We’re going to take a little blogging break. We’ll be back in action early next week.
Catch ya later y’all!
H, B, K, O
This morning on a whim Braydon put Owen on our new digital scale. He weighs 40.4 pounds. Then he put Kyle on the scale. He weighs 40.4 pounds. I know they are twins and all, but the exact same weight??? It just seems remarkable.
For an explanation of why we still allow Owen to use a pacifier, click here
Owen continues to be completely 100% unselfconscious of being 3+ years old and still using a pacifier. At this point he has only 2 left (all others have gotten lost, broken, or just disappeared over time). The 2 he has left are very old and don’t even work very well anymore, but as much as we’re willing to let this paci thing continue we aren’t going to actively support the habit by actually buying him any new ones. He only uses the paci when he sleeps at night. But just recently we’ve noticed that Owen might be finally showing signs of starting to give up the paci even for that. For the past couple of weeks we’ve seen that he’ll suck like crazy on his paci as he’s drifting into sleep, but by the time we check in on him before we go to bed his paci is long dropped out of his mouth, he’s sucking his thumb (so now we have two thumb suckers!), and he seems to sleep the rest of the night without the pacifier. Since he seems to be showing signs of letting go of the paci, yesterday we decided that we should start helping him officially move in that direction. So, last night, unbenounced to him, after Owen fell asleep, we found his paci in his bed and put it on his bedside table, out of his reach. All was good and the night was peaceful. …Then… very early this morning we’re all sleeping soundly and the house is silent and pitch dark. Completely out of the blue I jolt upright in bed to Owen’s voice — saying very calmly and very clearly and very loudly (not yelling or shouting, but definitely loud enough to hear throughout the house): “Excuse me?! Excuse me mommy and papi?! Excuse me?!” Braydon bolted into his room trying to get there before Owen woke up his brother. As soon as Braydon opened the door to Owen’s room I hear: “Excuse me papi?! Can you please help me find my paci?!”
for prior posts in this vein click here
Over the past week or so Braydon and I have had a series of encounters with overt racism. Of course we encounter various forms of racism regularly. Nevertheless, that doesn’t make it easy. It is horrifying. Racism has always been something that has horrified me. But it takes on a new level of horror when you’re raising black children. I remember talking about this once with a black friend of mine. He told me that racism had always been the dark side of life for him, but when he became a father racism was suddenly in “all caps” (racism became RACISM). Not being black myself, I surely don’t even know the half of it. But I’ll go out on a limb and say that as a mother, racism is no longer racism… it is RACISM. It screams out at me. It shakes me at the core. It sends me into that crazed-hyper-protective-mother-bear-mode that makes it hard to sleep at night. I hate it. “How can I protect them?” I keep asking myself. And the answer just pounds back every time, slamming me into its wall: “I can’t protect them.” It feels like an inescapable disease that I can’t keep at bay from my babies’ tiny lungs — no matter what I do, they will breathe that air, that sickness will flow in, I cannot keep them from catching it. I think of that After School Special I saw in 4th grade– ‘The Boy in the Bubble.’ Surely there is some sort of hygienic protective place where I could hide them so they don’t have to be exposed to this? But no, there is not. No such place exists. So, here we are. Trying to live our lives amidst this. We do our best to cope, to let it roll off us whenever possible, to get up and keep going. The looks and stares and inappropriate questions/comments/statements are manageable. But when you take a few heavy hits right in a row, it is hard to not feel weighted down by it.
Since finding out that the Lehigh University Board of Trustees voted to approve my tenure and promotion I have felt kind of zonked. It does not feel anti-climatic to me, it just feels like a big sigh of relief. I have a desire to just enjoy the simple things of life and let everything else go — at least for the time being. For the past few days we’ve sort of been gliding here. Letting dishes and laundry and messes pile up. Letting the To-Do Lists just grow longer. Letting the blog go without updating. Letting life pass us by, in a good way. The passing of time is something so interesting. So often we mourn it. But in this phase of our life here, I’m thinking of all the good wrapped up in it. Time passing is not always bad. Time passed is a good thing when you’re just on the other side of the tenure hurdle. That hurdle had been looming for a solid 12 years for Braydon and me. It is a good thing – that passing of time. We feel a huge sense of accomplishment and relief that it is over. I’ve also been thinking about the goodness in the passing of time a lot in terms of K & O for this whole past month. The month of October is an important one in our family. In 2005 October marked K & O’s ‘hump month’ — that month they passed a mile-marker in their lives: just as much time spent out of the orphanage as in it. By the end of October 2005 they had been out of the orphanage over 8 months… longer than the the 8 months they had spent in. It was a big deal. Our social worker had told us that it would take as long ‘out’ as they had been ‘in’ before we’d see a lot of their post-traumatic shock behaviors resolve. In the case of K & O it was true, almost to the precise day. By the beginning of November all of the heavy-duty issues were gone, our boys were happy and content virtually all the time, and it was clear to us that our family was fully bonded. Now, with October 2007 barrelling along, I have been thinking of that time two years ago. And I’ve been thinking a lot about how good the passing of time is. Of course I miss the little babies, and then the toddlers, that K & O once were. But these past several days I’ve been thinking about how happy I am that they are who they are now. K & O are 3 years and 5 months old right now. Here are just a few of the things I adore about them as they are today:
- they go to bed with relative ease, and sleep through the night almost always
- we can go to a relatively nice restaurant and be pretty confident they’ll behave very well
- they play together every day like inseparable best of brothers
- they love their school and they already have formed a very strong group of friends from school
- they can’t even consider going to sleep without their loveys
- regularly they tell me that I’m “beautiful”; tell Braydon that he’s “so funny”; and tell us that we’re “the best mommy and the best papi in the whole world”
- they love babies and talk about babies every day; they can’t stand to hear any baby cry
- they eat us out of house and home
- their twinship is just as strong as it has been since we’ve met them
- their imagination is running wild, 24 x 7
- they regularly invite people (friends from school, neighbors, random strangers) to their birthday party, even though May 8 is many months away
- their favorite thing in the world is to jump on an airplane and go somewhere — anywhere
- they are soooo happy sooooo much of the time
- they still have no real clue whatsoever what tenure is all about
(for back story to this post click here and read the comments)
Your Top Ten Favorite Posts from Our First Year in the Blogosphere:
- Arranged Marriages
- Nativity Angels Steal Baby Jesus
- Braydon’s Videos
- Top 10 Lists: Is There A ‘Right’ Answer? & Warped Mindset
- Open Book Challenge (Answers on posts from August 27-September 3)
- Apple Cart
- ‘Informational’ Stuff: Kyle & Owen’s Dreadlocks & Things We Did
- Dressing Twins
- Kyle Shares a Memory & Trauma and Healing in Adoption
- …and everyone loves the Conversations (and the quotes, such as “Hey June… Feel My Muscle”)
Sunday we did our favorite day trip ~~ New Hope, PA. We love New Hope any time of year, but fall is probably our favorite time to spend a day there. Lunch on the patio at the Logan Inn (bloody mary’s & crabcakes for H & B; chocolate milk, french fries, & turkey orzo soup for K & O). Feeding the ducks at the river. Strolling the town. Ice cream cones. Watching the train. Checking out the motorcycles. Cafe au lait & almont croissants at The French Bakery. Time for tickles. A gorgeous, fun-filled day in New Hope for the four of us.
Saturday was our Second Annual Fall Farm Day with The Uhrigs! Alstede Farms, Chester NJ. Hay ride. Hay Mountain. Hay Tunnel. Pony rides. Pumkin Picking. Apple Tree Climbing. Apple Cider & Apple Cider Donuts. A beautiful day on the farm shared with some great friends!
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