Book Review: Everything You Ever Wanted by Jillian Lauren

Title: Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir
Author: Jillian Lauren
Enjoyment Rating: *****
Source: Digital Copy
Content Alert: Some swearing

When Jillian Lauren gets to the point in her life where she wants a child, she has lived a very full life-- she's been an actress, a member of a harem, a drug addict, a cosmetologist, a rock star's wife, and an MFA student, just to name a few things. One thing that it seems like she might never be is a mother, and after several years of infertility, she and her husband Scott Shriner (bassist for Weezer) adopt a son, Tariku, from Ethiopia. And then, they set out on the task of learning to become a family.

I can't tell you how many times Everything You Ever Wanted made me cry. I was crying even before Tariku entered the picture, just from the way Lauren was able to get her life back together (she talks about her best friend, who also struggled with addiction, throughout the memoir, and it provides a haunting counterpoint). I adore her for the honesty about which she talks about raising Tariku. Raising kids who know trauma and loss, who have been abandoned and neglected, is no small stuff. Many of us put smiles on our faces, but Lauren goes the places that so many of us feel-- sometimes at our wit's end, but loving these kids with a desperate ferocity. So thanks, Jillian Lauren, for this book. For your gift with words, and for making me feel not quite so alone. And for the beautiful way in which you're raising your son. It gives me hope.

A year! (And oh, what a year it's been)

A year ago today, my mom, Rose and I spent the morning strolling through an outdoor shopping area in Nanjing, China. Over the previous five days, we had flown halfway around the world, then done a marathon of sightseeing in Beijing and Shanghai. I think we thought it was finally time to catch our breaths. A year later, I'm still not sure I've caught my breath.

A year earlier, when we had gone to the same room in the same office building in the same city to get Rose, we waited for the longest half hour of my life before the babies arrived. This time, the orphanage people were waiting for us, and we turned the corner to find Eli, with a look of terror in his eyes. They placed him in my arms and he screamed. Rose patted him and said, "Okay, baby." And within just a little while, it really was okay.

Once his tears dried, Eli seemed to accept quickly that life with us was the new normal. And he's been easygoing like that for most of the last year. I'm not sure he would have survived the early months, with new casts each week and surgeries every month, if he hadn't had such a sweet disposition. And, like most two-year-olds, he definitely has his moments when he wants to be held or he whines or he climbs on things over and over and over again, but really, he's such a sweet, gentle, nice little guy. I feel so incredibly blessed to be his mom.

I feel like all of this is building up to a "but." I've tried to be as honest as possible on my blog, and while Eli is incredibly awesome and smart and funny and has made so much progress this year, this has also been the hardest year of my life. Ed warned me. The social worker warned me. The reading I did about adoption warned me, but I didn't believe them. I was a seasoned mom. I could handle this or anything in my path.

I thought that the year Ed was an intern and we moved to Minnesota and it snowed all winter long and the house was all brown and dark and depressing and Bryce was a toddler and Annie was a newborn would go down in the history of our family as the hardest year, but this year beat it. I love my kids fiercely, but having two two-year-olds brings me to the brink of my sanity almost every afternoon between the hours of four and six.

photo by Crooked Pinkie Photography

I like to do hard things. I'm always up for a good challenge. Honestly, until this year, I had never met a challenge I wasn't equal to. I hope that doesn't sound too arrogant. I recognize that I'm someone who has a lot of energy and drive, and it happens that I've chosen to focus most of that energy on being (at least for now) a stay-at-home mom. Most of my parenting years, I've worried that the energy and drive would have a negative impact on my kids because I did too much comparing or I was too involved in the kids' lives, but this year, it's been all I can do to keep my head above water. Neither Rose nor Eli sleeps all that well, and if you combine the sleep deprivation with trying to be the best mom I can be to two toddlers (who often act like they hate each other) all day, with doing all of the stuff my school-age kids need once they come home from school, I've felt stretched so thin that I'm sure I'll never be the same. I never have enough arms, enough time, enough patience. I fall asleep in movies, in the car when I'm not driving, and within seconds of my head hitting the pillow at night. I smile less and yell more. I always thought I'd bounce back from this stay-at-home parenting thing to have an awesome career in my 40s, 50s, and 60s, but I don't know if there is a bouncing back from six kids. If there is, it might take a few more years before I can see it.

There's no doubt that I would still adopt these two sweethearts again in a heartbeat. Would I recommend that others adopt? Absolutely. Would I recommend that others adopt two kids the same age? Yes, but with their eyes wide open. I think I thought that having two toddlers would sort of be like having a friend over for a perpetual playdate.

This year has been stressful for all of us, but our lives are better for being together. Eli is such a fantastic kid-- he's adapted so well to the chaos of our lives, and he's grown so much. He's adorable and funny and the perfect completion to our family, and we love him to pieces. I hope that this year will show our kids that we can do hard things, and even when those hard things don't stop being hard immediately, it's ultimately persisting through the hard things that bring life's greatest rewards. I consider Eli one of the greatest rewards of my life.

Two years

Two years ago, they placed her in our arms. We expected tears. We got quiet acceptance and

alertness. This sick, skinny, red-cheeked baby seemed to trust us as we fussed over her, smiled and cried, then took her back to our hotel room to discover that not only was she not walking at eleven months, she couldn't sit or roll over. The only time she got really upset was when we tried to feed her solid food-- it was obvious she had no idea what it was. But there was a spark in her eyes that let us know that eventually, she would be fine.

This morning, she and Maren spent the morning acting out the songs from Frozen. She's wearing her favorite purple shirt and her favorite purple shorts, which she wears because she thinks they make her look like Elsa (so much for all the money I spent on cute clothes this winter). When I contrast the newborn-like baby she was two years ago with this big kid (an acutal kid! not a baby!), it makes me so happy to see how far she's come, and also a little sad at how quickly this time has

She's smiling for the camera, can't you tell?

passed.

Today, Rose runs the house. When we decided to adopt, it was, in part because I wanted the sound of kids' voices in the house for a bit longer, and I certainly have them. Rose does everything with purpose, intention, and zest. Everyone in the house, probably even everyone on our street, knows when she's happy and when she's sad. She's the life of our party and completely central to our existence, and even though she runs us all ragged sometimes, we couldn't imagine our lives without her.

The Parenting Mirror

Rosie is a thirty-seven inch, thirty-four month bundle of energy and muscle. She turns somersaults, jumps effortlessly to the ground from the fifth step, scales the fronts of cupboards, and throws and kicks with amazing accuracy. When she goes into the back yard, the first thing she wants to do is play basketball, much to the delight of her father. Ed was an All-State basketball player in high school, and although has half a dozen kids, Rose is the first one who has shown much interest or proficiency in throwing a basketball.

"She gets her athleticism from me," he says, deadpan, waiting for someone to come in and correct him.

We've also been known to joke that the only way Ed was going to get kids with dark hair and eyes like he has was to adopt them from China.

Parents seem quick to attribute their children's good qualities to their own genetic contributions; I've also been known to attribute some of the kids' less-than-stellar qualities to their dad. The boys' lack of interest in leaving the house once they've come home for the day, even for something fun, is so frequently seen among members of Ed's family that it even has a name-- Minertia.

Ten years ago, I was still finding my footing as the mom of my first child, Bryce. We'd spent the first three years of his life delighting over all of his superior qualities. As a baby, he had enormous blue eyes and a cue-ball bald head. When he walked at nine months and started talking shortly thereafter, I patted myself on the back, because I must have been doing something right, or at least contributed my superior genetics. We loved the way that he learned entire movie scripts verbatim and repeated them whenever he watched the films-- he'd grow up to have a mastery of standardized tests, just like his dad. We praised and praised and praised him, and saw ourselves reflected in that praise. The things that raised red flags for his preschool teachers (no interest in playing with other kids, having a hard time sitting during circle time, not making eye contact) were things that to us just showed a strong will that would serve him well later in life.

So when the teachers referred us to Early Intervention and he was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, I was crushed. Yes, part of it was solely worry on Bryce's behalf-- would he ever go to mainstream school? Would he be smart? Would he be able to live on his own? Make friends? Have a fulfilling life? Whenever I asked these questions, the specialists were evasive. "It's too soon to tell," they said. But a large part of my anxiety at that time was also self-directed. Was there something I could have done to prevent this? Was it because he was so small when he was born? I'd followed What to Expect When You're Expecting to the letter, and the doctor had assured me that babies are sometimes small, but what if I did something wrong during my pregnancy that I didn't know about? Had I been too indulgent during his babyhood? Should I have forced a greater variety of foods on him? Were my genes bad? In some ways, I feel like the diagnosis tarnished how I saw him-- it took away my innocence and my joy-- the things that had made him special now just made him abberant. It took me a long time to get the joy back.

Bryce was almost eleven when Rose was born, half a world away in China. We did not contribute her genetic makeup, I did not grow her in my womb, but she has been our daughter in our hearts ever since she was five months old, and has been with us now for nearly two years. We brought her back to the hotel on the day she was placed in our arms, and looked her over from head to toe. Unlike with our biological kids, we didn't try to figure out, "your toes, my hair, your long body, my gentle personality." She was completely herself. And over the last few years, as the force of her personality has become evident (a force that likely kept her alive during the first few months living as a cleft baby in an orphanage), it's been freeing to attribute those personality traits only to herself. Her sense of fun, her determined will, her propensity to throw and hit and kick at everything in sight when she gets angry.

And while I've learned lots of lessons over the last several years of being an adoptive parent, one of the most surprising has been the way it has changed the way I see all of my children. I do my best to raise them, individually, according to their needs, but ultimately, they are all their own people, and not reflections of me. By divorcing my genetic contribution from the equation with Rose, I could see that the important factors in parenting all of my children were my actions as a parent and my children's actions, and not all of the complications of the mirror. I couldn't see that with my older kids, and in some ways it makes me wish that I'd adopted Rose and Eli first, because it would have taken some of the pressure off everyone else.

Last weekend, when Annie and I were out of town together, we were stopped several times on the street by people who said, "Wow, you must be mother and daughter, you look exactly alike." It was kind of fun (at least for me, Annie may have been mortified), and I know that Rose and I will never have that experience. People are more likely to say, "You're her mother?" with incredulity in their voices, or just to assume that I'm the nanny. But we both know that we're mother and daughter, and I think that in becoming her mother, I freed myself of some of the pressure that so many of us feel with parenthood, that our children will reflect us in a positive light. I will push this girl to be the best Rose she can be every day of her life, but it's for her, and not for me.

Book Review: Daughters for a Time by Jennifer Handford

Title: Daughters for a Time
Author: Jennifer Handford
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Audible
This book would be rated: PG-13 for adult situations, language, unsexy sex

More than anything else, Helen Francis wants to be a mother. She lost her own mother to ovarian cancer when was a teenager (and her father abandoned Helen and her sister, Claire, shortly after that), and she thinks that more than her marriage or her successful career as a pastry chef, becoming a mother will show that she has overcome the challenges of her early life. The only problem? She can't have a baby. Helen has tried everything, and her husband Tim, seems eager to move on to the next logical step-- adopting a baby. But it's not that easy for Helen, who feels like she's giving up on herself if she chooses adoption.

Eventually, Helen and Tim adopt a baby girl, Samantha, from China. Helen believes that now her life will be perfect. She and Claire can raise their daughters together, and they will both have the strong families they were deprived as children. However, Claire is soon diagnosed with the same cancer that killed their mother, and Helen has to readjust her life's path.

I listened to this book on audio, and it was eminently listenable. I found myself listening in the shower and the car and everywhere else I went. But that doesn't mean I necessarily liked it. As an adoptive mom, I really enjoy reading stories about adoption, and particularly like reading stories where the motivations to adopt are different from my own, sort of nebulous ones. For me, choosing to adopt a child didn't have the same emotional implications as it has for many families who turn to adoption after experiencing infertility. So I found that part of the story quite interesting. It was obvious to me that Handford, or someone she knows well, adopted from China sometime before 2007. The problem for me is that the adoption portion of the book seemed to be set in 2011 or 2012, and by then the process was very different. So the nitpicky side of me wanted her to get that right. But she did a great job capturing the details, the smells, and the sights of China. I could even pinpoint the hotel she stayed in when she was in Guangzhou (Holiday Inn Shifu?). After Helen, Tim, and Samantha return from China, I wanted the story to go do different places than it did. I loved the side-story of her reconciliation with her father, but I hated that Claire soon got sick with incurable cancer. Even though I knew it was coming, it felt manipulative. And while I enjoyed the way Handford handled the struggle the family went through in the ensuing year, I felt like the final events of the story (which I won't give away) were implausible based on some of the actions the characters took early in the novel. Overall, it was a book I'm glad I listened to, and one that I enjoyed, but I was left with a lingering feeling of emotional manipulation, like I've felt after reading Jodi Picoult novels.

Staring at the wall

I don't know why I try to keep up the appearance that everything is going well in my life. Or if not swimmingly exactly, that at least I can keep my sense of humor about this life with six kids, two of whom happen to be two years old. Most days aren't so bad, as long as you have a high capacity for disorder (I don't), nakedness (I do), poop (I can handle that too), and being hit by your daughter at least a hundred times a day.

I keep thinking about how many people I know who have big families. Here in Mormon central, it's not at all uncommon to have six kids or more. There are half a dozen families in my church congregation who fill their pew to bursting. My in-laws were both seventh children. My mom grew up in a house of six. I also have lots of friends with multiples, which is, for all intents and purposes, how I'm raising Rose and Eli. I have two friends who each had two sets of twins less than two years apart, and another friend with triplets. One of my mom's best friends has grandkids who are quintuplets. The other families on my adoption boards seem to have it all together, and that sometimes makes me wonder what the heck is wrong with me? It's not like I haven't done hard things in my life. In high school I juggled early morning seminary, AP classes, dance, swim team, work, and the school play one semester. I worked my way through college, taking 21 credits some semesters (and getting straight As). I finished one MA program while working full-time and carrying my first child. I did my MFA while juggling the schedules of four kids. I've had horrible bosses and heinous jobs. I've run marathons and ultra marathons. Why is this so hard?

Let's take tonight as a case in point. Today was a pretty normal day. I spent the morning running errands, and probably pushed it too far with the kids, buckling them in and out of their car seats too many times, expecting them to be good in stores and shopping carts for too long. Then I came home and fed them and basically ignored them while I rushed around getting ready for a little get-together I held while they were napping. It was so nice to see two of my old running buddies. We ran together for what I see now as a golden time in my life. Now one is retired due to a back injury and the other is 38 weeks pregnant with her fifth child (which is why we were getting together), and our lunch made me realize how much I benefited from their wisdom and their awesomeness, and how much I miss having them as a part of my life most mornings. Running is a lifeline for me, and a lot of times I feel like it's what's keeping my fingernails holding onto the edge of sanity, but it was so much better back in the days when I could look forward to an hour of adult conversation most mornings.

Anyway, back to tonight. The kids come home from school, unload their backpacks and their day's reports on me, and rush off to piano lessons. I know I should sit and read to the babies, or play with them at the very least, but since I've spent the last two hours talking with friends, instead of putting the sheets I washed back on four beds, or staring at the wall to recuperate from my morning, or taking a nap myself (I haven't been blogging very much because I NEED that nap time to decompress, and blogging, though fun, is not as rejuvenating as blissing out with a book, or my comfy blankie). So I did the sheets, whining at the babies the whole way for getting into the LEGOs in the boys room, and getting into the makeup in Annie's room (I don't go anywhere without them following me), and pulling the damn pillows off my couch for the eighteenth time today in my room. Then I had to iron my duvet, because part of keeping up the appearance that I'm keeping it all together is doing things like ironing duvet covers. I did this with the babies playing at my feet, running under the ironing board, and doing tricks in the laundry baskets. And then, because there were a dozen or so other things that needed to be ironed, and I really didn't feel like reading to the babies, who were annoying the hell out of me, I did that ironing too, and got progressively more annoyed as they worked harder and harder to get my attention.

Then the older kids got home, and they had an agenda-- we were going to carve their pumpkins. So instead of playing with Rose and Eli, like they usually do at this time of day, they all started to draw complicated designs on their pumpkins. Annie wanted eyes with pupils. Isaac wanted enormous antler horns. And Maren wanted her monogram until I got 2/3 of the way through it and she decided that she didn't like how it looked with the C for Camilla all the way off to the right side and started crying. Meanwhile, Rose and Eli kept climbing up onto the island. Every time someone would lift one of them off, the other would climb on, and when we managed to get them both down on the floor, they'd start moving the bar stools, scraping them all over the floor, so they could get themselves a better view, preferably one within reach of the knives.

By this time, it was 5:30, and I got a text from Ed saying that he wouldn't be home until 8, because he'd forgotten about a mandatory meeting at work. I'd already ditched plans to make a real dinner, and was in the process of doing Mac and Cheese and leftovers. The doorbell rang, and UPS delivered something I've been waiting for with great expectations-- a tool to change the lightbulbs in my staircase, which were all burned out. So I plopped the kids in their high chairs and stools, plunked out the Mac and Cheese (no sides, just a clamshell of raspberries tossed on the table) and got to work on the lightbulbs. After a few tries, a major screaming fit at the two kids who could both do their homework easily yet felt the need to whine to me about it, and one lightbulb that went sailing down half a flight of stairs, I finally met with great success (yay!) and now have light in my stairwell, but I came back to find that Eli had spilled his drink all over Annie's homework, and Rose had freed herself from her high chair and her clothes, and was smashing raspberries with her toes all over the floor. Instead of sitting with the babies, reading to them, and giving them a bath, I knew that it would be impossible to rest until I'd done the dishes, so I started the dishes.

In the process, I climbed under the bar to get a plate off the floor, and fill it with discarded Mac and Cheese and smashed berries. I misjudged when standing up and smacked my head on the corner of our marble bar, and suddenly, I was crying hot tears, heaving, sighing. I don't cry-- I can't indulge in tears-- I just have to push through. But now I couldn't stop. Until.... I looked up and saw that Rose and Eli were now both naked, and dancing in the windows. I grabbed them, and took a second to rub the rapidly forming egg on my head, during which time Rose came over and proceeded to hit me, when Isaac pointed to the window. "What is that?" he said. I knew before I even looked. Of course it was poop. Back when I had one, two, or three kids, I would have disinfected the entire family room, but I just took a paper towel, grabbed the poop, squirted down the streak with antibacterial spray, and called it good.

The night went on like this-- babies doing their best to escape when it was time to dress them for bed, begging to watch Elmo for the millionth time in the car when I took Bryce to his clarinet lesson and crying when I said no, and so on. But then tonight, Rose gave me a kiss and a hug at bedtime and went right to sleep, and Eli gave me a million kisses and said "love you" and "night night." And I think it was worth the hell that was the rest of the afternoon. Or almost worth it, at least. And I know that in the long run, it will be worth it. Even if it's the hardest thing I've ever done. Even if I'm not up to the challenge. Even if it takes me another six months to learn to sit and be still and let them play instead of trotting them out to do a million errands every morning. Even if my kids mock me about writing a post in which I whine about my day. Even if I never develop the kind of stiff upper lip I might need to do this job I've signed up for. Even if it never gets easier.

So that was long and depressing and self-indulgent. And there's still laundry to fold and kids to tuck in and a husband to say hi to for the first time all day. But there are also clean sheets and tomorrow and the next day to look forward to. And the book reviews? I'll get to them, eventually.

Sibling rivalry, six months in

Then

Now

For most of the last year, I've had an idea stewing in my brain. I'd write a memoir about this whole experience of adopting virtual twins. Ed is rolling his eyes right now and internally accusing me of adopting for material to write a book, but adding two toddlers to a family is something no sane person would do for the sake of research. You can take that however you want. But I figured that as long as I wasn't rewriting either of the novels I wrote in grad school or starting some new fiction project, I might as well rework some of my essays and blog posts and use them as the starting ground for a memoir (of course, this hasn't happened, because every time I open my laptop during the day someone starts climbing on me, and right now I'm writing while two babies maintain eye contact with me from their beds in separate rooms). Anyway, I even had a name for this theoretical memoir all picked out-- Are They Twins?

The funny thing is, after six months home, no one has asked me if they're twins, not even once. Most conversations with well-meaning, nosy strangers go something like this:

"Are they adopted?"
"Yes."
"How far apart in age are they?"
"Six months."
"Are they really brother and sister?"
To which I answer, "They are now," or "No," or "You do the math," or "Who knows, maybe their dad got around," depending on the day and how snarky I feel.

I really expected that people would automatically assume they were twins. I often dress them in coordinating outfits, and think they look enough alike that they could be siblings. Add in the whole "Chinese among white people" thing and I figured it would be a natural expectation.

But they don't seem like twins. For one thing, Rose is three inches taller and six pounds heavier than Eli. When we adopted her, she shot up from 13 to 30 pounds in a year, and I assumed that Eli would do the same thing. But he weighed 23 pounds when we adopted him, and he's tipping the scales at 25 1/2 as of today, which isn't a huge weight gain in nearly six months.

Even more than their physical size, Rose outweighs him in personality. Before we had her, based solely on stereotypes, I imagined that the daughter we would adopt from China would be petite and reserved, possibly a little bit shy and retiring. Instead we got a big girl with an even bigger personality. She's so loud. She screams whenever something doesn't meet with her immediate approval. Even when she couldn't communicate her wants with words, she didn't have much problem making them known. She jumps and hits and runs and barrels through life with an energy that can be exhausting. From the moment she met Eli, she's been unsure whether he was friend or foe. These days, he's usually a friend, but she can break out the claws in a flash if she ever feels threatened.

There's something I hate about this way of characterizing my own kids. One of Rose's greatest strengths is that she's a fighter. It's probably the quality that allowed her to survive on the cold April night when she was abandoned, and it's certainly the quality that got her through the next eleven months in the orphanage. It will undoubtedly serve her well later in life, But she doesn't need to fight in the here and now, and sometimes I think she doesn't know how to turn it off. I know that when she's in preschool, I'm going to get calls from the teacher about how she pushes other kids on the playground or butts to the head of the line. I do my best to put her in time outs and time ins, to give her plenty of one-on-one love, and praise her strengths, but I know that the fighter will always be there.

My dad grew up in a house of four boys. He was the oldest, also known as "the smart one." There was an "athletic one," and a "funny one," and another one (I can't remember how he was characterized). And even though they had parents who loved them and all grew up to be good fathers and productive members of society, I know it bugged my dad and his brothers that they were circumscribed and reduced to a single dimension. I don't want to do that to Rose and Eli.

But it would be denying the reality of the dynamic not to admit that Rose has been the aggressor during the last six months. Six months from now, the story might be entirely different. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that she is physically larger, that Eli couldn't walk when we got him, and that she felt threatened when her position was usurped. Then Eli spent five of the last six months in a series of nine casts, which only increased the imbalance of power. It's been a great blessing to all of us that he's been so mild and easygoing about his state (whiny, yes, at times, but generally, very easygoing). I can barely get Rose into her car seat, I couldn't imagine trying to strap her into a Ponseti brace for eighteen hours a day. I love that he is so sweet, so snuggly. Rose has been home for a year and a half, and she still doesn't voluntarily give hugs and kisses, but Eli loves to kiss, and one of his first phrases was "lub you." They just seem so opposite in so many ways, and sometimes I wish Eli would stand up and clock her hard on the head to let her know that she can't take advantage of him. Then I feel guilty for feeling that way, and for stealing her opportunity for babyhood by adding him to our family.

Still, they are definitely more friends than foes. Last night at bedtime, Rose was angry (as usual) at being put in bed. She was lying there, screaming, big, fat tears running down her red cheeks. It was time to put Eli to bed too, but he stood next to her, stroking her head, trying to help her feel better. As I sit here typing this, she's calling out "bah," from her bedroom, which he returns with a "bah," from his bedroom, and then they both giggle and do it again. When she wakes up in the morning, the first thing she wants to do is go find "Ly." This sometimes backfires-- like today when they'd both been down for their naps for 30 minutes and I was just finishing up some Segullah emails, and heard crying from upstairs. I came up to find her in his crib with him. She must have had a hard time falling asleep on her own and went to find a little companionship, waking him from a deep sleep. (And you didn't want to be anywhere near my house from 3-6pm tonight because they were both completely evil). I love that they are now great playmates for each other, at least until I turn my back.

At two, Rose is feisty and Eli is gentle, and I recognize that these characterizations are in large part in opposition to each other. If they weren't feisty and gentle, maybe they would be the early bird and the night owl, or the smart one and the dumb one (I'm so glad I don't think of them as smart and dumb). I don't think admitting that at this stage in their lives they exhibit these qualities is necessarily a bad thing, but I also hope that I'm not so rigid in my thinking that I won't allow them to redefine themselves. Maybe some day they will be mistaken for twins, and maybe they never will, but one thing is for sure-- they are brother and sister. Really brother and sister. Because over the last year and a half, the thing I've learned again and again is that it isn't blood that makes a family. It's living with, and loving, and yes, sometimes hating on each other. And they've had plenty of that over the last six months, with a whole lot of togetherness ahead of them.

When are no hands better than two hands?

"Today," would be Eli's answer.

Eli and I sat in the casting clinic at Primary Children's Medical Center for about an hour this morning. We watched kids come in with casts on their arms and legs, and worried looks on their faces. "Will it hurt?" they asked. The parents assured them that it might feel a little weird, but it wouldn't hurt. "And besides," more than one said, "when you're done, you'll be able to run and jump and everything." When they returned to the waiting room, plenty of parents had big smiles on their faces, but all of the kids looked stiff and uncomfortable. No one ran down the hall or jumped. "Darn it," I thought, "I forgot about this part."

I shouldn't have forgotten. Eli got out of his last cast only six weeks ago. He's been in nine freaking casts, for goodness' sake. Add to that the three the other kids have been in over the course of their lives (including TWO spica casts for Isaac) and I have plenty of cast experience as a parent. But I had been so focused on today, the day marked in red on the calendar as the end of the casting ordeal, that I had forgotten that, for Eli at least, today wasn't going to be any fun at all.

We finally got taken back to a room, and the medical assistant took off the outer layer. Eli screamed. Then she left and I soaked the bandages again. They've been smelling really funky for a few weeks, but I figured that was mainly because we'd gotten them a little wet a few times. When she came back to take off the inner layer, Eli screamed more, and within seconds, a putrid smell filled the room.

I am not a barfer or a gagger (30 years and counting!), but that smell was so horrible, I needed fresh air. But I couldn't act distressed, because Eli was in such a state. He's been a little bit upset when he's banged his left hand funny over the last few days, but he had a pin in one of the fingers, and I chalked it up to that. But unfortunately, the skin graft on that hand didn't take, and there was a whole bunch of nasty, dead skin covering his fingers.

The poor kid cried all the way home. He usually sucks his thumb to soothe himself, but there was no way he was going to put his fingers near his mouth. I plopped him and Rose in the tub when we got home, and he refused to put his hands in the water. Finally, I had to take them both out, put Rose down for a nap, and then hold his hands under the water to get them bathed like I was told I should. I took him down for lunch, and he wouldn't even try to touch the food. I should have remembered it would be like this-- for the next three or four days he's going to need me to do everything-- hold his bottle, feed him, and play defense with Rose. He sees a hand therapist next week to look at the grafts and see if they want to put him in a splint.

Today's experience reminds me a lot of what we went through on the day Eli joined our family back in March. I was so excited. It was a day I'd anticipated for almost a year. But it was tragic for Eli. He was so confused and unsettled and sad, and it was several more days before we saw glimpses of who our little guy really is. We also had our visit with our social worker this morning for our six-month post-placement interview. She remarked that things seemed to be going better than they were at the one-month visit, and while that's definitely true, I also feel like this is a similar sort of experience. Getting surgery on Eli's hands was absolutely the right thing to do, and the long-term consequences will be fantastic, but taking off the bandages was also painful. In much the same way, expanding our family has been and will continue to be one of the defining choices we made as a family, but I still feel like we're in the weeds of the experience.

Another thing I remember, when pressed to remember the hard things, is that it always takes a few  more days than I'd like (or a few more months, in Isaac's case) for the kids to make a full recovery and begin using the part that has been casted. I think that's also true of our family-- I'd like everything to be easy NOW, not in six months or a year. But just like Eli's foot is now awesome, and Isaac's leg and Bryce's arm look like nothing ever happened to them, his hands will one day be great too, and so will our family life with six kids. Or at least I'll keep telling myself that it will.

Snuggles and injustice

My younger sister, Jillian, was here for the last two weeks. I love it when she visits, and it's even more fun now that she has kids. Her son, Sam, splits the difference between Rose and Eli (they were the triple threat), and Emmy is two months old and a little bundle of love.

A two-month-old is a full-time job. She eats every two or three hours, and when she's not eating, she wants to be held. And when you set her down, you can barely resist picking her up again because she is just so darn cute-- so tiny and adorable and smiley. She fit just perfectly up on my shoulder, and since she only weighs ten pounds, she was pretty easy to cart around everywhere. Between my mom and my godmother and my grandma and the kids, I don't think she got set down much the entire time she was here.

But for me, holding her was a little bittersweet. It reminded me of holding my own babies, which was wonderful, and which I miss (although I do not miss being woken up in the middle of the night, but that might be because my two-year-old still likes to keep that memory fresh for me).

Every time she cried, and I held her, or someone else rushed to pick her up and walk with her, it made me think about Rose and Eli. When they cried, who held them? Was there a nanny who walked the halls with them at 11:30 at night and they were fussing? Was there someone who burped them and wiped up their spit up? Was there someone who changed them into cute outfits and cooed over how adorable they were? In my revisionist mama heart, I hope that there was, but I doubt it. I can tell from the way that Eli still doesn't cry when he wakes up-- we have to go into his room and get him, even when he's awake. I can tell from the way that Rose holds on to me so fiercely, and pushes me away with just as much strength.

And there's nothing I can do to change that. There is no way to go back and fill up every empty place that grew inside them when they cried and no one answered. As much as I would love to turn back time and hold their two-month-old selves, the reality is that I didn't even know them in pictures at that age. Rose was five months the first time we saw her, and we had to wait six more, knowing she was lying in a crib all day, until we could clear the red tape to become her parents. Eli was six months older than that. And that's so unfair. Those babies were just as sweet, precious, and deserving of being held, adored and loved as Emmy, and as their mom, I feel guilty for not being able to protect them from the times they cried and wanted love.

I wish I could say that the love they have now would make everything all better. Maybe it will. I do love these babies fiercely. We all do. But sometimes I'm tired, busy, lazy and don't give them my all. And that makes me feel even worse than when I occasionally ignored my bigger kids, because even though I've failed them time and again as they grew, I was there for them every moment when they were infants. I only hope that somehow, some way, Rose and Eli will be able to heal and overcome the lonely and isolating first few months, and that love and family and effort will make up the difference.

Four months

Photos by Trisha Terry

Four months home means walking.
Four months home means knowing where the lollipops are hidden.
Four months home means Rose is now your very best friend in the world.
Four months home means at least a dozen English words.
Four months home means sleeping through the night (almost every night), and going to bed on your own.
Four months home means pointing to every face in the new family pictures and getting really excited to see your own.
Four months home means two surgeries and six casts (five leg, one arm) down, three surgeries and three more casts left to go.
Four months home means only one week (the first week) when you didn't spend most of the day in a brace or a cast.
Four months home means expressing preference for straws instead of sippy cups. And Mom's diet coke over anything else.
Four months home means peaches. Lots and lots of peaches.
Four months home means playing in the dishwasher.

Four months home means knowing what comes next in every scene of Monsters, Inc, Despicable Me, and Tangled.
Four months home means knowing the Gangnam Style dance.
Four months home means a pound a month of weight gain.
Four months home means you're still pretty skinny.
Four months home means chasing chickens in the yard.
Four months home means not much patience for the Ergo.
Four months home means loving nursery.
Four months home means splashing in the pool.
Four months home means cuddling with mom and tickle fights with dad.
Four months home means knowing that this home is your home, and this family is your family.
Four months home means it's been almost a whole year since we first saw your face.
Four months home, and we love you more with each passing day.

Help! My toddlers are making me depressed!

Yesterday, I was trying to make dinner. We weren't having anything special (homemade waffles, bacon, sliced berries), but my terrible twosome were not cooperating. Rose kept climbing up onto the island and eating or throwing the berries. Eli begged to be held or put up on the counter while I cooked, but I need two hands to make waffles, and although I am definitely the kind of mom who risks putting her kid on the countertop from time to time, even I am not stupid enough to do it when operating the waffle iron. Ed wasn't home and all of the older kids had made themselves scarce. So I stood there, with one kid pitching strawberries off the island, and the other throwing a major fit on the floor, and smashing the berries between his toes. And I thought to myself, "I used to love cooking!"

And a line from one of those commercials for antidepressants went through my mind, "Have you stopped finding pleasure in things you used to enjoy?"

Just for fun, I locked the kids in a bathroom, pulled up the Mayo Clinic website, and found the following:

Depression symptoms include:

• Irritability or frustration, even over small matters (if small matters include not being able to make dinner, babies throwing punches, or the twelfth poopy diaper of the day, then yes)
  
• Loss of interest or pleasure in normal activities (like going to the mall or the movies? You'd better believe it)
  
• Reduced sex drive (pleading the fifth)
  
• Insomnia or excessive sleeping (although it's getting better, the babies are still up enough at night that I need 30 minutes of down time in the afternoon, and woe unto thee if you happen to call me during that time)
  
• Changes in appetite (they want to eat or drink anything I have in my possession that actually tastes good, which means I do a lot of eating at night and closet eating to make up for the vultures at the table. And don't even get me started on how they've ruined Diet Coke for me, which means I now drink twice as much)
  
• Agitation or restlessness (it's more that I while I'm pinned to the floor by a whining child, I can't stop thinking about the laundry that needs to be folded, the dishes that need to be washed, or the older kids who need to not be ignored)
  
• Slowed thinking, speaking or body movements (carrying 60 extra pounds around tends to have that effect on people)
  
• Indecisiveness, distractibility and decreased concentration (decreased concen...what was that again?)
  
• Fatigue, tiredness and loss of energy — even small tasks may seem to require a lot of effort (going to the grocery store seems to take about the same amount of effort as climbing Mount Timpanogos-- more if you count making the shopping list and unloading the van)
  

I'm not entirely sure that antidepressants would help, because I know my frustrations are situational, and because none of my other coping strategies is working particularly well.

I hired a nanny so I can get out for a few hours a couple mornings a week, but even though the kids are great for her, they just cling to me harder when I get home (and besides, I spend most of that nanny time ferrying the older kids to dance lessons and swim team). I thought about just giving up on cooking altogether and getting Cafe Rio every night, but I know that there are some hard things you just have to go through. And I may eventually reach my capacity for Creamy Tomatillo dressing.

I also know that eventually, these babies will stop being babies and I will miss this period of my life. If I outsource it too much, I worry that I'll become one of the hysterical Victorian yellow wallpaper ladies. I may just have to be a little bit crazy for a year or three. But as long as I have these babies, a chance to run in the morning, and an endless supply of Diet Coke and ice cream after the kids go to bed, I think we all may make it through unscathed.

Ten little fingers

This was as good as the hand pictures got.

In my post about Eli's feet from a few days ago, there were a few people who were curious about his hands. I mentioned in that post that we haven't started the hand surgeries yet, but I thought I'd write a little something about his hands, what the plan is for them, and the long-term prognosis.

It's hard for me to talk about Eli's special needs without comparing them to Rosie's. When we got Rosie's referral, we knew enough about cleft lip and palate that we felt relatively prepared. We also knew that once she was done with her series of surgeries, she would, in totally crude terms, be fixed. Her lip and palate could be repaired, her speech could be practiced, her nose could be straightened, she could get dental implants, and by the time she was a teenager, people might never suspect that she'd been born with any special need at all.


When we got Eli's referral, we knew we were facing a different situation. Lots of adoptive parents say that limb differences are very manageable special needs, because kids are so resilient and usually adapt and make what they have work. The parents often say that they forget their kids have special needs at all. But unlike Rosie's lip, we were never going to be able to totally fix Eli's fingers or toes. As a best-case scenario, he might eventually, after surgery, have the use of both hands with some longer fingers and some shorter fingers. As a worst-case scenario, he might not have much use of either hand. We wouldn't know more until we went to China to adopt him.

Sucking his fingers

When we arrived in China, one of the first things I did was look over Eli's hands. His left hand is his "good" hand. He has a full pinky finger (his only finger with a fingernail) and about 90% of a thumb. The three other fingers are all short and banded together. It looks like he has about 75% of two of the fingers and about half of the third. This hand does everything. He has a great pincer grasp, feeds himself, colors, uses a fork-- you name it.

The right hand is, even now, a little bit of a mystery to us. When we saw pictures of it, it looked like a ball of flesh, and we weren't sure if there were any fingers there at all. Sometimes it looked like he had part of a middle finger, but honestly we weren't expecting much. But it turns out that he has at least half of all five of his fingers. The middle finger is basically a normal length. The four other fingers were banded together at the tips. Part of each was amputated in utero, and the fingers are webbed up through the first joint, but they appear to have bone structure. We won't find out about tendons until the surgery later this month. Eli uses this hand for support. He can pick up small items (goldfish crackers) with the middle finger, and uses it to point. But we were delighted to find that the bones are there, and eventually we hope that it opens up like a flower blooming. There are two tiny pieces of skin, each about 1/4 inch long, holding the fingers together at the top, and it kills me a little bit that he has lived for 19 months with his hand like this-- removing those two pieces of skin would be simpler than taking off a mole, or performing a circumcision. Snip, snip, stitch, stitch, and he would have five fingers (webbed, yes, but still fingers).

You can see his powerful pinky in this shot

So what's the plan? On June 20th he will have his first surgery on his right hand. The surgeon will snip the bands between the fingers, and bring down the webbing between the thumb and pointer finger and between the middle and ring fingers. He will have outpatient surgery, followed by four weeks in a cast to protect the hand while it heals. Our surgeon is expecting that he will have four surgeries in all, two on each hand, all followed by casts. Apparently, it's not a good idea to operate on both sides of the same finger in a single surgery, which is why we have to have two surgeries on each hand. My guess is that it will take at least a year to complete the entire process.

And after it's all done? We hope that Eli will have ten (little) fingers, and as long as he doesn't want to be a hand model, no one will be the wiser. Hopefully, his hands won't be an object of fascination and revulsion to the kids he meets like they are right now. Regardless, we know that he won't be stopped or limited by his hands, because they don't stop or limit him in any way right now.

Cast Away

Today is National Clubfoot Day. Today was also a big day for Eli, who got his fifth and final cast off his foot after eight weeks. What follows is a little bit about the process of clubfoot casting:

One of our first pictures of Eli-- it shows his clubfoot well

When we accepted Eli's referral last year, his clubfoot was almost an afterthought. We were so much more concerned with the fact that he's missing a big toe and that we couldn't tell what was going on with his hands (not to mention the fact that we'd only had Rose home for four months and couldn't quite fathom starting the process over again). For most of the last year, Eli's hands have been our biggest preoccupation, because they seemed like they might have the greatest impact on his daily functioning. But since we've had Eli, he's proven us wrong at every step. He doesn't let the fact that he only has one working finger on his right hand, and three digits on his left hand stop him one bit. And he hasn't been fazed by his clubfoot treatment either.

We are very lucky to have both Primary Children's Medical Center and Shriner's Hospital for Children less than 15 minutes from home. We had heard wonderful things about the treatment plan at Shriner's, and got a great referral for an orthopedist (Dr. Hennessey), and they were able to start his treatment a little more than a week after we returned from China.

Most children with clubfoot are treated very shortly after birth. The preferred method of treatment is what is known as the Ponseti Method, which involves a series of casting, which the kids wear for a week or two at a time. So we were at Shriner's every Monday for the last few months, gettting Eli a new cast. We let the big kids pick the cast colors, and Eli sported, at various times, blue, orange, kelly green, purple, and lime green casts.

The first week, we had x-rays of Eli's foot and got the first cast. His clubfoot was pretty mild, and related in some way to his other limb differences (all are a result of amniotic band syndrome, where parts of the amniotic sac strangle off digits or entire limbs). We were told that he would have somewhere between four and six casts, each that stretches the foot a little bit more. We're so lucky to live nearby, because most of the families who come to Shriner's travel long distances (Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho) with tiny babies.

While there are many advantages to our situation, Eli's age was a significant disadvantage. Newborns are less likely to have a hard adjustment to the casts, but the first few nights for Eli were murder-- he was up at least 100 times a night for some of the first week. Newborns' bones are also more pliable, so while his clubfoot was mild, it wasn't going to be as easy to reshape it as it would be with a newborn. And walking with a cast is a lot harder than being carried around with one like a teeny baby.

But Eli came through it like a boss. He wasn't a fan of the actual casting or uncasting, but he figured out how to run around on the toe-to-hip cast, and how to stand up with one leg fully unable to bend. He also rarely complained when the rest of the family hopped into the pool and he had to stay on the side and splash with his one good foot.

We got new x-rays on the day Eli got his fourth cast, and Dr. Hennessey decided that he would need a tendon release procedure in addition to the casting. There are many different reasons why a baby might be born with a club foot. But for Eli, we were fairly certain it was because of his amniotic banding. However, he also has a fairly significant band on the calf of that leg, and the doctor thought that the band was making it difficult for the tendon to stretch the way it should. So four weeks ago he had the procedure. Newborns have the procedure in the clinic, but because of Eli's age, his was under general anesthesia. He did great, woke up happy, gobbled down two yogurts and two containers of Jello, and was home by lunch.

Shriner's is a fantastic hospital. In fact, it doesn't feel like a hospital at all. We got to know the staff well because they took care of us week after week, and they'd all say hi and call us by name when we showed up. While Eli had his surgery, I got to wait in our private room (even though we went home the same day) instead of hanging out in a general surgical waiting room. We had a wonderful experience there.

First tub bath in two months

So now what? The casts are off, but in some ways, it feels like the process has just begun. Today Eli was fitted for his boots and bar today. He has to wear special boots with a snap-in bar for 18 hours a day. Once again, if he were a newborn, this would be no biggie-- but for a walking toddler, it feels a like a big deal. In three months, he'll only have to wear them at night, but I know that for the next three months, I'll be trying to squeeze out every minute in the boots and bar so he has plenty of time to run and play too.

In the beginning, I was really worried about Eli's hands. I was devastated when I found out that we wouldn't have hand surgery until July (now moved up to June). But in some ways, it's been nice to get this casting process out of the way before he has casts on his hands too. But I'm happy to report that when the cast came off, Eli had two beautiful, straight feet. Feet that are perfect for walking on.

Two Months Home

It's been two months since Eli was placed in my arms, and it's been a whirlwind. If you saw my post last month, you many have spent the month worried about my mental health, and I am happy to say that although I am still very much in the trenches of this mothering thing, at least we're smiling at the end of two months.

The first big change is that Rose is starting to adapt to Eli's presence in the house. Instead of hitting him hundreds of times a day, she's down to a few, usually right after their naps when she's grumpy, or when he has taken something from her. She also likes to pinch him when they're sitting in the stroller together, but I feel like what we've got now is normal sibling behavior and not attempted murder.

When I first approached Ed about adopting again, it was because I felt strongly that Rose needed a buddy down at the end of the family, and while Eli is much more than just Rose's little buddy, I am happy to see that relationship emerging as well. Whenever she wakes up in the morning, she always goes looking for "Ly-ly" and if I'm not quick enough she'll often wake him up. Their favorite time of day is definitely "twin tickle time" when I lay them side-by-side on the floor and tickle them until they're out of breath. Then do it again and again until my hands fell like they'll fall off.

We've moved into a stage where I don't feel like I'm quick enough to manage them, but it doesn't feel like our world is imploding, either. This afternoon, the house was quiet for five minutes, so I enjoyed watching Sherlock while I folded laundry, and the reward for that solitude was a whole bottle of shampoo poured onto Eli's head and all of the bath toys, with the remainder dumped into the entire roll of toilet paper they unrolled. We had to fix our pantry door because they were getting in there multiple times a day and spilling food. Emptying the dishwasher while they're both grabbing things out and throwing them onto the floor feels like a challenge right out of The Amazing Race.

Eli doesn't seem to be gaining weight and growing big like Rose did last year, but it's always hard for me to tell since I'm with him day to day, and he didn't have as much to make up for as Rose did. He's a good eater, and he's sleeping well once we finally get him to sleep, but the bedtime routine can take anywhere from five minutes (if someone else is putting him to bed) to an hour and a freaking half (if I'm the one in there). He still isn't at the point where he can go to bed without someone in the room with him. Maybe by next month....

Eli had his first appointment at the Shriner's Hospital a week after we got home, and he's now on his fifth and final cast (blue, kelly green, purple, orange, lime green) for his club foot. He's also had a tendon release procedure. In two weeks, he'll trade in his cast for a brace, and he'll be able to resume his favorite pastime, taking a bath. We're waiting to hear when he'll go in for the first of his four hand surgeries-- we're hoping it happens soon.

So all in all, things are going well. Life is slowly returning to normal. And we are so delighted to have this little guy in our lives.

Their first Mamas

I wish they could see them, these two beautiful babies. The babies that we share.

I wish they knew that they're not just alive, not just safe, but thriving. That beauty has come from ashes.

I wish they knew that Rose and Eli are loved. Fiercely, protectively, and completely. And not just by their parents, but by their brothers and sisters, their grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends.

I wish they knew that their tears are wiped dry, their booboos kissed, and their bad dreams chased away.

I wish I could ask them questions about their pregnancies, their lives, their family histories, and the wishes and dreams they have for these children.

I wish they could know that they're honored. We don't talk about how Rose and Eli were found without qualifying those finding stories by talking about the taboos against special needs, with the lack of affordable health care, with the unforgiving nature of the one-child policy, with all that we don't know that went into why I am now their mother.

I wish they could know that they're whole in every way. That Eli's foot is straight enough for him to walk on, and that soon he will have ten fingers that move independently of each other. But that even with his hands the way they are, that he can pound on the piano, throw a ball, and feed himself with a fork. That the scar on Rose's lip is the last thing most people see, because they're so taken with her shining eyes and the little ball of fire that's always climbing, jumping, and striving.

I wish they could see how smart these two are. How Eli mimics everything his big sister does. How hard he's trying to talk. How Rose knows exactly how to get whatever she wants out of her smitten parents.

I wish they could know that their children have a future. That they will never be limited by their disabilities. That they will go to preschool and high school and college. That they'll go to Disneyland and the top of the Eiffel Tower and back to the land of their birth.

I wish they could know how their children have made everyone in our family better people. How I finally had to learn to be patient and relinquish control while I was waiting for them, and how that has served me my fifth and sixth times around as a mother. How they've allowed Ed the hands-on fatherhood time he missed when our older children were born during his medical training. How Bryce, Annie, Isaac and Maren no longer shrink when they see people who are different from them. How adopting children from China has pulled us, just a little bit, outside of our own privileged lives.

I wish they, these first Mamas, could know how grateful I am that they carried and bore Rose and Eli, that they had the grace and bravery to share them with us.

I wish I could wrap my arms around them and say "thank you."  But since I can't, I'll snuggle the children they bore just a little bit tighter today.

Eli's blessing

When my great-grandmother made a christening dress for me to use for my future children, I was a preteen who would rather have gotten $20 than some weird crocheted dress.

My grandma passed away a month before Bryce was born, and by that time, I recognized the wonderful gift she had given me. He wore it for his blessing, followed by Annie, Isaac, and Maren. When we adopted Rose, I didn't think it would fit a one-year-old, but somehow we squeezed her into it.

This time, I bought an outfit that would do double duty as a blessing and sealing outfit. But last Sunday morning, I pulled out the dress. I really wanted Eli to wear it, even though I was sure it wouldn't fit. My godmother, who made the slip for the dress, has embroidered the names and birthdates of each child who has worn the dress into its hem, and I wanted Eli to be able to claim his right to it too. So I tried it.

After the blessing, we cooked hamburgers and hot dogs and ate on our patio with the people we love best.

Eli's sealing

Last year, we had a baby wedding.

I spent days perusing websites for the perfect dress for Rose to wear.

I spent more days scouring the internet for all-white clothes for the rest of us to wear.

I had Rose's picture taken ahead of time and sent out invitations.

I encouraged friends to attend, and secured the temple months in advance for a prime Saturday afternoon sealing appointment.

I hired a photographer and filled an entire wall with photos from the blessed event.

The whole family went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant after the sealing.

Like I said, a baby wedding. And it was a perfect day.

This year, my parents decided to visit a couple of weeks ago, and Ed and I looked at each other and said, "Maybe we should have Eli sealed to us while they're here."

I reserved the temple for a weeknight and told my friends they were under no obligation to attend. We changed the date a few days before when we thought he might be able to get in for surgery at the last minute.

Except for Eli, we all wore the same things as last year.

My mom was the photographer.

The whole family went to Cold Stone and got ice cream after the sealing.

When Ed and I got in bed that night, I said, "If last year we had a baby wedding, this year we had a baby elopement."

And it was still a perfect day.

One month

One month ago

I realized last night when I was putting the kids to bed that it had been exactly a month since we got Eli. I thought, "I should write a blog post commemorating the event," and then between bedtimes and driving to and from the dance studio and crashing on my own bed, I didn't get around to it. I'm sure I had some kind of commemorative post last year when we brought Rose home, complete with pictures, and proofread writing. So let's let that be the metaphor for the difference between this year and last.

Last year when we brought Rose home, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the poop to hit the fan, but it never did. She had an easy transition in China, an easy transition to home, and since I'd spent all of the school days of the winter of 2012 writing a book in solitude, hanging out with a baby seemed like a welcome change.

I want to keep it real on this blog, and while this has been a wonderful month in so many ways, I'd be lying if I said that everything was going great and only showed happy, smiling pictures of Eli. But I'd also be lying if I didn't recognize that Eli is doing great-- he is happy, smiley, and wonderful. Eli's transition, the most important transition, has been as seamless as Rose's was a year ago. The main difference is that Rose was a quiet little baby who couldn't sit up or talk back, and Eli is a super-busy toddler who wants to move but is hampered by a very large cast and a lack of opportunity to practice his gross-motor skills. He knows what he wants, too.

Eli's bigger problem is that he has a big sister who is no longer a quiet little baby who can't sit up, but a feisty toddler who spent the last year as the center of the family's universe. I expected Eli to have a hard time-- to mourn the loss of the place he had known, to have a hard time adjusting to our food and our routines and our life, and while that has been true to a certain extent (oh, the sleep has been horrible!), I stupidly didn't realize how this whole experience was going to be a lot harder for Rose than it has been for Eli. We've had hitting, biting, strangling. We've had not one, but two, velcro babies. I sometimes feel like life hasn't changed all that much in the last month, but I'm trying to do all the things I was doing a couple of months ago with a baby on one hip and my other hand blocking Rose's blows. Friends who've seen me in real life can attest to this. If I could show you a picture of what just writing this blog post looks like, you'd get the idea.

The stupid thing is, I've been through this before. I've had a baby, and then given birth to a new baby, and there is always a period of adjustment. When Annie was born and Bryce was 21 months, I thought I was a complete failure as a parent. I don't feel that this time around (although the people who saw me the other day when Eli had a thumbtack in his mouth and I nonchalantly pulled it away and tossed it across the table might feel differently), but I also know that I haven't hit my stride yet.

The big difference between the first two babies and the last two babies is that Eli isn't a baby-- he's a threat. He does almost all of the things Rose does, but he needs to be carried and snuggled. He needs me to lie down with him. He needs me to feed him. He needs to go to the doctor. And Rose is a smart cookie-- she senses that she's not the center of the universe any more. Also, there's the fact that just as the Rose and Eli show starts to wind down for the night, there are four more kids who need my love, attention, and chauffeuring skills. As for my marriage? I just have to have faith that twenty years of love for each other will sustain us if the relationship has to take a back burner for the present. Because it's go, go, go all the time here. When I was a busy high school student, I was always surprised when I added one new activity to my calendar and my life didn't fall apart. Maybe, in some twisted way, I've been adding things to my plate for years (marathon running, blogging, writing, reading, kids) to see how much I could handle. Maybe this experience, although I know it's the right choice for Eli and for our family, will make us fall apart for a while. But I also have faith that eventually things will come back together.

Last week

You might read this and say, "Get over yourself, this is just normal life." And yes, I know it. We've had no life-threatening catastrophes. No health challenges other than when all of the kids got a stomach virus. No financial difficulties or spiritual crises. All in all, life is pretty darn great. It's just a busier, fuller life than I'm used to for the moment. I'm sure I'll hit my stride again, it's just taking longer this year than last.

Maybe when I start sleeping again. I do so much bedhopping in the night, I feel like a frat boy or a hooker. Rose was not a great sleeper even before we left for China, and between the jet lag and the clubfoot casts, Eli has been up many times each night. How many? I'm not sure. Because within the first week, I gave in and started sleeping on his floor, and I can poke my hand in between the bars of the crib and pat him when he stirs, which some nights feels like all night long. But it's getting better. Miraculously, he didn't cry at all last night. And I've learned that if I'll just sit with him at bedtime, he's asleep within minutes, but if I try to leave, he cries for hours. So I sit and read. For the first time in my life, I may miss deadlines. The journal for which I'm the managing editor badly needs my attention. The reading contest I'm judging is over next week and I still need to read six more books. I am not superwoman. I'm just a mom, trying to muddle through, and trying to enjoy these sweet babies in the process.

Knocking it out...

Eli has been home two weeks, and in that time, I've had no time at all for blogging. First we had company, then the kids were on spring break, and Ed's time at home ends tomorrow. The first week we were home, my biggest worry was getting Rose to quit hitting Eli, and then fatigue set in, and now I'm a lot more worried about getting him to fall asleep and stay asleep. Last night, for instance, it took more than two hours to get him to fall asleep, and less than two hours later, he was awake again, and would only lie down if I stuck my hands through the bar of the crib, which meant I had to sleep on the floor all night. He was up bright and early and refused to nap, and if my ears are a reliable source, he's up there crying right now. It's complicated by the fact that he got his first cast for his club foot on Monday, and I think he's not very comfortable (the cast goes all the way from his toes to the top of his thigh). Rose seems to be hitting less, or at least I seem to be registering it less, but I'm pretty bleary-eyed these days. By the time Eli is asleep and I've had ten minutes of quiet time with the bigger kids, I am good for nothing but an episode of Scandal, but I'm guaranteed to be asleep before it's over (sometimes it takes me three or four nights to get through a single tv show). Like I said, no time for blogging.

That doesn't mean I haven't been reading. I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to be reading, but lying on the floor with my arm through the bars of a crib does give me some time to read. So I'm still sweating making the Whitney deadline (I have 7-1/2 books left), but I'll do my best to get caught up on the book reviews. And then I'll try to recap what we've been doing the last few weeks (Eli's cast! Rose's birthday! Taking possession of the house next door!) In the meantime, if I go dark, know that I'm lying on the floor next to Eli's crib, or else doing the fully hands-on thing that comes with having two toddlers. Holy cow, even a trip to the grocery store with the two of them feels like a marathon-- maybe even harder than a marathon. But don't feel sorry for me-- I have a very comfy blanket and I'm delighted to have my hands full with Rose and Eli, it's just a dynamic that I haven't fully mastered yet.