Life is Good

It’s been a fun week. I had a little time off and I treated it like a summer vacation.

Here are the highlights:

My very first roller derby! Seriously, roller derby is alive and well and I finally saw a match (game???) and it totally rocked! Usually there are two matches, but this night there was only one so the additional team members were in the audience. One of them sat next to me and explained everything and now I can’t wait to see the next one!

There was a picnic at one of the local lakes with Michael:

The stinker ate a whole container of strawberries by himself. Michael taught him all about cutting up sausages. I’m not sure that was actually a good idea.

My garden:

Anyone know what to do with eaten up green beans? I notice the leaves have a number of holes in them. I didn’t notice it on any of my other plants.

I think many of you reading are probably friends with me on FB so you have heard that Duc has had all his wheeled toys taken away (and books, tractors, trains, blocks or anything he throws at me or hits me with). But he is still a boy at heart and all he wants are his cars and choo choo trains. This is how desperate he has become—he’s treating the buns as trains . I do have a heart though. I gave him back his favorite tractor today (a very small one). Within two minutes I took it back after he threw it at me. The reason I am so strict with this? On Monday he nailed me and gave me yet another black eye. Even though the bruise is fading it is extremely painful and I think he cracked the orbital bone around my eye.

I am super psyched about the next two things…

My dad and I built this bench together on Thursday evening. I was/am so excited! I still need to sand, paint, attach the wheels and place the baskets in the cubbies, but wow, so cool! We had so much fun working on this together and we are planning other projects. I emailed tonight was another suggestion and now I am FULL of ideas.

And last, but certainly not least I did a photo session with Kelli and Aiden and I am so excited about the images. I had a lot of fun with them but oh my goodness was it hot! Heat index was 105* and ya’ll know I don’t like heat. We were saved by a breeze and a towel. Thankfully kids never seem to feel the heat and Aiden & Kelli were true troopers. I plan on posting the photos in the next couple of days on my photography website, but here is a sneak peek for Kelli.

I am in love with this photo. Kelli had mentioned that this “is so Aiden” so I am glad I was able to capture it. Why, you ask is he squatting on a rock and looking at the water? Fish, people, HUGE fish. You can see them to the left of his arm. They had little brownish fish and huge koi.

Healer, heal thy self

As women, especially mothers, we are healers. From early on many of us gravitate towards caring for baby dolls, having tea parties and assisting with younger siblings. Its no mystery why there are so many women working as nurses or teachers—they are caring professions. It is so easy for us to give and give and give and yet we are so hesitant accept help or allow others to care for us. How many of you go without time for yourself or things that would make you feel more complete? I’m betting a number of you (of us).

The last month has been hard. It has been incredibly hard. It was so hard that I don’t really have many pictures commemorating just how hard it was. I hated being away from my baby for long days. I hated not tucking him in at night or bathing him or reading him stories. I hated missing out on tickle fests and giggle competitions. I hated it all. Most of all I hated feeling like I was an adoptive parent for the first time ever. All adoptive children come with some sort of emotional baggage—how could they not? Every child that is separated from their birth mother feels that on some emotional level. Even if they are reunited with their mother days, weeks or years later, even if there was someone in the interim to care for them and love them, they ALL feel that loss. It isn’t a memory they can speak of, it isn’t an event they can tell you about, but when they experience abandonment—in any form—there is an emotional and chemical reaction that occurs and marks that child’s memories and emotions. They are hard wired to fight abandonment, but for so many of our beautiful children they become hard wired to fight attachment once abandonment occurs. They become emotionally, if not physically, dependent on themselves for comfort.

I write all that to say this: Duc and I never experienced this in the first 17 months together. When we met I think we were both just ready. He was ready for a mom, I was ready for a child. All those horror stories of attachment that I read about and prepared my self for, well, I just never saw it. We were always just us as if we always were. It was never a struggle. It was something that many people commented on in those first weeks and months home. I don’t write that to brag, but to remind people that abandonment how ever if occurs, is always there.

I’ve known that Duc has never done well when I leave. From our first hours together until now, he always keeps his eyes on me when I am in the room. From the day of our G&R people commented that he would look for my laugh. He knows it well. If family is visiting and someone else is holding him he always asks about mommy. He likes to know where I am and what I am doing at all times. At home he has always been underfoot. We stopped going to church once he got to the age where I could no longer contain him during the service and he had to go to the toddler room. He would cry hysterically and for prolonged periods of time. I could hear him even over the sound of the band playing. Yes, my baby has issues with abandonment.

But never did this become more apparent than in the last month or two. A year ago I went from seeing him 5 hrs/work day to 3 hrs/day to one hour or less a day 4-6 weeks ago. It was tough on me, it was tougher on him. I started seeing behaviors I had never seen before and it broke my heart. I cried every day for the 10 days I was away from my baby (seeing him 15-30 minutes a day because my mom or dad would bring him to work so we could see each other). The hardest thing for me was that this began on May 19th. His birthday, or as I know it, the day of his abandonment. It seemed horribly ironic that on the second year marking that day I was, in a sense, abandoning him as well.

My mom is a counselor and her current job has her working primarily with foster kids, adoptive kids and families, and birth moms who are trying to get children back from the foster care system or prevent them from going into the system. She has become an attachment expert as a result of her work. She told me it wasn’t my fault. I was not really abandoning him. That I was still seeing him every day and he saw my face every morning. But it still hurt. It hurt when he went to them for all his needs, when he pushed me away. When he laid in his crib at night crying for an hour or more because he was so mad at me and yet he wouldn’t let me console him. It hurt.

The first day home my parents made a point of staying away (they actually stayed away for a week so we would have time to bond again). Duc wanted held the whole time. He wouldn’t let me put him down. He dug through his closet and found the mai tai I wore in Vietnam and the first months home.

Over the last few weeks we have begun to heal. He is allowing some space between us again and he has been in time-out several times the last few days. He is also playing with his toys independently again. For weeks he wouldn’t play with his toys unless I was holding him. Seeing him naught and playful again has made life easier.

And now that he is beginning to heal, it is my turn. I built some raised beds and planted a garden two weeks ago and things are looking very good! I have made bread, fixed a pot of green beans like my mama used to do, I crocheted some dishrags (and can I say how good it felt to crochet again? I haven’t crocheted since the week before I left to meet Duc), I bought a cook book and made some good food. I made my own detergent (yes, I did!) and am trying to live simpler. I have a few days off so I am going to see a movie—a total guilty pleasure—The A-Team. I’m going to do some wood working with my dad because it has long been a hope to learn how to make things out of wood. I like the idea of self sustainability.

And I got Bertha out again and began snapping photos. It felt good. It felt right. It was something I couldn’t do even two weeks ago because I felt so empty and burned out. I feel some of my passions returning. Some of my joy in the simple things. And the best part of all, Duc enjoys it too.

Nearly two weeks ago Duc sliced open his finger. Well, filleted is actually a better description. From below the first joint, across the joint and into the nail bed the blood gushed. I witnessed the accident and even with me sitting next to him the blood ran down his fingers into my cupped hand creating a puddle that I had to pour into the sink. I struggled to get him to the kitchen so I could wash the wound and examine it. He was bleeding so heavily I couldn't see the depth of his wound. After 10 minutes of pressure I called Michael to rescue us and I called my mom in tears while I waited.

Duc's wails punctuated my own tears as I told my mom how hard it was to see my son in pain. She told me it never got easier. Even seeing your adult children in pain tears a mother up.

I hung up and thought I'm not cut out for this.

It is hard to watch your child cry out in pain and worse to anticipate the pain and tears that will someday come.

Duc knows something is going on with me. As much as I try to hide my feelings and brighten up when we are together I am sure he senses something is off. He has been clingier than normal and today as I dropped him off for daycare he clung to me harder than he ever has before. He locked his little hands around my neck and did his best to do the same with his legs. It was like having a second layer of skin. It took two daycare employees to pull him off of me. When I looked back at him as I slipped out the door his arms were still out stretched as he screamed and cried. I cried all the way home.

While Duc and I attached to each either amazingly well, I know this is still a process and the next 2-3 weeks are going to be tough. I know the dependence he has on me and how anxious and desperate he becomes when I am not in eyesight. The daycare staff tell me he says "mommy" all day long. When my family sits with him they say the same. I can hear it when I use the bathroom at a restaurant and leave him with friends. While I know that all children go through stages where they need their mommies more, I also know his is slightly different. The need is something more.

Some day he is going to realize I wasn't the first mother and that the other one left.

I wonder if there will always be a little piece of him that is desperate--for her, for me, for something we can't give him. Someday he may realize, as I finally did, that those that love you can't always give you the kind of love you crave. It can't be found at the bottom of a bag of chips, in a beer or in a stranger's bed.

Watching this unfold brings back memories of my own childhood. I remember my mother dropping me off at another child's home and leaving me in a strange home without her. I remember watching the car pull away and the desperation I felt as I thought she's leaving me...again. I cried, I screamed and I wouldn't leave the window. I don't know if they were ever able to engage me in play or not--all I remember is the anguish I felt. I was 4.

Other mothers comfort me when they see me wrestling with him in public. The assure me that as he gets older it gets easier. I don't doubt he will follow direction better and not act so feral, but I don't imagine that motherhood ever truly gets easier. Not when you feel the pain of the little heart tied so closely to your own. Not when their pain is your pain.

Perspective

One of my fondest summer memories was a tradition that never really took hold. My parents had bought a hand crank ice cream machine. I remember going to the local dairy which included an evening trip to a farm where we poured the cream and my dad left some change on the work bench. I remember the ice and the salt and watching my parents take turns laboring over the crank. My sister and I would anxiously hover wanting the first bite of ice cream and it always took SO long to finish.

Recently I was sharing this memory with my mother and I told her I was thinking of buying an AUTOMATIC ice cream machine. I’m not into ice cream and Duc is lactose intolerant, but the desire to recreate my fond memory with my son was a little too sweet to resist.

Her response surprised me. She asked why I would ever want to do it—she remembered the mess, all the cranking and remembered we gave up on it after only a few attempts.

Our perspectives of the same experience were totally different and I find myself thinking of that a lot lately.

It’s been over 3 weeks since i updated this blog and I think that may be the longest I have ever gone. A series of events left me being so physically and emotionally drained that I simply shut down. By the end of the work day I didn’t want to talk and I certainly didn’t want to email or read blogs. I spent as much time with Duc—we needed it. It’s been a rough 3 weeks and it is only going to get a bit tougher before it gets better. I read up on gardening and living a simpler, more organic lifestyle. I slowed down, soaked it all in, made bread and tried to enjoy as much time as I could with a sick and clingy toddler.

I remind myself that we all have choices. There is always an A and a B. I can choose to feel like a victim or I can take charge of my situation. So I adjusted my attitude and reminded myself that I will do anything and everything I have to for my family.

Duc’s birthday is a week from today. My little man is going to be 2. I’m happy for him, but his birthday always brings a bit of sadness to my life. I can’t love him and celebrate him without remembering how we became a family. I know there is a woman out there that rubbed her belly and probably named him long before he was born. I don’t recall if I have shared it here or not, but the reason I named him Duc was because I imagined it might be a name his first mother might have chosen for him.

I’m also sad because I will miss my son’s birthday. My work schedule is going to get nasty for the next few weeks, but the ugliest day will be his birthday. My parents are going to be taking care of him while I am away.

So, while I have plenty of things I want to write about in the coming weeks, they will likely have to wait until June.

Oh, and if any of you have suggestions on an affordable vacation I’m all ears:D

One big happy community

As an adoptive community we are large, and no, we don’t all know each other (I’m sure some of you reading know exactly what I am talking about—how many times have you been asked if you knew this person’s aunt’s step-daughter’s step-child that also adopted from China), but the actions of one parent impact us all, some directly and some in-directly. Adoptive parents always receive more scrutiny, more curiosity and we become used to having people ask us personal questions about our fertility, how our families were created and about our children’s birth families.

I have been following the story of Torry Hansen and her returned Russian son with the same morbid curiosity as the rest of the country. None of us want to hear something like this. As adoptive parents we fight to have a legitimate role as parents when too many view as “not real parents” because we are raising children not biologically related to us. The media and government remind us every day that there is a difference between us and all other families. From census forms to taxes to filling out medical forms we are reminded that we are different. When an AP does something so out of the norm, so villainous, we all feel it. We are all expected to respond.

For most, we will agree that it was a dastardly deed. The thought of sending your child alone to another country, well, it defies logic. Most of the non-adoptive community won’t understand this, can’t understand this. To them this is just further proof that adoptive children are not as good as bio children.

I am not defending Torry’s actions, but I do feel sorry for her. I feel sorry for the child that was her son. I feel sorry for the children in Russia and for their American parents that they will never meet. I feel sorry for all of them.

But I view this as a cautionary tale to all adoptive parents and to be perfectly honest it may not be such a bad thing to finally put it all out there and talk about it. I don’t know Torry. I don’t know her past. I don’t know if she watches TV at night or volunteers in a homeless shelter. I do know she found herself overwhelmed. I know she didn’t make a wise decision, but whether was out of anger, stupidity or out of feeling helplessness and exhaustion, I just don’t know. I don’t know the child and if what she said is true just as I don’t know if what he said about her is true, but having some familiarity with children that have come out of the Russian orphanage system and out of the US foster care system, I would not be surprised if that child had some degree of attachment disorder. If so, parenting and loving a child dealing with attachment disorder is a challenging thing. I personally know a mother that adopted out of the US foster care system and didn’t realize the child had RAD. This child lived with her for a year before she finally understood that something was wrong and the child was finally diagnosed. For her, she never considered disruption. She takes her daughter (and usually the rest of the family) to a RAD specialist 1-2 times a week. She drive 2 hours each direct for these appointments. She quit her job and became a stay at home mom because her daughter could not safely be around other children and could not be in the public school system. She sleeps with every door in the house locked and there are no sharp items any where in the house. There are also no matches, no lighters, no candles and no lit fireplaces. They use plastic utensils.

We look at the decision that Torry made and can’t fathom any parent returning a child. But they do. International adoptions are disrupted with alarming frequency. I remember feeling shocked the first time I heard of it, but now I hear about it several times a month. This isn’t limited to adoptive parents. Bio families disrupt also. Some of you may remember the safe haven law in Nebraska that had to be changed in late 2008 because so many parents were bringing their children, most between the ages of 10 and 17, to hospitals and claiming safe haven. In some cases the parent(s) was just too poor, but in others, they truly could not deal with their child. I used to work in a hospital with a psychiatric center. We saw adults and pediatrics and nearly every time I was floated to that unit a parent was coming in trying to unload their child onto their system. We look at the faces of our beautiful, sweet children and can’t picture a violent child, but they are everywhere. A nearby town recently made national news when the police Tasered a 10 year-old boy. His caregiver called the police twice that day to ask for help.

As a society we believe love conquers all, but it doesn’t. If you’ve ever had your heart broken, you know that love does not conquer all.

Those of us watching this drama unfold in the comfort of our living rooms may feel slightly smug. It seems so obvious to us. You get counseling, you involve your social worker and as a last resort you disrupt the adoption in the US (you do NOT send your child back to the country of origin!). But when you are in deep and you are exhausted and you see no other options you fall into survival mode. As a teen-ager we had a number of different girls living in our house and they all shared a room with me. We had a couple of foster kids and after the last one I said NO MORE. She a year older than me, a year behind me in school, 7 inches taller and 50 lbs heavier than I. I don’t know her back-ground and I have no idea why she was placed in foster care, but I quickly learned to make sure she always fell asleep first at night. I learned to never turn my back on her and I think that is when I began to always make sure my back was to a wall and I could find my way out of a room, a life skill, unfortunately, that I still practice today. I was in survival mode. I was scared. I never told my parents about it, I just told them never again.

I don’t know Torry. I never met her son. I have no idea if what she is saying is true or if what he says is true. I just don’t know. But I do know that there are many sides to a story and I know how hard it is when you find yourself in deep and overwhelmed. I know that some adoptive parents are amazingly unprepared and falsely believing that faith and prayer will relieve them of any future hardship.

To be perfectly honest, I was scared to become a parent. It felt right and it felt like something I was supposed to do, but I was scared. I have experience with attachment disorder. I know how scary and hard it is and there was a part of my brain that wondered if my personal experience was somehow preparing me for parenting a child with attachment disorder. The scariest moments of my life were on December 18, 2008 around 1:30 pm. I was preparing to meet Duc and I was freaked out. I was excited, but I was freaked out. The entire way to the orphanage I began to question myself—just what was I thinking? My life was good, I was happy, I didn’t need to do this, did I? What if this was a huge mistake? I went into the adoption with my eyes wide open, preparing and expecting the worst.

When people ask me if parenthood was everything I thought it would be, I tell them it is better. it is easier. It seems strange, I know, but I was really prepared for something very different. Of course, Duc is young and signs of attachment disorder may not arise until years from now, but at least I know I am as prepared as I can be. I know who to call and I have a plan.

****Reminder: I am not defending her actions. I hope this will be a place for positive discourse***

I’ll be back soon…promise

I’ll be back soon, I swear. I made myself promise not to blog or hang out on the internet until I completed my taxes and I finally did…two days ago. I have never waited until the week taxes were due and honestly, I don’t have a good excuse. I’m still able to claim his adoption expenses so I am getting a nice return and I could really use the money. My fridge is leaking water all over the floor and I pray I don’t have damage to my flooring.

I just couldn’t make myself do my taxes. I am tired of paperwork. I am tired of 171s and updating home studies. I’m tired of re-adoption paperwork and tired of shuffling paper at work. There is a part of my brain that wants to escape. Grab the Duc and just go somewhere without even packing a bag. I want an adventure. I want to live off the grid. I want to spend every waking moment with my growing little man. I want to stand on a beach at sunset, just the two of us, and feel the sun on my face and watch the wind muss my son’s hair.

I want a break.

My Son

And people thought I was the funny one in the family…