Another "10 Minutes"

So I must confess I didn't write that last post in exactly 10 minutes. I am using "10 minutes" loosely to refer to any sacred silent moment not punctuated by "Mama" (or "Mama-yeh") as is often heard in our Amharic-infused household. I know every mom says she's be rich if she had a quarter for every time she heard the word "Mom" in a day but it is so true. It's almost comical in our house. The JuneBug loves to say "Mama" all the time - in the car, at the table, on the pot - you get the idea. I guess when you have a limited vocabulary you use what you do have over and over again - kind of like those scary eggs at camp that just keep showing up in different forms at every meal. Lest you think I am some kind of Super Blogger (which I'm not), this post actually took several "10 minute" increments to finish given all of my copious spare time now. I may just take up knitting too...

As promised you will get two nuggets - one from our Ethiopian adventure and one filled with random reflections from life in the trenches in Mamaland.

Ethiopian Adventure - The $2000 Day.
Once we finished our very own Amazing Race and actually got to Ethiopia, we spent several days traveling in Ethiopia. We would highly recommend that adoptive families take advantage of adding a few extra days onto the trip in order to actually see some of the country if at all possible. Life outside of Addis Ababa is incredibly different. We feel that the time we spent traveling helped us to better understand the political, socioeconomic and cultural realities of our daughters' homeland. We were able to see Lalibella, Bahir Dar and Axum very easily in about 4 days. That also included our "$2000 day" - the day we took a trip to the girls' hometown to meet Eden's family.

God works in amazing ways. The way our trip had been planned, we were going to meet just Eden's birthmother at a cafe at the airport en route to Axum. I had always been a bit iffy - for various reasons - on whether or not this was the best plan. We finally opted to just go with the airport meeting plan because our time to explore other options was limited. Because of the mixup with our original air tickets, we ended up having the good part of a day in the town where Eden's family lives. We got to meet not only her birthmother but also her three siblings who also came along to meet us at a local community center. It was one of the most powerful and yet most difficult days we have ever experienced. It's hard to even articulate what is was like to sit across from a woman who tells you she had to give up her child because she was too sick to breastfeed and could not afford the formula to feed her newborn child along with the rest of her children given that she made about $10 a month and the formula cost $9. What on earth do you say to that?! How many variables are there to apologize for in a situation like hers? I could go on and on about this experience but suffice it to say - it was very clear through our meeting with Eden's birthmother that she - along with Junia - were dearly loved. We were able to get absolutely priceless video footage of Eden's family sending their love to the girls. We also got family history and pictures - provided to us by her birthmother (the copies were obviously originals, yet another sacrifice). Many years from now, what we got that day will be incredibly meaningful to both of our girls. It will help them to situate themselves in the world and understand the circumstances that led to their own life stories. It will give them a broader sense of place and of family. They will know they were dearly loved by birthmothers who chose to give them up because illness robbed them of the chance to care for them. Birthmothers who had the courage to love their daughters enough to want something more for them. It was worth our entire pre-placement trip - and the $2000 of repurchased airline tickets - to spend the day with this fiercely strong and beautiful family, a family that is now forever joined to us by chords of the heart.


Yuppie Goes Mama: We have now been home with little ladies for two weeks. Here are few recent thoughts (or at least the ones I can still cobble together now that my brain feels like mush a fair bit of the time) as this yuppie goes mama...

1. What we have endeavored to do is very hard. Let's just be honest about that. If you have no kids and a very convenient life with unlimited freedom and opportunity, bringing two toddlers (who are close enough in age to feel a lot - a bit too much sometimes - like twins) home with you from another country will ROCK YOUR WORLD. People keep asking me squishy and sparkly questions like "Aren't you just SOOOO excited to have the girls home?" These are hard questions to answer. Yes, we are excited to have them home and we adore them but in the transition time you are not thinking about squishy and sparkly things. You are thinking moment by moment of how to just survive. We knew this was going to be a big adjustment but sometimes words fail to describe what an adjustment it can be. That being said, things are finally starting to make sense again. The girls continue to bloom in their new environment. Eden absolutely terrified me at first because she did nothing but scream - all the time. She is now a totally different child. She is so much fun. She is fearless, fiesty and very outgoing. I am amazed. She is now very bonded to both of us (she wouldn't even look at me the first week we had her without screaming) and is an absolute joy with her wide 6-toothed grin. We are also finally now starting to feel like a family. You get off the plane as a "family" by definition but it has taken us all some time to start to feel like a family. I am now actually excited when the JuneBug bounds into our room in her footie pajamas at 7am with her mushed 'fro and huge bright eyes saying "Mommy! ...Puppy!" to remind me that the dog is in our room. It's hard to top that. They are both just so darn cute and they have completely stolen my heart. I get a kick out of just taking Junia with me to Target. She makes me proud because she's just adorable and she is so much fun to be with. The other day she saw this awful yellow hat on clearance at a kids' store we were at. I bought it for her because she was SO excited about it and it was just a buck or two. She wore it the whole rest of the day and kept saying to me (as I was driving!) "Mommy! Hat! Photo!" because she wanted a picture in her new (atrocious) hat. I've taken way too many pics of them but it's hard not too when they are that cute.

2. Speaking of the "puppy", the dog situation has also improved. Eden now giggles when the dog licks her in the face. Junia is very curious about the dog now too. She talks about him all the time but still wigs out a bit when he gets too close and she's standing on the floor. I can't say I blame her given that they look each other in the eyes when they are both on the ground. I seriously wondered if we were going to be able to keep the dog because the girls just would not tolerate him. Now, I'm happy to say that things are really looking up on the canine front. I think in a few more weeks the doggy drama will also be a thing of the past.

3. When adopting toddlers, it is hard to determine what meltdowns are adoption related and what are just age related. Junia hears a lot of "Koom-ee" in our house (this is Amharic for "Stop"). She is prone to being a drama queen and can be quite the whiner. We don't put up with that and she knows that now. We hope we aren't being too insensitive but we feel confident that almost all of these whiny meltdowns are because she's a two year old, not because she's adopted. It's hard to know for sure though and it really does come down to knowing your own child in certain situations. I'm sure as we get to know her better (and once we can all speak the same language), we will be able to fine tune our parenting a bit more.

4. In that first week back, we asked ourselves (multiple times!), "When will we find ourselves and each other again?" We felt as if our entire previous existence had been swallowed up when the little ladies arrived home. That too is getting better. We went on our first date (with a sitter!) last weekend. Once the girls were down (they sleep through the night with no issues - total blessing!), we headed out for coffee and then hit a late movie. The movie was marginal but it was significant for us to prove to ourselves that it really is possible to add children to your lives without losing your entire identity as individuals or as a couple.

5. Don't take on too much too soon - for you or your girls - even if things seem to be really humming along. We realized last week that even though both of our girls are VERY social (they both talk to every person behind any counter in any store we go into - in a combination of Amharic, baby babble, and "bye bye"), we may have been exposing them to too many people each day. I know that office Christmas parties wipe me out. Small talk, chit chat, lots of photos with strangers. The whole thing can be exhausting. I think kids can feel the same way. We realized at the end of one day that the girls had probably had too many people touching them and talking to them that day because they seemed really exhausted. We are now trying to limit the amount of people they see in one day so they don't end up feeling like they are on parade all the time. That's hard when they are so loved by so many already. They are blessed to have such a rich and caring community - as are we.

I also thought that I was enough of a Rockstar Mom to attempt to take my newly adopted children to a family gathering several hours away alone (without Daddy's help). Davis couldn't go because it was midweek and I thought I'd just buzz down with the girls for the night. This was a very bad idea. I had no idea what a mammoth undertaking out of town travel is with toddlers (especially if one of them is "sort of potty trained" and may start sobbing instantly about the need to go potty when you are in gridlock on the freeway and have no exit strategy). Eden ended up really melting down because of the change in surroundings and all of us were in tears when our 3 hour drive home turned into 7 thanks to 40 (that's right, 40!) accidents on the LA freeways the day we came home (CNN even covered the traffic that day!). I realized that the girls - especially Eden - are not ready for a change in surroundings yet, even for one night. That day will come, but it's not now. This was an example of too much too soon.

So that's my "10 minutes". Here's a final thought on "how you know your life has really changed". I now have a pink potty seat in the back of my shiny BMW. We used it today by the side of the road and I kept thinking "This is awesome!" Yes, things have indeed changed.