I am sitting outside Lily's room while she tries to fall asleep. My kids canNOT sleep when they have stuffy noses. They think the only way you can sleep is by breathing through your nose and if you have to breathe through your mouth... well, fuggedaboutit. I realize that mouth-breathing isn't the most comfortable way to catch your Zs, but if that's all you can do, then suck it up and get crackin' sister! So anyway, I am sitting outside Lily's room listening to her NOT breathing through her mouth and slowly suffocating with a stuffy nose and I realize I have nothing to offer you in the way of blog posts. So let me just go through my photos stored on the computer and see what I can find...

This is not Halloween, but somehow my kids are sitting around piles of candy in our old living room. I cannot remember what this was. Edit: D's mom was kind enough to point out the plastic eggs in the picture. I'm a little slow.


This is often how she looks at him--part confusion, part annoyance.


I took this while driving. Passed out cold!


From Lily's roller skating party. Very groovy.


Those suckers hurt when they hit you.


Is it just me or do I look constipated?


Forced family fun while camping.

Whatever.

Zinabu in the background. Rabid stuffed beaver in the foreground.

Disneyland Tiki Room. Looks kinda scary the longer I stare at it.

The man I married.

Letting my kids sit on the counter while playing with sharp objects??? What is this?

Carver in the face-painting stage. Every day, people. Every single day.

Me: bad cold
Carver: bad cold
Zinabu: bad cold
Lily: getting the bad cold
Buddy: giardia (imagine the worst and then multiply it by 1,000)

It's kind of disgusting at our house, so be glad you're not visiting.

My Boy, And His Other Half

As an adoptive parent, I carry a lot of baggage. Actually, the baggage belongs to my kids, but I carry it for them until they are old enough to learn about it, talk about it, process it, and deal with it. It is my job not to blab their personal information to the world until each child is comfortable with their birth stories, birth families, and situations that led to their relinquishment. You'd be surprised what perfect strangers ask me... in the grocery store... in front of my kids. As if my kids don't have ears. It's actually horrific. I am aware that by being so obviously an adoptive family we stand out. But I am always taken aback at the buttinskis that feel it is their right to cross 500 yards of a parking lot to ask if my kids are siblings.

Anyway, when kindergarten started for Zinabu, we met the cutest little twin girls. Piper and Mia. Piper is in Zinabu's class and Mia is in the other kindergarten class. Yesterday both kindergarten classes combined for an activity (I was there helping) and Piper and Mia sat across the room from each other and spoke in a secret hand language. It was adorable and amazing. I watched them for a bit and had to bite back a few sobs because Zinabu is a surviving twin. His twin brother passed away at 5 months old. I do not know if he was a fraternal twin or an identical twin, but he was a twin nonetheless. Last night as I was making dinner Zinabu and I were talking about Piper and I felt the little tug on my heart that told me "This is the time to tell him." Zinabu has known that he had a brother that died, but I never explained that it was a twin. Really, he had no context for it and I tell my kids information as I feel they can deal with it. Zinabu had a lot of questions. But he also passed over the conversation pretty quickly. This is what each of my kids have done when we've had such "adoption" talks. They take in what I tell them, ask a few questions, then move on. It is in the days and weeks to come that the kids process the details and begin to grieve. I don't know what it will be like for Zinabu. Yes, it's hard that there is a set of twins in his grade as it shows him what he lost. But how blessed he is to have been a twin in the first place. I share this with you because I'm sad, and this helps me process. And now that Zinabu knows, I feel comfortable telling others in small doses.

My heart is so longing to know Zinabu's brother. I wonder what his personality would have been like (aside from the obvious that he would have been the quiet one). I wonder what Zinabu feels as a surviving twin. How does it affect who he is? I don't have the answers. But I do know that I am blessed, blessed, blessed to be his second mom.

friday night

(vintage sunglasses, circa 1980--they were my dad's)
Friday nights here are unpredictable and boring. David has the lovely job of chaperoning a dance--oh the joys of being a high school administrator. So he's off watching teenagers trying to suppress their raging hormones and I am home with three children trying to suppress their need to drive each other bananas. The first week of school was fantastic. Really, I couldn't have asked for a better start. I love, love, LOVE public education and love our elementary school so much I could cry. Our kiddo with dyslexia is doing well. We are setting them up to succeed and then (hopefully) going to step back a little bit to see what they can really achieve on their own. Most importantly, they need to learn how to communicate to their teacher by themselves when they are feeling overwhelmed or unable to do an assignment. Zinabu survived his first week of kindergarten. He's a little tired and probably constipated from having to squeeze his mouth shut all day to keep from talking, but other than that he's wonderful.

And many thanks for all the compliments on my hair. Really. Those comments will get me through many a grouchy day. Yes, I chopped my hair off. I got so tired of staring at magazine covers of models with long locks, mocking my thin, stringy hair. Why (even now) am I still so concerned about my hair? I confess, I am. I know it's shallow and stupid and there are other things in this world to worry about, but my hair is a constant disappointment. So I cut it off--to make it easier and, hopefully, to not think about it as much. Perhaps when I'm 80 I won't care so much what I look like. Is it possible?

*

*This is what the "first day of school photo" looks like if you let your husband take the picture and he is all verklempt with emotion and not caring at all if his wife is in a good light or if all the kids are actually smiling or remembering to stand a little closer and not include the back porch and wait to press the shutter button until the youngest is finished flapping his yap and turning the flash on or taking more than one photo just for the heck of it.

So, this is our first day of school photo.

Things I Will Not Miss About This Summer

• Moving. I hope to never, ever do it again.
• Carver's insatiable desire to build things. He actually walked into the room and asked, "Mom, can I have some wire cutters?" My friend Annamarie was with me and she can validate this.
• Getting a dog. Yes, I like the dog. Yes, I'm glad we got the dog. But the first 48 hours about killed me.
• Hearing "Mom, I'm bored" exactly 11 seconds after we walk in the door after playing like crazy at the playground.
• Large spiders.
• Shaving my legs. I mean, if I'm wearing a bathing suit I can only expect so much grace from society at large.
• Going from the warm outside into a store with air conditioning cranked up so high I need wool socks to keep frostbite off my toes.
• Looking for appropriate sandals for an 8 year old girl that are neither a) high heeled b) Hannah Montana themed c) bedazzled or d) trampy. I'm still searching.

Things I Will Miss

• Sitting by the pool, drinking iced tea, watching my kids act like dolphins.
• Putting the kids to bed when it finally gets dark (10:00 pm) and smelling summer in their hair.
• Going barefoot.
• Watching Carver build things, sans wire cutters.
• The excitement of a new house and new beginnings.
• Hummingbirds.
• Cutting up watermelon, dumping pretzels in a bowl, and calling it dinner.
• Late night chats with David while he watches baseball games and pretends to hear me.
• Hearing about my kids' experiences at camp.
• Spontaneity.

What about you?

These Two

They are 5 years apart, but most days act like they're 5 months apart. They wrestle together, punch, grab, jump together, bound, hide, kick together, pull, flop, and blast things together. They love each other. They frustrate each other. They think the other is "annoying" but I know better. They can't live without each other.

Recently Overheard


Zinabu: Lily, you don't love me as much as you love Buddy.

Lily: Yes I do. We bought you way before we bought Buddy, so you've lived here longer.

(Me: Total horror and mentally going over adoption sensitivity training for my children again.)

Right. So besides needing to have a talk with Lily that we shouldn't use the phrase "bought you" when talking about her brother, we are winding down with the last 2 weeks of summer vacation. Where we live, kids get out of school in mid-May and go back to school in mid-August. I am always sad to think about school starting again, until these last 2 weeks of vacation when our unstructured time becomes just plain boring to Carver, Lily, and Zinabu. Getting a dog has not helped because I feel tethered to the house... we can only leave him for so long. Buddy whines and barks non-stop when we're not home. Yeah, he's a superstar that way. And other than the fact that he desires to be the alpha dog in our neighborhood and barks at every living thing that we walk past, he's doing well. Lily is loving her dog, but because we're working so hard on training him to heel and have good manners, she doesn't actually get to walk him. He could pull her off her feet if he wanted to.

Carver has had the best past few weeks building a fort on our property. The contractor has left all kinds of scrap wood for him to use, and he and his friend Nathan have spent hours working on it. They even decorated the outside to make it look as if it had been in a paintball war. It's very...um...colorful. I love watching Carver be a kid. He's still so sweet and playful and still into imaginary play, unlike a lot of other 10 year olds these days. Kids want to grow up way too fast and I think it's a tragedy when parents let them. David and I continue to strive to let our kids be young for as long as possible.

We have 2 quick camping trips planned for the end of August. We have not had one single summer trip as a family. The move to our new house sucked the entire summer up and left us with empty boxes and no quality time. At least we can squeeze in a small getaway before fall and try to make up for lost time. And in 11 days my baby starts kindergarten! It has taken almost 11 years, but on August 18 ALL MY CHILDREN will be in school. Wow.

I need a drink.

Freeloader

This is our backyard and our friendly neighbor stealing the birdseed.

David gone for 4 days.
Buddy has had 6 accidents in the house.
We had 2 hailstorms and 3 inches of rain this week.
Paid good money for something I shouldn't have because I'm a pushover... (why, Cathy, why?)
Forgot to take the wet wash out of the laundry machine so now it's moldy.
Still waiting for the contractor to finish.
Ran out of milk.
Ran out of COFFEE (good grief).
Need a vacation.

It's All In A Name

We recently had dear friends visit (whom I adore so, so much!) and because we hadn't seen them in 3 years, they had not yet met Zinabu face-to-face. We keep in touch through email and our blogs, so Annamarie was surprised when she heard me say Zinabu's name aloud. It occurred to me that I need to give a phonetic pronunciation of Z's name. The emphasis is on the second syllable: zi-NAAAAAA-boo. It isn't ZI-naboo. So I'm sorry if I've had you all reading and pronouncing his name wrong for the last 2.5 years.

What's on my plate today? Well, David is in Breckenridge for 4 days so I am supremom on call. I also get to keep the dog from licking his nether regions for the next few days while he heals from his surgery. I'm thinking cereal for dinner.

OUCH!

You are looking at the woman who is responsible for a certain puppy's discomfort.
Guess who got fixed today?

Every Home Needs One

Perhaps you recall that in our old house I had painted and framed a large chalkboard on our living room wall. It started as a place for the kids to scribble on, but once Carver and Lily were both in elementary school, it took on the role of weekly spelling word reminders and creative masterpieces. (Insert desperate cries of, "Please don't erase it, Mom. I worked so hard on that rainbow!) It was a sad day when I painted over the old chalkboard in order to get our house ready to sell. Well fast forward to our new house... it was only a matter of time until I could get my hands on a paint brush. We have an eat-in kitchen that you enter from the garage, so when you first walk in, the above wall is facing you. It was just screaming "chalkboard" at me. When I went to the home improvement store to get the paint, I discovered they also sell magnetic paint! Call me crazy, but I just can't pass up such a delightful invention. So I painted a few layers of magnetic paint on the wall, and covered it with a few layers of chalkboard paint--in chocolate brown, my favorite color. The magnetic paint is great, but it's not strong enough to hold up pieces of paper. A big disappointment, because I was hoping to display the kids artwork here. But you can put magnets on the wall and they'll stay. I'm on the hunt, now, for kid-friendly magnetic poetry. That should be fun.

I always love walking by the chalkboard to see what the kids have written recently.

A Letter To My Future Daughter-In-Law

You'd better be good to him, and I don't mean maybe!

Braces
Yesterday was a big day in our household. Lily got braces! Bless her heart, Lily has a few medical issues she's had to grapple with in her young life, and a mouth full of dental drama just adds to her plate. This girl is going to be tough, for sure, but David and I have to work extra hard to raise her self-esteem and get her to see the incredible value her life has despite the obstacles in her path.

A year ago I asked the dentist why her permanent incisors (the teeth on each side of your two front teeth) had not grown in yet, despite the fact that it had been months and months since she lost her baby teeth. Also, her front teeth had an enormous gap between them that was just growing wider--like Moses parting the Red Sea. The dentist did an x-ray and then pulled me aside, as if to comfort me while he broke the news that I will be shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars to an orthodontist. No permanent incisors exist in her mouth. He said it happens, though it's more unusual for both to be missing. We found an orthodontist we really liked and discussed our options. What David and I decided to do was get those braces started as soon as possible so that her front teeth could be moved together before kids teased her about it. Lily calls her front teeth her "special teeth", and adores the fact that she can fit a straw between them to drink. She was a superstar at her appointment, and picked blue for her color. Braces without colors is just sooooooo 1995. But I have to hand it to Carver for being a great big brother. Lily asked him to come to the appointment with her, and he sat by her chair and watched in fascination (remember, this is the kid who wishes he could blow stuff up) and kept saying things like, "Oh cool, Lily!" or "Lily, it's looking great!" and even "You're doing a good job, Lily." He held the mirror up at certain times so she could see what was happening in her mouth, and just made her feel good. To be honest, I felt very unnecessary, except to write a big fat check to Dr. Johnson.

Weird Things I've Said Today

What did the dog just eat? What was that?
Is it too early in the morning to watch Harry Potter?
I can't fly because I just can't, Zinabu!
No, you can't build a ramp with firewood.
Why are you wearing your bathing suit for breakfast?
I don't know why ticks exist.
Just try the stairs, Buddy. Just try.
I don't think you can make a living riding your scooter. Sorry.
Eating oatmeal all day long isn't very healthy.
What was that sound? Was that Zinabu?
We don't need napkins tonight. Just eat.

It's been very Four Weddings And A Funeral around here. Lots to celebrate and also some tragic news.

• My birthday was very uneventful and proved to me that I do mind getting older, even though Oprah keeps telling me I shouldn't care. David bought me presents from England. Went to Amazon UK and paid in pounds (recalculated to dollars). He is fantastically brilliant and had my birthday gifts shipped across the pond straight away. Oooooh, he's just so lovely.
• We had air conditioning installed, which doesn't matter much to me but David is quite over the moon about it. He's a happy man, and thus he does nice things like let me go see
• the new Harry Potter movie. Another cause for celebration! All of you who don't care, just go away. But for me it was spectacular. I need to see it about 16 more times in the next few weeks.
• And finally, we are winding down the baseball season. Zinabu had his last game and Carver's team has one left. Lots of good memories made and many fun evenings spent watching the great American pastime.

In sad news. a dear family friend that I have known since I was 7 passed away today. From Melanoma. He was my age and leaves behind a wife and 5 year old daughter. His mom, Bev, is my mom's best friend. It was a horrible death. Completely disgusting. As awful as you could possibly imagine.

I am tired of cancer.

Just so you know...

Buddy arrives on Sunday. Stay tuned.

A little more of this...


And a little less of this. please....

This renovation will never end. I don't know how my mom did it. She's lived like this for months. There are so many little loose ends to tie up, I'm pretty sure we'll be celebrating the holidays with our contractor. To add to my horror, we now have cable TV (yes, we're really moving into the 21st century) and I found out there is a show called "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant." So one of these days I could just wake up and have a baby fall out of me with no warning or preparation. Exactly what I need.

I think the kids are beginning to adjust to the new home and routine. It sure hasn't squelched their creativity. I found this note in Carver's room:

I don't know what the infraction was but Lily must have learned that paying off your big brother goes a long way in keeping the peace. She taped a dime to the note. Does she have ties to the mob I don't know about?

Africa
The school where David works went through a large renovation last year, and he was in charge of a lot of it. The day the staff helped clean out storage units, he discovered a few old, unused maps. David snagged the map of Africa and brought it home, and I tucked it away knowing I would do something with it someday.

The giant blank wall in Zinabu's room, just begging for an old school map!


The giant map... this was a conundrum. I didn't think I'd be able to afford a custom framing job, and I didn't want to just tack it to the wall.


The solution: two large frames that were pretty inexpensive but put together could hold the bulk of the map.

The result? Not bad! Zinabu wanted to know immediately where Ethiopia was located and the area he used to live. I used wall decals to spell out "Africa" and "Zinabu" above and below the map. Sorry the picture is blurry--someone would not sit still!

The Sandbox

We have had a sandbox for the last 8 years and we were so spoiled by it. True, I've had a fair share of sand clean-up in those years, but the hours my kids have spent playing together digging and creating are priceless. Our new house has a very woodsy landscape. There's no grass but there's plenty of great places to play--but we were sorely missing our sand. David and I walked around the property several times, looking for the perfect place to build our new sand utopia. We decided on a sloping area off the back porch. We made it a family project and all worked together to dig trenches for the lumber, clear the foundation, and spread sand. In reality, David and I worked a wee bit harder than the kids, but everyone helped in theory nonetheless.


Clearing pine needles and rocks. Zinabu is "misting" us when we got hot.


Three musketeers pretending to work.


Our new house is in a very quiet, private neighborhood where there are no children but tons of retired couples that have fallen in love with our family. Here are Charlie and Kathy talking to David. Charlie loaned us his 6 wheeler to haul the 1 ton of sand we bought from the street up to the sandbox. Our new neighbors are wonderful.


The hill from the street up to the sandbox that we were going to have to traverse with wheelbarrows. God bless the invention of the 6 wheeler!


One ton of sand only goes so far. We plan to add more in smaller portions as we are able.


A quick break with a surgical glove. Don't ask.


Breaking in the new sandbox! Anyone want to come play?

How It All Went Down

I am so behind in blogging I don't know where to start. Maybe I'll post our 4th of July pictures next year... not to mention more pictures of our new house and the big sandbox construction project. But alas, *Buddy made his way into our lives and I'll share what happened.

We told Lily a few days ago that we would begin our active search for a dog on August 1. We have some camping trips planned in July and Lily has day camp at the zoo all next week, so we figured August would be better timing. Lily immediately went into planning mode and begged and begged us to just "take a peek" at dogs at the humane society. We looked on the computer together, and although they had lots of black lab mixes, there were no yellow labs--which is her first choice.

On a whim I typed in "Yellow Labrador puppy for sale" in our city, and one popped up. Buddy. He is 8 months old and big but housebroken (bonus). His current owners adopted him from another family that bought him as a brand new puppy. They didn't realize what they were getting into (doesn't anyone research what it's like to have a dog?) and soon were in over their heads. So family number 2 took Buddy at 5 months old. Family number 2 is looking to sell their house in the near future and possibly moving, so they wanted to find Buddy a new home. Insert my search the other day and voila!

Because he's a purebred and because she was selling him so cheap, I figured I needed to at least call her and do some investigating. I went to meet him yesterday, and even though his size overwhelmed me a bit, I could tell this would be a great dog for our family. I paid her a deposit and worked out a deal where she'll hold him for us for about 10 more days. I'm thinking around July 20th we can bring him home and surprise Lily.

Lily has saved and saved and saved her money and purchased a dog cage, balls, leash, collar, toys, and food and water bowls. Now David and I just need to distract her for the next 13 days because all she wants to do is talk about dogs and research dogs and look at dogs.

Rest assured I will take photos and video of the grand event. And Aunt Diana, please come visit soon. Buddy the dog will be eager to meet you.

*Buddy comes with his current name. I don't know if we'll change it. Lily will have to decide.

Daddy
Mommy
Carver
Lily
Zinabu
*Buddy the lab

Yu-ummm!

Each of our kids has had at least one major meltdown in the last week--all the stress of the move, missing their neighborhood friends, and watching mom and dad unpack endless boxes has made for some miserable little children. Yesterday is was Lily's turn. In the midst of her trauma, I asked if she wanted to bake cookies and lo and behold, she snapped right out of her funk. We made the most delicious batch of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I'm beginning to think that our old oven at our old house wasn't super accurate in the temperature department. My mom's oven is almost new and acts like it! Also, my mom has this incredibly handy-dandy device that I bet you've never heard of: a kitchen timer. Yup. Isn't that fantastic? At our old kitchen, I would throw a batch of cookies in the oven, look at the clock, and think to myself, "Take 'em out in 12 minutes." Turns out a real live kitchen timer is super accurate. Hmmmm. Go figure.

My mom is good that way. She has stuff like that in her house that I've just never gotten around to buying. I mean, honestly, I do not write "buy kitchen timer" on my Target list. My Target list consists of items like new underwear and heartburn medicine. I just don't have time for all them high-falutin' things that make life easier.

Anyway, the cookies were yummy and Lily hasn't cried since.