The Adventures of Adoption and Parenthood

50 years ago today Martin Luther King Jr stood in our nation's capital and delivered a speech to 250,000 people. The I Have a Dream Speech. The speech that captured an entire movement in one speech given by one man. In his speech, he said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" The Civil Rights Movement was a long overdue effort to gain the same rights and freedoms for a repressed people that white America enjoyed: the right to vote, the right to eat in any restaurant, the right to sit anywhere on a bus, the right to walk down the street unmolested, the right to go to school, the right to run for office. There is little doubt that we have made progress as a society, but there is still an enormous amount of work to be done. As long as there are people living on reservations in dire poverty, as long as there are people being spi...

I saw a pin on Pinterest, pinned it in fact, that said "I missed the memo that said we ladies are now expected to not only to hold down jobs but also to knit, craft and bake from scratch again all while having washboard abs." Then I got to thinking about what it's like to be a wife, parent, and a colleague. The societal pressures are intense, the pressures we put on ourselves are even more so. Why do I feel the need to do it all? My husband travels a fair amount for business. So it's often just me and Turtle. Our daily routine is: get up, get ready, put laundry in the dryer, get Turtle ready, breakfast, pack lunch, maybe put dinner in the crockpot depending on what we're having, load the dishwasher (maybe even unload the dishwasher), drop Turtle at school, go to work, work, run errands at lunch, work some more, pick Turtle up from school, home, cook something healthy for dinner, eat, clean up, bathtime, pajamas, fold laundry, put it away, put more laundry in t...

I like to read. No, I love to read. And so far, my daughter also loves her books. But I've developed heightened sensitivities to race and comments about race in books. Comments like Chink and Gook written by writers long ago and today. Comments that further stereotypes of certain cultures: like the Chinese don't value human life and just go around killing babies - wholly inaccurate by the way. Even before we became a transracial family, these things would make me squirm when I read them, and I was vocal defender of others when it occurred within earshot. My bookshelves are overburdened with my collection. But now I wonder what to keep. Do I keep Pat Conroy even though his characters often refer to Asians as "little yellow people"? Do I keep Tom Clancy who perpetuates the stereotype above in one of his novels? There are others, and many of them literary greats. These books have things in them that will cause my children pain. I cannot shield them from that pain the...

For some reason, I was under the impression that once you had the penis/vagina conversation the anatomy talks were done until the sex talks began. I was wrong. The discussions around anatomy are both embarrassing and amusing, but mostly amusing. I tell it to her straight and then she sings it back to me. Here is an example: A few weeks ago, while giving Turtle a bath, we had this conversation: Turtle: Mom, why is there a tongue in my vagina? Me: That's not a tongue (silently rejoicing that a grandmother isn't hanging out for bathtime as they sometimes do) Turtle: What is it? Me: It's called a clitoris. Turtle: singing at the top of her lungs CLITORIS, CLITORIS, CLITORIS Awesome. Yesterday, when I was helping her get into her pajamas, she took off her shirt and immediately began playing with her nipples (as is her wont these days). Turtle: "Mommy, when I'm a mommy can I play with my mommy nipples?" Me: Yes. Turtle: When will they get b...

At dinner: Turtle: Is my sister in your tummy? Me: No, she isn't. Turtle: Where is she? Me: She is in China. Turtle looks a little puzzled. So I continued, "She was in another lady's tummy." Then a man walks up to our table and says, "CCAI?" I had no idea what he was talking about. I was giving Turtle all of my attention and couldn't wrap my brain around his question. My husband, much quicker on the uptake, understood he was asking if we adopted Turtle through the agency CCAI and he said, Yes. The man then told us about his 8-year old daughter from Sichuan Province, and his eyes lit up as he talked about her. It's always amazing to me when this happens. Turtle continued her questions as I hoped she would, "Mommy, was I in China when I was little?" Turtle knows she was born in China, but at 4, I think she is really beginning to explore what that means. Me: Yes you were. She looked at me intently an...

Welcome to the first blog post of The Adventures of Adoption and Parenthood. I've never blogged before unless you count my endless Facebook posts. This blog will focus on my experiences raising my children. I will include my husband sparingly as he is very private and I do not want to violate his privacy through this blog. So, if you know me, this will be perfect, as it will be all about ME. I will treat this post more as an introduction and hope to have more interesting/usefel blogs in the future. Our children Asian and my husband and I are Caucasian, so we are a transracial family. I have come to realize through adoption that even if your child is not "special needs" they have special needs. We have one child whom I will refer to as Turtle and are waiting on #2. Next month will mark our 36 month-paper-pregnancy for the second child. We got Turtle when she was 9 months old in November 2009 and traveled with the greatest group of people all doing the same thing - goin...