June « 2010 « American Family

So long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Zai Jian.

My dearest readers and friends in the computer,

I have been thinking about closing up shop here for quite a while. It is time to admit that my blogging mojo is gone.

I started this blog just days before M’s first birthday and now she is a strapping 7 1/2 year old. When I started blogging, L was only our Hypothetical Future Child (HFC) and now she is our child in every way.

This blog helped me through the dark, dark days of new parenting when I thought I was going to lose my ever-loving mind. This blog is where I turned when I was trying to figure out how to make being a multicultural, multiracial family a blessing instead of a burden for my girls. It helped me learn to unpack my invisible knapsack of privilege. Blogging helped me survive the long wait to adopt from China with humor and community. This blog was my refuge when I was in Baby Jail after L came home and I thought I couldn’t make it through another day inside the four walls of my house.

In short, this blog and the people I met here helped me walk through the fire and figure out how to be the mother (and person) I want to be.

Thank you.

My life wouldn’t be what it is today without you, my friends in the computer. While there have been some bumps (and assholes) along the way, blogging has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me. The support, friendships and community I found here were life-changing.

Some of you became my real-life friends. Some of you remain my friends in the computer. Some of you have been secretly lurking for years and years not realizing that having an audience for the crazy that is my life sometimes was the only thing keeping me sane.

I am so sad to let American Family go.

The things I want to write about (things that cause me stress and angst right now) are unbloggable. The story doesn’t belong only to me and putting it on the internet isn’t worth the risk to the other parties involved or to the relationships we hope to build. We are still searching and hoping to rebuild connections that have been lost. I think this is a road we will have to walk alone.

I was hoping to wait until we finished our big trip to China and Taiwan next year, but I can’t see dragging things out for another 6-12 months just to do a travel blog. I am going to hold on to the domain name, just in case. I have always made snarky comments (who me??) about people who close up their blog and then come back over and over, but now I understand why. This shit is hard, yo. I will still be on Twitter ( su per grrl 7 spacesremoved), if you feel you can’t stand to say goodbye.

A final update about each of us before we go:

M: M is lanky and tall. Sometimes she is a little bit awkward, but she has a lot of confidence. She is missing so many teeth she looks like a jack-o-lantern. She is a gentle girl with a kind heart. Just this summer, she has really come into her own as a big sister. She has started including L in the very involved pokemon games she plays with her stuffed animals. M is smart as a whip and we continue to try to figure out how to get her needs met at school. M was fortunate to have an excellent teacher in the past two years who made sure she was challenged at school. We hope next year will be more of the same. While she complains about learning Chinese, M is making great progress. I can’t wait until we get to China to see how much she understands and if she will feel comfortable speaking. M is goofy and beautiful. Sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I can see the woman she will be one day and it takes my breath away.

L: L is a surprise. She bares almost no resemblance to the chubby-cheeked, somber baby we saw in her referral photos. She is cute as a button and all girl. She has grown a lot lately. From the tiny bug who was wearing size twos on her 4th birthday, she recently shot up into the 20th %tile, much to my relief. She is nimble, compact and strong. She might be a little slow to warm up, but her smile lights up the room. L is cautious but has a stubborn streak that will serve her well (though it might be the death of me!).

This past year with L has been hard. (Actually, I could say that about almost every year with L. But each year for different reasons.) Not that L herself has been hard, but being the best mama to her and figuring out how to get her needs met has been a struggle. I have written a lot here about the challenges of trying to figure out the lingering effects of living in an orphanage – trauma and attachment issues, vision issues, vestibular issues, educational issues – but I don’t want to leave you with the wrong impression. L is amazing. She is smart and funny and she will be just fine. She is figuring out what it means to be adopted. She loves stuffed animals and anything soft and fuzzy. She feels her feelings intensely, but lets them pass quickly. She loves her big sister. She is learning what it means to be a friend. Her capacity for love in spite of all her losses could break my heart into a million tiny pieces. I can’t imagine this family without her spark.

Mr. A: Right now, Mr. A is working at a fancy-pants, piece of cake job. He works only about 50 hours a week and has actually been known to take some time off (!). While he likes this job, we know his days there are numbered. Sometime in the next year he will head back to the land of the corporate lawyers where he will work too much and (hopefully!) make a little more money. We are soaking up as much of this easy time as we can. He is still a wonderful father and the only man I can imagine spending my life with.

Me: I am happy. Really and truly. I am living the life that is better than I could ever have dreamed it would be. I have the perfect little family and I live in a perfect little town. I am surrounded by wonderful friends who live nearby and some who live too far away. Sure, there are a few areas I would like to change: I would love to find our forever house (or at this point almost ANY house) so we can move out of the cramped rental; I would like to have a housecleaner again because it seems I am never going to be a tidy person who enjoys cleaning; I would like to travel more. Recently, I have actually begun to contemplate getting a job once L goes to kindergarten for the sole purpose of funding more Big Trips. We are starting to get ready for our two month trip to China and Taiwan (and maybe Hawaii and somewhere else if we get bored?). I am so excited, I can barely contain myself.

So that’s us. We are riding off into the sunset with our hair trailing in the wind and smiles on our faces. We are finding our Happily Ever After.

It has been a wild and wonderful ride.

Thank You.

Taking the Power Back

I think today will be L’s last OT appointment for a while.

She made a lot of progress early on, mostly relating to her vestibular issues. She really has. Before OT, she wouldn’t lay her head back or do a somersault or recline in any way at all. After a good bit of swing work, now she loves flipping around. She is more confident jumping off the furniture (is that a good or a bad thing?), she happily logrolls around the living room, and she loves standing on her head while leaning her legs on the sofa.

But for the last month or so, I really feel like her progress has tapered off. The OT is insistent on continuing to work on visual things that have already been tested and cleared by the Vision Therapist. AND, she isn’t working on L’s sensory issues at all (which should be a priority if you ask me).

While I am not really on board with the current treatment plan, there may be an even bigger issue that is bothering me: She doesn’t acknowledge the huge gains L has already made with both vision therapy and OT. For example, last week I had L show her the table (backbendy thing where you push up from the floor) she has been working so hard on. In the past, there was no way L would do that because it involved pushing up and letting her head dangle upside down. She practiced and practiced and now L is awesome at her tables. Instead of praising her, the OT mumbled something about the “plane” and made L try again with her feet flat on the floor.

I guess I feel like she is always looking at L’s deficits. When I point out improvements, she always looks at the negative side or tries to find some other area where L isn’t up to par. While I get that this is partly her role, it is getting old for me. Also, she is flaky and I don’t know that I trust her professional judgment any more. She can’t give me a clear treatment plan or a timeline for how long L will theoretically need to keep going there. It is too expensive in both time and money for me to spend so much energy on someone I don’t trust.

I intended to quit last week, but (pussy that I am) I forgot to call and cancel. I will go back one last time and then I think we are done, at least for the summer. If it looks like L needs more OT (something I think is debatable right now), I will find her a new therapist in the fall.

A lovely day

Today, we finally got around to visiting the Wilds. It is a giant natural animal conservatory, kind of like a zoo but without cages. It is located not far from where I went to high school, in the middle of rural southeastern Ohio. It is located on land that was previously a giant surface mine which now looks surprisingly similar to how I imagine some parts of Africa.

Despite the heat, we chose the open air bus. It was surprisingly not that hot when we were moving. (It was brutal if you happened to be sitting on the unfortunate side of the bus that had sun exposure when we stopped.) We loved getting up close and personal with the animals. We liked this trip so much, I suspect plans for a real African safari will someday be in the works.

Fortunately, no one got eaten by the cheetahs. Heh.

On the way home, we stopped at a restaurant I used to frequent in high school. It is an original 1950′s soda shop. And by original, I don’t think they have changed a single thing in the past 60 years.

I think their chocolate malt may actually be the very best in the entire world. I also got a fried egg sandwich for old time’s sake.

This has nothing to do with anything, but it appears that this is a Campbell’s Soup-making contraption. Weird, no? Do people really go to a restaurant to eat a teeny tiny can of Campbell’s Soup?

Last but not least, on the way home we stopped an let adults (who seem to feel no shame about wearing Silly Bandz) punch holes in M’s ears.

It was a good day.

the Puzzle of L

Going back to my post about L and school…

The thing about L is that one day she seems like a total mess and other days she is completely fine.

The very same week I had a melt-down about her complete failure at circle time at her IEP meeting, I went to her end of the year party. At the party, despite the chaos and noise, L was amazingly perfect. Other times I have visited her in the classroom, she appeared completely shut-down (mouth sagging, unengaged, worried-looking). At the party, she was lively. She played the games happily. She **sang the songs and did the hand motions** in circle time. She was totally herself.

It is entirely possible she acted that way to make me look like a total asshole. Heh.

Mr. A and I are not exactly sure what we should do. We had been leaning toward requesting a different teacher for next year, but after seeing L so comfortable with her classmates & teachers, I am reluctant to uproot her. L is very slow to warm up to new adults (and kids too), so it might be better for her to start the year in a familiar environment? We have also decided to let the IEP from the meeting stand for now because it does address some areas where we have concerns. Once school begins in the fall, I will go in and observe her every 2 weeks or so to see how she is doing. If she looks shut-down, I will call another IEP meeting.

In one stroke of good news: L graduated from Vision Therapy last week! She had worked really hard in therapy and I am so pleased with the progress she has made. Her tracking (visual pursuit) issue is resolved and she tested at an age appropriate level for visual-motor skills where she was previously over a year delayed. She is still catching up on some areas that were behind due to her previous vision problems (visual memory, visual attention, spatial skills). These skills are falling into place rapidly now that she has a solid foundation to work from. L will have a follow up appointment in 3 months, but the doctor seems to believe she is totally done with vision therapy. That was $2,000 well-spent.

Because we are obviously not spending enough of our income on Occupational Therapy and Vision Therapy, there is one other area we are going to explore to see if it will help L: Play Therapy. I have a nagging concern that L still suffers from some residual effects of early trauma (either from when she was placed with us or possibly from something that happened in the orphanage). I don’t know if trauma is why L shuts down when she is stressed or not, but we are going to get an expert to poke around in her head to see. The therapist hasn’t met L yet, so he can’t say whether or not she will benefit from therapy, but once school is out we will give it a try. Ironically, we are going to see the shrink we saw during our homestudy debacle. I feel comfortable with him and I am confident he will be able to tell us if we need to worry or not.

This is a rather abbreviated post because I am running out the door to M’s Super!! Fun!! Day!! at school, but I didn’t want to leave that IEP post hanging like that. We are still working through our options. Most of the time, L is happy and healthy. I just want to do everything I can to make sure she is getting all the help she needs.

What I’ve been Doing in my Spare Time

I am going to come back to the IEP thing, but I wanted to do this too. I haven’t been online much lately because I have been helping my parents get their 2nd lake house ready for sale. Don’t ask my why they have two houses on the very same lake (especially because they live in the other one full-time), but they did.

They have owned the 2nd house for about 5 years and rented it out to someone who did not keep it up very well. They had remodeled the kitchen and bath when they first bought it, but we have spent the last few weeks cleaning it up and getting it ready to show. I was given free reign (and bossing my parents around privileges) to stage the house and make decoration decisions. The only limit was trying to keep the budget low, so we borrowed some furniture from our house.

Here are the before and after pics. Excuse the wonky sizes because I am running out the door and I wanted to get this posted.

Don’t these pictures make you want to go through your house and throw away all the clutter?

So long. Farewell. Auf Wiedersehen. Zai Jian.

Taking the Power Back

A lovely day

the Puzzle of L

What I’ve been Doing in my Spare Time

Brilliant Blogs

Friends and Neighbors

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