Lux et umbra vicissum…

Some people mistakenly think that a child over a certain age can’t get croup.  Truth is, even adults can get croup; the biggest difference is that our airways are bigger so it doesn’t affect us as badly.  To adults and older children it comes on like a bad cold.

Alexis has pretty much reached that point, as far as I can tell.  She might have a bit of trouble for a night or more, but it’s not that “seal-bark” cough that you usually hear with croup.  Even Desta seems to not get hit by these things very hard but to just get a rather icky cold instead.  Actually, Eli – the one who came home to us with pneumonia – seems not too terribly prone to respiratory ailments and hasn’t had worse than a cold (maybe with ear infections) since that first bout of illness.  But the same is not true of the two middle blondies.

So last night found Joel holding Branwen upright on his side of the bed and me holding Charis on mine while we waited for the hot, running shower in the bathroom to get the room nice and steamy.  We caught Branwen’s right after she started having trouble breathing, and she had gotten albuterol treatments before bed for a little wheezing, so it didn’t take too long to get hers settled down.  Charis, on the other hand, was so tired and felt so awful that she just wouldn’t stop crying.  Between the croup and the crying, she was coughing and choking and gagging non-stop, the poor baby.  I lost track of how long it took to get her settled.  I do know that it was after I promised her she could stay in bed with me for the night.  (As I was holding her and she was sobbing, we kept having the following exchange: “*sob* Mommy!” “What honey?” “I want you!” “Um… I’m holding you, honey…”)  Even after we got her settled, she woke up several times in the night.  I was glad we kept her with us, because if we had put her back in her own bed I would have laid awake worrying that she couldn’t breathe.  As it was, I could keep a closer eye on her.

I’ll have to keep an ear out for ideas of how to calm an uncontrollably sobbing toddler.  It was killing me to know that if I could just get her to stop crying, her coughing and hacking would settle down.  You’d think, having five small children, that I would have all kinds of tricks up my sleeve.  Well, I do have a few, but none of them worked.  I think the moment I knew that nothing I was doing was really making a difference was when we were sitting together in the steamy bathroom and I was trying to sing quietly to her.  This always seemed to calm my other children.  I finished one song and had just started another when Charis, mid-sob, interrupted me.

“*sob* Mommy!”

“What honey?”

“*sob* Don’t do that again!”

*sigh*  Everyone’s a critic!

Ok, life has been eating up my time, so here’s a brief update on what’s going on…

My back’s been acting up, but it’s not as bad as it has been at times.  Still keeps me from doing a lot of household things.  I’ve had a couple of chiro appointments and they’re helping, it just takes a while to get back to “normal” once it flairs up.  In the meantime, I’m taking advantage of the couch time to read some books, something I rarely have time to do otherwise.

Joel has been working, doing the necessary house stuff that I can’t do (such as laundry washing and drying… I can fold), and also working on some projects on the side.  For example, he’s making a craft table for me so that I can work on my jewelry again.  I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t do it often because it takes so long to set up and clean up that I only have a few minutes of actual work time in between.  With this craft table up (it’ll have fold up pieces on the edges to protect things on the table when not in use), I’ll be able to leave things out so I don’t have all that set up and clean up time so I’ll actually be able to use the whole time to work on the jewelry itself.  Pretty cool, huh? 🙂  I have such a smart, woodworking hubby!  I’ll have to post a picture of the table after it’s done.  I’m amazed at the things Joel’s been able to design and create!

Alexis is starting on a five week Hip Hop dance class this afternoon.  It’s just once a week and is through parks and rec, so the cost was very reasonable.  (In other words, the class was fairly cheap.)  We can’t spend a lot of extra money on things like this, but it’s neat when an opportunity like this comes along.  She’ll love it. 🙂  She’s also a butterfly in the first grade musical, “Bugz”.  There are a few butterflies, but she’s the only one who’ll metamorph in the middle of a song.  Pretty cool?  Very.  But I have to make the costume.  I bought a leotard and dance pants (all in black).  Those will have snaps down the sides.  I’ll create the wings (hoping to find a fabric that’s colorful and kind-of gauzy or translucent) which will attach to the snaps on the leotard and pants.  The wings will simply hang by her side until she’s supposed to metamorph, at which point she’ll slip her middle fingers through clear plastic rings sewn to the edge of the wings and lift her arms, at which point the wings will expand.  At least, that’s the plan.  We’ll see how well it works!  She’s thrilled at the prospect of flitting around the stage, anyway. 🙂  Oh, I’ve also resumed piano lessons with her, and she’s progressing very quickly.  I’m trying not to let her move on too fast to hone the things she’s learning.

Branwen was told on Sunday that if she participated in EVERYTHING with her Sunday school class, she would be allowed to have M&Ms on her ice cream (which she’s been wanting).  Guess what?  She did it!  Her teachers were amazed at how well she did, and we praised her up and down. 🙂   I reminded her this morning of how happy and proud I was on Sunday and asked her to do just as well in preschool today.  For some reason she never wants to participate in music class there, though she’s perfectly willing to stand up in front of the class before they get started and sing a song that she’s made up. 😛  Anyway, we’ll see how she does.  I’m nervous about kindergarten because I’m afraid she’s going to make the transition harder on herself than it has to be what with this choosing not to participate thing.  On a different note, she wants to learn piano, too, but she’s a student like her mother…. annoyingly impatient.  I don’t know how my piano teacher put up with me.  She never wants to stay on one thing, but always wants to catch up to her sister.  And she plays by ear more than reading the music (which is a way I cheated, too).  Right now I dread my lesson times with her.  Hopefully as she gets older and gets into more advanced stuff at the proper pace she’ll lose some of that.

Desta is her same old self… fun loving and happy much of the time, intensely whiny and frustrating the rest.  What can I say?  She’s three?  She wants to learn piano, too, but I’ve been putting off teaching her.  I don’t really think she’s quite ready to learn, but it’s hard to explain that to her.  I think she’ll be much more ready in a year or so.  I am planning on taking her and her two older sisters to swim lessons through parks and rec this summer, so I’m sure she’ll enjoy being grouped with them in that learning environment (even if they’ll be in separate classes).  The two littlest will have to wait for swim lessons till they’re a little older.

Charis is a sweetie pie, as always, though she’s definitely a bratty little sister at times.  And her expression even then is so sweet that if you didn’t know her well you’d think it was all the other person’s fault.  *sigh*  We’ll have to watch out for this one!

Eli is constantly making progress with his communication and development, playing with things in new ways and saying more and more words and phrases.  True, we still don’t always understand what the heck he’s trying to tell us, but the key is that he’s trying!  And he’s not running away from the puppy anymore, which is definite progress.

Cafall still pees on the floor, but we’ve noticed that he’ll go to the door and stand there sometimes when he has to go now.  Granted, it’s not all the time, but it’s better than nothing!  We’re getting there.

And now I must shower.  This afternoon I need to take Desta to pick up Branwen from preschool and then take them both to Walmart to pick up a bunch of things (glue for Alexis who ran out at school, dog food, hamburger buns, etc.).  This evening we’re planning on attending a meeting of the adoption ministry at our church.  It’ll be a full day.

One prayer request:

I had mentioned before that we’ll need a 12 passenger van once our new daughters come home.  Well, the Lord has really laid on my heart one of Alexis’ friends who is unchurched.  We’re trying to convince her to join Alexis at Sunday school or Awana or maybe VBS, but it struck me that, especially for VBS where I’ll be taking all of the kids, the only way she can join us is if we have a bigger vehicle.  We know the Lord honors these sorts of requests when they’re within his will.  We prayed for this house so that we could host people who needed it, and the Lord provided it.  (We’ve hosted two girls from a traveling choir so far and are planning on hosting a young lady long-term in the near future… more on that later.)  So we’re praying now that God would provide us with a 12 passenger van.  Please pray with us when you think about it, that God would show us His will in this matter, and that He would help us to be able to reach out to this little girl and her family.

Many little hands only make light work when the work looks like fun.

(Otherwise, they make more work.)

Writing a letter can be difficult for many people.  What to say, how to say it, what impressions you’re going to make, knowing how certain things will be taken when read… it can be a daunting task. [Read more →]

Mental Illness.  That phrase has such a stigma.  It dredges up images of people who can’t function due to severe retardation, or people laughing maniacally somewhere in the far recesses of a hospital.  Depression actually sounds a bit better these days probably because it’s become so common, but somehow it doesn’t really capture the nature of the beast accurately either.  Maybe it’s because so many of the pharmaceutical commercials seem to show depression as someone just being sad or tired all the time.  They show pictures of a woman sitting holding a coffee mug and looking down, or someone looking teary eyed in their living room.  I guess it’s hard to capture all of the facets of depression in a thirty second ad spot, so I don’t know how I’d have them change.  I just know that’s not all there is to this many-headed monster.

“Mental illness” really should make me feel better about it.  After all, it’s an illness, right?  It’s not just an “issue”, it has a medical reason.   Ok, so the psychiatrists still aren’t sure exactly why it happens, but it does seem to have something to do with seratonin in the brain and how it’s absorbed (or not).  So there are chemical and biological reasons that this happens.  And hormonal, or course.  Hormones seem to affect just about everything.  Why is it that I have this knowledge, and yet can still feel like my life will be unfairly judged by anyone who knows of my condition?

I guess thinking of it as a chronic illness isn’t really that far off.  How often do people who suffer from MS or cerebral palsy have to face judgment each day?  How many other chronic illnesses are often hidden from all but family and close friends because people don’t want to feel “labeled” by others around them?  Even asthma has a bit of a stigma for people, having a reputation as being the disease of the weak and non-athletic.  Who cares that any number of people have proven that image to be false?  And so depression and other mental illnesses are really just taking their place among the other chronic diseases that affect not only the people who have them but the way others in society will treat them.

At the same time, I wish that people would think of depression as just another chronic illness.  Then I wouldn’t feel so bad when I have a bad day and can’t function properly.  If people thought of what I was experiencing in the same light as, say, lupus or chronic fatigue syndrome where they expect people to have good days and bad days, well, the bad days wouldn’t bother me quite as much.  As it is, when I have a bad day, the knowledge that many would judge me by that day thinking it’s just a matter of willpower or positive thinking (or even of prayer, which may help but has not yet cured me), that knowledge causes the day to be worse and sometimes to draw out for longer than it otherwise would have.  No one likes to think that people think badly of them, or even that people would think badly of them if they knew how things sometimes were.

Over the years since we’ve had the children, I’ve been hesitant to mention to people that Joel is usually the one who gets up with the children in the night.  People assume that, as the mother, I would be the one to deal with nightmares and sick children.  The truth is, we’ve seen a very definite correlation between the amount of sleep I get and how hard my depression hits.  If I get more sleep, there’s less chance I’ll have depression trouble the next day causing Joel to have to play both mother and father until I get back on my feet.  We decided some time ago that knowing this, it would be best for Joel to be the one to take on the nighttime issues.  And yet, when the topic of getting up with children has come up in various settings, especially when women have stated that they always get up with the children since their husbands have to go to work the next morning, I’ve rarely said anything for fear someone would think me an unfit mother, a terrible wife, or a lazy bum.

Maybe that’s partly why I’ve become far less quick to judge other people.  Much like my need for extra sleep and the way it affects our parenting decisions, others may have more complex reasons for what they say and do than what we see at first glance.  And even when a person’s action is very obviously something to be condemned, who am I to say I wouldn’t have done the same thing if put in their exact position?  We don’t often know all of the factors in a situation, so why do we judge the person involved?  Human nature, I guess.  Judging and labeling, making others seem less so that we can feel like more.

The following dialog is not really one you want to use to start your day…

Joel: (in a frustrated voice) The dog’s a mess!  He peed and pooped in his crate, and he’s an absolute mess!  What do I do?

Andi: (in a sleepy voice) Well, it won’t kill him to be in it for another couple minutes.  Start with Alexis and I’ll be down soon.

So our day started with cleaning a stinky dog and his stinky crate while trying to get Alexis to school on time.  In the midst of this, I managed to lose the dog’s collar for several minutes (it was found on the dining room table though how it got there is still a mystery), all of the other children decided to wake up and want breakfast, and since I hadn’t eaten yet and tend toward low blood sugar issues I started feeling sick and extra cranky.  Really… not a fun morning.

It didn’t really end after the kids were (finally) fed and the dog and crate were clean, either.  Alexis had made it to school on time, but I needed to pick her up at lunch time (which is 11:20 for her) to take her and Branwen to the dentist.  I realized after feeding myself and the children that I hadn’t yet filled out the new patient forms that I was supposed to, so I started on them as quickly as I could.  The forms were only one page, two-sided… but you practically had to get our your magnifying glass to read them.  Filling in the blanks legibly should have been an Olympic event. 😛  And filling out the two forms took me until about 11:00.   I needed to leave at 11:15 to get Alexis, and I still hadn’t showered.

So off I rushed.  I think that may have been my fastest shower since college when I was late for an early morning class.  I was glad I had sent a note in saying when I’d be picking Alexis up so that at least I could walk in, get her and walk back out again.  That should help, right?

Nooooo… it couldn’t be that simple.  She was in “lunch bunch” with one of the teachers, and she hadn’t even begun to pack up her things to go home.  And she’s not terribly speedy about things in general.  So we didn’t get out of the school until almost quarter to 12.

Thank goodness that’s about where the difficulties ended.  We were able to get her and her sister ready fast enough to make it to their appointments on time, and they both did remarkably well at the dentist’s office.  I was very pleasantly surprised that Branwen didn’t kick, scream, or even shed a tear during the entire process.  Maybe it’s been long enough between visits that she didn’t remember it too well.  Anyway, this was the first time she didn’t give them any problems when they wanted to brush her teeth. 🙂  The only problem I had there was that they didn’t want to stop playing in the playhouse that was set up in the waiting area.  Grrr.

So now we’re home, the oldest three are down watching a video, the younger two are napping, Joel is working on his laptop in the kitchen so the puppy can be out for a bit, and I’m flat on my back (ok, propped slightly) on the couch because my back is hurting again.  The chair at the dentist’s office didn’t really help.  Anyway, the rest of the afternoon should be fairly uneventful.  Just as long as we don’t have to give the dog another bath.

1. If you get really upset with a child and start yelling, the dog will pee.

2. The children really do listen sometimes, as shown by the three year old repeating word for word and gesture for gesture, “I don’ get water!  I get orange juice!  EVERY MORNING I get orange juice!”

3. When dealing with toddlers (or anyone else, for that matter), repeating something louder does not constitute an explanation and will not make them understand any faster.

4. If you’re going to be silly about chasing a child around to pull a leaf out of her hair, expect her to then go and dump many leaves in her hair which may take a half hour or more to pick out.

5. The first step in teaching children how to take the dog out is to teach them to get their shoes on very fast.

6. Choosing clothing for your child will automatically cause her to hate said clothing even if it was her favorite outfit before.  The act of mommy choosing the clothes automatically makes them repulsive.  (I’m guessing this is practice for when they’re teenagers.)

7. The same basic principle applies to food.

8. Bribery sometimes works.  Unfortunately, using bribery one time causes it to become constantly mandatory in the child’s eyes.   And it’s not always a good time for ice cream.

9. If you want a child three years old or above to sleep during the day, do not say the word “nap”.  It’s an insult.

10. Never EVER imply or say outright that a child is too young to do something, whether it’s cleaning a sink or handling sharp knives.  Arguments and tantrums will commence, and the rest of whatever job you have to do will become even less enjoyable than it already was.  Best to avoid the topic altogether by suddenly thinking of something else the child can do or by “remembering” something you wanted to tell them.

11. Trips to the mailbox or to get the newspaper are apparently supposed to be family events.  Anyone left behind has the right to fuss and whine until appropriately distracted.

12. Balls are for throwing.  What is this hard and soft of which you speak?

13. Anything thrown is for the dog.  Who cares if it was meant to land in the compost pile?

14. Just because a dog can’t remember where to pee does not mean it is completely void of intelligence, as shown by the fact that it has learned to avoid the four year old when she’s near a pile of leaves.

I know several people check here regularly, so I wanted to explain this right away.  I took down two of my posts because I found out they were beginning to cause a bit of panic among some of the adoptive community.  There’s really nothing to panic about.  There was a miscommunication somewhere along the line and a few people’s adoptions were affected.  Unfortunately, this can happen with international adoption.  My heart still breaks for the families and for the kids involved, but there’s no need for anyone else to worry.  If you haven’t heard about it, then it doesn’t affect you.  And it’s not something that should cause future problems since it was a one time communication problem.

There’s so much complexity to this process.  Besides the adoption red tape and the immigration red tape, you’ve got translation issues, cultural differences to understand, and several different layers of people and agencies to work through.  Sometimes it almost feels like playing whisper down the lane even when people are trying to keep everything straight on all sides.  In many cases, you can’t really place blame anywhere when this sort of thing happens.  It’s honest misunderstanding more often than not.  And the more experience everyone gets, the less it will happen.  Ethiopian adoption is still young as compared to many international adoption programs, and for its age it’s going quite well.  It helps immensely that the people of Ethiopia and their government want very much to care for their children in any way they can, even if that means finding homes for them in another country.  God bless them for loving their children enough to let them go.

Alexis (praying before bed): Dear Jesus, thank you for Mommy’s socks and Daddy’s beard! giggle giggle 

Charis (after being told not to tell people she wasn’t happy with them): I’m not… I’m… I don’t want to be happy of you!

Branwen (while playing outside with Desta and the puppy): Mommy!  The doggy liked it when I threw him in the pile of leaves!
And the preschool idea of a good April Fools joke:

Branwen: Mommy!  There’s a fire truck on your head!  APRIL FOOLS!!!!

When we brought her home, we could tell that she was adventurous, but she was also overwhelmed.  She had come from a small home (most likely a hut) where she was starving despite her mother’s best efforts, to a place where everyone had their own bed, no one lived in one room, and there’s more food available than people can eat.  Not to mention she had four brothers before, three of them a good bit older than her, and now she had three sisters close to her own age.  Oh, and she couldn’t talk to people or understand what they were saying to her.  All in all, that’s a pretty huge journey for a two and a half year old to take.

One way that we saw her cope with this was the way she would fall asleep.  Where our biological kids would do the “normal” kid thing and find every excuse they could to delay actually sleeping, she would lie down and immediately be asleep.  I remember so clearly the first night she was home.  The older two girls were just smitten with her, and when we put her to bed, they stood next to her and stared as she fell asleep.  The whole process took roughly two seconds and involved one long blink followed by closed eyes and deep breathing.  The girls were amazed and thought that was the most interesting thing they had ever seen.

There are so many ways that she’s become a typical American three year old since those first days home.  She can communicate, she plays normal three year old games with her sisters, and she’s developed an appreciation for pizza and chicken nuggets.  But last night I was reminded of yet another way I can chart her comfort level in her new surroundings.

She still goes to sleep pretty quickly when she gets in bed, but not quite as fast as she used to.  And some nights when she’s upset, she needs her mommy with her.  Last night she was over tired and was upset about various minor issues, and by the time she was getting in bed she was in a terrible state.  Joel got her calmed down for the most part, and then as he said goodnight and left the room I knelt by her bed holding her hand.  I knelt there whispering to her that I loved her and every now and then giving her a little kiss until she fell asleep, and it struck me that sleep isn’t an escape route for her anymore.  Sleep is now just… sleep.  And as she held my hand in her slowly relaxing grip and sniffled her way to her dreams, I knew for certain that we had arrived at a wonderful place in our journey.  I was fully her mommy, and she was fully my girl.