I'm Off...

To go pick Evelyn up from her days of rulelessness and staying up late, baking cookies, playing Piggly Wiggly, bossing Brevin and making Aunt Melissa feeling stupid as many times as possible....
or I may just take a nap in this quiet house.
Who am I kidding?
Yes, the break has been nice. Yes I had a nice time with the Hubster.
But there has been this underlying blanket of anxiety and just missing "something".
Yes it has been nice to be able to string more than a half a thought together in my head.
But I have missed that sweet soft voice and her "Ariel" singing.
Yes I could just climb the stairs and plop into bed at night with minimal fuss, whenever I wanted.
But there was no warm, tiny body to snuggle with. There was no looking at her asleep and quiet.
Yes I was able to Crochet and not re-start the counting fifty times.
But there was no one here to "crochet" with me or try her hat on when it was done.
Yes I slept without the sound of a monitor buzzing in my ear.
But I had horrible dreams and could not hear her sweet little sighs as she turned over in the night.
Yes it is time for The Bean to come home.
BUT...maybe I will just nap a bit after all.....
___________________________________________________________________
I realize that I need to work on being away from Bean a bit. I know that it is not wrong to have some alone time and let her have time with her Aunt and Grandparents. I think we need to do this a bit more. Not that I need to be "used" to be without her around, it's just that I think my anxiety level when she is somewhere else is a bit much actually. I have a hard time letting go, even a little bit. So there may be a bit more of this in the future. I have a hard time admitting that I am a bit strung out and could use help. I need to get better at that too.
I find myself calling my sister up too many times a day when Ev is there and trying to insert myself into what they are doing. God Bless Melissa, she understands and patiently reassures me a hundred times. Well, maybe our version of reassurance is off..... She says things like "I know! I know ! We got it! I am not afraid of her I am an "Elaine" too" or " hey, this is my house, my rules just chill". So yeah she's my sister and an "Elaine"- so that's re-assurance alright.
I love that the reassurance and Faith that I get form my family is it's own , weird version of how others do those things. We are upfront and mouthy and it just works for us. I love it.
I had a very strange experience the first night that Ev was gone and my family- my whole family was everything that I needed. My Mom handled things beautifully for me and my Sister was a rock. I will never be comfortable or able to explain here what happened, I just wanted to say publicly that I appreciate my family and how we are together and how they deal with my weirdness.

For those of you that didn't get the Elaine references, let me explain. My sister is named after our Aunt, Tanya Elaine. So my sis is Melissa Elaine and Evelyn is Evelyn Elaine. They are all three great in every way. They are bossy, headstrong, organizational guru's, funny and bright. They all three take up the whole room wherever they are. They are Elaines. That's the only way to put it.

Listen. Do you hear that?

You don't hear a thing? Well, neither do I.
Les is at work and Evelyn has gone to Aunt Melissa's for, not one, but two nights. A "two spend over" as she calls them.
Now, I love my daughter. In fact, I couldn't love her more of I made a conscious effort to. But man, can that kid talk. I may have mentioned this before?
She talks non-stop. There is NEVER a break. And it's not light, regular 4 year old conversation. It's intense extremely intelligent 4 year old conversation that requires constant vigilance and intelligent responses on my behalf. It can be exhausting.
I know that she will be well taken care of and Aunt Melissa has lots of fun stuff planned, as a matter of fact Evelyn could not wait for the exchange to take place so she could be off with Lissa and Brevin. And I?
I will have a few hours of absolute quiet this afternoon, then a real, honest to goodness, "honey I shaved" kind of date with my husband. Tomorrow I will have my class for 8 hours and I swear by all that is Holy if it wasn't the Cardiac Lecture, I would totally skip it and spend hours upon hours with just me and Les.
I have been missing my husband lately. Which may seem kind of silly as really we spend alot of time together but mostly our time is with Ev included. We spend an hour or two together in the evenings thru the week but that's about all we get. I love my husband, he is absolutely the second half of me. I am looking forward to some time with just us.

Copper

Okay, let me preface this with the following : I actually like Police Officers and respect the job they do- I couldn't do it. I even kind of know one cool chic who is a Po-Po and I think she may be uber cool (Hey Special K).
However I met a Cop today that just about turned my opinion completely around. First of all he was short. A short male cop, can you get where his attitude was?
So okay I WAS speeding. I get that. That's the job, you gotta bust a speeding Mama once in awhile to break up that whole Domestic Violence/Drug Addict/Murder/Theft thing they get going on.
BUT do not give me a ticket while grinning at me. GRINNING. And then proceed to explain what a great guy you are because you are not seizing my completely current and up to date NC tags and leaving me in the street with my 4 year old while you have my tagless truck towed. DO NOT TRY TO INTIMIDATE ME AND MAKE ME FEEL STUPID. Just give me the ticket and get the hell out of my face. Really. And then to grin the whole time? Too much. Also? UM???? Soldiers and Sailors Act? Hello?????
So great morning that was. Ev missed her Gymnastics because of this and she is , ummm how shall we put it?....Pissed. I got the ticket at approximately 10:25 am - it's now 2:09 pm and we have yet to have a conversation on any other subject but missed appointments, traffic laws, police procedure, and the License Bureau. She even got 2 new pairs of summer shoes today but barely noticed due to the in depth Ticketing Trauma. Ticket as punishment? She never heard of such a thing. She is insulted. She is betrayed. How can there be tickets that are not good?!?!
Thanks Mr. Police Officer.

The Sum of Our Knowledge

I have one of those bright, yellow, ruler like growth charts. It came in a group stuff inside a "memory box" activity thing that someone gave us for Christmas. I got that thing out tonight and I thought "oh this is just bright paper, why oh why did I never get one of those beautiful fabric ones" So I went about rounding up prior heights on Ev and I started marking them down. Half way through, I remembered why I never had one of those things. There is a huge gap in our knowledge of her beginnings.

The hits just keep coming I guess.

I was NOT going to do another "oh we have issues" post but here it is.

We have issues.

I can sum up in one small paragraph, the information that we have concerning her first 10 months. I know where she was found, what they named her, that she had a "note", that she was ruddy, that, at some point she went to the hospital for "diarrhea" and had an IV placed in her scalp- though I have no idea how long she stayed or if anyone was with her, I have one set of measurements. I have 6 pictures of her ( 2 referral, 2 post referral, a picture taken for her adoption paperwork before we met her and I have her finding ad picture). That's it. Oh I have the " she sleeps...she eats.... she poops...." stuff but nothing that will help fill in the real blanks for her later. When she was handed to me, she came with the clothes on her back, and an old, scratched up bottle- nothing else. No more pictures, no special toy, no further stories.

So that big old growth chart? That is entirely blank -until her 4 mos info at 58 cm. I thought oh , well, 4 mos, that not too bad a gap. Then I looked at that distance and realized how small she was to be in the world alone. 58 cm and on her own for several more centimeters. I was too silly to write down her length on Gotcha Day- it is recorded on our video so I will look that up. That is what I know from her China days.

The sum of my knowledge of her since they put her in my arms? THAT information is written in my blood, in my bones, in my soul, in my heart. It is too much information to ever comprehensibly write down. It is love and smiles and warm breezes shared, it's kites on the beach and tickles from Papa whiskers, it is Christmas mornings and Birthdays too hot to tolerate, it's the way she looks in the morning, the way she laughs, her generosity, her faithfulness, her imagination, her particular ways, certain turns of her head, all of her food preferences and all of those million things that make up a single day- let alone 4 years of joy that we have had with her. I know when she walked for the first time, it was from Leslie to me in our living room, I know her first English words, I vividly remember her first tantrum.

The knowledge that counts, really counts for us as family and our future together?

Our love and respect for her. My soul crushing, breath taking love for that tiny brown body, those snapping dark eyes, that shiny hair, that tinkling laugh.

In then end, for us, her parents- not a bad trade. I just hope that we can fill up the rest of her centimeters with enough love to make up for the ones we missed.

I Waited So Long For This

Talking -very long post.

I haven't posted in a few days as I have been digesting some conversations and feelings. I wasn't even sure that I was going to talk about this- I don't want to be seen as jumping on any bandwagon -or focusing on negatives -or being dramatic. I like to be honest though. And quite frankly when I was JUST home with Evelyn and struggling, it helped so much to read the blogs of other mothers who were, or had struggled with things- so this is a sort of repayment and hopefully I can help in some small way, other families.
I have been following the blogs of some wonderful families who just got the referrals of some very beautiful babies from Jiangxi. I don't know what it is, but reading about little girls coming right out of the same province as Ev always makes me a bit more prone to remembering- both idle remembering and deep emotional memories that come out in sleep or hit at odd moments. Maybe it's the physical similarities. Maybe it's knowing that one of them could very well be biologically related in some way to Ev. I don't know. Then there is one particular blog where the Mom is having some attachment issues and she is talking frankly and openly in such a loving and thoughtful way, she too got me thinking and wondering.
Initially I was just remembering things with Evelyn. Then I started worrying about my second child. I mean, we have already been there with Bean but, I know I will be "going there" again and knowing that each child reacts differently and at different levels of intensity was leaving me a bit .....nervous. I would like to say that I don;t worry for MYSELF, I worry that I won't be good enough or smart enough or see what I need to see to help her.
Then I thought "oh this is silly" it's not time to get worked up yet, stop planning actions and what you would/will say in these times. Just get on with it.
I have recently added a "therapy" with Evelyn that seems to be helping her over some of her issues and I was thinking that I shouldn't borrow trouble. It seems that once again somebody, somewhere knew that I would be having a difficult conversation with Ev and that I needed to be primed.
Then, the other night, we were in the bathroom and Evelyn transformed in front of me. She got pale and she pulled herself in (like hunched up) and her eyes got huge and she said "when no one lived in houses, how did you know that I was in China? How did you know that you needed to get me? There were no homes". I have to say that I was a dismal failure at first, I could not wrap my mind around what she was asking particularly. Every question I asked would make her more and more frustrated and I couldn't seem to find the words that she needed. I had to leave the room several times to cry and pull myself together and then get right to it. Eventually I said to her "Evelyn do you think you remember living in a place that was not a home?" Her face closed right up, you could see the doors in her eyes slam shut and she said "NO", then she began to act VERY silly and happy. That acting silly to deflect is what she does when she is most stressed.
I know that she has deep memories of her time alone in China. She has, a couple of times, said things that I KNOW come from those times. These things are always shocking and sad and painful- for me- I can not even imagine the pain that she has sometimes. (all of the time? most of the time? is it all just a part of her?) Well, her previous statements made it so that I watch for her to say things so I can talk with her or let her know that we are with her now. SO i wanted to address the things she was saying the other night but I just couldn't get to where she was.
After she acted silly a bit, I tried to gently re-direct her and she said "just tell me something from China Mama- something funny, something with the three of us in it". So I obliged. I told her, her favorite story of how we met and how frantic I was (this story has become increasingly amusing for her as she is now old enough to get just how nutty I can be) and we laughed. And we hugged. Then she said "I am done talking about this now" I said okay. I then put her to bed, the whole time I could see that she was still stressed and sad and anxious and to be truthful, I was in the exact same shape (and so was Les).
After I was downstairs talking with Les for awhile, and crying and raging against circumstances in Ev's life before us- it hit me. I KNEW in a single flash what she was talking about. And I knew what to say to her. I raced up the steps and I approached that tiny lump under the covers, I slid into her bed and hugged her and I told her. I told her that I thought that SHE thought that because she didn't live in a home before she was adopted - that she though NO ONE that she knew had a home before she was adopted. (because at one point she mentioned that "all of them" her family - before they had houses). I explained that we did live in houses before that time. That when we adopted her and brought her home her changed her life so dramatically and in such a big way that, I think that she thinks, everyone's life must have changed in that exact way at that exact time. I told her that, that day we met her, those changes were for her. That was the day she got to live in a house." You know what? ALL of the tension left her body, she smiled big at me, she grabbed on to me and said "yep that's what I meant Mama- you did it". Then we giggled some more and hugged alot more and I left, knowing that she would sleep well.
How hard was it for me to say,essentially, "no you were the only one without a home". I will never be able to communicate the difficulty of that -never. How hard was it for me to realize that even though she didn't quite get the enormity of it the other night, that some day she will? It was enough for her the other night just that I could figure out what she meant and that I could talk with her about the scariness of that. How wonderful is she, that she was comforted by the fact that her family always had homes, that they didn't live like she did? I did tell her at one point that "as long as there have been babies in the world, their Mama's have known how to find them. I found you with my heart and I will keep you all your life" that seemed to help her in the midst of the confusion and she thought about that statement for a few long moments.
I have tried to educate those closest to us about attachment and abandonment issues. I am not sure if any one really gets it though. It's like you have to be the Mama and the Papa and see them in those dark, quiet moments to really understand. It is so easy to just go on and see those daytime/playtime smiles and think that there is no problem. That they are "healed" or "fine". The truth is that for these girls, showing these fears is so incredibly hard that they will NEVER let anyone but the parents see it. We can not fix them. We can only love them and try to understand what they feel.
I love my daughter. I do not spend every moment of the day looking for these things. We, as a family , do not spend time shoving the adoption and China into every moment. We talk when she asks about it. I try to establish that I am her Mama forever that I will always be with her. We try to be "normal". It's just that some days she remembers or some days her trust issues are more evident and we deal with it then. I try to be age appropriate, I try to tell her what I know, what I feel. I try to talk so that she can see that I am proud of her and where she came from, that I, in a small way, understand.
What else can I do?

Park Monkey

Since I am still under the weather.... yes the wheezing death has settled into a full blown, face swelling, head splitting, eye aching, hair hurting sinus infection....anyway.... I am still not myself and we haven't been doing much so here are some pictures from the park the other day. This is Bean's fave place to play right now, she loves all of the climbing and the tall slides. I wish you could hear it, she lets out this loud as hell, high pitched scream while going down the slide. The whole way down. Each and every time.


P.S. Mom don't worry. I have a Dr's appt on Thurs
P.P.S Jodi just so you know I now have a swollen face and I need a haircut and you will look gorgeous. You should be ashamed.