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.

Catching up

My poor, neglected blog.  Oy vey.  We’ve been so busy with the start of school (for everyone) and soccer (for all the male members of the household) that there just hasn’t been enough time in my day to do all of the things that I need to accomplish.  The blog falls somewhere between sweeping the kitchen floor (ie things that never happen) and uploading my photos (ie things that I do out of dire necessity) on my priority list…which is to say that it’s about a “meh” in importance when I’ve got a million other things going on.

Anyhow, backing up a few weeks:

Adam was the best man at his friend Josh’s wedding.  I haven’t been to many weddings- this was only my second in my adult life (not including my own, mostly due to the fact that I was barely even an adult at that time)- and I only went to two when I was a kid.  So this was fun, and we got to enjoy both a fancy wedding and a night sans kids at a hotel.  It was black tie, so I bought a fancy but cheap dress (and by cheap, I mean Target’s version of satin, which is really about as comfortable as Saran wrap), I got my nails done (fun) and my hair done (NOT fun- suffice it to say that in the future, I will not be attempting to save money by going to a less expensive place that I find on Yelp.) and dolled myself up to attempt to match Adam’s sexiness.

As it turns out, red is definitely not my color

Adam with the groom

That same weekend, we celebrated Adam’s grandparents’ SIXTIETH wedding anniversary!  Dang, they are old, huh?  They are wonderful, generous people and I am so lucky to have them as my grandparents-in-law.  I only hope that my marriage has the same longevity of theirs, and that Adam and I will still like each other as much as they do if/when we get to our 60th anniversary.

Four generations

Our new Ethiopian cousin has arrived!  And he is just perfect.  Like, I-wanna-undergo-background-checks-and-fingerprinting-and-months-of-nailbiting-waits-and-hop-on-an-airplane-to-Ethiopia-to-adopt-again perfect.  I love him.  I had the pleasure of feeding him injera with all sorts of delicious Ethiopian wats and watching him gobble up bite after messy bite.  Isn’t he adorable?

D!

Dawit happily pushed D around

My baby started preschool last week!!  Sula was really anxious about it- not that she expressed it, but she had more accidents in two days than she had had in the last six months.  So I wasn’t really sure how it was going to go.  We had an orientation day where I stayed with her, and at the drop-off two days later Sula was miraculously tear-free.  And so freakin’ cute.

My big girl

Bo started school the following day.  My kids go to school on opposite days, which sucks in that every single weekday morning, I have to have myself and the two kids dressed and ready and out the door before nine.  I am most definitely not a morning person.  And it also means that I have to be at the preschool door at 9:00 and 11:30 on the dot every day, so I often find myself wandering the aisles of Walmart or Target (or more dangerously, Baby Gap Outlet!) with an awkward amount of time to kill and ending up with mysterious shopping bags in the trunk of my car.  But on the bright side, each little one and I enjoy a bit of one-on-one time.  Bo and I are even doing a cooking class at the Y on one of those days, which we started today and he enjoyed.

All of the boys are doing soccer this fall.  Adam is coaching every afternoon plus Saturdays for his school’s varsity girls team, Dawit has weekly practices and games, and Bo is doing the four-year-old soccer clinic every Saturday for the next two months.  Good thing I love soccer (*insert sarcasm*).  The most exciting thing about the soccer season, aside from getting to parent solo for eleven hours a day, is the fact that they actually make cleats and shin guards small enough for Bo.  Bo was SO excited to get to dress up like a “real” soccer player.

So earnest it makes my heart hurt

Between Dawit’s and Bo’s love of soccer, I see many, many years of sitting on the sidelines in my future.  Even Sula is in on the action, starting sentences with “Next year when I play soccer…” Sigh.

My soccer stars

From the care center to the Catskills

Dawit, Sula, and B enjoying some sticky smores by the fire

***Note:  This vacation took place in oh….mid-August.  Just forgot to post this!

Last weekend we had the pleasure of visiting my friend J’s vacation home in the Catskills in New York.  I’ve written about J and her family before, but J was an “internet friend” who turned into the real deal.  Our memberships in several adoption of the same adoption groups was an indication that we would get along in real life, and we do.  J had one daughter adopted from Ethiopia and was in process to adopt her second from Ethiopia using our agency at the same time as us.   As it turned out, she ended up bringing her daughter B (pictured above) home from Ethiopia just weeks before we traveled to pick up Sula and Dawit.  All three kids knew each other in Ethiopia.  And here they are today.

The kids had a BLAST.  The weather was gorgeous and the house had a pond and a hot tub that were in constant use.  Despite a complete alteration of our normally somewhat rigid routine, I think Bo, Sula, and Dawit were (mostly) able to hold it together because they were so busy having fun.

Roasting marshmallows

All six (well, seven, if you include J’s exceedingly tolerant 17-year-old son who had the pleasure of rooming with Dawit) of the kids got along really well.  J’s girls were so kind and patient with Bo and Sula.  One afternoon, J’s daughter B brought Sula and Bo out to the patio where J and I were relaxing and Bo reported that Sula had gone to the bathroom.  It turned out that in my absence, B wiped Sula (and it was #2!) and washed her hands.  SOOOOOO Ethiopian.  You would NEVER find an 11-year-old American who would know what to do in that situation other than yell “Mom!  Help!”, never mind an American kid willing to actually do that stuff.  School-aged Ethiopian kids are, on the whole, way more clued into the realities of taking care of little ones and do so in the most matter-of-fact way. Masho and B were also quite industrious when it came to prepping the collard greens for gomen when I made an Ethiopian feast for the elven of us to share.

Masho and B were not the best of friends in Ethiopia, and I’m not sure if Sula truly remembers B.  But all the same, I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of that connection.  Our kids shared an unimaginable experience, and while I know for a fact that their perspectives on the situation differ greatly, I know that Dawit finds it very meaningful to be on the other side of the world with someone else who remembers life in Ethiopia with him.

Too gorgeous, no?

Noteworthy article: ” One oversease adoptee explains: Parents’ embrace of the ‘home’ culture can have its costs”

In today’s Boston Globe, an essay by Mei-Ling Hopgood entitled “Another country, not my own” explores the delicate balance that adoptive parents must try to strike when seeking to maintain their adopted child’s culture of origin.  To sum it up, back in the days when international adoption was still a fairly new concept in the United States, adoptive parents were encouraged to embrace a “love-is-colorblind” philosophy, and ignored their children’s race and birth culture with the belief that by doing so they were being fair to the child by raising them exactly as they would a child of their “own.”  Years later, a significant population of adult transracial/transcultural/transnational adoptees have been voicing their concerns over that approach.  As it turns out- and you really don’t need to be a PhD candidate in psychology or social work to figure this out- children who grow up shielded from their culture and race are aware of the loss, and the loss is enormous.

But as Hopgood explains, as adoption professionals and adoptive parents scrapped that approach to child-rearing, they embraced the opposite approach, which also has its problems.  Parents can become wrapped up in teaching their kids to “be” Chinese or Korean or Guatemalan- or at least teaching them to be the parent’s *idea* of what it means to be Chinese or Korean or Guatemalan.  Their ideas of these cultures tend to be watered down- throwing ramen noodles in the salad, placing “Asian” decor around the house, wearing Guatemalan jewelry; or frozen in time- having their Chinese daughters dress in traditional clothes and learn about fan dances and tea ceremonies.  This is obviously problematic, just as it was when people ignored their adopted children’s culture altogether.

Obviously, if you read my blog, you’re familiar with my feelings on the subject.  We try to maintain our kids’ Ethiopian culture in a way that is meaningful and real.  I’ve admitted it before, and I’ll say it again:  Adam and I are totally unfit to play Ethiopian Role Models.  But we can do things to facilitate our kids’ comfort and familiarity with their Ethiopian culture and what it means to be Ethiopian.  We can help Dawit keep his Amharic, we can eat Ethiopian food as part of our regular diet, and we can foster relationships with Ethiopian adults.  I commented below the article on the Globe site (I’m sure you can guess which one is mine if you read it) so I won’t get into my whole spiel here, but I truly believe that adoptive parents CAN strike a balance between the love-is-enough and drown-your-kid-in-exoticized-culture approaches to transcultural parenting.

Recipe: Injera Chips

Sour, spicy injera chips

Before we head off for the weekend, I just wanted to share two things.  First of all, check out our kids’ photo, featured over at Anti-Racist Parent under “Gratuitous Cut Kid Pic.”  Second, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these injera chips that I made the other day.  The recipe was given to me by a woman in our local adoption group who has four older Ethiopian kids.  I couldn’t believe how easy they were (they’re nearly impossible to screw up) and it’s a fantastic way to use up injera that is starting to get old.  I literally can’t make them fast enough to keep up with demand.

You will need:

-berbere
-oil
-injera

Preheat the oven to 275°.  In a small bowl, combine the oil and berbere in proportions to your liking.  We bought some berbere recently that isn’t particularly hot, so I added at least a tablespoon for every quarter-cup of oil.  Tear a piece of injera in half and arrange it on one baking sheet as shown, and then do the same on a second baking sheet.

This doesn't look very appetizing...but I promise, it comes out great!

Using a pastry brush, spread the oil and berbere mixture onto the injera.  Bake for about 60 minutes (more for really crispy, crunchy chips, less for chewier chips) and allow to cool before breaking into chips.  Repeat.  In the future, I’m planning on getting even more creative with these chips and adding ginger or garlic or other Ethiopian spices.  Yum.

Busy busy busy

All year I was looking forward to summer, relaxing, lazy summer.  I love summer because it’s fun.  But this summer…man, it has NOT been relaxing.  Or lazy.  We are just always going, going, going.  You should see our calendar.  We’re not particularly popular people, but this summer has been filled with doctor’s appointments, camp, work, adoptive family gatherings, playdates, bachelor parties, grownup sleepovers, and more.  I feel tired just thinking about it.

To recap, briefly:

We finalized the adoption in our state!  Woohoo!  Now on to the paperwork and financial mess that is trying to prove our kids’ citizenship.  Argh.

At the court hearing

We had a great playdate with Bo’s buddy J from swimming class, whose family is Ghanaian.  J’s dad T stayed and hung out and is just a really fascinating guy.  We had a powerful but depressing conversation about the Gates case, which happened not too far from here.  T talked about his personal experience in the Boston area and I really, really wish that people in this country who insist that racism isn’t a problem anymore could talk to ONE person like J’s dad, a man whose brilliant education and work experience do not shield him from the realization that people are reluctant to sit next to a big black guy (albeit one with a briefcase or a laptop) on the subway.  One of the most poignant things about the playdate was realizing that J and Bo are two peas in a pod, Mustang-obsessed little boys who couldn’t be bothered to eat more than a few bites of apple at lunchtime because of the Siren call of Matchbox cars waiting to be lined up and counted in imaginary parking lots on the floor.  These two little boys who bob around the pool together and give each other high-fives will grow up into not-as-adorable teen boys, and their life experiences will be vastly different simply because one is white and the other is not.

Bo and J, before abandoning their food for more important things

Bo and Sula did two three-day sessions of camp for 3-5 year olds at our local community center.  It was so. darn. cute.  The first week was “Beach Week” and the second was “All About Me.”  Sula wasn’t quite three years old yet for the first session, but the people working at the community center just fawned all over her and said it was fine since she was toilet trained.  Camp was only two hours long, but you’d be amazed how many errands I can cram into two hours when I’m all by myself.  It was totally worth the $50 each week for the two of them to be entertained for six hours.  It was good practice for Sula since she’s going to preschool in the fall, and she did really well separating from me.

Sula and Bo with their show and tell items for "All About Me" week at camp

Adam had not one, but TWO, bachelor party/golf weekends to attend this summer.  Both of his best friends are getting married in the coming months so he had no choice but to abandon his family to go drinking at Mohegan Sun and on Martha’s Vineyard:

Adam faking a life of leisure on the Vineyard

I can’t complain, though.  Adam returned the favor by running the household while I went on sleepovers of my own.  First, I enjoyed a culinary vacation at Katy’s, where I got to read funky baby books to the most adorable twins in the world and was stuffed with the type of food that one reads about in magazines but never actually attempts at home (homemade mango-pineapple salsa?  arugula with fig salad? where the f*** does one buy figs?!?) and got to kick it old school and relax in ways I haven’t in ages.  It rocked.

My second sleepover was with a dear friend from high school, Erin, who has transformed from a punk teenager like me to a brilliant investigative photojournalist.  She is doing some really critical work exposing multi-level corruption related to Guatemalan adoptions.  It blows my mind how two girls from a boony-town high school could grow up and go off on their separate ways only to find themselves both embroiled in the same small, particular world like that of international adoption.

In other kid-related news, it has rained a lot this summer, and one day the little ones were making me crazy so I told them they could go outside in a torrential downpour and they were thrilled:

There was no way I was stepping outside with my brand new SLR, hence the very far away kids

Sula transitioned out of her crib, and we gave her a new bed complete with a stereotypically feminine canopy to celebrate her third birthday.  She was really happy about the bed for the five or so minutes until it came time for her nap, during which she kept getting out of bed and promptly pulled down the canopy, which is now folded up in her closet until we can get it more securely fastened to the ceiling.

Sula's big girl bed

Dawit has been at camp this whole summer, first at a reading/math school program, and then for the past two weeks at the community center’s full day fun camp.  He’s loving it, and he also hasn’t been home much, which is why there aren’t that many pictures of him.  But the other day Adam took both boys to a professional soccer game:

The boys before the game

A very tired Bo at home after the game

We’ve been attending a lot of Ethiopian adoption community events ever since culture camp.  We know most of the families in our area who have kids from Ethiopia and it’s just a really nice group of people.  All of our kids enjoy these events and make friends of their own.  And it’s important for Dawit in particular to practice his Amharic, so we’re always happy to see some of the older Ethiopian teenagers at these gatherings.

Playdate with friends

Sula with her much older Ethiopian buddy meeting a gigantic steer

Last but not least, summer would not be complete without a trip to a Pick-Your-Own farm.  There’s one nearby with cheap blueberries and Adam and I took the two little ones last week.  I LOVE blueberries.  I think I ate at least as many as I bought.  Probably more.  The kids helped, though we had to be sure to pick out the not-quite-ripe ones.  But it’s the thought that counts

Blue...or should I say red, purple and blueberries

We’re off to the Catskills for a weekend with some friends- including one who knew our kids in Ethiopia.  Stay tuned for a yummy Ethiopian recipe that I’ve been addicted to in the past few days!

Vacation, Part Two: Lake Winnipesaukee, NH

After Ethiopian Culture Camp, we headed directly to Lake Winnipesaukee for a week with Adam’s parents at the rental house we’ve been staying at since Bo was just a wee baby.  It was a full house, with Adam’s parents, my sister-in-law, Adam, me, our three kids, and two dogs.  Did I mention that it’s got three bedrooms?  And yet everything worked out just fine; it was cozy but not cramped; Bo and Sula gave us (and especially poor Dawit, who was sleeping on the floor of the same room with them) a hard time when it was time to go to sleep but always managed to settle down; and it was great to have a higher ratio of adults to kids.  We had perfect weather practically the whole week, which I know helped a lot as we were out of the house on a different adventure every day.

To recap:

-We went to the beach a couple of times.  Well, Adam did, with the kids.  I went once.  We have a nice lake in our town so I don’t feel the pressure to spend our vacation time (in a place with tons of other fun stuff to do) at Winnepesaukee.  But the kids really love it- the sand, the water, the ducks- and Bo’s and Dawit’s swimming skills are improving rapidly.

-Adam and I went to the drive-in and saw Bruno.  It was totally outrageous (TONS of male frontal nudity of the variety I have never seen in a wide-release film), kinda stupid but kinda funny, too.  Not nearly as good as Borat, which I consider to be a fascinating expose on the deep-seated “American” beliefs that we pretend don’t exist.  We have bizarrely low-brow taste in movies with a DVD collection that one would think belonged to an adolescent boy (although to make up for it, I do enjoy the occasional foreign film), so do not take this as a general endorsement of Bruno.  We had planned on catching The Hangover after Bruno, but the projector that was to show the second feature broke and none of the other movies playing looked good enough to hold our attention at that late hour.  I was annoyed with the fact that we had basically paid full double-feature fare for one stupid movie, but we still enjoyed the experience so it was worthwhile.

-We took the kids to Storyland.  I wasn’t a huge fan, unlike everyone else in the family, but that’s just because I pretty much universally dislike anything with lots of noise, lights, and crowds (think circuses, fairs, and amusement parks).  It helped to have Adam’s father with us so that he could take Dawit on some of the “big-kid” rides, and we could go at a slower pace with the little ones.  The kids got to meet Cinderella, and then I spent the next hour trying to figure out how to respond to Bo’s repeated question as to whether she was “real” or not.  Adam’s favorite moment of our entire vacation took place at Storyland when we were the passengers and Bo “drove” this cool antique car.  Bo LOVED it.  He’s been obsessed with cars and trucks for over three years now, and that interest hasn’t waned a bit in all that time.  He can’t wait until he can really drive, but in the meantime, the antique car felt like a really close subsitute and he was just overwhelmed with joy.

-We returned to the Squam Lakes Nature Center, which we have visited several times and always enjoy.  I vastly prefer outdoor animal or nature attractions (zoos, nature centers, etc.) to most indoor museums, as there’s so much for the kids to see without needing to follow too many “indoor” rules of decorum.  Dawit and Adam’s sister went off on their own, spending time leisurely reading all the descriptions of the animals and their habitats, while Adam and I took Sula and Bo on a faster tour of all the animals.

-We went to Wolfeboro, which just appeared on Yahoo’s front page as one of “The Best Summer Lake Towns“, for the day.  We even went on the Millie B., the speedboat that appears at the top of that article.  Weird.  Anyways, the speedboat ride was my absolute favorite activity of the entire trip.  The weather was gorgeous and sunny and it was just us with the kids and a French couple who sat at the very back of the boat.  Totally relaxing and cool, and we got to gawk at the mansions of the rich and famous.  After that we took a ride on Molley the Trolley, which my ass always reminds me has really, really hard wood seats that hurt when the trolley goes over bumps and I swear I won’t take again.  And forget and go on every year.  We had so much fun in Wolfeboro that we returned that night without the kids to get dessert at a crepes restaurant and have drinks at a local watering hole.

That pretty much sums it up.  I can’t wait to back next year…assuming Adam’s parents are kind (or perhaps crazy) enough to invite us back

Sula Sunshine turns 3!

This is our precious little girl, as she appeared at her very first birthday party, celebrating her third birthday:

I got writer's block trying to come up with a caption profound enough to do justice to this photograph.

This little person was born three years ago this week in a hospital in Ethiopia.  We didn’t know her back then, but we are lucky enough to have photos of her when she was just a teeny-tiny little thing:

Sula in the hospital, just hours old

Dawit tells us that the doctor named her.  Her name, roughly translated, means something like a gift, or a blessing from God.  Knowing the circumstances surrounding her birth, the name suits her perfectly.

We have other photographs from that first year that show our same little girl with the full lips entering toddlerhood.  I know we are very, very lucky to have these:

Sula in her first year

Sula began to exist for us on November 26, 2008.  That was when we first saw her on a waiting child DVD.  My heart sank.  For those of you who know the circumstances of our adoption, you might remember that the path we were originally on did not lead to Sula and Dawit.  From that day on, every time I saw Sula in photographs taken by other traveling parents, I felt nauseous, with my heart stuck in my throat.  I was utterly and totally terrified that she was supposed to be in our family, and yet it was not possible.  I tortured myself by staring at pictures of Sula in the meantime:

The months dragged on.  Everything fell apart and then magically, with one phone call, it was put together again the way it was always meant to be, at least according to the script that had been haunting my days and nights.  Unfortunately, it took a long time from the time of that phone call until I had Sula in my arms.  In the meantime, we clung to any and all photos we could get of her:

According to the person who took this picture, Sula was bewildered as to why anyone would want their bare feet to touch grass

Sula well-loved in our absence by her wonderful friend Laura

Sula receiving a letter, photos, and stickers from us

Sula eating lunch and wondering why someone is interrupting her to take a picture of her holding a letter

And then, after six months of doubting that this dream would ever really move into the realm of reality, I got to see for myself that this little Sula person was the real deal.  She wasn’t too sure about me at first, especially while we were still in Ethiopia:

This was actually from day two. Can you tell that I was still more into her than she was into me?

Using a scarf as a makeshift sling- Sula wasn't having the Ergo

Starting to trust me...

She likes me! She really, really likes me!

Sula and I at the end of a very long day

Now here we are, at the end of almost a year together.  It’s been a long year, and I can’t believe how much Sula has grown over that time.  She came home practically a baby.  Now she’s a defiant, willful, spunky three-year-old through and through.  What a miracle.  What a blessing.

Our time with Sula so far, reviewed month-by-month:

Protected: Vacation, Part One: Ethiopia Culture Camp

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