The Adventures of Adoption and Parenthood

I haven't been blogging much lately. My kids are relatively stable emotionally. Segunda is doing unbelievably terrific with her current set of limitations. We have settled into a routine and all is calm ... for now. I have made some new Facebook friends. Their struggles with their kids are so much larger than mine. It feels petty to write blog posts about minor surgical procedures that scare the hell out of me, but are really just a tiny blip on the radar. My friends have kids who have had heart transplants, will have a hemispherectomy, spinal cord surgeries, have fought and concurred brain cancer, have multiple cleft lip/palate surgeries. My friends have kids who have ODD, ADD, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, Auditory Processing Disorder, Autism. I don't have anything to add to that conversation. Of course, Segunda could get diagnosed with those things. Prima has not. Prima uses her words at level expert. She is just a dynamite kid. She enjoys karate and wants to learn ...

I am in awe of my 6-year old. Prima has always been a verbal child and able to express herself and ask questions about things she doesn't understand. At 2 1/2 we took her to Sea World. She spent the day in a state of silence just taking it all in. The next day, she couldn't stop talking about everything she saw the day before. Thus launched her interest in marine life. She learned everything she could about dolphins and could probably give a mini lecture to anyone who asked before the age of 3. This is just back drop to her history with the spoken word. Fast forward to today and she uses her verbal skills to tell us how she is feeling and what she needs. I often feel like she is parenting me. Segunda necessarily needs quite a bit of attention in the form of carrying and sometimes just plain cajoling to get her to do stuff like hold still for a diaper change. When this happens, Prima quietly says to me, "Mommy, I'm feeling jealous and I need some attention." Lite...