Mayhem and Magic

Okay Then

1.  A short but carefully crafted message was sent to foster mom via facebook.  She friended me!  Hooray!  She sent a little note back saying that Sparkle is as cute as ever and she would send him an email later that day.  She didn't, but that's okay.  Well, obviously I'd love it if she did, but I'll take what I can get at this point.  She has not completely disappeared from the planet, so that's awesome!  It looks like she mostly plays facebook games with her account, not much personal information there.

2.  Yet another potluck lunch is happening at work next week.  Those who have not signed up got an email today.  Apparently I need to commit to a particular dish ahead of time, which...  argh!  Maybe I can just get some chicken from the deli across the street. 

What do you bring to potlucks?  This has to be a lunch entree or salad, and I have to be able to put it in the fridge at work in the morning.  Microwave is the only reheating option.  Actually a few people have brought things in crockpots in the past, so that might work. 

3.  Pumpkin has a new sister.  She's almost six months old now.  I meant to blog about it, because having siblings in another family is a big deal for adopted kids.  You might recall that the birth of Pumpkin's first sister threw me for a loop a few years ago.  This time...  much less loop. 

It still feels like a big deal though.  I'd like to talk about it more, but it seems a little overwhelming.  I want to be sensitive to privacy issues and adoption triad communication issues...  It's a big subject and I want to say what I'm thinking about it clearly.  But, dude, she's almost six months old.  I'm apparently not going to find the time to write anything that I have to think about too much.  It feels a little like I'm hiding something, though, if I don't talk about this part of open adoption.  So I'm just mention it here, all casually and in passing-- there, did you see it?  

Holy...

I found Sparkle's foster mom on Facebook... 

I want to email her right now but...  I know the adoption agency told us that South Africa does not allow contact between us and Sparkle's first mom until Sparkle is eighteen.  But I'm trying to remember if that applied to his foster family as well?

And I had mostly given up on finding anyone who knew Sparkle in South Africa.  Now that there's this bit of hope I'm scared I'll do something wrong and she'll disappear. 

Just today we talked to Pumpkin's first mom on the phone.  It's his sister's birthday and she had a Tinkerbell party.  While Pumpkin was talking to them I gave Sparkle a hug and kiss and said, "You know what I wish?  I wish we could call your brothers on their birthdays."  He just said, "Yeah..."  He was busy listening to what Pumpkin was saying to his sister.  (She turned two today, so it's not much of a conversation but they both enjoy it.)

I know it's hard for Sparkle not to know his first family, especially because Pumpkin does have that opportunity.  It would be so cool for him to have even the tiniest connection to someone who cared for him before we met him.

Oh God...  (Seriously, this is a "help me, help me, help me" prayer.)

Thinking About Adoption Again

When we went to South Africa we knew we would visit the adoption agency and a baby house.  We hoped we might see the social workers who knew Sparkle and his first mom, we hoped we might see his foster mom, and we even hoped that we'd be able to somehow connect with Sparkle's first mom.  I tried not to have too many expections, tried to just be open to anything. 

(Here is a post about meeting Sparkle's first mom the first time we were in South Africa.) 

Well, I must have had some expectations because I found myself disappointed.  Now, I am not complaining...  People helped us as much as they could and we are very, very blessed to have the information and background that we do. 

I guess I had an expection that we would learn something more...  But we really didn't. 

When we met Sparkle, Beloved and I were all about the baby and becoming parents.  I knew that we should get as much information as possible, meet everyone we could, see as many places connected to Sparkle's history as possible.  But really, all of that took a backseat to the energy and headspace of becoming parents.  (Wow, what a rush!  Honestly, my energy and motivation has never been so focused as it was during the first few weeks of becoming a mom.) 

Once we came home, we realized over the course of time that we wished we'd gotten more information. 

Here's just one example of things we wish we'd clarified:

Sparkle's mother made an adoption plan before he was born, yet Sparkle stayed in the hospital for six weeks before coming into a Place of Safety (what South Africa calls foster homes or baby houses).  Why, why, why?  Was he sick?  Was there a paperwork problem?  Was his mom reconsidering her options?  There is no documentation of what was going on with him during that time.  We know that his mom had a C-section (we don't know why) but Sparkle's APGARs were 9 and 10, he was declared healthy... and then six weeks later he went from the hospital to a baby house. 

It honestly didn't really occur to me at the time to question at all.  And we did have opportunity to figure this out.  We talked to his first mom, his social worker, and his foster mom.  We never asked...  I guess I was just thrilled that he was healthy and mine, and at the time it didn't seem that important.

Maybe I thought I could ask later.  Well, five years later all the potential sources for that information are gone.  We don't have current contact information for his first mom, her social worker doesn't work for the agency any longer, and his foster mom stopped fostering shortly after he was adopted. 

There are actually a number of other things that I wish we had asked about, but I don't think I'll share them here for privacy reasons. 

My point is...  We should have asked.  Any silly thing that came to our minds, any time we spent with anyone, we should have asked.  Once the opportunity passed, that information just evaporated.

I feel guilty that I didn't get everything I could for Sparkle.  And then I feel guilty for wanting even more information when we have so much more than many adoptive families. 

But when it's your kid, anything less than everything seems like not enough. 

Maybe I could make up for not being there when he was in the hospital for six weeks if I could at least explain to him why it happened. 

Social Worker E-mail

I just received the direct email address for the social worker who managed Sparkle's file in South Africa.  I think she may actually be the person who wrote his referral. 

We've been trying for a while to connect with someone in the adoption agency who might be able to help us contact Sparkle's first mom.

Suddenly I've got this lady's email address and I'm all tongue tied.  I want to say just the right thing, make our pitch perfectly, so that she'll read it and think, "Well, of course I'll help them!"

Should I be really direct and tell her now exactly what we're hoping for?  Should I just try to secure a generic assurance that she'll help?

I'll definitely send her a picture of Sparkle at his most charming, with his brilliant smile and shining eyes.  Surely that will soften her heart toward us right from the start!

The Boys

Do you know what this blog desperately needs right now?  A Cute Infusion!

We bought this outfit for Sparkle when we were in South Africa.  This spring he's finally grown into it!  When I bought it, I could just barely imagine having a five year old.  He was just over five months old at the time!  The Blue Bulls are a South African rugby team from Pretoria.  We don't follow them closely, but apparently they've had a rough few years, though things are looking up.

Sparkle is one tough dude.

Pumpkin is inspecting and smelling all the flowers in the park.

Here are the brothers, running off to find adventure!

And... running back again!

Ah, yes, brotherhood...

Wait, that's a tackle, not a hug...

That's brotherhood for sure!

Preschool Presentation Follow-Up

Beloved and I talked about South Africa with Sparkle's class on Friday.  We think it went well.  The kids were especially interested in the idea that when it's daytime here, it's night in South Africa.  When it's spring here, it's fall there.  Fascinating stuff.  We looked at pictures of Ndebele homes.  We brought our South African flag, and Sparkle got to show it to his class.  We brought some South African utensils and art that the kids could touch and handle.  We looked at maps, and pictures of South African animals. 

We talked about a few of the people groups in South Africa as well.  I was not sure how to handle this, but here's what I ended up saying (pretty much):  "The Xhosa people in South Africa are very smart.  Nelson Mandela is a famous Xhosa man.  (showed a big picture of Nelson Mandela)  He was president of South Africa, and he is important because he helped teach people how to live together peacefully.  The Zulu people in South Africa and very strong and brave (picture of Zulu warriors, looking buff, but not manacing)  Can you see their strong muscles?  The Ndebele people in South Africa are very artistic and creative.  (picture of Ndebele women dressed in embroidered clothing, let them hold an Ndebele doll)  These women sewed their own beautiful clothes and painted their beautiful houses.  Children in South Africa are a lot like children who live here.  They love their families and they play with their friends. (pictures of kids)  They like to be able to go to school, just like you.  Most school children wear uniforms to school. (picture of school kids in uniforms)."  (Many pauses throughout for exclaimations and questions from the kids.)

Anyway, you get the drift...  I hesitated a little about grouping all Xhosa or Zulu or Ndebele people under a particular characteristic, but I specifically wanted them to see pictures of Black people and associate the words, ideas and pictures together: Black person<-->smart, Black person<-->strong and brave, Black person<-->creative, Black man<-->president.  Black kids<-->like me, but with a school uniform!

(Oooo, Black president!  Maybe, maybe they'll get to watch that happen right here in the U.S!)

At the end, the kids all had some rooibos tea and biltong, and we talked about them being made in South Africa.  I was surprised by how many kids actually drank quite a bit of tea.  It's good, but it's just a red herbal tea, and I didn't expect preschoolers to like it.  The "biltong" was actually beef jerky strips from the grocery store, so we totally cheated on that, but it's hard to get real South African biltong around here on short notice.

Sparkle enjoyed having us there, and being the cool kid whose parents came to the classroom. 

(Hey, we're still cool!  We're going to enjoy it while it lasts!)

Ack! Preschool Presentation Suggestions, Please!

After spending about three months studying "Asia," Sparkle's preschool class is now working on their study of "Africa."  Beloved and I volunteered to help if the teachers needed any thing, and now we are scheduled to do a little "presentation" about South Africa in a few weeks.

So here's where I need help...  How should we do this?  The kids are between four to seven years old.  We have about twenty-five to thirty minutes.

We have music we can play.  We have some picture books, maps, and a flag.  We have some bowls and utensils that we use in the kitchen, as well as some carvings of animals that the kids could touch and handle.  (We wouldn't want to bring any larger art, or anything we would be too sad to lose.)  We would like to include some kind of South African food (trying to incorporate the sense of taste, I guess), but all we have on hand is Rooibos tea.

We'd also like to include Sparkle, and let him be the expert on South Africa in some way, without a lot of pressure or focus on adoption.  And we want the kids to all be able to participate somehow, or at least hold their attention. 

I don't know if we should talk at all about social issues in South Africa, or just try to leave an impression of South Africa as an interesting and exciting place, where the kids are a lot like kids in the U.S.

Neither Beloved nor I have experience teaching preschoolers, but we would love for this to go well.  Have any of you done anything similar in your child's classroom?  Ideas?  (Help!)    

A New Book

(First of all, Beloved is home!  Whew!  The boys were pretty much glued to his side all day on Saturday.  One good thing about Beloved being gone is watching the boy's excitement and adoration when he returns.)

We got a great new book!  It's called "My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken, and Me" by Maya Angelo.  I saw it mentioned by cloudscome, and ordered it right away.  It's written in the first person from the perspective of an Ndebele South African girl!  How cool is that?

(For any new readers, my older son Sparkle was adopted from South Africa in 2003.  You can read our South Africa travel journals beginning with this link.) 

I (still) don't know a lot about the various people groups in South Africa.  The Xhosa are known for the famous "clicking" in their language and of course Nelson Mandela is Xhosa.  The Zulu were warriors and their clothing is pretty distinctive.  The Ndebele create colorful clothing and beadwork, and paint wonderful designs on their homes.

Sparkle's first father is Ndebele, and it's nice for us that Sparkle can easily identify Ndebele art and clothing.  As a toddler, it's just a really basic physical reference or distinction that he notices and feels proud of. 

Sometimes I'm a little jealous of adoptive families who have the ready-made support groups in place when they bring their child home from China or Korea or Ethiopia.  There are state-wide and even nation-wide groups designed to help families connect with one another and learn about the country of their child's birth.

I feel a badly for Sparkle at times because there just isn't any South African community here (or anywhere in the US of which I am aware).  And there isn't a South African adoptive family community either.  Anything we learn about South Africa at this point is from a book or music or internet source.  We have absolutely no South African adults in our lives.

Often I think that finding his place in the African American community is most important for Sparkle.  This is definitely where we focus our transracial adoptive parenting energy.  Unless he decides to live in South Africa at some point, it might not make a huge difference if he knows South African culture very well.

But then, this boy is always surprising me.  He decides what he thinks is important, and often it's not what I expect.  So I wish connections to South African people and culture were easier to find for him and for us.

All that to say...  It was exciting to find a children's book, full of pictures, specifically about a group of people from whom Sparkle can directly trace his first family.  And reading the book reminded me how little of that type of resource we have.

Thanks, cloudscome!

A Different Subject Before Part 2

Before we even met Sparkle, we planned to travel to South Africa when he was four, again when he was ten or so, and again when he was a teenager.  Making that committment to ourselves and to Sparkle ahead of time has been important to us.  We have been saving a bit each month in our "South Africa Travel Fund" since he was a baby.  If we didn't plan and deliberately save for the trip(s), we were afraid we would put it off and it may not happen at all. 

We want the first trip to be just a really fun vacation for a kid.  No big cultural tours, no expectation that he will soak up South African traditions, no pressure to learn Tswana or anything. 

We want the trip just to leave him with a positive impression that South Africa is fun, and that it's special and cool that he was born there and his first family lives there.  Maybe we'd like him (and Pumpkin, too, of course) to learn some things like which animals live in various parts of South Africa, which ocean is nearest, and maybe be able to recognize Ndebele art.  Easy, fun kid stuff.

The only other important goal we have for the trip is to meet Sparkle's first mom again.  We don't have any contact with her now, but I think we could probably find her if we tried.  We are a little worried that the longer we wait, the harder it will be to find her.  We also would like Sparkle to see her again when he's little enough not to be too nervous or uncomfortable.

We were planning to go next spring, when Sparkle turns four.  But our plans changed after our trip to Minnesota last summer.  We were only gone for about ten days, and the time change was only two hours.  But the time change was hard, the unfamiliar environment was hard, napping was hard, and the odd schedule was hard.  By the end of the vacation, it was clearly time to go home.  Sparkle is usually a very busy, but generally well-behaved kid.  However, by the end of the trip he was melting down in tantrums several times a day, anxious, and cranky all the time.  This boy loves his routine.  He loves excitement, too, but without a predictable schedule he really struggles after a while.

After considering for several months, we decided to postpone our visit to South Africa for six to twelve months to allow Sparkle to mature a bit. 

So, anyway...

Last week we got a letter from Pumpkin's first mom, R.  We talked about it, of course, and I told the boys, "R says to tell you that she loves you, Pumpkin.  And Sparkle, she says she wants you to look after your little brother."

After we talked a while, Sparkle asked, "What did Auntie Karen say to me?" (Auntie Karen is the lady who was his foster mom at the baby house.) 

We have never had any letters from Auntie Karen or L.

When I told Sparkle, "Honey, this letter is from R.  She's Pumpkin's first mom, and she lives in BigCity.  Auntie Karen lives in South Africa, and this letter isn't from her," his little face was so disappointed. 

Sparkle knows that R is special to our family, and especially to Pumpkin.  He's old enough to be a little jealous that Pumpkin gets letters from R, but he doesn't get letters from L or Auntie Karen.

We have one mostly open adoption, and one mostly closed adoption.  I expected that this might be hard for one or both boys at different times.  I have not tried to make it seem "fair," because it's not fair.  Their first families are just different and their relationships with the boys are just going to be different, and that's really okay.

And I am getting to my point...  (Thanks for hanging in there...)

Sparkle seems to be more consciously desiring to know his first family better lately. 

So should we take him to South Africa when he's four to hopefully satisfy this desire somewhat, even though we are not sure he can handle the travel itself?  Should we put off the trip until he's a bit more mature, but make him wait for more concrete answers to questions he's starting to have?

I'm certainly open to advice here...  Have you traveled a long way with a younger child?  Have you met first parents or anyone else important to a child's pre-adoption life?  If you are an adoptive family, do you have plans to travel with your child to his/her place of birth?

Love Thursday: Remembering Referral Day

It's Love Thursday!

Today is the third anniversary of the day we received Sparkle's referral. 

We had been waiting for about four months after our profile was sent to South Africa.  The whole time we had been praying urgently for our baby and his/her mother-- that his mom would get enough folic acid, that she would know where to go to find safety or help when she needed them, that she would not be afraid to attach to the baby and that he would feel welcome and loved while waiting to be born, that she would have a safe delivery, and a million other things...

Two days before we had gotten a strange voice mail from our adoption agency.  Our referral was not quite ready to be sent, but we had a tentative court date in South Africa on October 1, so maybe think about buying plane tickets because they are so much cheaper if you buy them at least two weeks before you fly, but maybe wait for your referral... 

We video-taped the machine playing that message.  Oh my gosh, the suspense was killer.

At work two days later, I got a phone call from our adoption agency.

"You have a little boy!  He's five months old!"

Joy!!!

Hooray!  Oh my gosh, I have to see him!  I HAVE TO SEE MY BABY BOY!! Call Beloved!  Hurry home!  Don't you dare open the email before I get there!  Hurry!

We looked at his pictures first, of course.  I have never seen a more beautiful baby in my whole life, truly.  We read the referral out load, and I memorized all five pages of information about him.

We called my mom.  (We videotaped this, too.)  She was crying on the phone before she even saw his picture.  Then both of us were laughing and crying and exclaiming over this beautiful little baby boy.

Both Beloved and I had to go back to work then, but not before I printed out about ten copies of one of his pictures.

After all my sweet co-workers admired him, I tacked one copy of his picture above my desk beside this verse which was my comfort and prayer while we waited for this happy referral:

                 "But these things I plan won't happen right away. 

Slowly, steadily, surely, the time approaches when the vision will be fulfilled. 

            If it seems slow, be patient!  For it will surely take place. 

                              It will not be late by a single day."

(Habakkuk 2:3 from the New Living Translation)