Thanksgiving

The most wonderful moments of my life have been the ones I could never have anticipated, even though I am always trying to plan and to be in control. We are going to Vietnam, hopefully before spring, to bring our son forever home. I am so thankful. He is so beautiful; we are overjoyed.

Scotty LOVES Mimi!!

Jackson's Coyboy Birthday Party was GREAT!

Paradox (n) - a contradiction that equals a truth.

I suddenly have grey hairs, lots of them. Does one, at this point, consider dying the hair. Should I go short and curly...just get it over with? Honestly, I don't mind getting older because I don't really feel like I am getting older. Mentally, I feel pretty much the same way I felt when I was in my teens, and it is much easier to be mentally me now than it was to be mentally me then. Physically, I am just droopier. Everything is a little droopier including my cheeks (both sets), my belly, my knees (how does that happen?), and the bottom of my arms. I hate to sound like I am complaining, but what on earth is the universe's purpose in making us droop as we age? Now, in addition to drooping and getting grey hairs, I woke up this morning with a pimple on my chin. Where is the justice in that? Once a person notices 30-40 grey hairs on her head and distinctively droopy skin all over, she should not be expected to go through the adolescent ritual of trying to hide a pimple, really. Nevertheless, today, I went into my high school (as a teacher, granted) drooping slightly, grey and brown hair in a pony tail (woke up late), and cover up slathered over the very obvious pimple on my chin. Such is life.

News:
Scotty has an ear infection. He can't seem to get totally well this winter, and it makes me feel very helpless. Plus, the doctors keep giving him more antibiotics, and I worry that he will be immune to them by the time he is 10. What did people do to help their sick children before antibiotics? One of my goals is to do more research about and implementation of holistic health practices for prevention and eventually for treatment.

Greg had our bathroom painted pretty fall sky on a football Sunday blue. It is very serene and also energizing. I like it, but it makes me miss the ocean for some reason. Maybe I am just missing the ocean.

Last week, families logged in between Sept. 29 and Oct. 13 of 2005 were referred their children. Our agency received referrals for 81 children (6 boys!). We have been logged in for almost one month. I am thinking we are one month down and 29 to go! We'll just have to wait and see though.

OK. So I am the kind of girl who has never been able to figure out the big deal about scrap booking! Am I an anomaly? Am I neglecting an important part of making memories last? For some reason, the muse of crafts and all things crafty seems to reject me as a subject. Thus, among many girls my age, I feel somewhat foreign. Those women are all stamping, scrap booking, Pampered Cheffing, etc. etc., and I admire their enthusiasm for domesticity. I've even tried to fake it occasionally to see if I might develop a taste for what I should probably be doing. Those women are creative, kind, and capable. I just sincerely don't get it, though. No wonder I am a little on the fringe of everything. Buying into the regular patterns of any one group of people is difficult for me.

Maybe my lack of craftiness is just a symptom of my larger issue which is the inability to focus on anything for very long! Ah well. That may be one of the big reasons Greg and I make a good team. At least he doesn't expect me to be crafty...or extremely domestic. We have this crazy jungle gym of a house with ultra mega shiny paint on all the window sills, doors and trim b/c Greg thought it would be easy to clean! (Everyone wonders if we just painted because it looks wet.) We've been here for over a year now, and we still have pictures sitting on the floor below the walls where they ought to be hung. Toys are EVERYWHERE (both Greg's and Scott's). My school books and papers along with office supplies show up in the strangest places (How did that get there?). Shoes are strewn across the landscape of the floor like hills and valleys; the baby's crib, which we have never disassembled since Scotty got a big boy bed, is full of clean laundry to be folded. We have three different dinners at night because we have one meatatarian, one vegetarian, and one kidatarian living in our house(occasionally, by chance, the menus collide and we actually have one common dish...mac and cheese). I am exaggerating, of course (a little). Sometimes our house is very tidy, and occasionally I can get a great dinner together that pleases everyone, but mostly our life seems just a little different from the scrap-booked, picture perfect lives of many of our friends.

Somehow our life works though. We turn on the radio, and we all dance around the house like people in love with life. Greg is incredibly industrious, and he is always engaged in a project to make our life easier, happier, or just more fun. In the morning when we wake up, we group hug in our mismatched kitchen and say, "love you more than the whole world and everything in it". We like learning and speculating, pretending together and reading books. And even though I am on the fringe of almost everything else, I am right in the middle of this little life of ours, and so is Greg, and so is Scotty. Every night I thank God for so so many blessings.

LID and Snow :)

LID!!! 1/18/07

We are so excited to finally have our official log in date from CCAA. Tonight, Greg and I are going out to celebrate.

We had snow here on the day we were being logged in by CCAA. Scotty just could hardly believe his eyes. Life is good.

Attachment

In the midst of the great excitement of welcoming a new baby into our family, I hope that I will be able to help our friends and family understand how this transition is different than it would be with a biological child. Our baby may have real and valid fears about abandonment. He will surely be disoriented and confused. Even if he decides to accept us right away (which may or may not happen), he will need time to learn to trust us. The Rumor Queen site has an interesting discussion today about attachment and bonding with a child adopted from China.

http://chinaadopttalk.com/2007/01/15/attachment-activities-2/#comments

We spent our morning at the Museum of Life and Science. Scotty literally ran everwhere we went, and Mason, Jackson, Carter (cousins) ran with him or after him! We had fun.

Pretty Song

Pretty song...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiVOfEL5iRg

Loved.

Something in my heart is yearning to hold another baby. Nothing I can imagine is as beautiful as loving a child.

Today, my speech students had a debate about homeschooling, which, coincidentally, I have seriously considered for Scotty. They were really against the concept of homeschooling, except for a few students who advocated it for the sake of meeting the interests of children with special talents or different learning styles. In order to extend the discussion, I said, "Isn't a parent's job to protect her child until he can protect himself. Why not give him the tools at home instead of throwing him right into the deep end?" One of my very perceptive girls said, "Mrs. B, you just look at Scotty now and you see how beautiful his innocence is, and you want to preserve it, but the nature of life is that innocence fades...no matter what."

How true, and from the mouths of babes. Is it possible to teach and shield innocence all at once? Or does the quest for knowledge, and thus life itself, require that innocence be lost? The snake and the apple. When I teach world myths, one archetype is knowledge = death (literal or symbolic). Still, I look at my baby, or now my big boy, Scotty, and I believe that I might save him from the pain that we all must face in life. Whether I can or not, that illusion is powerful.

So why are people, why am I, so driven to raise more children? Oh my gosh, life is so beautiful, and I guess the pain that comes with learning about the beauty of life just makes it all the more beautiful. Scotty helps me to admire life, and just dreaming of his sibling does that, too. I dream that he will be a person who, like Scotty, reminds me, teaches me, about the amazing just because I have been given the priveledge of being his mommy, and children are amazing. I dream that I will be able to love him so much that he will understand love that transcends pain. I dream of protecting his innocence as long as I can, even though he will have already faced great sorrow. I pray for his other mom, that she will carry my little baby with a reverence for miraculous life, that she will love carrying him, and that she will somehow leave me with the messages that will help me raise our child with the knowledge that he is a precious, beautiful, valued, desired, LOVED, child of this universe. My baby is probably not conceived. I cannot explain how I know that I am supposed to love him this way, but I do.

Person of The Week

Scotty is the "person of the week" at his preschool this week. We made posters with pictures of him doing all of the activities he loves which include (among other things) dancing, playing at the park, watching the tornado form at the museum, and digging with his cousins at the beach. Additionally, we have included all grandparents and cousins in a collage of pictures labeled and categorized according to family. He told me that all of the kids wanted to touch the posters, but his teachers said "no" because the pictures were special. As person of the week, in addition to sharing his special posters, Scotty gets to be line leader, bring a favorite book from home for the teachers to read, bring his favorite food for snack, and generally become the superstar of the 3-year-old class for a week. How awesome! All of the children in the class get to be "person of the week" at some point, not because of intelligence, behavior, good looks, or popularity, but just because they are valued for the unique experiences they have had and preferences they have developed in their three years of life.
This concept, as simple as it may seem, made me consider my own students. How great would it be to let each one of my big high school kids be person of the day one day...every single one of them at some point. My sweet kids who are dark in spirit could share sad poetry, and everybody would listen and empathize because of the value those people have on those special days. My silly girls could say their silly awkward jokes, and we could all laugh in a genuine, not artificial way, and those girls would see their worth beyond the superficial. What if my struggling academics, my awkward nerdy kids, my painfully shy wallflowers, my raucus, rambunctuous kids all had a day to shine just because they have had unique experiences and individual preferences in life! I am definitely doing "person of the day" next semester.
Furthermore, I am going to make myself person of the day one day soon (in my own mind). Why not? It is so easy to forget that God makes us special, of value because we are exactly who we are. Whether we meet any other qualifications should be inconsequential occasionally. At least, that would be nice to imagine occasionally.

On a side note, Scotty had a basketball in his shirt when I picked him up from school today, and he said, "Mommy, I gonna have a baby." It was funny.
Plus, a few days ago, when the flag was half-mast for Ford's funeral, he asked why. I told him that a very good man was sick, and then he went to live with God; the flag flying low was to say "have a nice trip". Today, when we left school and the flag was flying high, Scotty said, "that man is all better now!" I like that.

Today

1/8/07

Today, Scotty stayed home sick with his daddy. He is learning the skill of "milking it", as when we told him it was time for bed, he said, with drama, "My tummy hurts" even though he has not really been sick since last night. Tonight, he was an alligator except for the ten minutes he ran in circles around the hallways as Mr. The King, who is one of the regulars in our house these days.
Scotty is absolutely the most loveable human being I have met so far in my life. I am one lucky mom. I can't wait to meet our little baby. He should be here before Scotty goes to college.
I hope we can keep everyone informed about the progress we make on our adoption through this blog.

The Gregs