They each weigh over 40 pounds. And it is pure bone and muscle. They are built. They are heavy. Especially when you try to pick them both up at the same time. Long ago I gave up on carrying the two together. But he — my man, my hero, (I know girlfriends, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t brag, but he is The Man when it comes to dad duty and he is It when it comes to being Papi to twin 3-year-old Haitian-American-bundle-of-love-and-boundless-energy-boys), he can still carry two.
Over the past couple of days I have received this email from a few different people. Because Braydon and I both work full time, we can’t host a child right now. If you can think of anyone who might be able to do this, please pass this along.
Dear Friends,
We have just been given the best Christmas present ever. We have been granted free surgeries for Hydrocephalic children. This is a child who need brain surgery. I need to line up around 24 host families in the Philadelphia or Willimington Area. Host parents are families and/or churches who donate there time and love for a child who is coming to the US for life saving surgery. The child is a minor and can not be accompanied by a parent (according to our US laws).
Children will be in the US for 2 to 4 months. Host parents take them to all doctors visits, hospital stays, and care for them as if they were their own child. There are a thousand different questions I will try to go over some of them. Please feel free to contact me with any others I have not covered.
Does the child need their own bedroom? No a child can share a bedroom with other children. Do we have to be licensed? No but host parents fill out an application form and agree to a finger print, background check. What is the cost to us? We charge nothing but ask for day to day needs be met by the host family. (Clothing, food etc.) Plane tickets – We fund raise for each child needing a plane ticket. It cost between $2,000 to $6,000 per child depending on where in the US we need to fly the children. This covers the Medical Visa Cost in Haiti, plane tickets for the child and escort who will be bringing them to the US.
We love it when a church gets involved with just one child. The whole community gets together for a child. It is an awesome feeling to help a child who will for sure die without our help. Knowing you helped save a life. All of these children have loving parents in Haiti to return to. Imagine if you may being a parent and knowing you can not get the care for your baby. Your baby will die without surgery. Imagine how helpless of a feeling this is. The parents love their children so much that they bring them to us begging for help. They hand them over to us (and I cry sometimes more than they do) they cheer me up by saying “No cry God send you it will all be ok”. Taking the child back to that family whole and able to live life is the most amazing thing. We are blessed that God has chosen us to help these precious Haitian Children.
Please pass this email on to any church group, friend or family member who lives in this area. We need to line up homes ASAP as we just received the ok from the Hospital and Doctors involved. My contact information is below. May your Christmas be as blessed as ours.
In Christ Love and service, Vanessa
http://angelmission shaiti.blogspot. com www.AngelMissionsHaiti.org
Vanessa A. Carpenter 4071 Barley Drive Salem, VA 24153
1-800-409-7948 answering service / 540-380-4588 home / 540-580-9721 cell
I’ve been wondering if anyone would notice and sure enough my good friend from over at Mayhem and Magic (click here) did! She left a comment on my post from earlier today asking about the boys’ hair. Yes, indeed, they got their very first hair cuts! I trimmed their dreds. This was a long time coming, the decision had been weighing on me for months (literally!), and it was a big thing for me to finally determine to do it. The boys’ locs were getting very long, especially for 3-year-old-rough-and-tumble-boys who really couldn’t care less if grass/sand/mud/play dough/cookie dough/jelly/glue/glitter/gum/or slime of any variety gets smeared in their hair. Their locs were so long that we could put both of their hair into full ponytails. We were also letting them wear my headbands sometimes (which they liked, to keep their locs out of their faces). These looks (ponytails, headbands, etc.) were very hip and cool (the boys looked like some of my coolest students do), but not so appropriate for 3 year old boys in our neck of the woods. Their locs were getting very long, and very heavy. And, the real kicker was that Kyle’s hair was driving him absolutely batty. The locs in front were growing straight down, no matter what tactics I took to keep them twisted back. And they were hanging straight into his eyes. A bazillion times a day the poor kid was pushing his hair out of his eyes with his hands. It was distracting him from his playing, from his eating, from his craft projects, from everything. Just watching him go through this was killing me. Kyle’s annoyance at his locs-in-his-eyes slowly came to outweigh the idea of keeping the locs long because of my own emotional attachment to the idea/symbolism of it. That is what finally pushed me over the edge and made me make the decision to trim. It was an emotional decision for me. Their hair had never been cut. Never ever. I loved it so much that the tips of their locs were their baby hair; their hair from Haiti, from the orphanage. I loved it so much that the end portions of their locs were from when they first came home, the middle portions were their hair from when they were settling-in-with-us, the roots were now, etc., etc., etc. I loved the symbolism. I loved what it represented. And if they were girls and I could do up-do’s everyday, or boys who cared more about keeping junk out of their hair, or people who placed any value whatsoever on the length of their locs… well… then I suppose it would have been a different story. But this is Kyle and Owen we’re talking about. Finally I bit the bullet. And once I made the decision, that was it. I said, “O.k., boys, Mama is going to cut your hair!! Just a little, you’ll still have your dreadlocks, but I’m going to cut them shorter just a little bit!!” and they jumped right up into the chair I had set up in the kitchen. I made a huge production about how “ONLY MAMA CUTS THEIR HAIR! No one else! And definitely not each other– NO CUTTING YOUR OWN DREADLOCKS!!!!!!!!!” (still, the next morning I caught them right in the nick of time — both holding scissors in the playroom and about to “cut hair!”). Anyway, the momentous date was Friday, November 23; that was the date of the boys’ very first hair cuts. Braydon and I are sooooo glad we finally did it. Their hair looks awesome now and so healthy. And the boys are much, much happier with their hair now.
K & O love cooking lately. They get very excited about it. We’re cooking with them a lot now. Not every day, but almost. Here are some photos from the past few days.
[in first two, Owen is in blue; in last two, Kyle is in stripes]
Things You Probably Shouldn’t Let Your Kids DoK & O are in love with our cat Cooper right now. They are obsessed with chasing him around the house, carrying him around the house, trying to “lasso” him (note the long ropes that K & O call “lasso’s” on the floor in the photo above), giving him kitty treats, etc. Cooper plays along surprisingly well. But when he wants to get away, he gets away. One of his favorite safety spots is hiding in a basket high above the cabinets in the kitchen. When need be, he is known to jump way up high and escape from the boys… for safety… until today. We found Owen and Kyle standing on the counter, Kyle standing on his tippie toes and cheering and helping to push Owen upward, and Owen pulling himself up to eye-sight with Cooper in the basket. Poor cat.
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Our TreeWe put up our tree this morning while we were still all in our pajamas. We have no particular theme to our tree or system to our approach (other than the “glass balls go exclusively at the top and out of reach of 3-year-olds rule). Note the huge clump of about 20 ornaments hanging all together on the very bottom, far right, of the tree. Thanks to Kyle for that special Christmas Tree “look.” For whatever reason he simply could not help himself from placing every ornament he got his hands on in that one specific spot.
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Santa Hats in SnowWe woke up to a dusting of snow this morning. Perfect for our Christmas Tree Decorating Day. Amidst the ornaments we found these two Santa hats from last year. K & O love them and wore them the rest of the morning.
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Scooters in SnowLate in the morning the boys rode their scooters in the driveway despite the snow.
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Panara Hot ChocolateWe went to lunch at Panara. K & O love their broccoli cheddar soup and have each been eating the full adult sized portion since they were about 18 months old. They rip up their baguettes and stir the bread into their soup. During our lunch Owen noticed a woman at a nearby table with a huge mug full of something with a big dollop of whipped cream on top. He shouted over, “Excuse me?! Excuse me?!” The woman looked over at us. Pointing to her mug, Owen asked, “Excuse me, what do you have? What is that?” She said, “Hot Chocolate!” He said, “Ohhhh!!! Thanks!!!” Then: “Papi if I do a good job can I have that please?!” In the photo above he was about half-way through it. The boy was in heaven. At one point while slurping it up he said, “I’m the luckiest boy in the whole world! I really love hot chocolate!!!”
Click here for a post from this day of last year. We (really, I, but now, we) have a tradition of waiting until December 1 to start the Christmas Season. We do everything we can to completely ignore the early-onset of Christmas up until this day. But the first thing we do when we wake up on December 1 is get the Christmas CDs out and get the Christmas music blaring. After the Christmas music festival here at home we went to the boys’ school for a special school festival called the Spiral of Light. The youngest kids at the school each get to light a candle to symbolize the light within them shining bright even during the onset of the darkest days of the year. It was really beautiful and I had tears in my eyes watching Owen as the first child to walk the path of balsams with his candle, and then watching Kyle hand-in-hand with his best friend Will on the path. Afterward we went out to lunch and then visited Santa. Owen and Kyle have a whole new appreciation for Santa this year. Owen declared immediately that it was “a real Santa!” He was respectfully stand off-ish and wanted to watch closely, but from a little distance. Later he warmed up and sat on Santa’s lap for a bit. Kyle was quick to run right up to Santee Claus and ask a million questions of him. #1) “Where are your reindeer?” #2) “Do they eat grass?” #3) “Where is the North Pole?” #4) “How did you get here?” #5) “Where is your sleigh?” ETC., ETC., ETC. Finally when Santa could finally get a word in edgewise he asked Kyle what he wanted for Christmas. Kyle told him: “A real airplane.” Owen piped up and specified: “A toy that is just like a real airplane.” Santa nodded with approval. As the boys ran off they yelled at the top of their lungs “Bye Bye Santa! HO HO HO! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”
One of the CDs we listen to regularly in the car right now is 20 Great Kid Songs: Music For Little People’s 20th Anniversary Special Collector’s Edition (click here). Song #4 on the album is “This Land Is Your Land” by Woodie Guthrie. This CD’s version of the song is a really cool version by Willie Nelson and friends (lots of ‘friends’ including many verses sung in various musical/regional styles and some verses sung by children). Kyle loves this one track and requests to listen to it over and over and over and over. For the past couple of weeks I have noticed him listening to it intently in his carseat when I play it for him. His favorite part is a section where one of the verses is sung in Spanish. He waits in anticipation for the Spanish verse and will often say, “Mommy, where is the Spanish??!!” I’ll say, “Just listen, it’s coming.” And sometimes he’s say, “I’m so excited! I can’t wait!” Over the past few days he’s been starting to sing along for sections of the song. He enunciates the words very strongly, follows the tune almost perfectly, and sings many of the verses’ with confidence– especially the chorus where he really belts it out with precision: “This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land, from California, to the New York Island, from the Red Wood Forest, to the Gulf Stream Waters, This Land Was Made for You and Me.” This afternoon, on the drive home from their school, I noticed that Kyle was able to sing — word for word (including the verse in Spanish) — the entire song, almost perfectly.
This one comes from the “Things I Never Thought I’d Hear Myself Say” Category~~
“Owen! We do NOT put pretzels in our shoes! NO MORE pretzels in your shoes! O.k. Owen?”
–Heather
These past few days K & O have been in such good moods. As anyone who knows them well knows, they tend to be very happy and very animated most of the time. But sometimes we seem to go through little spurts where they’re even more happy and animated than usual. These past few days there has been very little fighting and picking-at-each-other, there have been lots of giggles and belly laughs, and even more hopping-skipping-dancing-jumping around than usual. They’re in a good place right now. Braydon and I enjoy these little spurts immensely, it makes it feel like everything is o.k. regardless of whatever else is going on in our lives. And Owen— man, he is eating up a storm. Being so sick last week he lost more than 3 pounds (a lot for a kid with zero percent body fat). This week he has eaten an incredible amount of food. Yesterday he ate 7 pieces of french toast for breakfast. Today he ate 5 pancakes (plus guzzling down cup after cup of milk of course, and a glass of OJ here and there too). Two nights this week he ate the same amount of dinner as me. One night we had made pizza with a thick crust – Owen and I each ate 2 slices. Another night we had fish, rice, green beans and fresh dinner rolls – Owen and I each ate the same serving portions of all of it (except that he ate 2 dinner rolls and I only ate 1). The boy can eat. Anytime. But this week he’s setting records— even for himself.
Early this past summer Kyle and Owen went through a phase of being hyper-interested in their own adoptions and in concepts related to ‘where babies come from’ (click here for just one example of blog posts from that period of time). Over about a 3 week period they were like little sponges, thirsty for information. We gave them as many of the age-appropriate details we possibly could. However, during that time, despite our best efforts, they consistently insisted that they had come from “a nest” or from “an egg” (as in a bird’s egg), or… their favorite: that they had come from “Haiti” (as in they were “born from Haiti” – with no acknowledgement of there having been any human beings involved). It seemed very, very hard for them to grasp, at that point, the concepts that we were trying to convince them of: that they “had grown in a lady’s belly” and that they were “born from that lady” and that “she wanted us to have them” and that “then they were adopted and we became our family.” Whenever they’d initiate it, we worked this from every angle, in the most straight-forward and simplistic ways. We followed the advice of all of the adoption literature. We followed the advice of other adoptive parents. We followed the advice of child development books. Still, they more-or-less ignored our information and plowed ahead with their own explanations. This is one of the interesting things that I’ve found about raising twins; regardless of what they hear/see/experience via Braydon and I (or any other person for that matter), they still have the mighty power of twinship… so, for example, if the three of us (K, O, and me) were talking about how they were born and I was insisting that they were born from a lady’s belly, but they were insisting they were born from a nest, then ultimately it is 2 against 1, and it is twin-super-powers vs. wacky-old-mom and… to state the obvious (obvious for the twins at least): they win out. No matter how much their logic or rational (or behavior, as the case may be) is flawed, it is, ultimately, the two of them vs. the rest of the world. And, in our experience with our twins (who have a bond stronger than titanium), the two of them stick together through thick and thin. So when their explanations for babies’ births come up super thin, those frail and flawed explanations still overpower the logic-of-another. Any other. In June, after going around and around with them about this baby-born-thing, I figured they weren’t ready yet — just simply weren’t ready for the information. When they put it to rest, I happily let them. And waited for it to rise to the surface again. Recently, their interest has blossomed and we’re in the thick of it once more. And now, just 5 short months later, they seem much more able to grasp some of the basics. Over the past couple of weeks they are suddenly deep-in-thought about it again. It comes up repeatedly, at any and all times. But this time around there has been no mention of being born from a nest or an egg or from Haiti. They currently seem to fully grasp that Haiti is a place (that you can be born in, but that you can’t be literally born from), they understand that all human babies are born from human women, and… drumroll please… they ‘get it’ that they themselves “grew in a lady’s belly.” They can talk about how “the lady squeezed and squeezed” (Kyle needs to add that “she squeezed gently because she didn’t want to hurt him”), and how then they “came into the world!” They also seem to understand that they then lived in the orphanage “until they were EIGHT MONTHS OLD!!!” and that then we came on a “big airplane!” to get them. They can tell the story of how we “held them!” and “fed them bottles!” and they know that we loved them so much right from the start. They also know that for our first days we stayed together “in the hotel in Haiti” (and if you leave this part out, making it seem like we went straight home from the orphanage, they will correct you), and that then we “took them on a big airplane” to “bring them home.” Although I’ve begun to introduce the word “birthmother” to them, they have yet to take that on. They ignore it, and continue to call their birthmother “a lady” (with a strong, positive, upbeat tone), and for now it seems that they are not ready to go further than that. Which is o.k. With their newfound knowledge (or, I should say, their newfound acceptance of this knowledge), and their comprehension of the idea that they grew and were born from a lady’s belly, K & O are now expressing what could only be expected: deep and profound sadness that they did not grow in my belly and were not born from me. They have told me numerous times “but I want to be born from your belly Mama.” And it gets me each and every time. We hug and I tell them, “I know, know, and I wish you were born from my belly too, my baby,” and I try to remind them of how much they were loved from before they were even born. They are particularly fascinated with the idea that they were both in “the lady’s belly together.” And, importantly, this seems to give them — Kyle in particular — great solace to know this. This tiny piece of information seems to mean the world to him right now. Which makes perfect sense. Three days ago the boys were playing with their dolls and I walked into the playroom. As Owen watched, Kyle walked straight to me, took his doll and carefully pushed it up under my shirt until it was tucked fully inside. He looked up at me and told me his baby was growing in my belly. I then slipped the baby out of my shirt and Kyle announced that the baby doll “came into the world!” Kyle held his arms out to me and said, “Now you give me my baby Mama.” I handed him the baby, “and it was an adoption!” The next day during their rest hour I peeked into Owen’s room to check on him. I saw him playing with a different small soft doll. He was pushing it up under his own shirt. He noticed me in the doorway and announced to me, “Mama, I am a lady!” I said, “Oh!” He then told me that his baby was “growing and growing, bigger and bigger” in his belly and that “soon it would be born!” He walked in front of his mirror to admire himself with his doll tucked fully under his shirt. Then he let the baby drop out and announced that it “came into the world!” He then handed me his baby and told me to “hold it gently.”
- “I’m just a wreck!” -Owen, discombobulated, trying to get on his boots/coat/scarf/hat/mittens.
- “Mommy, we are so mad at you! Mommy, we will TAKE OFF! Mommy, we will run away from you SO FAST!” -Kyle, speaking on behalf of both brothers, shouting out at me from the laundry room where they were reluctantly getting their shoes on after I told them, firmly, that they could not go outside without shoes.
- “You’re killing me!” -Owen, laughing hysterically at Braydon’s antics.
- “It is a sunset. The sun is going down, down, down. The sun is landing!!! Wait a minute, where is the runway???” -Kyle, watching the sunset.
- “But I am a person! I am not a kid! I am not a child! I am not a baby! I am a PERSON!!!” -Owen, when I wouldn’t buy him a Ghirardelli chocolate in the check-out line at a store.
- “If I grow up, then I will be a grown up. I slept so well. See? I growed up from sleeping so well. Now, feel my muscle!” -Kyle
- “I’m not angry at you Mommy, I’m just mad at you.” -Owen
- “If I throwed up, then can I get some soda???” -Kyle
- “I’m so great! Right?” -Owen
- “But we are growing up. We are getting to be grown-ups.” -Kyle, holding back from petting a random lady’s dog because she told him that her dog ‘really likes kids.’
We’ve known this about him for a long time — basically, since the first few days we spent with him: our son has a seriously positive attitude. This boy is ever the optimist. Without a doubt this is true about Kyle too, but Owen is this way to an extreme. And because I’ve been thinking so much about Owen’s incredibly positive attitude these past few days, I want to focus here on just him. The first moments we spent with Owen it was clear– He left that orphanage with an intense look in his eyes, a smile on his face, in his Papi’s arms, and never looked back. At eight months old, with two perfect strangers and his twin brother, leaving everything they’d ever known, Owen never hesitated, not even for a second. He was bright-eyed and ready to see the world. He was thrilled with everything we introduced to him. A brand new formula? Awesome! Pureed green beans? Cool! Being carried, hot and sweaty, in a front-pack baby carrier for 8 hour stretches at a time in Port au Prince? Let’s go! No problemo. His first morning home he babbled and screeched with joy like there was no tomorrow. Owen never fussed over a wet or dirty diaper. I don’t think he ever cried once from falling down when trying to learn to walk; he’d bounce right back up and try it again. To this day he rarely even bats an eye when he falls/slams/smashes/scrapes down; he always jumps right back up, laughs it off (quite literally), brushes himself off (quite literally), and goes for it (whatever it is) again in a heartbeat. More than once I’ve discovered trails of blood droplets through the house and had that be my very first clue that Owen was hurt. “My God!!!” I’ve screamed, when I’ve followed the blood-drop-paths to find Owen with his bloody cuts. “WHAT happened Owen???” His typical response: “It is just a little itty bitty blood Mommy, I’m O.K.!!! Don’t worry!” I’m not kidding. The boy is amazing. Every day is a “BEAUTIFUL day!!!” for him — rain, snow, sleet, or hail. Every field is a “PRETTY field!!” Every person is “Soooo NICE!” Everything is so good. This recent bought of sickness has brought with it, for me, a new-found sense of awe at Owen’s incredibly positive attitude. Despite a long stint of barf and diarrhea (almost 5 full days straight), he was unbelievably upbeat the entire time. He’d puke a ton, then look up at us and announce cheerily, “I just throwed up a little itty bit!” He’d be sitting on the toilet for the 100th time that day and shout out to us cheerily, “I’m o.k.! I’m just having a little bit of di-rea, but I’m O.K., and my belly is JUST RIGHT!” He’d be lying on the couch in misery, but when asked which video he’d like to watch next (in a long, long string of the same old boring videos) he’d say cheerily, “I know! How about Diego!?! That would be a good idea!! Diego!!” Really, the whole thing is mind-boggling. Yes, Braydon and I tend to be the-glass-is-half-full-kinds-of-people. Surely that is part of it. But Owen takes it about 1,000 miles further. Owen is a glass-is-overflowingly-full-kind-of-person… even when the glass appears to everyone else to be quite empty… and Owen is this way to an extreme which I’ve honestly never previously witnessed. Owen is, if nothing else, a child with a seriously positive attitude.
Real quick post to give the link to a longer post about K & O’s dreadlocks. We’ve received a few comments/emails lately asking for info on the boys’ locs. If you’re interested in knowing more about that, check out this post from March, 2007 — CLICK HERE. If you have questions leave them here in the comments and I’ll try to respond. Remember, though… we are *not* black hair experts!!! ;0 We’re just two white parents trying to do our very best with our sons’ hair.
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