplacable selves, their inimitable perspectives...their perfect particularity in the sight of God....will always govern the way our family operates. Our lives and the love that infuses them with meaning will unrelentingly reflect our commitment to the unity that comes from absolute diversity (not the shoddily drawn diversity of arbitrary categories but the radical diversity of individual, unrepeatable souls).

There you have it. Tug of war team # 1, truth, and its presidence over our family and all of its members: Race is a CONSTRUCT. It does not exist.

And here's the second, unmistakable fact:

Race IS a Construct: It DOES persist as arguably the most powerful construct in human history. It has been used to justify war and cruelty beyond measure. It continues to dellineate neighborhoods, churches, and cafeteria tables. In its prevalence, it creates commonality. People who have been stung by the broad, stupid application of the construct, again and again, are galvanized into unity by the heat and pressure. Likewise, people coagulate into like-mindlessness and power by virtue of their appropriation of a construct in common. So, at its best, the construct of race offers people a home, a place where belonging exists before words because common experience rarely needs to be spoken. And in this solidarity, people are comforted, empowered, and understood. At its worst, well....read the papers.

If I don't arm my children with the tools to face down the wrong-headed implications of the most powerful construct in human history, then what kind of parent am I? And if I deny them an opportunity to melt into a community where they can find ease and identity without words among people who share common experience, an experience of a construct that I will never have nor completely understand, then I will have failed my children. I have an obligation to educate, encourage, and empower my family on all sides of this volatile, powerful, hateful, ennobling construct with every tool that my own resources and the resources of my community can provide.

I don't know how we'll manage it, but I'm fairly sure that if we let these two facts slide out of balance, if either side begins to pull harder, our whole family will collapse in a filthy heap. So I'm committed to the effort, with all of my heart. And I'll trust in the miracle of being set aright and hosed off again and again by the one who created without construct and yet enabled us to create them. And I can't tell you how much peace washes over me as I end that sentence with a solid, definitive period.

Family Perspective Week!

2007-10-03T09:24:00.000-04:00

I'd like to tell you all about my wonderful little sister: she is thoughtful, tenderhearted, and loving (sounds like I'm naming Care Bears here, doesn't it?), AND she has organized a family perspective sharing week in preparation for our adoption! Because of the weight of words like black and white, and because of the way that those concepts will be transformed and will transform our family dynamic, Karen (my thoughtful, tenderhearted, loving little sister) thought it would be helpful to set aside a week to challenge our individual ideas about race and share our discoveries with one another....as a family. She could not have planned a better adoption gift for me if she had used all of the time and resources in the world to try. Josh and I have spent the last year and a half examining our own ideas about adoption and race and our family. We have reimagined our dinner table and our grandchildren and ourselves. We have admitted weaknesses and embarassments and developments to one another nearly every week (sometimes, every day) throughout this entire journey. Wouldn't it be bizarre for us to expect (or even hope, for that matter?) that our family would instantly evolve to a place that has taken us months and months (and months and months) to even approach as parents? We don't, but opening up a conversation wherein people can admit their perspectives without fear, where we can feel safe to challenge, confess to, and accept one another as we grow toward love together can be difficult. (Now I sound like one of those weird new greeting cards that seems oddly specific...). That's why I'm so grateful to Karen for holding this conversation for all of us.

NOW, for my first contribution to our dialogue:)

A couple of months ago, I responded to a post on a forum for Ethiopian adoption. Another mother was struggling to reidentify herself and rediscover her ideas about race as she prepared to adopt a child who would be African-American. In my response (which I tried to think through carefully, though it only got one, very caustic, reply), I shared my own struggles with the same ideas. I'm going to paste my response here with as few interruptions as possible:

What lessons our new children teach us....before they even arrive in our arms. This process (and I keep thinking of words like whiplash or crawl or hurdle as I type that phrase) compells me to evaluate parts of myself I was entirely unaware of before I "met" my children. Following your example, I am going to share my starts, steps, and stumbles in muddling through the minefield of race, motherhood, and hope......so far.

First, the decision: After a series of loosely connected encounters with the question of international adoption, [Actually, the night after Josh and I had decided not to have any more children during a conversation at the WalM*art.....and I don't think we are the only people on the planet who have ever reached a decision like this one at the Walm*art....I began to pray. I prayed for my children, and then thought to add "and for any other children that you may give to us....though you're going to have to beat me over the head with that one because I'm pretty comfortable with two." At that moment, I had an uncomfortable (uncomfortable like when I tried to mail the unsigned check to our adoption agency!) sense that if someone in our church had a child that needed a home, I would open our family...and mother(*verb*). After I finished praying, I went to the computer, where I had just received a congregation-wide email from our preacher that mentioned a blog of someone connected to our church who was adopting from Ethiopia. I opened the link (Dani and Brian West....I'll post the link to my sidebar), just to kill time before hitting the regular blogs I regularly use to kill time. Within an hour I was crying. Within two, I was purposefully sifting through agency requirements and country-specific facts.] I opened up one night to the possibility and began to surf the web.....researching. Ostensibly, I researched agencies, costs, wait times, etc. More honestly, I was researching myself. Every time I opened up a file with a photo of a family completed by adopting internationally, a blog about adoption, or photos of waiting children, I stared, searching faces, studying eyes, trying to decide if these could be MY children, my babies whose skin and hair don't resemble me....or my husband. Yes! Yes! Yes! and so we began discussions. {More accurately, I left a voicemail on his work phone, saying something like "Josh, I think we should adopt internationally. Let me know what you think when you get home."}

Second, the quest: Was I a racist? The magnificent mystery love from that first night slowly evaporated, burned off by the harsh light I turned inward to search for answers to that question. Love and hate cannot occupy a common space; mothering and racism cannot coexist. An urgency to justify my un-racist heart obsessed me. I read pages and pages of internet material by writers [of several different racial identities] convinced that caucasian parents could not adequately parent adopted children of color because the gulf (racism) could not be bridged. I have been raised around the insidious us/them mentality of latent racism, confessing equality and clutching my purse. Could I think of black people (and not just black babies) as family? I began to watch, stare really, at the black people I encountered throughout my day (my life) thinking, could you be my grandmother? could you be my sister? could you be my grown up child? could I love you like I profess that I do?

My heart exploded.

Third, harder questions: Questions that weren't really questions at all but truths that flattened me. I had lived a lie. I fought for equality and cherished friendships, but I kept words like "they" close at hand.....little racist safety nets should I be rebuffed or rejected. I flailed about inside myself, loving children I had never met and hating myself for loving so badly all of my life. The big question: would I whip out my racist "they" (from the back to the front of my heart) on hard days with my children?
Suddenly, peace: the floor broke.
I fell through. God smiled, and I learned, from my children, the love and connectedness that has made me ALIVE and has stilled and invigorated me. There are no words for this stage in the process for me. [I typed that last sentence on the forum in a moment of efficient, maybe evasive, delerium. Of course there are more words! Sometimes, I have described my efforts to investigate my race and my heart as an elevator. On the top floor ...the floor near my eyes and mouth.....I say and see...or at least I say that I see....the right things. Children of God. Multiplicity as a miracle. Individuals as infinitely particular, etc. Floor two, the level that lands me right at the center of my heart, is a nightmare. Distances I hated to admit. Stereotypes I never wanted to believe I believed. Smallminded stupidity that I couldn't acknowledge.....I thought....if I were going to continue with this adoption. I kept pushing the up button. Finally, I resolved to open the doors to level two, face whatever I found, and trust God with whatever followed, even if it meant ending our adoption. That's the moment I described before with the phrase "the floor fell through," and I really did feel like God was laughing (with me? at me? at least near me.) ....like I had just tried to tell him that the Red Sea was too deep or a mustard seed too small or a minivan just too expensive (wait until I tell you all about that one!). I felt like I had fallen into a warm sea. And people were not scary; they were all small, like me, and swimming in the same big sea. Brothers and sisters. FAMILY. Ideologically, I have always wanted to believe that family.....big, boundless family, was possible. Now, I was soaking in it!] Along the way I have toiled over other issues, the particulars of mothering (empowering without terrifying my children...caring for them properly...etc.) and of mothering a child born to and loved first by another mother....a mother I would learn to love as I continued to sift through my fears about adopting. [See She's my Baby's Mama] I'm not afraid of what I'll find anymore when I look inside. I run deeper than I would have ever learned had it not been for my children.

I have a million (or so) more thoughts on this topic that I hope to contribute to our dialogue this week. Thank you, Karen, for organizing this week, and thank you, everyone, for participating.

By the way, I think we should have a family perspective week every year, guided by developments in all of our lives. Think about it (perhaps we should have a family perspective week to gather everyone's thoughts about what it would be like to have an annual family perspective week....perhaps).

Light a Candle 2....the update

2007-10-03T01:09:00.000-04:00

By the way, the nice man I spoke to when I called the Indianapolis Opera to ask about discounted tickets to the Sunday mantinee was busy...too busy to take the time to listen to and investigate my whole "That nice boy at the information desk named Patrick suggested..." ....and "we just got our days mixed up....." .....and...."Olivia has so looked forward to another Mozart Opera....." SO he interrupted me to offer us COMPLIMENTARY tickets (complimentary $95/per seat tickets!) to Sunday's matinee of The Magic Flute. We saw it!!!!! It was beautiful. We are blessed beyond measure! (Did you pick up on the fact that I love free things? Here's a motto: "Got something free? Give it to me!" Do you think there's any chance that one will end up on Lawrence Fishburn's wall? I'll keep working on it...)

As Long as I'm Quoting People......

2007-10-03T00:53:00.000-04:00

I've run across this prose poem a handful of times this year, and it still gives me pause. Marianne Williamson (who is okay) wrote it, and Nelson Mandela (who, of course, rocks) quoted it just before he first took office.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won't feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It's not just in some of us;
it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

If I'm going to be unoriginal, I might as well do it richly, right? (I saw this quote, aptly abbreviated, in Akeela and the Bee this evening.....we have free Sh*wtime this week on cable...I'm not sure if I'll sleep at all, but it is fun to watch movies!...fun, because it's free.) Here's the Akeela version, for those among you who prefer it distilled.....

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.

I like this efficient version. I like to read it aloud. I like, then, to imagine that I could write something inspiring too....something that might also one day hang on Lawrence Fishburn's wall.

Light a Candle

2007-09-27T23:34:00.000-04:00

Adlai Stephenson said of Eleanor Roosevelt "She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness" .....approximately (the quote is in a children's book CLEAR OVER in the kitchen). We read that quote yesterday after poring over about 6 books on the late first lady during an improvised unit study surrounding the movie Annie (I call it a unit study because Obsessing-over-every-vaguely-interesting-detail-related-to-anything-which-gives-us-pleasure is entirely too long a label). I turned to Olivia and gushed, "Olivia, I hope one day someone could look at my life and say something like this about me, don't you?" She answered instantly, "What are we waiting for mom? You would rather light a candle...than....swallow the night....or something." Then we both busted up laughing and went back to Eleanor (who really had a difficult childhood, and was FDR her cousin or something?).

I can't spend 20 minutes sentimentalizing about dishwashing detergent and then go to bed without telling at least mentioning the fact that my daughter, daily, lights my candle for me. Tonight we fancied up and went to see the dress rehearsal of The Magic Flute (Olivia loves the opera). She has been looking forward to this date forever (in the way that a 5 year old understands forever.....maybe in the way that any of us understand forever)....and so have I. We hurried to the performance hall, arrived early, and found out that the dress rehearsal was LAST NIGHT. It was a long drive. We spent money we should have saved. No opera. Olivia cried. I nearly cried. Poor Patrick at the information desk almost cried. After about 4 minutes of grieving and then 3 more of regrouping, I remembered Eleanor, and Olivia and I resolved that, after a quick trip to the bathroom (and 10 or so more apologies from me about my mis-schedule) we would salvage our date and light a candle instead of sitting around cursing the darkness. ("What's cursing again mom?" "Complaining or sitting around saying really bad things about your situation instead of doing something to change it." "Oh yeah; let's light a candle.") So we left the auditorium and saw a pack of sorority girls (women?) with painted faces and balloons in their hands. Needless to say we followed them for a time. Olivia thought they were clowns, and I was open to anything that would help to drag our date out of dissappointment quicksand. Then I saw a mom with four kids exiting a minivan with a purposeful look on her face. I distracted Olivia from the clown processional long enough to accost the woman, fill her in on our tragic date, and ask her what she had planned for her own kids. Her comments led us to a rehearsal of the Indianapolis Children's Choir, which we surreptitiously attended and LOVED. Then, candles lit, we left the campus. We were so close to the Indianapolis Museum of Art that, in spite of the late hour, I told Olivia we could stop before we headed home, and she jumped at that one. So I darted across a couple of lanes (sorry, Dad) and we surveyed the whole of African art in about an hour. Now, we know a good deal more about incorporating the beautiful into everyday life, and every docent in the wing knows about our Ethiopian adoption thanks to a VERY proud big sister. We both declared the evening one of our best dates ever, and we told the story of The Magic Flute (as best we could remember it.....somehow, we managed to forget how the actual flute played into the plot, but we did not forget the crazy bird man!) all the way home. She will be very tired tomorrow in school....all that candle lighting wears a body out. What a great kid.

One Great Thing

2007-09-27T23:15:00.000-04:00

I learned something wonderful today. Cascade Complete, the $6 dishwashing detergent that promises to clean your dishes without ANY prewashing......DOES!!!!!! I sprung for the high end soap figuring that, on the off chance that the stuff really worked, I would bask in the unwound joy of having countless extra hours this year because of the time I save in NOT washing my dishes before placing them in the dishwasher (and, better yet, avoiding the bitter post-dishwasher soak and rewash of the 30% of the dishes with crud firmly baked on by the dishwasher sanitation kiln....a lovely tomatosauce glaze).....OR I would chalk the three additional dollars up to relatively cheap lessons learned and move on (and back.....to the $2.99 Electrosol). But it works!!!! I have washed two loads of dishes today....the first was loaded last night....an experimental run with the new detergent after a detergent dry spell that yielded mountains of disgusting (DISGUSTING) crusty dishes. I challenged my new soap and my new soap met that challenge!!!! My bowls are clean -- completely clean -- every crevice of every fork is sparkly, and there is no disconcerting crud on the edges of my spatulas that must be manually scraped into the insinkerator. They are clean. So I tried the pots and pans....havens for blissful dishes of dinner and unbudging growths of visible bacteria colonies.....ALL CLEAN. I cannot describe the unspeakable happiness that warms me everytime I open this dishwasher (my first ever). Who invented this stuff? What is the procedure for recommending someone for canonization as a saint? This discovery rivals the introduction of Zout to our laundry system (that's right, JJ! Pass it on!) I'd ask the Cascade people (saints?) to pay me for this gratuitous recommendation, but I'm not sure there's a budget for mentioning a product to immediate family (the sole demographic that comprises my blog audience). Thanks, anyway, Cascadians......You are (sniff) wonderful.

Approved!!!!!

2007-09-25T18:17:00.000-04:00

If you've read my posts about sparkly shoes and the conspiratorial folder (Homeschool v. Public School), you have probably inferred that I have spent the better (or worse) part of my life clawing up the smooth face of other peoples' approval. Today it finally happened. Signed, sealed, and delivered to my home, I got approval. Approval from the government of the United States to adopt up to 3 (but we're only requesting 2) "foreign-born orphans" into our "immediate family." I'd have to say, I'd happily sacrifice a revision of my whole junior high experience for this flavor of approval.....MUCH sweeter. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. We are WELL on our way....and now the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security agree!

An Adoption Update

2007-09-20T23:05:00.000-04:00

I realized this afternoon how long it has been since I updated news of our adoption progress (the ostensible purpose of this blog!). I have something to report, in fact. Last Friday, Josh and I were officially fingerprinted at USCIS, the final step in our application process with the US government to petition for our adoption....pretty big news, actually, for all of us. We celebrated a very merry unbirthday for the new babies, together all day. (I should clarify the "very merry unbirthday" reference, as I realize it is a peculiar family holiday. One of our children has a birthday very close to Christmas. In order that her "special day" not be entirely subsumed in the fervor of the season, we instituted the Very Merry Unbirthday. At least once a year, we surprise each kid with a day of devoted celebration. We arrange our plans around an event geared toward the interests of that particular child, and, after waking her with a loud and badly rendered version of the tea party song from Alice in Wonderland, we shower her with attention, affection, and the planned surprise outing. The only stipulations we restrict ourselves to when planning a VMUB are 1. Every immediate family member must be present for the day in its entirety. This stipulation often requires that Josh take vacation from work...I think he looks forward to the unbirthdays more than the kids do actually. 2. No gifts. Very merry unbirthdays are exclusively for celebrating together, an activity that often requires little if any expenditure {a HUGE bonus}. We still celebrate birthdays wildly, but I think we have all grown to anticipate and appreciate the unbirthdays as staple family holidays. I have to think it would be very cool to wake up every morning of your childhood knowing that it could quite possibly be your very own Merry Unbirthday! {I really like to think that, anyway.} As the kids get older, they love being in on the planning and secret-keeping for each other's unbirthdays. In fact, I often have to reign them in from instituting daily VMUBs by invoking rule one so that Daddy won't be left out of the festivities -- they have found a loophole, by the way, in very special brother day or very special sister day. These are days that they plan and orchestrate on their own for each other...very sweet, though they often last only until shortly after lunch....so anyway....We made Friday a first Very Merry Unbirthday for our two kids who are far away, devoting our day to celebrating and appreciating them and the depth they already bring to our family.) After our stop at the immigration office, we headed to the art museum to take in art created in Ethiopia. Finding, however, that the museum opens much later than it used to, we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house for a visit before having dinner together at an Ethiopian Restaurant. All in all a powerfully fun and eventful day and another milestone (maybe a half-milestone....they have those, now, in Indiana, you know) as we continue moving toward completing our family.

Laughing out loud

2007-09-17T23:22:00.000-04:00

After laughing out loud and in tears for the last 15 minutes as I read this story of one woman's visit to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (where we will pick up our babies in a few months), I am taking a minute to add another link-related entry to this blog. You must not miss this one!

http://www.bootsnall.com/articles/07-01/three-weeks-in-addis-addis-ababa-ethiopia-africa.html

I'm going to post it quickly so that I can read it again before I shut down for the night.

The British Invasion ---- A Homeschool Curriculum Link

2007-09-12T21:59:00.000-04:00

Oh how I love this BBC site! We love the primary science and math arenas, but there's so much to explore. I hope it's helpful. I know it's fun!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/

As always, I will link it to my sidebar so that it will be available forever and ever.

Ethiopian History and the Christian Church

2007-09-12T21:26:00.000-04:00

I have run across a few sites that detail the history of Ethiopia and its longstanding relationship to Judeo-Christian traditions of faith. I thought these sites might interest some of you (I'm thinking of you in particular, Grandpa M.).

http://www.peace-on-earth.org/Ethiopia/
http://www.st-gebriel.org/
http://www.angelfire.com/ny3/ethiochurch/
http://www.pbs.org/wonders/fr_e4.htm
http://www.fhi.net/fhius/ethiopiafamine/christian.html
http://www.bethel.edu/~letnie/EthiopiaHomepage.html
http://www.selamta.net/religion.htm
http://www.ethiopiantreasures.toucansurf.com/pages/religion.htm

I'll link them in the sidebar as well for later reference. I love you guys. You are the greatest family (and friends) in the world. Thanks for taking the time to read and keep up with our adoption (and for tolerating all of the other crazy things I write about along the way).

Homeschool vs. Public School

2007-09-10T22:04:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I'll revise that title later; it sounds like I'm heralding a steel cage deathmatch between two opposing groups of kids. I'm not (I'm NOT). I've been revisiting a longstanding debate between myself and.....myself: me vs. me (much more boring than my aforementioned wrestling intimation....but much less ethically volatile). Where to begin.... Do I start with the sometimes glorious sometimes grueling (mostly pretty terrific) year of homeschooling my kids that I only recently wrapped up with a preschool graduation ceremony at grandma's? Or should I begin with the school supply aisle at Targ*t last month, where our public elementary school list "outed" us in front some of our favorite fellow homeschoolers?

I'll just give you my lists...the nebulous coagulations of pros and cons and what?s that I've never organized into lucid bulletpoints.....never...until NOW.

What I love about homeschooling:

1. Spending time with my kids. If you've met my kids, then I don't need to elaborate on this one. In case you haven't, imagine hours spent pretending to be....any number of real and fictional characters....while hiking in the woods....sharing grapes, water, mudpies, and knock knock jokes much funnier than the ones that actually make sense....then add my kids to the scene and you have a fairly accurate rendering of the better part of our afternoons together.

2. Learning whatever interests them....and me. As it turns out, I love science and history: two facts that completely eluded me during my years of studenting (it SHOULD be a verb). As it turns out, they love EVERYTHING, with an emphasis on all things attached to a story, song, or bug net.

3. Field trips. I've said it before (is there a more arrogant introductory clause in the English language? I seriously doubt it), I am a terrible stay-at-home mom (so I'll balance it with a little self-effacement). I require the perspective of an apple orchard, or a stage, or a creek, or a museum, or a zoo, or a factory, or a festival, or a creek (yep, there it is again, we love them that much), or a park, or a tree, or a sky, or a library to keep me from going berserk (see my previous post wherein I describe the calculation with which I anticipated conversations with visiting mormons for further elucidation of this point).

4. Scheduling and unscheduling our days. I love poring over lesson plans, unit studies, children's books, and educational theories until my eyes burn and I have no feeling in my feet only to wake up WHENEVER WE WANT TO the next day and implement the very best of what I've learned with fantastic students or drop it all and celebrate Bat Day.

5. There are a million or so other things that we loved -- enough, at least, that I thought the bulk justified an open-ended numbered point. We love the seamless continuum across which we turn our loves into our lessons and our lessons into our loves. Josh and I get to play to our strengths, and I think we are all stronger for it.

Things I don't love about homeschooling.

1. Failing, failing, perpetually failing. Here's one glaring example: I planned a year of activities geared to address each day of creation across the span of seven months(so we would spend a month loosely discussing light, one on water and the sky, one on land, dirt, rocks, sea, plants, seeds, and climates........and there it stopped. No "etc." Who knew day three was so rife with educational potential? We didn't do half of the hands on exploration that I had planned for the first three months, and after a full year we were still jostling around in day three.) Some of you more generous readers (hi, mom) are thinking "that's not failure," but I bought wall-length charts of the human skeletal and digestive systems! I organized our entire children's library by their relationship to the days of creation! I planned science experiments, display posters, and literature-based unit studies that we never even broached! I bought wall-length charts! WALL-LENGTH charts! And it turns out we just really like dirt and plants! Who knew!

2. When they love school, they love me. When they hate school, well...you get the idea. I am the one urging them to finish their projects, put away their markers...with lids...when they're finished, and stand for our closing song (oh, we HAVE a closing song, and an opening song, and transition music.....transition music planned to coincide with the relevant aspect of the day or creation we are discussing.....who can blame them for being annoyed?) And when I (also annoyed by my own anality [it OUGHT to be a noun]) failed to communicate the central idea of a lesson or the phonics concept or mathematical principle or logical structure during a given school period, I often failed, too, to love them effectively in the process. My patience waned, frustration mounted, and occasionally someone cried. It stunk. Some days, it really stunk.

3. Balancing passion and pressure. This point relates less to the time I spent with my kids, directly, and more to the interaction that I maintain with the homeschool community at large. The passion we share for enjoying and educating our children drives us together. The pressure to represent is overwhelming. And in case the nineties-rap jargon (you know how I love love love 90s rap) turned homeschool verb(al) seems confusing, I'll take a minute to unravel "represent." What's your curriculum? Is she reading? Phonics or whole language? TV or no TV? Latin yet? Music class? Art class? Ballet? Do you test? Co-op? If none of these questions resonates with you, think freshman year, "What's your major? Did you rush? Are you ready for finals?" or Fall semester, senior year: "What are you going to do when you graduate?" Or for you preacher-readers (hi, dad), "emergent or traditional? saved or baptized? gay-friendly or homo-phobic?" (as a side note, however, I need to point out that, although I referenced my father when I prefaced the religiously-oriented hot-button topics, I can't imagine that any one of these questions would cause him the slightest alarm or that he would venture into a discussion about them unless one of his kids needed a sounding board during a personal crisis....and it would have to be a crisis. He's not particularly religious, in the strictest sense, and RARELY engages "issues" of religion.....unless we make him:). Exhausting! And if it's exhausting for ME to have to represent, imagine the trickle-down effect on my kids! (Emotional Reaganomics!)

4. Which brings me to number four: homeschool weird. There, I said it. I don't think the socio-psycho-pop-cultural-iconifiers have constructed an esoteric label for this one yet, but it's a very real phenomenon. Somehow, the pressure to represent (see number 3)mingles with the overarching sense of failure (see number 1), yielding an environment in which homeschool weird is likely, if not certain, to take over. I don't buy the "lack of socialization" explanation for HSW, for a couple of reasons. First, most homeschool students have a broad and active peer group in their communities and churches. Second, I think the factors that contribute to the HSW phenomenon are so obvious and so obviously unrelated to issues of socialization that I'm surprised they are still discussed so frequently in tandem. Here's an example of the petrie dish in full effect. I have attended a number of homeschool plays, concerts, and performances at which the performance anxiety in the audience is as high or higher than that which is on stage. The sense that lines misspoken, a blip on the public school screen of parental concern, reveal some amplified failure to educate or support by parents whose days and often nights are spent thinking acrobatically of ways to educate and support their children oppresses the otherwise joy-filled atmosphere of a homeschool gathering. Which is why, in the homeschool dyad, it is quite often the parent and not the child who winds up HSW. Some families manage to skirt the issue entirely, finding a glorious middle ground between hyper-intensity and inattention that makes for remarkably close, loving, and enviably educated parents and children. And I need to point out that HSW is not an altogether pejorative term! Some of my favorite people are HSW. I, myself, am branded many different types of weird and am secretly proud of most of them. The danger, for me, that forces this point into the second category rather than the first rests on the fact that I think my personality is exactly the kind of personality that could contribute to the most damaging kind of HSW, where the kid, my kid, feels that a parent's success or failure rests squarely upon his ability to spell really tricky words or to properly assess a logical fallacy. NO BODY needs that kind of pressure. (I am seriously doubting that I'll be invited to speak at any homeschool gatherings on this topic, but it has been a part of my own deliberation, so I thought I'd pass it along).

I'm going to have to abbreviate my public school comments as it is very late, but I'm going to give it a whirl.

Things I love about public school.

1. The pledge of allegiance. I have no explanation for this one. In fact, in a rigorous, ideological debate, I'd probably fall closer to the platform of the anti-pledgers. But I love it. I love the standing up, hand-over-the-heart solemnity of the whole thing. I love feeling like I'm a part of something as big and important as "liberty and justice for all." Throw in a little "My country 'tis of thee" before we are seated, and I'm so full of the untrammelled national pride of youth (before discontent makes you say that stuff with a sneer) that I'm ready to write a treatise or run for office or something. I think you only get the corporate resonance of the language and the broad range of its application in public school (which is why we never did it in homeschool.....our thin three voices couldn't drown out my sneer.....and we already had the whole opening song ritual....it seemed like overkill).

2. THAT teacher. The one who notices and reaffirms the talents and aspirations that your parents have cultivated and encouraged since birth (or, in a couple of cases I can think of [not you, mom...parents of my friends] gifts that parents may have been completely blind to). Somehow, in the language of this teacher, this third party observer, your potential sounds true and you begin to chase it down. I love teachers who challenge and inspire individuals rather than categorically educating their students. There are tons of them! Ask your public school graduate friends, and most can name at least one.

3. School plays, field days, sports, dances (yes, dances....think of my 90s rap affinity, and you just about have the picture), academic teams, competitions, clubs (although, I never really did clubs....they didn't make sense to me without performances or competitions...I'm too much of an extra-curricular capitalist, I guess), choirs, bands, and ALL of their AWARDS days. I eat this stuff up.

4. Report cards and tests. (And right about now you're thinking I should elaborate on the phrase Public School Weird because what else would you call that?) I love knowing what's expected and then knowing where I stand. I love it.

5. The system. I love participating in a predictable system that, given time and attention, can serve your every inclination. Do you want to learn? There's a way. Do you want to do as little as possible? The system allows for that. Do you want to cross-list courses and achieve as much as possible with as little effort as you can manage? There's a system for you! The public school system is (or at least has historically been) pliable and a student with supportive parents has almost no greater ally than a predictable educational system.

Whew.

Things I don't love about public school

1. The conspiratorial folder. You are 5 or 6 or 7. You believe that your teacher loves you, has taken you into her confidence as a partner in learning and fun. You have grafted her into the thin tree in your inner nursery of trust alongside your parents and favorite grandparents and a couple of aunts, and then, WHAM, in walks another teacher, and she whips out the conspiratorial folder behind which she is most certainly scoffing at you, maligning you, mocking the class, discussing your bad habits, or berating your parents. WHATEVER she is doing, she is making a dramatic gesture of excluding you by holding up a notebook or a folder that conceals her words but not her adult-ish, whisper-masked scornful tone....sometimes it's held so carelessly that it doesn't even hide her animated, almost assuredly snide eyebrows! You feel isolated, violated, and excluded. And here's a weird thing. Some teachers are so surfeited with kid-culture that they whip out the conspiratorial folder around parents. I've seen the thing used at PTA meetings, in conferences, at orientations, all of which involve only adults. On what planet is it deemed acceptable to overtly exclude other grown ups for the purposes of whatever teacher-speak cannot be accomplished outside of the context of that impermeable folder? It's not....ever! I hated it as a kid, and I hate it now....and I hate it for my kid.

2. Lunch, recess, and student elections. After a whole decade of movies devoted almost exclusively to disassembling the tenuous social strata of public education (think Goonies, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Can't Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, Lucas.......etc.), the "youth of America" remains unphased. Lunch tables are unmistakably demarkated; hallways are minefields. It's a feudal state. I'm not sure I was a serf (look at me pulling out the medieval terminology I learned in 5th grade....there's nothing I learned in public school that I didn't learn in either 5th or 6th grade....ask my parents; they'll back me up on this one). In fact, I think the problem was that I wasn't sure where I belonged. I bounced from landowner to serf to sub-aristocracy with uncomfortable ease (that's the oxymoron that could caption my entire high school career)....I never really landed, but I'm not sure that anyone ever did. Maybe if we had tackled the Molly Ringwald movies a little sooner....

3. Checkmarks, punitive writing assignments, revoked recess privileges, names on the board. I hate crap like that. Give me a good old-fashioned trip to the principle. Or demerits. Or detentions, or something. AHHHHH, the system. The system, I can handle. It's the renegade dictatorial classroom strategies that wear me thin.

4. THAT teacher. If they can build, they can also destroy. For my husband, it was an elementary school choir teacher; for my Dad, it was, first elementary PE and then a long string of English teachers; my mom had several of them in grade school; and mine was a first grade teacher. The parts that these teachers break off never grow back. And so my husband won't sing in front of people, and my father won't dance, and my mom carries around innumerable scars, and I am earnestly self-conscious and mathematically awkward. And lots of teachers break lots of kids. Just ask any of your public school graduate friends; they can almost all name at least one.

5. The heavy girl in the sparkly sneakers. I hung out on an elementary school playground with my son the other day during a kindergarten recess in the early part of the second week of school. Three girls ran over chasing some boys in an ill-defined tag game. A few steps behind, an overweight little girl tried to find her way into the game. The most vocal of the tag-players was oblivious to her presence. In fact, it was tag-player number three that the hopeful little girl was addressing. "Hey, can I play with you?" Pause, "Hey, can I play?"......Again and again, until finally #3 turned to the little overweight girl with an irritated expression and some surreptitious muttering before looking for approval to Tag leader #1, conventionally cute and well dressed, and recommencing her ambiguous role in the game. The heavy girl looked down and shifted her weight back and forth in pink, sparkly sneakers. I didn't want to cry until I saw her shoes. I've bought sparkly shoes of all kinds. One year, I was given $20 or something for my birthday, and I went to the mall...the MALL, and stretched the $20 at a sale in some boutique-y store to buy 4 sweaters. You can imagine how cool I must have felt (and, with some perspective, you can probably imagine how "cool" my sweaters must have been at 4 for $20...they had short sleeves). I just knew that my time on the periphery was over, that with these sweaters, I could break through into the mystical ring of belonging that I kept bouncing off of. Of course it didn't work, for various reasons (not the least of which were the sweaters themselves, I'm sure.....4 for $20 at the mall....short sleeves....short sleeved sweaters), but it was worse than before. I kept looking down at my meal-ticket tops expecting the situation to change...expecting to feel important like in my dreams....and the rebuffing was more painful because of my uniform.....I stared at my sweaters the way this little girl looked at her pink sparkly sneakers. And they gave her courage; she tried again, "Can I play too?" This time she called out as the #3 girl began to run away, with a vaguely sympathetic but still annoyed look of disdain on her face....off to more amorphous tag, I guess, increasingly aware of the threat that sparkly shoes posed to her own position in the tag game.....fearful, I guess, of her own not-belonging. But, wide-eyed, the heavy girl with the sparkly shoes followed, calling after her again and again the same, steady unrelenting question, "Can I play?......Can I play?".....Until finally, the teacher blew her whistle and the kids began to fall in line, the little girl shuffling to her spot, her eyes, confused, glued to her sparkly shoes. A few days later, my son and I were parked in the car line waiting to pick my daughter up from school, when I saw the little girl again, lined up with her kindergarten class on the way in from recess. They were lined up alongside a brick wall, and the little girl had both hands up in her hair, clutching strands on either side as she faced the wall, kicking it again and again with her sparkly pink shoes....fierce and bitter...while other children filed past her, until a teacher finally told her to get back in line. All of this during the second week of Kindergarten!

None of this analysis is designed to be even-handed. Not everyone experiences school, at home or elsewhere, the way I have. Not everyone listens to Pink Floyd's The Wall with their matriculating Kindergartener, assuring her that her teacher will certainly encourage and appreciate the unique and special person that God made her to be, but that the song illustrates the pull toward conformity - the insistence that children become the same, like bricks in a wall that ultimately keeps people apart - sometimes engendered by the social circumstances of school and validated by some teachers.......not her teacher of course because her teacher wants her to become the unique and special person that God created her to be......but some teachers. Our three year old danced around the house for days yelling out "How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?" We are, in some ways, unique. In other ways, we are not.

Adoption Update -- Short but VERY very sweet

2007-08-29T12:23:00.000-04:00

It's official: we have updated our files with immigration and our agency to allow us to bring home TWO young siblings instead of one infant. That's right....two. We are (ALL) very excited.

TWO MORE BABIES!!!!!

We will continue to wait for a referral (which is estimated to take between 5 and 7 months), and we are still waiting, in the meantime, to finish our fingerprinting at USCIS.

Our agency advised us to include the greatest number of children we could possibly be open to accepting when we first submitted our CIS forms (we put 1-3). What we didn't realize at that point (while we were still committed to adopting only one child) was that your homestudy has to match your CIS forms or the number you include on the form is irrelevant. Our homestudy agent sent the addendum at our request last week, and we are on our way! I give you this boring logistical part of our exciting news in case you are preparing to begin your adoption process: be sure to request that your homestudy and CIS forms both reflect the greatest number of children you would consider the first time, as changes are more difficult and are sometimes expensive. You can always work with your agency to designate a lower number (as we have.....our documentation certifies us for 3, but we are requesting 2).

TWO MORE BABIES!!!!!!!!!!

Another Blog to Visit

2007-08-25T22:31:00.000-04:00

At the risk of appearing blog-eager, I'm going to post a second entry tonight because I really want to share a blog entry I ran across when I was surfing (web-surfing, not metaphorical, spiritual surfing) last night.

http://ethiopia.adoptionblogs.com/index.php/weblogs/blending-families-adopting-sibling-group

I'll link the whole blog to my sidebar (listen to me, sounding like a tech-savvy girl of the 21st century! Ahhhh, the power of a template), but this entry is a must-read.

Stay away from Animal Planet!

2007-08-25T21:04:00.000-04:00

You may not even have to read this blog; the title really says it all. Yes, as you've doubtlessly surmised, this entry is about Motherhood. Would you like me to elaborate? You don't have to twist MY arm (you don't even have to grab it firmly.....not even an idle arm-mangling threat will be necessary)! I'm always up for elaboration. Where to begin? How about with the Naked Mole Rat (always a popular starting point).

Our favorite show to watch as a family is called Fooled by Nature (Animal Planet, 7:30 on weeknights where we live). One of the episodes contained a segment on the Naked Mole Rat and the bizarre phenomenon of its single queen fertility dynamic. Apparently, all mole rats are born physiologically fertile; females ovulate, males.....spermulate. It seems like a friendly and pleasurable colony structure. Enter the Mother. In each mole rat colony (and they do live in underground colonies, like ants or bees), one female asserts her dominance over all of the other little mole rats through physical abuse and emotional manipulation (seriously), making all of the other little mole rats, certainly all of the little female ones, too stressed out to procreate. Indeed, her oppressive behavior halts their reproductive capacities entirely; females cease to ovulate....etc.. Here's a little blurb I've cut and pasted from an informational site online devoted to the fertility of mole rats:

The naked mole-rat lives in colonies of between 100-300 animals, but only the 'queen' reproduces, suppressing fertility in both the females and the males around her by bullying them. Dr Faulkes said: "The queen exerts her dominance over the colony by, literally, pushing the other members of the colony around. She "shoves" them to show who's boss. We believe that the stress induced in the lower-ranking animals by this behaviour affects their fertility. There appears to be a total block to puberty in almost all the non-breeding mole-rats so that their hormones are kept down and their reproductive tracts are under-developed. "Currently, we think that the behavioural interactions between the queen and the non-breeders are translated into the suppression of certain fertility hormones (luteinizing and follicle stimulating hormones). In the non-breeding females this has the effect of suppressing the ovulatory cycle, while in the non-breeding males it causes lower testosterone concentrations, and lower numbers of sperm. In most non-breeding males, sperm that are present are non-motile. "The queen also seems to exert control over the breeding males, so that concentrations of their testosterone are suppressed except when she is ready to mate." However, this stress-related block to fertility is reversible. When the queen dies, the other non-breeding, highest ranking females battle it out for dominance, with the winner rapidly becoming reproductively active.

As you can well imagine, this segment catapulted me into the gnarly brier patch of mother-guilt. Could my maternal intensity really cripple my children? Are they, in a sick irony of post-Freudi*n human drama, actually stifled by my diligence and fanatical concern? My head begins to swim as the thorns begin to snag on bits of recollection and realization: there are the violin practices, and how about when I tried to "teach" Olivia to write the letter g (or was it the number 8.....oh my gosh....it was both!), and Josiah, sweet little Josiah with his inverted pronouns yesterday! But animal planet wasn't through with me yet.

Next came this bit on the Ladybird Spider, who apparently lays a mess of eggs and then nourishes them with hundreds of nutrient-rich blobs secreted throughout her masterpiece web, which she NEVER leaves, in spite of its absolute seclusion from light and interaction with all other spider-amiable species. Finally, since her creepy, translucent brood is still just one meal shy of the strength they will require to make it in the outside world (a world, you recall, that she hasn't seen since she entered the breeding phase of her brief life-cycle), she nestles all zillion of them together beneath her spider body, wraps them in a final, fatal embrace, and they proceed to eat her until she dies. They feed off of her blood and sinews (I'm not actually sure if spiders have sinews, but if they did...). They brutally (and it WAS brutal; I saw it!) consume their still living mother. Here's a little bit that I found online about it:

Once inside her burrow the female never leaves. The male only comes out for a couple of weeks in May, during breeding time. Female ladybird spiders are dedicated to their young, laying up to 80 eggs in a cocoon and nursing them until they hatch in July or August. The mothers feed the young on regurgitated food and then they themselves become a meal for the hungry spiderlings. It takes 3 to 4 years for the spider to reach maturity.

Now for a whirlwind of self-conscious regret and grotesquely overblown isolation. Am I a Ladybird Spider? I have written or read nearly nothing that wasn't assigned to me since I started....breeding. My musical tastes in the last five years have covered the Raffi-Wiggles-Veggietales spectrum (with a little obligatory Mozart thrown in from time to time...you know, for their intellect). Rare, now, are the hours I used to share daily with Amy and Emily, Bob, Van, and Ani. I've managed to retain Rich Mullins and Patty Griffin and have picked up Sara Groves and Mindy Smith, but even so. I begin to feel my lifeblood ebbing and my sinews snapping. Exercise, HA! Showers, surreptitious. Make-up...well, I was never really a big make up wearer, but now I may never have the opportunity to give it a legitimate chance! The "honeymoon" months after Olivia's birth were especially lonesome, with Bob Barker and whatever unsuspecting Mormons that I could hijack as my only adult conversation (and hijack them I did! I had cups of water ready, the door flung wide, and two chairs cleaned off and strategically arranged whenever I spied a pair of well-dressed men toting backpacks and Bibles working our block. My mother used to call time and temperature 83 times a day just to hear a grown-up voice.....I had Price is Right and the Mormons.) They rarely had a chance to stumble through their concern for my spiritual well-being before I began my own copiously-rehearsed Welcome Mormons spiel. And after I was blacklisted by their congregation (having commandeered the afternoons of 4 "elders" over the course of several weeks), I started to keep an eye always peeled for the less recognizable Jehovah's witnesses. I bear no ill will against the Mormon religion as a whole for abandoning me during my darkest days. My husband and I still use the phrase Mormon-nice regularly (as in, she's not just nice, she's MORMON-nice....like Aretha-cool, or Beck-weird, or Mother-Theresa-Good.....see, we're inter-denominational in our hyperbole). They had to do what they had to do. But I was clearly in solipsistic despair.....suffering from what one magazine freelancer called "isolation without solitude," a perfect description.......of the LADYBIRD SPIDER. Would I end up like her, a mere shell of a formerly magnificent, vibrant creature, cannibalized by her beloved?

Perhaps I was just taking this all too personally....(hmmmmmmmm)....

I found comfort.....nay, enlightenment....where we all find it eventually, in the arm-waving admonitions of a flight attendant. As I mulled over the mole rat ladybird spider predicament, I was struck by the memory of the sharp-gesturing, impeccably-groomed stewardess on my recent flight home from visiting my brother and his family. She said, sagaciously,

Should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead area. Please place the bag over your own mouth and nose before assisting children.

I realize her direction was lofted toward all hundred or so people riding on Northwest flight whatever that afternoon, but I couldn't help but think that she, my guru, my sensei, meant those words especially for me. I don't have to suffer as a Ladybird Spider or nag and destroy like a Naked Mole Rat; I just have to mother with the very best of all I have to offer, and I cannot mother if I cannot also (occasionally) breathe.

Best Adoption Site Ever

2007-08-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, I have found it. They mythical adoption site that unfolds, with impartiality, intimacy, and wit, the hundred laborious, life-altering steps that mark every international adoption journey and the zillion un-namable transformations that take place in the hearts and minds of a single family touched again and again (and again and again and again) by the complicated blessing of international adoption. http://www.thereisnomewithoutyou.com/blog?op=view&id=4 Her whole site is informative, but this page of Melissa Fay Greene's sometimes blog stands as the most thorough and readable description of the international adoption process that can be digested in a single serving. Read it!

Weeks without a blog, and all you can come up with is this?

2007-08-19T12:40:00.000-04:00

Hello, big, empty blogosphere! So here's what I shared this morning at church. Josh and I are mulling over a decision related to our adoption. I have always determined to live according to a kind of surfer principle of the Spirit of God (I didn't mention the surfer thing in church, actually....I've never surfed before...we live in Southern Indiana....the wave action here is limited.....I do listen to Jack Johnson occasionally, though, and not just the Curious George soundtrack either! I'm intense in my vicarious surfer life...dude [do they still say that?]), believing that God's vision for humanity rolls on steadily and rhythmically, and if I pay attention to tides and gravity and reefs (and so forth, you know, surfer stuff), I can participate in the ongoing motion of God's intention by riding the waves offered to me. If I miss them...my loss, but my choice to duck under the waves rather than to shoot the curls (nice) does not impede their steady progress toward the shore. Because of my tendency toward the surfer model, I have (sometimes disproportionately) relied on my sense of the Spirit's direction, my ambiguous emotional discernment of the waves and their trajectory, for my own vision of right and truth. You might say I lead with my heart (you might say that.....or you might elucidate it with a clumsy, drawn own metaphor relying on the experience of a sport and a subculture from which you are utterly alienated....making your metaphor awkward and confusing....either way...pot(ae)to, pot(ah)to.). When I approached Josh to discuss our decision over this aspect of our adoption, I talked to him about the fact that my feelings seem to land firmly on one side of the choice, while my reason stands on the other. Which side shall be my guide? Do I surf or sidle through this question? Josh is a sidler...he pauses, considers, weighs, and balances before cautiously stepping into circumstances that seem to best reflect God's Love and his ability to effectively Love other people. I am a surfer (well, not really, but...). Together, we generally arrive at a sense of balance....sometimes it looks like one of those uncomfortable yoga positions that is disturbing to see but secretly compels you to try it when you are utterly alone.....but it is a kind of balance that makes our marriage make sense. In this case, we are fumbling around trying to find that position (very much like my efforts to strike a yoga pose), so I asked my father during a conversation yesterday to pray for wisdom and clarity (balance) as Josh and I approach this question of what is right and best. I told Dad about my feeling/reason dichotomy (left out the part about the surfing.....I just thought it best), and he made sense of my yoga problem. I told him that I had been thinking that perhaps reason wasn't marching around in opposition to the Spirit, who floats, but maybe reason is a tool of the Spirit itself. Dad said that he had always interpreted the injunction that pervades scripture to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength" as a kind of call to balance....that worship (which, in a pragmatic context, includes all of the decisions that comprise our lives) involves a careful combination of feeling, discernment, reason, and action....and that omitting any element of this balanced combination can distort the worship....leaving the choices unbalanced and the worshiper.....confused (at best). I told him his insight would make for a good sermon. He said he preached it once. I thought how much better my life would be if I could hear his sermons every week.....I'm just so glad that he's my Dad! If he wasn't, here I'd be, in board shorts and a swimming top toting my surfboard through the cornfields of Southern Indiana with Josh sidling along beside me in his golf shirt, glasses, and remarkably cool shoes.

So much to blog....so little....structure

2007-08-06T22:23:00.000-04:00

I jumped into blog world with both feet (guns ablazin! whole hog!...I wish I were from Southeast Missouri right now. People from Southeast Missouri have the best cliches. My cliches are so......cliche) a couple of weeks ago with nary a thought toward continuity or structure. And while I have every intention of preserving that pattern, I have a few salient issues that I would like to cover. In order to force myself into some accountability, I am noting here a few of the topics I'd address as this record evolves.

1. Sunday thoughts -- Every Sunday in church I expose myself (not in the way you're thinking....what kind of church do you think I attend!?) by sharing the challenges/insights from my week (more challenges than insights as you might well imagine). I frequently talk about the journey of this adoption, my kids, and the process of life in a way that pertains to threads covered in this blog. I'd like to share those as I go along.

2. Getting Started -- The "how we started thinking about adoption in the first place" stories that I have read online have thickened my own perspective and have informed so much of my introspection regarding family that I feel compelled to share my story somewhere along the way as well (incedentally...always avoid anyone who authors a clause like "I feel compelled to share." -- apart from this blog of course.).

3. Questions for the table -- I would, at some point, like to offer a number of the questions that have made this adoption far more than a gruelling exercise in paperwork competency....questions that have called me into question on foundational issues. I think I'll blog a list one day, hope for responses in the comment section, and enter the discussion a few days later...keeping the conversation openended.
Perhaps we can generate more questions together (whirling me into another tailspin of anguish and self-deprecation....my husband wouldn't know WHAT to think if I weren't in a tailspin of anguish and self-deprecation.)

That's all. So I'll take time to hit these issues over the next couple of weeks and will interrupt with adoption news as it becomes available.
Tonight, all I've done to that end is call the passport office, which has been monumentally overrun throughout the last few weeks, to request corrections in the spelling of our names on the passports we ordered a while ago. Shockingly, I didn't have to wait the projected hour to talk to a very helpful person. The corrections have been made, and everything is moving forward in the right direction. Incidentally, the passport.....liaison?.....said that Mondays are traditionally very busy in the passport office, but tonight was very quiet. So if you have a passport question...call tonight!

Ethiopian Adoption Update (finally!)

2007-08-05T23:10:00.000-04:00

Well, I reread my last blog entry...aren't I annoying?! I thought I'd keep this entry focused, so that at least I can be irritating AND informative. We actually have some news! Last Thursday, we received word that our dossier was approved by our agency, which means that our names will officially be added to the agency's waiting list. (Apparently, I was too busy blogging about my feelings and ideas to take the time to write about the actual progress of our adoption! Annoying.) My blog-friend Jennifer calls this stage being "pregnant on paper." (I'll add a link to her blog in the sidebar....she's hip and interesting.) Our dossier will be forwarded to the US State Dept. and the Ethiopian Embassy for another round of identifications while we continue to wait for our fingerprinting appointment with CIS (remember them? not especially nice, not very helpful at first, but ultimately very necessary). I have faith that everything is going to come together perfectly. Here's what I'm hoping. While the Ethiopian courts are closed, from tomorrow until the end of September (the courts close at the end/beginning of their calendar year in observance of the New Year, which, in Ethiopia falls on our September 11th....in fact, this year is their turn of the millenium. They operate on a 13 month calendar that has rolled approximately seven years behind the calendar used in America...if this confuses/bothers you then you should see what it does to my mom! She gets completely freaked out -- almost angry -- about the fact that time is a pliable construct....it's a little bit funny to watch. Try this experiment for yourself. When you talk to her, just say, "Did you know that the Ethiopian calendar is seven years behind the calendar employed in America, making this their millenial new year?," then stand back and enjoy the show! She won't disappoint you.) our dossier will be making its way through the American authorization circuit. About the time the courts reopen, we should be heading their direction. Who knows what can happen when things time out just perfectly in all the hubbubb? (I don't think I spelled hubbubb right, but can you really fault me for that one?) I'm very hopeful. And thank you for your patience. You are the best blog readers in the world for sticking with me....all 17 of you!