The Adventures of Adoption and Parenthood

I just finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. I picked it up in the Tucson airport on the tail-end of a business trip so that I had something besides a business book to read on the plane. When I wasn't being pulled out of the book by her obvious wealth, which makes some of her Resolutions darn near impossible for most us, I found that I have been working on my own Happiness Project without realizing it. A few months ago, I began to notice that I was constantly yelling at the kids, constantly criticizing my husband or nagging him, constantly fretting over the state of the house, always on the go trying to get everything done all of the time. And this had been going on for who knows how long. I was sad because I didn't have any time to myself. I was overweight. I was unfit. I ate junk food every day. I never read. At my annual physical I talked to my doctor about my mental state because I wanted it to change. Doctor: Do you want help with your anxiety? Me:...

Prima is a People Pleaser. I'm trying to tame that a bit because I know that it will get her in trouble in the future. People Pleasers give away their belongings to their friends because their friends ask them to and they want their friends to be happy. People Pleasers have sex because their boyfriend or girlfriend asked them to and they want their boyfriend or girlfriend to be happy. Yes, that escalated quickly, but that's where we are headed. Yes, I know she is only six years old. Prima has a new found love of Pokemon that she acquired over the summer. She went to a Day Camp/School place that had students in her class ages 6 and up. There is a 9 year old girl who wants to trade Pokemon cards with Prima. We have banned Prima from trading. Why? Because she has no earthly idea how to play Pokemon although she thinks she does and will end up trading all of her great cards to the 9 year old who is itching to get a hold of my daughter's "Mega EX" cards (whatever tha...

Being the incredibly wise parents that we are, we decided to take the girls on a mini-road trip this weekend. We went to Crested Butte. It's a 4 hour drive without traffic and interminable with traffic. Let me preface this by saying that Prima had temper tantrums at 2, but they were generally because  she didn't get her way and they were rare. Most of the time she was over-stimulated and they were predictable. On the drive down, we got about 35 minutes out of town and Segunda decided she needed to go potty. Since we are potty-training, husband dutifully pulled into a parking lot. Out comes the Potette. Segunda planted herself on it and delivered exactly bupkiss. Back into the car she goes only to scream for 30 solid minutes before finally falling asleep. Whew. Throughout the weekend she had tantrum after tantrum. We've never experienced this before and at the end of the long weekend we are frankly exhausted and eager to return to work. At the 4th of July parade, Segunda...

We've all seen those silly memes about first world problems. "I had to tidy for the cleaning lady - first world problem." "My diamond earrings keep scratching my iPhone - first world problem." They are silly, but they are covering up some genuine first world problems. It's almost like we collectively feel guilty for any problems when there are people on the planet without clean drinking water, enough food to eat, clothes on their back or a roof over their heads. Those are the real problems in the world, not our piddly little first world problems. While those are very real problems that we should all be striving to fix, we have real first world problems too. I think it's important to call them out and talk about them so that we can address our problems too and shove them under the rug in shame. There are middle class families in America going bankrupt because of the cost of medical care. Those same families in 1950 would belong to a country club an...

This is not a political diatribe on testing, but an ode to teachers and the lifelong impact they have on our lives. As you read this, think about whether or not teachers can have this kind of impact on children if they are spending their time in test prep and test delivery. I had five teachers/professors in my life that had a major lifelong impact on me. One in elementary school, one in high school and three in college. In elementary school, my 3rd and 4th grade teacher was Ms. Randolph. She taught at Fremont Elementary in Cupertino, California. She took a personal interest in me. I remember her encouragement when I struggled with penmanship. She made me want to practice and practice so that I could please her with my improvement. She knew me so well that I was cast as the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland in the class play because I rolled my eyes a lot. At the end of the year she showed me a handwriting sample from the first day and a sample from the last day so that I could ...

This is a post I've been thinking about for weeks and it will be haphazard and scattered, but I need to get it out there for me. If you read to the end, thank you. Food, I have discovered, is an emotionally charged topic. Until I was in my early 30's, I always found it easy to maintain my "ideal" weight. I could eat what I wanted, eschew exercise and look great doing it. In my 30's, I started gaining weight, but it was a slow process. I also started going to the gym. I still felt pretty okay and looked pretty okay. When we adopted Prima, I felt great and had a wonderful trip to China. When we adopted Segunda, I hurt everywhere and the trip to China was very very hard for me. In my mid-40's I have begun to deteriorate and I'm fat. Paradoxically, I'm also not into body shaming. There is nothing I want more than to give my children the idea that I have a healthy outlook on my body and I hope I'm faking it well enough to convince them. But my body ma...

The CCAI Adoption Reunion is coming up in June, and it got me thinking about our guides for our two adoption trips. Three of them will be at the reunion. They aren't going to remember us because they have helped over 11,000 children meet their forever families. But I'm so excited to see them again. This is a biased opinion because I haven't used any other agency but CCAI has the best guides in the adoption process. They shepherd worried parents through every step; they hand feed babies; they change diapers; they carry bags; they argue with the Chinese equivalent of TSA. In a word, they are AWESOME. And I mean that in the true definition of the word. Our first trip started in Hong Kong. We had Joann and Matthew. Joann picked us up from the airport with several other families, handed out water bottles, loaded us onto a bus, counted heads, made sure our bags were stowed on the bus, counted heads again, double checked water and we were off. She checked us all into our hotel r...