Family and friends

We’ve been busy having fun lately, spending time with friends and family.  My (much-younger) brother Michael has been home from University of Maryland for winter break, and the kids have loved having him around.  He is everything that a child could want in an uncle: cool, goofy, and willing to get down and do whatever it is they want to do, whether it’s reading book after book after book, or chasing them around the house while they shriek with exhilaration, or playing repetitive games of War, or building elaborate block towers.  I honestly didn’t expect him to be an uncle of this variety.  I wouldn’t have been offended if my nineteen-year-old brother said a brief hello and doled out high-fives to my kids before heading out the door to meet up with his peers.  The kids adore him, and he has earned their adoration.

Sula cuddling with Uncle Michael

Uncle Michael patiently reading a circuitous choose-your-own-ending version of The Three Little Pigs with his just-as-patient and kind girlfriend looking on

On Martin Luther King Day we celebrated by having a dinner with our cousins Jim and Carol and their two boys, M and D.  The last time we saw them, it was right after D came home from Ethiopia.  His personality has really come out, and he’s a hilariously animated and strong-willed little guy.  Bo and Sula are really into babies and younger kids and they thought D was fascinating and silly.  Bo is just as into “big” kids, so he thought cousin M was the bomb.  The kids had a blast together, and I’m so hapy that they’ll be able to grow up with cousins who are close in age that share so much in common.

The kids enjoying a home-cooked Ethiopian meal together

Pajamas and smiles all around

Adam getting a goodbye kiss from his buddy D

On a friends (but with a bit of family thrown in for good measure- explanation below!) note, Bo had two playdates with buddies from preschool this past week.  Ever since Dawit started having friends over last year, Bo has been begging us to have his friends over.  He had his first big-kid playdate when his friend D.M. came over a few months ago sans Mom, and it went well for the first hour or so, until D.M. casually mentioned his car collection.  Apparently he has “the most cars in the world.”  Or something like that.  Bo was devastated, believing his own collection to surpass any other (and he is probably right!).  Bo couldn’t really recoup, and I was left trying to sooth his wounded soul while trying to occupy his friend.  This week we gave it another go, and Bo did much better.  He has really bonded with a group of several little boys in his preschool class, and refers constantly to the “cool guys” (HIS words, believe it or not).  It’s hilarious when Bo tells us that “D.M. doesn’t take naps anymore; he just rests on the couch with his Mom” or wonders aloud if “M.B. rinses with pink stuff (fluoride) after flossing his teeth.”  He casually drops the phrase “best friend” when he talks about what he and D.M. have been up to at preschool.

Bo and his best friend

The oddest thing happened after this past playdate.  I went to add D.M.’s mom as a friend on Facebook and noticed that we had friends in common: my great-aunt (by marriage- she was married to my great-uncle) and my dad’s first cousin, both of whom live in Maine.  I emailed her to ask how she knew my aunt, and she proceeded to tell me that it was HER aunt!  So we’re actually first cousins-in-law, once removed.  We have memories of pool parties at our aunt and uncle’s house; we’re fairly certain that we must have been in the same place at the same time at some point years ago.  The smallness of our world never ceases to amaze me.

Work it, baby!

Sula has been receiving free physical therapy services for about a year now due to her gross motor delays and low muscle tone.  For those who don’t remember, she came home from Ethiopia at 26 months of age still walking like a caveman.  Her balance was poor, and that combined with her low muscle tone and over-pronation in her ankles meant that she would often lean on something (like me) while standing.  I’d turn around in the kitchen to reach for something and she’d collapse on the floor.  Poor thing   This past summer Sula was fitted for braces (the most adorably tiny braces you could imagine, with butterflies and flowers on them) for her ankles, which help keep her ankles straight, and around that time she also transitioned from our state’s Early Intervention program to the local public school system.  Since the beginning of this school year, I have been bringing Sula to Dawit’s school for a half-hour session each week with a physical therapist.  It’s basically a hilariously cute workout that tires Sula out like nothing else.  She regularly takes a three-hour nap on days when she has physical therapy, and at preschool the next day her teachers always note that she seems tired.

This past week Adam and Bo were able to join us because they were already on vacation, and it was so much fun.  Sula tends to be a bit poky, and mildly uncooperative on occasion, with the physical therapist.  Not this past week, though.  Not with Dad watching, and a big brother who was more than happy to display his physical prowess.  Sula did her best to show off her skills and we were so impressed!

Bo and Sula using their cooperation skills

Adam, Bo, and Sula racing on the scooterboards

Walking the balance beam

Sula showing off her relatively recent balancing talents

Look at the adorable belly peeking out from under Sula's shirt

Sula has made so much progress over the past year with us.  The first time it snowed last year, we bundled her up in her snowsuit and sent her out to play with the boys.  She just burst into tears, overwhelmed by the effort it took to trudge through the snow, and cried until we took her back inside.  During the first snowstorm of this year, she was a completely different child.  She made snow angels, shoveled snow off of our deck (!!) and helped her brothers make a snowman.  She tromped around happily until her fingers were so cold I had to force her to come in.  These days Sula runs, does jumping jacks, balances on one foot, and kicks and throws balls like she’s been doing it her whole life, even though she has worked her little butt off to gain these skills in just a year.  She’s so fierce.  We love it.

Recipe: Kinche

Kinche

Kinche is a very common Ethiopian breakfast food, their equivalent of oatmeal, if you will.  It’s incredibly simple, inexpensive, and nutritious.  It is made from cracked wheat, which you can find in any grocery store.  You can boil it in either milk, or part milk/part water.  And in Ethiopia, after the kinche is cooked it is mixed in the pan with niter qibe (clarified spiced butter) or oil and fried onions.  Personally, I skip that step, but only because I make the kinche the day beforehand and Adam heats it up for the kids in the morning.  Very un-Ethiopian of us, from both a culinary and gender-role perspective, but I am literally never conscious while the kids are eating breakfast and Adam is kind enough to get up and feed them in my absence, but won’t do much more than make toast or heat milk in the microwave.  So the kinche with fried onions and qibe is out.  But the kids still eat it and like it.  I bet your Ethiopian kids will, too.

Kinche

3/4 cup cracked wheat
3 cups milk (or some combination of milk and water)
niter qibe OR oil and finely chopped onions
salt, to taste

Heat the milk and add the cracked wheat.  Cook on low or low-medium heat, stirring frequently, until the wheat is cooked, about 20-30 minutes.
If using qibe: heat the qibe and stir the kinche to mix thoroughly.  Salt to taste.
If using oil and onions: fry the onions in the oil.  Stir in the kinche and salt to taste.

~Happy Chanukah~

Lighting the candles

This has been a delightful Chanukah, filled with light and songs and enough latkes to tide us over for the whole year. We kicked off the season by taking the kids to their first rock concert, a performance by the fabulously funky Jewish musician Mama Doni and her band.  Adam’s sister gave us the Mama Doni Chanukah CD, so now every time we get into the car there is a loud chorus of children in the backseat demanding that we play it.

Bo doing the disco finger to "Chanukah Fever"

I did two Chanukah presentations at preschool, one for Bo’s and one for Sula’s class. I brought in latkes for snack time, talked a little about how and why we celebrate Chanukah, and even threw in my best disco dance (with the aforementioned Mama Doni music) for Bo’s class.  But to be honest, I didn’t do this presentation so that my kids’ classmates could learn about Chanukah.  I did it for my kids.  Bo beamed with pride at being able to share his family’s relatively unique traditions, and help “teach” his classmates something new.  Christmas is a very loooooong and isolating season for those of us who don’t celebrate the holiday, suffocating us with reminders everywhere we go that we are “other.”  Despite its lack of religious significance, Chanukah is an important holiday because it allows us to celebrate who we are at a time when we are inundated with what we are not.

Sula eating latkes with Grandma Becky at preschool

We had two Chanukah parties, one at Adam’s parents’ house and one at ours.  We enjoyed delicious food and cheerful singing.  This year I got lazy and bought frozen latkes from Trader Joe’s instead of slaving over a hot pan of oil and frying hand-grated potatoes.  But I think I made up for the lack of effort in the latke department by printing out the lyrics to all of the Chanukah songs so that we wouldn’t have to struggle through the Hebrew lyrics of Maoz Tsur and Mi Yimalel.

Aunt Amanda lighting the candles on the first night

Sula enjoying a dreidel cookie

This year we have succeeded in lighting the candles every single night.  We were lax about this in the past, as we have stumbled along our path to establishing our family traditions.  Now, we have come to understand the importance of finding the little things that bring us together as a family.  This is one of those things.

Three bright faces

Psst…

Go check out Laura’s blog to read a tearjerker of a post about my favorite little girl…

Thanksgiving adventures

We decided to do something a little unusual this Thanksgiving and skip town.  Actually, Adam and I did this once before, in 2004.  We went to Cancun and had the time of our lives, basking blissfully in a sunny, tourist-free zone.  Thanksgiving is the perfect time to go away; the majority of people prefer to spend the time relaxing with family than sightseeing.  Since we see our extended family on a regular basis, our absence from Thanksgiving dinner is no big deal.  So we decided to go on a family adventure instead.

But there were several factors that went into choosing this particular adventure.  It needed to be within driving distance, and relatively inexpensive.  Child-friendly, obviously.  And perhaps the most essential of all, our destination needed to be one that was culturally and racially relevant for our family.  No surrounding ourselves by rural woods and white people.  No, we wanted to be in a place where our family could enjoy blending in with others who look like us, where our kids could explore the history and culture of both their birth country and their adopted one.  Washington, D.C., which is home to the largest community of Ethiopians in the United States with a population of around 150-200,000 (!!), fit the bill perfectly.

Our adventure began when we left home on Tuesday evening at 6 p.m.  We drove through the streets of D.C. and arrived at our absolutely SPECTACULAR hotel (a suite, actually, that we got for a mere $100 thanks to Hotels.com’s 30% off Thanksgiving sale!) at two o’clock in the morning with three wide-eyed creatures in the backseat of our minivan.  Their excitement was palpable when the hotel desk clerk handed them warm cookies.  Adam and I were too tired and cracked out on crappy coffee to protest, so with resignation we ushered the three kids up to our hotel room and fell asleep knowing that we would have to be awake and schlepping around the city within six hours.

Overall, though, the trip was AWESOME.  Some of the highlights:

There were several transportation “firsts”…

First cab ride!

First ride on the Metro...too excited and waaaaay too cool to take a seat

Little Bo peek

So much to see

Sula mapping out our route

Um...maybe someone else should do the navigating

Aside from riding around in cabs and on the Metro, we also saw the various memorials and monuments:

WWII Memorial

Dawit at the FDR Memorial during a "DC By Night" guided tour with Adam

We went to the absolutely *spectacular* zoo:

We found this frightening little creature there

Sula checking out the coral

Notice the grouchy little lady in the stroller in the background?

We visited museums:

Sula in the butterfly garden at the Museum of Natural History. Which she didn't really enjoy, because the butterflies were "too scawy."

The picture is kind of blurry, but this is Bo gazing in wide-mouthed amazement at the dinosaur fossils.

We ate some good food:

I think Sula might actually unhinge her jaw like a snake to eat ice cream

All of us, but especially Dawit in particular, enjoyed the thoroughly Ethiopian culture of DC.  Chatting with our Ethiopian cab driver, listening to Teddy Afro playing on the radio at a deli, stopping into a market to buy some mit’in shiro, seeing Habesha faces everywhere we looked and overhearing conversations in Amharic as we walked down the street; it was all such a treat.  Dawit kept asking us “Is he Ethiopian!?  Is she Ethiopian!?  Did you hear that?!”  We saw this gorgeous depiction of the Battle of Adwa at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  It’s hard to convey the international, militaristic, and even racial significance of the Battle of Adwa, but it was a turning point in history when the world realized that maybe Africans weren’t so colonizable after all.

Canvas of the Battle of Adwa- note that the artist depicted the Ethiopians with full faces, while the Italian soldiers are only in profile.

One of the most exciting Ethiopian-related aspects of our trip was the dinner we went to at Almaz Restaurant.  The food was great, but the company was even better.  We were joined by Laura and Teferra, a former social worker for our adoption agency in Ethiopia.  I “met” Laura while blogsurfing one day, when I stumbled across a picture of Sula on her blog.  I emailed her immediately and discovered that she was a volunteer at our agency’s orphanage during our kids’ time there.  Laura and Sula had bonded, and I am so grateful to Laura for taking such good care of Sula when we couldn’t be there for her.  And it was clear, from Sula’s willingness to let Laura hold her and love her like she did in Ethiopia, that Sula remembered her on some level:

Sula cozying up to Laura

And being the small world that it is, Laura is friends with Teferra, who moved to the United States to join his wife in D.C. this year.  So cool, huh?  Dawit was SO excited to get to see Teferra again.  Teferra greeted Dawit using his special nickname for him- “Mashiti!”- and embraced him warmly.  Dawit had a special relationship with the social workers at Layla House because he was fully fluent in both Amharic (the primary language of Ethiopia, and the one spoken by the staff at Layla) and Oromiffa (the language spoken in the region our kids are from).  The social workers used Dawit to translate whenever new kids arrived at Layla speaking only Oromiffa.

The kids with Teferra

See, all you doubting husbands of bloggers, our blog friends exist in real life!

The trip was a fabulous success, and we look forward to future travels with our little explorers in tow:

Riding in style

The end

Attachment is hard work. Duh.

There is an unfortunate story that I have been following for several months; I’ve tried to ignore it, but it simply won’t go away.  Anita Tedaldi, a former adoptive parent, has been making her rounds in the media, first in the New York Times, and then on the Today show; she has now crossed the Atlantic to appear in The Guardian to continue garnering attention for her vile self and her story.  Since it seems as though people are tripping all over themselves to congratulate this narcissistic subhuman mess of a woman on her “selflessness” and “heroism” for giving up her adopted child, I figured I’d add my voice to the chorus of those (including the more articulate folks over at Racialicious, Resist Racism, and ChinaAdoptionTalk- all of whom have written critically and extensively about this case, and done a lot more research into Tedaldi’s background than the venerable Guardian or NY Times) who think Tedaldi needs to shut the hell up.

To make a long story short, Tedaldi brought home her toddler son Matteo from Ethiopia (although she has lied about this and claimed he’s South American), decided she and Matteo were not attaching to one another, and gave him away.  She then proceeded to write about it on the Times’ Motherlode blog, lie about other surrounding circumstances, and garner attention and airtime for herself at the expense of this poor child.  Oh, and what were those circumstances?  Just some minor facts, like the fact that she was pregnant during the adoption and had two biological children in the two years following it, or that her soldier husband was deployed for months on end leaving Tedaldi to parent five or six kids alone, or that she parented her son for a long year and a half (which she has also lied about, claiming it was only a few months) before finding him a new home.  Despite going through what Tedaldi describes as a thorough screening process for the adoption, it seems she and her family offered little potential for meeting the needs of fragile baby Matteo.

As I watched the clip of Tedaldi being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today show, portraying herself as a loving mother who did what was best for her child, I almost threw up in disgust.  It was just all about her: her feelings, her grief, her magnanimous spirit in setting Matteo free.  *NOT ONCE* does Tedaldi seem to accept responsibility for the outcome of their adoption.  *NOT ONCE* does she point to any of the critical factors- her absent husband, multiple pregnancies in quick succession, her lack of preparation for attachment issues- that set Matteo up for failure in her family.  She doesn’t seem interested in preventing other adults from putting children through what Matteo experienced.  No, she did this so that others who do so don’t have to feel quite as guilty as she claims she did.

I will never pretend that parenting through adoption is the same as giving birth to a child who is biologically yours.  It is not.  Adoption is hard fucking work in ways that parenting Bo never was.  Bo IS me and Adam.  He looks like us, smells like us, talks like us, thinks like us.  Sula and Dawit were so…foreign when we met them, as I’m sure we were to them.  I wouldn’t hesitate to share a water bottle with Bo, but for a long time it felt strange to do the same with Sula, as though even her germs were completely different from ours.  The differences were even more profound with Dawit.  Have you ever cut the toenails of a nine-year-old child that didn’t belong to you?  Yeah.  It’s unpleasant on a profoundly visceral level…and yet I’m sure I wouldn’t have even thought twice about doing it for Bo.

But you know what?  WE SIGNED UP FOR THIS.  Sula and Dawit didn’t.  So in those first few months home, when we were changing foul diapers and collecting stool samples and accepting enthusiastic wet kisses from clingy children who only weeks before had been virtual strangers to us, we sucked it up, because we were the adults.  Hell, over a year later it’s STILL hard and we STILL have to suck it up.  If you read my blog, and especially if you know me in real life, you know that I don’t think attachment comes easily.  There were many days where we felt that we had made a big fat mistake by adopting.  I’d be lying if I said that thought doesn’t occasionally cross my mind on a particularly tough day even now.  One of the worst aspects of experiencing attachment difficulties after adoption is the knowledge that we were the ones who chose this life, the ones who asked to bring these children into our family.  But the solution wasn’t to add more biological babies to our brood, find a new family for our adopted kids, and sell our story in the media.  No, we work on attachment and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.  That’s what we committed to when we decided to adopt our children.

It’s obvious that nothing anyone says will cause Anita Tedaldi to look deeper into herself and realize that she is a failure as a parent and a human being.  But I can at least hope that the media will stop giving this woman a platform from which to bray her narcissistic virtues.

“Gotcha Day” and other ugliness

I read this essay a week ago via Harlow’s Monkey and have not been able to shake it from my mind ever since.  I’m not going to summarize it here, because it would be impossible to convey the profundity of Jane Jeong Trenka’s essay in short paragraph form.  Go read it for yourself, and come back.

Adoption is a beautiful thing.  Sometimes.  But in many ways, perhaps in even more ways than not, it is complicated, tragic, and ugly.  It is a result of inequity, desperation, privilege, and money, among other things.  The thing is, though, that the people who have the shitty luck and the desperation and the poverty often lack a voice.  If they don’t have money for food, shelter, and medicine, then they most likely don’t have money for a computer on which to keep a blog devoted to their side of the adoption journey, or edgy t-shirts with messages like this.

There are times when I am appalled by the blindness of the adoptive parent community.  I am disturbed by the dehumanizing Madonna/whore depiction of “birthmothers” who have carried, birthed, breastfed, loved and cared for their children; the innumerable ways in which APs desperately try to claim every aspect of parenting *including pregnancy* for themselves ( “paper” pregnancies, sonograms of foreign countries, “Born in My Heart!” accessories); and the rewriting of the adoption narrative, transforming it from a complex process of loss and grief to a simplistic act of gift-giving between a grateful “birth” mother and an eager “real” mother.

As an AP I understand that adoption can bring a tremendous amount of joy.  The process itself can be exciting and overwhelming, and sometimes the lack of excitement and understanding from those around us as we are in a long process filled with unknowns leads to overcompensation at the expense of the very same people who make our adoption possible.  I’ll admit it: right here, on this very blog, I once titled a post “Paper Pregnant.”  It was my way (and I think this is very common in AP-land) of indicating that we were waiting, and that our wait was for something very exciting and valid.  Did I intend to hurt the feelings of the women who are pregnant with children that they are placing for adoption?  Of course not.  But it still did not give me the right, especially after I realized the problematic nature of the saying, to use the language.  Along with the other parts of the adoption process- the unknowns, the excitement, and so on- comes the obligation to educate one’s self about all aspects of adoption.  As an adoptive parent I can never stop reading, listening, and learning; it’s part of the job description.  So I learn, I change, and I use the information I gain to be a better parent.

I don’t understand the complete and total lack of perspective that is so widespread in the adoptive parenting community.  I’m baffled by this inability to step into the shoes of another member of the adoption triad for even a moment to consider how hurtful and ugly their “celebration” of adoption can be.  It’s hypocritical for adoptive parents to demand that everyone respect their feelings and their families when they can’t do the same for the first families of their own children.

We don’t celebrate “Gotcha Day” in this house.  In fact, we didn’t really celebrate the anniversary of our adoption.  We acknowledged it, with a fair amount of ambivalence all around.  It some ways it was a happy day last fall when we met Sula and Dawit.  Happy for us, anyways; we got to meet the kids whose pictures we had been staring at for months…and that’s pretty much where the joy stopped.  Dawit remembers feeling excited, but was also nervous and nursing a bad cold.  Sula doesn’t remember, but she was frightened and confused and didn’t want anything to do with us.  Looking back, I guess it probably did feel a whole lot like “Gotcha Day” to Sula, who viewed us as abductors more than parents.  I’m no kiddy snatcher, but if I were, I’m pretty sure that the word I’d utter upon capturing a child would be “Gotcha!”

It’s an ugly word, with ugly connotations, and it- along with all of the other ridiculous phrases that have come to be associated with adoption- should be banned.  Our children may not be able to “hear” the voices of the parents who gave them life, but they can hear ours, and we should not use our powerful voices to denigrate their life histories with fantasies that suit our needs as adoptive parents.

My children are people, not flowers that blossomed or Ethiopian princes and princesses that grew in my heart.  They were not a gift from an impoverished donor to our relatively wealthy family.  They are a blessing to me, but I recognize that this blessing was the result of a tragedy.  I am their Mom, but I share that title with another Mom who also loved them.  This is not a zero-sum game.  We are both “real” mothers.  We both love our children.  Only one of us has a voice.  I will be careful how I use mine.

Dawit

Dawit, age 10

Yesterday, Dawit turned ten.  I have a ten year-old son.  He is resilient, brilliant, beyond handsome, and full of joy.

It’s taken me a long time to come around to feeling like I truly wanted this goofy, extroverted kid of mine.  We are polar opposites in so many ways.  He excels in every athletic endeavor; there are a million things I’d rather do than play sports.  I crave solitude; he hates nothing more than to be alone.  He wants to entertain and interact with everyone and anyone; I prefer quiet conversation with those closest to me.  I know that some people say opposites attract, but I don’t agree.  It can be hard to force together a family of people with different needs and desires.

Dawit came to us as a real, whole person with an entire lifetime behind him.  More than that, really, because he has seen more in his ten years than most American adults will see in their entire lives.  He has learned three different languages and lived with two different households with two entirely different families.  He has experienced sorrow and rejection and heartbreak.  And he has persevered with love and optimism and flat-out courage.

I have failed Dawit many times in the past year.  I have let my frustration and anger bubble over and contaminate our fragile bonds.  And yet Dawit has never given up on me.  He greets me cheerfully every morning.  He tells me he misses me when I work late at night.  He is beyond thrilled when I cheer him on at soccer games.  As it turns out, love is contagious. 

So on Dawit’s tenth birthday, I’d like to honor him with a list of ten great things about him:

1.  His enthusiasm for…everything
2.  The fact that he isn’t shy.  His lack of shyness is the envy of every introvert he encounters.
3.  He is a GREAT big brother.  Sula and Bo adore him, and he adores them right back, putting up with a lot of annoying little sibling behavior in the process.
4.  Dawit is, hands-down, the fastest language learner I have ever encountered- and I say this as someone who teaches English to speakers of other languages for a living.
5.  He is so athletic.  The kid was just born to play sports.  It’s awesome watching him run, kick a soccer ball, pick up a bat, etc.  He’s immediately awesome at anything he tries.
6.  Dawit is helpful.  He offers to clean up, hold the door, and help his little siblings without being asked.
7.  He’s a great friend.  He makes an effort to include others in activities and is the first to stand up for those being left out or picked on.
8.  He loves school and his classmates and his teachers.  Not so much the learning, but whatever.  He never has to be dragged out of bed in the morning, and looks forward to getting on the bus every single day.
9.  I just have to put this one on the list for Bo’s sake: Dawit has the most beautiful skin.  And ears.  You just want to reach over and touch him.  Most of us refrain from actually doing so, but I can see why Bo always feels the urge.
10.  Dawit is forgiving.  His glass-half-full view of the world prevents him from holding a grudge, or heck, even being annoyed with another person for more than a split second.  We adults have a lot to learn from him in this regard.

Happy birthday, Dawit.

Hair through the ages

Looking back over the past year in pictures (we celebrated our first famiversary this month), I came to the realizations that A) Sula was really just a baby when she came home, and she’s not anymore; and B) her hair has grown a lot!  Oddly enough, people always ask if Sula has gotten a haircut when they see her wearing her hair curly if they’ve been seeing it in braids.  Her hair does spring up quite a bit when it’s left free.  I wet it every morning with a spray bottle so it is at its “shortest” first thing in the day, with the curls getting a bit looser as the day goes on.

Looking at pictures from last September, though, I was really surprised at just how short it was. The first photo is Sula’s referral picture, taken two years ago, when her hair was still wispy and babyish.  I am so excited to see how gorgeous and healthy Sula’s hair looks now.  I envy her natural highlights and glossy curls and can’t wait to see her hair in a year, or two, or ten, from now.  I hope she loves it as much as I do.