Lux et umbra vicissum…

You can’t stop time. It’s funny how a mother (and a father to some extent, I’m sure) experiences a mix of pride, joy, and grief with each new accomplishment of her child. The pride and joy are pretty obvious, I think, but that little tinge of grief is usually hidden in the background, a sorrow that you’re losing your little baby.

I remember so clearly the day that Charis first said, “Yes,” instead of “Dah.” We used to call her our little Russian, and I still miss it. And as much as I’m trying to help Branwen say her “r’s”, I know I’ll miss her little voice with its lots of “w’s”.

The feeling is naturally intensified with Eli. When he was brought to an orphanage at 6 1/2 months old, he was severely malnourished making him grossly underweight and incredibly developmentally delayed. His poor mama tried to care for him and Desta as long as she could, but when she saw that there was no way she could keep them alive she decided to give them up for adoption. She loved them, and I’ll always have that to pass along to them.

At 6 1/2 months old Eli was 9 pounds and change. He couldn’t sit up. He couldn’t roll over. He smiled, but didn’t make much noise.

The orphanages in Ethiopia do everything they can for the children. Sometimes the orphanages are fairly poor, too, but they’re better off than the families and can help a bit until the children are adopted. Desta and Eli gained a little bit of weight when they were in the orphanage, and Eli started laughing… a good sign.

When Desta and Eli moved to our agency’s care center was when they took off in some areas. Eli arrived at the care center weighing, I believe, 11 pounds. In the two months that it took for the court case to go through and for an embassy date to happen, he had gained 6 pounds, so that when we picked him up he was up to 17 pounds… still small for his age, but so much better than he had been! He was also making little baby noises like the ones you might hear from a baby a couple of months old. By this time he was a year and one month. He still could not sit up, but he had just started to be able to roll over on his own.

I love my baby so much. I remember him sitting in a Bumbo seat while the others played around him. I remember when, mere weeks after we brought him home, he learned how to tip the seat over and get out of it. 🙂 He couldn’t move around yet, but he liked to be n the floor. It wasn’t long before he was starting to low crawl and he was sitting up on his own for longer and longer stretches of time. By the time he was with us for three to four months, his weight was up to 23 pounds or so, he was starting to crawl on hands and knees, and he was pulling himself up on everything and trying to cruise. Fast forward another month and he was walking. It was like baby progress on speed.

As far as making noise went, we found out within a month of having him home that he couldn’t hear a darn thing. No wonder he wasn’t making much sound other than a piercing shriek! We had the wax cleaned out of his ears (a procedure which went VERY well considering his age), but that didn’t do the trick. We then had tubes put in. Within a week of having the tubes, he had said his first word. Within a month of so of that, he had at least five words under his belt as well as one or two phrases. At this point, having been home for almost eight months, he knows several phrases, has strung together two word “sentences” on his own (e.g. “Up, Mommy!”), and is picking up new words every day. He’s been practicing his animal sounds lately, which is fun. 🙂

Am I a proud mama? Absolutely!! This kid is darn smart! He’s picking things up so fast you’d think someone gave him some kind of brain implant. Whatever problems he has, long-term delays don’t seem like they’ll be among them. I am exceedingly happy for him and what that means for his future. And yet…

I didn’t want to take away his bottle. He didn’t care. He had been using a sippy cup for a while, and he was just as happy to drink his evening milk in that as in the bottle. But I would have liked to have that feeling of feeding my baby for a bit longer. Granted, I compromised. I give him his sippy, but I hold him like a baby while he drinks it. From what I’ve been told, that’s good to continue for adopted children for a while because it helps with long-term bonding. He doesn’t complain, so I guess he doesn’t feel like he needs to move on yet.

I also feel a pang of regret whenever I see him manage a new feat, like managing to get up on the couch all by himself (albeit with the aid of a stool which he put in place first), or discovering that he can go down the stairs now without getting hurt (though I still won’t let him do it without me there). He was a year old when we got him. In some ways, the delays he had were a blessing because I at least got to experience those different baby stages, but it flew by so fast! I feel like I’ve missed out on so much with him.

Why does it hit me more with him than with Desta? I love her dearly and have loved seeing her grown and learn. Most of her learning has been in the are of communication, though. She already had pretty good motor skills (more gross than fine), and she picked up on many of the new skills quickly enough that I hardly even realized they were new for her. Eating with utensils, for instance. Even while in Ethiopia, she was doing pretty well when we’d have her use a spoon or fork. (Utensils aren’t used for meals in Ethiopia. The injera, a kind a flat bread, that’s used as a plate is also used to handle the food… just tear a piece off and pinch some food up in it.) She’s done an amazing job of learning English along the way. When she went back to the international adoption center for her second assessment when we’d been home for four months or so, she was already testing at a three year old level in English communication skills. And she’s gotten even better since then! She’s really an amazing little girl. She has to be interested in learning something, though. She hasn’t felt like learning what the ABC’s look like when I’ve tried to teach her. She’d much rather draw or color something that she wants to draw or color rather than try to draw something that starts with “D” or whatever. Oh well. We’ll get there eventually. But for some reason I don’t feel as many pangs when I see her accomplish something new. I do get a little teary eyed when I look at the pictures of her from when we first brought her home; she looks so little in those pictures! But that’s pretty much it. Other than that, I’m just happy for her when she learns something new. (She was very proud of herself several weeks ago when she learned to skip like her big sisters.) 🙂

Oh well. I’ll probably never understand my feelings completely. I’ll just love the kids and keep on going. We can’t turn back time, after all.

Eli when he first entered the agency care center Eli in December with sister Alexis

Desta in the Ethiopian orphanage Desta in front of our Christmas tree