day in the life

Wanna hear about fashion forward? Well Adi, Belay and I are all sporting black nail polish. I keep my polish to my toes only but kids are full on mani/pedi.  Its totally in right? I figured it was in honor or halloween.

Also, I found (from kohls) something I've been looking for since adi was about 18 months. A kids friendly boom box of sorts but that I could put mp3s on and that the kids could carry around and turn on  and off on their own and not break.  You know, since our kids are budding musicians and all. But mainly so I could ignore the constant whines for me to turn on music.  

I have asked all the fancy electronic stores about this sort of thing with no avail. Then I run into kohls (because I thought they'd have a little fan there, they didn't because apparently its totally impossible to find a fan in october?!?)

And there it was. Priced at 50% off for 19.99$ ( I don't want to admit that I actually considered buying them a fancy schmancy i-pod dock for well over 100$)
A fisher price plastic primary colored boom box with 4 buttons. Play being big and green. The dumber of our mutts could figure it out.

Anyways point of story is that I have yet to actually hook it up to the computer to put tolerable music on it, but we are all lucky enough that it came preloaded with 20 kids songs (my fav of course) so Adi is listening to "down by the bay where the watermelons grow..." (do I need keep going or do you follow?) on repeat. Fabulous. Just faboulous.

Oh and she sings along except she doesn't know the words yet.

I decided to keep Adi home on Mondays cause I miss her too much. Except I have to lie and tell her its still the weekend and then I have to recreate any crafts they did in school so she isn't left out. Then I spent the day pulling Belay off of Adi and plucking strawberry blond hairs out of his finger. It was exhausting. why am I doing this ?

 
I took them to get halloween costumes today.  Since August Adi had plans of being a bride (along with her entire class of little girls) and a friend even gave us a dress we were just on a hunt for a veil. Now Belay has wanted nothing more than to be Rapunzel complete with long blond hair. Since we have the dress already we only needed to get some long glorious hair. So we end up at the halloween store at the mall, first mistake. But this wasn't until after we all got flu shots so Belay was doing his usual post shot limp and claiming that he couldn't walk.



Then we found a wig and despite the big talk, Belay refused to keep it on his head. There were no bride veils, actually there were, but they were black. And we briefly debated what a black bride looked like (no, not like Belay) but said no. Now, the actual plan was to head to the fabric store to make a veil, at this point is no longer an option since I waited till the last moment and now don't have any free time the rest of the week.  At this point Belay is flipping out cause he has to pee and the halloween adventure people refused to let me use their "staff" bathroom even though the scene we were making was totally worthy of an MTV show. 

So we see  a really tacky polyester strawberry shortcake outfit that it too small but Adi squeezes into and she's sold. Then I spot an adorable "country girl" outfit which actually just looked like a way less tacky strawberry short cake costume (the old school strawberry not the new hoochafied one). She agrees and is actually gitty over it.

Belay is about to pee all over the floor and I grab a totally consumer-tastic "James"( B's fav) from Thomas the train outfit. Its awful people. Awful. I've seen them before and have always sworn I would never put my son in it.( I sincerely apologize if you have chosen this costume for your child, but I am allowed to say this because I, in fact, have also chosen this for my kid.)

At this point I will absolutely not make another trip to the mall before the school Halloween party on Friday. I am totally not crafty enough to construct a last minute costume that Belay would find acceptable. And I'm not spending 13.99$ on a blond wig that he won't wear. So James it was and we ran to the potty.

I feel like I have a new notch in my failed as a parent belt today. My kids will be sporting unoriginal, store bought, trendy, consumerist costumes this year. And they love them:)

lets never forget

 I read this on the blog  rageagainsttheminivan (written by a mom to 2 biological children and 2 adopted children) and loved it. 

"I think that adoptive parents hold a sacred responsibility to acknowledge and attempt to minimize the traumas that can be associating with uprooting a child from all they know . . . even when all they know is a life of abandonment in a third-world orphanage with sub-standard care."

Attachment has been on my mind a lot lately and it is hard to put into words.  Really all I'm  saying is lets not ignore our children's past. Its okay by me if Belay has attachment issues. That is what I'm here for. To help him learn to attach. Its not always easy and not always fun but it is always important to remember who he is. Even if he appears "perfect" to the outside world, his loss is never going to disappear.

Who are we to decide that our children should be fine because they are now in a loving home. How can we choose to ignore the time our children spent else where. It was real.

For Belay, it may have "only" been 14 months. When was the last time you spent 14 months away from anyone who loved and cared for you unconditionally? When did you last spend 14 months alone with no family or friends?  And if you did spend said months alone, would you be the same as before you left? Would you want to let everyone know why you act certain ways? Would you at least want t talk about that time spent alone? Or would you ignore it, pretend it never happened? (Even if you did choose to shove that isolation into the back of your subconscious, it would never leave you. It would find you again, in a less friendly way)

A child has memories, feelings, yearnings for whats lost, even if what was lost was sub-standard.

Lets not forget where our babies where before they were in our arms.  Lets go beyond celebrating their culture with food, music, and photographs. Lets always remember the trauma, even when they appear happy. Our babies where not always our babies.  We will be doing them a great disservice by ignoring that fact.  Lets acknowledge that its okay for our children to suffer from their losses. Even if it was only 14 months. Even if it looks different in my child than it does in that child.  That child who is clearly suffering.

Big blue

Apparently there is a level of rowdiness that goes on in our house that I'm not aware of on a daily basis.  I am reminded of this on nights like tonight. When my kids are happily playing with a boy from Adi's class and then suddenly that boy is crying and hurt and my kids are just staring, wondering why the game ended. 
Of course, when asked to apologize, they both argued that it wasn't their fault. I realized at that moment that they were kind of right. Neither of them had any idea that a full body slam into a steamroll over the fallen body  constituted as anything but fun.
What went wrong in the last 1.5 years? Where did I mess up?  This then had me recapping the time when Adi, out of pure excitement, punched Belay in the head.  Then the time Belay punted his cousin's cat across the kitchen out of pure joy. And lets not leave out the head lock where Adi was about 3 seconds away from sending her brother to the emergency room or the black eye Adi sported for a while for reasons I can't even remember except I am sure they had to do with a short guy with curly brown hair. 
And so goes daily life in Big Blue.

                          Speaking of life in Big Blue, here are some oldies but goodies.

                                   "We're the three best friends that any guy could have"

                                     
                                         A little tea, a little swimming.

                                      
                                     A huge pile of laundry to fold. I loath folding laundry.

 

The amazing new washer and dryer we bought when we moved that does NOT fold that giant load of laundry. But seriously, for the $$ these girls cost it would have been a nice feature.

                                                        Breakfast with a fall crown.
Quick story about the crowns... I forced Adi to stay home with me one day, just me and her, because I miss her so much. That fateful day happened to be the day where the class made "fall crowns". Yes, I forced my daughter, lover of all things crafty, projecty, and involving crowns, to stay home that day.  While her sweet teachers promised to make one with her, she couldn't bare to go another day without one.  One night after school we marched around the block collecting leaves and shoving them into a purse. We then stayed up way to late dumping glitter and gluing pompoms and dried leaves.  They were a hit.  So much that Adi "shared" her crown and the story of making them every day for a week during sharing time 

My "fall" mantle. Is it wrong that I bought fake pumpkins cause I'm sick of them rotting by mid October? Don't worry we brought home a slew of real ones from the schools pumpkin patch fundraiser yesterday.

                                               view from living room to kitchen

                                                   from stairs into living room

                                                           front porch

                                      Kick ass fence Andy build and the front yard.

The rest of the house is still a work in progress. Obviously since its only been 3 months since we moved. Actually its killing me a little on the inside each day that the coats still don't have a home and our "office" is more like a storage unit.