“After I listen to Rhapsody in Blue, then I listen to Alicia Keys.” –Kyle
Tonight, while we were eating dinner, the four of us were talking about some of the music we are currently listening to in the car. In the midst of it Kyle announced what is quoted above, and it made our hearts melt with pure pride for the sweetness of this darling boy.
(If interested… click here for notes on Rhapsody in Blue: classical.net or fanfaire.com …click here for notes on Alicia Keys: aliciakeys.com )
Our next-door-neighbors, Sandy & Charlie, are back from India and they’ve got their newly adopted babies home with them now safe and sound. We were honored to be the first non-family members to welcome the newest American citizens to the U.S.A. I cannot even articulate how big of a deal this is for us. What are the chances that we’d happen to find ourselves living in an upper-middle-class Bucks County Pennsylvania neighborhood in which 5 of the 12 houses are inter-racial families? What are the chances that we’d happen to find ourselves living anywhere in the country and have our next-door-neighbors be an adoptive family that comes pretty darn close to resembling our own? I seriously can’t even explain all of the ways that this is so incredibly great for Kyle and Owen — let alone for Braydon and I. We are so blessed to be in this situation. In so many, many countless ways.
The arrival of Ambika and Nate from their orphanage in India has been much anticipated by our family. I wasn’t sure how it would go, given how attached to Sandy our boys are. Would they be insanely jealous to see Sandy have, and prioritize, her own children? Would the age difference between the kids (Ambika is 4, Nate is 6) bo too huge for them to be able to play well together? Would K & O have a real big problem with not being the sole focus of all of the adult attention (Sandy, Charlie, Braydon, and I hang out in our driveways –between our two houses– a lot, and often our other neighbors, Pat & Amy who have no children, join us)? How do you explain adoption to two-year-olds in a way they can understand? We try all the time, when we talk about their own adoption, but who knows how much of it they are actually comprehending? What do they interpret, for example, when I say “Sweetie pie, Sandy is Ambika and Nate’s mommy now!”?
I honestly do not think that K, O, Ambika, and Nate’s first meeting could possibly have gone any better. At first there was apprehension on all of their parts. But after some Halloween candy was exchanged, and the trucks got rolling, it was as if the four of them had been playmates forever! As a welcome home gift we had given Ambika and Nate each a truck — just like the ones that Owen and Kyle have and play with every day in the driveway. Although they are 4 & 6 years old, they are so tiny because of malnourishment and stunted growth. So, they can fit and ride the trucks just fine. Since K & O are so enormous for their age, the four of them are very comparable in size. (Just as a reference point– K & O currently weigh 38 pounds each; Nate, the 6-year-old, weighs 24 pounds). And since none of them speak English very well (Ambika and Nate spoke no english when Sandy and Charlie first met them at their orphanage 2 weeks ago) everyone is JUST FINE in that realm!!! That’s one of the best things about the whole scenario: They don’t have to talk much or explain much or do much at all — they can all four just be kids. And play. And forget, a bit, about the suffering they have all had in the histories of their short little lives. What’s amazing is to watch them together and see their smiles and realize that they don’t even have any idea how much they all actually have in common. What matters to them right now is basically this: We are four little kids, we have four cool trucks, our driveways slant down-hill so we can ride like the wind, we have mommies and daddies, and our mommies give us all the milk we can drink and all the snacks we can eat… truly: it doesn’t get much better than that. Especially when you have known otherwise.
Here are some photos of the big day: the day the four kids met for the first time! (click here and here and here)
The very first moments that the kids all meet
Check out the look on Owen’s face!
Sandy tries to explain…
Food unites all!
Ambika & Nate
Sandy & Owen
Heather & Nate
Sandy (with K & O)
We play this game in the car when we get to our neighborhood: We point to each house and say – “is that our house?” and Kyle or Owen answer “nooooo!?!?” When we finally get to our house they say “our house!”. I am sure lots of parents do similar things, after all, we want our boys to know which is their home.
We also do it with driveways when we take walks. “That’s not our driveway…” (which really means, ‘don’t go walking in there, stay here with me’). It’s morphed into everything – that’s not our dog, this is my mama-papi, is that our car, etc. It must also be some developmental stage, since they seem to have nailed the concept of “mine” (although they don’t quite have sharing yet, but they’re not too bad about it).
We were driving home from the pharmacy after picking up antibiotics on Tuesday and before we arrived at out neighborhood Owen started with “Papi – that’s not our house” for pretty much every house we passed. That’s a lot of houses and he insisted I answer “that’s right Owen, that’s not our house” for each one. When we got to our house he was thrilled, kicking and thrashing in his seat (see note below about being ‘sick’…) “our house! our house!”
And the thing that really zings me is that they get to say “our” – after all, “ours” means so much in so many ways.
Kyle and Owen carved their first jack-o-lantern. Well, they didn’t actually carve it, but they helped dig all the seeds and gushy pumkin stuff out of the inside. And I guess technically this was their second jack-o-lantern carving experience, since we did it last year too, but they were only 18 months old then so I’m not sure that really counts. Anyway, Owen kept saying, very seriously, “Mommy, don’t eat it.” And I’d say, “It’s o.k. Owen, you can eat it!” And he’d taste some of the raw pumkin guts and say, “It’s yucky.” Then a few seconds later: “Mommy, don’t eat it”… and the whole thing would start all over again. He tried it many times and said, “It’s yucky” each time. Kyle, on the other hand, had no interest in eating it (remarkable since the boy can EAT with the best of ’em and eats about 3x as much food per day as Owen). Kyle was just totally fascinated with the whole production– particularly the CANDLES once they were placed, and lit, inside the jack-o-lantern. He continuously kept blowing them out by blowing through the pumkin’s cut-out-mouth. It was driving me nutty because I’d finally get the thing lit, then he’d blow it out. I started getting really mad, telling him “KYLE, DO NOT BLOW IT OUT!” Owen would then eagerly egg him on: “Blow it out Kyle! Blow it out!!” and Kyle would then blow out the candles. So infuriating. Anyway, the jack-o-lantern was cute and the boys loved doing it.
Kyle and Owen get into their costumes, and then insist on going upstairs to their room to admire themselves in the mirror before heading outside for trick-or-treating!
I cannot imagine a more fun Halloween night than this one was. The boys were just so, so, so into it! Everything about it was so fun for them. They got to carry flashlights, which was HUGE. They got to run around in the dark on everyone’s lawns, which was HUGE. They got to say, “rooaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” about 100 times, which was HUGE. They got to ring everybody’s doorbells, which was HUGE. They were absolutely adorable and delighted everyone at every house we went to. The boys would run up to the door, ring the bell, wait patiently for the door to open up, and then shout: “Trick or treat!!!” I mean, seriously, how is that not the cutest thing going? They got tons of candy, which they could barely care less about (although we let them eat waaaay more of it than you’re probably supposed to let a 2-year-old eat). But after we went inside at the end of the night they never even looked in their pumpkins to see all the loot they had collected in there. Who cares, right? (well, Braydon and I cared– we ate it all after they went to bed). It really was a magical night. Rooaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
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