We interrupt this blog to provide a public service announcement to the socially inept

I need to vent a little

For my real friends and family, this is not directed at you. If you say something hurtful or unintentionally stupid, I’ll tell you. I’m not afraid to educate you in person :-). This is for the general population that just doesn’t get it. To be fair, I’m sure the majority of the general public doesn’t intend to be stupid or hurtful either but I thought maybe I could educate them a little for future encounters with adoptive families.

Alyson and I were at a birthday party not too long ago where we met the husband of a friend of mine (a pretty new friend, hence my inability to “educate” them). So here’s how the conversation went:

Him: So Jana tells me you adopted your little girl from China?
Me: yes, we did (big proud smile)
Him: We thought about doing that once.
Me: (silence while I fiddle with Alyson’s ponytail so I can pretend I didn’t hear him.)
But on the inside I’m saying: No you didn’t. You might have thought of dyeing your hair once. You might have thought of taking up figure skating once but you don’t think about adopting “once.”

He continues: I always thought that would be neat.
Me: (nod and smile) But on the inside: No, bungee jumping would be neat. Taking an Alaskan cruise would be neat. Committing your life to raising a child, especially one that has suffered multiple losses in her first 15 months of life, is not “neat.” It’s amazing, rewarding, and glorious but it’s not “neat.”

Him: Is she your first?
Me: No, we have an 8 year old son (another big proud grin)
Him: Is he adopted?
Me: No.
But on the inside: Did I ask you how your children were conceived or brought into your family? Just because I have an obviously adopted child, what gives you the right to ask about my other child? If Andrew and I were out somewhere without Alyson, no one in their right mind would think it’s ok to ask if he was adopted or not. How is that fair to him, to suddenly question his background just because he has a sister from China? Seriously. What if he is adopted but we haven’t told him yet? Do you think it’s ok for a stranger to start that conversation for us?
(Ok, that’s pretty extreme seeing as how he’s almost 9 years old. That would be pretty irresponsible of us to have not told him yet but that’s beside the point. And no, he’s NOT adopted.)

Now I know this gentleman was asking totally innocent questions out of genuine curiosity but it got under my skin anyway.

On to a different vent…
I can’t stand it when people say “We always said that if we couldn’t have children of our own, we would adopt.”
Sigh.
I’m not going to deny that it’s totally natural to try for an old fashioned conception/pregnancy first when starting a family. It’s easier, it’s cheaper, and it’s more fun (well, the first 100 or so tries anyway).

That’s fine to feel that adoption is a second choice after pregnancy. Just don’t ever say that in front of my daughter.

One of these days she’s going to understand those words and I don’t EVER want her to feel like the way she was brought into our family was a last resort. Alyson was a choice we pursued with all our hearts. She is a miracle that we prayed for as fervently as we did for Andrew. And she is a gift, not a last resort.

Another thing wrong with “We always said that if we couldn’t have children of our own, we would adopt,” is when people say it like they want to make us feel better. It’s as if they’re saying “we would have done the same thing if we were in that situation.” Like it somehow validates our choice. We don’t need you to validate our choice. We’re thrilled with our choice. We weren’t in a ‘situation.’ We were at a fork in the road and we, along with God’s guidance, chose our path. (Little did we know at the time that our ‘path’ was an ice covered mountain pass with dangerous twists and turns every 2 miles along the 400 mile stretch, but I digress…)

Ok, last vent. Along the lines of the “last resort” sentiment. It’s when people who are trying to get pregnant say “well, if it doesn’t work out, we can always adopt.”
Umm, hate to break it to you…no you can’t. Well, maybe you can but it’s not as simple as you think.
We can’t adopt from China again. We no longer qualify under their new rules. Who am I kidding, we can’t adopt from practically anywhere ever again. We can’t afford it. Good news is, we’re done. Our family is complete, so we don’t need to worry about it.
Just a caution that just because we made adoption look easy, doesn’t mean anyone can do it.

I’m sure the people who know us well are saying, “is she insane? She didn’t make adoption look easy. She complained constantly.” And they’re right. It’s just easy for people to forget the process when they see Alyson’s beautiful face so they say stupid things like “we could always adopt if we have to.”
It’s like labor. They say you’ll forget the pain, otherwise no one would do it more than once. They’re right, it’s been almost 9 years and the memory of the pain of delivering Andrew has faded some. I’m sure someday the pain and stress of the icy mountain path to Alyson will fade too.

I’m done. We will now get back to our regularly scheduled cheerful blogging…

RSV, croup, and "uh oh, whas dat?"

As if our poor kid hasn't had enough night troubles, now she's had RSV and croup for the last week. It's been rough but she started feeling better yesterday and she slept pretty well last night. She seems less frightened at night too so hpefully we're turning a corner both in her health and her anxiety issues. That sounds so bad, "anxiety issues." I dont' know what else to call it. She's just having a normal adopted toddler rough time. She has some more grieving to do and it can take kids years to truly trust their new family. We'll get through it :-)

Good news is none of this has slowed her down from learning new words and phrases in the past few weeks.
Some of our favorites:

uh oh, whas dat?
uh oh, whas dat clue? (while watching blue's clues)
where's daddy at?
stinky
ewwww
cute
neat
pretty
thank you (although she seems to have given up on please)
bless you (sounds like tissue, she says it after anyone sneezes)
good girl (referring to herself sometimes but usually the dog)


On to some pictures... They're a little out of order but essentially newer to older.


This is the expression we call "horror movie." I'm not even sure how it started now but whenever we say "horror movie," she'll make this face like she's bracing herself for something startling. It's hilarious.

This picture is too dark but she's just so cute.
Helping Daddy sweep acorns off the walk.

These pictures were taken when I was trying to put Alyson's new stroller together. Andrew laid down on the floor to watch me so of course little sis has to do everything he does...

Andrew surfing on a turtle at the nature center. Alyson didn't want anything to do with this turtle.

Alyson lecturing her brother about something or other...

Pretty sunset on the lake that the nature center is on.

A rough couple weeks

Sorry for not posting in ages. It's been a hard and busy month. Michael and I each had a Grandmother pass away this month. We're both sad but we have many happy memories of the long, full lives they had. On a positive note, Alsyon did great with the travel to California and all the activity surrounding my Grandma's funeral. It was nice for the rest of the family to meet her and she handled everything really well.

She had her first babysitter on September 29th and survived that as well. We had a high school girl that lives only a couple blocks away come for the evening so we could go to the Air Force Ball. She came over the weekend before just to visit and get Alyson used to her. It went really well, hardly any cying and she let the babysitter put her to bed without trouble.

Then the very next week I started her in a Mother's Day Out program on Tuesdays and Thrusday mornings for just a couple hours because I'm having such a hard time getting my schoolwork done and we want to ease her into the idea of other caregivers before she starts a 3 day a week day care when I go back to work sometime in the spring. We started out slow and built up to a couple hours.

Well, things haven't been right since. Alyson has only slept through the night once since we started the program and she has become a velcro child. Things had been going great in the attachment and bonding department but we must have tried too much too soon and she's getting insecure again. She cries at the drop of a pin and she won't let me out of her sight without a complete meltdown. I feel terrible about it. We decided to keep trying short periods of time at the program in hopes that she's just suffering from average toddler seraration anxiety.

Things have gotten much better as of today. She only cried for a minute when I left her and she came to me with open arms and a smile when I picked her up, then she started to cry when she remembered that she was mad at me for leaving ;-) That was a vast improvement over the first couple times when she didn't cry or reach out and wouldn't make eye contact with me.

I took her to the doctor yesterday convinced that she had an ear infection or something to account for the waking 3 times a night crying and general discontent but there's not a thing physically wrong with her. It's all emotional. It's hard to remember that she's only been with us for less than 5 months. It feels like she has been a part of us forever. She still has a lot of grieving and adjusting to do.

Since today went so well, we're going to keep trying the mom's day out program. I think stopping and starting again later could be even worse at this point. I think if we're consistent with our routine and continuing doing all the things that are recommended for forming secure attachments, things will get better. This afternoon has been so much better already, hence my ability to post this at all. She's playing with Michael and Andrew right now and not flipping out about the fact that I'm in another room. This is such a relief!

So it's all a work in progress and we'll take it day by day :-)

On to some pictures...


I'm having some issues uploading pictures to blogger so here's a few for now, I'll have to do the rest separately. They'll be out of order but oh well :-)

These are from Michael's end of the year squadron picnic. I'm guessing this was Alyson's first time in a bounce house. Very fun! Then Andrew got to go for a boat ride in Michael's coworker's boat. (Guess who wants to buy a boat now?)





Future surfer?

All that bouncing is very tiring...


I'll post some other pictures soon...