Mayhem and Magic

Overheard From Sparkle: One Funny and One Serious

I told the boys this morning, "You may each have some Sprite after you have put on your pants and brushed your teeth."  Chalk that one up as a parenting phrase I never thought I'd say...  But as Sparkle was pulling on his jeans and working on the snap (tricky, those snaps) he said, "Mom, you know, I think the silent e is kind of mean."  (Ha!) "Why is that?" I asked, truly thrilled by his observation and wondering what the heck he was going to say next.  "Well, it's always changing one thing into something else, like a 'tub' into a 'tube.' "  (Ha!  What a kid!  And also, thank you Between the Lions!)

Later this evening he and I were making pumpkin bread together.  He's way into baking and measuring, my Sparkle, and he's always excited to bake or cook something together.  Right in the middle of the recipe, like, as we were adding baking soda, he asked, "Mom, why did you want two brown boys?"

This isn't the first time he's asked me the same question.  And he's phrased it that way each time.  He asked Beloved the same thing a while ago when I wasn't around.  He's looking for something...  I'm not sure what or why.  I've never, ever said we adopted them because we wanted two brown boys.  I've never said we wanted brown kids in particular.  I'm not quite sure what he's getting at, or what he's really asking.  Maybe he doesn't know either.

We had a long conversation about it, probably seven to ten minutes of talking over his adoption in particular.  I said some generic stuff about how I wanted to be a mom ever since I was a little girl, that I was waiting and praying for a child, how we asked the adoption agency if they knew of a baby who was going to need another mom and dad (not a different mom and dad...  to me it's important that he knows his first mom can still be his mom but he needed another mom), how we loved him and wanted him, how he was the one child who made me into a mom...  I don't know what was said...  Nothing really new, I don't think. 

We got the pumpkin bread into the oven and I scooped him up and sat his little hiney on the kitchen counter, where he was right at my eye level with my arms around him.  He was messing with my necklace while we chatted.  I must not have answered what he was really asking because he asked then, "But why didn't you want a little white boy?"  I answered, "You mean, a baby who was born out of my uterus?"  Yep, he said, why not that?  "Baby, we needed you...  I didn't have a baby out of my body because we were waiting for a baby who turned out to be you."

(Sometime let's talk about the difference between telling a kid, "You were the answer to my prayers" and "God meant for you to be ours."  Whew, that's a discussion!  Not too inflammatory, is it?  You can handle it, right?)

Then he was done.  I think Beloved and Pumpkin came downstairs at that point, and Sparkle was ready to go play.

Sheesh, these children...  Always growing up and asking new things and expecting us parents to grow and figure stuff out with them...  Demanding little folks, children, aren't they?

I've been thinking about it since, and I'm not sure my answers to him were complete.  He wants to know why we ended up together.  He doesn't care about the things that were not the reason we adopted.

Does that make sense? 

I didn't adopt my kids to prove anything...  I didn't adopt to show that I'm a good person.  I didn't adopt to prove I'm not racist.  I didn't adopt with the intention of rescuing a poor child.  We wanted to parent and adoption was the way we chose to build our family.

But I think I've been so determined not to place value statements on the decisions made by adoptive parents as well as placing parents that I've missed something important.

Our family does say something about us. 

It seems arrogant to think that our little family could demonstrate anything positive to the world.  If we do, it will be by grace alone... 

(Wait, no faith stuff here!)

Anyway...  Here's what I hope our family shows about us:

We believe that people can choose to be family to one another.  We believe that making the decision to love someone is always a good choice.  We believe that people have value because they're people; not because they are like us, they share our genes, they share our lifestyle, they share our beliefs, or they share our culture. 

Maybe Sparkle needs for us to tell him that more directly.  Maybe we need to say, "We chose you to be in our family and we decided to love you forever, and that's why we adopted you."

I love you, my Sparkle.

 

(Check out the hug/stranglehold.  That's a pretty good summary of brotherhood, right there.)

Between the Lions

We're still working on reading readiness with Sparkle, and we're doing okay.  I just want to give a big thumbs up to the PBS series "Between the Lions."  I read about the series on Shannon's blog and we got the first season for the boys for Christmas.  We really like it!

It's all literacy training stuff, not just identifying letters but putting sounds together, organizing letters into words, and interacting with various stories and books. 

Plus, it's the only kid's show I've ever seen where the theme song doesn't make me want to pull out my hair.

And (last thing, I promise) many (most?) of the characters and cast are African American.  The boys pointed out that the boy lion cub (Lionel!) has dreadlocks. (He's an animated lion puppet, so I guess I didn't notice at first.) The dad lion has long hair like Beloved and "kind of" has dreads, per their assessment.  It absolutely does matter to them to see African Americans in their screen time and books, as well as in their real lives.

So, to summarize...  Between the Lions, Season 1: Wonderful, we highly recommend it. 

(Does any one know-- Why don't they sell the other seasons?  I would buy them!  I don't imagine that producing DVDs of a PBS show would be very costly and could make them a lot of money.  I must be missing something...)

Secrets

I want another kid.  We decided not to.  I am basically happy with the decision.  But...  My heart is constantly scheming to come up with ways to make it work.  I don't know if that means I'm nuts because I can't get it out of my head, and I'm torturing myself when I should be enjoying my family as it is...  Or if I'll regret it forever if we don't have another.

I am kind of lazy.  I want to spend more time just doing fun stuff.  Really, what I'd like is complete freedom to only do what I want to do and never have any responsibilites.  I'd also like to be able to do things like knitting or quilting or something without having to learn and practice.  Why can't I do that, huh?  I'm not reading as much as I'd like, I'm not running...  It always feels like we don't have time.  Part of me wants to shake the schedule up completely and Just Do It.  Part of me feels like it would be irresponsible and selfish.  Part of me is too lazy.  Part of me is just plain fearful.  

I swear sometimes, even around my kids.  I never swore, ever, until I went to college.  I thought when I had kids that I would stop, that having little ears around would motivate me to change.  But...  not so much.  Last week I hit my shin on a bed frame and said (not loudly, mostly under my breath) "Damn it, that hurt!  Piece of sh*t..." (Oh my word, now that I've typed that out it looks so silly.)  My mom was in the room and chuckled.  I asked her, "What?  Did my kids swear around you?"  (Kind of embarrassed-- this is my mom, you know.) And she said, "No.  But they're gonna one of these days."  My kids haven't heard me use nasty launguage all that often, but probably often enough that I'm going to regret it.  Funny, right now if they hear me say, "Stupid piece of crap" (You see?  I clean it up a little around them-- crap rather than sh*t, that's better, isn't it?  No?) my kids gasp and say, "Mom!  Bad word, bad word!  We don't say 'stupid!'  That's unkind!"

I want a big huge house, preferably on several acres with lots of trees.  This is clearly crazy.  I'm very well aware that I and my family consume more than our fair share of the world's resources.  I don't want the expense or the work of having a bigger house, and I don't want to be deliberately wasteful, but I just want MORE SPACE.  

I have a chocolate stash hidden in the pantry.  Sometimes when my kids want a snack I insist that they eat something healthy, and while they're busy peeling their bananas I sneak a handful of M&Ms.

I read the Twilight series.  And I enjoyed it.

I Think He'll Be Fine...

 

Here are some pictures of what my kindergarten-repeating kiddo has been up to.  He made a sign for the back door to remind us to put on our shoes before we leave.  I wrote down the words he wanted randomly on a piece of paper and he put the words in order and wrote them on a card.

We're going on an quick overnight trip and Sparkle is determined to pack.  He would have packed up the entire house by now if I'd let him.  I had to make him take his underwear out of his backpack-- he had packed it all in preparation for this overnightadventure and didn't have enough to wear for the next few days.  Anyway...  He wrote a reminder here to "BriNG Boocs" and taped it to a book.  So cute.  I did not correct his spelling on "books."  You're supposed to let them just spell phonetically for quite a while, right?

 

And my favorite...  Here are some cards we have to practice putting letter sounds together.  The boys both love to just put random letters down and try to say the nonsense "word" they've created.  Again, I figure that's an appropriate and helpful activity, right?  A few times Beloved or I has used the letters to spell out a simple message for Sparkle to discover in the morning when he comes down for breakfast, like, "Sparkle my big boy" or "Dad loves you" or "Sparkle is a smart kid."  Easy to sound out, positive simple words.  The only thing I wish were different about this is that it would probably be better to be working with all lower case letters rather than upper case.  Oh well. 

My sweetie told me, "Don't look, Mom!  No peeking!  Are you looking?  Don't look!" and wrote me a message.  Well done, isn't it?  No spaces between words, maybe got sidetracked and changed his mind about spelling "you" and spelled "mom" with an "a."  But darn good work and completely adorable.

Yeah, I think he'll be just fine.

Kindergarten, Again

So, Sparkle's going to be a kindergartner again next year.  Yep, yep...  He'll be in a different classroom, same school.  He's actually excited about going to Apple Tree (the name of next year's classroom, this year he's in River), and said, "Mom thanks for letting me go to Apple Tree."

No problem, Baby...

Actually, it's taken me a while to blog about this because it was really bothering me.  It was hard for me to hear that my kid isn't mature enough, doesn't handle transitions well enough, isn't engaged in learning enough, not enough, not enough, not enough, etc.  I was very nervous before the conference (with one of the directors, his lead teacher and the lead kindergarten teacher--sheesh).  I was afraid I might cry as they were telling us how they see that he's not ready.  I didn't cry, thank the Lord, but I probably just looked really cranky.

Then, I actually did cry later.  I'm mostly over it now, so I can talk about it, but honestly I was so upset.  I caught myself with thoughts like, "I'm a failure.  I hate my life.  I can't do this.  I'm not good enough to be a parent.  My child is never going to succeed.  We're in for a lifetime of academic struggle.  I'm a failure, I'm a failure, I'm a failure."

A little over-dramatic, eh?

Once I heard what I was saying to myself in my head, I deliberately stopped myself and said, "No, that's not true" when those thoughts appeared.

I realize that repeating kindergarten does not even register on the list of potential life crises. 

Beloved repeated kindergarten... and later he finished a degree in chemistry in three years and a PhD in analytical radio-chemistry in four years, and is by any measure a successful and happy person.   

Education decisions are difficult.  It's important that kids learn to be confident, motivated, eager learners.  (And that's something different than intelligence and high test scores.)  But other than the general "make learning fun" there's no guaranteed way to be sure that happens.  We've made the best decisions we could, agonized over them, prayed over them, considered and reconsidered, and we've still thought back and wished we could get a "do-over" on some things. 

It seems like you have to make your best guess, and you won't know if you made a good choice until way, way later...

Right now I seem to be working on helping my kid to do the best he can, and at the same time letting go of any pressure I feel or any expectations I have of what will make him successful and happy.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that because it's been on my mind a lot lately.  I'm really mostly over being upset about it. 

Apple Tree, here we come!

Doberman

I came home over the lunch hour to let the dog out.  Poor Viper, it's a weird schedule this week and I knew he wouldn't make it if he didn't get to pee mid-day.  So he peed and we played tug of war for about 15 minutes. 

He's strong.  He growls with this game and dude, I know he's a sweetie, but I would not want to face an 85 pound Dobe who's mad at me.

We tried having him play tug of war with the kids a few days ago, and he won't do it.  The kids were a little disappointed, but I was actually pleased.  He is well-trained in the rule of Do Not Ever Take Anything Away From The Children.

--------

Right after I wrote this, I discovered the dumb dog chewing on a bottle of Hair Balm.  Not only do I not know how to get it out of the carpet, but that stuff cost me $12!

--------

Also, my children were at school today for almost 10 hours.  Mother of Year material, right here...

Pumpkin's Joke

 

Last week Pumpkin and I made banana bread together.  It's a super kid-friendly, easy banana bread.  No sifting, no nuts, one bowl... 

Pumpkin isn't as into cooking as Sparkle is.  Even though this recipe takes only about 10 minutes, tops, til it's ready for the oven, he was losing interest.  He probably wanted to go play football.  See the jersey?  Every day since Christmas... 

Anyway, he was in a hurry to finish.  I told him he could go ahead and put in the bananas.  He picked up the first banana, gave me a mischievous look, and dropped in the whole thing!

 

Oh so funny!  I said he should put in the bananas!

It was actually quite cute.  He was pretty proud of his joke!
 

I think Pumpkin tolerates cooking with me because there is usually some sort of treat to be had.  In this case, he wanted to lick off the banana bits and batter from the potato masher.

And after I put the banana bread into the oven, I turned around to see him sharing the "banana smasher" with the Dobie!