OmegaMom

Firstly, you actually can send a Sharpie Marker through the clothes washer and clothes dryer and not have a horrible mess.  If this happens, you should fall on your knees and thank the Kozmik All.

Secondly, “Y’know, sometimes you’ve just got to do what you’ve just got to do.”  This piece of wisdom comes from the dotter, I’m not quite sure what it was in response to.

Thirdly, Google cache rocks.  Mysterious blogs appearing then vanishing, and other blogs disappearing or reconfiguring entirely, can be recaptured quite nicely using Google cache.

Fourthly, sometimes truly mean and hilarious skewering via parody can be painfully truthful.

Spring has definitely sprung in Small Mountain University Town.  This weekend was the annual kite festival, so I took the dotter off to fly a kite.

There were stiltwalkers.  There was a kiddy carnival–complete with games such as “knock the bowling pins off the table with a ball”, and the classic “fishing game”, and the one where you toss beanbags through holes.

The weather was flawless, except for just one thing:  there was hardly any wind.  So those of us who had brought kites to fly were rather disappointed.

But first, there were bubble wands to wave through the air with a trail of lovely shimmering bubbles…there was food to be had…

While I was in line trying to get my $2.50 burrito (this took forever because the burrito seller’s microwave broke), who should we run into but One And Only True Love and his mother!  So OAOTL’s mom purchased him some shaved ice while I was waiting, and the dotter went to sit with him and share the shaved ice.

Then off to the kiddy carnival area, where first the two spent an inordinate amount of time in the bouncy houses (a first!  The dotter has refused to do bouncy houses until now!), and then it was time for mommy to camp out in the line for getting faces painted while the dotter and OAOTL went running like madmen through the grass, encountering yet more kids we all knew.  It’s one of the delights of living in a smallish city–go to an event and you will always run into people you know.

Finally, the dotter was able to get her face painted–this is supposedly a horse.  It looks more like a cat to me, but, hey, what do I know?  The dotter was delighted.

We wandered on to the grassy area where people were supposed to fly their kites.  But first we stopped at the “Geology for Kids” booth, where a splendid fellow was inviting children to smash rocks with hammers.  He obviously had stocked himself with a goodly supply of fossil-rich limestone, because every kid who smashed a rock got a performance of this gent eyeing the split pieces and finding shells and snails and–best of all, for kids!–crab poop!

Then it was time to wrestle the kites out of their bags, put them together, and try flying them.

Bah.

 We have a couple of lovely dragon kites, purchased from Sam’s, that do wonderfully when the wind is up.  Unfortunately, when the wind is not up, a great deal of running can get the kite up into the sky for a few moments, after which it takes an ungainly dive to the ground, narrowly missing other families out trying to fly their kites.

When we finally decided it was an exercise in futility, and frustrating to boot, the fair was winding down and it was time to go.  The dotter, hot and tired and thirsty, slumped and whined on the way back up the hill to where we had parked the car, and then fell fast asleep on the way home.

So.  I have a vivid sunburn, and the dotter still has remnants of her horsie face.  A good day.

Technorati: Spring, festivals

The OmegaFamily has a nightly routine.  We eat dinner (usually late, sigh), then, between the end of dinner and the beginning of the bedtime ritual, is OmegaDotter’s “eleven minutes”.  This is her time to play with daddy all by herself.

(”Eleven minutes” can be anywhere from an actual 11 minutes to an hour, depending on the night.  As for why it’s 11 minutes and not, say, 10 or 15–well, OmegaDad has an interesting quirk.  When he uses the microwave he refuses to use any number divisible by five or any of the standard time divisions.  Thus, you find him firing up the nuker for 31 seconds rather than 30, or 6 minutes and 2 seconds.  OmegaMom rolls her eyes at this.)

Sometimes the “eleven minutes” is spent playing with horsies, sometimes watching a video, sometimes hide-and-seek, sometimes a big Bad Guy roaring, “WHERE IS SHE?!?!” as she giggles and flees, or sits on his shoulders giggling as he whirls around “looking” for her.

Last night, for whatever reason, they decided they needed a tunnel.  OmegaDad was stumped for a minute or two, then had a light-bulb moment.  They marched out to the garage, and returned with OmegaDad carrying a bunch of flattened Home Depot boxes.

I deduced that the boxes were being made into a tunnel, and heard much hilarity for a few minutes (”My butt is stuck!” quoth OmegaDad), then the dotter dashed in, grabbed my arm, and started pulling me back into the living room, saying, “You have to see this!”

The boxes marched across the living room, flaps overlapping and taped here and there.  OmegaDotter vanished into one end, boxes bumped and jumped, and she emerged from the other end. 

Then she demanded I do it.

Erm.

I gave the boxes the hairy eyeball.  They didn’t look really large enough for me to do what the dotter was doing–scamper through on arms and legs.  And I feared I would end up saying, as the dad had said, “My butt is stuck!”

But I gamely squirmed in one end and proceeded to do a Marine-style crawl through the boxes, pulling myself by the elbows and wiggling my lower body as I progressed.

(Hallelujah, ladies and gents!  I have discovered the be-all and end-all to tummy exercises!  I’m sure if you did this ten or twenty times every night, within a few weeks you’d either have a hellacious bad back or else a svelt new figure…)

And then OmegaDad and I watched as the dotter chased the Wooly cat through the tunnel, and he, in turn, chased her.

And then it was time for bathroom and toothbrushing and bed.

I have been awarded the “Thinking Blogger” award again, by two different bloggers, an embarrasment of riches.

Blog Antagonist tagged me first.  She and I go back many years on various debate boards; there was a period where I was very angry with her for a variety of reasons, but time passes, people change, anger fades, and, besides, I enjoy reading her blog.  She does good work when she writes from the heart.

Rhonda, of Worth the Wait, also tagged me.  Rhonda is mother by adoption of two children from Russia, and is learning to deal with “instant motherhood”.

Once again, I’m supposed to tag five bloggers who make me think, typically to a specific post that struck my brain in a particular way…I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking.  Half my problem is that many of the ones I’d like to tag have already been tagged, and part of the meme is to tag someone who hasn’t been tagged yet.

So:

American Family makes me laugh and think about adoption and racial issues.

Cephalogenic plays with words all the time.  Since I’m a wordmeister, I love his stuff.

Wandering Visitor is a medical resident doing her rotations.  Right now, she’s doing dermatology; I don’t know what’s next.  She posts impressions of her work, thoughts about people in general–she’s pretty good.

EnviroWoman’s quest to live a plastic-free life for a year has been fascinating.  She makes you realize just how much plastic there is in our everyday world.  And she’s just plain funny, too.

Johnny has said good-bye; he wrote his farewell-cruel-world post this week.  I am crushed.  He always had an interesting outlook on things, pondered some of life’s imponderables, and threw in tasty-sounding recipes to boot.  So this one is kind of posthumous (postblogous?), but well-deserved.  Read him up quick, because he’s going to delete his blog in about a week-and-a-half.

Technorati: Thinking Blogger

A vision of western pioneer spirit.  Note the pink roping rope.  This was a birthday gift to the dotter from OmegaDad.  Apparently, unbeknownst to me, OmegaDad had been teaching the dotter how to “rope” various items.  Also, unbeknownst to me, brightly colored ropes are the In Thing at rodeos.

So, for her birthday, OmegaDad sashayed on down to our local feed store to try and find her a real rope for roping, a “kid’s” rope.  And he really wanted to get her a pink rope.  He ended up having to ask a friendly sales associate–who immediately led him to the hidden-away pink ropes, which the FSA informed OmegaDad were only purchased by men.  No women ever purchased the pink roping ropes.

I suspect a great number of those men were dads wishing to please small princesses. 

Technorati: Cowgirls, roping, dads

Thinking over the experiences that Chew had in her adoption (and disruption) in China, I have to say it’s like looking at your reflection in a fun-house mirror.  You know the kind–where a skinny person sees the reflection as squat and fat, and a larger person can get in front of another mirror and see themselves stretched long and thin, and everything is distorted from reality.  Her experience was so totally different than ours.

When we decided to adopt, I researched a whole slew of agencies, and kept coming up with CCAI.  There were no complaints.  When I asked people to email me offlist with their experiences, everyone was–without a single exception–extremely happy with that agency.  At the time, CCAI was the only agency that had a website that broke down the costs to adopt specifically, with a description of each step and an explanation of the costs.  In addition, they were one of the least expensive.  So we went with CCAI.

We got our dossier together…we sent it in…we got our DTC date(nowadays, it’s the log-in date which is more important)…and we waited.

And waited.

Fourteen months later, we got our referral.  Our dotter-to-be was from Guilin, in the Guangxi province (okay, the Guangxi Autonomous Region), and we were going to meet her in Nanning.

I read Chew’s story, and her view of Nanning and the process there is so diametrically opposed to our experience.

Her guide was horrible.  We had the absolutely most fabulous facilitator in China anyone could ever ask for…Michael was sweet and kind and efficient and funny.  We got off the plane in Nanning, and were greeted by Michael and the bus driver.  In the bus on the way to Nanning, Michael immediately started teaching us some basic phrases and nursery songs in Mandarin.  He had handouts for us–a list of each of the people in our group, plus their email addresses, their child-to-be’s name and birthdate; a handout with the pinyin words to the phrases and songs he was teaching us.  One of the couples were adopting a toddler, a girl about 2.5 years old.  She knew what was happening, and she was not happy about it.  Michael spent extra time with this family, helping them out, talking to the girl in Mandarin, working with the whole family to make sure everything worked out.

Her introduction to the civil affairs office in Nanning was odd–they went in the back door in an odd fashion; we were driven to the front, everyone took lots of pictures, we went into the lobby (it was in a hotel), went up to the third floor, and into the very same room she describes, the one with the dais and the flags.  That’s where we were introduced to our babies.  There may have been signs about no videotaping, but I can assure you that no-one saw them, or if they did, none of us paid attention to them!

As Theresa said in the comments, the Mildew Hotel that Chew describes is probably the Majestic.  I have to say, this is the one thing in her tale that is pretty much the same; the Majestic is not very majestic.  I recognized it immediately from her description.  It’s older and somewhat shabby–but it’s considered a four-star hotel by China because it has an outdoor swimming pool and some old tennis courts!

The experiences diverge so much from that point on that it’s hard for me to take in.  It seems like she encountered “the perfect storm”–a bad guide in Nanning, a baby who was sick, a lack of communication from her agency, a client in shock and dealing with culture shock as well.  Carosgram made some excellent points in her comment:

I have been wondering if after having just spent 4 months in a 3rd world country and bringing home her first baby, was she rested (physically, emotionally, spiritually) enough to take on another child? Was she so excited about the possibility to add to her family without another long wait that she didn’t really evaluate if she would be able to meet the needs of two children who were being taken from their homes and cultures to live with people who didn’t even speak their language?…I’m thinking that because she was so excited she didn’t even know how exhausted she was from the first adoption and didn’t feel she could pass up the opportunity to add to her family. I’m thinking that when she got to China she suffered from culture shock and then had to deal with the conflicting needs of her 1st child and the one she went their to adopt. I’m thinking she did not really have enough time to analyze what adding another child to the newly formed family would do to her 1st daughter. I’m thinking that she felt overwhelmed with the idea of trying to meet the needs of the new child and came to realize that she didn’t have the inner resources to do a good job for both children. I wish that her husband had been able to be there for her to give her the support she so badly needed during her journey.

The long and short of it is that I pretty much agree with Carosgram from start to finish.  I would add that it seems to me there was a bad fit between her and the Chinese culture, so very different from the hispanic culture of Guatemala which she had been soaked in for four months previously.

It is obviously a very good idea to pin down what your agency would do in similar circumstances.  Like the Boy Scout motto:  Be Prepared.

But please–do not think this is the norm in adopting from China.

One of these days I really have to do that “status” post.

In the meantime, I’m stuck thinking.  Because of this.  Start at the bottom and read your way up.

What I’m thinking is that I don’t know what to think.

What I’m thinking is that we had a wonderful agency to shepherd us along in China, and some fabulous facilitators working for that company in China.

What I’m thinking is that our dotter, while quiet and withdrawn, was obviously healthy.  And she started opening up very quickly while we were in China (though we now know she didn’t fully open up until we were home for–oh, six months…).

What I’m thinking is that I have no idea how we would have reacted if things had gone wrong at any step along the way.

What I’m thinking is that people who adopt should really bone up on the possible difficulties that can crop up in their path to adoption.

What I’m thinking is that people who adopt from institutions need to be really aware that the children can look totally and completely withdrawn from the world when you meet them.  And it can mean something serious, or it can mean just shell shock from the transfer and lack of stimulation at the orphanage.

What I’m thinking is that there’s a helluva lot more discussion of bad situations nowadays than there was when we were adopting from China.  People do talk about attachment issues, and delays, and disruptions, and problems with their agencies.  It’s not as closed and fearful a world as it used to be.  Not every list and not every post is all ladybugs and rainbows; and not every person who discusses the difficult areas of adoption is shouted down–which used to happen with regularity on the lists I was on.

Of course, I have “self-selected” the lists and blogs I read, so maybe things are the same as they always were…but before I left the Big List, these discussions were aired much more often than previously.

Anyway, there you have it.  I’m thinking.

I have no words to describe this.  (”Did the Devil Make Him Do It?”.  Seriously, folks.)

It goes nicely with this.  (Fred Phelps and his gang of true-love Christians think the people who were killed were killed because they “weren’t Christian enough”.)

Excuse me while I go roll my eyes right out of my head.

Folks, this was a sad, sick young man, filled with a persecution complex and violent fantasies, who decided to go out in a blaze-o-glory, and made sure he sent his “manifesto” to NBC before he did it so that he was guaranteed that blaze-o-glory.  We don’t need supernatural demons to explain why people do bad things.  We don’t need people telling grieving families that their kids and parents were killed because they didn’t do the right religious things in the oh-so-proper fashion.  For that matter, we don’t need people telling the grieving families that their kids and parents were killed “because God was teaching us a lesson which we don’t understand” or equally pompous idiocy.

I am also here to tell you that the administration at Virginia Tech did mighty damned good to get word out to the campus about the first shooting as soon as it did, and they acted blazingly fast getting the news out when they realized there was a guy out there with a gun randomly shooting people.

The second-guessing that’s going around just makes me want to scream.  Doctors should be mind-readers, and fortune-tellers, to boot, so that they know that a young man referred to the hospital for depression is actually going to blow up and shoot the world up a year from their visit.  College administrators should know–like some kind of all-seeing, all-knowing psychics–that the domestic violence case the university police dealt with in the early hours of the morning is going to explode into random shooting a few hours later.  Well, dayum, of course they should have known!  Everyone knows that domestic violence cases–rather than typically being done by upset spouses/lovers–are actually the first symptom of psychotic killers on a rampage.

Of course university police should be able to close off a 2700-acre campus as soon as they hear of a random shooter.  We all know that the people who are second guessing the university police wouldn’t be up in arms about the UP sending their small forces to close off the campus, rather than trying to deal with the gunman. 

Yah, right.  Small Mountain University is 730 acres, a quarter the size of VT.  The thought of having to cordon off SMU within minutes of hearing about a crazy shooter makes me howl with laughter.

Don’t get me started on the media.  First off, the sanctimoniousness of the various networks saying they would never have used the video footage or photos from the manifesto is laughable.  NBC’s ratings soared through the roof when they aired that stuff, and other networks’ ratings tanked.  Oh, there might have been a bit of debate at various networks about using the material if they had gotten it instead, but my cynicism makes me doubt that they would have stood fast against the lure of Ratings.

And some blogs I have read that talk about the presence of the media afterwards at VT make me just sick.  Intrusive, insensitive, obnoxious, omnipresent…

We’ve got people arguing that it makes a case for more gun control.  We’ve got people arguing that it makes a case for arming students on campus.  We’ve got people arguing that the tragedy is the result of immigration.  We’ve got people arguing that it’s the lack of community…the inability to involuntarily commit people…violent video games…the culture of violence in the U.S.  Pick a favorite hobby horse, and someone is arguing that that is the reason for this young man going berserk and being able to kill 33 people.

All I can say is that my heart goes out to the families of those 33 people dead–including the family of the killer.

Technorati: Virginia Tech

So, here I am, home again.  It was a great conference, I learned stuff, I ate way too much food, and had fun at the concert and at “casino night”.  Today, we spent the day traveling, got home around 6:30, and OmegaDad made us pancakes for dinner.  Yum.

In the meantime, let’s see:

I won a video camera (woohoo!) from ParentDish!

I did not win the Best of Blogs Adoption/Infertility category, but I did come in third.  The winner was StirrupQueens, who I was rooting for all along.  The runner up was OpenWindow, who writes about adoption.

Figlet gave up blogging because of a flame war in the comments on her blog.  Guys, this is so not cool.  I’ve had three bloggers vanish in the past year because of this–bloggers who I really liked.  Figlet, I’m sorry the eruption of flames on your blog drove you away.

More later…

Think back to those glorious days of yesteryear…and the songs you heard on the radio.  Songs like:

Sailing…

Ride Like the Wind…

Never Be the Same…

And, a year or two later, Arthur’s Song, from the movie Arthur.

Does any of this ring a bell?

How about the name “Christopher Cross”?

(Okay, you younger folks, just skip right over this post at this point, please.)

So here I am in Midwestern City on the River, doing my annual corporate software user conference trip.  This software company does their conferences up right–they feed you like crazy, cram the days with breakout sessions, have a casino night with prizes, and each year they have a fancy dinner the first official night of the conference.

This year’s was to be a picnic dinner at the Kewl Art Museum gardens, with a concert, but the weather didn’t play along.  Rain threatened, so they moved the dinner into the hotel, then bussed us all off to the concert.

Yes, Christopher Cross.

Hey.  It was much better than I ever expected!  He played all his number one hits (I had forgotten how many he had those few years), a lot of stuff from later albums, and then finished off with a medley of Beach Boys songs.  It was grand fun–and free!

It was interesting watching all us older folks at the concert.  Lots of grey-haired types.  People in their later 40s and 50s.  These days, people don’t flick their lighters to signify approval–they take pictures with their cell phones, and record the concert with their cell phones, and turn the phones around to show the light.  Life has changed.

But we all rocked out, and had a good time.

Later, gators.

This weekend has been like an episode of the Keystone Cops.

Let’s see:  Yesterday, I took the dotter off to the dance studio so she and I could partake in the “how to do your daughter’s hair properly for the recital” show-and-tell.  After much combing and twisting and wrapping (with a hair net) and spritzing with water and spritzing with hair spray, the dotter’s bangs were tamed and swept back.  We arrived home, she showed it off to daddy, and I was about to go get some milk…

When I realized I had left my purse at the studio.

Did I mention the studio is normally closed Saturday and Sunday, and the hair demo was a special event?

Did I mention I’m going out of town on Monday, leaving Small Mountain University Town at 8:00 a.m.?

We spent hours trying to track down one of the teachers or the owner; all of the phone numbers we could locate that were, say, Esther Wallace, were for different Esther Wallaces.  In desperation, I left an email to the MySpace address, and called and left a message on the phone at the studio, hoping against hope that someone would call in & get the message.

Then there was this morning’s desperate attempt to find TurboTax Deluxe (not Premier, and not Schedule C, and not Basic).  OmegaDad couldn’t find it at Sam’s, and called me from there to tell me so.  Anyone who is inclined to lecture me about waiting until the last minute can rest assured that I’ve already gotten that lecture from OD.

So we decided to buy it from the website.

I happily motored along, clicking here and there, until I went to check out.  At which point, I remembered, I didn’t have my purse, and thus didn’t have my Visa card.

I call OmegaDad.  I get his Visa number, and the 3-digit thingie (we think it’s the right one, but it’s been worn off the card).  I hang up.  I start filling in the details, and realize I forgot to ask for the expiration date.  I call OmegaDad back.  The phone rings immediately over to his voice mail.

I try many times.  Each time, it goes to his voice mail.

An hour later, he calls back.  I get the expiration date.  He hangs up.  I fill in the details.  It gets rejected (that 3-digit thingie).

He calls back in a few.  I tell him what happened.  He gives me a different Visa number.  It works.  I download the program and start working on the taxes, grabbing my file of documents.

I try downloading my W2 from the electronic service SMU uses.  It claims I’m not there.

Gasp!

Luckily, I had a printout of my final paycheck of 2006.

Then, I try locating OmegaDad’s W2.  I know we have it.  Somewhere.  Hours later, while I’m still searching for OmegaDad’s W2, the phone rings.

Much to my delight, it’s Esther from the dance studio.  I drive off to the dance studio, purseless and license-less, vewy, vewy cawfully.  Please don’t arrest me, Mr. Police Officer!

I get back home & start the program.  I can get my W2 from the electronic service quite nicely through TurboTax.  I ask myself, if it works this way, why didn’t it work the other way?? 

Since that worked so nicely, we try getting OmegaDad’s the same way.

He works for the feds.  It has to go through his personal finance page login.  He doesn’t know what it is.  The page says he can use his normal fed login.  Woohoo!  He logs in.  The page says it needs to synchronize his accounts so that from now on he can use his normal fed login to get in.  Soooo…he needs his personal finance page login.  ARGH!

Luckily, I have found the last paystub from 2006 for him, too.

Oy.

So.  I am outta here tomorrow early a.m.  We don’t have OmegaDad’s W2.  If the figures from his last paystub are correct, we get a nice refund.  We have to wait because we haven’t the vaguest idea if the figures are correct.  We’re filing an extension.

ARGH.  I hate taxes. 

Technorati: taxes, Keystone Cops

Having garnered a few new readers, I am about to promptly disillusion them and chase them away by being an unsympathetic hardass.

I wrote my first post on this issue because I remember–vividly–the angst and ambivalence with which I first approached the adoption process.

I understand it.  I think it’s human.  I think it comes from a lot of hurt and confusion.

But here the OmegaFamily is, seven years down the line from when we first dipped our toes into adoption waters, and I am here to tell you:

The angst…the ambivalence…the hurt…the confusion?

All gone.

Long since.

Because, as Figlet says, my very first choice–the one driving the quest all along–was to be a parent.

Very early on, between our first visit to our local agency and our decision to adopt from China, a light bulb went off over my head (just like in all the comic strips!):  it’s not about “getting pregnant”–it’s about “being a parent”.  “Being pregnant” lasts nine months (if you’ve got a smooth pregnancy).  “Being a parent”…well, it lasts a lifetime.

Once you realize that, the drive to find the latest and greatest infertility treatment goes *poof*.  The ambivalence about adoption goes *poof*.

So, while I understand all the heartache that comes before deciding on adoption, I’m afraid my attitude is “Get over it.  Move on.  Take time off if you need to to work your way through it, but don’t wallow.”

At this point in time, I am much more concerned about unethical treatment of potential birthmothers, corruption in international adoption, potential adoptive parents who lie through their teeth about wanting an open adoption just so they can get their hands on a baby, adoption agencies that scam teenagers into relinquishing their children–stuff like that.

I don’t know of a way to say this gently, so here goes:  It doesn’t matter if some freakazoid woman tries to scam you when you’re trying to adopt.  Oh, it hurts like heck, yes, I’ll grant that.  But it has no bearing on the adoption process itself.  It’s sort of like saying, “Don’t buy insurance, because insurance companies are all scammers–I know because I had car insurance from the Joe Blow Insurance Agency, and when my car was totaled, they never paid up.”  That’s a commentary on the particular insurance company–and the freakazoid woman–not on the insurance industry itself–or the adoption process itself.

Similarly, if a potential birthmother decides to parent, that’s her choice and her right, and has no bearing on the adoption process itself.

And if a birthmother revokes her consent within the time frame allowed, once again, it’s her choice and her right, and has no bearing on the adoption process itself.

And if you’re in an international program, and that program closes before your adoption goes through–it’s that country’s choice (or our country’s choice), and has no bearing on the adoption process itself.

Any of these occurrences will hurt, yes.  But none of these people or programs are there for your benefit alone.

The home study and all the associated paperwork and police screening and child abuse screening and the classes on adoption and the reading assignments aren’t there to award potential adoptive parents the prize of an adopted child.  It’s no-one’s right to adopt.  Hard for people to accept, but there it is:  The process isn’t there for you.  It’s there for the children.

And that’s as it should be.

Technorati: Adoption (again!), adoption issues (again!), infertility (again!)

Dear OmegaMom:  I have a blog and want to increase traffic to my site.  What should I do?  Signed, Sorta Lonely

Dear Sorta Lonely:  The best possible thing you could do is write a post about a very contentious issue related to two bloggers with lots of traffic.  If you’re very lucky, you’ll see your hits turbo-charged, rocketing from 60 per day to more than 200!  You may even gain new readers!  Signed, OmegaMom

Har.

Ahem.  My previous post seems to have lured a bunch of folks over, and gotten a certain amount of approval from some people.  (OmegaMom waves “Hi!” to all the visitors.)

There were a lot of things left out from the prior post.

For instance, I have firmly come down on the side of “homestudies are really, really good, and if I were Queen Of The World, every single person who had a chance to get pregnant or impregnate someone would have to go through a homestudy.”  (Let’s just set aside the fact that I’m not Queen of The World–what a shame!, and the incredible violation of civil liberties that I am contemplating there.)

For another:  I firmly believe that when someone gives you custody of a child–whether directly by a birthmother, or via an agency or orphanage–you’ve been given a precious trust.  Anyone who is in charge of deciding these things needs to examine the people who come along wanting to adopt, to be sure that they’re not really seeing it as a substitute for a “real” baby.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again:  If I were forced to relinquish my darlin’ dotter, you can be damned sure I’d want whoever was in line to adopt her had been examined with a bloody microscope.

The adoption process is not meant as a torture chamber.  It’s not aimed at making people feel unworthy from the very start.  It’s a simple attempt to try to ensure that the people who do adopt are, in general, Nice People.  It’s not about the potential adoptive parents, see–it’s about ensuring a relatively good home life for any child who is going to be adopted.

Thirdly:  There are people who adopt who just plain shouldn’t.  The process isn’t perfect.  There are overworked or just incompetent social workers.  There are harried, desperate birthmothers.  There are really sickening people who deliberately hide the facts and make up a nice looking facade so they can adopt a child to do…things…to him or her (read up on the case of Masha Allen).

In a perfect world, everyone who wanted a child could have one biologically, and everyone who had a child would be in a position to raise him/her and want to raise him/her.  But it’s not a perfect world, and there are children who need homes. 

Singing Bird posted an interesting comment to my last post; she suggested we turn the process on its head, think of someone who couldn’t adopt “having to settle” for IVF.  How odd many people would think that!  I think she means it as an intellectual exercise for people who consider adoption “settling”…

At one time, I did consider adoption “settling”.  But I moved on, and learned, and became committed to the idea, and met my lovely dotter who is our pride and joy.  Having never had a biological child, I can’t objectively rebut the “you can’t love an adopted child as much as a biological child” idea.  But I love her with all my heart, would run in front of a speeding car to knock her out of the way, and have lovingly dealt with puke and poop and pee and snot and other ew-icky bodily fluids without batting an eyelash.  Subjectively, the idea of loving a child any more than this is kind of scary, because my heart is already full to bursting as it is.

So.  Anyway.  Go congratulate Singing Bird on getting her Travel Approval, and welcome Johnny and family back home.

Technorati: Adoption, adoption issues, infertility

There’s been this kerfuffle in the adoption blog world, related to Julie’s post and the responses to it.  We had ChicagoMama blowing up…Figlet chiming in with “it’s not about you“…AmFam talking about the difference between loving and raising biological and adopted children…Lorrie chiming in with some pretty laidback commentary…then Julie posted some clarifications…and ChicagoMama posted some more thoughts, to which I posted a rather long comment…to which ChicagoMama responded.

A lot of drama.

In a nutshell:  Julie is thinking about adopting.  She’s still recuperating from a boatload of IVFs and IF treatment.  She’s still thinking about donor egg or surrogacy.  She’s got a lot of stuff to think about.  She felt that there was something wrong with her that she wasn’t feeling “joyful” or “joyous” about the prospect of adopting.  Somewhere in there, she tossed in the word “settling”, which upset a bunch of adopters.  Then the comments came along, and there were people telling stories of Adoptions Gone Bad, some folks saying they wondered if you could love an adopted child as much as a biological child, some folks saying they adopted joyously right from the start, some folks saying they, too, were ambivalent at first but that the ambivalence passed.

Of course, the “can you love an adopted child as much as you’d love a biological child” trope really got under the skin of many adopters, too.

I sort of sat on the sidelines, reading and commenting here and there.  I didn’t get upset at Julie’s post, because…well, that was me six years ago.  I didn’t get too upset at some of the comments because…well, I’ve been living, breathing, thinking adoption to death since we started the process.  I have, as it were, a Ph.D. in adoption issues, as do many of my more favorite reads in Blogistan (ChicagoMama, Figlet, AmFam, Mrs. Figby, MortimersMom).  We’re all drenched in research into the ins and outs of adoption, transracial families, attachment issues, it’s-for-the-children-not-for-you, blah-de-blah-de-blah.  But if you had asked me six years ago, while I was still in the throes of IF “treatment”…I really wouldn’t have understood those things.  Adoption wasn’t joyous to me.  I was actively resisting it, and feeling very whiny, tantrummy, and miserable in general about my reproductive facilities (or lack thereof), my femininity, my role as a woman in human society.

It hurt.  Damn, but it hurt.  And I had been in that hurt for so many years that it had become a way of life.

Bitter, angry, jealous, hostile–that was me.

Of course it’s not a good outlook on the world.  But even as you know you’re being self-absorbed to the max, you can’t break out of it.

Until somehow, somewhere, somewhen there’s an emotional straw that breaks the camel’s back.  Something that makes you say:  Stop.  I’ve had it.  I can’t take this any more.

Some people never reach that point–they stay mired in the misery, year after year after year, trying each new variation on infertility “treatments”, throwing good money after bad, trapped.

Some people reach that point early on–they do a round of Clomid or two, say “To hell with it!” and either decide to just live life without children or move on to adoption.

Some people move on to adoption even while they’re still trapped in the misery.

And when you start thinking about adoption, you realize that now, in addition to all the poking and prodding you’ve had medically, you’re going to be poked and prodded psychologically.  Measured.  Judged.  But out there in the world there are shitloads of people who pop out babies left and right, and who don’t realize what a gift they’ve been given.  So many of them beat them.  So many of them neglect them.  And then there are the ones who sell them for a hit of whatever the latest drug is.  None of them are being measured, or judged, until it’s too late.

So, yeah, you get angry and bitter about that, too.

Look.  It’s not pretty, but it’s human. 

And during the process…somewhere along the line, where you started thinking about adoption as a “maybe”…suddenly, it becomes a hopeful “maybe”.  A little-itty-bitty-sliver-of-joy type ”maybe”.

And if you’re like me, you’ll start researching the hell out of stuff, and discover that there are real people on the other side of the equation, and a real little person whose life is being shifted around without its control.

Some people never do that.  They just decide to adopt, and wham bam thankyew ma’am end up with a child, get on with life, and get flummoxed when the child has issues that they have to deal with.  Or they ignore the issues.  Or don’t even realize there are issues.

Some people don’t experience the joy.  They keep mourning that biological tie.  These people are the ones who should be kept out of adopting–but it doesn’t always happen.  In general, though, folks who feel like that never make the step into adoption, which is good:  if you feel like you can’t love an adopted child like a biological child, then you damn well shouldn’t be adopting.

Some people have a moment of clarity when suddenly that little-itty-bitty-sliver-of-joy turns into a deluge, an omigod-they’re-giving-me-a-baby! joy.  I remember that time so well…it was such a blessed relief to be healing.

One of my earliest posts on this blog–my second, in fact–was about this transition from fear, misery, pain, into joy; it was prompted by one of Karen’s (Naked Ovary) posts at that time.  At the time, she had not yet moved into the joy–she was still unsure, still pained by other people’s babies, still in the grips of that IF misery.  But her viewpoint totally changed as she got closer and closer to meeting her baby…and afterwards, she was as thrilled and absorbed as any new mother could possibly be. 

The point is that there are people who start the adoption process with fear, trepidation, irritation with the process itself.  Some of those people will pass through that stage, and move on, learn a great deal about adoption, and look back wondering what the big deal was about.  Anyone who is thinking out loud about it the way that Julie is, as seriously and deeply as Julie is, is one of those people who, if they proceed onto adoption, will be that type of person.  And if Julie decides, after thinking about it seriously and deeply, that adoption isn’t for them, that’s a Good Thing, too.

It’s the thinking that’s good.  It’s certainly much better than just gaily deciding one day, “Oh, well, I guess we’ll ‘just adopt’!”, glossing over the personal emotional issues related to the transition from self-absorbed IF “treatment” to adopting parent, and ignoring all the possible ramifications.

Technorati: adoption, adoption issues, thinking about adoption

I was originally planning to do a post all about people to whom “status” is paramount.  I was going to be witty…cutting…pithy…

The best laid plans.

Did you know that OmegaMom, that paragon of rational thought, that believer in “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again”, lover of practicality, is, in reality, a sentimental marshmallow?

Yes, it is true.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, today, at the dotter’s ballet class, we were given schedules for recital stuff.  (We’re talking five meetings/rehearsals within one week in May!)  Teachers were scurrying around getting measurements and weights for the kids.  The jazz/ballet company (girls around 12 who had to audition for the company) was rehearsing in the big studio.  Miss Elaine had the primary/kindergarten class scuttle into the big studio and practice their routine right after the jazz/ballet company did their big production.

And I was just a mess.

It took everything I have to not dab at my eyes and start sniffling.

I was on the verge of sobbing.

This recital is designed to yank at heartstrings in multiple ways.  First off, it has a patriotic theme.  The p/k girls are doing their routine to a slow version of “My Country Tis Of Thee”.  The jazz dancers are dancing to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America”–a tear-jerker if there ever was one.  A whole slew of other patriotic songs follows.  And then there’s the fact that they’re just so damned cute.  And it’s the dotter’s first recital.

(The p/k girls are adorably uncoordinated.  I fully expect them to be turning in opposite directions, some to be stepping forward when they’re supposed to be stepping back, and a few collisions.)

If I’m like this for a silly class, just because the dotter is well on her way to her first recital, what on earth am I going to be like for the Real Thing??

Mush, I tell ya.  Mush.

I’ll do “status” tomorrow.

Technorati: Ballet, recital, sentimentality

A few years after I moved away from the Bay Area to join Not-Yet-Mr.-OmegaMom, we traveled back there to visit some relatives.  I took him in to the city to do the usual touron things.  As we were walking through downtown San Francisco, we encountered a quartet singing opera, a violinist, and some people playing folk music.

It reminded me of one of the things I absolutely loved about living in/near a city:  the nonchalant expectation that one would run across buskers almost every day during one’s normal, everyday routine.  Climbing out of the BART station, I was greeted by the sounds of the saxophone; walking down the streets, I would hear a trio of guitarists who I could see if I peered down the sidestreet; there would be multiple groups of musicians jamming in the various parks.  It wasn’t a bonus of being in San Francisco–the same delightful musical free-for-all existed in Chicago, as well.

I miss it.  Oh, we have music here in Small Mountain University Town, but it’s not the same.  The type of musical encounter one has in the city is serendipitous–there’s no schedule to it, no need to put it into one’s calendar and remember it.

My mom remembers an instance, during a visit to Vienna, when she climbed out of a subway station into the midst of a large group of people singing the Carmina Burana.

The Washington Post, prompted by–curiosity?–ennui?–sheer deviltry?–enlisted the famed violinist Joshua Bell in a busking experiment, seeking to determine if “beauty can transcend”.  Bell was assigned a DC Metro station to settle in and play his violin during the morning rush hour.  Hidden cameras took video; reporters cornered commuters outside the station to take names and contact info for a “commuter study”.  Bell made $32 in the 45 minutes he was playing; tickets to Bell’s performances on stage regularly command $100 and up.

The Post claims that most of the commuters didn’t even look, yet when I watch the videos, it seems to me that a majority of people actually glanced over at Bell.

In Chicago and San Francisco, when I encountered these serendipitous musical moments, I was often in transit–on my way to work (and usually about to be late), on my way to a date with friends, or on my way home and just dog-tired.  I preferred my buskers lurking on station platforms during the evening rush hour, rather than the upper levels or the connecting passageways or by the exit doors; though the music was constantly interrupted by trains arriving and departing, I could enjoy it in a more relaxed manner without a constant underlying nagging feeling that I Should Be Somewhere Else!

A few of the commuters knew that they were listening to an excellent violinist; one of them knew who he was.  But the majority hustled on by, some flinging some money into his violin case in passing.

Perhaps if the Post had positioned him elsewhere…perhaps if it had been the evening crowd, rather than the morning crowd…there would have been a different response.  I’d like to think that I’d recognize the quality of the instrument and the playing if I had been there–but, even so, the pressure of modern life, of needing to “be there on time”, would have intruded and had an impact on my response.

But, no matter what the response was in reality, the tale makes me wistful for those days of serendipitous music providing a sound track for my city life.

(FYI:  “Brainwashing my child” is featured at the Carnival of Family Life at Lil’ Duck Duck, along with many other fun and touching blog posts.  Wander on over and check them out!)

Technorati: Joshua Bell, busking, music, city life

Yesterday, while I was off ferrying OmegaDotter to a birthday party–the very first birthday party she’s been to where the parent of the b-day girl told me, “Go.  She’s fine.  Go and have fun!”–OmegaDad was having a terrible time locating makings for an Easter basket.  He confided in me today that it was hard finding anything that wasn’t “party pack” size.

So, while I was worrying about the dotter–would she be okay there by herself?  Would it be okay that she only knew the birthday girl?  Would she drop the bowling ball on her foot?–OmegaDad was building the basket.  (You’ll be happy to know that the dotter did just fine, loved the kiddie bowling, ate pizza, cake, and soda pop, played games, and had a grand old time.)

And last night, while the girlchild and I slept, he made pawprints out of flour.

So after the basket was opened and shared, the dotter leaned up against me in the office and said, “That Easter Bunny sure is messy!  Why would he be messy like that?”  Then she thought a moment or two, and said, “He must have put some flour on his feet.  It looks like flour.”

Earlier, while she was digging through the basket, I turned away into the kitchen to grab some zippies for the spillage of jelly beans, malted milk balls, and chocolate eggs, thinking to myself, “One of these years, she’s going to wonder why the Easter Bunny only brings baskets for kids…”

When I returned to the living room, zippies in hand, she asked, “Daddy?  Why does the Easter Bunny only bring baskets to children?”

Um.  Aside from the eerie reading-my-mind trick, it looks like we have only a year or two more before the dotter corners us and asks us if we’re the Easter Bunny.  Much too sharp.

We still have eggs to color, and then…

Well.  It’s my birthday.

Woohoo!  Another year under my belt.

Unexpectedly, OmegaGranny emailed me yesterday to say that Great Grandma, who recently purchased her a fancy digicam because she has been in the mood to share her money while she’s alive so she can see how everyone enjoys it, has kept asking her what I want.  Mom gave me a price range of $500-$1000, and said, “What do you want?”

Whoa.  So I thought.  And today, I get to buy myself another laptop, a wireless router, and a wireless card, and we’ll be able to set up a home network, with the wireless card going into our old, old computer, which goes into the dotter’s room.  Eeek!  A computer for the dotter!  OMG.  I swoon, thinking of things like hideous internet predators and accidental clicks on links to porn pages. Looks like I’ll be figuring out how to limit her to places like Nikolodeon or Disney or Barbie. 

Technorati: Easter, birthday

If OmegaDad and I had actually been able to start a second adoption from China, we would probably have been DTC in, oh, February 2006 or March 2006. That was shortly after the referral train slammed on the brakes, and the wait to referral was suddenly stretching from a breezy 7 months to, at that time, 12 months.

No one could ever have imagined a time when it looked like it was going to take three years from LID (log-in date) to referral. But right now, with the latest batch of referrals covering a grand total of two days, people who were LID in February or March of 2006 are now looking at a referral in February or March of 2008, and people logged in since then are looking at waits stretching out even longer.

Of course, the nature of international adoption being what it is, that could change in an instant.

I am not here to tell those folks who were hoping to get a referral this time, only to be told “Nope, sorry,” anything about how the wait vanishes once you have your referral in hand.

I’m not going to talk about “In His own sweet time,” or “This was meant to be,” or “This just means your destined child isn’t ready for you yet,” or “Maybe this is God’s way of telling you to do x, y, or z instead.”

Because I know just how horribly infuriating all of those are.

I especially know how frustrating and infuriating it is to be venting about it and have well-meaning friends say this kind of thing in response. They mean well, but it’s dismissive and condescending.

The right response is: “I’m sorry. The wait sucks. I’m sorry it’s taking so long. You must be feeling so upset and frustrated and worried right now. I’m here to listen.”

---

On to other adoption stuff…You may think that sentiments like “you never know what you’re going to get when you adopt,” or “Often, these kids are physically ill or weak, or mentally unwell,” or “Even if a kid is perfectly normal, somehow adopted kids tend to just not turn out ‘right.’” are all things of the past.

Aren’t we beyond that? Doesn’t everyone have experience with at least a few adopted kids who grow up to be happy, successful adults who just happen to have been adopted? And doesn’t everyone have at least the sense to realize that making sweeping generalizations about any group of people is pretty silly, because it doesn’t take long to find just one exception…at which point, the sweeping generalization is rendered moot?

Ah, well. I am here to tell all of my readers that there are people who will string all three of those sentences together, plus a few more, and then defend it when called. And add on the ever-lovely, “You can’t love an adopted child like a biological child”! (For those who think I’m pretty blase about whatsername, Alice Walker’s daughter, saying just about the same thing, I have to say that she was careful to make it “I couldn’t love an adopted child like a biological child.” The one is an admission of a deficiency within oneself. The other is, as I said, a sweeping generalization about the entire human race.)

Be prepared!

(And, no, I’m not going to link to it. I’ve already said my say there, and I just want to vent here.)

---

Okay, a quick clarification: I am not talking about Julie’s post. I am talking about a post at ParentDish, and actually, it’s not the post I’m talking about, but the very first comment responding to the post.About Julie’s post. Hmm. While I don’t like the “settling” comment (really!), I have to ask: Am I alone in having started off very ambivalent about adoption? I’m so very glad that the local adoption agency made us wait until we had been married three years, because (a) it moved us in the direction of adopting from China (because the Chinese didn’t care how long we had been married), and (b) that extra year between that sentence from the local agency and the official start of our adoption process was needed by *ME*, so I could take the time to grieve my dream-baby, take a year off from testing and tryouts and shooting up meds, and shift my dreams in another direction, towards my darling dotter.

I do think Julie needs to wait, to process some of those feelings. Finish off the IVFs, close off that process, say, “That’s done. Time to heal. Time to do other stuff for a while.” Other stuff being…just live life. Enjoy her son. Then, at the end of that time, then is the time to examine adoption again.

Something for people to remember: “Second choice” doesn’t mean “second best”. Our dotter was our “second choice”. She is in no way “second best”.

Technorati: Adoption, The Wait, prejudice

This evening the dotter was busy building a house/restaurant/castle in the living room.  She insisted I lie down on the futon and be served by “Melissa”.  Melissa (the dotter) is possibly the owner of the establishment; I was told she was “kind of a waitress, but also kind of a doctor.”  After which, the dotter gave a very French style of shrug.  I have no idea where this shrug has come from, but she’s using it fairly often these days, and it lends a certain je ne sais quoi to our interactions.

OmegaDad came over to peer at us in curiosity, and the dotter informed me that he was “The Officer of the Bakery”.  Then she told OmegaDad that I was “the staying customer”.  I had to stay there forever, she told me, and when I objected, she said, “Oh, you can take my car!”

But this morning, in the car, was even better.  There was some grand flight of imagination that made me laugh, that I thought I should share with people.  The problem is:  I don’t remember it.  Oh, I remember noting it in my head, and saying to myself, “I need to remember this one!”  But less than 12 hours later, it’s a blank.

Some people are veritable recording devices when it comes to their kids’ utterances.  I am in awe.  I tend to have episodes like the above all the time, and it frustrates me.  The dotter is a font of cuteness, strange collections of pseudo-stream-of-consciousness all stitched together by her imagination.  I would like to share it with people.

I read blogs where the parental units recite, word-for-word, utterly cute things their kids said that day, and I seethe with envy.

My memory is a patchwork, a thing of lace and tatters.  Half of the reason for this blog is so that I can lay out this piece of the lacery, and that piece–kind of like those photographs of what archeologists do with old papyrus documents when they’re piecing them together.

I find myself grasping at the memories, and putting them down on paper (or computer) whenever I can, because they flit out of my head so quickly.  I would like to say that this is a recent development, an outgrowth of my dalliance with menopause, but, alas, it is not so; the faulty memory is a constant in my life.

My Unka Bill has a phenomenal memory; at the age of 70-something, he can chit-chat with my mother and recite specific things that people did or said when they were two and four.  My husband has an interesting take on memory abilities:  he can remember complete lyrics to obscure ’60s rock-and-roll songs and entire scenes from movies (though he can’t remember, for instance, that the dotter was to visit Miss Louise, our OT, yesterday).

We went to China only four years ago to meet the dotter and bring her home.  An amazingly emotional journey.  Something that you would think would live on in one’s memory for years, indelible, movie-like in its clarity.  My memories?  A few snapshots, a vignette or two.  I cannot remember holding OmegaDotter for the first time–so I rely on the photos from the trip, and I feel dreadfully guilty about this.

Anyway, I thought the “Officer of the Bakery” was cute enough to put down on paper, so when the dotter is 25, I can open up this blog entry and remember it.

Technorati: Memory

That’s me.  Yup.  Because I’m an atheist.  (Well, okay, agnostic, but in many people’s minds, it’s all the same.)

Tsk, tsk.

Ah, well, at least this person didn’t pull out the usual chestnut about atheists being immoral, and how all morals are the result of religion.

I know I run the risk of running off bunches of my readers with this, but statements like the above just bother the heck out of me, and they got trotted out on a regular basis.  A writer on a group blog wrote about his lack of religion, and how he is teaching his kids that religion isn’t needed to live a moral, just life, and the very first comment that pops up says that all the atheists this person has met are “unhappy, cynical people”, and that religion is all about luuuuuuve.

And when some other atheist, agnostic, or (gasp!) liberalized Christian types said that, to them, religion reeks of justifying hatred, this same person comes on and tut-tuts, saying that this just exemplifies the ignorance about religion in the U.S. these days.

Let me just say to that:

• The Crusades
• Northern versus Southern Ireland
• Palestinians versus Jews in Israel
• Jihadists whose dream is to fly an airplane into a tower filled with unknowing businesspeople who are just living their daily lives.
• Fred Phelps and his ilk
• Kicking a city manager of 17 years out of his job because he’s going to have a sex-change operation
• Hitler (what?  You think Hitler was an atheist?  No, he was a Christian.)

Need I go on?  Ah, sure, there are plenty of atheists who have tolerated or promoted or inflicted hideous miseries upon their fellow man en masse, and I know it will be brought up to justify how good religious people are and how narsty atheists are.

My point is:  we’re all human beings.  And human beings are a wild and wooly bunch, subject to the same passions and inclinations towards unpleasantness, regardless of religious belief or lack thereof.

I personally feel that a great deal of the inequities and injustices that man has inflicted upon his fellow human being are historically justified on religious grounds.  Don’t talk to me about being “ignorant” of religion; I am merely looking at the evidence.

And when someone trots out the “Jesus says he is the way, truth, and light” as a counter-argument to someone talking about how all religions seem the same to him, what on earth can one say?  How about, “Well, Mohammed said the same thing.  So, I am sure, did Zoroaster.”  Why should I believe the one over the others?  They all seem equally improbable to me, and equally worthy, or unworthy of my respect and belief.

As I have said before, I am an agnostic, not an atheist.  I don’t know.  I don’t claim to know.  I have my own woo-wooistic set of feelings and beliefs about an inherent harmony in the universe…but I’m not going to go out and kill my fellow human beings if they don’t believe in the same Kozmik All.  And I sure as heck know that my beliefs are just that–beliefs, totally unbacked by any evidence, totally unscientific, and I have absolutely no right to tell anyone else that My Way Is The Right Way.

Grumble, grumble, grumble…

(And, to add to my grumblishness, the “B” on my keyboard is being recalcitrant and causing me no end of misery.)

Technorati: Religion

Today was the last ice skating lesson of the season.  The rink closes at the end of April for two months for its annual refurbishing (melt and drain all the ice, resurface the concrete under the ice, paint the place, etc.).  OmegaDotter and her BFF, K., got their certificates of completion and a badge, leaving K’s mom and me to consider what to do with the badges…a kind of motherly befuddlement.

Prior to the class, OmegaDotter and I skated, waiting for K. to show up.  (I had forgotten my own skates, and foolishly rented a pair.  I felt like I had two concrete blocks on my feet, and had no “feel” for where the blades were, or the inner and outer edges.  This indicates to me that we desperately need to buy an actual pair of skates for the dotter next year, gambling with the question of how much her feet will grow, and when.)

Out on the ice was a girl who looked to be nine or 10 years old.  She obviously was well on her way in figure skating–she was doing some basic jumps and practicing spins and skating backwards on the left foot inside edge, stuff like that.  I pointed her out to the dotter.

Oh, dear.

The dotter began stalking this girl!

And when K. arrived, in between races and chasing each other around the rink, the two of them stalked her!

It was like an itty-bitty fan club.  A two-member club made up of five-year-olds.

They cornered her a few times.  They’d skate up to her when she was stopped and pepper her with questions.  Luckily, she seemed like a nice girl, and I was later informed that she showed them how she could do some jumps, and some of the spins.

She’d go off and skate some more, and then the girls would corner her again.

At one point, not only did they corner her, they cornered her and her coach–a long, leggy drink of water who is incredibly graceful and makes me sigh wistfully whenever I watch her skate.

I didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled by their paparazzi-like behavior; in the end, it was a mixture of both.  Ah, to be a five-year-old, unfettered by social convention…

“Best of Blogs 2006″ is what it means here, so git yer minds out of the gutter, gals.

Yes, my nomination from the lovely Miss Cellania made its way through, and I am now a finalist for a BOB Award this year.

Voting for the Best Adoption/Infertility Blog goes from now through April 13.

(I still think Stirrup Queens should win.)

Miss C. is up for “Funniest Blog“, so go vote for her, too, while you’re at it!

Technorati: Best of Blogs awards

Today, OmegaMom went to a scary place that she had never entered before.

It had large, echoing hallways filled with strange people.  Slashes of vivid colors.  Odd smells.  Strange sounds.

She felt a frisson of fear as she opened the large doorway and walked in…

…to the local elementary school’s “Register your kindergarten open house”.

AIYEEEEEE!

No!

It’s not possible!  OmegaDotter is not that old yet!  No, no, NO!

But, yes, she is.  And the school seemed just wonderful.

I reserve my right to be dubious in the future, but the kindergarten teachers were nice, the “activity center” lady was enthusiastic, the hallways were bright and cheery and covered with colorful artwork, it sounds like fun…

OmegaDotter was thrilled.  She loved it.  She kept asking me, on the drive to ballet class, just when “autumn” was, and why was it going to take so long?

I will admit, when I realized that we were actually there, actually getting the packet to register her for (::gasp!::) kindergarten, that this was a Real Live School that we were looking at, my heart skipped a beat or two.

Man, how is this possible?  It’s way too soon!

Technorati: Kindergarten

Angelina Jolie to adopt yet again?!  So soon?!

Okay.  I tried, but I can’t restrain myself.

Look, I love adoption.  It brought us our darlin’ girl who is a constant source of amazement and amusement.

But…but…

Oh, man.  Give those babies a chance to settle in, learn their new homes and families, let the familial orbits have a chance to stabilize.  Please. 

Even if we could toss money around like so much confetti and run hither and yon collecting whatever babies and children caught our fancy whenever we felt like it…

We wouldn’t.

We’d let whatever child we adopted take the time to find a fit, to realize that this is home, give our child the time to bond and attach.  So many things I’ve read from so many places on attachment emphasize that it takes as long as a child has been in an institution to form a real, permanent attachment.

I hope it’s just a rumor.

Technorati: Angelina Jolie, adoption, attachment

Miss Cellania asked about “weird people” I have known.  Alas, my mind immediately went blank.  All I could think about, rather than people, were the various odd living spaces I’ve either considered or lived in.

Shortly before I moved out of Chicago, I was wisting for the country life.  I was also wisting for a cheaper rental (though, looking back, I could slap myself upside the haid, because I had a lovely one-bedroom rental with built-in bookcases flanking a defunct fireplace, a balcony, hardwood floors, and lots of closet space for the amazing price of $365 per month, all in a place that was walking distance from the beach and lots of nice restaurants).

Anyway, yearning for a different place to live, I scoured the classifieds in the Chicago Reader week in and week out.  Most were retreads of what I was in–three flats, small brick apartment buildings, some swanky stuff on or near the Magnificent Mile.

But one day, I read an ad that piqued my curiosity.

They were renting a silo.  A real live, honest-to-goodness, grain silo.  Four floors, one room per floor, hardwood floors.

They also had a refurbished barn for rent.

It was way the hell and gone north of the city, but it sounded just too cool for words, so I called the owner up and set up an appointment to view the silo.

It looked great from the outside, but once you were in it, it was quite the letdown.  I had had visions of a spiraling staircase on the inside of the walls, circling up the interior, with each room using the most of the space (like this).  Alas, the guy who had done the work was…um…lacking in imagination.  Or dumb.  Or just plain weird.  Y’see, he had built this weird boxlike structure down the middle of the silo with the stairs there.  It ate up all the space.  What was left was, oh, four feet of space surrounding the stairwell.  And the stairwell was no great shakes, either; it was rickety and poorly built and looked like the slightest bit of wind coming through the cracks in the silo would have it all come tumbling down.

My heart was broken and I abandoned my silo dreams.

Years later, when I went back to college for the final time in the Bay Area, I knew I needed an inexpensive place to live.  So, once again, I found myself scouring the rental ads.  Interestingly enough, in the East Bay, there were lots of little cottages to rent–inexpensively, too.  But each time I called, the ad had been out for a day already, and the place was rented (no doubt to other penniless, hungry students).

One day, I found an ad the day it was posted.  I called the guy up.  I went to take a look.

And ohmigosh, it was just darling.  It was a tiny little 10×20 cottage in the back of a house at the bottom of the San Leandro hills.  It had a wall full of French windows, a teeny-tiny galley kitchen, an itty bitty bathroom with a shower stall, and exposed rafters painted white.  I was sunk.

The most interesting thing?  It started life as a chicken coop.  Yes.  I lived for two years in a former chicken coop–and I loved it.  There was an avocado tree right outside those French windows…there was a boxed flower bed at the foot of the itty bitty porch, which I filled with California poppies…there was a bottle-brush tree beside the porch…It was wonderful.  Best of all, I could pop into my car, drive up the hill five minutes, and be able to hike around the San Leandro Reservoir.

These days, of course, we live in a log cabin in the piney forest–a dream for many folks.  We almost bought an octagonal house, instead (apparently, they were all the rage for vacation homes in this area for a while).  But I still yearn for a yurt, or an earthship, or something equally offbeat, miss my darling cottage, and daydream about what that silo could really have been like, if the owners had just tried a bit harder.

Technorati: Silo, yurts, earthships, non-standard housing

SpaceMom asked:

Has the experience of being a mother changed you in any profound ways? Or are you still Omega woman just with another section added to your life?

When I was a non-mom, there were some particular emails that got forwarded on and on, over and over.  One was “practice for parents-to-be“, always good for a guffaw or two.  Another was “Motherhood–it will change your life“, which was always good for either a tear or two or a screech of annoyance accompanied by a full-scale meltdown, depending on where I was emotionally with respect to infertility.

Really.  When you’re in the midst of a harrowing attempt to just get pregnant, you don’t want those reminders of just how your life changes.  And, to top it all off, you just don’t know how your life will change.  Oh, you can imagine it.  You can come up with all sorts of rosy scenarios.  And, as any childless person will tell you, it’s grating to have parents tell you, “You just don’t know what it’s like.”

Um.

I hate to say it, but…well, you just don’t know what it’s like.

Paradoxically, the profoundest change has been that I’ve become more patient and I’ve become more impatient.

I never realized just how much patience it takes to tell or show a small person, for the umpteenth time, how to do something.  These days, I am able to achieve a zen-like stage in some areas of interaction with the dotter–either I’m aware that this is something that just takes lots of repetition to sink in, or else blowing a fuse about it is way down the “battles I want to start” list.

On the other hand, sometimes that zen-like stage just goes “whoosh!” and I am a veritable volcano of impatience.

Who’d've thunk it?

Having a small child around takes time…lots of time.  And, I admit, I resent it sometimes.  Before Dotter, I would spend an hour or two a day hiking around the woods surrounding Hippy Dippy Enclave in the Woods.  I’d get home, grab the dawg’s leash and the dawg, we’d pile into the car, drive ten minutes or less to one of my favorite trails, and be off.  I’d be able to spend the time to look, to listen, to breathe in the fragrance of the woods.  I loved it.  It nourished my soul.

For a very short time after we brought OmegaDotter home, I was/we were able to do hiking–we’d stuff her into a baby-backpack and head on out.  But only a few short months after she came home, she became a toddler.  A very stubborn toddler, who Did Not Want the baby backpack.  And my hikes suddenly came to a screeching halt.

We are at the point where I can now take her out with me for short hikes.  What, to me, are very short hikes.  Slowly, slowly, she is increasing her stamina and interest.  But even so, while at times it’s grand to have her along, dancing and running and peering and chattering away, I still miss–extremely–those hours of peace and relaxation spent among the trees.

(The dawg, too, misses this.  The dawg has become fat.  Very fat.  Sigh.)

I’ve become more empathetic and compassionate, and, paradoxically, less so.  I find news stories about little girls being kidnapped and raped, or just lost, or dying, to be excruciating.  I can’t read them any more; while I felt it intellectually before, now…now I put a little girl’s face to that faceless news story, my breath catches in my throat and my heart skips a beat.  My liberal “oh, he must have had a bad life!” intellectual reasoning about the perpetrator gets buried deep underneath a very primal desire to rip his jugular out.

I didn’t know how your heart could fill with all-out pride at some very simple things–like a child who only weeks before couldn’t take a step out onto the ice rink suddenly being able to fly around on the skates.

I didn’t realize just how hard capabilities that adults take for granted are to learn.  Lost in the mists of time are my own feeble first attempts at buttoning buttons, tying knots, or reading.  Now, when the dotter tries something new, I can see just how hard it is to learn the basics, have the ability to stick with it and practice, and then, suddenly one day, it becomes easy.

I didn’t know how just looking at a sleeping child could take your breath away.

I didn’t know that you could look at that sleeping child and see the teenager-to-be, and have your heart fill with worry about some faceless unknown pimply teenage boy.

Oh, yeah, it changes everything.  Honestly.  But, at heart, I’m the same OmegaMom, with additional depth.

Technorati: Motherhood, parenting