Surprises

There are things about being a Mother that you can expect to love. The smiles, the giggles, the hugs, the laughs, those quiet moments, those big moments when your child learns to tie her shoe or ride her bike, the first time you hear her read a few words. It's no surprise really when you find yourself in love with those things and find yourself craving them. It's no surprise to watch her walk across the room and know that, there in that little body, there is your heart- now and forever.
There are things that you love from the first or end up loving-eventually. Things that no one else seems to ever bother telling you about. These are things that are little and maybe a nuisance, things that-- well surprise you, when you find that you love them. Then when you realize that these are the things that are the glue between all of those other expected and wonderful moments, when you know that these things are there because SHE is there-
epiphany.

• Dirt piles. When I sweep my floors now, all of my dirt piles have glitter in them. This always makes me smile. It's as if that little girl magic has infiltrated every bit of this old house.
• Finding items put away "wrong". Like when she helps and it's not perfect or the way that you have done it for umpteen odd years.
• Hearing her bedroom door slam when she stalks off to her room in a tizzy.
• The endless arguments and battles between human child and feline child.
• Tripping over the stray cooties foot left in the floor.
• Scraps of paper. I never thought that I would say this, but she has won me over to her side with the scraps of paper. When she was sick last week, she sat with markers and tissues and colored me up bits of tissues to "decorate" with. They were lovely and everywhere. I am sure that my visiting in laws wondered what was up.
• Watching her "smoke" her corn cob pipe.
• Listening to one silly potential sibling name after another. her current fave for a brother? Well, "Super Duck" has just taken the lead from "Live Long and Prosper". For a sister "Candy Cane" and "Lantern" are big time faves.
• Waking up in the middle of the night to help her find a lost animal.
• Arguing with her about if we should eat Subway first or go to Costco first.
• Explaining in detail every single aspect to every single moment of my day.
• Stopping what ever it is that I am doing approximately every 32 seconds to "look mama"
• My refrigerator. I used to have a wonderfully clean and uncluttered fridge- not any more. It is covered with pictures and scraps of art work, colored pages torn from coloring books, alphabet stickers- you name it, it's on the fridge and I LOVE it.
• Having your work on the adoption stopped, or having to stop working on a job application or your resume because some little person desperately needs a Popsicle, or because the cat is chewing her Barbie, or because she needs a drink, or because she is hiding and wants you to find her and sometimes it's all of these things - at once. Or it's a hundred other little things that she is asking for just so you will stop and look at her.

There are about a gajillion others but I think that you get the point.

It's. All. Good.

Time

The Bean has been home with us since May 23 in 2005. According to Leslie that is 4 years 6 months and 10 days. That is roughly 1,650 days. In case any of you out there is pondering the whole attatchment/bonding thing. Let me tell you this. It has taken every single second of those 1,650 days to help my daughter turn the corner as far as trust and intimacy. Every second.

Then, you know what? It sort of happened without me noticing it. I just realized yesterday that I am getting brighter and more open smiles, she is starting to accept the choices that I lay out for her instead of divising one of her own, she is hugging us more and allowing us to hug and kiss her more. She is more easy. That's all that I can say.

Easy like Sunday morning now.

More confident.

If you don't know her as well as we do, you probably would not even notice. Heck, it took me awhile! It's just that well, it's hard to put into words...... I can sense with my mother's heart that so many of the things that I have been hoping and praying would happen for Ev have happened.

It seems that these days she is luminescent. She is more free.

It has not been all me. Or all Les. It has been Grandma and Grandpa Aunt Lissa and her Dillon Aunts. It has been having Brevin in her life. It has been watching us struggle to get the baby home and hearing every day that this is what we did for her-reaffirming that she was wanted and loved form the very beginning.

It has been HER.

This tiny girl who was followed home by the pain and betrayals of her beginnings. This baby that was left outside at just a day old. This child who survived hospitalizations and an orphanage-alone- this one little being who determined somewhere in her mind that she would live. I have learned so much from her. I have to respect her shell- it is part of why she survived. I have to make room in my life for her inner warriors for they kept her strong. I am almost bowed over every day that I see her smile and feel her arms around me and hear her say "Mama I LOVE you." Because there is no real and solid reason that she should have lived, that she should have healed, that she has found a way to finally crack that shell and send those warriors off for a lunch break. What I have on my hands is a miracle.

I know that.

Leslie knows that.

I am not saying that our work is over. I know that there will be questions later. Hard questions with answers that one can only soften so much. I know that those teen years are out there- looming.

It's just that this Christmas more than any of our other 4....This Christmas is something super duper. Something great. Something important. I want it to last forever and I want to bask in every minute.

So I will.

This One Is Mine

Thanks

I am thankful for my husband. This person that I stumbled across early in life. This man who is my everything. I love where we are right now in life and our relationship. We have a mutual respect for each other that I know is rare. We are friends, the best of friends really. He is the other half of me. I have no idea how I would get through a day if he weren't right here with me.
I am thankful for my Empress. The girl that I worked so hard to find. The girl that never disappoints. The girl that smiles and bosses and fusses and chatters non-stop. I am amazed at the quickness of her mind, the depth of her emotions, the ferocity of her love.
I am thankful for my parents. My upbringing. The love and respect that I was shown from the very first. I am thankful for their friendship and kindness, the absolute acceptance in their hearts for my children born in foreign lands.
I am thankful for my sister. What can one say about her sister? She is there, she knows me, we are symbiotic. This is the one relationship in my life that I have the hardest time talking about. It is quite profound. My love for her is unlike any other in my heart. It is part parent, part friend, part rival, part .... part everything.
Then there is Brevin. The first boy in my heart. The one that makes me laugh. The one that takes my breath away.
There is another out there. My mystery child. The one that I am longing for. Yes, I am even thankful for the longing.


I am thankful for Jodi. My friend. The one that is good for solid advice, hair appointments, casserole dishes and laughs. The person that is, in fact, a female Leslie. The one who is always there.

And So

And so the holiday season is upon us! I nearly had a panic atack in Costco yesterday, thinking of all of the cooking and cleaning and planning that will go on for the next 4 weeks. I do love it though. I love being close to family and having Ev around her cousins and Grandparents at such an important age.

• Les just took me out last week for a fancy dinner and then to see Wicked. What an awesome night that was. I loved every minute. I just couldn't believe that there was all of this surplus time to talk with each other! Ev spent 2 nights at Aunt Melissa's so Les and i had a much needed mini vacation.
• I still don't have that Home Study in my hands. That's not freaking me out too much.
• I am now truly in the market for a job.
• Evelyn is reading more and more every day. She did concede last week that I MAY know more than her because I can read anything but she can only read her school books. She followed that statement up by saying "it won't always be like that though- one day I will go to college"
• A little neighborhood girl is here playing today. Let's call her G. This kid goes number two every single time she steps inside my house then she gets all critical about my snacks. What's up with that?
• Evelyn has had her very first Christmas Disappointment. She wants a certain gift and Les and I have had to sit her down and tell her absolutely not. That will not be a gift that she gets as we have very strong personal feeling about it. We had to tell her before Christmas because she was really working herself into a froth over it- I would rather her be disappointed now then on Christmas morning. (Please note that I did not mention what she wants as I would hate for Gma and Gpa to get one and then have to return it)
• We have a great trip planned in mid-December with Lissa and Brevin and Grandma and Grandpa. I can not wait!!! We have a cabin rented and there will be train rides and Santa and ice skating!!!!

Well, I am off to fix a late lunch for Ev and G. The I am going to clean this house and get it ready for company. By the way? I have a HORRIBLE headache that I think is either a migraine or just plain old sinuses but I am sort of expecting my head to pop off any minute. My hair is hurting and my vision gets blurry every once in awhile. I wanted to cry last night but decided that it would only make my head hurt worse so I toughened up.

What? The? Heck?

I have been fretting a bit about "The Adoption". That's how it looks in my head when we say that, "THE ADOPTION".
It seems that our finalized home study has been completed and mailed of to our agency for them to review and review for "THE DOSSIER". This is a big thing. It means that once we get that in our hot little hands, things will be up to me for a bit. That is the way that I like it. So much of this process depends on other people- it just feels so helpless sometimes.
Knowing that the home study will soon (hopefully soon) will be in my hands for me to complete the final four steps and get it all sent to China means that I have been in a frenzy of paper fawning. This is where I pull every document back out and compare it with the checklist for the hundredth time- just to "make sure". This really does help me sleep better at night.
Last night I had my folder and my freshly Authenticated Documents (11 of the 13 that we will need in total)- I said to myself "self, you better check those Immigration Papers" Then I said to myself "self, you have already done that like 100 times, stop being psycho". Then I said to myself "Yes. But have you looked at the page numbers and verified that they are in order?" The answer was that no, technically I have never paid much attention to the page numbers, so I listened to myself.
Good thing that I did. Page 6 was missing! No page 6!!!! What the hell?
So. Les will reprint that package of what I call "very important info-crap" and we will have page 6.
I do not want to even think about the delay if I had sent that package off to D.C. with out page 6. Probably horrible delays and double payments and .......complete mental and social breakdown of this household.
Those quiet suggestions that I get? They are what makes me know that Somebody Important In the Grand Scheme of Things is watching out for me.


If you have never done an adoption, these Immigration Papers are your official request to the USCIS to approve you to bring home a foreign born child(their term, not mine). They are a bit tedious and each question has sub questions and the section for the primary requester is slightly different than the section for the spouse. So it can be easy to get confused and turned around and not notice that your section ends differently than your husbands.

Just Because

I have been rather wordy latey (embarassed cough)....SO here are a few pictures for your viewing enjoyment.