random thoughts

Last week we had a fun little excursion.  Tim had a one-day conference in a city halfway between here and my grandma's house, so we all drove up together and while Tim was in his conference, Esther and I spent the day (nearly seven hours!) in a science museum.  It was nice to have a day that wasn't about accomplishing anything but just about playing and exploring.  Esther was seriously considering trying to take a nap by the end of our time there, but she made it! When Tim picked us up, we drove on to Grandma's house (Esther slept in the car) and had a mini family reunion with her, my aunt, and two cousins.  We just got to stay overnight and part of the next day, but it was really nice to get to see family we don't see very often and to celebrate Grandma's birthday.  One of my cousins had never met Esther, and the other hadn't seen her since we were in China adopting her (that cousin lived in China at the time).  Esther took surprisingly long to warm up to everyone when we arrived, but once she reverted to her usual attention-loving self she had a wonderful time playing with everyone.  At one point I came into the living room to see her holding a "story hour" with my cousins.  She was in her little chair holding up a book, and they were sitting attentively on the floor in front of her.  I came in just in time to hear her say, "And there was a storm!"  ("Another one?" a cousin interjected. "Oh no!")  Esther continued, "And the T-Rex got wet!  And it wasn't waterproof!"

While we were gone, we got word that our Article 5 has been issued!!  That is our final immigration approval from the U.S., and it came faster than I had expected.  On the other hand, I had thought that our TA (the last document we need in order to travel) would be issued immediately after our Article 5...and we're still waiting.  :-(  So we still haven't gotten plane tickets, and we want to be in China meeting our son a week from Monday!  We would appreciate prayers that our TA is issued tonight (Wednesday China time) and our consulate appointment date tomorrow night (Thursday China time).

Tim and I are trading off being stressed.  Last weekend he dedicated himself to helping me get things checked off our checklist, and we got a lot accomplished.  Now he is frantically trying to finish up a paper that he wants to submit to a journal before we go.  Last night I helped him enter some articles into his list of references.  Engineering/physics is a weird field in that every journal (or group of related journals) has its own style of formatting--no MLA or APA that everyone in the field follows.  So on at least three separate occasions I had to go back and change the formatting of all the entries I had already done because we discovered that the journal Tim thinks the paper will be submitted to did something differently than the example I was following (e.g. I had to go back and type in page ranges for every article when I had just put in the beginning page number of each article).  And then if the article ends up going to a different journal, Tim will have to go back and reformat everything AGAIN.  Ugh.  

This morning Esther said to me, "I don't like FH [her soon-to-be brother].  I am going to be so mean to him when he comes.  He's going to be mean to me, and he's going to say, 'I don't like Esther.'"  I can't absolutely assure her that he won't dislike her, so I mostly just listened empathetically.  At least she knows it's okay to talk about her negative feelings.  We talked a little bit just now (I'm writing while she takes her bath) about what we are going to do in China.  She is excited about the trip, but told me again that she doesn't want FH and she is going to spit on him.  I don't think she means it.  (The spitting part, that is.)  

Three Weeks

I realized last night that just three weeks from today is the date that we hope to meet our new son!  Yikes!!!!  That means we want to be on our way to China in about two and a half weeks.  And that means that our Article 5 needs to be issued early next week.  That is, if our desired timing is going to work out.  We do have a few days beyond that before we have to be in China, but we're hoping for the above schedule.  I looked at my to-be-done list today.  I have only managed to cross off a few items since I wrote it at least a month ago, but I have made progress towards most items, so it's not too overwhelming.  It's going to be a busy couple of weeks, though.  It's just hard to feel like we're really leaving that soon when we're still at least a week away from buying plane tickets!

Meanwhile, our son's orphanage relocated to a new campus outside the city last week.  We're wondering how he is feeling about the move...whether he is still somehow going to school or whether he had to leave his classmates and teachers before the school year was over in order to make this move...how another move right before his big one into our family is affecting his stress level.  I also can't help thinking about the littler kids, who don't quite get what is going on.  It was really hard for Esther to move last year.  :-(

Less than a month now before we meet him!

Day Seven?!

Today was our last full day with Big girl.  As Tim said to me just now, I have mixed feelings about it.  I will not mind getting some time back.  I will not miss the noise, the mess, and the extra need for supervision.  But I will miss her.

This morning the four of us went to a free fair at which county organizations who serve children were exhibiting.  I had hoped to find out about local preschools for Esther, but the only preschool there was Head Start.  However, all the tables had cool free stuff (like temporary tattoos and coloring books on being safe and pencils that change color when you rub them), and there was a moon bounce, a bouncy obstacle course, face-painting, a few games, and free hot dogs and bottled water!  Both girls had an excellent time.

In the afternoon, while Esther napped, Big girl sorted through all of her loot from the fair (which Esther keeps referring to as the "welfare") and packed up her stuff.  Then she did some work for me as reparation for my having to buy the almond bark the other day.  She swept and mopped both the front and back tile porches (which are small) and mopped the kitchen floor.  They look much better now than they have been!

By that time, Esther was up and Big girl wanted to start making dinner.  She knows what she is about in the kitchen, but still required supervision, especially since her ideas on handling raw chicken are not up to my cleanliness standards!  So I hung out in the kitchen, washed lots of dishes, and watched how she made the stuffed tomatoes so that I can make them myself if I want to.  I may tweak the recipe a little bit, but we all agreed that they turned out yummy!  It was such a nice day that we had dinner out on the deck.  Big girl told us that she feels proud of herself.  I asked why, and she said it was for being a good cook, for doing well in school, and for doing something for somebody else (the cleaning she did for me).  I'm glad we're able to send her back to her long-term foster home with that little glow of self-esteem!  It was a reminder how important it is to people's well-being for them to feel that they are contributing something valuable to others.

After dinner we finished icing the cookies.  It made a huge mess (including on Big girl's shirt and pants and in her hair) but was otherwise fun.  Then we did a science experiment and a small art project before bedtime.  The art project turned out to be a problem, as I had envisioned them sharing some of Esther's stickers, and Esther suddenly became very possessive and didn't want Big girl to have most of them.  I was perplexed as to what to do, because they were Esther's stickers and I want to respect her property rights, but at the same time it didn't seem right to rub it in that Big girl didn't have her own stickers.  I finally had Esther pick out a few of her favorites that she absolutely did not want anyone else to take, and let Big girl pick out hers from the rest of the stickers.  I think they were both okay with that.

Esther took a long time to fall asleep tonight, and Big girl fell asleep while waiting for me to come sit with her! So I think she is feeling more settled than a few days ago.  Hopefully that settledness will survive her transition back to her other foster home tomorrow.  She is going to be with us through lunch, and then we will meet the other family and she will go home with them.  It will feel strange to have only one child in the house tomorrow afternoon.

Day Six

The Big Event of today was that Big girl got to have a parent visit!  She has been sooooooo missing her parents and worrying about them.  Tim said she cried in the car on the way home, but she told me before she went to sleep tonight that she thinks she'll sleep much better now that she has seen for herself that they're okay.  And I'm sure it won't hurt that they brought her her teddy bear that she's had since she was a toddler.  We all went to drop her off, so we got to meet her parents briefly.  They were very nice to us, but of course mostly excited to see their daughter!  Big girl had collected a whole assortment of gifts to bring to her parents, including: a small hydrangea bush, a Mother's Day card, two paintings, the glass boot mug that she won at the church Ladies Dinner, a can of sardines (that she had picked out as a snack for herself, but I guess she decided she wanted to give her dad a present more than she wanted to eat them), and four photos that I had taken of her over the last few days and printed out.  I had thought Big girl might be in manic mode when she came back from her visit, but she was actually pretty subdued.  She and Tim and Esther played boat with legos in the basement while I made dinner, and after dinner the three of them went outside for a few minutes while I got ready for icing cookies.  Then we iced until bedtime.  We didn't finish that many, but since they got to bed so late last night I made sure they got to bed in time to catch up on their sleep tonight!

And now I have to figure out how to tell Big girl that she won't be allowed on Facebook any more.  She may well feel betrayed, since she told me so confidingly about her account, and I hate that!  But she isn't even old enough to legally have an account, and there are all kinds of reasons why it's not a good idea for her to be using one.  (She hasn't gotten on it this week, since she uses her DS to do so and its battery has died.  At least, I think she hasn't gotten on it this week--she was telling me today about something that she saw on another child's Facebook page on their DS at school.  Apparently, monitoring tweens' internet use is no simple undertaking!)

Day Five

Discover of the day: I do not like shopping with Big girl!  I had Tim drop us off at the store while Esther was in her gymnastics class, and it became a very long hour.  There was the touching everything, the getting "stuck" looking at scrapbooking stickers and not moving on when I said it was time, the yelling "Don't leave me!!" when I finally told her I was moving on and started walking away from the scrapbooking section (that got us some startled looks from nearby shoppers!), the tossing fruits and vegetables roughly back into their piles if they weren't the ones she wanted to buy, the constant asking for food items (especially sweets and fruit)...and did I mention the touching everything??  She is now the not-so-proud owner of a bag of almond bark that she whacked over her knee and broke in half.  Well, I was the one who paid for it, but she is going to pay me back, probably by doing a job around the house since she doesn't have any money.  It was the first time I've spoken to her sharply since she's been here, and she felt terrible about it.

The rest of the day went pretty well.  I think she was a little bored at school, but no drama that I'm aware of.  In the afternoon she and Esther and I mixed up some sugar cookie dough.  Then Esther watched some new Thomas the Tank Engine movies, I washed dishes, and Big girl called her parents.  They told her the good news that they have completed one of the tasks they need to in order for her to come back home!  She was over the moon excited, and thought she was going to be going home right away.  Sadly, that is not the case.  :-(  There are a couple of other things that they have to do as well, and then they will have to wait for their next scheduled court date for the judge to decide that they've met all the requirements and she can go home.  But progress is progress.  Meanwhile, she has a parent visit scheduled for this afternoon, and she can't wait to see them.

I made the mistake of thinking we'd be able to finish the cookie baking process after dinner.  Oops.  Both girls ended up staying up way past their bedtimes so that they could eat some of the first batch of cookies out of the oven.  (I finished up after they were in bed.)  Big girl complained of feeling sick last night, and again this morning.  I suppose she could really be sick, but I think more likely it's either tiredness or anxiety.  I am shooting for early bedtimes tonight!  I'm finding it's a long process to get two children into bed, especially when both of them need me to sit with them in order for them to fall asleep easily.  I don't mind, though.  :-)  I just need to adjust my timetable a little.

Days 3 and 4

I'll try to make this quick so I can get some sleep!  Last night I ended up staying up late talking with Big Girl, who was feeling overwhelmed with anxiety.  Then I sacked out in my sleeping bag in her room, since she didn't want to sleep alone.  So I slept okay, but not as well as I would have liked.  She wanted me to do the same tonight, but I wanted to sleep in my own bed and I have reason to think the anxiety won't be quite as intense tonight, so we compromised: I sat in her room with my laptop until she feel asleep, she has permission to turn the light on and write or read if she wakes up during the night and can't fall back to sleep, and I'm leaving the door to her room and the door to our room open during the night.

Some vignettes from the last couple of days:

Big girl painted again yesterday--she is amazing at mixing colors!  Then she decided to paint her arms and face, after which I asked her to take a second shower.  So she hid under the table and spent about fifteen minutes chanting, "No, no, no!  I don't wanna take a shower!  You can't make me!"  After which she got bored and came out and took the requested shower, after just a little bit of stalling and griping.

Big girl and Esther love to play a lot of the same things.  I wasn't sure at first whether it was because Big girl loves those things herself, or whether she was just being nice to Esther.  But I have had some time alone with Big girl when Esther was napping or in daycare, and two of the things we have played, at her request, are: hide and seek (the version where I know where she is and she knows I know where she is, but I pretend to look in a bunch of other places anyway) and house.  Her "house" play is very, very elaborate, with lots of details.  Yesterday she stopped in the middle of it and said, "Out of the game.  I have a good imagination, don't I?"  I agreed that she does, and she said gleefully, while jumping up and down on a seat, "I'm acting just like a grown-up!"  I thought, but did not say, "Yeah, I know lots of grown-ups who jump up and down on seats!"  Ha.  This afternoon we got to go outside for a while, and she and Esther played cooking.  She made herself a "stove" out of things that she found, and created some beautiful spring rolls with rolled-up leaves and flower petals (did I mention that she's artistic?).

In her play, and in dealing with frustration, she acts a lot more like a six-year-old than a twelve-year-old.  (This is not an uncommon phenomenon among kids from turbulent backgrounds; they seem to be going back and "catching up" on developmental stages that they didn't get to do properly when they were at the chronological age for it.)  But then there are other times when she's like a twelve-year-old and then some.  She made pancakes for lunch yesterday (from a mix, but it was her idea to add strawberries and she did all the cooking), and she is thrilled that I'm going to let her make stuffed tomatoes (one of her specialties at home, apparently) on Saturday.  Her interests in books, music and movies are...I won't say age-appropriate since I'm not so sure that some of them are appropriate, but I'm guessing that she would find a lot of company among her peers.  She is a fan of Justin Bieber, vampires, and rap songs with risque lyrics.  She has explained to me how a "chick fight" works at school, and sung me the song that kids sing to "fat kids" as well as the one that is sung by popular girls to put other people down.  No wonder she's not keen on going to school!

Last night all four of us went to a Ladies' Dinner at church (Tim helped serve).  The theme was "footprints."  Esther spent half the evening crying to go to her daddy, which was a little frustrating for both of us.  (I eventually let her go, and he hung out with her in the kitchen for part of the evening.)  I think Big girl found the dinner part a little tedious, but she enjoyed the guessing game, and won a prize in the footwear fashion show!  (Esther and I also won prizes--I got socks with lotion in them, and Esther got some sandal-shaped lollipops and notepads.) I think it was a good evening altogether.

AND, today Big girl had her first day of school.  She was, I think, dreading it (but had a poker face on), but came home all excited about all of the new school supplies she had been given, and the fact that she doesn't have to take the standardized tests with the other kids but gets to do all the fun stuff.  She sits in the principal's office while the testing is going on.  She said that this morning she napped (which she probably needed after last night!), but tomorrow we're sending her with a book in case she doesn't sleep and wants something to do.

Tomorrow she has to be at school even earlier, which means...I'd better quit and get to bed!

Day Two

Our (mostly my, since Tim went to work) first full day with two kids went pretty well.  A lot happened!  I got to talk to three different social workers on the phone (Big girl's social worker from her home county, her social worker from our county, and our home study social worker), and one of them came for a visit.  We also found out that she will be starting school this week after all, on Wednesday.  The school is doing standardized testing this week, so I'm not exactly sure what she'll be doing...but apparently, it was deemed important to get her enrolled.  She didn't react one way or the other when I told her of the new plan.  She didn't react when I told her that her social worker was coming either, but was shrieking and jumping up and down with joy when she arrived, so apparently no reaction doesn't mean no emotion!  She was a lot more expressive today in general--very dramatic exhibitions of frustration or excitement.  A couple times it was hard for me to tell if she was truly upset or just kidding around.  Big girl also got to talk to her parents on the phone today.  I tried not to listen in the the conversation, but since she either had the phone on speakerphone or had the loudest connection I have ever heard, I did hear parts of it.  She sounded happy about some of the things she has gotten to do here, but it was clear that she and her parents are both hurting from the separation.  At one point I overheard her tell her dad, "You think y'alls the only ones feeling the pain, but you ain't."  Then she added, "Just playin' with ya."  She's supposed to have a parent visit this week; I really hope it works out.

In the morning, Big girl and Esther painted.  I had been thinking I could go in the kitchen and get stuff done while they were both occupied, but since they both chose to use tempera paint, I ended up spending most of the time in the dining room with them, helping Esther mix her paint and dealing with various accidents.  Big girl really does have an artistic bent.  She wanted to paint an evening sky, so she mixed two different shades of blue, some yellow, and some pink, and it really did look like the sky at sunset!  She was pleased with the result, and plans to give the painting to her mommy.  Then towards lunch time Big girl discovered the space under her (elevated) bed and decided to open a "Christian Academy" in her room, with Esther as the student. Once I told her that I needed to be in the room with them for that game, I was recruited as the teacher's aide. Big girl spent a good part of Esther's nap making signs and writing out the schedule (which included an "opening preyer," offering, meet-and-great, questions, Bible study, snack time, play time, praises, prayer requests (which she described as, "I'll pray for the person and tell them everything will be okay in the end"), and a "closing preyer.")  So after Esther woke up we played "Christian Academy."  The text for our Bible study was Job 15, a speech of Eliphaz the Temanite.  Oy!  This evening towards the end of dinner we all played "I Spy" for a long time.  And Big girl and Esther got in some playing house too.

A few minor frustrations...Big girl has a habit of going through other people's stuff that I find kind of annoying. She does, at least, ask before using any of the stuff--and she doesn't fuss if I say no--but there are times I wish she would have asked before getting into it in the first place!  And she really, really wants to play a virtual-reality computer game, and we don't have any available.  She has some games on her DS, but the DS ran out of batteries about the time she got here.  We could possibly figure out how to recharge it...but given that she also has Facebook on there (despite being too young to legally have an account) and was planning to use Facebook to contact a friend (who we know nothing about) this week...I'm not really sorry that the DS is out of commission!  Just one less thing to deal with.  Oh yeah, and then this afternoon she put her hair up in a bun, which reminded her of a song she likes, so for a while she was going around singing, "Your BUNS...buns, buns, buns!  They make me feel HOT...hot, hot hot!" and Esther was dancing around to the rhythm.  Yikes!  However, if those are the biggest issues we have this week, we have nothing to complain about!!  (I described to our social worker how our time was going and she commented, "Honeymooning big time, huh?"  Here's hoping the honeymoon will last all week!)

We're going to send Esther to daycare tomorrow morning as usual.  Hopefully Big girl will be able to find a way to entertain herself that doesn't involve getting on the internet and looking for virtual reality games.  I'm thinking another art project will be in order...

One down, six to go!

Our first day with our temporary big girl is done (or at any rate, both girls are in bed and I haven't heard anything out of them in the last few minutes), and it went well.  We picked her up this morning on our way to church, so we had her most of the day.  She went into Sunday School, but sat with us for the first part of the service (which was a celebration of babies and small children in the church) and then chose to come with me to help out in the nursery for the rest of the service.

It is, for me, mentally tiring to spend all day with someone I don't know, especially if I'm responsible for them!  But other than that it has been better than I expected.  Big girl is doing her best to make herself agreeable, and succeeding quite well.  There were one or two times I think she recklessly disregarded her own opinion when expressing agreement with me on something, and I noticed that she's very good at observing what people around her are doing and adjusting her behavior to fit in.  However, she is not shy about asking for things she wants (especially if it involves food) and she has told us some of her likes and dislikes.  Some of the things she likes are gardening (which she knows more about than I do!), cooking, art, playdough and spicy food.  She volunteered to help me with both weed-pulling and cooking.  So now I have some ideas of what we can do together for the next few days!  Esther thinks she is The.Most.Exciting.Person.Ever and wanted to be with her every minute.  Big girl clearly has experience with smaller children, and they played together most of the afternoon without getting into a single fight!  For the most part they played playdough, and I was able to do a bunch of dishes and study Chinese while keeping an ear out on them in the living room.  I was tickled, though, when Big girl wanted me to "taste" her playdough "food"!

One of our new house rules, which we are getting to test out this week, is that children's bedrooms are private.  No child may go into another child's room without being invited, and then there must be a parent present.  Well, they both got the "invited" part (although Esther is not keen on it!), but early on in the day I did come to check on Esther after a minute away to find that she had been invited into Big girl's room to watch her put away her stuff!  So apparently, the "parent" part of the rule went in one ear and out the other.  It wasn't an issue the rest of the day, as Big girl mostly chose to play with Esther in the living room.  We'll see how the relationship goes the rest of the week.

dentist

I did remember the name of our dentist, of course.  Tim wasn't feeling great yesterday morning, and Esther had been complaining from time to time of an "owie" tooth, so I called and asked if I could switch her appointment for his (she and I were scheduled for next week).  They said fine, so in we went.  Esther was a little nervous initially, but she did great!  She opened her mouth, complied with instructions, and got a good cleaning and inspection.  I really liked both the hygienist and the dentist.

The good news: Esther's teeth are very healthy.  The "owie" tooth could be gum tenderness, or it could be the tooth hurting from banging into the one below it, but it does not appear to be a cavity.

The bad news:  Esther has a class-three malocclusion, otherwise known as an underbite.  I knew she had an underbite, but didn't think it was a big deal.  Our dentist respectfully disagrees, so we now have an assignment to get an orthodontic evaluation.  Apparently (piecing together what the dentist said with what I read on Dr. Google last night), there are two possible causes for an underbite: skeletal (the lower jaw is outgrowing the upper one, causing the lower teeth to align in front of the upper ones) or orthodontic (the jaws are in the right place but the lower teeth are pushed too far forward and/or the upper teeth are recessed--this can happen with extensive pacifier use or thumb-sucking, or if the tongue is constantly thrusting forward, which I think Esther may do when she sleeps as the tip of her tongue can frequently be seen protruding from her mouth).  The two causes have different prognoses and treatments, and the orthodontist should be able to tell which we're dealing with.  When the dentist was having Esther open and close her mouth, we could see that her top and bottom teeth actually line up almost exactly, but in order to close her mouth fully she has to push her lower teeth in front of her upper teeth (rather than behind).  I think the dentist suspects that her underbite is of the skeletal variety.

As for long-term consequences of having an underbite, I asked the dentist and he said it was primarily an aesthetic issue.  Well, that's not so bad.  I learned that about 10% of Asians have an underbite, and thinking of people I know or know of who have an underbite (Michelle Obama apparently being one of them), I don't think it's especially unattractive.  But it can also cause less-than-ideal wear patterns on the teeth, which could be a problem long-term, and from my reading last night I gather that underbite can also be implicated in chronic jaw pain for adults.  And that is bad, especially since the treatment for an adult with a skeletal malocclusion is a year of braces, followed by jaw surgery (which I think involves breaking and repositioning the jaw), followed by more braces.  Yeah, not what I want my little girl to be going through in a couple of decades.  For children, I'm not sure there's clear consensus on treatment, except that they shouldn't have surgery since their jaws aren't done growing.  There are devices which purport to retard the growth of the lower jaw or enhance the growth of the upper jaw, but they sound uncomfortable, and their results could be undone by adolescent jaw growth patterns.  Orthodontia can be used to change the angles of teeth and how they line up in relation to each other, but it can only do so much if the jaws themselves are out of whack.

I'm really not keen on treating something that she can probably live with just fine.  But if, on the other hand, putting her in nighttime headgear for a couple of years could prevent her from having chronic pain or jaw surgery further down the road, it would be worth it.  I guess we'll have to wait and see what information we get from the orthodontist.  (In any case, I don't think interventions are typically done until children are several years older than she is now.)

Can I just say...

...that my head hurts?

I've been trying to get all our family medical appointments in line.  My first-choice pediatrician for big boy (selected after careful research) turned out to have retired last year.  My second choice (selected after further research) turned out to have moved out-of-state.  My third choice doesn't do appointments for first visits--we just walk in on whatever day we want to.  I'm not quite sure how to note that on the calendar but okay, whatever, at least he's still practicing in the area.

Then I realized that I wrote down when all our dental appointments (made a week or two ago) are--but I didn't write down the name of the dentist.  Being as Tim's appointment is tomorrow, I sure hope I can remember!

AAAAAAAAARGH!!

Random thoughts

I have several well-ordered, interesting topics for blog entries percolating, but I don't have time to write them today.  So instead, here are a sample of the things on my mind.

Naps.  Is Esther ready to give them up?  Over the past few months she has sometimes taken a long time to fall asleep at naptime, and/or bedtime.  On Monday she didn't take a nap at all, despite two attempts, and did not appear to need one.  At first I was alarmed.  Then I thought, "Wait a minute, if she doesn't nap, I can put her to bed earlier at night, she might stop waking up at 5 in the morning asking to come into our bed, I won't have to lie down with her two times a day to help her fall asleep, and the end result would be that I get more sleep myself and spend less time doing nothing.  Brilliant!"  Then the next four days she took a nap, and obviously needed it.  So I guess we're in that in-between phase where she needs a nap some days and doesn't some days, and I will never know which is which until she either falls asleep or doesn't.  Sigh.

I posted a comment on another mother's blog the other day and signed it, "Mom to another aging-out boy...." I didn't realize until a little later that I had signed it in the present tense.  I guess this adoption is feeling pretty real!

Remember how our home study agency required us to become an accredited foster care family for our state? Well, we have been asked to do respite care for a 12-year-old girl whose foster family is going out of town for a week and can't take her with them.  We said yes!  It was absolute perfect timing--probably the only week this spring we could have done it, actually--and we certainly want to help other families out.  Still, it is a step out of our comfort zone.  I spent yesterday trying to wrap my brain around the fact that we had actually agreed to do it.  It shouldn't be nearly as challenging as our first weeks with our son, especially since she will be in school during the day--but you expect to make major investments of time and energy in a relationship that is going to last a lifetime.  It's a little weirder to do it with a child you have no connection to.  Now, though, I'm getting a little excited.  I don't know much about the girl yet except that her foster family (who have toddlers in the home) haven't seen any concerning behavioral issues during the time she's been with them.  Her foster mom is going to call and talk with me early next week.

I'm getting to write in the blog now because Tim and Esther are out getting gas and "maybe stopping by the dollar store while we're at it."  Esther has been telling me lately something about buying a present at the dollar store and hiding it.  But I really shouldn't be telling you that, because it's a secret.  ;-)

Imagination fails

I was recently reading some articles about talking with adopted children about adoption.  Usually I just read the preschool stuff, but this time I thought I'd better read the adolescent stuff as well, since we're about to have an adolescent in the family.  One thing the article touched on was what an intense part thoughts of birth family can play in an adolescent's inner life.  Not that it is the same thing, but it made me think about what an intense part our children-to-be have played in my thoughts for each adoption, even before we were officially in process.


All that to say, I have been thinking a lot about our son lately.  The trouble is, I don't know what to think.  I know our lives will change drastically in less than two months, but I can't picture how.  It's not lack of information.  I have read numerous books about older child adoption and first-hand accounts from other adoptive parents, and I know what range of experiences is normal.  But I have no way of knowing where in that range our experience will fall.  Even though we have been blessed by way more information about our son than is generally available to families adopting from China...none of it really tells us what kind of a person he is.  We have reports from people at his orphanage who know him well...but I have to wonder how selectively the information may have been chosen and presented.  After all, their main goal is to recruit a family, not to paint a perfectly objective picture.  We have other reports from people whose objectivity I trust, but their observations were much more superficial.  So when I try to picture what it will be like to have our new child in our house, I'm at a loss.  And I find that it's frustrating not being able to picture my life beyond six weeks from now!!


For example, when Tim and I were trying to develop teenager-ready house rules and consequences recently, we found it hard to formulate them without knowing either what discipline issues we will have, or what our son cares about enough to motivate him to do things "the way we do it in this family."  (On the subject of behavior issues, I should clarify that I think we have a pretty good idea of issues that are common among older internationally-adopted children coming out of institutions, we just don't know which issues our particular child will have.  I don't, for example, see him being both an over-pleaser and oppositional at the same time.)  I don't know which of our favorite summer activities will be things that we can do with him.  I don't know if he will like what we normally eat, or what we/he will eat if he doesn't.  And the list goes on.  At least with a newborn you don't have to know their personality to have some idea of what it will be like caring for them the first few months!


Here are the things that we do know (or are pretty sure we know) based on our various sources:


He has a beautiful singing voice (possibly in transition right now--he is about due for his voice to change), and he loves music.


When he is happy, he has a smile that lights up a room.  (We got some update pictures of him playing in the snow that made me hope for a snowy winter next year!) 


He very much wants his own family, and is willing to move to a foreign country to get one.  He has had some experience living or visiting with families in China.  He has had a much wider range of social experiences than most kids growing up in orphanages.


He is skinny and a little on the short side for his age.


He is a favorite of adults, gets along well with peers, and helps out with younger children (but that's not necessarily the same as being kind to them).


Our most recent report from the orphanage says he "has his own opinion on how to live his life"--perhaps a positive way of saying, as his nanny did on his video interview (in response to a clarification question), that when he is upset he argues with his caregivers!  Still, that is normal for a teenager, and I would rather live with a child who knows his own mind than one who has never had an independent thought.  His initial report described him as very understanding and good at communication and expressing himself.


We have heard him described as both "outgoing" and "quiet."  He impresses outsiders as being mature compared to his orphanage-mates, but who knows.


Back to the discipline question...we finally gave up.  Our basic house rules (no hurting people, no destroying stuff, be safe, listen to Mom and Dad) will be the same for him as for Esther, and we will just have to figure out the details as they come up...and accept that it will take some trial and error to figure out consequences that get the desired effect (motivation to improve behavior) without triggering shame, fear or rage that could make the effect of the consequences worse that the effect of the original misdeed.  I don't like getting things wrong...but I generally get things wrong with Esther a time or two when first addressing a new phase of misbehavior, so I don't know why I would expect to be more competent with a teenager that I barely know!  I have a feeling I'm about to get a lot of practice in letting go of my own expectations for myself, and accepting being a learner rather than an expert.  I'm not looking forward to the exhaustion that I know will accompany all this learning, but part of me is getting really curious and excited to finally get to know our new son!