- “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.
What a long strange trip it’s been.
Monday night at around 5:30 Owen started saying he felt “sick in his belly.” At 6:00 he had one of the biggest, nastiest vomit attacks I’ve ever witnessed. Let’s just put it this way: Our boy does nothing in moderation… and at age 3 it is impossible for him to aim while puking (it just goes everywhere).
And that was the beginning of the end.
It was the end of our Thanksgiving Week plans, the end of our Thanksgiving Week house-guests (MorMor, MorFar, Stina, Tim, and Sadie), the end of our Thanksgiving Dinner (which 17 people were planning to join in), the end of our Thanksgiving Week festivities, the end of the Thanksgiving that we had spent the past few weeks planning and prepping and preparing for.
It was the beginning of a four-day marathon puke and diarrhea fest for Owen, the beginning of a four-day laundry and Clorox and Febreez fest for Braydon, the beginning of a four-day sad-lonely-without-twin-playmate-and-jealous-of-the-sick-twin-getting-all-the-attention fest for Kyle, the beginning of a four-day long-strange-trip for the Mama.
Tuesday morning we were hanging in there, hoping it was a 24-hour flu bug.
Wednesday morning we were hanging in there, hoping it was a 48-hour flu bug.
By Wednesday night all of our Thanksgiving plans were cancelled, our plans were dashed, and we were just hoping it would end soon. And we were buckling down for the long haul.
It was quite the Thanksgiving.
It was quite the day-after-Thanksgiving.
And here we are, Saturday morning, seemingly out of the woods. We’ve been throw-up and diarrhea free for about 16 hours now. We’re thinking the coast is clear. The fog feels like it is lifting– at least a bit. Although we are left in a gross kind of haze, feeling dazed and confused and stir-crazy and cottage-feverish.
Which, we fully acknowledge, is much better than feeling flu-feverish.
We are left feeling truly thankful for so many things. But what are we most thankful for this Thanksgiving 2007? We are most thankful that only one of the four of us got it. So far.
Knock on wood.
Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your Turkey Day left-overs for us! Over here, we’ve got plenty of leftover Saltines and Pedialyte (that we’re hopeful we won’t have to use on bambino #2)! ;0Sunday morning Kyle and Owen were delighted to wake up to see snowflakes falling outside their windows. Our first snow of the season! Granted, it was just the lightest of a snow dusting, but it was snow nonetheless. And it was beautiful outside. The silence and peacefulness of a real snowstorm, but with the slightest, daintiest of snowflakes falling gently from the sky. Outside, in their pajamas and boots, it was magical for the boys. (the top three photos are of Kyle; the bottom three are of Owen).
Saturday we went to Jonah’s 4th Birthday Party. K & O love birthday parties. Many of their friends from school were there, and the boys had a blast– of course. But this party was actually super fun for everyone — it might have been the best kid-party I’ve ever been to. No joke. It was at a really nice Japanese Hibachi Restaurant. At first, when we got the invitation, I thought ‘oh my gosh, a restaurant party -like, at a nice restaurant- for 3 & 4 year olds?! It will be mayhem!!!!!’ But the kids were mesmorized by the exciting live hibachi cooking (including lots of fire!) and the result was that I’ve never seen so many little kids behave so well in a restaurant– ever! A highlight for K & O was that we got to sit at a table with their three best friends from school. Kyle sat right next to his very best friend (click here for backstory), and the two of them were so cute together laughing and playing and trying to use their chopsticks. Kyle kept saying “Will, you see that?! You see that Will?!” (when the Hibachi Chef would do something dramatic), and “Will, you like the chicken?! I love the chicken Will!! You like the noodles Will?! I love the noodles Will!!” Turned out to be a really great time (and the really great food was just the icing on the cake— so to speak)! Kyle did announce later, however, that for as much as he loved Jonah’s party, he still wants to have his birthday party in our backyard.
(click here & click here)
~and~
Today is National Adoption Day!
Some of you may be surprised to hear this, but we get quite a lot of anti-adoption ‘stuff’ thrown at us via this blog. Pretty regularly we get anonymous comments (funny how the horribly hurtful comments are always anonymous, huh?) from anti-adoption folks (before starting this blog, I didn’t even know there were such people– let alone so many of them out there). They say some nasty, nasty stuff. I refuse to even acknowledge it by repeating any of it here. I always just delete their comments before anyone ever sees them. But it is sad, really. Adoptive families — in all sorts of subtle and overt ways — get lots and lots of yucky stuff directed their way. And as with most things in life… we tend to hear a lot more negative than positive. Rarely do people take the time to send the nice messages (subtle and overt) — so much more often it is the mean junk that gets sent and received (subtly and overtly). National Adoption Month and National Adoption Day are meant to be times to celebrate adoption and all the good that adoption so often is (and can be). Adoption is something that Braydon and I feel really strongly about, obviously! If you are reading this, and you’ve been considering adoption, please do not hesitate to come to us and chat. We’re huge advocates but not ‘pushers.’ Leave a comment here with your email address and we’ll be happy to be in touch (if you’d like, just note “private” in the comment and we will not publish it on the blog). We celebrate and support adoption. If you’ve thought about adoption… think about acting on it.
7:40 a.m. — We catch Owen in a quiet moment. These moments aren’t exactly rare, but they are not exactly commonplace either.
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2:30 p.m. — Home from school, after lots of playing outside on a cold November day (it is finally starting to feel like fall around here), the boys and I (heather) make hot chocolate.
Just like Braydon says in the post below, K & O have been talking a lot about when they were babies, and talking a lot about when they grow up— or, in their own words, when they will be “a Big K” and “a Big O.” Right now we seem to be in a stage of them feeling compelled, to assert their independence. They like to do everything themselves, with “NO HELP!” They like to do “growned-up” things, like “REAL cooking! NOT pretend cooking!!!” They like to try to do things on their own (for example, yesterday morning they tried to get themselves their own milk in the morning — bad idea — but got somehow sidetracked and began taking every single item out of the refrigerator and placing them in random places around the house – a bottle of ketchup here, a jug of juice there… you get the picture… by the time Braydon and I came downstairs and realized what was happening half of the fridge had been dispersed all over the house). Anyway, the thing is, I think especially with twins– this sort of independence is such a relief. Twins are really hard to care for– just even physically/logistically speaking — when they are babies. Any parent of twins knows what I’m talking about. Just the simple task of lugging them both to-and-from the car, for example, is a major task. I think back on the days that I was mixing up huge pitchers of formula to make bottles by the dozen every morning and strategizing how to hold two bottles and two babies at once… I think back on the days of diaper-after-diaper-after-diaper (ask any parent of multiples and they’ll tell you the war stories– of course, just as you get one cleaned up and re-diapered, you have to start in on the next one, and this can just go on and on and on all day and all night)… I think back on the days when both of them would be throwing food all over the place, with bits of baby food smeared everywhere, and no matter how often we’d ignore it or scold them for it, there would be zero impact since both of them would be laughing like crazy at each other and getting the biggest reaction possible out of each other… I think back on all of these sorts of things and I feel so grateful that we’ve got these two guys in a whole new phase now. Now, rather than having food fights and apple-sauce-smearing contests at the dinner table… Braydon and I are looking across the table at each other and laughing at: #1) how much the boys eat, and #2) the fact that we literally [and I do mean, LITERALLY]cannot get a word in edge-wise during dinner these days. They boys dominate [and I do mean, DOMINATE] the dinner conversation. Kyle and Owen are a handful, for sure. Have always been, and I suspect they’ll always be. But man, life is so much easier now than it was then. But still, still, still, still, still, still…. oh how I miss the baby boys that they were. I thought it then, and I stick to it now (I know, I know, every mother feels this way — just indulge me here…) I swear, Kyle and Owen were the cutest babies in the whole wide world. This isn’t to say they aren’t adorable now. They sure as heck are. But my oh my were they ever the cutest little things back then. Apple-sauce-smeared and all.
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