Hey guys! I’m still here! Just staying off the computer a little more nowdays. We are really enjoying the new space, the old place is entirely empty and mostly clean, and many boxes have been unpacked. Miraculously, no one has resorted to medicating mommy to get us to this point, either. So things are good. I just read the article in Oprah on time management; it was what I needed right now. I also stayed up late tonight watching the Randy Pausch last lecture video, which I tried to post, but it seems to have failed. The last line about the “head fake” was great. And the mention of Karma. He says that if you live your life right, the good will come to you. Guess that is worth a try. (Or, when what you get doesn’t fit the description of “good,” then maybe “the universe gives you what you need” to grow?) I also loved the reminder to give people the benefit of the doubt. Believe in someone, and they will show you their good side. Anyway, my goal for the week is to do more of what matters: read to the kids more, sit on the floor and play with them, laugh with them more, be thankful for how healthy and smart and happy they all are. Remember to breathe in the cooler fall air, look at the sky, and to appreciate and enjoy it completely. This moment, right now,
One thing to remember: When you adopt, don’t expect sympathy (or a genie to drop fully prepared pad thai with steaming sides of brown rice on your table) for biting off more than you can chew. Not that I want sympathy, exactly… Just some help, sometimes. Reactions can be different than they are when you give birth to a kid. Completing an adoption is clearly premeditated. Everyone knows that we must really, really WANT these children badly in order to go through all that we adoptive parents have to, on the way to bringing the babies home. We do! But that doesn’t mean that sometimes, it feels even harder once the kid(s) are home. Parents need support. Village, come to me!
Right now, I’m swamped. None of the esposo’s relatives live in the country, and my relatives? Well, they are great, but they all live hundreds of miles away. I’m working part time; the esposo is working part time and in school full time, at least in theory; we are homeschooling 2 kids while parenting an adorable and very, very active toddler; I have a marathon coming up in 3 weeks and have barely been running lately; we are STILL moving; the blog is suffering terribly. Have I said enough? Can you feel the stress coming your way?
The good thing is, IT WILL GET BETTER! I will at some point have discretionary time again, I hope, and then I’m going to run like crazy! That will help me to be a happier, and therefore better, parent. Soon the age of reason will come to Zufan… right? And the boxes WILL unpack themselves. Yeah, they will.
One thing that sometimes works for me when I feel overwhelmed (or sad, or stressed, or whatever), is to find someone who is more overwhelmed than I am, and help THEM. Then suddenly, I realize that I am OK. So I’m reaching out. And always believing that someday, I will look back on these days — when I was so busy with 3 little sweeties that I could fall asleep within one minute of going to bed and had no time to worry about anything other than the essentials – and say these were some of the best days of my life. At the same time, I know it’s going to keep getting better. That’s right, Jesse, I’m keeping the hope alive.
it sort of boggles my mind. The first time I got a package from a cyberfriend, I turned it over and over, feeling it, and peeled off the return address thinking, “WOW!” She’s REAL. It was as if Barbie had just come to life. Except, of course, this cyberfriend had a few more brain cells than Barbie. Since then, it has happened a few more times. I LOVE you guys! This time, thank you Paige!!! Here’s Zufan loving her princess, in the new kids’ room at the new apartment.
We are so so happy to have this new place. It is wonderful, far better than I dreamed it could be. However, I’m still swamped with work, sinking in piles of clothes and boxes and uncorrected tests and tortured by unrun miles, and longing to dive into what has become a virtual ocean of unread blogs and unwritten posts. That’s where I am. Hope you’re all doing well. (Oh, yeah, that “b” that turned into a “p”? My computer. I swear. On a Time magazine. Now, fixed. That’s right. I’m not totally insane. Though maybe I should get myself some “brozac” for those tough times? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re fortunate.)
The move is in process, but far from completed. It’s been overwhelming. We did have some movers come and help to get the big stuff: beds, furniture and a storage room full of boxes of books. The movers were SO ultra-relaxed that I think they must have taken tranquilizers before our stop. I went out and got each of them a 20 oz Mountain Dew to see if that would help. The only thing produced by that was a long break to drink it. Oh well, I don’t really blame them. I’m sure they were getting paid by the hour. So… since we only hired them for 3 hours, and they barely scratched the surface, it has left a lot of stuff for us to do. On another oh-so-cheery note, I did something really nasty to my back moving a gigantic book box (I was totally fine, then suddenly had an almost scream inducing pain in my back. Is that bad?), so now I’m pretty worthless, and having trouble even carrying the little girl. Did I mention I haven’t been running for 3 days now, on top of it? Can someone please just put me out of my misery?
When we do get moved in, it is going to be SO SO NICE! We love the new place. We’re going up to 830 square feet, and it feels like we’re moving to a mansion. A really, really clean mansion! Our neighbors seem nice, too. Just gotta make it through one more week. The blog has suffered. Bye-bye 100 hit days. I’m probably in the single digits by now. But we’ll be back, back in business and on-line again soon. Until then… Happy Monday!
Hey guys! Looks like a tornado hit around here. We have been packing, although on Sunday, I took a LONG break to cheer on the Ironman Wisconsin participants. Wow, that was incredible. These people are amazing. (After swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles, they ran a marathon, 26.2 miles.) I highly recommend getting out there and cheering if you ever get the chance. I had never cheered for any race — or not even really at a football game — but it was so addictive that once I got going, I couldn’t leave. I’m not at ALL the cheerleader type, but I hung out at mile 9 of the marathon, which was also mile 22 since it is a two loop route, and gave out a whole lotta sincere love. Where else is it culturally acceptable to make eye contact with perfect strangers and tell them how incredible, amazing and heroic they are? So many gave the love right back; not the leaders, though. They were pretty focused. The majority of the folks looked surprisingly normal, which in itself was very inspirational. I got so intoxicated from the excitement of it all, and yelling at strangers is so out of character for me, that Monday I woke up with an “oh-my-gosh-what-did-I-DO-yesterday” type of feeling. Then I remembered. Yeah, it was just cheering. It was OK. Culturally acceptable.
Kids are getting into the swing of the new routine, Zufan is her usual happy and fiesty self. Her favorite new work is “kickle,” which she especially enjoys saying to us at bedtime, when she should be winding down instead of up. Big brother can always be counted on to come through with some “kickles”:
Now, hopefully, you won’t hear from me until after the big move. But… we’ll see how focused I can be. Luego!
We’re moving! That’s the really, really good news. The bad news is, we are moving in only 8 days from today. We’ve lived here since there were just 2 of us, and we have 2 huge storage spaces in the basement, which we won’t have at the new place. Even if we get rid of tons of “stuff,” how is it even possible to pack away 9 years of living in one place in… 8 days??? The thought makes me dizzy. So I’ll just sit at the computer and contemplate that. HA!
It won’t be a big change, moving 1/2 mile away from a two bedroom to a three bedroom, but even another 100 square feet is going to make a difference for us. Mommy has been feeling a little, um, claustrophobic lately. Really, the space issue has reached absolute crisis proportions. Sometimes you have to really hit the ground hard before you can superball back up, and the move is the ball bouncing back up. We have all 5 of us somewhat-wild-and-sometimes-very-loud people, books, toys, and then homeschooling on top of it, in a total lack of space. Ummm… Something wasn’t working there. During the summer we can use the endless backyard as an extended (communal) living room and the front sidewalk as a (communal) playroom, complete with Legos, paints, and 10 bins of other toys. But it is getting cooler now, school is in session, and so, we’ve found an alternative, which I hope will be a slight improvement. Please, wish us luck with the packing. We’re going to need it!!
And as always, don’t forget about Haiti. It looks rough out there. I just better be really, really thankful that we HAVE stuff to pack. Wow, what a contrast. If only I could magically beam half our clothes, books, dishes, blankets and toys there, we’d all be better off. Haiti has my heart.
One of the huge advantages of adopting internationally is that it is a perfect excuse to get to know people you may have otherwise not had a connection to. That’s how it is with my Ethiopian friend. We’ve known each other quite a long time now (I need to check the achives to figure out how long!). She is just such a great person, and knowing her has added a special dimension to my life. She helps me to stay balanced, as I am in awe of how hard she works and the challenges she takes in stride.
Since she doesn’t have a car, we have a nice little exchange going on; I pick her up after class some days, and she can occassionally do Zufan’s hair, getting to know her in the process. She works the night shift, then goes straight to school and is exhausted when her class is over. If she takes the bus home it adds another 2 hours to an already very long day. For me, it is easy to zip on over and give her a ride, and for her, it is no problem to do a little braiding. It’s a nice trade-off. And I keep on learning from her. I didn’t know that it is common to braid the hair dry in Ethiopia, and that no rubber bands or clips are necessary. The hair just holds the braid. Yep, does it ever! It took me half of Zufan’s naptime to work out our first experimental efforts the other day. Anyway, I guess it does take a village, and I sure appreciate ours. Cute, aren’t they?
It’s been just over a year since we were matched with Zufan (August 20th, 2007) , 10 months since the adoption has been official in Ethiopia (October 30, 2007), and 9 months to the day since we arrived home with her (December 2, 2007). And today, it became final under US law. It was official “Adoption Day,” and it’s been a beautiful day. It was so fun, and happy, and the courthouse — or at least our area of the courthouse, which was all adoptions, all day — was like one big party. Here it is:
Waiting outside to be called in.
Inside the court room, listening to the (very funny and extremely nice) judge, who called our family “lively” as Zufan attempted to crawl both on and under the table, and patted the little microphone in the middle of the table. She was pleased with the startlingly scratchy noise it made. The girl doesn’t miss a thing.
Here we are, all official, after the bang of the gavel. That was one tall judge. Maybe height is a job requirement? I don’t remember ever seeing a short judge. The judge gave them each a stuffed animal, spoke to us in very respectable Spanish, and all the kids shook his hand. The kids were so cute.
Now, we’re paper signing in the next room as Zufan makes a break for the exit.
Soon we were all out the door, and on our way to work and home. Happy, happy back-to-school week, everyone!!!
Hurricane season is upon us and Haiti, so often overlooked by the rest of the world, was also hit by Gustav. See the following article: Desperate Situation Grips Haiti in the Wake of Hurricane Gustav. In a country where people are already hanging by a thread to mere existence, even a little damage becomes a major catastrophe.
So, some parents adopting from Haiti have organized a fundraiser, giving away a stay at Disney World. The raffle will be held October 1st, tickets are very reasonable and it is all set-up safely with paypal, and 100% of the money will go to A New Arrival’s Orphanage in Haiti, where Jenite, Midrine, Leslie’s little girl and some 50 other kids are living right now. Please, go HERE TO BUY A TICKET and to get all the rest of the information. One thing I just noticed: Flights aren’t included. So if you win, you still have to get yourself there. Thanks, Leslie!!
"If you don't know what your passion is, realize that one reason for your existence on earth is to find it"; "If you make a choice that doesn't please your mate, friends, or whoever, the world will not fall apart."
Paulo Coelho Quotes, from By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Cried
"If I'm going to fall, may it be from a high place."
“The universe always conspires to help the dreamer.”
