Little Acorn

Happy Birthday

To me!

It was a simple birthday, but nice. A mexican feast not cooked by me (okay, I couldn't resist helping just a little), a delicious cake, a few presents and the two year old's version of a surprise party (I went upstairs, she hid and then yelled "SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" when I came back downstairs. It was all very lovely.

To be honest, there are things going on around here that I just can't/don't want to/am not ready to discuss with the world, hence my lack of blogging. All is okay, everyone is healthy and no one is getting divorced or anything like that - we're just grappling with some BIG decisions about our future and they aren't easy decisions to make. Plus David moved to a new job a month ago and while it's surely going to be a positive thing in the long run, the transition is proving stressful as David gets used to the busier pace and learns the way things are done with his new employer. He's working longer hours (boo!) but for more money (yay!) and he's stressed out now (boo!) but will hopefully be happier in the long run (yay!). Poor David has also been battling with a huge outbreak of psoriasis, which he's never had before, but that is currently running amok no matter what the doctors throw at it. He's itchy, self-concious and worried that it might be his new normal. He does finally have an appointment with a dermatologist, so hopefully some relief is coming his way. And then there's toilet training... Seriously, this is the hardest thing I've come up against as a parent so far. It is PAINFUL. But it needs to be done and it needs to be done this summer because preschool starts in the fall. I won't go into the personal details as someday I'm sure Adeline will be MORTIFIED that I ever even mentioned it on the blog, but let's just say that the girl is AMAZINGLY STUBBORN and has the liquid holding capacity of a camel. Whew. So those are just a couple of the things we're dealing with. It's the decision making that's really throwing us for a loop though - I know David's work situation will smooth out, I'm hopeful his skin can be helped and I know we'll get through toilet training somehow. Maybe once those things happen it will be easier to concentrate on making the right decisions for us as a family and for each of us as individuals.

Mother's Day

I have some actual thoughts on being a Mother and more specifically about being Adeline's Mother and about being the Mother of a child who also has a Birth Mother, but those are some very big thinks to think, so they need a little more time to swirl around in my brain before I'm ready to write them down. So for now I'll show you some pictures of my Mother's Day outing to Butchart Gardens.

Now Butchart Gardens is a garden, first and foremost, but I seem to have only one picture of flowers on my camera - every other picture features a spunky almost-three-year-old, who is lovelier than any blossom - even this one...

It was tulip season and the huge beds of single colours of blooms with contrasting underplantings were heart-meltingly gorgeous. I really should have taken more pictures and I really should try tulips in my garden again.

But really, when you're there with someone this sweet, who is really looking that closely at the gardens?

It was a lovely Mother's Day with lots of love from my girl. Some Moms may want a spa day or some other escape from it all, but I like to spend the day with the amazing girl who made me a Mother, making a family memory.

Adeline loved the twisty paths through the "deep dark wood" and running in the big fields and sniffing lots of flowers, but what she really came for was the carousel. Adeline did the merry-go-round at the fair last year and while she was okay with it, when it was over she was done, so we didn't know how the carousel would go...

Adeline chose an awesome zebra to ride and held on tight, with Daddy by her side...

The carousel made it around a little less than one revolution before I heard "Get me down NOW NOW NOW" being yelled repeatedly. Luckily her zebra was right in front of a "chariot" (a much cooler name than "bench") so they moved there and finished out the ride. Adeline came off looking a little dazed and didn't want to go again, so we went back out to explore the gardens. After a big run and a snack, Adeline asked to go back to the carousel. She had decided that she didn't like the "up and down" but only the "round and round" and she then rode 4 times in a row with either Daddy, me, or both of us joining her in the chariot.

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there. I hope your day made many wonderful memories for you.

More

I've had some positive feedback about the lifebook pages and I think I'm inspiring some other Mamas to get to work on one for their child, so I'll keep going.

The page about the orphanage has had many revisions, but finally I decided that this is just the most simple of lifebooks and the time to go deeper is still to come and it can be seen as more of a conversation starter than a provider of all the answers (HA! as if I'll ever have all the answers). I think I had trouble with this page because of all the words and phrases around adoption, the only ones I continue to be uncomfortable with are "orphan" and "orphanage". I have never, and likely will never, use the word "orphan" to describe my daughter, as it just seems to have so many connotations that don't fit and it seems so negative. It sounds more like a playground taunt or a melodramatic Disney movie to me. "Orphanage" is a word that I wish I could do away with, but I know Adeline will have to face that word and that truth sometime, and better to learn about it from me where I can tell her the truth about what orphanage life was like for her - which was nothing like you see in the movies. Truly, Adeline was in the best of institutional care and I know she was loved and cherished, so it's not hard for me to tell her proudly what good care the nou-nous took of her when she was a baby, but orphanage is the word that has to be used, so that's what I'm going to start using sometimes.

Adeline was worried but brave on the day we met her. She was curious about us, but VERY serious and she continually searched the room for Nga, who kept coming back to try and make Adeline laugh (with no success). While it would be easy for me to focus on this as the happiest day of our lives, for Adeline it was a pretty weird and worrying experience, far from her normal daily routine, which she faced with an open heart and the most concerned looking eyebrows I've ever seen. I am continually grateful that, unlike in other countries, we didn't just take our daughter from everything she knows in the instant she met us and we had the chance to visit with her and her caregivers at the orphanage a few times. By the second visit Adeline was much more relaxed and was laughing with us, and when she was ready to come with us we weren't strangers anymore and we had learned a lot about her from Nga and the other nou-nous.

More Pages from the Lifebook

 

November 24th, 2009... I remember EVERYTHING about the day I met my daughter - right down to what I heard when I first woke up (for the first time in Hanoi I heard birds singing), what I had for breakfast (a ham sandwich, peach juice and tea), what I saw in the courtyard of the orphanage (a huge bright blue butterfly), and most importantly what my sweet baby's sweaty little body felt like when she was first placed in my arms and how her dark eyes looked right into mine.

Real Family

More pages from the lifebook...

 

These pages start to address the very big topic of how Adeline will answer questions about herself and her family once she is out in the world. This can be very challenging for many children, but hopefully Adeline will have the self-confidence she needs and will be armed with the right responses, so that whether the question is curious or intrusive or even confrontational or rude, she will be able to choose the response she is comfortable with. This is just laying the groundwork and we will continue to talk about this topic in more depth as Adeline grows. It also lays the groundwork for the inevitable "family tree" project and the "bring in a picture of you as a newborn" request (many children who were adopted or fostered don't even have baby pictures, never mind a newborn picture), the "write a story about the day you were born" assignment (this is my most dreaded assignment - it could be a very hurtful topic and make Adeline feel like she stands out, and the "ancestry" projects that Adeline will someday face in school. You would think with the many adopted children, children in foster care and children with untraditional families that these sort of assignments would be modified or replaced, but I hear from people in the adoption community all the time that their children are having these assignments given to them in school year after year. I will always have to be an advocate for Adeline, and my wish is that we will always have enlightened and thoughtful teachers. Ohhhhh...picking a school for Adeline...one of my constant nagging worries and she's not even three yet!

Big Girl

Adeline will tell anyone and everyone that she's a big girl. And she really is. Not physically...no...I think Adeline is destined to be a small person, as while she's healthy and freakishly very strong, she's pretty teeny-tiny for her age. But in all the ways that count, Adeline is BIG.

The biggest of the big girl things Adeline is doing now is (drum roll please) falling asleep by herself and sleeping the whole night through in her very own bed in her very own room. This has caused almost giddy excitement as David and I can now sleep through the night as well, and once the lights go out at about 7:30 the rest of the evening is OURS rather than David and I finally having some couple time when he would come down from Adeline's bedroom after 8 and even occasionally after 9. Believe me, this has been a long time coming and I'm HAPPY...but I'm sad too. We went from rocking Adeline to sleep and then to sitting near her when she fell asleep, but then about two weeks ago, with no warning, she didn't need us to sit with her anymore.

It's another one of those "if I'd known it was the last time..." things, just like when the rocking ended (I still miss the rocking, sometimes). I have to admit, that first day when I finished our stories, gave Adeline her hug and kiss and turned out the light and went downstairs, I got a little teary. At naptime I would usually sit in the half light by the window and read my book and watch as Adeline twiddled the tail of her elephant and slowly drifted off and it was NICE - maybe even the nicest part of my day. It was mostly nice because at naptime the only other thing I had to look forward to was cleaning up, and she has always fallen asleep within 10 or 15 minutes during the day. If I'd known that last Monday was my LAST time to sit and watch my girl fall asleep I think I would have...I don't know. Would I have enjoyed it more, would I have felt prouder of my big girl for being ready to take on such a big step or would I have been sadder that it was one more big step away from babyhood?

Don't get me wrong - going to sleep by herself and sleeping through the night is wonderful and I'm so happy that Adeline finally feels secure enough to do that, and I'm so proud of how confident and independent Adeline is becoming. I guess it's just that I wish I could just push the pause button for awhile to enjoy her littleness, or even make some visits back in time using the rewind button to cuddle my sweet baby, rock her and give her a bottle while she looks in my eyes and strokes my cheek. Those were good times... These are good times too, as Adeline is an incredibly smart, funny and creative not-quite-three year old. They are also trying times, as Adeline's new-found confidence and independence has also got her trying out defiance, rudeness, hitting, not listening and general surliness towards her Mama which tries my patience every single day. Yes, I know it's a stage and with loving and firm guidance she will pass out of this stage (oh please, let her pass out of this stage!!!) and it helps immensely that when she's not being a tiny and oh-so-cranky contrarian she's really fun to hang out with. So while I want the "evil twin" stage to pass, the rest of the almost-three stage is pretty awesome and I would like to linger in this time when her family is her everything, the world is new and exciting and full of possibilities, her imagination is boundless and her joy overflows at the smallest things.

I love my big girl. I miss my baby. I look forward to being the Mama of the very big girl that is to come. All at the same time.

Happy Easter!

It was a busy Easter for us, and we traveled a long day in the car to visit with family and celebrate one of Adeline's favourite Great Auntie's ninetieth birthdays. We had less time at home than usual, but we still managed to fit in an easter egg hunt, a special dinner and some playing outside in the gorgeous spring weather!

Here's Adeline's Easter basket...

Yes, that non-traditional and very tentacly puppet friend on the left there is an octopus. Adeline has a good friend at our small local aquarium - an octopus named Lola. Actually it's been a couple of Lolas since we started visiting there, as our native octopus (octopi?) grow quite huge and they only keep each Lola for a bit and then return her to the wild, but all that is far too much for Adeline to process right now. She just knows she loves Lola. At random times throughout the day she'll say "I wonder what Lola is doing?" or "Lola is sure quiet and nice" or "Can we go to Lola's house right now?".

Here's the moment when Adeline realized that it was a Lola puppet in her Easter basket...

She was SO EXCITED! First she made Lola "wiggle and wriggle" and then she hugged and kissed her for a long time.

The weather was AMAZING this weekend, so we also got to play outside for awhile (I tried to resist the urge to pull weeds and was mostly successful). Adeline's Easter dress might look familiar as it's the same Easter dress she wore last year - an 18 month size. Our girl has a huge personality, is smart, smart, smart, eats like a champion, talks like a big kid and is freakishly very strong and healthy, but BIG she isn't. I can't say I'm disappointed though. I just love this dress and was so happy to see Adeline in it again. I remember so well buying it just before we travelled to Vietnam to bring home our girl. It was on the deep discount rack at the end of the season, and even though I knew it would be a long time before our tiny baby would fit in it, I just had to buy it and put it away for her, as I knew she would look beautiful in it. I was certainly right.

HAPPY EASTER!

Easter Eggs

If you ask Adeline, the best thing about Easter is CHOCOLATE, but a close second is dying the eggs! This year she coloured two dozen and she really didn't want to stop!

 

 

 

Considering the vast quantities of food colouring on the table it's amazing that besides her monster hands, Adeline and my house remained uncoloured. I, on the other hand, have some newly decorated jeans with a huge slop of yellow down one leg...

The Big Haircut

Before...

During...

After...

Sorry for the quality of the pictures - Adeline was super excited about her haircut (both before and after) and was really grooving on her big girl self and didn't want to pose for pictures, plus I didn't have my real camera with me. I needed to document the big haircut though!

Well...I didn't plan for it to be THIS big a haircut, but in the end even though there is 6 or 7 inches of hair gone, I'm pleased. And because I'm growing out the bangs (horrible horrible horrible) it's the right choice to help them catch up faster. I asked for below the shoulders, but I guess it was hard to see where her tiny shoulders were once she was in the cape, as it ended up a cute swingy bob just above her shoulders.There's no denying that it's a very cute haircut and I LOVE how easy it is to brush out in the morning, but oh, how it's making me sad to see my girl looking so very grown up. Yes, she will have long hair again, as what was cut off today was only a years worth of growth and it's still long enough to go in pig-tails (whew!), but it's just another symbol of time passing. We've had some very big-girl developments lately and I've really been conscious of how fast the years are flying by us. This was Adeline's first real salon experience and she loved the whole thing and was so patient and listened to everything the stylist said and I was really proud of her. The same stylist cuts my hair and after 20 years of seeing each other every few months she feels like a friend too, so I knew Adeline would be in good hands.

I'll write about the "big girl developments" soon, but for now I think I need to go look at some pictures of my baby girl and get weepy...

Lifebook Project (and a Two Year Home-i-versary!)

Happy Home-i-versary! Two years ago today Adeline started making the big blue house a noisier, messier and most of all a happier place!

The easiest pages to put together for the lifebook were ones like this that talked about Adeline's life since she's been with us...

And I apologize to all the scrapbookers out there, both digital and paper, that I have ever disparaged in the past. Yep, I was pretty snobby about the whole thing. It might not be art and you can get some pretty impressive results using very little creativity, but it's SUPER FUN and with some creativity I think it can really elevate photos to something much more special. Now I want to digital-scrapbook everything!

 

Lifebook Project

Adeline will have been home for two years on Monday. The time...whew...FLOWN. My seven month old baby is now my running-towards-three big girl and she has learned so much, changed so much and grown so much. Adeline is a very verbal girl and very curious about the world and how it works, and lately I've noticed her asking some questions about adoption, about Vietnam, and about where babies come from. We've always been open with talking to Adeline about her adoption and the fact that she has a birth family, but I think she's on the brink of beginning to actually understand what it all means. For a long time she would say "I was born in Vietnam! Mama and Daddy adopted me and I came home on the airplane!" but she didn't seem to really understand what any of that meant. My project has been working on a lifebook for Adeline that is told in age-appropriate and correct language and that tells HER story. It's not the story of her adoption, as her life didn't begin when she was adopted, but it is the story of her life. It's not a scrapbook as there are more words than pictures and our roles in it are only as they relate to Adeline. It's the first of a few lifebooks. I know that as she grows Adeline will need to process her adoption in different ways and will be able to understand things on different levels. Even in this tiny book there are some very hard to talk about topics, and when your intended reader is just about three, finding just the right language is hard. That was one of my motivations to work on this project now - I wanted David and I to be able to answer Adeline's questions confidently and without any hesitation as we searched for just the right words. I want to always be truthful, but not harsh, even though some of the things that have to be talked about ARE harsh. It's important for Adeline to have the truth, but my Mama heart wishes that she never ever had to feel a single hurt, so it's hard for me to write about how Adeline was brought to the orphanage or even just to use the word "orphanage", but I do it because I know I need to and I know that owning the truth of her story will give Adeline power. It's hard for me to know that I will always have to answer many of Adeline's questions with "I don't know. I wish I knew, but I don't know" and it's hard for me to know that there are going to be some hurts that I can't prevent or even make better. I'm going to share some pages with you as I know many of you are parents through adoption and you might be working on lifebook projects of your own, but I won't be sharing the pages that speak of Adeline's specific circumstances. Part of giving Adeline power is letting her decide who hears her story and when. It's not that it's a terrible story - she shares the basics of her life story with tens of thousands of other children - it's just that it's her story, not mine. And perhaps those of you who are parents through biology can read these pages too, and begin to talk to your little ones about adoption as a different way to make a family. It's guaranteed that they will know children who joined their family through adoption and the more people who grow up thinking that adoption is just a fact of life the better.

The first pages I'm going to share are the ones that are meant to teach that every baby is born. Many children who were adopted believe that there are two ways to come into the world - through birth and through adoption. It's important for Adeline to know that she is no different from anyone else, and that she was born too. Click on the picture to open a bigger and more readable image.

The black bar isn't on the original image, but there was some personal information there.

Then it gets a little harder to write as I needed to talk about birth parents and the choices that they make. These pages, along with the ones where I talk about the specific choices Adeline's birth family made, were the hardest to write. I wanted to put as positive a spin on it as I could, without sugar-coating and without discounting the pain that birth parents and adopted children can feel. It was also important to just stick to the facts and try to keep my bias, conjecture and guesses about how people might have been feeling out of it. All that and make it concise and understandable for an almost-preschooler.

Whew. To be honest working on this project has brought up a lot of emotions for me. I've had a lot of time to reflect and think and while I think it's been good for me, there have been tears. Tears for myself, tears for Adeline's birth family, tears for the many children in the world who will never have a family and of course tears for my daughter.

It's all about the hair...

Lately I seem to be obsessed thinking a lot about Adeline's hair. As of maybe a month ago, I guess we're officially growing out the bangs. I say "we" but Adeline doesn't really know it's happening and David doesn't care (and probably wants me to stop talking about it). I think Adeline's last haircut was before Tet in the middle of January. Her bangs are now officially not just long, but shaggy-dog long and hanging in her face. Which means clips and pony-tails and a constant nagging itch to get the scissors out and just get them out of her eyes. They are at that terrible stage where they are too long to leave down but they don't stay swept to the side or parted in the middle without accessories. Mostly Adeline is good with clips and she likes a fancy hair-do (especially braids, lately) but this week she has a super bad cold and doesn't even want me to BRUSH her hair, so despite my best efforts it's all a tangly, eye-obscuring, snot filled mess. I've been wearing a lot of headbands this week to try and convince Adeline that they're cool, but while she likes them on me, she just won't keep one in. I'm thinking it's going to be at least six months and maybe even a year of wanting to give in and cut bangs until it gets better. Adeline is beautiful with her hair away from her face (but then she's always beautiful), I LOATHE cutting her bangs and her hair seems to be in her eyes no matter what cut she has, so I THINK I'm making the right decision, but wowza...I'm sure not liking this process.

I've been working on a project (I'll tell you about it soon) which has had me looking back at pictures of Adeline over the last two and a half years and I've come to realize that I've ALWAYS thought about Adeline's hair way more than I probably should have. Everybody has buttons, yes? And one of my buttons is kids with messy hair. I don't blink an eye at shirts covered in paint or pants with muddy knees, but hair that looks like it hasn't been recently brushed or that is hanging in the child's face and scraggly just bothers me, ESPECIALLY when it's my daughter. I KNOW that hair isn't really that important, but I can't help wanting Adeline to have good hair every time we're out in public. Maybe that's why growing out the bangs is proving so worrying for me - right now Adeline is having a bad hair day just about every day. 

Happy Anniversary!

Seven years ago today, in a beautiful garden not far from the Mexican seaside, with Mariachis playing, I said "I do" to the best man I've ever met. It was a perfect wedding. Every single thing went wrong (or at least wasn't as we'd planned) but it was a perfect day, from start to finish and I couldn't be happier with my memory of my wedding day. It was a low key (okay, non-existent) anniversary celebration for us this year, but we've decided that we can slack off for two more years and then we're doing up our tenth anniversary in style! I'm thinking a return to that Mexican beach is definitely in order.

Happy Anniversary, David. I love you! Thank you for being mine and making my life immeasurably better.

My First Crop of the Season

Urban farming has CHALLENGES, not the least of which is an army of cats that have discovered my nice soft raised beds and have been...welll...you know...DIGGING in them. Okay, not just digging. We know what I'm talking about right and I don't have to come right out and SAY it? My poor garlic sprouts were constantly being jostled and the thought of the rain washing through...what the cats leave...and getting into my soil was EXTREMELY icky to me, so I needed a solution. There are commercial "cat scarers" you can buy and other things like cayenne or chemicals that you can spread in the garden, but I LIKE cats and wouldn't want to hurt them. They just MUST! STOP! POOPING! (They made me say it!). My Mom's friend Sandra had a brilliant idea and now my garden is unique looking, but the cats have stopped visiting...

Yep. A couple of boxes of plastic forks have solved my problem. Once the plants fill in and I don't have bare dirt the cats won't find it appealing anymore and I can remove the forks, but until then it's a cheap, unfriendly-but-not-hurtful solution.

I have to kind of laugh every time I see them out there - especially at night when they kind of glow in the moonlight. It might not be the picture-perfect kitchen garden of my dreams right now, but anything to keep my veggies safe!

And in other great news - spring really is coming!!! Adeline and I played outside with NO COATS on one morning and it really and truly felt like spring! I'm soooooooo ready for it this year!

A Dolly

I had so much fun getting into my studio to make this custom doll in a so-Valentiney pink/red/green colour scheme. It was ordered for a little one who is currently in China and who will be joining her forever family soon. I just love all the amazing stories that my dolls would have to tell if we couId get them all together for a reunion someday. I really need to find more time. Okay. That's not true. There's no way to find more time...I just need to make better choices about how to use the little bit of free time I have in a week. But sometimes bad television, random web surfing, Pinterest, knitting and sitting on the sofa with the lights dimmed so I can't see the mess is just so tempting.