When bad moms happen to good kids

Oh, the shame, the shame. Can you read this? Can you see that it says "Dear Tooth Fairy: MY TOOTH!" Did you know that it is possible for the tooth fairy to forget the recently desiduoused tooth of a fabulous 9yo (who is just in it for the money at this point, but still) for three nights in a row until it gets to the point that the bad mom goes to her room to get ready for bed and the good but impatient kid has had to leave a NOTE for the hack fairy to remember about HER TOOTH! Did you know that guilt ridden tooth fairies are especially generous? Did you know that the good kid is only $6 away from having enough money to buy the ORGANIZER of her dreams, the one she has had her eye on at OfficeMax for over two months? Don't you think that an organizer is kind of a strange thing for a good kid to be lusting after? So many questions, so few good answers when bad moms happen to good kids in the heart of the lonely city. 

Three rounds and one square

Tomorrow the service comes to cover the pool and put it away for the winter. It was an unseasonably hot day today and when we got home, Mimi suggested one last swim. However, I had not left the pool heater on in anticipation of one last swim, so the water temperature was not unseasonably warm, it was pretty darn nippy. They only lasted in the pool a few minutes. I always make them take their wet swimsuits off so they can warm up in the towel faster. So Mimi and YuYu dried off and went inside (Ellie was at soccer practice) and I sat and watched Nora swing, naked, in the sun for a long time. She had her eyes closed against the setting sun and I could tell she was trying to sing one of Miss Judy's Classic Kindergarten Tunes but was just making up 90% of the words. So I sat there, watching this gorgeous child swinging and singing and I was scouring my interior for even a hint of affection. I know I can always get a rise out of myself when I let my mind go to the birthmother angle. Here I am with the opportunity to love and nurture this child largely because of a failed political and economic system (one can assume, who knows she may have been love child of a forbidden romance between a man trapped in an unhappy marriage and his one true love he had to forsake to marry a woman he did not love in order to honor a family obligation, who knows, it could have happened that way) in a vast and crowded country. So my interior motivational speaker was giving myself this rousing pep talk about honor and privilege and duty and my interior wise ass was flipping her off. I just was not feeling it.

So fast-forward an hour and I snap when she snaps and it’s fast and mindless and sudden. What is it that makes me snap so quickly when Nora expresses her unhappiness about her lot in life with her particular flair for the the whiny, floppy, surly, sulky, sullen mode of delivery? Apparently I have a zero tolerance level for crabbiness that sets wheels in motion over which I have no control, apparently. Nora was not happy being the child at the end of the couch when Ellie wanted to read Disney princess stories out loud. As I walked in to see what was going on, she chose to slide to the floor with arms flailing as if every nerve had suddenly gone dead while moaning in a loud and complaining voice and I didn't even give her a chance to redeem herself and stop it. I took her by the flail arm and led her quickly to her bedroom and at 7:45 pm I was done with her. She screamed herself to sleep within minutes, before I could even go in to explain my decision to remove her from the little couch reading vignette.

Meanwhile my three round pegs sat together contentedly on the couch reading about Ariel and Belle. I went back in to watch my three round pegs and my heart simultaneously swelled with enormous love and pride for these three and overwhelming discouragement about my feelings for Nora. I still see Nora as a square peg who is making a pig's breakfast out of that one remaining round hole I had saved for my last child. Adjusting to her is painful and slow and after my hair-trigger reaction to her loss of composure tonight, I wonder just how long I'm going to make myself suffer with this adjustment before I crack the code. Because even though I just artfully used myself as the subject of the prior sentence, like I am the one doing all the adjusting and I'm such a hero, what I really really want is for her to get on board with the pleasant family interaction agenda and completely re-adjust herself to us, not the other way around. But seriously, how much adjusting can I expect an emotionally immature five-year-old to do? Oh great, now that I've come to the conclusion that we're both emotionally immature five-year-olds, or at least that's how I feel when I let my whole body turn into one HUGE button that reads "PUSH ME" on top. But it really is my job to make the changes, because, good hell, she's only just turned five. But ooh ooh ooh, some of her behaviors just set me off like a Saturn rocket and compassion, understanding and any affection I've been building for her get burned up in the launch.
I need to do some serious readjusting of my expectations regarding her emotional abilities or I'm just going to make myself nuts and Nora very unhappy. Shoot, every day in every way is work with her, shoot.

Just thinking out loud loud here, but

Nora plays SO well with Lan Lan (4) when the Ellisons come up to visit the cultural capital (TWO Asian food stores within eight blocks, it doesn't get much more cosmopolitan than that) of the Intermountain West, that it does make me think about the possibility of maybe, some day, adding another, heck, it couldn't hurt, Nora's emotionally immature, a younger soulmate sister would be so good for her, we have room for another, never say never, it could happen and maybe . . .

























HAH, had you going, that will NEVER happen, tick tock the game's locked and NOBODY else can play, no more Hanson sur-named female type children will be sashaying around these parts until they look up and call me Grandma. HAH, adopt another child? preposterous, absurd, and I do mean NEVER! I'm saying NEVER and I pretty much mean NEVER.

So this Kindergarten thing, hope it works

Mimi and Nora started Kindergarten last week. There are more parents who want their K-graders in the one all-day classroom than can fit in the classroom (even in Utah, land of HUGE class sizes). I asked for both girls to be included in the all-day program and ver, ver, ver thankfully, both of my darlings were placed in the same class with The Divine Mis Judy, the most incredible, fabulous, organized, loving, experienced, energetic best K-grader teacher in the known world and her wonderful aide Miss Elaine.


But, I still have big fears about Nora and whether she will be able to progress to first grade next year. My thinking was, shoot, I can pay grundles of money to keep her in Montessori K-grade this winter and start her in public school next fall as the oldest in her class -OR - I could save a grundle of $$$ that I simply don't have after two adoptions in 18 months what WAS I thinking and let Miss Judy take a crack at her. I just figured, hey, if she can't cut it, I'll make the decision to hold her back in K-grade next year in public school. Now I have the big guilty doubts about that strategy. If she can't advance with her peers, she will be crushed, crushed and humiliated. If she can't advance with her peers, me thinks I'll be paying grundles next fall to send her to another year of private K so at least she has a year of separation from her former peers before she has to start first grade the same time they (including her sister) are starting second.



It may just be that I end up paying later rather than sooner, but I'm going to cling to the hope that one of the BEST educators ever to sing good morning in circle time can crack her code and help her learn.

I actually had no fears about Mimi and Nora in the same class together. They play very independently of each other anyway, there isn't any strange dependence vibe happening between them. That was how they co-existed in the same class at Montessori, so I had no qualms about them spending this one year in school together in the same class.

Yeah, and when did I turn into the mean kind of mom who makes her children wear shoes to school instead of kicky fun sandals you may wonder? From always, just ask Ellie who suffers so in her sneakers when all around her are in flip flops (until it gets too cold). So, yeah, Nora looks clod-hopperish in her cute swishy skirt and HUGE shoes, but she won't be coming home with all the skin scraped off the ends of her toes and slivers from the playground wood chips embedded in the soles of her feet either. And good hell, she doesn't know how bad it looks, let me have a few more years of picking out their footwear.

WWJD?

I don’t know, and those who know me well know that I spend less than any time worrying about it either, but I’m using the template to guide my reactions to Nora’s behavior. But instead of pondering the imponderable, I ask myself this: “how would you be reacting to this if you loved her?” and who knows, that’s kind of on the imponderable spectrum too, isn’t it. I have to stop and do this because I’m not fair to her. To those I’m about to offend, forgive me, but forget astrology, it has to be bunk because the chart next to the comics in the Tribune says that I’m a Libra, but how can I be a Libra because I’m not fair, I play favorites like a demon: the scales they need adjusting.

I was embarrassed a few weeks ago because I started to go off on Nora because she had taken one of those slick little single serve Crystal Light tubes that turn your little bottle of store-bought water into a soft drink in a jiffy into the bathroom and from appearances, kind of didn’t get much of the contents of the spammy little tube into the smallish neck of the little bottle and there was too much cleaning up of raspberry delight going on for my lazy-would-rather-not-be-cleaning-the-bathroom-again-this-month sensibilities. I was reading her the riot act about asking permission, food is NOT prepared in the bathroom, ewwww, germs, ewww (and for those that know me, that’s a little bit hypocritical, what’s the opposite of germophobe? Oh yeah, slob), don’t do it again, ever. I took away one of her three wrist bands (ponytail holders) which meant she did not earn back her Barbie battery-operated toothbrush and her heart heaved itself into two pieces and she was bereft, bereft, and I left her to cry/think/feel bad for a minute. During Nora’s “quiet contemplation time,” I went downstairs and noticed that the light was on in the downstairs bathroom where I discovered that YuYu had done the same thing to that bathroom except that she had chosen the lemonade palette, umm, pretty. It looked like I had sons instead of daughters, if you know what I mean.

So, I called YuYu down, helped her clean up, did not rant, did not take away a privilege, made her promise not to make drinks in the bathroom and it was over. It did not even occur to me at the time how embarrassingly different I had treated them for the same crime discovered within 15 minutes and even worse, YuYu was aware that I was coming down on Nora for the spilling and the spreading about of much color and she did not say anything, didn’t even try to go cover her tracks. She was clueless at best and deceitful at worst and with YuYu, you can always go with clueless as the safe bet (the girl who brought home an open cup of chili in her backpack because she was saving it for later).

So as I was dropping off to sleep that night, it finally registered what I had done to Nora and how unfair I had been to her, what a schmuck I can be at times. And I don’t think it’s because I wore out my anger by the time I found YuYu’s mess, it’s just because I love YuYu, I have patience and forgiveness for YuYu and I don’t have those baseline feelings for Nora yet.

Now I am trying to make myself sloooooow down before I tee off on Nora when she pushes my buttons. The other three are not angels all day all the time, they need correction too, and it’s just that their misbehaviors don’t send me into orbit the way Nora’s can. Like today, when Ellie noticed on the calendar that she starts Girl Scouts on Wednesday afternoon, and Nora started the stamping and complaining that “I want go girl scout too,” even though she has no earthly idea what that means, she just knows that it is something she is not going to get to do, my first reaction was to tell her to “please Nora, please stop complaining all the time.” And truth be told, yeah, that’s what I did say, at first. But then I stopped, thought better, engaged her in a little conversation about why Ellie was a big girl and could scout and Nora will too someday, and I know it feels bad when Ellie can do more things because she is older and I gave her the attention that she needed/wanted and stopped grossly over-generalizing, because, yes, she does complain, but not “all the time” and her complaint this time was valid. But, sheesh, can I tell you, this gets tiring and tiresome to put this much thought into so much of my interaction with this child. I want it to be a cinch, it’s not. Come on cupid or cupid equivalent because I’m not looking for romantic love here, just good old mother love, please, please, sting me. My girl needs me to love her before I really cause some damage here. In the meantime, I step back several times a day and try to visualize how I would react if I were coming from love and hope for the day I don’t need to take any additional steps.

P.S. that's the sulking face that sets me off so badly, almost, a partial sulk, not fully developed, she was unhappy about the size of the box she was given to play with, so in between having fun, she was being petulant, so the sulk look didn't get the full lip thrust that day.

Why the hit clicker?

in the side bar under the picture flicker you may ask? Well, because it has a map and I'm hoping that a dot will appear in the vicinity of Nanning (probably not, I learned first hand last January that blogspot is filtered in Guangxi) or Guangzhou. If the dot appears in Guangzhou, it may mean the YuYu's foster brother has access to a computer and can click in to see updated photos of YuYu once in awhile and that would be nice to know. That's all, I'm not counting visits, although it is interesting to see dots in Europe and Tasmania?, I just want to know if Huang Wei can see YuYu, it broke his heart to lose her and I want to let him know she continues to thrive and still loves him very much.

Project Me Bag

My Ellie is . . .. and I've started with the superlative adjectives and back-spaced so many times I've worn out this screen which tells me that I do not have sufficient vocabulary to adequately describe this amazing little human. She does not judge, she embodies the word "inclusive," she is calm and centered, silly and gullible, not too adventurous or observant, but always willing to help without a word of complaint. She is short in stature among her peers by a long way; her tall friend Laurel had to lift her up to write her name on the white board in her new classroom on the first day of fourth grade last week. But where some children would be mortified, Ellie just giggled hysterically. Ellie is the shortest student in fourth grade but she just shrugs and says, "Someone has to be the shortest." Sanguine is the word that always comes to mind to describe this treasure I was entrusted to raise. My first goal in parenting Ellie is to just not ruin her with my own special brand of nuttiness. All I need to do for Ellie is provide praise, love and safety and make room for her own natural instincts, her predisposition to be kind, fair and accepting, to flourish and grow.

I adopted Ellie in 1998 when she was 14 months old and she is now 9.5 years old. The moment she was placed in my arms is seared into my memory: I was never so happy or grateful just to be me. She traveled to China with me in 2001 and 2004 on our trips to adopt Mimi and YuYu. She was not troubled on either trip with regard to feelings of yearning or loss as described by parents of other adopted children who take them back to their home countries. For right now, she does not question how she came to be a Chinese-American girl raised by a single mother in the heart of the Wasatch. She knows that she has birth parents and that she will never know the who or the how or the why of her beginning in life. She seems to be satisfied with the answer that there is no answer and she may never know anymore about her start in China than she does right now.

As an adoptive parent, I try, try so hard to be sensitive to the knowledge of everything my children have lost, both emotionally and culturally. That even though they are ethnically Chinese, they will never be more than tourists in their birth country. That alone is a huge loss, never mind the issues of abandonment and separation they will need to deal with as they grow to adulthood. I'm also aware that Ellie, even though she is almost ten, does not yet have the emotional language to talk about those feelings and has not processed any of the contradictions in her life. She made me a mom, and my great happiness is the result of another mother's great pain. All she knows is that she is loved, here and now, and she returns the feelings with equal intensity.

So, her first homework assignment in fourth grade is to decorate a brown paper bag, a Me Bag, with illustrations about her interests and to fill the bag with 5-7 items, including a few pictures that represent the important things in her life. She will share the Me Bag with her classmates as they get to know each other this week. She filled the bag with a sodoku puzzle book, a tiny stuffed dog, a soccer participation medal, hamma bead doodads, a sketch book and a photo of her grandmother and her sisters. I am standing there watching her load the bag and ask, I think helpfully, "don't you want to add something from China?" Ellie's response "no." The "no" wasn't presented with either positive or negative inflection, just "no." So there you have it. My totally assimilated little American girl. Despite my efforts to incorporate Chinese culture in our home, she has not escaped the collective. She has become one with the Disney Channel Stars, Saturday mornings on the soccer field, dvd watching in the mini-van and microwave popcorn. What can you do?

A rose by any other name

Would not be as sweet as my YuYu. My dearest little love sponge, the most gentle, kind, spacey love bucket child, started first grade on Wednesday. Although she didn’t come home with the dreaded family tree project (sigh of relief, hate to start the new year with the need to lecture her teacher about insensitivity to children who’s family trees are pretty sparse), she did come home with a questionnaire about her name, e.g., what does it mean, who gave it to her, where did it come from(?), was she named after anyone. I sat down and filled in the blanks in what I like to think of as the sanitized version because, although her teacher could not know it, my precious YuYu comes with a name that is loaded down with emotional and cultural baggage. But, I was calm, it’s not her English name that's loaded and I figure I don’t need to go out of my way to pound on her teacher over a seemingly innocent little assignment that isn't so innocent for this particular student. I just filled in the questionnaire in a way that does not bring any special or extra attention to YuYu’s name. She is named after my cousin who died too young (Kathryn), YuYu’s brave great-great-grandmother who immigrated to the US from Germany (Wiemar Republic, raging inflation and political instability, but pre-Hitler) only after earning enough money to send each of her 12 children on before her in the 1920’s (Marta) and raised them all by herself when she was widowed in the 1930’s. I also kept YuYu’s second and third Chinese symbols, Rui (auspicious) Yu (treasure). But YuYu’s first symbol? Baby’s named a bad name.

The good folks in charge of naming at the Nanning SWI gave every child who entered the orphanage the same surname: Yuan. Giving every child the same surname is not an uncommon naming practice in the realm of Chinese orphanages. All children from Ellie and Mimi’s SWI (different provinces) are named Fu (good fortune) blank blank. At Nora’s SWI, the surname changes every year and identifies the child’s birth year. However, no family in the Guilin egroup has indicated that they have a child who was abandoned more than a year after his/her birth and whether the SWI changed the child’s name to match the same name as other children born in that year or the name of the children brought to the SWI that year. Clear as mud?

The sad/bad aspect of YuYu’s Chinese surname? It’s the Chinese symbol for orphanage or institution. Every child that remains in the Nanning SWI until they age out into who knows what kind of life will carry the burden of a name that brands them indelibly as a person who was raised in an orphanage. Happily, this practice has changed, but only within the past year. The orphanage officials did this from a position of extreme insensitivity or, worse, they did it on purpose and they knew exactly what they were doing to these kids. For example, the director at Mimi’s institution gave every child who came into the SWI in 2000 the family name of “De” which means the morality/integrity of the Chinese people. Mimi is Fu (also not a real family name in China, no one except an orphanage kid would be named Fu) De Xin. Before I was scheduled to travel to adopt Mimi, I joined the Fuling egroup and there was a discussion about the meaning of De. A parent who traveled before me wrote that she had asked the director why she chose De for this “class” of children. The director’s response knocked me back: she said she gave the children a symbol of strong morality to make up for the immoral acts of their parents, no further elaboration. I had intended to use De Xin (symbol for keep in touch/write a letter) in Mimi’s permanent name, but dropped it like a hot rock and quickly notified my agency to make sure the paperwork was completed for Meredith Jean Fuling (where she spent her first year).
So, I didn’t pound YuYu’s teacher about the name assignment, and YuYu can be proud of her English name and the Chinese nickname she prefers, I blogged about it instead. YuYu’s teacher doesn’t even know the bullet she just missed, more info than she needs, more info than YuYu needs to know until she is MUCH, MUCH older. See, most kids have scrapbooks; my kids are going to have this blog. 

It's official, Mrs. Ellison is an angel

Stefani Ellison was notified by the CCAI yesterday that she will be among the honored at the annual awards banquet in DC next month. Talk about pulling teeth. I'm sorry I had to arm wrestle with Hatch's office to get it done, but there can be no doubt that she is a deserving recipient, a real angel, and now she has the plaque to prove it. Yay for Stefani. And, if YOU know any one who you think is potential angel material, you do not have to be an angel to nominate them (myself as a case in point). Go to the CCAI website (www.ccainstitute.org), look up your state and see which of your congress persons and senators are members of the coalition and send the nominating letter to ALL of them just in case. Then, learn from my mistakes, follow up, follow up, follow up.

still with the over-reacting

I know, I know, I know, if I had an OUNCE of self-discipline, planned and executed a party count-down to do list that I wouldn't be freaking out all over my kids during the short precious hours before we're expecting guests. The house was hammered (down side of having in-home child care during the summer months) and I couldn't even get close to Costco on Friday afternoon (traffic on Third West was unreal and just for future reference, you can throw a party without stepping foot in Costco before the event, it's just not as good a party, because, really, what spells gracious like a Costco meat/fruit/veggie/you-name-it platter?) and I still hadn't quite wrapped up the Folsom Prison paving stone project in the corner of the pool which leads me to an ungrammatical but HUGE thank you to Dutch Uncle Stew who, with his full ESP powers engaged, called at noon and asked if I needed any help, DO I DO I YES YES YES, what a man) ending sentence now, will pick up thread right here. So, I warned the kids in advance that as I needed their help and I had a job they could handle, I wanted them to jump into action, but if not under direct threat from me, they were to keep themselves occupied and out of the way. The three littlest aren't "helpers" yet, but Ellie can really pitch in. Ellie was straightening up in their bedroom, Nora was bored and directionless (my fault), Ellie could not "play" chess, they pretend, on a small magnetic chess board, so Nora just threw it, the plastic case exploded, pieces went everywhere, I exploded, no child of mine has EVER thrown/broken something to get attention or to work out a frustration, and I marched her little butt out on the deck (in the shade) told her that I was ANGRY, that she needed to use words, she was not allowed to throw and break toys, and that she was banished for a bad bad choice. Periodically, I would look out (sliding door from the dining room, I could always see her), ask her if she was bored, she would shake her head yes, and I would say good. I let her lay out there for close to an hour. I didn't even realize I had let it go that long because the last 20 minutes were spent snaking out a dollar store pom pom from the vacuum because my usually reliable helper had been too indifferent to bend down and pick it up. So, to Nora's credit, she did not tantrum out there, but I had huge guilt.

I left her too long and it was nice not having to deal with her in the house. Once again, my expectations for her behavior far exceeded her capabilities. I created a bad situation with all the rush rush cleaning and set her up for failure. On the other hand, sometimes in the course of human affairs, a mom needs to clean and kids need to lay low and it would be ideal if that family could make it through the morning without shattered chess sets. What would be more ideal is a mom who didn't feel like the top of her head was going to blow off over a minor infraction. I think of other parents dealing with purposeful destruction of costly items, public meltdowns, hours long tantruming and I really need some one to do the Moonstruck thing: slap me and shout "snap out of it." I know I know.

Hey, that was fun, let's do it again

We hosted a SMSP (single mom swim party, I didn't think that up, I had to have that explained to me, although it should probably be the FSMSP, F for fabulous) on Saturday afternoon and I think everyone had a good time. I remember the days when we spent most of our time at these parties chasing after toddlers with tissues and wipes and could hardly get a word in edgewise because our little little kids were running amok. This party was either (a) evidence of the effect of single quota imposed by the CCAA almost five years ago because all of the kids except for a cute as a bug 14-month-old from Kazahkstan were at least five years old, or (b) I'm way out of the loop and there are bunches of hip single adoptive parents out there and I don't know them. If the latter explanation is the case, I hope they're out there having as much fun as we did on Saturday watching our beautiful quota-free kids cavort in the pool.Having a house with a pool takes some getting used to. First, it's the pool maintenance or "how fast can algae take over your cement pond" challenge, then it's the make sure you keep a sharp look out for sinkers or the "how long can a preschooler float under water before the hostess figures out someone is drowning" issue (I have vowed to be MUCH more vigilant, believe me) and now its the lost and found box issue. By the time we're ready to say good bye, everyone is worn out from the the sun and chlorine and they just want to get the heck out of Dodge. So, if you are missing kids' flip flops, swim suit cover ups, or beach towels, give me a jingle. I think I really do need a lost and found box by the door. Even if I have to lard it with our own items, it might cause guests to pause a minute and check to make sure they have everything they came with on the way out.

How neat is this?

"Side the last week we the whole family leave for the sea play, play very much happy. Now sends a picture to give you, lets you also share our joy!"

That is the Babelfish translation of the message I just got from Huang Wei, YuYu's foster brother, that accompanied a dozen photos from their beach excursion. Can you stand it? I can't stand it. I can't wait to run home and show YuYu. Since YuYu's adoption in 2004, I've sent some money to make life easier for her family and for Huang Wei to get a computer and camera for college and for us to stay in touch. Got to love that technology. The little one is Xiao Zhen's "commercial" foster daugther, as opposed to a foster placement from the Nanning SWI. This little one's parents work too much and are paying YuYu's foster family to raise her. Another little heart breaker in the making. 

Rant update

Oh good hell, I just listened to a message from Marreen Casper, Senator Hatch's staff member tasked with processing the Angel in Adoption nominations. She went on an excursion for work, tipped an ATV on herself, has been "really goofy," is just embarrassed to tears that she didn't get this done, oh good hell, I can't even respond by phone, I'm too embarrassed for her that she would use the "it must have been the cold medication that made me do it" excuse, so so so
so so lame, what an asshat. But, since NO ONE from Bennett's office has called me back, I will fax a letter to Ms. Casper imploring her to submit Stefani's nomination as quickly as possible and cc: it to the CCAI. Oh my, I'm furious. Here's the letter, I hope it makes her feel bad:

Dear Ms. Casper:

I just listened to the message you left in my voice mailbox this morning. I am responding in writing for three reasons: (a) it is past the time you mentioned that you would be leaving for the weekend, (b) I’m very angry and embarrassed by your excuse and teeing off on you will serve no useful purpose, and (c) by responding in writing to your offer to proceed with Sen. Hatch’s nomination of Mrs. Ellison for the CCAI Angel in Adoption award I can also provide Ms. Armstrong at the CCAI with notice that she can expect to hear from you regarding this matter on Monday, August 21, 2006. In addition, no one in Senator Bennett’s office has returned any of my phone calls and this matter does not appear to have any urgency to his staff members either. Since you have all of the relevant information, you are in the best position to complete the nomination and I am requesting that you do so as quickly as possible.

I am relieved that the CCAI will extend the nomination deadline so that Mrs. Ellison may be included in this year’s awards event. I am very sorry that all the difficulty I have had trying to draw attention to Mrs. Ellison and provide her with this recognition from the CCAI has tarnished the award or will make her feel like she is in any way less than deserving of the recognition. This has ended up feeling more like a root canal than a project I embarked on to make a dear friend know how much her work is appreciated by both the families and children whose lives she has touched and the rest of the adoption community.

If you have any questions or need any more information, I can be reached by phone or email. I encourage you to make this request a top priority on your August 21, 2006, work schedule to insure that you have every thing you need to process the nomination before the extended deadline expires.

Sincerely,




Marji Hanson



Yeah, never be in doubt that I can be a huge ASS when I want to and sometimes even when I don't know I'm doing it. But this time, I knew.

Getting my rant on

That's what blogs are for, right? so it's my turn to use this little forum to blow my stack a little. There is a political thing created by Sen. Larry Craig (R. Id.), don't like his politics, creepy Bush Republican type, but, hey, he's an adoptive dad in a position of power and he whipped this institute together and it does good things. http://www.ccainstitute.org/ So anyway, every year they throw a big recognition banquet to focus attention on adoption related issues and to recognize people who make a contribution in the adoption community. Most of your own state's congressional representatives are members and are entitled to nominate someone from their jurisdiction each year for an Angel in Adoption award. So I have tried and tried and I'm still trying to nominate Stefani Ellison, the China co-coordinator for CHI (see links in sidebar) for this award. It's a good thing; she gets recognition in front of her peers for all the great work she does. Even though she deals with some difficult clients, families that commit to a child and then suffer financial or emotional set backs, or just change their minds, kids with severe medical needs who really really need families, she still has managed to place over 300 special needs kids since 2002 when the CCAA started the Waiting Child program and CHI started its participation in the project.

So I solicited letters of support from her clients and colleagues last year and submitted the package to Rep. Matheson's office because he is almost a Democrat and therefore not repugnant to me like Orrin Hatch and Cedar City, where the Ellisons live, is in his district. His office TOTALLY SCREWS THE POOCH and doesn't submit any nomination last year with this lame excuse: "At the last minute, we received so many nominations, we didn't have time to investigate each potential recipient, so Rep. Matheson chose not to submit any nomination this year." I was fit to be tied.

So well in advance of this year’s deadline, I retrieve the packet from Matheson’s lame-ass staff member and submit it to evil Hatch’s office after a nice conversation with his staff member about how inept Matheson’s office had been and how much Stefani deserved the recognition, I mean, how hard should this be right, 300 kids, she should be a lock, right? So when Stefani had not been contacted by the CCAI, I tried to reach Hatch’s staff member, I get silence. I call the CCAI and CONTRARY to what I had been told by Hatch’s staff member in July ( a senile sounding biddy down in his St. George office, and I can just imagine she’s one step up from a Gray Lady volunteer in this outpost Hatch maintains only for show because everyone knows the real action in this state happen much farther north), that she was submitting the nomination that day to the CCAI, she was LYING to me. The CCAI never received any form of communication from Hatch, I know because I had to call directly to follow up on our inept tax-payer dollars compensated public servant. Shouldn’t this be easier? I’m not asking Hatch to get a drug-abusing music producer out of some Malaysian jail, I just want Stefani to have a nice plaque she can hang in her office.

So, now I have to retrieve the package yet again, the CCAI will suspend the deadline and wait for Sen. Bennett’s office to submit the nomination, Stefani hangs fire and can’t make reservations for hotel or flight because who the hell knows if this will really happen for her this year, and I get to have the top of my head blow off because some slack-ass nincompoop can’t be honest that she has no idea what she is doing down to St. George.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Hanson Girls 6?

Okay, here is our world rocking news, we have a pet, we are now officially dog people, let the spoiling begin. Her name is Lucy and she is a 2-year-old hand-me-down silky terrier. I have resisted getting a pet because I am (a) lazy, (b) allergic to cats, (c) lazy and (d) lazy. Ellie has wanted a dog for a long long time, but only in her polite Ellie way of bringing it to my attention. No explicit whining or begging, just well placed, but not too frequent, comments about how great this or that dog is, or how much this or that friend really enjoys their dog. But I’ve consistently said no, not for us, puppies are harder to raise than babies at first, e.g., babies at least do their business in diapers and you can take them to KinderCare and they won’t chew up all your furniture while you are at work. But when my mother mentioned that her friend from way back in their high school days in Bear Lake needed to find a good home for this little lady, I said, what the heck, my home is good, relatively, depends, I can think of worse, bring her to us. Mom’s friend got Lucy for a companion after her husband of almost 50 years died two years ago. But mom’s friend has connected with a high school sweet heart, also a widower, and they are traveling a lot and Lucy is kenneled more than not so mom’s friend wanted her to be with a family/owner that was at least home more often. Since I’m too lazy (see above) to get us organized for just a weekend camping trip, we won the Lucy lottery because, shoot, we never go anywhere.

So Lucy arrived Friday evening with BAGS and bags o’dog stuff, BAGS I say, even a little coat to cover her own silken, but pretty skimpy, fur coat in the winter. And she is stuck with us now because the contents of the BAGS are scattered throughout our good but cluttered house and I will never get it all back in one spot again and by the time I do, she may like us and want to stay. Lucy is very sad and subdued, not at all happy here yet, kind of like YuYu acted for several months after she came to be a Hanson girl. She must feel like she is in the Twilight Zone after living with a retired lady in mourning to a house full of hands that want to pet her and small faces that want the get really really close to see if they can make Lucy smile ala Winn Dixie. So this is a good thing, pets are a good thing, right?? Sure they are, who could not adore this furry little face. Here’s hoping Lucy starts to like a little because she sure needs to start eating and drinking again; at six pounds, there’s not enough of her to survive an extended hunger strike as opposed to me, I could survive a famine.

P.S. Nora’s feet ARE big, but not that big, bad angle. And it was a really good day until Nora spit on Ellie as they were getting ready for bed and I had Lucy on the side lawn to do her dog business, sigh. I’ve started taking away Nora’s favorite things (now that she has enough of her own things) and putting them in jail whenever she does something disgusting, disrespectful, mean, impulsive, etc., The jail population waxes and wanes but it’s pretty full right now, sigh.

Comments

Teri in Iowa, thanks for the good anonymous advice (wink, wink) and for letting me know that you're concerned and keeping track of Nora and I. And to Amy and Kim, thank you so much for sharing your own insights to parenting because I'm blocked on this Nora thing and I do need to know what other, more thoughtful folks have discovered about parenting because I am not a more thoughtful folk. I've felt more like a good herd dog with the first three; guiding/pushing/herding around the edges of the flock because they intuitively know the right direction, they just need a wee yip or a yap from the left or right to keep them on the straight and narrow. With Nora, I feel like I need to put a saddle on her and ride her until she is exhausted and capitulates to my way of right until she can be legally emancipated and then all bets are off, she is society's burden at that point. I really do appreciate your concern and that you take the time to give me guidance and encouragement.
I so wish that Nora and I were better matched, I so wish that I liked her more, I so wish that this problem I have learning to love her was easier to solve, and so on, and so on, etc., etc., and if wishes were fishes, I'd have a fish fry. Yum, I love denial, where can I get some more. But sheesh, it is not going to get better by neglect, crap, I had been so hoping that ignoring the elephant in the room for the past seven months was the right ticket. I need to work at this, this being Nora's mom thing. I need to keep reminding myself that I need to work at this and if keeping this blog keeps me honest with myself, then there it is, a little public self-inflicted flogging is a small price to pay to improve myself because Nora deserves a fully invested parent who can love and appreciate her for who she is, all the energy, goofyness and gorgeousness and the in your face pouty spitting not fair kid who slips out too often and plays me like a xylophone.

Man, I need a life

So I got the kids to sleep and went downstairs to see what in the heck is wrong with the printer, I'm trying to get a box in the mail to Nora's foster family and my attempt to print photos this morning resulted in some psychedelic '60's rock poster kind of stuff and to add even more length to this sentence, I ended up adding nerd crap to this blog. I'm taking good advice and developing a hobby? oh I guess you could say that, but mostly it's just putzing around because it's there on other people's blogs and I'm thinking what, hey, I want things that flash on my blog too, I need I want (long story about my younger brother Clark and a beebee gun, I need I want a beebee gun, repeat a bazillion times) flashy crap on my blog. Since Nora can't read yet, and, therefore, can't read about all of my angst surrounding her adoption, I'll show her the birthday ticker and the Flickr thingy tomorrow before I go to work, I know she'll like it a lot.

Ooh, and we have a very special guest arriving tomorrow afternoon, but I won't let the dog, um, er cat, yeah, cat, out of the bag until the kids get the full measure of their surprise. But can I tell you, it is going to ROCK their world and teach them responsibility and empathy and all that other good stuff too.

Counseling session cancelled today, counselor called in sick, but that will give me more time to do my homework with Nora. I'm supposed to involve her in an activity that I enjoy and that we can do together. The theory is the more I concentrate my attention just on her, the more I will grow to like and appreciate her. And I'm not disputing that she is a great kid, it's just the button pushing that is keeping me at arm's length. How do you grow to love a child that pushes the big buttons one minute and the next minute is just a regular good kid with no apparent recollection that her behavior of half an hour ago sent her mother around the bend. This is pathetic, but so far we've cleaned shrimp, done hand dishes and skimmed the pool together, but she does seem to enjoy it a lot when she gets to contribute and work by my side as long as it is on her schedule, e.g. mucho pouting and stamping if she is not in the mood to help. I don't think that's what the counselor had in mind, but I'm beyond my creative resources to come up with anything else that we can do together that the other three wouldn't be standing there thinking, hey, what's up, how come only Nora gets to do that fun thing with mom.

But for tonight, no more nerdy computer stuff until I can refill light cyan and get Nora's pictures printed.

In the swim of things

Okay, that will teach me, AGAIN, mid-message and pictures loaded, something, either DSL or stupid blogspot freezes up and I lose many wonderfully written and very insightful paragraphs, sparkling gems that you would have adored reading, and I’m too tired to even attempt to recreate the moment. Stupid computer. Also, it just occured to me that if I leave the camera on portrait setting while I have it pointed at bobbing bathing beauties that the photo quality, heck these aren't even in focus, photo quality is an overstatement, might be impaired a tiny bit, d'ya think?

So here are pictures of wet kids having fun in the pool. I bought the house because it was parked in the backyard of both the elementary and jr. high schools. I couldn’t buy the house and not buy the pool, I asked, so I learned how to maintain the pool and the learning curve has been steeeeeeeeeeeep. Especially because the whole set-up is antique/vintage/pieces o’crappish. But the girls love it and are becoming strong swimmers and Nora has just been amazing. Our fun teacher from last summer wasn’t available for private lessons this summer, so the girls have been on their own and Nora just pushed herself to keep up with her sisters and can now swim under water across the deep end. Pretty darned amazing when compared to YuYu’s tentativeness that lasted all of last summer when it was her first exposure to swimming.

I have another appointment tomorrow with a family counselor. This is only the third session, but just talking about my fears/guilt/anger has actually been helpful and this is an admission from a reach-down-grab-those-bootstraps-a-real-team-player-plays-hurt kind of gal. I have done this before, YuYu was adopted at exactly the same age as Nora was at the time of her adoption, and this one just wasn’t feeling right. I knew I had to get help with my feelings for Nora. I was out of my depth. Thank you to all who wrote with encouragement and walked a mile in your moccasins kind of advice, it is good to know that others have had the same doubts and struggles. I have learned that I can’t respond to posts from anonymous folks, no email address is associated with your messages, but thanks for thinking of me. It’s not as pitiful/dramatic as I let myself sound. I have a wonderful mother who lives within 30 minutes, good friends in town and great friends on the internet, other singles with many kids, and it helps me feel better knowing I’m not swinging this hammer on my own.

Dont' look behind the curtain

Okay, thanks to the encouragement from Anonymous and Darlene, I will fill everyone in on the reason why I'm reluctant to post any more entries to this blog. I added Nora last January and it has not been pretty. We are a bad fit. I had been delusional. I thought I was the uber-mom. Everyone always told me what a great job I was doing with Ellie, YuYu and Mimi, really, everyone, and of course, I realize no one was going to step up and criticize me to my face, but still, I got raves. They were well behaved, clean mostly, and charming through and through and I love each one with a purple passion. I really thought that being a single parent of three was no big deal. I could do three with one hand tied behind my back, like falling off a log, like butter. I now know I was more like the Cowardly Lion dancing and feinting and shadow boxing a big show but I had no magic powers, no mom-wizardry. All I had been doing was pretend parenting, the great wizard was just plain old me with great theatrical props in the form of three very mild-mannered, easy going, easy to please daughters.
Since I brought Nora into the family I now understand why I believed before that single parenting, heck any parenting, could be so easy. My first three daughters ARE easy, they had me duped. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I don’t and I blame those three for giving me a false sense of accomplishment. I am not the uber-mom because those three tricked me into thinking I had even the slightest clue about filling this role. As it turns out, forget about the super mom suit, they won't be measuring me for that any time soon. The badge I should be wearing is struggling, flailing, cartoon-like mom: no heft, no substance, no there there.
I am not attaching to Nora. She pushes my buttons and I get so frustrated and angry with her so fast, it makes my head spin. I scare myself, can you imagine what it does to Nora? I demand more good behavior than she is currently capable of providing and I know that, in my head I know that. I look at her and know that she was institutionalized, that her foster family was exasperated with her too, that she has such a HUGE emotional deficit to overcome but still, I just want to say, so change already. Stop all this pouting, sulking, stamping, “not fair”, tattling, complaining malcontent crap and get with the Happy Hanson Girls program. Toe the line and get in tight formation like the other three. Be a team player dammit, right now, don’t make me repeat this to you again, and all of my wishing she were different probably exacerbates her odd-man-out feelings. We do make small progress, but we inevitably go backwards again. I am not cut out for this adventure. I sat on her bed last night looking at her, searching my heart for a solid label for anything I can feel for her besides resentment and it just is not there and if I were more hopeful, I would type "not there yet" but I’m not hopeful enough to type yet, yet.
So welcome to my whine fest, drink up, woohoo, partay. Yuck, I bore even myself with this pity party. I have pulled back the curtain to expose the charlatan that I am because I have no idea what the hell a real parent should act like and maybe if I throw myself at the feet of the blog world I can get some ideas, suggestions, guidance, tools, strategies, something, anything to help me learn to love this gorgeous, exasperating child. But for now, I would really like to click my ruby slippers and have all of this fixed, poof, like magic, but I guess I left those shoes in Kansas and I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore. I know I have to put on the hip-waders, do the hard work and grow up quite a little bit if I’m going to be able to drag all of us back to Oz in one Happy Hanson Girls package. But mostly I would just rather just piss and moan and hope for my mojo to return without all the intense emotional labor that I know is in store for me and Nora in our future.

To blog, or not to blog, shrug

Saturday night after the girls got to sleep, I had my laptop at home to catch up on some work, so, of course, sat their like a huge potato zombie and clicked through adoption blogs. I can't even remember why or which one was the first one I clicked into, but once you get into them, it's like quick sand, one blog leads to more links, leads to more blogs and more personal information than I thought I ever wanted to know, but apparently, I want to know because I just sat there clicking and reading and clicking and reading for way way way too long.

Some of these folks are very entertaining. They can make me want to read about the fourth diaper bag and gazillionith Baby Gap "drooly" outfit that bought that day. Some aren't so entertaining and I want to say, oh, put a sock in it. I am fascinated by the whole phenomenon. They have audiences, they write to please their audiences, they are pleased when they please their readers, they keep track of comments, they are hurt when no one comments, they know the lingo, they have the time, they respond to email, they make e-friends, they post controversial opinions and don't seem to get offended when they get negative comments, to the contrary they seem to relish the opportunity to lash back, they can manipulate the webhost site with neat things that flash and link video clips. I am too middle-aged, I am unworthy, I cannot keep up with that kind of "competition."

I can report, that's easy enough, when I was in China and observing and regurgitating my thoughts. But I've been home with Nora for over six months and the difficult work of parenting a child you weren't expecting her to be and attaching to that small fully formed and often annoying little human, that is hard, very hard to write about. But, I'm thinking, could writing about it help me accomplish the task better? Would it keep me honest when I slack off, when I'm supposed to be doing my "homework" with Nora, but I just would rather watch reality tv? I'm just wondering out loud because, apparently, that's what people who blog do, they wonder outloud. Let me think about it. Older child adoption is of great interest to a lot of people, I just don't know if I have anything to say that would be helpful, enlightening or comment worthy.