Bedroom for Two

We moved into our house six years ago now. It's the longest I've ever lived in one place as an adult, after hopping through a line of dorm rooms and rentals.

It is a fine house, and we are grateful to have it. That said, it was built in the 1970s, and it has had a few owners with terrible unusual taste since then. Both of those facts have left their marks on the house, from the popcorn ceilings in many of the rooms to the strange two-tone carpeting choice in the hall stairs. My mind (and Pinterest boards) are full of ideas for changes I'd like to make, both big and small, but, alas, time and money are not unlimited.

When baby Trey arrived, we knew we'd need to figure out the bedroom situation fairly soon, since we now had three children to fit into two bedrooms. Of all the combinations, having Mari and Eddie share a room for the next few years was the one that seemed to make the most sense (and the one they were most enthusiastic about). Snuggled together in my bed one morning, they decided on a nature theme and we set about designing what would soon be their room.

In keeping with Schade tradition, what probably would be a weekend project for some has taken us almost half a year.  Todd and I somehow managed to keep our marriage intact while putting in a tongue-and-groove ceiling (no! more! popcorn!) in an un-air conditioned house during what turned out to be the hottest week of the summer. But over the past several months walls were painted, furniture rearranged, ugly light fixtures banished, and new curtains sewn, all with Mari and Eddie making excited choices along the way.

Yesterday I was putting the finishing touches on the climbing wall mural (there is a climbing wall!) and realized that we were almost finally finished with the room. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's become my favorite space in our house. I love resting on the fuzzy green area rug the kids call The Grass, staring up at the wood ceiling. I love the shared sibling space with its bright, outdoors-y colors. I love that the big kids were finally old enough to help create a space they enjoy. It is the one room in our home that finally feels completely "us," and it's a reminder of the wonderful changes that happened in our family this past year that led to its creation.

This is part of the first Open Adoption Blog Hop. Bloggers are answering the question, "What is your favorite room/spot/piece of art in your home?" 

You can visit other participating blogs (and join in the fun yourself) at Open Adoption Bloggers.

Six

Dear Eddie,

You settled into being six years old a few months ago now. It is, thus far, a slightly taller version of five: the same intent love for Legos; the same need to run and jump and explore; the same fierce desire to snuggle together for books at bedtime. Your blankie is still your most treasured possession.

There is also, in the last two months, a new found fascination with all things football. It is your father's fault; he got in there before I could snag you with an appreciation for something more civilized. We recently interviewed a string of potential babysitters and, after (mostly) patiently listening to them answer our boring, adult questions about things like discipline, you got to ask them your burning question: "What is your favorite football team, college and professional?"

We hired a 49ers fan. I hope you approve. At least you are quickly learning to add by 2s, 3s, 6s, and 7s.

This is the year of kindergarten, the tip of the iceberg of crumpled papers in backpacks, never-ending school concerts, and days governed by the bell. On your first day, I gave you a smooth pebble to carry in your pocket, telling you I had loaded it with kisses and all you needed to do was touch it if you were scared or lonely and needed a reminder of my love. That afternoon I stood with a crowd of other parents, anxiously holding my breath and waiting for school to end. The school was so big and that day you seemed so small. Would you leave holding back tears? Confused? Hating school and begging never to return? Then I saw you coming through the double doors, tiny amid those big kids, wide-eyed but confident. You slipped your hand into mine; as we walked down the sidewalk you looked up me with a soft smile and said, "I only needed to use my rock twice!" My heart soared like a balloon released from its weight.

Sending you to school feels like another big step in the sometimes painful, often joyful process of watching you slowly grow ever more independent. Inevitably more and more of your day will happen away from my eyes. Already I feel out of touch with your social scene in a way I never was before this, gleaning whatever I can about your friendships from the snippets you tell me after school. It's different, but not sad. There is something right about watching you branch out, bright and sure of yourself. Because that's the point of this parenting gig, right? Somehow we hope to help you feel so deeply rooted and loved here that you are able to go out confidently on your own.

Each weekday as we leave for the walk to school, I speak a blessing over you, our own private ritual for transitioning into that part of the day. I love the final lines: "May he bring you home rejoicing at the wonders he has shown you. May he bring you home rejoicing once again into our doors." They capture the heart of what parenting is for me right now, what it will be throughout our lives together--that opening of the arms to send you out in the world and the joyful opening of the arms to welcome you home.

Love,
Mama

The Simple Things

One of the nice things about having a six year old is that you've had enough years to turn repetition into tradition. This Thanksgiving morning the kids woke up all excited, knowing there were pumpkin cinnamon rolls baking and soon we'd sit around the table, gobbling down rolls and making our big thankfulness poster. This year we drew a row of handprint turkeys across the bottom and filled the rest with all sorts of people and things for which we're grateful.

This probably crosses into only-the-parents-find-it-amusing-please-put-away-that-seventieth-picture-of-the-baby territory, but I wanted to capture some of what Eddie and Marian contributed. I love hearing about the tiny things that make them happy.

• Building Legos
• Gourds
• Blankie
• My stuffed animals
• Rubber bands
• Chairs and rugs
• Fire
• Nativity set
• My pants
• Rice
• Toy story undies
• Target
• Lollipops
• Library
• Outside
• Glue
• A blue sweatshirt
• Colors

Whether this was Thanksgiving for you or just another Thursday, I hope there was something that made you happy in it. Your pants, perhaps? Gourds? Rubber bands?

Interview with Eddie

Eddie let me do this little interview with him that I've seen floating around the internet. His answer for #20 may be my favorite.

Overlapping Family

Eddie came bounding out of school one day last week all full of excitement over a little photo album he won when his table group collected the most points for following directions. He knew exactly what he wanted to do with it: "Fill it up with pictures of my family."

I set him up with the laptop, open to Picasa. He paged through the last year diligently, pausing occasionally to ask me to add a photo to his print order.

He added pictures of Todd, Mari, and me, of course. His grandparents, cousins, and uncle. A photo of himself on his first day of kindergarten. One from a ridiculously exciting trip to a Star Wars museum exhibit.

He added pictures of himself with his first dad, Ray, and his first mom, Kelly, from this summer.  No surprise for an adopted child who has grown up with his birth parents present in his life.

Then he searched for a photo of Marian's first mom, Beth, and added it, too.

"Pictures of my family."

That's how it is around here: my son counts as kin his adoptive sister's biological mother. There isn't any official familial relationship between them. There aren't any easy labels to describe who she is to him. I haven't the foggiest idea what a genealogical chart would make of it. But she's his sister's first mom and an important part of his life. That's enough for him right now.

I used to think the untidiness of "family" in open adoption--the way it doesn't neatly fit on the standard family tree--was sort of an unfortunate, but necessary thing. Something to be accepted as part of the bigger package. But the opposite is true; my family is stronger because its tent is stretched wide. It has created a space in which my son can claim Beth as his family just as easily as he claims his own first mom or me, the mom he lives with. In our house family is the people you live with and the people whose heritage you carry, but it's also the important people love you and are committed to you. It's hard for me to see anything unfortunate about that.

Quoted

Me, to Marian: "You used to be Baby Mari, but not anymore!"

Eddie: "Now you're Baby Awesome!"

A Boy of Gentle Spirit

We offer the kids many small choices throughout the day, in the grand tradition of Love & Logic and oodles of other similar parenting approaches. "Buddy, do you want to leave the playground in five minutes or in three minutes?" "Would you like to brush your teeth first or put on your jammies first?"

Eddie now has five years under his belt of hearing such statements. And clearly the technique has sunk in, though perhaps not the principles behind it. The other day while in the kitchen I overheard him calmly explain, "Mari, these are your choices. Do you want to give me your balloon or get hit in the face?"

(She gave him the balloon.)

At Bedtime

"Mommy, am I your five-year old baby?"

"You are my five-year old baby."

"I'm your BIG baby."

"You're my big, big baby."

"What about when I'm bigger and bigger and an adult?"

"Even when you're 35 and 45 and 75, I'll still be your mommy and you still be my baby."

"Just a giant baby! What about when Mari is bigger?"

"She'll always be my girl-baby and you'll always be my boy-baby."

"Even when I'm 105!"

"Even then."

"I like that."

"Happy birthday, buddy."

Renaming My Kids and Not In the Way You Might Think

The following things are true:

• I've always thought that if I ever had kids the regular old birth way, I'd wait to get to know them a bit before choosing names for them. It's always seemed odd to me that we parents name our children before ever meeting them face to face. Naming that way wasn't an option the way Puppy and Firefly came to us, and in the end the process of naming each of them was meaningful in other ways.  But it wasn't long with either of the kids before I looked at them and thought, "Oh, they're really more of a [this whole other name we had never considered]." It's not something that keeps me up at night, tossing with regret, but it is something I think about on occasion.
  
  
• When I started writing here, Puppy was a two-month old nugget of baby awesome, totally dependent on us for everything. Giving him a cute online nickname seemed fitting. Now he's growing into a more independent little guy every day, expressing all sorts of complex thoughts and stories. For awhile now whenever I've sat down to write about him I want to call him something more real, more person-ish. The same is just beginning to happen with Firefly.
  
  
• Nicknaming an adopted kid "Puppy" in a world in which pet adoption programs exist was dumb. It just was, even if it was only on a blog and even if it was a play on words based on his actual name. That's one of the scary thing about blogging, at least for me. If you're writing honestly and openly, all of your mistakes and missteps are preserved for the world to view. But it doesn't mean I can't try to make it right after the fact.
  
  
• It occurred to me the other day that, unlike in the real world, I can change the kids' blog names whenever I please. And finally have a chance to bestow on them the names I think so fit their little selves.

So, without further ado, meet Eddie (short for Edward)...

...and Marian, often called Mari (sounds like "merry").

Babies Don't Eat Pie. Poor Babies.

I made tiny pies! Cup-pies, for those of you still carrying a torch for Pushing Daisies.

I'm quite taken with them. They were for a baby shower I helped host. When Puppy heard the menu, he was concerned. "But, Mom, babies can't eat any of that!"

(When did he start calling me "mom"? He's only four! At least Firefly still thinks of me as Mama. I'm not sure I'm ready to be Mom all the time.)

It's a kick to be able to actually talk with him and get a glimpse into his thoughts. When he was still a baby, I remember being almost melancholy at the thought that he would grow into boyhood. He was my perfect widdle baybee and I couldn't imagine that it could possibly get any better than it was at that stage. But it did. It really did. And it will again.

The Ladybug Incident

I have been struggling with insomnia the past couple of weeks (the up-till-4:00 a.m. kind), so forgive me if this rambles.

Awhile back I mentioned the difficulty Puppy has saying goodbye to certain people and objects and a few of you wrote to say your kids have similar intense reactions. I wanted to share bit of artwork he did with me, because it's such a clear example of how strongly he sometimes reacts when certain people/things leave and how he's growing in dealing with those feelings.

Several months ago, I was working out in the back yard. The kids were playing. Puppy had found a little ladybug that he was carrying around and carefully putting onto different leaves. He'd chatter about the ladybug with me, running off and then coming back to check on the ladybug again. The ladybug was no fool, and at some point ran off while the preschooler wasn't looking.

Puppy was so, so sad. Tears and wailing and wanting his friend to come back. All about a ladybug he had played with for all of twenty minutes--but who had left him. After my usual responses ("I saw how much you were enjoying the ladybug," "You sound very sad that it left," etc.) and doing some wishful thinking with him about finding the ladybug again one day (which always helps to calm him down), we went inside and sat down together to work on this (click to embiggen):

"I lost my best friend. She was great. We might find her again. Or I'll be very sad. I think we'll find her again. I hope we will."

He dictated the story to me and asked me to draw a picture according to his very specific instructions. He added the spots to the big ladybug and drew the one that looks a bit like an ant. The big ladybug is a mama bug carrying her babies on her back. The baby bug closest to the mama's head is his buggy best friend.

He was very focused while we worked. When we finished he kept coming back to talk about it for a couple of hours, then tucked it away behind a cabinet in his room (that's why it's crumpled) and said it was private. He didn't even want to show it to Todd that night. He continued to bring up the missing ladybug for quite awhile, especially when we'd go in the yard, but without the same intensity of emotion he's often had in the past in these sort of situations. Writing it out seemed to bring him back to equilibrium--like he had put all his emotions onto the paper, and because the paper continued to exist he didn't need to carry the emotions with him.

My gut tells me that watching special people/things leave will always be hard for Puppy. But as he's getting older, he's finding more helpful ways to express his emotions. And by "helpful," I mean helpful to him: tools to give himself a feeling of control in the situation and ways to channel his feelings. I was glad to see that he's figuring out it is okay for him to decide when and to who he wants to tell things, too.

No, this wasn't about adoption. And, yes, I noticed that his picture was of a mama carrying her babies with her so they would always be near. But when I think about talking with my kids about adoption, I do think about days like that one. Because I feel that one of my biggest jobs as a parent is giving him tools to wrangle with the complicated and emotional things in life--and adoption is one of those things for him. I know some people are going to say I was indulging him. Honestly, part of me wanted to roll my eyes and say, "Your 'best friend'? Are you kidding me? It's a bug. That you found less than an hour ago." But look at the payoff in taking his emotions about an insect seriously: he got practice in helpfully dealing with sadness and I got another chance to earn his trust.

I pulled out the paper from its hiding spot this week when I was cleaning. He was excited to see it. It was clear that he still considers the ladybug incident as a Very Significant Event. But now he wanted to show the paper to other people and talked about it freely and even cheerfully. Which is why I felt comfortable asking him if I could share it with you.

Four Years Old Is Fun

Puppy runs through the house, shrieking, "Ow-uh-ow-uh-ow-uh-ow-uh!"

"Buddy!" says I. "What's going on? Why the yelling?"

He stops moving. He ponders. And ponders some more. Then finally turns to me and says, "I need to think about it more. But it has something to do with dragons."

I'm totally tucking that response away for the next time someone asks me a question I'm just not sure how to answer.

Q&A: Adopting Again?

Asks Susiebook of Endure for a Night (with whom I recently closed out a Starbucks and who is both lovely and gracious):

Under what circumstances, if any, would you adopt again?

You're trying to get me in trouble, aren't you? Heh.

• If we were ever asked to adopt a sibling of Puppy or Firefly. I really don't ever see this happening--nor do I want it to happen, because how awful for whichever first parent involved--but there it is.
  
  
• If we do end up doing foster care (we're registered to start the certification process this summer as sort of an exploratory thing) and if a child in our home became available for adoption and if we were the best permanent spot for them. Those are three pretty enormous ifs.
  
  
• If I ever found a progressive, ethically respectable, reasonably priced program somewhere that primarily placed African-American children and worked with residents of my state. But even then I'm not sure.

If I selfishly think only about our household, I would love to adopt transracially again. Then I take our little household and put it back into the bigger world in which adoption involves the real lives of other real people and real open adoption relationships and real moral conundrums and real money and real emotions and all of a sudden I don't know what I want.

For those keeping track, Puppy has downgraded his original request for two brothers and two more sisters to just one additional sister. He also specifies that he needs to stay the oldest. During his haircut the other week, the stylist asked him he had any brothers or sisters in addition to Firefly. He told her, "No, just her. But we're thinking of getting some more."* Apparently he's got this under control.

* No, of course Todd and I don't talk about "getting more" kids. That's the four-year old talking.

Socks. Just Socks.

I'm swimming in the busy around here! Is everyone else feeling the press of the to-do list right now? Somehow the week before Christmas is always busier than the week of for me.

Some tidbits in lieu of anything substantive:

• Puppy got to talk to two different Santas while we were out and about this weekend. Both had real beards, which I give two thumbs up. The first was your standard big-belly, sit-on-my-lap guy. The second was a rugged, skinny outdoorsman type wandering around a state park lodge. Santa Claus as a pioneer, if you will. He cracked me up; only around here would Santa look like he's about to build a log cabin.
  
  
• Puppy told both Santas that he wanted blue socks for Christmas. That's it: blue socks. 

• For all of you with itty bitty babies in your house or in your future, my favorite baby wrap carrier is on sale right now. I wrote up a whole Sleepy Wrap review* awhile back, but the summary version is that it's super soft, cozy and simple. (It's stretchier than a Moby Wrap, which I think makes it a bit easier to use.) Great for promoting attachment. Firefly spent many happy hours in ours during her first several months. There's a free shipping offer running right now and coupon code MAMAROCKS gets you 10% off. Between the two discounts it's $35 shipped, which is the best price I've seen in a long time.
  
  
• Firefly's first mom, Beth, is coming up to stay with us this weekend. Hurrah! Our Christmas visit was canceled last year because of snow, so I'm glad things are working out this this time. I do need to get moving on a Christmas present for her, though. Oops.

* Hi, FTC! I bought my Sleepy Wrap with my own pennies and don't get any kickbacks from them. Are we cool?

Dirty Joke

"Mama! I have a dirty old joke to tell."

"A what?"

"A dirty old joke. Listen!"

"Okay."

"A race car was driving and it got stuck in a MUD PUDDLE! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

One of 6.7 Billion

"I love you, Mama."

"I love you, too!"

"But I love everybody."

Protected: Coffee Talk

Show protected post

Just email me if you want the password. :)

Puppy's Goodbyes

The lovely mama2roo asks ...

"Puppy does have an unusually strong reaction to people leaving. Or really to anything going away." I'd like to hear more about this as it echoes in my ears as I think about Woob. I want to know I'm not imagining things or making things up.

I'm not sure how to describe it other than to say when we have special visitors, he gets terribly sad when they leave. Almost distraught. He buries his head in our legs and sobs like his heart is breaking. Sometimes it lingers for a day or two as him being a little "off." You can see a lot of it going on in this old post written after one of Ray's visits.

My brother was in town for just one day the other week as part of a business trip. He and Puppy always have a great time together--Justin is incredible with kids and Puppy oozes affection right back. We had dinner together and they played and played. When we left Puppy did his usual falling apart at the thought that Uncle Justin was going back to New York. It was the first time my brother had witnessed it. It shook him up so much he brought it up with my mom the next day on the phone. "He was so sad," he said.

It's not separation anxiety. He's fine leaving us when he needs to, has no problems transitioning at the babysitter's house or at the church nursery or what have you. He's always been a bit of an explorer. This is about people coming to him and then leaving. And it's not just people. We pulled out a small bush in our yard that he's never so much as glanced at and suddenly he's crying, "I always loved that bush." That sort of thing.

The common thread is always someone or something going away and him being very sad about that loss of presence. It's also very important for him to know people miss him. He often asks if I missed him after he's been at the babysitter's or even when he and Todd just go off to run an errand.

Here I'm tempted to speculate about what's going on for him, but I'll refrain. Sudden mood swings are completely normal for an almost-four year old. It's the outsized nature of the swings when it comes to saying goodbye to certain people that has my antennae pinging. I could certainly imagine reasons for why that happens, but I'm not imagining that it happens. Is it about adoption? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't really buy into the idea that adoption can be separated out from the rest of his identity--it is part and parcel of who he is. I'm clinging to Dr. Pavao's notion that adoption is always going to add a certain complexity as Puppy works through the usual developmental stages--and that that complexity is healthy and normal. Adoption isn't something our kids work through separately from everything else that is going on for them cognitively and emotionally. They do it in bits and pieces and always in tandem with whatever else is going on in their amazing growing minds.

So we sit with him while he cries. We acknowledge his feelings. We emphasize the permanency of things that are permanent. We talk a lot about loved ones who live far away, trying to establish for him that those bonds still exist even when we can't be together. We model missing people and trusting that we will see them again just by talking about our own emotions in front of him. We don't "make it about adoption," and yet we do, because we include his birth parents in the constellation of loved ones who come and go; we acknowledge that they aren't present and let him be sad about that when he is. For now, it's all we know to do.

I'm in Africa Moment

Long ago, while I was still a college student, I spent the summer in West Africa with some friends. We were there long enough that we settled into a semblance of a routine and the sights and sounds and foods began to grow familiar. Eventually we stopped talking about all the new things we were experiencing and instead went about our day chattering and laughing about the small things of life. If someone were to only have audio for our conversations, they would have never guessed we weren't just walking across the quad back at school. It is how human minds work, I suppose. The familiar, or even semi-familiar, fades into the background.

I remember so clearly one afternoon late in our stay when we were waiting by an empty school playground for our transportation to arrive. The school was on the edge of the town; to one side of us was a dirt road leading back to scattered brick buildings, to the other side and ahead of us stretched empty land and community fields, seas of broad green leaves of the crops. We had waited like that, in that spot, dozens of times before, and we were just killing time, joking around with each other about who knows what. Except one woman in our group, who stood with a distant look on her face. "I'm in Africa," she suddenly said, apropos of nothing. "We're in Africa." And immediately all of us were aware of the red earth around us, the broad purple sky stretching endlessly above, the feel of the humid air on our skin as we collectively took in the amazing privilege of standing on a continent nearly half a world away from where we were born.

Ever since then, Todd (who was one of the friends on the trip) and I have used "I'm in Africa" as our personal shorthand. It stands in for those unexpected, defining moments we have every now and then. Not the exceptional moments that are of course burned into your memory (your wedding day, seeing your child's face for the first time). But those otherwise ordinary occasions when you briefly step back from the flow of life and think, "Wow, I'm suddenly aware of how hugely significant this time is." When you realize you're in the job you love, or are now somebody's spouse, or are standing in a place you always wanted to visit. After we moved, I was flipping a light switch one night and thought, "Holy crap, I own a house." In those times, "I'm having an 'I'm in Africa' moment," is all Todd and I need to say for the other one to understand what's going on.

I had an Africa moment last night. It was at the beginning of the end of a long day, right as the sun was setting. I sometimes feel like my whole parenting day is about keeping us on certain trajectories: out the door in the morning, toward dinner in the evening, to bed after dinner. Not that we don't often enjoy ourselves along the way, but I'm always keeping the schedule in the back of my mind while focusing on whatever task or shorties' crisis is at hand. But last night I was next to Puppy in his bed, reading a story aloud like I have countless times before. We sat together, our legs stretched out under his sheet, his tiny blond head bent down toward the picture on the pages as twilight took over the room. And out of the blue I was overwhelmed with the thought, "I am this awesome little boy's mother and we're reading together the way I used to dream about doing." It was such a rejuvenating, uplifting flash. I'm still humming with the happiness of that tiny moment, hours later.

Have you had an "I'm in Africa" moment lately?

Pictures for Mom

A couple Sundays ago, on Mother's Day, I found Puppy coloring a picture at the dining room table. We had been drawing cards together all week to send off to the many grandmothers and first moms in our family for Mother's Day. I asked him what he was working on.

"It's a picture for my mom," he told me.

We play a game often, a game which ends in grins and snuggles. "Who's my baby boy," I'll ask. "I am!" he'll squeal happily, throwing his arms in the air. More often, Puppy is the one starting it off. "Am I your baby bear?," he'll ask. "Are you my mama bear?"

That Sunday as he colored in the afternoon sunlight, I smiled and asked him, "Who's your mom," slipping into our familiar routine.

"Kelly," he said, his eyes never leaving the paper, his tiny hands still coloring. "Kelly, my mom. Birthmom Kelly. My mom."

***

Puppy and I had a hard couple of days together right before Mother's Day weekend. Really hard. The kind that fill up with thunder and tears and end in quiet crowded with regret. The sort of days we never seemed to have when he was younger and less independent, when I was watching over one child instead of two.

Those kinds of days when I'm not the kind of parent I want to be--the kind of parent I want to believe I can be--tap into fears that normally stay tucked deep away. The little voice starts up that says your kids didn't have to end up with you, you were supposed to be better, you chose this, they could have had parents who never lost their temper... It is hard to even admit that I think those things. If I had birthed my kids, the little voice would probably find some other impossibly high standard to hold me to. But I am a parent through adoption, so this is what it says to me.

Hearing Puppy unexpectedly call Kelly "mom" that afternoon, something that would have been more of an interesting observation on another occasion, hit me in a spot that was already tender. What on another day would be just words, on that day made me draw up tight inside.

***

"This side [of the paper] is an elephant. And this [side] is us. This is Kelly [pointing to the largest figure]. And Daddy and Firefly and me [three smaller figures in a row]. We're kids. Here, I'll draw you in, too. You can be a baby."

"It looks great, buddy. Have you been thinking about Kelly today?"

"Yeah. You can color with me, Mommy. Draw a horse for me."

***

I can hit 'publish' on this finally because Puppy and I have had some wonderful days together since that week. We're back in our groove. Maybe that is small of me to admit that I had to have some of my confidence restored before I could share this, but it's the truth. We went back to our equilibrium almost right after that Sunday, in fact.

I've been thinking more about those hard days leading up to Mother's Day. The past several months, since a little bit before Puppy's sister's birth (Kelly's daughter, not Firefly) I've been struggling with a lot of frustration in our open adoption. Babies and marriages and the like change how we relate to the people already in our lives; that is just reality. We have less time available, less emotional energy. Those changes can bring up hurts we thought were behind us. But sometimes people deal with those shifting relationships and emotions by simply pushing out the people who were there before. It's a hard thing for me to understand, especially when the one pushed aside is so young. It was on my mind more than usual as Mother's Day approached.

At the same time, Puppy is getting older and starting to have expectations of the people in his life. He's sorting out, in a basic way, what it means to have birth family and reaching out more. It would take so little to make him feel loved and important. A birthday card. A phone call. Part of me now wonders how much that was in this thoughts with all the talk of Mother's Day. If my struggle to practice compassion and his questions collided beneath the surface.

***

If there is anything that is true about open adoption, it is that it's about our kids, not ourselves. We meet them where they're in at in in any given moment. That day we sat and drew and talked a little about Kelly. Puppy finished his picture and asked me to mail it off. We colored together as the sky turned pink outside and I wished that I could read his mind. And wished that loving people wasn't so complicated.