To Have and Have Not

I have had this one aspect to our current place in life rolling about in my head for days and days. Then I read this entry from one of my favorite blogs and then suddenly I had words.
 
Bushel and a Peck

It was as though, reading Christie's words freed my own. That happens to me alot. I am a true  extrovert so my emotions are directly connected to language. Sometimes I can't find words, and then I will read the right thing, or make a silly comment to Leslie and SHAZZAAM! I have words.
And so that's about it. We have this precious boy in our lives. I have a son. There is this other person here enriching our lives, preventing sleep every other night or so, leaving me staggered by the doctor's appointments. Making me dig deep yet again to find even better versions of myself to offer.

And I am happy about this. I truly am. This boy is amazing. He can break your heart, make you laugh and make you feel like you would make better progress by attempting to talk a tree into walking away, all in a five minute stretch.
I have a son.
I am still finding the mother that goes with that son.
I know who I am to Evelyn, I know how to gauge her moods, read her face, comfort her when she cries. I don't yet have that for Liam.

On top of all of the typical adoption/attachment/bonding things we have going on, there is a dimension to it all that is present and it is making things much harder.
We can not communicate with this boy. Now, let me be real here, he has a mild hearing loss so really we can make ourselves heard. It's not that. We are teaching and learning sign language but that will take time. It's that we can not understand him.
He has lost so much, and now even the slightest wish or desire requires so much work to get across. His words are lost in that cleft and they swirl around and tumble out in all sorts of ways and there is no clear way to understand him. I watch him and I KNOW that even though he has seen love, he has been fed well, he has been cared for, there was no one there that had the time to teach him in the area of language- it simply does not occur to him to make the same sound twice for the same thing.

 I can guess at a few things. That he has had so much loss already that he will control this issue to the last? That he just wants to be a kid? That he is embarrassed by this whole thing? Am I right? Am I wrong? Who knows? He does and he can not tell me.
What I know is that these kids loose so much. They have so little choice in what happens to them that this loss of being able to speak his needs, wants and jokes- it just feels terrible.
Think of it like this, he has the mind of  a 2 year old but the physical language ability of an 8 or 9 month old. He jabbers and points and talks and we have no earthly idea what he is getting at. He knows. I see him sometimes, just give up. It kills me.
This is troubling. Not for me. I can work through it. We are working through it, slowly. And I know that his surgery will  help and we will really be on our way then. It's just that he didn't choose us- I would like to be able to understand some of his choices, even just if he wants a certain type of cookie. I am troubled for him I can not imagine how difficult it would be to be in his position.

And so it goes.
A little here, a little there.
And we will get there- toghether.
It's all I have to offer.

Breakdown

  So far this week I/we have:

                                                Accidentally stepped on the cat 563 times.

                                               

                                                        Gotten a toy boat stuck in hair.

                     

   Drove 3 hours round trip to play at Grandma's house.

                                        

             Tried Chile for the first time (he loved it in case that's not obvious)

Completed 6 hours of Homeschooling.

Had three Doctor's appointments among the boys.

Mopped the floors twice.

Finally got the laundry caught up.

Taken a few moments to sit on the porch in the spirit of camaraderie.

Cooked on the grill with Grandpa.

Played with cousins.

Discovered caterpillars.

Learned about Grandma's and Great Grandma's.

Realized that nephew's grow up way too fast.

Goofed off with Photo Booth.

Hey we didn't even have to use an AK!

Homeschooling is Hard Work

After a long day at The Table of Learning, someone in the house passes out on the couch.

No, not the student.  One of the Teachers.

Messages for Grandma

Happy Birthday Mom.

Today Evelyn and I sat and talked about you and she told me some things she wanted you to hear.

Here are her messages: Save a piece of cake for me.

Have fun at your Birthday.

We are coming on Monday for you to see me.

I love you.

I'll be bringing you a present.

I also asked her to tell me some things that she liked about her Grandma and this is what she said:

"She is just a special Grandma"

"I like her because she plays with me"

" She is just so pretty. I like all of her pretty jewelry"

"When she hugs me tight tight tight it makes me happy"

Mom, I love you dearly. I shudder to think about the type of person I would be without you in my life. You have taught me how to be kind and gentle and to be more "soft". When I think of us together when I was Ev's age, I just have this impression of you smiling at me. I have never wanted for a thing in the years as your charge.

Here's hoping you don't have to cook dinner on your Birthday.

Special Needs

Many months ago my husband and I made a decision. It was possibly the biggest one in our lives. We decided to add another child to this home. Not just any child. We held our breaths and jumped into the Special Needs line. I have to say that now, it was easy. Really and truly easy.

I knew in my heart that we could do it. I will not go into the dark days we had while filling out the Medical Conditions Checklist- some things are just ours. I will say that you can have some pretty awful moments when you look that closely at your own flawed heart. Mostly it was the worrying over this and that. What procedures would be needed- that sort of thing. But after that MCC, it was good. It felt right.

You now what? It still does. Easy in fact.

I am not trying to belittle the physical state of my son's "Need". He has a very significant cleft in that mouth of his. And as a matter of fact all of my false hopes for " a tiny hole" or " maybe it was already fixed" have been dashed. I have had a couple of rough afternoons when the reality of just how bad his speech situation is going to be. It's like this, if that boy is saying anything that resembles English, it is so garbled and scrambled that we have no idea. My heart broke for him today because I realized that he was pointing at a picture on my wall and I said,  " oh yes that is a picture" and he made a sound that I KNOW was meant to be "picture". But it was not. I looked at him and the light in his eyes and I realized that he did indeed say "picture"- just like any child his age would have. But if I had not been looking really hard, right there at that sweet little mouth? I would not have any clue that he is trying his damnedest to meet us half way. And that was the saddest moment of my life. Because I saw this big hill in front of him and I know that he will have to climb it.

What I am trying to say is that the loving him is easy. The choosing to care for him is and was easy. The hard part is going to be watching him fight and struggle to be understood. Before we met him, I would read blogs about children with clefts and how they struggled terribly with their speech and I would think "Liam's speech won't be that bad". Naive? Yes. 

Because the fact is, his speech is that bad. I have come to terms with that and I have set my heart to fight mode and I will struggle up that hill every bit of the way with him and I will be proud and happy to do it.

We have yet to see a Surgeon (it's scheduled) and we have yet to see a Speech Therapist (working on getting it scheduled) so, in our daily lives right now? There is no "Special Need". Physically.

I do however find myself looking at the fact that you just don't get a post-institutionalized child home and find them unscathed. The fact is that I thought Liam was "better off" than Ev. And, yes, I am going to say it, in many ways, he is. It's that he's not as well off as I originally thought.  He is hurting. He worries. He wonders how long this will last. He laughs and charms his way through the day because he feels so insecure. He needs me to smile at him so he can feel like the next few minutes will be okay. 

I have found a streak of stubbornness in this child that is a thing of biblical proportions. I know in my heart this stems partly from personality but also partly from pain. These children MUST maintain a certain amount of control. They MUST. 

And so the need I find myself stepping around and fretting over has nothing to do with the cleft in his mouth, it's the cleft in his heart. And there isn't a surgery or a referral or a vitamin or a therapy for that. It's just us and him, stacking time together. Smiling and loving and being as predictable as we can be so that one day he will decide that no matter what, he can not rid himself of us. We are in this for the long haul and he is the only one not in on that secret.

Completion

She Rocked!

Yesterday was our first day of Home Schooling Ev for 1st Grade.
We had some kinks to work out but, that was the 'Rents, not the students fault.
All in all it was a good day.
We did Math, Spelling, Handwriting, Art and History.
She was an enthusiastic student, she never complained and she ROCKED!