Mayhem and Magic

Where Does He Get This Stuff?

At the lunch table on Friday:

Sparkle:  "Where's Daddy?"

Me: "Daddy's at work, Sparkle.  He'll be home at supper time."

Sparkle, holding up his fork menacingly: "I'm gonna shoot up Daddy's work!"

Me: "Sparkle!  We do not talk that way in our family!"

(What the....?!?!?!  And brilliant response from me, no?) 

Then again today, as Pumpkin was sitting on my lap, just waking up from his nap:

Sparkle, holding Pumpkin's hand for a while, then kind of pulling on his hand, wanting him to get off my lap:  "I'm gonna break your arm!"

Me: "Uhbamumbadeebuh...  Sparkle!"

Sparkle: "I mean the bad guys, we can chase 'em and catch 'em and hurt their arms."

Me: "Sparkle, that was an unkind thing to say to your brother.  We do not even pretend to hurt people in our family."

I don't know for sure where Sparkle has learned these things, but obviously they made an impression.  The kids in his new classroom are older than he is, so I assume he probably heard it from one of them. 

Hearing such cruel things coming from his innocent little three-year-old mouth was enough to make me (briefly) consider quitting my job on the spot and homeschooling him until he is 18. 

I was surprised by how unprepared I was to respond. 

Perhaps I have over-prepared myself to talk with my kids about adoption and families and race, and neglected to plan how I will talk with them about other things.  I'm thinking now of both "positive" and "negative" topics that have come up recently or probably will soon.  Like faith, servanthood, and courage.  Like violence, guns, and pretecting himself from being hurt by an adult.

He's so darn concrete in his thinking these days.

I've heard, "Where is Jesus, Mama?" and "Do I have to swallow my bites?" (after being told he needed to take two more bites before getting down from the table) just in the last day or so.

He needs things to be straightforward and to make sense.  There is no room for mystery or subtlety. 

I don't want to say, "Guns are unsafe," or "People who shoot guns are wrong."  I don't really want him to believe those things.  I don't want him to be frightened of guns.  I want to let him be a masculine boy who chases down bad guys and protects the innocent, if that's what he wants to do.  But I also don't want him to think that pretending to shoot people is okay.  (Just using the gun thing as an example here...)

So, once again, I'm rambling now.  Maybe I'm overreacting.  But this is definitely something Beloved and I are going to have to work on.

How have you talked with your kids about difficult or subtle topics?  How do you explain war, or grace, or Heaven?  I'm open to ideas, here...

Naming in Adoption (Pumpkin's Story)

Naming kids is fun, but kind of hard, don't you think?

While we were waiting for the baby who turned out not to be ours, Beloved and I tried to find names we agreed on.

Though we had been thinking about names for a few months while waiting for the first baby to be born, by the time we knew about Pumpkin three weeks later we had dismissed our whole naming discussion.  It was like starting over.

Also, Beloved wasn't there when I met Pumpkin.  I remember driving in the dark to Indianapolis, with itty bitty Pumpkin in the back seat and Beloved on the phone.  He had been fielding calls from family all day, and everyone wanted to know the baby's name. 

Before I flew to Indiana to meet Pumpkin, we didn't know very much about his first mom, and we didn't know if she had named him.  When I picked him up, the nurses were very clear that there was some information regarding his first mom that I was not supposed to see, and some of it they hid pretty well.  But some of it they didn't.  So I did manage to see on some paperwork that she had, in fact, named him Dante. 

Pumpkin was not issued a social security number or a birth certificate until after his adoption was complete when he was 6 months old.  And no where in the paperwork we were eventually given was he referred to by the name chosen by his first mom.  I am very grateful that I was able to discover quickly what his first mom had named him.  If I hadn't, we would not have been able to include it in his eventual full name.  (The guardianship paperwork I got before leaving Indiana used the full name we chose for him.  So though it wasn't official until the adoption was complete, it probably would have been a legal hassle to go back and change it.)

So Pumpkin's first name is a name we chose.  It's a Biblical name, and not uncommon.  His first middle name is Dante.  His second middle name is Beloved's mom's family name, Lee.

Pumpkin's mom still calls him Dante, or Pumpkin Dante, which is totally fine with us.  At first she tried to remember to call him Pumpkin, but it was obviously hard for her.  This was not because she does not respect our family or Beloved and I as Pumpkin's parents.  He just is Dante to her, and has been since he was born.  Partway through one awkward phone conversation with her, where she was clearly stubbling over the whole name thing, I told her she was welcome to call him Dante.  Her voice sounded very relieved, and talking to her was much easier. 

At home, we usually call Pumpkin by the first name we gave him.  Or sometimes Baby, or Bubba (Sparkle's word for brother when he was smaller).  But we have been deliberate about calling him Dante or Pumpkin Dante as well.  As with Sparkle, we want his original name to be familiar but special.  I hope that for both the boys, their middle names will be familiar enough that it would not be difficult for them to chose to go by those names when they get older.

So far, I am very happy with the choices we made about naming the boys.

As always, I love to hear about how other people choose name for their kids!  (Thanks to those who have shared their thoughts so far!)

Another Perspective on Naming in Adoption

Brianna Heldt writes about how she and her husband chose to keep their son's Ethiopian names.

I'd love to hear how other adoptive parents make naming decisions, if you'd like to share! 

(Actually, I love anything to do with baby/kid naming, whether in an adoptive family or not!)   

What We Did On Our Summer Vacation

The folks you might not recognize are my sister, the older of my two brothers, and my mom.  We were in and around Duluth and Grand Marais, Minnesota.

Naming in Adoption (Sparkle's Story)

Adoptive parents, adoptees, and first parents disagree about naming adoptive children.  There are some strong arguments for keeping a child's first name no matter what, for changing it completely, or for keeping part of it. 

Some say a child should keep his/her original name as a connection to his/her past, first family, and first culture.  Some adoptive parents feel that they want or need to give their child a name as a way of claiming him and including him in their new family.

(Dawn has an article in Adoptive Families on the topic of naming her daughter.  Go read it!)

I think I understand the arguments, and I believe all of these points are valid. 

That said, here's what we decided to do:

We gave Sparkle his first name, which is Beloved's middle name.  It's a Biblical name, and not unusual in either South Africa or the U.S.

Sparkle also has two middle names.  One is my father's name, David.  The other is Kgothatso, the name is first mother gave him.

We know that the name his first mom gave him is significant.  The spelling of his name is only one letter off from the spelling of her own Tswana name.   Obviously, we would not have known this if we had not known L. 

After we came home from South Africa and got to read through some additional medical records, we discovered that L. had originally given him a different first name, but later changed it to Kgothatso. 

Kgothatso means "comfort" or "peace."  One translation we received said the name is from a phrase that a mother would say to her crying child, and means, "I sympathize with you."  L. herself never told us this, either when we spoke with her or in her letter to Sparkle.  (However, we never asked her about it.  I wish we had, but it never occured to us until after we were already home.)   

To me, the story of Sparkle's Tswana name illustrates a strong reason to keep a child's original name.  You never know what significance it may have, even if the significance is not obvious to the adoptive parents.

When we met him, Sparkle's foster family had been calling him by a completely different name since he came to their home when he was six weeks old.  Our referral had not mentioned that his foster family called him anything other than Kgothatso.  We struggled briefly with whether or not we should keep his "foster name" as his first name.  When we asked his foster mother about his name, however, she just shrugged and said, "Well, he just looked like a John to me."  So we didn't keep it.

Most of the time we call Sparkle by the name we gave him.  But we have also been very deliberate about using his Tswana name as well.  At first it seemed a bit awkward to call him Kgothatso, but hey, we practiced!  He hears himself called Kgothatso every day, and answers to it easily.  I try to use it especially during times when we are snuggling, or during family time (but we use it publicly, too).  I want it to seem ordinary to be called Kgothatso, but I also want him to think of it as a special name.

So far, we are happy with the naming decisions we made for Sparkle.

(More to come on naming Pumpkin...)

Any Minnesotans in the Crowd?

Any Minnesotans out there?  Can you guess where we went on our vacation? 

We Are Home...

We're home! 

(Whew!)

The boys had a great time, but they are glad to be home, too. 

You know how you can tell your toddler is relieved to have returned to the familiar routine, even though he protests the loss of all the vacation excitement? 

They ran around the house exclaiming over stuff, like they were surprised everthing was still there after their long, long absence.  Like they expected it all to have decomposed by now.  ("Cars!  Book!  Read a book, Mama!  Socks!  My socks!  Broom!  Snacks!! Snack, Mama, snack!")

Two weeks is a pretty long time when you're less than two years old.

The boys played outside this morning in their pajamas, and watched Daddy mow the very, very long grass.

Vacation pictures to come tomorrow! 

(Edited: Photos removed.)

We're Outta Here!

It's "Airplane Day"!

Our family leaves this morning for a trip to visit my family.  Hooray!

Sparkle knows which airports we're going through in the correct order.  We didn't intruct him to learn it (obviously), he just is so excited.

We may not have internet access for a while.

I shall leave you with the image of Sparkle's choice of hosiery from yesterday.

Have a Happy 4th of July!