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On behalf of myself, my kids and all of us who are grateful to The Wiggles for producing outstanding children’s music and entertainment, I want to offer a heartfelt “Get well soon!” to Greg Wiggle (a.k.a. Greg Page).  We attended a concert last night and learned that the yellow Wiggle is home in Australia dealing with a significant illness (the identification of that illness varies depending on which internet rumor you believe).  The concert was great fun, but it just wasn’t the same without Greg’s melodious voice.  Greg, we hope you’re up and pointing your fingers and doing the twist again very soon.

I know I promised part II of my adoption discussion today, but I must beg my readers’ forgiveness and ask you to return for that post later this week.  Since being woken at 4:30 a.m. today by my daughter’s hacking cough (she went back to sleep; I didn’t), I have labored hard all day and created the following:

A giant bowl of black pasta with orange peppers;

Several pounds of “Witch’s Hair and Bug Salad”;

Five Peanut Butter Spider Sandwiches;

A large roasting pan full of autumnal vegetables;

One “Buried Witch Cake”;

And seven ghosts in chocolate cups.

I then set up for my annual Halloween dinner party (leaving my harried husband to deal with my sick, unhappy daughter and my restless, couldn’t-wait-to-dress-up-as-Buzz-Lightyear son), served the guests, ate WAY too much food and made a half-hearted attempt to clean up the house after various little goblins spread toys and chaos throughout.

Aside from my daughter’s unhappy illness, it was Halloween dinner just the way I like it.

However, the day’s activities have fried my brain, and I cannot do the adoption discussion justice now.  Besides, our Monday holds the promise of what has become another annual tradition: our trip to see The Wiggles in concert!  So to bed I go, crossing my fingers all the while that my daughter will be well enough tomorrow to appreciate her first opportunity to Wiggle live. 

Halloween AND The Wiggles; the adoption discussion will just have to wait!

(Credits: the pasta dish and the Witch Cake recipes are from Gourmet magazine, October 1995; the salad recipe is modified from one found at www.care2.com; the peanut butter spiders are modified from a recipe located at the National Geographic Kids Magazine website; and the ghost recipe appeared in Parents magazine in October 2002.)

One of the many downsides to our celebrity-driven culture is that anything a famous person does can spark public controversy, and, as that controversy is hashed out in the media and around water coolers, facts and true understanding of issues can become as elusive as the pot of gold at the end of a leprechaun’s rainbow.

Everyone on the planet, it seems, knows that Madonna is adopting a little boy from Malawi.  I will leave aside here the discussion of the specific facts of that case because I don’t know them, and they seem to be in dispute in any event.  I’m also not concerned about this alleged trend of “celebrity adoptions”; presumably, celebrities have the same rights and reasons for adopting children that the rest of us do.  Instead, I am more concerned about the ostensible facts surrounding international adoption that have emerged from the current discussion of Madonna’s and Angelina Jolie’s adoptions; “facts” that I have read about and heard from people’s mouths before and which, unfortunately, inform much of the public’s views about adoption in general and international adoption in particular.

Two widely held beliefs have been aired in the past week or so that particularly trouble me.  The first one is the notion that adoptive parents “buy” their children.  The second is the scorn often directed at parents who adopt internationally because they are presumed to be ignoring some obligation to adopt “at home”—meaning domestically, in the United States—before turning to the children of another country.  Often remarks along these lines imply, too, that parents who turn to international adoption do so because they don’t want to adopt the children of color who are most often available for adoption in the U.S.

Let’s start with the first belief: the idea that adoptive parents buy their babies.  (As this is a blog entry, not a tome, I will post my discussion of the second point in my next blog entry, on October 30.)  I have been fortunate in that no one has ever asked me how much my adoptive daughter cost, but it seems that I am in the minority here.  Good friends who are currently in the process of adopting from China have been asked repeatedly, “How much will she cost?”  If one is to believe the anecdotes, adoptive parents face this question all the time.

A child is not a commodity; a child is a person.  Child-selling is illegal.  As far as I know, it is illegal everywhere.  It does happen, but it is not supposed to and should be considered and treated like the crime that it is.

It is expensive to adopt a baby or a child, especially internationally.  Fees that can climb into the tens of thousands of dollars must be paid to agencies, multiple governmental entities and sometimes orphanages to cover costs.  Why are these costs—and the resulting fees—so high?  The reasons vary, but they include: caring for children prior to their adoption, whether in orphanages or foster homes; processing large amounts of paperwork both in the U.S. and abroad to ensure that children to be adopted are truly and legally available for adoption (this is to discourage baby-selling); supporting all of the adoption agencies’ work, which often includes pre- and post-adoption services and funding to help support kids who are awaiting adoption and those who may never be adopted.

We had to part with a substantial amount of money to adopt our daughter.  But we did not “buy” her as one would buy a gallon of milk or a car.  We made sure that we worked with a reputable agency and we were confident that the expenses we paid went to support children like our daughter and the entities and processes all involved in ensuring that her adoption and the adoption of children like her were legitimate and done properly. 

We also, incidentally, spent a substantial sum to have our son through infertility treatments.  Those funds were used to pay a doctor, nurses, lab technicians, health-care facilities, etc.  I see no reason to distinguish between those costs and the costs incurred to adopt our daughter. 

In short, it cost us a lot of money to build our family.  Though it was not easy to meet those bills, we don’t regret a penny.  We know that our family was created through love just like any other, and that our children are ours wholly, legitimately and forever.

Of course, money can’t buy you love, or happiness.  Yes, it can be used to help create a family.  But it takes a lot more than mere cash to create a real family where before one didn’t exist.  It  also takes persistence, dedication, patience, thought and commitment.

And those aren’t things you can carry around in your wallet.

There are lots of physical sacrifices we’re told to expect when we become parents.  Chief among those, of course, is sleep.  Sleep deprivation begins the day the baby is born—sometimes even earlier, in pregnancy—and continues until at least the day that baby’s youngest sibling leaves for college.  (Personally, I’m looking forward to the tables being turned when adolescence dawns and I get to make THEM drag themselves out of bed each morning.)  Then there’s the nutritional sacrifice: with no time to cook decent food, parents are often reduced to eating their kids’ leftover macaroni-and-cheese and turning to stale Cheerios scraped off the car seat for their whole grains.  Child-bearing women often sacrifice their figures.  (No one yet has explained to my satisfaction why one’s butt gets bigger during pregnancy, and, unlike the abdomen, refuses to shrink back to its original size afterwards.)  We learn to make do with fewer showers.  And I attribute most of my gray hairs to my son.

But no one tells you that your kids will beat you up.

I have been kicked, punched, slapped and occasionally bitten—for the most part inadvertently.  I’ve had a thirty-five pound child jump and land on my head, leaving my neck sore for days.  My arms have been almost twisted out of their sockets.  I’ve tripped over countless toys and have had the bruises to prove it.  Surely all parents have been the victim of multiple head butts from surprisingly hard juvenile skulls.  (Those are always the same: you lean down to give your darling a sweet kiss atop his silky hair, and he suddenly jerks up his head and smacks your chin or your nose with a force that would make James Bond proud.  Admit it; how many times have you wondered, just for an instant, if you have a broken nose or tooth?)

Yesterday, however, was something new.  My one-and-a-half-year-old daughter stabbed me.  Up my nose.  With her finger.

Half-an-hour later, the blood finally stopped running.

She didn’t even notice, of course.  She even howled in protest when I made my husband take her so that I could hold a tissue stuffed up my nose with one hand while pinching the bridge of my nose with the other.  She still wanted to play.

There’s a lot of conversation these days about stay-at-home parents deserving pay for the work that they do.  I say, let’s add hazard pay to this discussion.  I never got this beat up when I worked in an office.

I’ve established on this blog that I am NOT a clean freak.  Yes, I like a clean house, but I hate getting it that way and I only clean when I feel I absolutely have no choice.

But I do have someone I can call for minor cleaning or tidying-up jobs, someone who is more concerned than I am about messes and who shows great promise for cleaning up in the future.

That someone is my eighteen-month-old daughter.

“Emmie” doesn’t mind making a mess, but she doesn’t really like to leave one behind, either.  She isn’t consistent yet, but often if we are outside and it’s time to go in, or we’re inside and we need to go upstairs, a simple announcement that it’s time for the next activity will inspire her to put away the toys she’s been using before coming inside or leaving the room.  When asked to put something away, she will comply without hesitation.  When she’s done eating, she’ll frequently stack her plastic dishes, napkin and sippy cup in front of her to demonstrate that she’s done.  Give her a rag while you’re dusting, and she’ll dust, too (and often do a better job than I do).  And her daycare teachers have told me that after her nap, she dutifully folds up her sheet and blanket and puts them away—and then she starts working on the other kids’ nap sheets and blankets, even if the kids are still using them.

Other people have marveled at Emmie’s skills and enthusiasm for cleaning up.  I can only wonder at it myself and call my clean-obsessed sister to tell her she might finally have someone to help her clean up at holiday gatherings.  Once Emmie gets a little taller and steadier, she can even help clear the table and do the dishes.

I’m thrilled that someone in my house is good at picking up.  I just hope that she’s as interested in cleaning when she’s eighteen years old as she is at the age of eighteen months.

We’ve been “booed,” and I didn’t even know it was a thing.

One night last week as I was clearing the dinner dishes and trying to appease my grumpy daughter, the doorbell rang.  As I approached the door, I saw two little boys speeding away from my porch as fast as their sneakers could carry them.  Perplexed—in my experience, that sort of juvenile trickery rarely occurs around here—I peered out the window and saw, sitting on my porch, a shopping bag decorated with a ghost and other harbingers of Halloween.  Even more puzzled, I retrieved the bag and found it filled with Halloween toys, decorations and candy. 

The bag also held three copies of a Halloween poem explaining the bag and providing instructions for how to continue the game:

The phantom ghost
Has come around
To leave the goodies
You have found.
And since the ghost
Has come to you
Please read closely
What to do . . .

First, post this note
Where it can be seen
On a door or window
Until Halloween
Then no other ghost
Will visit again
Be sure to play
It will make you grin.

Next, please do your part
You only have one day
So every ghost can haunt
And every ghoul can play
Make two treats,
Two ghosts, two notes
Now that is the gist
And take them to two families
Other ghosts have missed.

Deliver the treats in the dark
When there barely is a light
Ring the doorbell
Quickly run
Please stay out of sight
Last but not least
Have loads of fun
Share in the spirit of
Halloween, you’re done!

I was entranced!  What a fantastic neighborhood game surrounding one of my favorite holidays.  (I love Halloween because it is the only holiday I can think of devoted solely to having fun.)  My four-and-a-half-year-old son excitedly emptied the bag and grilled me about its contents, and he became even more enthusiastic when I told him that we would make up two bags ourselves and deliver them in the dark the following night.

What a great way to get the entire neighborhood to participate in an activity where giving is as important as receiving, thereby showing our kids how being an active part of a community can be lots of fun!  I had no idea who came up with the idea, but I admired my neighbor’s brilliance.

Then I went to Target the next day to buy treats for our bags and discovered “Boo Kits” for sale.  These kits included Halloween bags, tissue paper, decorations and a poem of their own, in many ways similar to the one we had received on our porch the night before.

Okay, so the idea isn’t original.  None of my neighbors is the civic genius I briefly suspected to be living in our midst.  No matter; I still think the Boo Bag is a fabulous idea, and I hope it will become one of our annual Halloween traditions.

I don’t know why, but every time I experience for myself some ill-informed adoption-related phenomenon I’ve read or heard about, I’m surprised.  I know that these things happen, but seeing it for myself is always a shock.  And I never have good comebacks ready like I wish I did.

Yesterday I was in an elevator with my eighteen-month-old daughter.  A woman joined us in the elevator, and she stared at “Emmie” and smiled.  Emmie is as cute as they come (yes, I am biased), so I am used to this reaction.  Then the woman opened her mouth to speak, and I prepared for some baby talk or the usual, “Isn’t she adorable?”

Instead, the woman said something in Chinese.

I was so surprised, I said nothing.  It took me a moment to register that this woman had just addressed my daughter in Chinese and to realize what that meant.  By then, the woman was gone.

In one short sentence in a language I didn’t even understand, this woman conveyed multiple assumptions about my daughter.  She assumed that Emmie was from a foreign country.  She assumed that that country was China.  She assumed that this eighteen-month-old child understood Chinese and would respond to words spoken in that language.  And, I’m guessing, she assumed that I would be impressed with her knowledge of Chinese and of her presumed sensitivity in speaking Chinese to my daughter.  (She probably also assumed that I was Emmie’s adoptive mother; at least that assumption was correct.)   

That’s an awful lot to assume about a person simply because she is an Asian child out and about with a white woman.

As much as it annoys me that a random woman in an elevator would make all sorts of assumptions about my Korean-born daughter, I’m glad that these things happen now, when Emmie is so young.  I hope that these occurrences will sufficiently shake me out of my comfortable white mindset to apprise me of the assumptions that Emmie will face as she gets older.  When I look at my daughter, I see Emmie.  Sure, she’s Korean, but she also giggles a lot, loves to dance and wants to do everything her big brother does.  All of these things together make up Emmie; she’s as complex as any other American child—or any child, for that matter.  But there are plenty of people who won’t see her that way.  When you are a member of a racial minority in modern American society, many people, unfortunately, will still see a stereotype before they see a person; people who, for example, may assume Emmie will speak with an accent and be excellent at math.  As her mother, I need to help Emmie find ways to deal with people who will view their own assumptions before they truly see her, and people like the woman in the elevator are good reminders for me that developing this skill is one of my responsibilities as Emmie’s mother.

I do hope, however, that I learn to be a bit quicker with a response.  That woman left the elevator with the same assumptions she harbored when she entered it.  I wonder what she would have thought if I had asked her, “Why would you assume that my daughter can understand Chinese?”

Because I have just succumbed to the school-picture scam.

Okay, so “scam” may be too strong a word.  After all, there is nothing dishonest about it.  The photographer my son’s school is using is completely up front about the cost and rules surrounding the taking of pictures.  Yet somehow, I feel like someone just hypnotized me and convinced me willingly to part with nearly $50 for which I may receive, well, nothing useful.

My son’s annual picture day at school is tomorrow.  He’s at a new school this year, so I’ve never dealt with this photographer before.  I was amazed when I received the order form for his photos and discovered that I had to choose among five pre-existing photo packages and pay for my choice—all before the camera ever took aim at my son’s face.  All of the packages include a class picture and eight 1 ½” x 2 ½” “exchanges,” neither of which I desire in the least.  I also had to decide in advance if I wanted the photos retouched.  Finally, I had to pick a background color—a responsibility which seems to me best suited for someone who has some expertise with a camera; i.e., the photographer.

How can I know what I want when I’ve never seen the photographs?

Even as I grumbled about the school-photography “racket,” I filled out the form and wrote the check for a package of 8×10’s, 5×7’s, 3×5’s, 2×3’s, “exchanges,” and, of course, the class picture.  No, no one’s forcing me to buy into school photography, but not buying your kid’s school picture seems somehow un-American.  Surely only uncaring parents of future juvenile delinquents wouldn’t snatch up the annual photographs of their cherub-cheeked angels, ready to hang the 8×10 on the wall and distribute the wallets to grandparents, aunts, uncles and the mechanics who fix the family cars.  I may detest spending money for something I’ve never seen, but how could I call myself a soccer mom and drive my Volvo if I didn’t buy the school pictures?

I guess I’ll just seal the envelope with the check in it and hope the photographer, with check in hand, manages to get my son to smile.

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you know that my four-and-a-half-year-old son, “Jack,” can ask me some pretty deep questions.  I’ve had to come up with answers to inquiries in the areas of philosophy, metaphysics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, theories of evolution, geology, sociology, government, paleontology, geography, theology and more.  Over the past few months, however, Jack had backed off these questions and focused on more “mundane” pursuits, like learning how letter sounds combine to make readable words and understanding the process by which a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly.

But now: he’s baaaaaack.

It began last week with a simple discussion of negative integers.  I took notice of the fact that he must have been pondering on his own how numbers work, because the question “What number is deeper than zero?” came to me in isolation from any discussion we had had that week.  But I didn’t suspect the beginning of a trend until the next day, when I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at a question Jack threw at me while we were driving home: “Are babies alive when they are in their mommies’ tummies?”

Oh boy, Jack, if I could answer that one definitively, they’d be giving me some sort of Nobel prize.

I recovered and struggled through an answer to that question (“Well, some people think . . . .”), and Jack rewarded my efforts by tossing another, equally challenging inquiry at me: “Where are babies before they are in their mommies’ tummies?” 

I never expected to feel so intellectually challenged by my child’s questions before he was five years old.  What in the heck am I going to do when he’s fourteen?

My family has just completed a fantastic holiday weekend.  The weather was as I imagine it to be in that corner of Heaven reserved for former residents of New England: bright, warm sunshine, a blue sky so deep and smooth it appeared to have emerged from a painter’s palette, and red, gold and orange-bedecked trees in every direction.  Good friends of ours were visiting from another part of the country, and we took in the pervasive, mountain-dotted beauty of our surroundings while picking and eating apples right there in the orchard and alternating adult conversation with activities designed to entertain our collective three children.   My husband and I relished the opportunity to spend an entire weekend with good friends we rarely have the opportunity to see, and the children were on their best behavior.  Our four-and-a-half-year-old son and our friends’ three-year-old son laughed, shared toys and ran around like crazy people.  The weekend was idyllic.

It was also one hour too long.

All four adults were impressed by the boys’ behavior throughout the weekend.  Sure, there were minor disputes—mostly over specific toys—but those were easily resolved with minor assistance from the grown-ups.  There was a fair amount of rough-housing, but both boys smiled and laughed even when they were whaling on each other.  (This despite the fact that when I and the other boy’s mom walked in on these activities, we were somewhat dismayed by the sight of two red-faced children wrestling, hitting and jumping on each other.  I guess boys would never get to participate in this sort of behavior if there were no such things as dads.)

But unbeknownst to us, the boys were ticking time bombs.  The clock ran out almost exactly one hour before our friends were scheduled to depart for the airport.  Suddenly, these two children who had reveled in each other’s presence all weekend couldn’t agree on their own names.  It seemed that each time one looked at the other, accusations and tears spilled forth, and we grown-ups were forced to divert our attention from preparing to leave and cleaning up in order to referee the kids.  One boy hit the other with a large toy; the second child then threw an even larger toy with as much force as he could muster.  The idea of sharing was suddenly an anathema.   When my husband called from the road to say that our friends had to leave as quickly as possible to beat traffic to the airport, not one of the three adults in the house offered up a single regret about the need to get out in a hurry.  The boys were done; thus, so were we.

I understand the boys’ limitations.  After all, is there any adult who doesn’t have a family member, friend or acquaintance whose presence is tolerable, even welcome, for a couple of hours or days but who then begins to inspire desperate fantasies of separation?  And these kids are so young; that they could play as nicely as they did for approximately forty-eight hours is quite impressive.  But it would be helpful if we could somehow install a device that could warn us that breakdown is imminent—a little hourglass on a shirt sleeve, perhaps, or a green-yellow-red warning light system to let us know that the end is approaching.  Or maybe something that could offer us an instruction for mixing two or more kids: “Do not exceed the maximum recommended good-behavior allowance of forty-two hours and thirty-six minutes.  Failure to observe this limit may result in deafening screams, sob and whines.  Welts may also develop from hard objects thrown by overstressed subjects.”

Of course, one hour doesn’t detract from a fabulous weekend.  I can guarantee, however, that when we speak fondly of this time in the future, most discussions will be introduced  by a phrase like, “Do you remember that weekend—the one that was one hour too long . . . .?”