Life in the fast lane – Year 5

Happy 5th Famiversary, Wesley!

June 21, 2013. The date of my first journal entry for this blog, for what I thought at the time would be a quick whirlwind of a story, no iota of an idea that the years that followed would be filled with throats aching from tears cried, and pleading left seemingly unanswered. If you are surprised at seeing this update pop into your email inbox today – so am I! It has been almost 9 years since that day I first signed up for a WordPress account and started this story. Eventually, for those of you still asking, I’ll write my book – but that day isn’t here yet!

I have been feeling lately the strong pull to write, to ink emotion to paper, to get lost in the light tapping of keys while the cursor blinks and trails my thoughts as they spill out onto the screen. I remember my years as an adoptive mama still in process, when I would lose hours browsing other adoptive family blogs and posts and articles, and realized how very many of them just left me feeling anxious, sometimes excited but mostly anxious, as I read and read stories of challenges, of hard-to-manage transitions, countless re-adoptions, children who were loved but who were somehow branded with the trauma and families that couldn’t seem to move beyond it. At times I wondered if we would make it – if we somehow had made a quick decision of something entirely monumental, and would we possibly be altering our family’s course for the worse – and ultimately for the downfall and destruction of it in the name of the pursuit of something good.

Those thoughts weren’t there all the time but they certainly floated through the periphery. I found myself thinking the other day that it wasn’t often that I remembered seeing positive follow-ups – of families post-homecoming when all the transition had settled, people being real and raw about the wins and the successes, not just the pain and the immense challenges. I’ve been feeling the need to write again, and so here we are – as I sit in the 96 degree heat at the edge of the local waterpark while my 12-year old Haitian-American son saunters all over the park with his buddies like he owns the place, full of smiles and laughter, a big kid with big dreams and endless possibility; strong in body, mind and spirit, a natural leader and respected peer.

Yesterday we hit a monumental 5-year Famiversary! We took the whole family to see Top Gun: Maverick (SO worth watching!!), and then sat out on the pool deck together under the patio lights and shared memories, swapped stories and “remember when”s. Shared smiles and laughter, experienced Abby’s epic seagull impression that she’s been perfecting for years, and came up with a laundry list of potential career suggestions for Wesley (Marine Biologist, Architect for Mars housing project, Solar-Powered Rocket Engineer, Mariana Trench-ologist, etc – so far no clear winners).

This past year has been a year of major change for us! We picked up our family of six, sold the farm and most of our furniture, and moved to North Texas! We were all ready for change and new beginnings, and while it was really tough to leave behind 40+ years of familiarity, our close-knit families, and life long friends, we knew that we were ready.

Since arriving in Texas in late July of 2021, our kids have thrived, blossomed, grown up, and grown into themselves. We have seen change we never knew was possible, we have seen growth we only imagined, and have made friends and community faster than we ever have in our lives!

Our oldest, Braeden, is almost 20 and will be heading back to Abilene Christian University about 3 hours West of us in the fall for his sophomore year of college. Logan, 18, graduated from high school in May and will be heading to ACU as a freshman this fall on the heels of her brother! Abby, 16, will be a junior in the fall and will be continuing on in the A Cappella group, Remedy, that she and Logan were a part of this past year. Wesley, now 12, will be joining the ranks of the local middle school as a 6th grader, and continues to play year-round competitive soccer, and basketball and football in season. He’s super excited to be able to play tackle this fall! 😬

Now, the part you really want to know – “but how are you doing, REALLY?” And “how are family dynamics in real life this far beyond homecoming?” If you are an adoptive parent, or an in process one – maybe your question is simply a statement: “tell me it gets better!”

First, I do want to offer a disclaimer – our process and our story in no way attempts to sugar coat anything or anyone. While we are truly doing great 5 years out, we recognize that there are families that are not, and there are kids that are not. We also recognize that just because we are doing great right now doesn’t mean we won’t be dealing with some undercurrent of trauma that pops up later in life.

So, how are we…really?

We are good, strong, happy, social, well-adjusted, normal, healthy, aware, and thankful.

REALLY.

Wesley has shot up over 5’ tall, 95 lbs and has graduated to men’s shoes. 😣 Due to his constant carousel of sports, his body is like a tree trunk and it is nearly every game (no matter the sport) that some poor kid on the opposing team mistakes him for a pushover. There is the “thunk” of body to body and a collective “OOF, poor kid!” From the sidelines as the kid is inevitably laid out on the ground while Wes is left standing there trying to figure out if he should feel sorry, or keep playing. If the moment is stalled, you will always see him extend a hand, and no matter the engagement, you will never see him lose his cool with another player. He plays respectfully, but hard, focused and determined. He supports his team always and prefers to function as a unit with his teammates rather than be the central focus of the accolade.

Wesley to this day is compassionate and a friend to all. While he does have his “crew” of boys that are usually all seen together, he floats easily between different groups and it is common to show up at any given sports or school event (like Lo’s senior graduation) and have younger kids and older middle and high schoolers walk up to greet him or call out to him from across the field. Most kids that know him today wouldn’t even think twice to wonder about his story. He doesn’t wear it on his sleeve, doesn’t mention it very often, has unconsciously or consciously chosen to not define himself by his past. He is driven toward his future, driven to try new things and to experience new surroundings.

He still struggles with emotions. We see evidence of orphanage life still clinging to his skin like sand on a damp body. The grains that makes you uncomfortable as they stubbornly cling when you try to wipe them off, and inevitably cleanse and exfoliate when they finally release their hold. We have seen his entire self run the gamut of the emotional rollercoaster. I liken this experience to the Hulk ride at Universal Studios in Orlando. In March we tagged along with the girls’ high school choir trip to Orlando and I wanted to prove to them that I was not “lame”, that I still had some fun left in my bones. So I started out my day with Hulk. My sweaty palms stuck to anything they could during the 40 min wait in line, I think desperately hoping they could grab onto a life ring and yank me out of line. But no, I had promised and I could handle it. The worst that could happen is that I’d die. And if I died on this ride then the good Lord was taking me for a reason. The girls had already gone on with their friends and told me it was “totally fine, you’ll love it mom!” Kris and Wesley and our friends all cool as cucumbers in line like they did this weekend very darn day. I practiced all my pregnancy breathing, my heeeees and my hoooooooos all the way up and when it was finally our turn I strapped in with shaking hands. My stomach lining crept up to my uvula (you know, the little dangly thing in your throat – I promise, not lying), and it slowly crept forward.

The instant I felt the tension of the tight suck backward in the tin can of death, I knew I was going to hate this with every ounce of my being. The ride hitched in a locked and loaded position with a horrendous click, and before I even had time to say all the horrid words that were about to roll off my tongue we were catapulting through the tunnel into what would be the most horrifying forward, upside down and corkscrew trajectory I will ever experience in my life. (I know this for a fact because I will NEVER do that again!) as we screamed to the top of the initial tunnel and I could see the daylight at the top, I took a deep breath and thought, “ok. I got this,” and opened my eyes wide right as we crested the drop. I took one look at the theme park laid out before me and said, “NOPE!” and shut my eyes tight the entire rest of the ride while I hummed and envisioned myself walking through the gates of heaven. JESUS, take me now! I got off the ride and swore up and down I would never ride one of those again. The Good Lord is going to have to take me some other way, and that is a non-negotiable.

My point is this – our experience with emotion with this kiddo is something I know many of you adoptive parents are experiencing, have experienced, or will experience. It is just sometimes nice to know you aren’t alone. In the beginning when he first came home he had no clue how to process emotion. He didn’t even know how to feel it. At the orphanage the boys especially were taught that showing vulnerable emotion was weak. Unless you were hard, callous, or fighting you were called out, made fun of, or bullied. If you needed to cry, you cried in hiding. If you were mad you made sure the other person knew it and felt that anger for a long time. Because of this, he has had a tough shell to crack. While initially when he came home he was physically touchy, it wasn’t an emotional response – it simply was a purely physical response to something he had missed and needed to catch up on. 5 years later he still doesn’t offer physical affection of his own volition, but will oblige us at times. He doesn’t like physical touch, doesn’t usually seek it, and shies away from it especially in emotionally intimate situations. He still doesn’t always know what to do with emotional situations – even movies that have emotional parts he will just skip through it or get up and do something else til the scene is over.

He refuses to say “I love you”, even after this long, and it has taken me 5 years to get to a point where I am most of the time okay with that. He will say, “yeah I don’t say that” – even though he communicates his feelings in other ways that are less emotionally vulnerable than those raw words I guess. We have a wonderful family therapist that we have found here in our little town that works with whole families and often with adoptees and we are looking forward to continuing to work alongside her over the next few years. We feel that there will always be some residue, some sticker-gunk leftover on his life – as is true for all of us – but also recognizing that without that gunk left there to reference, how would we ever appreciate the fullness of the story?

The roller coaster has been rough at times, I screamed, he screamed, we all screamed (and not for ice cream), and we had some serious rough beginnings. But our persistence and willingness to be flexible with what we had been “taught” about how to parent a child from trauma was the key, we feel, to being able to get off the darn ride!

At this point in the journey we are rolling on through, taking things as they come, dealing with how to be a good friend, using our words respectfully even when we are joking, and now that we live in Texas, learning to say “yes ma’am” and “yes sir” to all your elders no matter where you are (which is pretty impressive!) – I’ve never been called ma’am more in my life than I have in the past 9 months! We are navigating normal teaching moments like when to remove yourself from an unhealthy group chat, and how to speak up when things aren’t right, making sure others are included and not left out, and striving to do your best in everything, and being proud of that, even when someone else is better. Our battles are few and far between and usually revolve around hours on Xbox. 🙄 (like I said, NORMAL). He is adamant still that he won’t have a girlfriend and won’t get married, and that he won’t have kids either – but we’ll see about that! 😂

This kid has forever dreamt with the stars – his first grade teacher instilled a love of science and the solar system and this year he has soaked up marine life and ecology – he just loves anything and everything science-related! He still is committed to play professional soccer, or football, (depending on the season) and wants to live a double life as a nerdy scientist. This boy is going to take his world by storm!

My thumbs are tired, I started this post at the waterpark on my phone and finished it at home – too afraid to swap to my computer at the risk of losing it all!

I’ll end the post here with some photos to catch y’all up – it’s been almost four years since I posted – and the difference in Wesley and how he’s grown incredible! When you get more than a minute, totally worth scrolling to the June 2016 & June 2017 posts to compare photos. My heart still melts. Every. Time.

Thank you all for being a part of this journey, and for continuing to share in it as life catapults us all forward. Sometimes it’s worth it just to open your eyes for just a second to see everything laid out before you – helps you appreciate the insanity you’re about to embark on – and when you finally get off the ride – you’ll be thankful you didn’t go it alone.

Blessings,

Laura

Happy Famiversary!

Famiversary

Fam-ih-ver-suh-ree

An anniversary of the day you came home with your new family. Synonymous with “Gotcha Day”, “Adoption Day” and the like.

One year ago today, a very tiny, skin-and-bones, wide-eyed 7-year-old Haitian boy stepped onto U.S. soil hand in hand with his Mommy and Daddy and became a U.S. Citizen and the youngest McGreevey child. I am sitting here completely exhausted, a text to study for, remnants of pokémon card packs strewn all over the kitchen table and a pile of dishes in the sink…and I. Am. Overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed that we flew through an entire year and it feels somehow like the Haitian sun was overhead just yesterday, yet simultaneously – eons ago.

We’ve come a long way in a year. If anyone had told me, “don’t worry it gets better” when we were in month two I probably would have said a few choice words that shouldn’t be repeated and then cried myself to sleep. My anxiety was high, we were walking on eggshells with our new family member avoiding conflict as much as possible while trying to build a base of trust and dependence that we could use for support when the conflict became necessary. We had a few really, really rough days – but thankfully the good ones far outweighed the hairy, and about the 6-month mark had settled into some good routine and processes.

In one year, Wesley has put on almost 25lbs, (guessing about 95% of that is pure muscle mass), grown about 5″ in height, grown an additional 5″ in hair (LOL), and gone through 3 sizes of shoes and clothing. He has gone from happily accepting any clothing I had him to wear, to meticulously choosing his own outfits each morning (and subsequently changing 1-3x before a final decision is made). Wesley is a wealth of knowledge, a human sponge, and can tell you how far we are from the sun, the planets in their correct order, the rank in hottest to coldest and what each planet is made of. He knows which ones are likely to have a climate like earth, and which ones are uninhabitable. He even told me the other day exactly how many moons each planet had and how long it would take for us to travel there.

One year ago, I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up – he responded with “nothing” – because in Haiti I really don’t think anyone asks these kids that question. They will be lucky if they can answer that question “full” or “loved”. When you ask Wesley that question today, the top of his list is “professional soccer player like Christiano Ronaldo”, followed by “astronaut who studies rocks on other planets” and “a dad” and a rotating fourth choice. He lives for school and sports, is battling the internal push and pull of happy/sad that school is ending for the summer, and is super excited for the local outdoor pool to open up for summer swimming.

Wesley has more friends than I can count, and consistently makes friends around him easily, even if he doesn’t know their names. He still hovers over the acceptance of physical affection with mom/dad, brother and sisters, and refuses to say “I love you” – but some days are more obviously vulnerable than others, and nearly every night, regardless of the day, he snuggles up next to us as we read stories and lay with him until he falls asleep. He loves his big extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas and grandpas, loves to be silly and plays the “obnoxious little brother” role like he was gunning for an Oscar. When the kids bicker and fight, tattle and whine, we know we’ve arrived at “part of the family” status.

A few months ago, we took a family trip to California over Spring Break, and Wesley got his first taste of California sunshine and Disneyland. He had the time of his life and often tells us we should move to California. 😉 His favorite ride was the Radiator Springs Racers, with the new Guardians of the Galaxy (previously Tower of Terror) as a close runner up. We had some fantastic laughs on scary rides, and he surprised us all! Braeden was once again left holding all the bags and pin-studded lanyards at all the crazy rides! While we were there, we also celebrated Wesley’s 8th birthday, so he got to be the only one in our family who has ever celebrated a birthday in Disneyland! Some good friends were able to connect with us while we were there, so we shared some memorable rides and birthday cupcakes to celebrate the extra special day.

Our lives here are moving from one adventure to the next as Spring sports wrap up (PRAISE JESUS – we had 7 sports at the same time between 4 kids – stinking overlap!) and we head into a super-light summer round. Wesley just had tryouts today for a local club soccer team, just finished baseball, and will be going to several day camps and sports camps over the summer to keep busy! Braeden finished his JV Baseball gig playing for the high school (after he finally got his cast off…he finally played the last few games) and decided that since he hadn’t been able to play much, he wanted to play summer ball – so he snagged an available spot on a summer league roster and is playing one more round! Logan is wrapping up the last few weeks of her softball team (Kris is coaching) with a bunch of girls from school and loving it! When summer hits, I thinks she plans to sit poolside, and eat bonbons until September…she’s in for a rude awakening. LOL! Abby is finishing her last week of rec soccer this week and will pop into some summer trainings to prep for fall soccer at King’s Way in the fall. Kris is almost done coaching until summer is over! I’m hopeful I’ll actually get to hold a conversation longer than 3 minute update sessions when he’s finally done! 🙂

My Haitian goods company, Bél Lavi, is closing its doors – so if you want some incredible pieces at great prices, shop online at http://www.bel-lavi.com with code CLOSEOUT20 at checkout for an extra 20% off already-reduced prices!

With the exit of that company comes a brief bit of sadness, but also a joy in knowing that I was able to share so much of my son’s heritage through handmade pieces around North America! We had customers in Canada, Florida, East Coast and all over in between – it was amazing! Those of you who have supported that venture – THANK YOU!

My teaching this year at the school has turned into a blessing – albeit a hard one – but I have grown to love and cherish those 360 elementary students so much! Which makes it even harder to know that I’ll be leaving my position when school finishes. The school decided to pull the program from the lineup, and there isn’t yet another place for me to transfer into – so until there’s a spot that lines up with my passions, I’m going to sit it out!

However, due to the influx of free time in my schedule and a long-time brewing interest, I started (and finished) Real Estate School and am taking my broker’s exam on Friday morning! I have wanted to get into Real Estate here in Washington for over 10 years, and each time Kris and I mull it over, it just hasn’t been the right time – well – we finally decided there’s no time like the present! 🙂 I’m super excited, and will be teaming up with a local firm here in Vancouver. If anyone is in Washington State and needs help buying/selling you know where to find me!

As I prepare to close my laptop on Wesley’s Year One, I want to end with a heartfelt “Thank you”. To those of you who prayed, thank you. To those of you who listened, thank you. To those of you who laughed with us, thank you. Cried with us, thank you. Rolled your eyes with us – ESPECIALLY thank you to you eye rollers. Eye Rollers UNITE. There are so many pieces of these processes and parenting in general that just need a good, solid eye roll. I actually saw a T-shirt the other day that said, “I’m sorry, did I roll my eyes out loud again?” Yes. I need that one.

Thank you to those of you who have walked beside us and continue to walk (and sometimes run) the course daily. Thank you to those of you loving on our kiddos, loving on Wesley, encouraging us as parents and friends. Please don’t stop. We haven’t “arrived” until the day we step through Heaven’s gates, so we will graciously accept your prayers and encouragement!

My eyes are rolling around now, not because I’m annoyed – but because I feel like I haven’t slept in a year (which is actually highly probable). So, with that, I’ll say again,

Happy Famiversary, Wesley! We love you!

~ Laura

The Words We Speak

This (school) year has already grown and stretched me beyond what I thought reasonable. Having nothing to do with my own children or our adoption transition, going back to work – and working with children, no less – has had its own plethora of challenges that I wasn’t always prepared for. I love kids, I love my approximately 350 K-5 students and pride myself in the fact that I know them all by name (with the exception of maybe two that I get wrong on a 50/50 basis). I greet the by name as I pass by, make a point to recognize them at Fred Meyer on my off-days and wave across restaurant booths, and say hello in the parking lot. The relationships are what I love most about my job – its the classroom management that is the beast that kills my soul! (okay, so that’s a bit over-exaggerated, but seriously – I love organizing my shelves, organizing projects and setting out supplies, and doing life with these kids all year long. It’s just the discipline part of it that kills me! Then I go home after school and am so exhausted of “managing” kids, that my own children get the bare bones of my patience…not quite the ideal especially for a newly transitioning family! 😉

At any rate – back to the relationships. I love the random conversations I have with my students,  it’s definitely the part that feeds my soul (see, prior comment was an over exaggeration, I still have a soul to feed). I find out about who loves unicorns and who plays soccer and whose sister broke their arm over the weekend. I hear about grandmas coming to visit (and which ones will receive the day’s coveted art project), grandpas going to see Jesus, and whose dog died…when they were in their mommy’s tummy. I hear it all. Apparently I have more of an art therapy room…

I don’t mind that part – and it is those stories that rock my weeks, those words that I hear and in turn speak, that propel the rest of the class time, or the discussions to follow.

Last week I had a very heartfelt conversation at the back table in one of my younger grade classes. It moved me quickly to tears, and I thought – this is why I’m here – as frustrating as some days are, as much as I wake up some mornings and think there’s 73 other places I’d rather be right now – this is why I’m here. I had started my class, done my “intro” to the project and was starting them on a coloring assignment. I noticed that one of my students was struggling with something – and it was affecting his ability to interact with other kids and he was obviously lost in his own heart struggle. I quietly came alongside him, and said “Hey (X), it seems like you’re having a rough morning, buddy.” He nodded. “What’s going on?” He continued slowly drawing his picture, and I could see tears welling up in his brown eyes as he struggled to keep his emotions contained. he slowly drew fingers on an arm. “I’m drawing me on here.” “I see that, (X), it looks great!”…Long pause, shuddering sigh. He hovered his pen off the page and lifted his eyes up to mine. His lashes held tears that threatened to spill over as he softly said, “Mrs. McGreevey, I just wish I didn’t have brown skin.”

Be still my heart.

I dropped to my knees instantly and held onto his gaze as my eyes came down to his eye level. “Why do you wish that, (X)?” “Because, Mrs. McGreevey, I wish I didn’t have brown skin so I could be NORMAL.”

“Oh, (X), you are normal just the way you are, but even more importantly, you are SPECIAL because God made you the way you are. Look at XYZ in your class – they all have brown skin like you! And they are pretty cool kids just like you. Do you know M in 2nd grade? He has brown skin too and he’s a great friend. Do you know the big boys in high school? They have brown skin just like you and are basketball players and they are awesome! You know what, (X), you are normal – but even more importantly, you are amazing because GOD MADE YOU. He made you with brown skin – because you were special to Him – and our God does NOT make mistakes. He made you and you are amazing!” And in that moment he took in a deep breath, picked up his pen, and with his eyes now shining he looked at me with a sloppy smile and said, “Well, when you put it that way…!” and went on happily coloring.

That moment seared my heart – because I know that someday I’ll have the same conversations with my son – and it caught my tears in my throat for that child’s mama, because she’s going through it now even if she doesn’t realize it. To me, it’s truly an amazing thing that God had the creativity to create so many different colors and peoples – but in that same fist is also clenched the pain of our fallen world twisting that creativity and beauty into something it was never intended to be. Our differences were crafted to glorify the Creator, and now even our youngest children are wading through painful assessments of their fragmented hearts simply because they look different than someone else.

I pray that when the time comes for that conversation that my son can hear those words and respond with such grace and innocent faith. That he will, as well, recognize that the simple truth that God created him and that he is not a mistake, that he has a purpose bigger than what he can see in front of him. We don’t all look the same – but that’s the beauty of the created – we are each unique, created out of an intense, reckless, passionate love – chased down by a Father who longs for us to listen to His truth and allow that to be our anthem.

The words we speak are important – they matter – whether to each other, to our children, or to someone else’s children. Don’t be afraid to speak truth into someone else when it needs to be heard. Feel a moment? Take it – run with it – risk with it – you never know when the words you have to say may just be the awakening their heart needs to shake their soul.

Blessings,

Laura

Addendum

This is quite embarrassing, but I felt the need to post a quick addendum tonight because I was 100% positive that I was so loopy with exhaustion when I wrote a few nights ago, that my words didn’t make sense. I couldn’t even remember what I wrote about and was convinced I hadn’t finished or formulated any complete thoughts! LOL – whew. I just read it and even I will admit, it’s fairly cohesive – so I think I’m in the clear.

I just had a few more things on my mind, that I thought I’d add on to my post.

For many of you reading, you’re an adoptive parent fresh-home with your new little one, or perhaps trying to prepare as best you can for the coming days when your new child will finally be home. I really hope that this blog has been helpful, and not discouraging – but I would LOVE to reiterate again – as I try to frequently in some way or another – that our experience in no way will be your own. You may read pieces of my posts and think “she’s describing my child” but then in the next sentence what worked for us in dealing with a certain behavior will not work for yours. I don’t say this to discourage you further – I know exactly what it’s like to be the one searching for answers. But, I will encourage you by saying so much of this adoptive parenting (and parenting in general) is trial-and-error. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes, don’t be afraid to say, “I’m sorry, that didn’t work!”, you aren’t going to “mess them up further” by dealing with a behavior in a poor way one time (or many) in fact, I truly think that our journey with Wesley and also our older children, has been strengthened by our willingness to admit we were wrong. To get down on the floor, with our faces close and look them in the eye and say, “Mommy was wrong. I’m so sorry. I’m going to try differently next time.” To know that we are not always right allows them the freedom to still be themselves, to still learn to make good decisions on their own, to blossom into a fuller version of themselves and not a fuller version of a static US.

On a different note, I thought it might be helpful to quickly chat about the challenges we are having at nearing the 9 month home mark, and also the hurdles we have (mostly) moved beyond. I think it is so important for new adoptive parents to know that the exhausting black-hole of inadequacy does fade, and that you do start to gain your footing on solid places, and actually feel like you’re doing a passable job at this adoptive parenting thing.

Challenges at 9 months home:

Talking back. – this annoys me to NO end, and since the language is at 100% fluency, and he’s in school with peers, this allows him full breadth of skills in nuances, implied wording, and passive-aggressive speech! UGH. 😉 We gently correct the behavior the first time in a lighthearted way, and sometimes second time, but then firmness is necessary if it moves beyond this. We haven’t had to instill a disciplinary action for talking back yet – he usually can grasp the frustration in our voice enough to think “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t say that again right now” – the most common form of this is saying “no it’s not.” to almost everything we say. (Dad) “What a great day for baseball!” (Wes) “No it’s not.” or (Mom) “It’s going to take awhile to get there” (Wes) “no it’s not”. Most of the time his responses are due to the fact that he doesn’t like something and is feeling negative, but our tactic in changing this behavior has been to encourage him to say, “I don’t think it is” instead of “no it’s not” because it’s way less obnoxious, and also more correct. It’s going to rain today, “no it’s not”, well,  if you don’t agree with me, you can say, “I don’t think it is going to rain today”.

Constant activity level – he wants to be DOING something always. He doesn’t “do” down time, unless it’s watching a movie, which we try to limit TV and movies as much as possible – especially within 30-40 min of bedtime. This is great when his little best friend next door is home and they can entertain each other, but when a playmate isn’t around and everyone else is doing homework or cleaning house, the attitude shifts. His world is still largely self-centered (as most kids are at that age especially) and when no one will play with him he quickly decides he has “nothing to do” and every parent cringes when they ear that phrase.

Telling the truth the first time – now I’m not talking here about lying. Thankfully, right now, we don’t have an issue with lying. What we do have an issue with (still) is working on telling the truth the first time for simple things like “did you have fun at the park?” (No) “is that the truth the first time? Remember to tell the truth the first time…” (yes). Simple, silly things – his intention is to be funny, he loves to joke around – but there comes a definite point where he doesn’t have a good judgement cap on as far as what is a funny joke to everyone else, and what is only funny to you. This also extends to other things like “shutting off” for a minute or so so that it seems like he’s mad or despondent, but then snapping out of it and saying “just kidding”…it can get old and frustrating. But, we still are trying to drive the point home about telling the truth the first time so that people know they can trust what you say/do.

Saying I Love You – We have just barely begun this breakthrough – he has admitted to us that saying “I love you” makes him feel nervous, so we don’t push it – he’s much more willing to say it to the kids offhandedly (even though its very few and far between) than to say it to Kris or I. We continue to tell him multiple times a day and let him feel like it’s normal. We want him to have the exposure of hearing it constantly so that it no longer feels like a “special” phrase that should make him nervous to say.

Sleeping in new places, and being alone – A few weeks ago we went on a long weekend trip with two other families – something we do every year together – and the biggest issue we had was that he was “scared” to sleep in our room on the floor, away from the kids, removed from where we were sleeping, in a room with windows and an exterior door that opened to the woods. He was very afraid and it ended up being a massive battle until we figured out a better plan the 2nd night. He still wants us to fall asleep with him each night, and occasionally wakes up in the night and needs an older sibling to walk him down to our room. For some reason, he just gets unsettled in the dark, which is again – totally normal for the age. The new space for sleeping arrangement threw  him off too I think – which we knew it might be trigger, but I’m not sure why – other than simply the unknown properties of the new space.

Positive Wins after 9 months home:

Praying out loud – He began opening up and being willing to pray out loud a couple nights a week at bedtime, and is getting more and more comfortable with just spilling his day out to the Lord in the dark – it is truly a beautiful and cherished moment when he begins to pray! 🙂

Heart Change – we are seeing some serious beginning buds of heart change. About a week and a half ago, Wesley prayed with mom and dad to ask Jesus into his heart, fully understanding Jesus’ death, resurrection, the payment for sin, and forgiveness and grace. The personal story behind this moment is a teary one, and one that I’m not going to post here – so if you know us personally and would like to hear it, ask me next time you see me! Like most kids at this age, he is a little embarrassed by the whole exchange, so other than his brothers and sisters I don’t think he’s told anyone. However we have begun to see little bits of his heart changing over the past couple weeks – being more agreeable, finding easy compromise, putting others’ needs or desires or preferences over his own.

Fear of unknowns lessening – for about 8 months, anytime a situation involved a complete unknown for him, he would flat out refuse to participate, go there, or be involved. We would usually make him eventually, but the initial digging in of his heels on any given subject or event was maddening, especially when it was something he’d never experienced! Thankfully, he is starting to realize that we won’t be asking him to do terrible things, so the trust that is building here is fantastic, and he’s learning that there are things he has never seen or experienced that are really cool – so it might be worth checking it out before he says “no thanks” 🙂

Willingness to accept responsibility – whether responsibility around the house like caring for dogs or doing dishes, or accepting responsibility for his actions (like decapitating the snowman) his process of acceptance and follow through are becoming quicker and self-regulated rather than parent-enforced.

Tantrums and uncontrollable emotion are very limited – His ability to regulate emotion even when he’s mad or extremely sad is becoming a more and more “normal” part of his emotional routine. He is able to monitor his feelings better, communicate how he is feeling with words and sentences, and provide his own process of “cooling down” or “calming down” without parent involvement.

These are all just the few things off the top of my head that I can think of! I hope this is helpful to many, and I have to say how encouraged I am when I see posts on the forums about people recommending this blog to other parents/families, or just the encouraging words about my writing. I love writing (when I have the time) and I really pray that it is purposeful, and not just frivolous documentation.

Thank you for reading, thanks for asking questions, thanks for answering them, and for continuing to do whatever it is that you’re doing. Love on your kids, flex with them, and teach them how to be incredible versions of themselves! 🙂

Blessings,

Laura

 

Guilt Trip

I can’t even begin to understand how two full months have gone by since my last post. Part of me doesn’t even remember what happened its all a complete blur! For those of you who follow this blog regularly, my sincere apologies as I promised I would faithfully update it, and now I’ve missed at least two of my regularly scheduled posts! 😉

Enough groveling.

So – if your winter has looked anything like ours in the PNW this year, it appears as though the Good Lord may have ADD, ADHD or Hyper Vigilance, or possibly Schizophrenia depending on the manifestation. We launched into January fully preparing Wesley for the best time of the PNW winter weather, and many snow days, only to be bombarded with balmy, sunny weather, spring sprouts creaking through the bark chunks and blooms on the bushes lining the walk. We actually said at one point, “I think we might need to mow the lawn…???!” Not normal in the least for us. Wesley had finally decided that he got completely gypped by this whole “come live in Washington” family deal, and was borderline ready to move back to Haiti where at least it was warm enough to wear shorts outside and chase down a few ripe mangoes. Then out of the blue one morning a cold front came in and we could see our breath, and the tips of each blade of grass were frosted in a sparkly, brittle shell. It was beautiful – we left on vacation for a weekend with some good friends and came home to a snowy wintry neighborhood! He helped build his first snow man, assembled many snowballs, got in trouble for throwing snowballs at the kitchen window, and had to re-make Frosty’s head (much to his chagrin), when he decided to decapitate Abby’s Snow-Masterpiece of a Frosty replica.

With school back in session after Christmas break, we slipped back into our favored weekly routines, adding in a soccer skills clinic for Wesley (which he loves) and doubling down with session 2 of basketball for both Wesley and Abby. Braeden wrapped up his basketball season playing with the school, and was just gearing up to start getting ready for baseball tryouts when he decided to take a header down the stairs on Super Bowl Weekend and crush his left wrist. Painful fall, even more painful catch (smart move protecting his head from smashing into the landing, by catching his full weight on his wrist), and quite a notable time in the ER while the docs had to reset his bones before they could splint him up for the week. He’s held up extremely well, had a great attitude, and after 3 weeks in a full-arm cast (over the elbow), will be swapping out for a shortie cast tomorrow for another 3 weeks. Thankfully, he will only miss about 3 weeks of full-capacity baseball practice and the coaches have okayed him stepping in to participate and play as soon as he’s cleared by the docs. Meanwhile, he’s keeping his pitching arm warm and ready to go! 😉

In the middle of all of this constant movement and schedule for our family (I mean, really, unless we just sentence them all to sitting home every day and not playing any sports or doing clubs, etc. with four kids, chaos is just a given), we are finding some interesting moments. Wesley LOVES, DEPENDS, LIVES for the schedule. He’s the perfect little brother counterpart to Braeden. For Braeden’s birthday each year we type out a schedule for the day. A literal schedule with time-stamps and travel and all our stops. He just functions best when he knows what the plan is. Wesley is the same way – without structure his life falls apart at the seams – which is super interesting because at the Orphanage, other than school, he didn’t have any structure. The afternoons after homework were free-for-alls, there was never a “plan” in place for what to do that day, or who to play with, or how long you were going to hunt spiders and then how long you’d lay your face on the coolness of the tile before sprawling across the hallway to play with a toothpaste cap for 40 minutes. That’s just not how life was. So coming home, where there IS the opportunity to have a schedule, he loves it, lives by it, counts minutes and hours, keeps track of time and order of events. But the interesting thing, is that we are starting to see him come to a point where he just gets tired of the constant go-go-go. 2 weeks ago, he abruptly asked me after school if he could stay home from soccer that evening. It caught me so off guard that all of a sudden my mama-bear brain went on high-alert for dangers. “Is there someone bothering you at soccer? Is there a grownup that is not nice to you? Is something making you sad about soccer?” on and on…bleh. I hate that feeling. I finally got to the bottom of it a day later when he finally admitted that he didn’t want to go to soccer because he just wanted to stay home and have a chance to play with his friend next door. He had been so chained to the schedule that he was missing his unscripted down-time to just play and be “free” from scheduling. I had, in the moment, of course – said “sure, you can skip soccer tonight” – because I sensed that there was something he was needing but couldn’t put a finger on – and I wanted to be able to be present in that moment and not hang onto the schedule for the sake of the schedule, or training, or development – but simply to acknowledge that yes, every day feels busy to you, and YES you are important and your TIME is important.

We find ourselves more and more making off-the-cuff, in-the-moment decisions like that, not because we are catering to his wants or expressions of desire (although that’s how it was early-on after homecoming, just to avoid blow-ups) but because we are realizing that part of the design of being a “present and accounted for” parent means that you have to be willing to flex. If you aren’t, then there’s a good chance you’re only present in your own universe, and not that of your child. Each of our kids lives in their own plane of existence at times. We are all part of the same world, but almost parallel universes! For each of them, being present and accounted for as a parent looks completely different.  For our oldest son and daughter, a lot of that stems from being available and engaged with them after-hours. They LOVE their “after-Wes-and-Abby’s-bedtime-time”. Many times we watch a favorite show together, or just hang out and shoot the breeze – but that’s how we show them we are here with them, living, growing and learning alongside them. For Abby and Wesley, being present with them looks totally different – but by realizing that they are different kids, and therefore have different needs is ESSENTIAL. They won’t all feel loved and cared for the same way. Abby would be in tears if I tried to stay up late with her and watch a show. She’s my early-bedtime old soul, and would much rather I be present in a different way – like sitting with her while she does homework, picking up a harmony while she’s singing around the kitchen, or playing a game together. Wesley’s moments are those like this evening, when we began reading a bedtime story, only to have it bust into a hard rap version of the story line complete with “wiki wiki”‘s, beat boxing and operatic elements. It was quite amazing, if I’d had my phone you’d be watching a video right now. But those moments, when we can just be completely silly and unguarded – that’s when he knows we are present.

Another piece of the flexibility with the parenting here has morphed with time. We’re almost at 9 months home now – incredible, absolutely incredible! – and we are finding that all the books we read and videos we watched have one huge thing in common – they don’t seem to apply to our kid.

I was chatting on one of the online forums I’m a part of with other adoptive moms from our orphanage, and there was a common theme that I saw threaded through our discussion. Multiple people have said it and I honestly don’t know where it came from or who to give originating credit to! I’ll speak to it in a minute…

One of the hardest thing as an adoptive parent (in my opinion) is reading all these rule books on how to parent your child from hard places, how to deal with traumatic pasts, what to do for discipline when you can’t do time outs or spanks, and a million other subjects. Each one has a formula or process you should follow in order to turn out a well-adjusted adoptive child.

This is my opinion on all that – There is some great advice and teaching out there. if you find some good stuff – by all means read it. But by all means do NOT make your only acceptable plan of attack based on their itemized list of what works and what doesn’t. The reason being: every child is different. Every situation is different. Every background and trauma is different, every age is different, every heart tendency and malleability is different. Kicker, – and here’s the part I wish I could credit to someone – , someone said it and I don’t know who, but I would love to go give this person a massive hug and a million dollars – Parent the child you HAVE, not the child they say you should have.

To all you adoptive mamas out there – I think one of you should write a book about this, and it will revolutionize adoptive parenting. What has worked for us is to consistently parent the child we HAVE – not the one the book says we should have. We tried for months to operate according to the “book””s plan, the steps laid out in response to negative behavior, how to combat “no'”‘s and the power of redirection. However – when we tried to shove Wes into the box that fit those responses, he folded. It has only been since we began to parent HIM in the way that HE resonated with, that he truly began to blossom like crazy!

So even if you’re not an adoptive parent, but a regular, old-fashioned, “from-my-womb” parent – please remember that your child is not a statistic. They most likely haven’t been screened for their aptitude and willingness to respond to this kind of book-learned disciplinary response. Your child is unique, and while you can still be firm and create boundaries for your children, you need to remember to parent the child that you have, not the one you’re reading about in the self-help chapters.

I promise I’ll post again soon – there’s lots more to say, but my eyes are looping in my head and I have to get up early and teach tomorrow!

 

Blessings to you all,

Laura

When the magic fades

It’s amazing to me how quickly the element of a magical experience can dissipate, leaving you in the throes of a magic hangover where we all wander like zombies, falling asleep late, sleeping in late (for some), all sense of routine and schedule thrown out the window. Gone is the tinkling of sleigh bells, the little red Elf has flown back to her wintry home, Santa came to town and left us with a mess of paper and stacks of “stuff” that now has to find a permanent home on a shelf or in a closet. It is incredible how much anticipation and breathlessness is compounded over the course of a month, only to completely disappear as soon as in-laws and cousins board the planes or buckle in for the drives home. The tree is gone, almost all traces of the wondrous, magical day is packed into bright red plastic tubs, correctly labeled and snapped closed to ward off any creatures that may think my 18″ Santa’s beard is a great place to rear their new family.

Our December month was certainly a magical, wondrous experience here – the whole “magic of Christmas” that has been somewhat lost the past couple years as our bio kids grew older, was refreshed in full-force with a 7-year-old experiencing Christmas for the first time! He has loved every bit of it, and the older kids have really enjoyed playing the role of encouraging excitement for someone else other than themselves. Imagination ran wild, many times running the gauntlet of targeted, fire-balls of questions aimed to prick any potential holes in the glittery facade. We decided to let the imagination run, pretty much on it’s own, answering Wesley’s questions with leading questions or thought-provoking questions, encouraging him to come up with an answer for himself. I can see him being a lot like his older brother, and next year we will probably have the pointed, “tell me the truth. Is Santa real?” And, when we get that question, as we did with Braeden, when the truth is asked of us, we tell it.

I found an awesome book this year, called “God Gave Us Christmas” by Lisa Tawn Bergren and David Hohn

it does a fantastic job of relating Santa, God and Christmas all together in a way that even Wes could understand. We read it many many times over this season, I highly recommend it!

We were able to have many “first” experiences this Christmas, first presents opened, first trip to the Zoo at night to see the Zoolights at the Oregon Zoo, first 2.5 hour Star Wars movie in the theater, first Christmas cookies made, first gingerbread house, first ornaments handmade, first family Christmas gatherings, first taste of Anise Cookies (secret family recipe…he loved them – he’s a keeper LOL), and most memorable of all – FIRST SNOW!

Helping make daddy’s famous Christmas morning cinnamon rolls

Gingerbread houses with Aunt Noelle and cousin Lucie

Ornament making with Aunt Laura

Christmas cookies!

Christmas Jam session with Uncle Reid, Grandpa Steve, and Spencer!

On Christmas Eve, despite the weather forecasters’ predictions of rain and blah, it started snowing while we were in our morning Christmas Eve service! It was quite incredible – We were inside singing O Holy Night by candlelight (another beautiful first, accompanied by a wash of fresh tears for a mama so thankful to be holding candles alongside my Haitian son and his Daddy, brother, and sisters), and we walked out of church to a wintry wonderland of snow falling, white powdery fluff on the ground, and grinning, giggling Wes, who couldn’t even believe what was happening! We drove home as fast as possible, busted out the snow gear and he proceeded to play in the snow for probably close to 6-7 hours over the course of the day, even into the dark with his cousins when they joined us for Christmas Eve dinner! It was an incredible gift for a first Christmas, and the kicker was that it was still there when we woke up on Christmas morning, giving us our first White Christmas in a very, very long time!

On the 23rd, we brought home our newest FURRY family member, 8-week old Maggie, a chocolate, standard-sized Australian Labradoodle. She was met at the front door with screaming Wes who couldn’t believe we got a puppy all our own, and teary older three, who were just completely melted at the sight of her. She has fast become everyone’s newest obsession, and the way that everyone is coming together to care for her and play with her is very sweet! She is highly entertained by our 2.5 year old pup Ollie, who thinks she is the best thing since dog food, and has to be put in isolation at times just to leave her alone! 😉 Bella, our 11-year old grumpy grandma dog, on the other hand, thinks she is the worst thing to happen to this family since Ollie came home, and refuses to give her the time of day, avoiding her like the plague! LOL

Wes handled Christmas gifting like a champ, we gave him a quick intro on how to be polite with gifts, even if it is something you don’t want, like underwear or a barbie (he thought that was funny), and after a couple awkward go-arounds with his first gift or two, he figured it out. We decided we would see how he was transitioning with American life before we made any decisions on Christmas and whether or not we were going to eliminate gifts this year, or change our normal routine for Christmas morning or gatherings. He was doing so well, that we decided to proceed as normal, being prepared to be flexible should we see anything questionable arise. We got through everything with zero issues, other than a tiny bit of normal kid crabbiness due to late nights and overstimulation. He was excited and a bit nervous to see how Christmas in America played out – it was very different at the orphanage, but I think he was satisfied with the result, and decided he might like to stick around to see how next Christmas goes…the countdown has already begun. haha 🙂

We’ve had a very nice break from the constant sports and practices and coaching, although at this point everyone is very ready to get back into their normal routines, needing their friend-time, and workouts, and court-time. This morning Wes woke up super excited because it was sunny outside (how come it is sunny in December??!!) and is already chowing through breakfast so he can “practice” shooting baskets on the sport court outside before he goes to his playdate later today!

We are continuing to see a blossoming of his personality, now coming up on 7 months home, he does continue to wrestle with the challenge of unknowns – but he’s learning to try something, (or be asked to try something) new  before he makes a decision as to whether or not he likes it.

Praying for a fantastic new year for all of us, and all of you – please continue to keep in touch and ask questions, and we’ll continue to update here!

I’ll post pics in a few min from my phone!

Blessings,

Laura

Case in point.

I rest my case (see prior post). Apparently in today’s world, “there was an elf watching over the sheep by night…” and she came to see baby Jesus.

Elves, Santa, Jesus, and balance

This is a weird world we live in. I’m totally seeing Christmas from a new vantage point and it’s certainly gotten weird, and not just because I live a sneeze away from Portland (for reference, Portland has gotten weirder and weirder in the past 20 years, to the point that there are bumper stickers driving around on Toyota Priuses and Subaru Outbacks that simply say, “Keep Portland Weird”). Vancouver is going through its own growing pains, but Portland has fallen in my opinion. I drive down there to shop or take the kids roaming and I don’t even recognize all of the places I grew up in. Most likely that’s due to the tent cities on the side of the freeway and the Hipster Santa in the mall (real life story, people. What’s so wrong with a regular Santa who eats Christmas cookies and milk and hands out candy canes? Why do we need a Scotch drinking, mustache waxed, fair isles sweater wearing Santa with rolled up jeans and trouser socks and penny loafers who hands out packets of weed? (okay, the weed was an added creative liberty, but I wouldn’t be surprised) Let me tell you I had a very weirded out 7-year old who immediately said, “Mommy that’s not real Santa, let’s go.”).

Sorry. Rabbit trailing. I feel like Christmas as a kid was so much simpler. I know it was, in actuality, much much simpler – there was no Santa magic in our home, Santa was just a cheesy name on the from tag that meant Mom was trying to be cute. I didn’t think anything of it as a kid – never really questioned Santa or whether or not his existence (or lack thereof) would ruin my own. Christmas was filled with family gatherings, lots of food, cousins, tights (the ONLY time I would wear tights, {shudder}), and a pair of mom-sewn Christmas pajamas. We baked Christmas cookies, made homemade gifts for others, and drove Peacock Lane with a carful of kids. We parked on a bluff and watched the Christmas ships on the Willamette River, sucked our candy canes into dangerous saber-points of peppermint, and hung our tube socks on Christmas Eve. We watched black and white Christmas classics, It’s a Wonderful Life and Holiday Inn, and celebrated Advent every day throughout December, an activity planned for each family dinner or breakfast of the day. We made paper chains, and thanked the Lord for many, many things. We sang Christmas carols during church each Sunday, went caroling with our Fellowship Group in the neighborhood, and lit candles at the Christmas Eve service.

Christmas was always fun, but more than that it was always something that gave me warmth, hope, and a soft reminder of who Jesus was to me – not to my family, or my church, or my friends, but to me.

Fast forward 25 years, to a new world of Christmas where iPhone X is at the top of your kids’ Christmas lists, regardless of whether that’s even a practical thing to list (it’s not), and the Elf on the Shelf is competing with baby Jesus to bring joy to the world on these not-so-silent nights of Christmas. Somehow flying, glow-in-the-dark reindeer become the heralds of a little king’s birth which is usurped and trumped by a large, ruddy nosed, cookie eating old guy (very unhealthy role model for children today, I might add…surprised we didn’t have a healthy-plate makeover for Santa’s diet when we re-did our school lunch menus…), who sneaks in your house at night, and sees everything that you do – (does Santa see you in the bathroom? No. What if you pull your sister’s hair in the bathroom. Yes. Ew. Creepy.) – and somehow this gift-giving crazy-man takes over everything.

Most parents probably don’t realize how much of the bare bones of Christmas is getting pushed out each year by more and more of the froofy magical made-up stories and excuses for consumerism. I hadn’t either – until I all of a sudden had a new 7-year old who has never experienced Christmas like this before. America in general is a complete overload of the senses – but Christmas? Right now I’m starting to wish we lived in a remote village with nothing but a rudimentary nativity scene and a candle and a scrubby pine with popcorn strings and a star.

How did Christmas get so crazy and over-the-top far-fetched? I’m sitting on my couch with a set of Elf on the Shelf eyes boring into the back of my skull as we speak. Wesley was so concerned when the Elf showed up December 1st, and the onslaught of questions we received all of a sudden had us wondering – is it okay to allow your kids to believe in this stuff?

We’ve always dealt with our kids’ questions over the years with returned questions. “Is Santa real?” “I don’t know – what do you think?” etc. With Wesley, he has an engineering mind, and strategery (I know that’s not a real word, but Monty Python said it so I’m using it) is his right hand man. He wants to know the details of how Santa gets here, how he comes in side, and why he doesn’t use the front door. How does he make the dogs not bark, and what exactly is he bringing again? Do his reindeer really fly and why is every book about Santa a little different? Does the Elf go into your room and does he go tell Santa stuff when you leave the house or only at night?

Funny how he has no questions about baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds other than, “Mommy what’s a shepherd again?” It’s all so straightforward – and there’s no muddling of facts. Mary and Joseph traveled a long way, there was no room in the hotel so they had to have baby Jesus in a cave (or barn) with the animals. Jesus was the King of the world, even though he was just a baby. He came to save all of us, even the people who aren’t nice. God sent him because He loved us very much – end of Christmas story. There’s not a billion different ways to tell it – and maybe that’s my biggest frustration with today’s version of Christmas.

For a child who is entering the American Christmas Story for the first time ever – what is it important to me that he know? We’ve wrestled through a ton – he’s doing amazing, our family is rocking the 6 month mark for sure! But we are constantly revisiting – what do we really want Wes to know or learn right now? What are the froofy non-essentials and what is a make-it-or-break-it lesson that needs to be taught? What are the parts that really matter and what things could we just let go? How much of the magical made-up version of Christmas is a fun add-on to childhood and where is the line crossed at leading him on into a world of consumerism and materialism and stuff that is just a flat-out lie? How do you balance that as a parent – is it wrong to allow your child to believe in Santa when you have never actually said “yes, Santa is real”? Our older kids eventually got to the point where they decided for themselves that Santa wasn’t real – but how is that different for a child who is new to all of this? Who hasn’t grown up with all the stories, or the Christmas morning stockings, or the Elf that comes for a month and does crazy things, etc.? We are realizing that just because something was okay for some kids, doesn’t mean it’s beneficial for every kid – it doesn’t mean it’s NOT, it just means it’s worth asking the question – and being aware.

I don’t necessarily have the answers right now – but it is a good question to allow ourselves to explore – many, many times over. We’re working on it.

We hit the 6-month mark this morning. Just another morning, but I realize that an encouraging thing for other transitioning families is that there does come a point where you realize, “wow, we just hit 6 months – that flew by!” When you’re in the first few months home, it’s like having a baby – you count the days first, “He’s 9 days old!” (really? Not a week and a half?) then the weeks, “He’s 8 weeks old!” (actually, he’s 2 months, but who’s counting?) and actually for transitioning families it’s more like “I can’t believe it’s only been 9 days” and then “I think it’s been 12 weeks already…(count on the calendar)…cue fresh fountain of hot tears and exhausted blubbering…It’s only been 8 weeks!!!” and then one day you wake up and get to the grocery store and realize that you calmly and naturally told your new child “no” about 33 times in a 10 minute trip to 33 different items and you had no pushback other than the normal “aww, mommy, why?!” and you mentally count and realize it’s been 4 months since he came home. Then you blink, and all of a sudden it’s Christmas and you’ve nearly forgotten that he hasn’t been a part of your life for your family’s whole existence.

It does get easier, the days don’t necessarily get shorter, but the minutes are less calculated, and the hours pass quickly. The anxiety wanes, and typical parent-of-four-children responses surface – like today’s exasperated outburst to drawing a sharpie angel on his own palm…it was a very nice angel, but we don’t write with sharpie on our hands! – and he shrugs off the reprimand with a small pout and moves on. I no longer count days between meltdowns, we haven’t had an issue with that since the middle of August – he’s learning very well how to self-regulate and emote in healthy ways, uses verbal communication and even says, “I’m sorry” when prompted – and has asked for forgiveness. These seem like small things, but there were many months where I just had to settle with my heart and accept the fact that he may never learn to say I’m sorry, and he may never learn to tell someone how he feels – and that needed to be okay.

We have transitioned into bedtime rituals where he seeks out the physical comfort of snuggles and hugs, and practically welds himself to us as he falls asleep. We’ve heard “I love you”‘s and seen true compassion in action several times over.

We definitely have our side-splitting laughter moments, funny things that just randomly “click” for him and come out as random bits of conversation – like his new favorite conversation is about babies and “lots of kids” because he saw Cheaper by the Dozen and thinks that somewhere between 12 and 20 kids is ideal for our family. LOL He asked me what babies wear when they come out – and I said, “honey, they are naked when they come out.” To which his eyes squeezed tight and he shook his head vigorously and said, “Naaaaaahhhhhhhhh….” and then looked at me quizzically like I was joking – I assured him that no, they really do come out naked, but then the doctors put on a diaper and some little jammies to keep them warm and he responded with, “Well, maybe you should swallow some shirts and pants so he can put them on before he comes out.”

🙂 Yes. We all had a fantastic laugh! 😉 I’m just a little concerned that he keeps saying “You should…” instead of “the mommy should…” and then in the next breath tells me that we should have 12 kids, but we should only adopt again from Haiti if it is some kids that he knows already.

Sigh. I thought 4 was a good number…I’ll have to intercept Wes’ prayers for awhile…

I’m sure more posts will follow as we get closer to Christmas – it is very fun to see Christmas as fresh and new again, but it is definitely a wake up call to all the extra stuff cozying up to Truth that may need some pruning.

Oh, also – a moment of silence for the loss of 18 months of photos and videos of our adoption journey from my phone. We have some of our trips backed up, but somehow a couple weeks back, 18 months of my photos and videos disappeared from my phone and my icloud with no reason or explanation. Hours-long support from Apple and recovery attempts from external software have turned up nothing.

So – if you happen to have photos or videos that I’ve sent you at all in the past 18 months, I’d love it if you could send them back to me – especially those from the past 6 months of being home. I shed many frustrated tears and have come to grips with the reality, but yet another reason to simplify. I’m getting a poloroid and digging out my 35 mm camera from high school and going to start hoarding physical photos. Does anyone still own a VHS camcorder?

Blessings, and Merry Christmas!

Laura

 

 

Ungratefulness vs. Reality Check

Today was the last day of a 2-week Clay series, I called it “Clay Week” but in my head it was pretty much H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks Week(s). Almost every teacher who dropped their kids off at my door took one look and said, “Wow, you’re brave” (Translation: “you are one buckle short of a straightjacket, Lady!”). It wasn’t that bad, but it was definitely borderline insane. Today was the toughest, with an extra added class as a reschedule from earlier in the week, which meant I had zero prep time, zero lunch, zero time to pee, and spent my 10 min turnarounds flinging clay crumbles off the table, and trying to carefully maneuver around creative drying spots for the multitude of snowmen, dragons, one-legged lunch ladies (yes, there is one), ornaments, and mini-football fields (yes, one of those too). I’m just praying this air-dry clay holds up…I have a feeling I’m going to have a lot of one-armed snowmen.

Every time I start to think that I can’t possibly make it in this career the rest of the school year, I run into a student at the store, a soccer game or the park, and the way their faces light up and say, “Hi Mrs. McGreevey!!!” makes me inwardly groan and say, “Darn it, God. Why do you insist on proving your point that I’m right where you need me to be at the moment?!” 😉

Today, I overheard a conversation between two boys while they were rolling out their clay, starting out very lighthearted and conversational, and escalating into fervently adamant rebuke. It started something like, “I’m going to make a bell shape ornament and give it to Taco Bell…maybe they’ll give me a free burrito if I give it to them!” to which the other 3rd grader burst in, “You don’t give someone something because you want something in return! You give something because you just want to give it!” Sigh. These are the moments, when I’m prompted by a child, to think a little bit deeper on something that’s eating at me.

Just this morning, Kris and I had a very short, passing conversation that had haunted me all day – just a bit unsettling. He was relaying a brief overview of a recent conversation he’d had with a good friend about adoption. His friend had had an encounter with yet another adoptive parent (yes there are a lot of us out there! LOL) who had voiced that they were having a hard time with the fact that their child (adoptee) wasn’t grateful. I said, “Grateful for what?” Apparently that their child wasn’t grateful for the fact that they had been adopted. Kris laughed and told me that his immediate response was, “When was the last time your biological children (no matter what age) said, “Mom, thanks for giving birth to me!” I concurred, echoing his amusement, because I know that there are very few children who would actually be given the label “grateful” for anything that they have – whether it be food, family, housing, location, etc. etc. Kids just don’t get it.

But that conversation got me thinking – how many adoptive parents are battling this emotional struggle months or even years after their kids come home, just wanting their kids to turn around and say, “Thank you”? What unspoken (or sometimes verbalized) frustrations do you have surrounding your child’s perceived “ungratefulness” for “everything you have done for them”? Is this striking a chord in your heart? It may be tweaking just a little bit of ugly in your gut at the moment. You may be nodding your head and saying, “Yeah, totally, my kid just doesn’t get it – they don’t appreciate anything they have now, they aren’t grateful for where they are vs. where they would have been if we hadn’t completed this adoption,” or “Why can’t they see how difficult their life was, compared to how awesome it is now, and appreciate that difference?!”

Can I say something that might sound harsh?

Why do you need them to?

If your motivation for adoption was to give – to give love, to give family, to give unconditional opportunity, to give hope – I’m assuming your commitment to giving all of this to your adopted child wasn’t “I’ll love you but only if you love me in return”, or “We’ll be your family, but only if you accept us as your family”, or “we’ll give you unconditional opportunity but only if you actually utilize it”, or “we’ll give you hope but only if you give us something to know it was worth our while”.

But let’s circle back to my 3rd grade boys’ Art Class conversation. When we give, it should just be because we want to GIVE; gifts should be given freely, without expecting reciprocation. So when you give the gift of love to your biological children, are you emotionally distraught when they don’t say “thank you for loving me”? or “Thank you for being such an awesome mom/dad”? Probably not. They are kids, they see the world different than we do – as they age their brains will mature and maybe some day they will realize just how awesome you are – probably when they are 35-70 years old – and they might tell you. So why do we sometimes get our hearts in a twist when our adoptive kiddos don’t reciprocate with a heartfelt thankfulness for their new family situation?

I’ll tell you what I see in my 7-year-old. He says “thank you” when given a gift, when given his food, or something that he’s asked for, like a glass of water. But his life prior to Adopted Life for him was so completely normal, he may not see the true reality of his situation until he’s an adult. Kind of like if you grew up in a low-income family like me, I don’t remember ever thinking that I was embarrassed of my house, or the neighborhood I lived in. I don’t remember being embarrassed that I had to ride the bus to get to where I wanted to go or that I lived in hand-me-downs or bought my own clothes from discount stores, Goodwill, or Fred Meyer when I really saved enough of my babysitting money. It didn’t occur to me until I was an adult that there was at least one Thanksgiving where the Thanksgiving Food Box appeared on our front porch, and another one at Christmas with small gifts in it. It was just normal life, and I was a happy kid. This is how I imagine Wes’ view of his past life is. He talks about his orphanage with matter-of-fact-ness, about his friends and stories of things that happened with a nonchalance assumption that everything was absolutely normal. He would probably tell you that there was never a time when he was really hungry, but I know there was. His “family” was the 120+ people at his orphanage, he wasn’t “alone”. We didn’t “save” him from anything.

The truth is is, there is nothing I expect him to be “thankful” or “grateful” for – besides learning thankfulness and gratefulness from this point forward just as my bio kids have been learning since they were old enough to grasp the concept.

I want him to eventually understand that he is blessed to live in a modern day “land of plenty” with opportunities, with thousands of schools to choose from, with plenty of jobs, with technology and networking, with food, with clothing, with amazing friends and an incredible family – but not because he’s adopted. Simply because he is alive, and is a citizen of the United States, just in the same way that we teach our bio kids to appreciate the same things for the same reasons.

If Wes turns 38 and is married and has children and is working hard and calls me up one day and says, “Mom, I just wanted to say Thank you for bringing me into this family and for …” I’ll stop him right there, and I’ll say, “Wesley Wadnelson. You’re welcome. For loving you. Because you’re my son. And there is nothing I would rather be, than be your mom.”

There are days, many many many days, as a parent that are completely thankless. But just because our kids don’t tell us thank you for dinner, and thank you for tucking them in, and thank you for driving me to youth group, and thank you for buying me a homecoming dress, and thank you for packing my lunch, and thank you for doing my laundry, and thank you for cleaning up my puke, and thank you for…(you get the idea), it doesn’t mean that we just up and quit being a parent and go on strike. But we also can’t expect our kids to fully understand, whether adopted or biological, the extent to which we have sacrificed livelihood, income, relationships, free time, brain cells, sleep, etc. etc. so that they could grow up the way they did. They are kids. And many of those kids will continue to be kids in that regard until they are on their deathbed. So be it. But please don’t make the mistake of thinking that your child is ungrateful because they don’t recognize how good they have it here, or how amazing you are as an adoptive parent. It’s just “normal” for them. It may be the “new normal”, but it’s normal just the same, and they’re just a kid.

I hope this makes sense. I encourage you to teach gratefulness in other areas moving forward, being grateful for their home, their family and their parents is one thing, but being grateful for their adoptive family having “saved” or extracted them from something lesser is an expectation that I believe should never be placed on your adoptive child. I don’t ever want my son to feel that he “owes” me anything. If I am expecting gratefulness from him regarding his new Adopted Life living situation, I’m expecting him to “owe” me thanks, and that’s not fair. His life here with us, as a part of our family is unconditional. It is forever, no strings attached. My gift of motherhood to him is open-ended, non-confined, and full of UN-expectation.

I love you because you’re my son. You’re my son, because I love you. And there is nothing I’d rather be than your mom.

Period.

And all this talk about gratefulness and teaching them to appreciate what they have – we think they just don’t get it, and then Wes comes up to me today and says, “Mommy, can I bring some food to school? I want to bring it for the people that don’t have some.”

HEART WARM.

I don’t mind if he never feels grateful for or exhibits thankfulness for his adoption. In fact, I would rather he not. I would rather he just be thankful that he has a super cool mom that he loves, that is fun and silly, who sings with him and laughs with him, who corrects and teaches him, who encourages and inspires him. For me, that’s enough – and I hope that can be enough for you as well.

~Laura

Honk if you like Novocaine!

I can’t believe it’s been a month – the past 30 days have flown by with the gusts of wind that sweep up our forested hillside, bringing a torrent of feathery helicopter seeds spinning into the grass. It’s fun to watch, but the quiet awe and appreciation of something that so exquisitely reflects our God’s genius starts to tread the edge of annoyance in a few months when all those seeds start sprouting new trees in my lawn. Yes. I’m the one that spends 3 hours on a crisp spring afternoon hand-plucking maple babies from the grass. I started counting last year and I counted 300-something then got tired of keeping track. At that point I just started keeping track of what everyone else in the household was doing at that moment since they weren’t out plucking babies next to me. Grrr…

It is definitely fall here in Vancouver! Our woods are full of flaming, mustard-hued, rustling leaves. Wes has quietly observed all of the changes in the trees as they move from bright greens to yellows, browns, oranges and reds. These changes are something that he’s seeing for the first time – and you can see his eyes taking it all in. We’ve spent hours at the neighborhood park playing kickball (complete with bases, and our entire family playing – boys vs. girls – somehow the boys always clean up the score), and throwing the football in the driveway. The crisp air prompted a trip to target to pick up a pair of “man tights” (man sport leggings) also dubbed “Mights” or “Bites” (boy tights), for Wes to wear under his soccer and basketball shorts. He amazingly doesn’t seem to mind the pouring rain or the cold! On days when the downpours are incessant he comes home from school, hops out of the car and runs around the driveway with no coat yelling at the top of his lungs, “IT’S RAINING!!!!!!! IT’S RAINING!!!!!!” and insists profusely each morning, “Mommy, I do NOT need a jacket. I’m not gonna get cold!” Just wait, kid. This is nothing. 😉

All four kids are racking up the miles on our cars this month – Braeden started driver’s ed last month and has been hopping in the driver’s seat every chance he gets. Amazingly enough, I’m not nearly as nervous as I thought I would be! Well, okay, that’s a tiny bit of a lie. The first few times in the passenger seat I was writing out my living will and testament in my head. But at this point, he completes driver’s ed next week, and I feel pretty confident that our lives are safe in his hands for the most part. Wes continues to give him a run for his money, winning the prize for the “most vocal backseat driver”. “YOU GOTTA SLOW DOWN, BUD!” or “DUDE, YOU’RE ON THE LINE, MAN,” are common outbursts from his booster seat…Logan has started basketball for school with Kris coaching the 8th grade girls team, and Abby has started her 6th grade basketball team (Kris also helping on/off), and Wes began playing on a 1st grade boys basketball team (again, Kris helping on/off) with boys from his school which he LOVES – and this is in addition to overlapping soccer for a few weeks. Insanity, is what it is. And we wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂

We continue to deal with the same parenting issues with Wesley that we have been through with our older children when they were seven – respectfulness, telling the truth the first time (instead of giving the “joke” answer”), sharing, and finding a compromise instead of doggedly holding to only one opinion. We are finding joy, more and more, in realizing that these behaviors are so much more about just generic, 7-year-old discipline/teaching-moment issues than they are about un-doing his past bad habits or healing a trauma. We still have moments that we recognize an orphanage-style response, or habit – teaching him to pick up after himself is going to be a lifetime of learning, for sure! – His tendency to flick a wayward bit of trash or food across a table or across a room if he doesn’t want it near him is common, or stash his trash somewhere close by instead of making it all the way into a garbage can. Although – again – it gives us relief to remind ourselves that we deal with this same behavior in our biological children as well, and they are 5+ years older than he is! I guess, if this is any encouragement at all to families going through a transition process with their adoptive kiddos – just remember that not all behavior is trauma or hard-past-related. A lot of the issues you’ll deal with are normal, age-appropriate behaviors and when I thought about it from that perspective, it became a lot less anxiety-producing for me. While it is important to understand that some behaviors are age-appropriate but also exacerbated by past trauma, it is equally important to understand that not all the negative behavior you’re seeing is going to need to be UN-done – some of it just needs to be done a first time.

This week, Wes had his very first dentist treatment (AKA Cavity Fillings). I was super anxious that he would be stressed out and nervous and refuse to go in, or fight the hygienists trying to stick stuff in his mouth (AKA NEEDLES). Not so. This kid practically dragged me back to the dentist chair, picked out his movie (Kung Fu Panda 3), put on his special glasses and opened up his mouth wide. He calmly obliged when asked to put the silly gas elephant nose on and breathe deeply, and then proceeded to tell me I could “go out and wait for him” in the lobby until he was done. LOL – a constant battle to teach this child that he DOES, IN FACT, NEED HIS MOMMY. 😉 Today I told him (while he was throwing me the football decked out in a Spiderman costume) that even Spiderman kisses his mom, to which he said, “Ugh, I KNOW, Mommy!” However, something softened his heart today, because I got multiple kisses at a few different times today – all complete surprises and not asked for! Anyway, when he finally tromped out of the dentist room with the nurse, carrying a highlighter-green, rubber monkey that lights up when you fling it around, he attempted to smile at me. His lips were tinged with puffiness and his smile ended about 1/2″ into his lips. He looked at me and said, “Mmmy, muh lipppthss are not wuuuhkng!” and proceeded to attempt to slide a mini wooden paddleful of vanilla ice cream into his mouth. When his lips finally landed on the spoon, they were dripping with melted cream and flapping all over the mouthful. Braeden was there with me, waiting, and we both burst into peals of laughter. Of course, like a good mother, I whipped out my phone and started videoing the spectacle. We’ve had many laughs over that video since, but he was such a trooper! He was dead-set on going straight back to school despite his sleepy lips. He couldn’t say “f’s” or “p’s” and could only smile halfway. His nose was tingly and when he had to raise his hand to make a quick exit in class he said, “Mrs. Hippbppbbbbbs, can I go to the bafffppppwoooom?” He still laughs about having to go to the “baffwoom” and says that his lips were so sleepy they made a toot noise when he tried to say it. I guess I don’t need to worry about him being afraid of the dentist. If anyone is in Vancouver – I highly recommend Adventure Dental for all kids dentistry and orthodontia! Amazing people, and it is so worth it for my kids to not mind going to the dentist!

Work for me is busy, exhausting, challenging, but getting easier as I get my bearings and figure out how to manage a classroom of children. I’m not sure I was cut out to be a teacher, but those kids do find a quick way to my heart, darn it! Plus, last week we did a coloring and design element with our Mola making project so each class period I let myself sit down among my kids and color! Color Therapy. It’s a thing, I’m sure.

In addition to working at the school, my ECommerce business, Bél Lavi, is also gearing up for the Christmas shopping season. My office at home and, unfortunately, my dining table, are being overrun with inventory – metal wall pieces, Christmas ornaments, leather bags, jewelry, etc. I get super excited to see it all come in, but nervously pray that it goes back out in boxes with paid shipping labels to customers! 😉 If you’re at all interested in checking out what we have going on, please visit www.bel-lavi.com!

Kris’ work is busy as usual, but he’s such an amazing steward of his time, and somehow finds a way to balance his crazy work load with coaching, parenting, and still finding time to be the best husband on the planet.

Well, my eyes are fluttering, and I have another day of teaching about Van Gogh to some 2nd graders and Kinders, making chalk sunflowers! 😉

Blessings to you all,

Laura & family