"twins"

I've decided it doesn't matter what size or color they are, if they are sitting in a double stroller together, people will ask if they are twins. It has happened with Brett and Lydia, Lydia and Reggie, and - today - with Brett and Reggie. Twice.

With different races, people are being rude. With the brothers, people just aren't very observant.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Lydia!

12 months:


13 months: 14 months:

15 months:

16 months:17 months: 18 months:
19 months:20 months:

21 months:

22 months:
23 Months:2 years!

giving thanks

thanksGing Is a time to think about eVerything wE are THANKful for - it iS easy To get caught up in the cares Of THis world and losE sight of all our bLessings. tO name a few, bRett, lyDia, Friends, our warm hOme, Reggie, my Husband, hEalth, holIday celebrations, a loving baby-Sitter, Grandparents, staying-at-hOme, bryan's jOb, and delicious fooD!

(1 Chronicles 16:34)

quote of the day

Me: "The B-I-B-L-E, Yes that's the book for me...What's that spell?"

Lydia: "God!"

Adoption: Loss and Grief

Not long ago, it was common belief and practice for everyone in the adoption triad (birthfamily, adoptive parents, adoptee) to move through life "as if" relinquishment didn't matter. But what has been learned over time is that relinquishment has a price.

Ron Nydam states, "There is part of the adoptee's heart that can never be adopted; the part forever connected to birthparents and birth history." Nydam goes on to explain how relinquishment and adoption are related and yet very separate. There cannot be an adoption without a relinquishment - and while adoption is beautiful, relinquishment is a great loss.

I think as adoptive parents we must be cautious not to have our feelings hinge too strongly on one and not give attention to the other. A faulty belief is that we (adoptive parents) are somehow being rejected when our children experience grief-and all the emotions that come with it-over their relinquishment. If we lived in the ideal, relinquishment would never be necessary, but in reality there is this alternate familial design of adoption. Bryan and I are the beneficiaries of very unfortunate circumstances. But we can be sad and confused and angry with our boys about their relinquishments and still be thrilled that the relinquishments resulted in us being a forever family.

It is our goal to help them navigate through the loss and grief that comes throughout development and find forgiveness and restoration. Some suggestions that the book offers to aide this process are: facing our own pains; opening the conversations such as sharing concern about the well-being of the child's birthfamily; inviting conversations about sorrow with particular sensitivity to trigger days (like Mother's Day); honoring birth cultures, birth stories, and birthfamilies; practicing openness in adoption (referring to an ongoing relationship with the birthfamily); sharing the burden of the loss with the child (Galatians 6:2); and seeking professional help if necessary.

Coincidentally, just a Brett was going off to bed tonight, a mention of Daddy's upcoming trip to Tennessee brought on a "geography" lesson of how Tennessee is almost as far as Georgia - where Brett was born.

"It's snowman!"

Monday: Tuesday:

Saturday:

We started out the week with unseasonably warm 60's and playgrounds and we ended our week with winter's first real snowfall. Knowing what's ahead for the next several months, my preference is pretty clear. But the kids were absolutely delighted to wake up to the sight of snow. Even before sunrise, Brett was begging to play outside and - meaning to say "It's snowing"- Lydia kept saying, "It's snowman!"

Adoption: Sibling and Extended Family Relationships

This chapter of the book focuses on some of the challenges and joys we can expect to experience with our extended families and, if applicable, other children in the immediate family - both in our announcement to adopt and after the adopted child(ren) are home.

The book has some wonderful suggestions for how to open a discussion of the possibility of an adoption with children already in the family(specifically, biological) and helping everyone ease into being a family uniquely pieced together by God. Our family doesn't quite fit this scenario - our children - bio and adopted - essentially came all at once and as far as we can tell none of them have figured any of it out yet! Since they are so close in age, I speculate the kids will pretty much all start to conceptualize adoption at the same time, and that is bound to be...interesting.

Since we discovered we would be a family built both through adoption and biology, we have been aware that we have a "dynamic" or "layer" in our family that families with all adopted children or all biological children don't have. It is pretty much inevitable that Lydia will spout off something mean to one/both of her brothers about not "belonging", just like it is pretty much inevitable that one/both of my boys will at some point tell me I am not their "real" mom. There is no way to stop it from hurting. It will hurt, but it will also be an opportunity to extend grace and ultimately strengthen our bond. But for now, we are making sure all our children know they are unconditionally loved. There is nothing hard about doing that.

It's a little intimidating to blog about extended family relationships because our extended family makes up most of the readers of this blog! But the basic advice that the book provided was to present the prospect of adoption gracefully over time. We did a terrible job of this. With the exception of our parents, we proudly announced our decision to adopt to our extended families as though we were expecting by traditional means - and expected a similar response. But the thing about adoption is unless you have allowed your family to journey with you in your process of deciding to adopt, they are probably caught off-guard and don't know what an appropriate response is.

I think it is important for Bryan and I to recognize that adoption -and, more overtly, transracial adoption - is something we chose while our extended families did not. But when we are out together as a group or if they want to display pictures of our boys, they are going to get the same stares and questions we do.

We have learned that some preconceptions come out over time and indirectly. Some mind-sets came out when we announced our pregnancy-it hurt a little to have people who were seemingly indifferent to our adoption be so excited about a pregnancy. And again there were some subtle objections to our decision to adopt our third child. Let's face it - we didn't need anyone to tell us we were acting irrationally - we knew it. It is hard to imagine that we would have missed out on one of our children had we acted rationally...

Far beyond any opposition, our extended families have been overwhelmingly supportive. As our social worker encouraged us, most of our families' concerns were "cured at the airport". Our families have fully embraced our boys as their grandbabies, great-grandbabies, nephews, or cousins.

I realized I missed National Adoption Day on November 5th-a special day each year where thousands of adoptions are finalized. But I will still post the video:

quote of the day

Lydia to Brett after a successful trip to the bathroom:

"Pee-pee potty? High Five!"

Reggie is 1.25!

Reggie is already 15 months old! He weighs 25 pounds and wears mostly size 18 months clothes and size 6 shoes. He just cut his 9th tooth.

Reggie eats just about everything, although he is not particularly fond of green vegetables. He sleeps from about 7:30pm-5:30am and usually naps for a couple hours in the afternoon.

Reggie has recovered from his little accident with the wooden spoon. I think his sensitive skin is looking better than ever - I've changed his soap, lotion, diapers, our wash clothes and laundry detergent and something appears to be working! Bryan says it's time for a haircut, but I disagree-his hair is wild but manageable.

In addition to his attraction to long skinny objects, Reggie likes to throw balls around, climb, and roughhouse. He loves to dance - and does a pretty good impression of a chicken. He has started showing more interest in books. The kids' newest game is playing "hide-and-seek" under Reggie's bed, since I just put the dust ruffle on it.

Reggie's latest endeavor has been to climb up and down stairs standing up, rather than crawling. We are also trying to encourage him to use his spoon for it's intended purpose. He can follow simple one-step instructions. I think his expressive language grows everyday. Here is a partial list of things he says:

Momma, Daddy, Brett, Lydia, Reggie, Papa

Hi, bye-bye, night-night

snack, cracker, banana, apple

all done, help please, no, yes (no usually means no; it's unclear what yes means)

up, down, stuck

bed, bath, outside, car, dance, lego, shoe, Wiggles

cow (his favorite), cat, dog, donkey, duck

Reggie has one speed: turbo! I have lots of pictures of him like this:

big girl bed

We're a one-crib family!

"excellent"

Got another report in the mail from Brett's latest evaluation. Eight single-spaced 10pt-font pages of otherwise discouraging news. But I'm choosing to focus on one word:

"excellent"

As in: "Potential for progress: Excellent."

It has been one of those dying-to-know-not-sure-if-I'm-ready-to-hear-the-answer questions keeping me awake at night - can he make progress?

And so we press on.

Adoption: Attachment and Bonding

November is National Adoption Awareness Month. Each Friday during the month of November, I intend to blog about an adoption-related issue. My primary source of information will be the book, Thriving as an Adoptive Family, published by Focus on the Family. Although I just recently added it to our library, I would highly recommend it to any Christian family who is considering adoption or in the process of adopting. It gives a research-based general overview of various adoption-related issues with a Christian perspective.

I considered not writing about attachment and bonding because our family has seemed to accomplish this fundamental goal. But it is the first obstacle that every adoptive family must overcome. So I will share some things that I think we did right, and somethings we could have done better.

All babies need to attach to their primary caregiver(s) and this is accomplished through the Needs-Arousal Cycle (Healthy Attachment Cycle):

->Baby has a need->Baby cries-> Caregiver meets the need ->Trust develop->

It is often the case that when families adopt a newborn, bonding is much like bonding with a child born to them. However, research suggests, and I firmly believe that even when babies are placed with their families at birth or shortly after, they experience a trauma - a broken bond - and that wound needs attention.

Brett and Reggie were placed in our arms at 15 days and 20 days of age. In their brief existence, I was their third mom. April was their first mom and they each had a foster mom. One can imagine that this could be quite unsettling to a new baby just entering the world - different smells, sounds, touches, routines...all of this in addition to what every new baby experiences of suddenly being outside the womb.

To attend to this difficult transition into the world, Bryan and I set a couple of ground rules from the start. We were the only ones to hold our babies for their first week with us. The second week, extended family was allowed to hold the babies, but not meet any of their needs (feeding, diapering, comforting...) This was a little difficult with Brett because we came home with him right at the holidays, but our families had been informed on these rules in advance, and everyone was respectful of them. When Reggie came, everyone knew what to expect!

In addition, for the first 3+ months, to the best of our ability, we responded to every cry. We did not attempt any type of "cry-it-out" sleep method. As I have previously discussed, we also carried and wore all of our babies a whole lot. At 25 lbs., I still wear Reggie in a backpack nearly everyday, to a point where I have noticed I am starting to get varicose veins on the backs of my knees! (Although, now I wear him more in an effort to confine him than to bond with him.)

A couple things I would consider doing if we were to adopt a newborn in the future, as suggested by the book, would be skin-to-skin contact and nursing (which is often possible with medical support). Also, with Brett, it was easy to spend lots of one-to-one quality time together, but I would have liked to have had more of that quality time to bond with Reggie.

With Brett, we did not notice any signs of a difficult transition into our family. However, Reggie cried almost non-stop his first few weeks in our family. We thought we had another "colicky" baby, but something clicked after a few weeks, and he was a much happier baby. In retrospect, we think he was missing his foster mom (she had told us he was a content baby).

Infants and children who have experienced trauma in their early life (such as being abused by their primary caregiver) or never had the opportunity to bond with one or two significant caregivers (such as infants in orphanages) are more likely to have challenges with bonding. Families considering adoption should be informed and prepared to encounter these challenges. In most cases, families are able to overcome the initial challenges of bonding over time. But we have all heard sad stories of children who were so badly wounded by the time they entered their adoptive family, despite their family's greatest efforts, the child was incapable of attachment. I appreciate how the book points out that in most cases, it is not the family's fault - the child would have rejected any family. For all of us who have not experienced the reality of living with a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), it is important not to judge and to show support for these families. Noone goes into adoption hoping it will fail.

On another note, Focus on the Family recently had the Chapman's on their broadcast to share their story of adoption. (If you listen to the broadcast, be aware the first couple minutes is politics-oriented -in my view-the one downfall of Focus!) Also, many churches will be recognizing Orphan Sunday this Sunday.