We just got back from spending several days near our soon-to-be hometown, taking care of some work business for Tim and looking for a place to live. We camped at a nearby state park, both because we like camping and to save money. It was our first multi-day camping trip with Esther, and I think we will be doing more of them! She did have a lot of trouble sleeping the first night (a typical issue when she is out of her routine and in an unfamiliar place), but otherwise she did amazingly well. The part of the campground we were in was like a big meadow surrounded by trees. The campsites were on both sides of the little road that ran around the edge of the meadow, with the middle of the meadow being left empty and available for playing. We were in the inner loop of campsites, so in a mostly grassy area with a couple of trees for shade. There were lots of other families with kids there, and Esther promptly made friends with everyone close enough to talk to. I think she is really gifted with people. One brother and sister duo that she approached didn't seem to know quite what to make of her, and at first kind of ignored her, but she kept talking to them as if they were old friends, and within ten minutes or so, they were. She is hard to resist! :-) She also made up with the family across the street, who had four active children a little older than she is. We had brought her scooter and they had brought theirs, and they had a great time scooting up and down the campground road together. A little to my surprise, no-one out of everybody we talked to (and thanks to Esther's friendliness, we talked to a lot of people!), made any comment on her being adopted, or asked where she was from, or asked if I was her mother (I get that question from time to time here, and a friend of mine whose daughter is biracial has also said that she sometimes gets taken for her daughter's nanny). Several people did remark on how Esther reminded them of their own child or grandchild, and we got several compliments on how well she scoots. So I left feeling pretty good about our new home.
Meanwhile, Esther continues to crack me up with the things she says. Often she is trying to be funny (she is developing quite the sense of humor!), but here are a few serious comments just from this last trip that made me laugh.
(At a rest stop, where there were a lot of flies in the bathroom): Those flies should find their own habitat! In a tree!
(A conversation with another little girl who came over to greet Esther carrying a roasted marshmallow--Esther's pronunciation is still not entirely clear):
Esther: Marshmallow!
Caden: Do you know what this is?
Esther: You'd better eat it before it falls.
Caden (indignantly): It is not a dust ball!
(At the snack bar in the lodge, where we went in desperation after our dinner preparations were rained on and rendered inedible):
I want a hot dog! And a honey bun!
(While we were looking at a rental townhouse, Esther asked me if there was a playground there. I said no, but she must not have been convinced, because this was her reply):
We can investigate, if you wish.
(Marching up to a fellow camper, whom she had not previously talked to):
Hi! I've never been to London before. Maybe we could go to your house and then we could go to London together. (As he walked away, he commented, "I can tell you're going to have a lot of fun.")
(Looking at the hairs on her arm):
I have chinny-chin-chins on my arm.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The end of an era
Before we went to China, we bought an Ergo baby carrier for our soon-to-be baby. According to many adoptive parents, it's a great tool for attaching to your child because it lets you spend lots of time holding them against your body, re-creating that bonding opportunity that mothers naturally have with their newborns when they feed and rock and carry them. It's also a whole lot easier to maneuver than a stroller, especially on crowded sidewalks and public transportation!
Esther got her first taste of the carrier early on in our lives together. She had fallen asleep in my arms in the van on the way from our Civil Affairs appointment (where we met her) to our hotel. I still cherish the memory of that sweet, sleeping baby in my arms, but boy, by the time we finished checking into our hotel and made it up to our room, I felt like my arms were about to fall off! With great relief, I laid her gently down on our bed--and she woke up. And wailed. In no uncertain terms, she let us know that she was furious and she was not going to go back to sleep! I didn't think my arms could take much more, so I hauled out the brand new carrier, wrestled it on (with Tim's help!), and plopped her into it. Once I started walking with her, she calmed quickly, and then fell back asleep. I was afraid to put her down again, so this is how she took her first nap with us:
Later in the day when she was a little fussy, I put her back in the carrier and went for a walk, and she calmed right down. After that, she pretty much lived in the carrier whenever we were out in public. It was incredibly convenient, it was a place where she felt safe, and it let us stay in tune with her so that we were always aware of what mood she was in, what was attracting her attention, and whether she needed anything from us. She loved peeking over the top or through the side opening to watch the world go by, and it was the only place where she fell asleep without crying.
It also had the added benefit of making it impossible for any well-meaning stranger to swoop her up out of our arms to make a fuss over her. She was greatly admired from an appropriate distance, but always stuck securely to one of us.
After we got back to the U.S., we continued using the carrier pretty much anytime we were out of the house. Esther went to the grocery store in it, slept through church services in it, took trips to the library in it, rode the bus in it...that was her second home! We do have a stroller, donated by kind friends whose kids are done with such things, but I think I could literally count on both hands the times that we've used it. I used it once to take Esther to the library on a day that I thought was too hot for the carrier, and it felt really weird to me not to be able to see her face or hear her quiet cooing. Once she learned to walk well we started using it less frequently, but it still has gone with us to all kinds of places:
I don't have any really recent pictures of her in it, because recently I've mostly just carried it around with me in case she needed it (but she usually doesn't), or used it for long walks when it's just her and me (in which case I don't take pictures of her in it!). The two things I've used the carrier for every week are going to the library (only a twenty-minute walk, but a good part of it along busy streets) and coming home from the grocery store (I've discovered it hurts my back less to carry both her and the groceries than it does to carry only the groceries but take twice as long to get home). Yesterday I left the grocery store, buckled her up in the carrier, hefted both bags of groceries onto my shoulders (I use reusable bags, much easier to carry home than plastic grocery store bags), and realized that the carrier suddenly felt loose around my waist. So I grabbed Esther with one hand to keep her from slipping out, wrestled my heavy bags back into the cart, unbuckled her and put her down, and inspected the carrier. I found that the buckle was still buckled, but the place where the waist strap attaches to the buckle was broken, probably beyond repair. The carrier has seen hours upon hours of use (not to mention all the extra hours I've dragged it around with me just in case), and parts of it were already showing wear, so I guess I'm not too surprised. But, it's been a big part of our lives up until now, and I'll miss it. I don't think it's worth replacing for the amount of future use we'd be likely to get out of it, but I wish it had held out just a few more months! So, apparently, does Esther. She walked home holding my hand and crying that she wanted to get up in her carrier. :-( She hasn't said anything about it since, so we'll see how our next trip to the grocery store or the library goes. And I may look into getting a Mei Tai (a less structured, very lightweight carrier) for hiking. Esther is a sturdy little hiker, but a distractible one, and sometimes it's nice to be able to get where you're going in the amount of time you had budgeted to get there.
Esther got her first taste of the carrier early on in our lives together. She had fallen asleep in my arms in the van on the way from our Civil Affairs appointment (where we met her) to our hotel. I still cherish the memory of that sweet, sleeping baby in my arms, but boy, by the time we finished checking into our hotel and made it up to our room, I felt like my arms were about to fall off! With great relief, I laid her gently down on our bed--and she woke up. And wailed. In no uncertain terms, she let us know that she was furious and she was not going to go back to sleep! I didn't think my arms could take much more, so I hauled out the brand new carrier, wrestled it on (with Tim's help!), and plopped her into it. Once I started walking with her, she calmed quickly, and then fell back asleep. I was afraid to put her down again, so this is how she took her first nap with us:
Later in the day when she was a little fussy, I put her back in the carrier and went for a walk, and she calmed right down. After that, she pretty much lived in the carrier whenever we were out in public. It was incredibly convenient, it was a place where she felt safe, and it let us stay in tune with her so that we were always aware of what mood she was in, what was attracting her attention, and whether she needed anything from us. She loved peeking over the top or through the side opening to watch the world go by, and it was the only place where she fell asleep without crying.
It also had the added benefit of making it impossible for any well-meaning stranger to swoop her up out of our arms to make a fuss over her. She was greatly admired from an appropriate distance, but always stuck securely to one of us.
After we got back to the U.S., we continued using the carrier pretty much anytime we were out of the house. Esther went to the grocery store in it, slept through church services in it, took trips to the library in it, rode the bus in it...that was her second home! We do have a stroller, donated by kind friends whose kids are done with such things, but I think I could literally count on both hands the times that we've used it. I used it once to take Esther to the library on a day that I thought was too hot for the carrier, and it felt really weird to me not to be able to see her face or hear her quiet cooing. Once she learned to walk well we started using it less frequently, but it still has gone with us to all kinds of places:
I don't have any really recent pictures of her in it, because recently I've mostly just carried it around with me in case she needed it (but she usually doesn't), or used it for long walks when it's just her and me (in which case I don't take pictures of her in it!). The two things I've used the carrier for every week are going to the library (only a twenty-minute walk, but a good part of it along busy streets) and coming home from the grocery store (I've discovered it hurts my back less to carry both her and the groceries than it does to carry only the groceries but take twice as long to get home). Yesterday I left the grocery store, buckled her up in the carrier, hefted both bags of groceries onto my shoulders (I use reusable bags, much easier to carry home than plastic grocery store bags), and realized that the carrier suddenly felt loose around my waist. So I grabbed Esther with one hand to keep her from slipping out, wrestled my heavy bags back into the cart, unbuckled her and put her down, and inspected the carrier. I found that the buckle was still buckled, but the place where the waist strap attaches to the buckle was broken, probably beyond repair. The carrier has seen hours upon hours of use (not to mention all the extra hours I've dragged it around with me just in case), and parts of it were already showing wear, so I guess I'm not too surprised. But, it's been a big part of our lives up until now, and I'll miss it. I don't think it's worth replacing for the amount of future use we'd be likely to get out of it, but I wish it had held out just a few more months! So, apparently, does Esther. She walked home holding my hand and crying that she wanted to get up in her carrier. :-( She hasn't said anything about it since, so we'll see how our next trip to the grocery store or the library goes. And I may look into getting a Mei Tai (a less structured, very lightweight carrier) for hiking. Esther is a sturdy little hiker, but a distractible one, and sometimes it's nice to be able to get where you're going in the amount of time you had budgeted to get there.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Difficult decision
Back before the end of April, I noticed that Tim had e-mailed himself a notice about a job opening for a physics professor position at a small, teaching-oriented university. A couple days before the deadline, I asked if he was going to apply for it, and he said probably not. The town wasn't anything approaching diverse (92% white, with precisely three residents of foreign birth), and we have always said that we didn't want to raise Esther in a place where she would feel like the odd one out. And at that point, after a frustrating year of trying unsuccessfully to move into a higher-education teaching career, Tim had already shifted his focus to making a career change into actuarial science, and was pretty excited about it. I have always seen Tim as a teacher and was feeling a little sad about leaving that dream behind, so I encouraged him to apply anyway--it was an easy application, and what could it hurt?
After Tim sent in his materials, I spent the next few days racked with guilt that I could even think of raising our precious little girl in a town where no-one looked like her. But as days passed and nobody contacted him, I began to relax. Then he got a call for a phone interview. Well, that was no great investment on anybody's part, so he went ahead with it. Then he got asked for an on-campus interview! At that point we had some serious discussion. Was there really a possibility that we would move to that kind of small town for the right job? We didn't want to waste the committee's time or the university's money by interviewing for a job that we weren't prepared to accept. We had made a firm commitment to raising Esther in a place that was good for her--but what did that mean, exactly? I know from talking to and reading about adults (both adoptees and not) who were raised in communities where they were part of a tiny minority that it does, inexorably I think, affect one's self-image and reactions towards others in ways that are a much bigger deal than the rest of us are able to appreciate. I know from my own experience growing up as a "farang" (foreigner) in rural Thailand that it affected how I see myself and others, but I had the advantage (sometimes disadvantage) of belonging to a very privileged minority, and relished my strong resemblance to my father and siblings. Esther doesn't have that. At the same time, was this one issue sufficient to outweigh the other advantages that there might be for her personally and for the family as a whole?
In the end, Tim scheduled the interview. By the end of that week, he had gotten an offer. It was decision time.
At the time, we were staying with my grandmother celebrating her birthday, and my mother was also there. So my grandmother and my mother agreed to watch Esther for an afternoon so we could get off by ourselves and pray and talk.
We started by getting ourselves quiet, and in a position to listen to God. Beyond being quiet, I spent some time reflecting on what I know to be true. I wanted us to make our decision on that foundation, rather than in reaction to our fears. So here are some things I know to be true: God is big. God can (and does) bring healing and wholeness to even the most difficult situations. No-one is doomed to a life of helpless suffering from an emotional wound if God is in the picture (although healing may be difficult and requires us to deliberately embrace the process). Avoiding suffering is not the ultimate goal of life. Those things that hurt us can also make us deeper, more resilient, and more compassionate.
When I stood on this foundation and looked at the reasons that I wanted to move, or didn't want to move, I could see that most of my reasons for not moving were fears. They were not without substance, but at the same time they failed to take into account God's power and willingness to redeem difficult situations and use them for the good of us who trust in God. Meanwhile, the reasons for wanting to take this position were mostly healthy ones, things like wanting Tim to use the gifts God gave him, and to be in a position where he could be a mentor and a positive influence in many lives. Tim's list of reasons for wanting/not wanting to move and wanting/not wanting to stay overlapped some with mine as well as having some unique items, but overall he found the same pattern: the reasons for wanting to stay or not move were based largely on fears, while the ones for wanting to take the position were mostly reasons that affirmed the things we know to be true.
So, we decided to take the position. I still believe that Esther will experience certain hardships as the result of our decision that she would not have experienced growing up here. (She might, of course, have experienced different hardships growing up here, but that's a subject for a different post!) I can't guarantee that she will allow God to use those situations to make her a better, stronger, more compassionate person, but I pray that that will be the case and we will do everything in our power to give her the tools and support to live well in her new environment.
Meanwhile, there are things that I think she will love about living in our new small town. She is such an outdoors girl, and the outdoors will be more available to her than ever before. We'll be able to see stars at night, we can go camping more often, we may have a backyard that she can play in, and we'll be able to give her more freedom to play outside at an earlier age than we could here. We can afford to send her to preschool! She is such an extrovert that she thinks going to school must be the ultimate adventure, and I think she'll be thrilled to get to spend regular time in an environment with other kids. We'll be able to live in a place where no-one is living under us and she can run and jump and dance in the house as much as she wants to. We will be living less than three hours' drive from my grandmother, with whom Esther has a very special relationship, so they will get to see each other more often. And, Tim has a great deal of freedom to do what he wants during summers, so we will be able to spend an occasional summer in China!!
If in the future we see that the race issue is having a significant negative impact on Esther, we are prepared to move (or seek other creative solutions), but for the moment, we think it's going to be a good move for all of us.
After Tim sent in his materials, I spent the next few days racked with guilt that I could even think of raising our precious little girl in a town where no-one looked like her. But as days passed and nobody contacted him, I began to relax. Then he got a call for a phone interview. Well, that was no great investment on anybody's part, so he went ahead with it. Then he got asked for an on-campus interview! At that point we had some serious discussion. Was there really a possibility that we would move to that kind of small town for the right job? We didn't want to waste the committee's time or the university's money by interviewing for a job that we weren't prepared to accept. We had made a firm commitment to raising Esther in a place that was good for her--but what did that mean, exactly? I know from talking to and reading about adults (both adoptees and not) who were raised in communities where they were part of a tiny minority that it does, inexorably I think, affect one's self-image and reactions towards others in ways that are a much bigger deal than the rest of us are able to appreciate. I know from my own experience growing up as a "farang" (foreigner) in rural Thailand that it affected how I see myself and others, but I had the advantage (sometimes disadvantage) of belonging to a very privileged minority, and relished my strong resemblance to my father and siblings. Esther doesn't have that. At the same time, was this one issue sufficient to outweigh the other advantages that there might be for her personally and for the family as a whole?
In the end, Tim scheduled the interview. By the end of that week, he had gotten an offer. It was decision time.
At the time, we were staying with my grandmother celebrating her birthday, and my mother was also there. So my grandmother and my mother agreed to watch Esther for an afternoon so we could get off by ourselves and pray and talk.
We started by getting ourselves quiet, and in a position to listen to God. Beyond being quiet, I spent some time reflecting on what I know to be true. I wanted us to make our decision on that foundation, rather than in reaction to our fears. So here are some things I know to be true: God is big. God can (and does) bring healing and wholeness to even the most difficult situations. No-one is doomed to a life of helpless suffering from an emotional wound if God is in the picture (although healing may be difficult and requires us to deliberately embrace the process). Avoiding suffering is not the ultimate goal of life. Those things that hurt us can also make us deeper, more resilient, and more compassionate.
When I stood on this foundation and looked at the reasons that I wanted to move, or didn't want to move, I could see that most of my reasons for not moving were fears. They were not without substance, but at the same time they failed to take into account God's power and willingness to redeem difficult situations and use them for the good of us who trust in God. Meanwhile, the reasons for wanting to take this position were mostly healthy ones, things like wanting Tim to use the gifts God gave him, and to be in a position where he could be a mentor and a positive influence in many lives. Tim's list of reasons for wanting/not wanting to move and wanting/not wanting to stay overlapped some with mine as well as having some unique items, but overall he found the same pattern: the reasons for wanting to stay or not move were based largely on fears, while the ones for wanting to take the position were mostly reasons that affirmed the things we know to be true.
So, we decided to take the position. I still believe that Esther will experience certain hardships as the result of our decision that she would not have experienced growing up here. (She might, of course, have experienced different hardships growing up here, but that's a subject for a different post!) I can't guarantee that she will allow God to use those situations to make her a better, stronger, more compassionate person, but I pray that that will be the case and we will do everything in our power to give her the tools and support to live well in her new environment.
Meanwhile, there are things that I think she will love about living in our new small town. She is such an outdoors girl, and the outdoors will be more available to her than ever before. We'll be able to see stars at night, we can go camping more often, we may have a backyard that she can play in, and we'll be able to give her more freedom to play outside at an earlier age than we could here. We can afford to send her to preschool! She is such an extrovert that she thinks going to school must be the ultimate adventure, and I think she'll be thrilled to get to spend regular time in an environment with other kids. We'll be able to live in a place where no-one is living under us and she can run and jump and dance in the house as much as she wants to. We will be living less than three hours' drive from my grandmother, with whom Esther has a very special relationship, so they will get to see each other more often. And, Tim has a great deal of freedom to do what he wants during summers, so we will be able to spend an occasional summer in China!!
If in the future we see that the race issue is having a significant negative impact on Esther, we are prepared to move (or seek other creative solutions), but for the moment, we think it's going to be a good move for all of us.