NEIL!!!!! (For Leslie)

Fathers, Daddies and Papas

Sometimes in life you get lucky and that's good. Great even. The nature of luck makes it so that if you have good luck, it will most likely snowball and then, you will continue to have good luck.
In my case, I was lucky enough to be born to great parents and end up with Jack as my Dad. ( My Mom is pretty excellent too but this is Father's Day so I'm working on a theme here).
Having Jack as a Father was a pretty singular experience. It was akin to being raised by a fellow child that could drive...but... that's not quite it either because that implies that what he did was silly and goofy and undirected and that wasn't it at all, how he and my mom raised us was so much more, so much better than that. His fatherhood was much more tailored than that. There was silliness when we needed it, discipline when the situation called for it, there was always love and respect, and the occasional Ninja outfit....My sister and I were seen for who we were at every stage of our lives, we were given love and respect (yes, I already said that but it is very important to give that to your children and those are the two things that I am most thankful for), we were given the best of what they had, every day- I am talking about the best of themselves here. They were the best that they could be for us, day after day, year after year and it continues into today for our children, their grandchildren.

 I had this great Daddy when I was a little thing. A Daddy that could drive the fastest, pick me up the highest, he could be the funniest, he was the best. As I grew older he became my Dad. I realized he was pretty smart- book smart and smart about life. I started to see that he made sacrifices for his family and as a pre-teen and a teenager I had no words within me to thank him, to tell him that I saw who he was.

Then as I got older even and started to date, this is where the luck of having him as a father paid off. I got to look around and compare. I got to see that I had a pretty great Dad and I realized very quickly that I really didn't want to settle for anything less in life. I grew up in a house with a man that was an excellent husband and a terrific father, that was luck. I could either place value on that luck and pursue a man that was like my own Dad or I could go the other way.... I chose to try my best and get a guy that was like my Dad.

Some guy that really and truly liked his family. Some guy that would consider me a friend. Some guy that would spend his life being a steward for the children we had in our lives. Some guy that would make me laugh and protect me. Some guy that would help me.

I have two very excellent men in my life.
My Mom found one, I found the other.
One is my Daddy.
The other, a Papa to my children, my husband.
Jack and Leslie- I love you both.
Happy Father's Day.
Thank you both for loving me.

Even if you get together and "girl watch" occasionally.

Stories of China

Every once in awhile we find ourselves navigating a deep emotional family discussion. As an adoptive family the topic selection can be, and often times is, an emotional minefield. Sometimes though you get lucky and you find that the Big Talk you are currently in with your very-soon-to-8 year-old is how she has been sneaking books late and night and reading until midnight or so.
Then you find that you are in this conversation about reading and books and before you know it, there is this real ~ REAL~ dinner conversation happening. About books. With your 7 year old. How cool is that?
You realize too that it's also about choices and her growing up and you begin to work that into the conversation and before you know it, you are outright begging her making very thinly veiled pleas for her to home home for Christmas when she is 25- but I digress.
Through her comments you begin to see that she really has been a bit upset thinking that she might be in trouble, even though for three days now this has been an open and ongoing discussion and you have repeatedly told her that it's ok. I thought it might be time to just put it all out there for her, so I did. I told her that she was almost 8 now and what was I going to say? She knew when we had things to do the next day, she knew that once I put her to bed she shouldn't be making noise and having a hooplah and making a bunch of requests, I let her know that her Papa and I knew she had been up reading and we didn't mind ("You knew?!?!"). I basically informed her that this was our way of letting her know that we trust her, that she's cool, that we are trying to let go a bit and see what she can do. I think she got it. I think she was pleased. She might have mentioned something about coming home for Christmas when she was 25 if she wasn't too busy....
My point is this, when we talk emotional stuff and she ends up feeling happy and secure, she always wants to finish with us telling her stories of when we met her in China.
And so we do.
The story of "The Big Room and How We Met"
The first time she smiled at me.
The story of how she pooped all over a red couch in a hotel.
How Mama was so hungry she stole bread from Papa.
How she was so tiny.
Why we started calling her Butter Bean.
How Papa nearly burned down the hotel and she slept through it.
Her first bottle with us.

The funny thing is that I find this with Liam too. When he is very happy and secure in a family moment , he looks around and tells what he can of his China story. "Mama, You, Sissy, come China, get baby Liam. Home. We. All. Family." "AAA UUU OOO" ( I love you).
And so his China stories begin.

And I will proudly tell them their stories of China, whenever and wherever they want to hear them because those are the stories of my family.

Boys Versus Girls

We were on a family walk tonight over at the beach. Les and I were kicking a soccer ball about and Ev was running along the surf line and Liam was bobbing along between us, occasionally landing face first in the sand, like he does... he came across a patch of sea foam and it surprised him because he's never paid attention to it and well, he did what a boy does. He stomped it to smithereens.
Naturally.
As we walked along I got to thinking about that and why it struck me as being so funny and odd and kind of different. It's because my first child is a girl. Now, the things I am about to say will not be considered profound by anyone who has both girl children and boy children but it all sort of washed over me today and left me amused.
You can sort them into two camps by how they are going to react to two major stimulus groups: something unknown and something dead.
Lets look at the something unknown:
A girl: will be the more varied of the study group. She can have several variants of basically two major reactions based upon her overriding emotional state that day.  She can either go all fraidy cat or she can go mystical. I prefer the mystical route. For instance, a girl comes across some sea foam, it's unknown...must be...mermaids! Yes! That's it! Something, something, mermaids, something! Chitter chatter wonder amazement! Mark the occasion! MER-FREAKING-MAIDS-WERE-HERE-ZOMFG!!!!! OR She will weep uncontrollably until she is taken home and given ice cream.
A boy: Will stomp that shit into the earth and run until he finds more to stomp. He will gleefully eradicate. every. last. bit. And only think of ice cream because his sister mentioned it.
Lets see what happens when they come across something dead:
A girl: EEEEEEWWWWWWW!!!!!!OR she go all sciency for a bit and poke at it unti she sees something gross then, EEEEEWWWWW!!!! OR, if her emotions are running high a very romantic and involved burial might need to take place, you know, something that involves lace and tears and poetry. After the funeral, she'll be so upset that she will need ice cream to calm he beleaguered soul.
A boy: Well that depends on the size of the dead thing doesn't it? Dead bug? Call for Mama. Small dead mammal?Pick it up and play with it until your mother catches you and decides that she must quarantine you and call the CDC- no wait she better save that call to the CDC for the time you inevitably come across a dead LARGE mammal and immediately become Han Solo on the surface of Hoth and the animal is now a dead Tauntaun and you are not going to survive the oncoming night so you have to slice open the belly and climb inside and pull in the unconscious form of your closest friend so you guys can live to fight off The Imperial Forces and somebody still has to seriously snog Leia...and instead you get a bath in Lysol and a lesson about poking dead moles with sticks. He won't think of ice cream until his sister suggests that he might feel better after that stinky Lysol bath if he had some.

Then theres also this----
Raising boys: Ur Doing it Wrong Acshully

And Raising Girls----

Ummm yes acshully that's it.

My Boy

                              Sons are the anchors to a mother's life   ~Sophocles

They come into your life different than girls, right from the start. They come in crashing and banging, stomping and growling. They are dinosaurs and knights. They are monsters and puppies. They scoot and huff. Holler and bungle.
OH! But if you wait for it- there is a softness there that is something entirely of its own origin. A sweetness, a roundness, a slobbery kiss given at the most wonderfully unexpected moments.
A son can wrap you up and drag you down as his prisoner and you are willing to go. You are his, body and soul. And you longed for him every moment of your life. And you never knew.
You simply never knew the joy that would come from having such a wild, soft, noisy, wonderful thing at your side.

At three, my little guy is such a fun mix of things so strange and wild that it can all come only from the mind and will of a child. We just stand back and watch him and shake our heads in wonder at what he will think to do next. He loves his purple wizard hat and sees absolutely no contradiction in wearing it while playing football or while wizarding or while capturing a warrior maiden for that matter. His favorite book is a calm sleepy book about barn owls but his favorite toys are swords and battle axes. He loves to ride his bike up and down the quiet streets of our neighborhood while belting out odes to his Mama or singing about the deep blue summer sky. He is clumsy and falls over air, exactly like his cousin, but he is strong and gets up and runs off, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying.

"I help you Mama?" is the thing I hear him say most throughout the day. He just wants to be here with me, doing whatever it is I happen to be doing. Sometimes we will be doing something, it can be anything really, but he will get so overcome with happiness that he will stop whatever it is and run at me with his lips already puckered making the "mmmm" sound and lay a big kiss on me- just because he is happy. 

The other day he did this at the beach, he had run all of the way to the water line, decided that he was overcome with joy, turned and ran all of the way back to me, kissed me and then ran back and jumped in the ocean, his expression of thanks and joy complete. How can I not be completely in love with a boy such as this? 

Head Scramble

• Some folks may wonder why I would post and talk about having such a bad parenting day with my kids, well... That's because I try to have this blog be as close to a real journal as possible for myself and I need to get that stuff out there too. And let's face it, we all need to read that other people have shitty days too because zomfg!
• I have been utterly and completely freaked out about Lyme's Diseases for awhile now and my damnable cat keeps coming home with ticks. Gahhh.
• I have decided that Topamax may be my own personal miracle drug.
• Did you know that if you send a three year old out of the room you are in because you NEED some quiet, he will go three rooms away and find a mother trucking recorder to play?! I bet you didn't know that.
• I have discovered that a book written in the 1970's about the British Navy in the 1800's can be a laugh out loud romp. I am talking about Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. Thank you Les for encouraging me to read the series. It really is one of the best books I have ever read.
• I used to have two vices. Drinking Caffeine Free Diet Coke like it was going out of Style - no really 6-8 cans a day- and cussing. Now thanks to the Topamax, I have had to quit the Coke cold turkey (and yes I am grieving all official like with the real Kubler Ross Stages and all)(and the bonus of near Trainspotting-esque withdrawal)  but unless they invent a pill that makes the cuss words taste like hot vomit water in my mouth....well...I will continue to have a vocabulary that makes my mother sigh with dismay. Sorry Mom. I'm down to one vice and this one won't give me some weird cancer or something...so that's good. Right?
• I felt like the cussing needed to be addressed because, elephant in the room? Man. There's like three and a stand in up there. I am such a lady. Well, we all have our talents. I can crochet and I can cuss. Not as divergent as you would think.
• We have had The Hangover in from Netflix for three days now and we just can't seem to put it in and watch it. Methinks we may not be that interested. We'd rather read books about the British Navy in the 1800's. Nerds.

Sometimes The Loving Can't Be The Thing

And it's not the loving that's at fault. It's not that your love isn't there or big enough or selfless enough. It's that it's sometimes impossible to keep it all right there at the forefront and then you get all human and things deteriorate and by the time the kids are down for an early bedtime, you look at yourself in the mirror and turn away in disgust.
I can't figure out how to be one of those Mom's that never looses her cool. I try and try. I could sit here and type paragraph after paragraph about how the kids drove me to loosing my cool tonight but in reality I AM THE ONE THAT LOST MY COOL.
I am the grown up. The responsibility is mine.
I know that ultimately it's ok if a mom yells at her kids once in awhile and everyone is sent to bed early and crying. No lasting damage was done. There will be apologies and explanations and trying harder and doing over. It's ok that the kids see us dealing with anger and frustration. It's ok that they see we can, and do apologize.

It just doesn't stop us from feeling like terrible people once we have calmed down and the house is too quiet, too early.

Let us be clear for the sake of the Internet and the Grandma. Some yelling occured. Mama stomped about a bit, talking loudly and making large gestures with her arms. Mama made it clear how very fed up she is with certain repetitive bad behaviors. The children noticed.

I love them dearly and I would dearly love a do over for most of today- not just this dinner time fiasco.

Sigh.

My Girl

                                      "And though she be but little, she is fierce."
                                                                                                   -Ole Willy

She weighs 37 pounds soaking wet at age 8 (well almost 8). She is the human embodiment of the phrase "spring steel and rawhide". She has six pack abs and her leg muscles ripple when she walks, runs, hops, skips or jumps. She can shimmy to the top of our street sign. She can back down kids years older than her and twice or three times her size if she thinks they are being mean to someone else, "someone smaller".  She cooks. She can help her Papa change the oil in the cars. She climbs trees. She is forever and always doing something gymnastic-y. She is a Math Whiz. She is kind. She is funny. She can smack talk with the best of them during video games. She will set up a blockade in Parcheesi and NOT move it, not matter how many dark looks her Mama gives her. She never thinks for a moment that she can't do something she sets her mind to. She sincerely believes that the only reason she can't drive is because she can't reach the pedals yet. She can run for 2 miles and not stop, she can bike forever. She can tend her brother's wound with the skill of a field nurse or the tenderness of a Big Sissy- whatever the situation calls for. She loves Harry Potter and fully believes that by the end of the summer she too will be a wizard. She believes in fairies and mermaids and Santa still. She loves the beautiful facts of science and math. She loves her microscope. She wants a telescope. She loves her cat. She wants a pet bunny. She is loyal. She is strong and fierce and wild. She is kind and gentle and sweet. She is Evelyn.

He's Home and We Are All Better Than Okay

Papa came home yesterday. Yes, he did. And suddenly the world, the Universe, our home and our hearts are all in order.
We actually didn't meet him at the airport until 7:20 pm, so we had all day to wait and Ev had all day to fret. Would we get the decorations all up? Would we get the cake done? Would we be on time? Would we find the right gate at the airport? And she strapped on her wristwatch and was not shy about keeping me up to date on the exact time and also how much time we had left (that wasn't too nerve wracking at all driving through Philadelphia).
One of the things we love about Ev is that she is genuinely invested in making sure that others feel special on special occasions and she wanted Papa's homecoming to be special. She worked for three days on a welcome home sign that we took to the airport, along with two ballons. Les said that he couldn't see us around the people in front of him but when he saw those balloons floating above everyone, he knew that they were for him.
I can say now that my kids were both in partial shut down mode while he was gone and they have come back alive with his arrival. They are bright and shining and full to the brim with "papa papa papa!".
Aggghhh.(sigh of relief)
He was terribly missed.

Fun at States

This Gymnastic season has come to a close. Ev finished out the year by going to the NJ State Gymnastics Competition. It was a long, 9 hour day, mostly because we also stayed to offer support to her friends who were competing after her group. I really am still trying to fully process what I think about and feel about today but, it will probably boil down to me feeling absolutely amazed that this tiny girl walked right into that big convention center, dropped her stuff off and started warming up. No hesitation, no balking. She just walked in and started doing the thing that she loves. I watched her all day and all day she smiled and laughed and talked with her team mates, she was happy to be there and I was so glad that she was there. 
She came home with a medal for Best All Around. She came home tired and happy and full of a quiet self confidence and champing at the bit to start her summer training.

She is a determined little thing but the thing that I love most is that gymnastics just makes her happy.

As of May 8

We were so busy these past weeks, visiting and distracting ourselves from Papa's absence that  one little detail got a bit lost in the shuffle- on May 8 we reached the seventh year anniversary of the day we met Evelyn.
The girl has been with us for seven years and though I become acutely aware of each day of those years when I look at how long her legs are, when I listen to how sophisticated her speech is...it still seems like the blink of an eye to my heart.
I'm left wondering if it will ever feel like I have had enough time with her. I know the answer to that one, really I do, it's just that there is a certain comfort in thinking that I don't, in thinking that maybe one day I will be able to say, "Ok, go on, I'm ready".
On the day we met her, it was steamy hot in China. We were in a big conference room in our hotel in the middle of Jiangxi City and we were just one couple in a group of 19 that were waiting to meet their child. I remember the big doors at the back of the room being opened and the hall being filled with babies and nanniesAnd I remember catching a glimpse of her and realizing right there that it was really going to happen, they were really and truly going to let me have her.

She has been an absolute joy, this girl that I had to go half way around the world for. She has completed me in a way that I never thought possible. I had no idea how much a person could love another until my love for her started to grow and take root in my heart. She came to us as this tiny, fragile, frightened baby and now, though she is still tiny, she is healthy, glowing, full of light and laughter, she is a real bit of magic, this Fu Mei, and Leslie and I are completely honored to share this part of her life with her.

When It Rains

When it rains, and this is something I absolutely love about my sister, Melissa will corral all of the kids, strip them down and send them out into the world with a big smile on her face and her laugh filling the air. I can never seem to get them up and out with the enthusiasm she whips up. If it's a real good gully washer? All the better! Then they have a place to go and stomp and splash and squeal. They can march in lines up and down the street, yelling and hollering and pretending that they are in mortal danger. They can run under umbrellas and imagine that they are using magic forcefields or...well, who knows what happens in those little minds?

Most of the time, our kids are the only ones out in the rain. And Melissa and I never understand this. When we were kids, it was easier to find drippy wet, squealy playmates on a rainy afternoon than it was on a clear, dry day. I even remember running to the top of a hill at my Grandma's house with 3 or 4 of my Aunts so we could all wash our hair in the rain that flooded out of the gutter of an old building.

My children have learned from their Aunt that magic can happen when it rains.

And now that we are older, my sister and I, and the world has worn some of our shine off, we mostly just stand and watch and laugh together as our children fill their hearts with a magic and joy that once belonged to us too.

Store Closing

Today one of my all time favorite stores closed.
Rabbit Store.
Rabbit Store is closed for business.
Rabbit Store was a game that Ev and I played with her little Calico Critters set.
We had a house with rabbits, and a General Store and one of our favorite things to do was to sit down in her room in the afternoon and play...Rabbit Store. You know, where the Mama Rabbit decides she needs stuff and goes shopping- over and over again.
It really was the nicest little store and the proprietor, a rabbit named Peach, was the spirit of generosity and fun.
And today, my daughter decided that she was just a bit too old for that doll house and the store.
And today, my heart is a bit sad as I think about those quiet afternoons playing Rabbit Store being all over.
Of course I am happy to see her grow and change and of course we have other special things we do together.
But...
But.
But.
I was not ready for this.
I knew it was coming and I AM the one that blithely brought the subject up this morning. She hasn't even touched that dollhouse or store for weeks and weeks- months really and I thought it would take her almost a year to be ready to put it away. I thought we would have a few more trips to the store together.
But a few weeks ago, she asked me to play Rabbit Store and, I didn't have the time.
I didn't play with her that last time.
I didn't know it would be the last chance.
It was, and that is what has me in an emotional mess today.
I missed that opportunity with her and now she is on to bigger things.
I just have to keep telling myself that I only ever said no about 2 times, including that last one, so there is that.