Santa Baby

They're fans. But all they can think of to ask for is "a Christmas tree." I can't even tell you how much that pleases me.

I guess it is a side effect of not having tv... they don't have commercials telling them what to want all the time.

Things have been pretty all around magical around here. Every trip across town is an adventure with many exclamations of delight at the lights.

Life isn't easy with three kids 4 and under... but it sure is sweet.

Proud

So, did you know I used to be a taekwondo teacher? Yup. 3rd degree black belt, hands deadly weapons... you know, all that. That is actually where I met Nathan. I kinda quit when Mer came home. Well, not so much quit as had to stay home and take care of the baby. But Nathan owns a dojang downtown and it has been part of the kids' lives since they came home. In fact, Mer used to stay in the Ergo on his back while he taught classes. The people there are a whole other family for our kids, but they've never taken part until now. Nathan told the kids that they could start when they started school. Kai is still too young, but the girls have been participating in classes since school started.

Mer is mischievous, but does very well considering how young she is. Hani is a natural. The structure and the outlet for big feelings that doesn't involve talking make it a perfect activity for her. They finally tested for their while belt last week. It was... fun. Weird. Exciting. Heart stopping.

I was so scared that it wouldn't go well. Neither of my girls does well with embarrassment. Plus, Nathan was the one who had to test them. And they still have a hard time separating daddy that they hug and wrestle with and Master Nathan at the gym. But they were great. So great. And they each broke a board. They were kind of bubbling over... it was so fun.

And I am really so proud... as are they.

Grim Determination

So, we are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season. We just celebrated our first Thanksgiving with our whole family together.  It was great. Good food, good conversation, passing around my seriously adorable niece, Eleanore...

All of my kids had fun. At least, I think they did.  These family celebrations have proved to be difficult for Hana.

 I knew they might, so we talked about it ahead of time. She had a billion questions, "Where will we eat? What will we eat? Do they have a table? Will we sit at the table? What will Eleanore do while we are eating? What will Eleanore do while we are cooking? What can we play with?" Etc. Things that would never have occurred to me to tell her.  She had a lot of anxiety about the whole thing, even though I kept telling her it was just a meal. A meal like any other meal we have with our extended family. Lots of people adoring her, lots of food she likes... all fun stuff.

I knew in an abstract way why Hana would be nervous. She'd never done Thanksgiving before, and she likes to do things right. Not just right... the BEST.  If she is going to do Thanksgiving, she wants to do whatever Thanksgiving is better than anyone has EVER done Thanksgiving.  Feeling like that is stressful, I'm sure.  But I never connected the dots. Never understood in a concrete way why this is so hard, until we went to get our Christmas tree.

I wanted it to be fun... we went through the whole day's plan. First we'll eat breakfast. Then we will get dressed and drive to the tree farm. Then we will pick a tree that we like and cut it down. Then we will bring it home.  It wasn't enough. Hana was in tears.  She needed to know how we cut it down. She needed to know how we will pick the right tree. She needed to know how it would be carried into the house, where it would sit and how it would stay upright.  It was all just so... stressful.  This fun, happy, first Christmas tree experience wasn't fun or happy or exciting... and I didn't understand.

Until we were in the car on the way to the tree farm.  Nathan and I started singing Jingle Bells. Meron joined in.  Hani didn't know the song, so we tried to teach it to her.  She attacked that song with grim determination, just as she does every new thing she wants to master. She demanded we tell her the lyrics again and again.  And it hit me like a ton of bricks.  This is what her life has been for the past year.  Exactly this.

Everyone around her knows what to do. They know the expected behavior and the expected emotions. They understand the give and take of their family and school. They communicate with an ease that must seem very like telepathy to someone who doesn't see the small signals.  And she tries.  Oh she tries. She attacks every situation with that same grim determination to fit in. To feel like as much a part of the action as everyone else. To feel like she is part of this new, strange world she has landed in.  She has no context for Christmas or Jingle Bells, Thanksgiving or Halloween.  She doesn't know why the songs she has worked so hard to learn are suddenly exchanged for new songs that everyone knows but her.  She studies those around her so that she knows how to act and what is expected.  She asks questions when she gets nervous so that when we get to this mysterious "Thanksgiving" she won't be the only one who doesn't know what is going on.

It brought tears to my eyes.  I can't imagine how exhausting and discouraging this task is.  No wonder any change in the routine she has learned is met with anxiety.  It is just a new situation that she has to analyze and master, with no associations of the joy that come with it.  She doesn't have any, "Remember when's" to talk about or pictures to look at.  We survived getting the Christmas tree home and put up in the stand.  We assured Hana that we didn't need to feed it, just give it water.  We got out the decorations and practiced some more Christmas songs and taught our daughter how to hang ornaments.  And then I remembered. Last year, we bought an ornament for her.  I found it in the box and told her that it was hers from last Christmas. I said that we were so sad that you weren't home with us then, and I picked this ornament out especially for you. And that I was so happy that this year she was here to pick out her own ornament.  Her whole face lit up as she hugged it to herself. She said, "Yes, this is from our tree last year. I know." and hung her ornament up on our tree.  She helped put the star on top and stood and looked at it, smiling.

Here's to firsts. And to the fact that next year, she'll have some "Remember when's" of her own.

Bursting... with... stuff...

You will remember from this post, potty training is not our strong suit.  You definitely can't claim toilet training proficiency when it took the intervention of a dog with the IQ of a quail suffering from a brain injury to teach your daughter how to use the potty.
Enter Malakai.

He is a delightful young man in incalculable ways, but one of his more frustrating traits is that he is, in the grand tradition of children in our family, adamantly against anything that we feel strongly would be beneficial in easing the financial burden of a herd of children who eat like a camp of lumber jacks.  As such, he was profoundly anti potty training.  We thought confidently of his fixation on candy and decided that we would cave as we did with Meron and give him candy every time he uses the bathroom.  This was unsuccessful at first for two reasons: first, we don't like to clean pee off of the floor or poop out of underwear and second, we had a teen age nanny all summer long who was lovely, but not as committed to the potty training quest as we were.  So, after a highly unhygienic and incredibly disgusting experience of cleaning poo out of a pair of swimming trunks, I admitted defeat and retreated.
But lately, Kai has been showing unmistakable signs that he is ready. Interested in the potty, staying dry for long periods of time, etc. We decided to leap in again.  And he did great. Yay for Kai.  Except... he was scared to poop on the toilet. Not like, concerned about it. Terrified. Like a giant alligator would appear the moment the deed was done and bite his suspended tush.  We begged. We pleaded. We bribed shamelessly.  All to no avail.  Until he saw the truck. Oh, the truck.  Malakai is fascinated by fire trucks.  While wandering the aisles of a dollar store, Malakai saw this truck and his eyes literally popped out of his head. It wails. It beeps. It makes... all sorts of horrible screechy noises that are unidentifiable to me, but make him leap with glee.  So, we did what any terrible parents would do and promised him a fire truck if he would poo on the potty.  He ran desperately to the potty in the store, but with no satisfactory result.  He was disappointed, but determined.
The next evening while everyone was enjoying some post supper crazy time, Malakai suddenly disapeared. We didn't notice right away (do you need me to reiterate that we aren't great parents?).  He came out of the bathroom, sans pants and announced that he had produced "kaka."
I looked at Nathan. Our eyes met in mingled hope and disbelief.  Nathan sprinted to the bathroom to find said kaka in the toilet.
Now, I imagine that in finer homes, the discovery of poo in a toilet after the emergence of a child would be proof of depositor. Not so in our home. We have three small children, all of whom often forget to flush. We had been fooled before when Malakai claimed a kaka that clearly wasn't his (don't make me go into how we figured out who it belonged to).
Nathan frantically began interrogating the girls and I. "Is this yours?! Did you do this?! WHO DID THIS?!" I read it as excitement, but the girls apparently read this behavior as "Daddy has finally been pushed off the deep end by poop." and began to slowly back away while shaking their heads.  He advanced on me next, but I proclaimed  innocence ignorance.  He ran to Malakai who was standing proudly by the toilet and flipped him upside down like a rubber duckie flipped by a carny and roared with ecstasy "IT'S HIS! HE POOPED IN THE POTTY!!!"  Nathan then proceded to hoist him into the air ala Simba in "The Li0n King" while the girls jumped around in circles cheering and clapping. And then Nathan gave him an entire bag of jelly beans.
I seriously laughed so hard I fell over. I love them so much. And we're all proud.

Especially this guy.

Beauteous.

The much anticipated event...

One of the absolute best things about adopting older children is watching all of their 'firsts.' Babies have a first Halloween, too, but they don't care. Hana, however, was beside herself.
We talked about it for a long time leading up to the big event... she likes to know what to expect. It was funny trying to explain it to an intelligent, aware little girl.
 "So, I know you aren't supposed to knock on stranger's doors, but we are going to go knock on the doors of all of the people in the neighborhood. No, it doesn't matter if you don't know them... but look and see if their porch lights are on. Then you will say 'trick or treat' and they will give you candy. And you have to dress up in a costume. I don't know what kind... like a princess or a turtle or a ghost or something. Why? Umm... that is a long and complicated explanation. Ask your father. Oh, and we are also going to hollow out pumpkins and carve faces on them"

 

Yup... already prepping for Christmas. In fact, last night she started crying and said she doesn't like it when we tease her when Nathan told her that we will be bringing a tree into the house and will be putting decorations on it. And don't get me started on Easter... Ever tried explaining the whole connection between the resurrection of Christ and chocolate and bunnies to a child who has been in America for 3 months and doesn't really speak English? It went something like this, "Umm... well... the bunny hid the eggs we colored and was sorry and gave you some candy... because... I don't know. Put your bunny ears on and eat your chocolate. We're taking a picture." So, there was a lot of discussion on exactly what the costume would be. It is an important decision for any kid, but Hani didn't know what everyone else would be wearing. First she said a deer. Then a cheer leader, (although she didn't know the word for cheer leader and just started chanting rhythmically "My name is Hana, I'm a banana." when trying to get us to understand her). She finally settled on a ghost. Nathan gave her the option of scary or funny and she said scary. She wanted to be a brown ghost though, and not a white ghost. Which, because I'm an idiot, took me a while to figure out... in fact, I figured it out when she said, "But mom, I'M BROWN!" Oh... yeah... well, good! I'm glad she wanted to stay that way. Unfortunately we had no brown sheets we were willing to sacrifice, and were worried about sending her out in the dark covered in all dark brown. So, we settled on a white ghost with a brown face. But then she picked green. I don't know, it was confusing for all of us. She was extraordinarily cute. Although once she realized that Meron, who was unswerving in her dedication to being an Ethiopian Princess for the second year in a row, would be wearing eye shadow, the appeal of being scary began to diminish. So, Hani was a stylish ghost with shimmery eye shadow... which is more challenging than you might think to apply through eye holes in a sheet.

And Meron was an Ethiopian princess.

Malakai had an even harder time deciding on a costume. His first request was to be "Oh Susanna." I know... but he really likes that song. I didn't know what we were going to do... wig and cardboard banjo? Plastered in sheet music? Thankfully he changed his mind and wanted to be a car. Well... he wanted to be a princess car. Don't think less of me... but I really didn't want him to be a princess car. I mean, we don't believe in forcing strict gender roles on our children. He wears heels and purses and shiny necklaces all the time at home. He likes to get to be the princess when they are all playing and tonight at the taekwondo gym he announced to everyone that he had a big baby in his belly and he had to push it out (although he gave birth to a car... so... you know...). But I don't know what the hell a princess car is. A car a princess would drive? A car with a tiara? A car that has a princess painted on it? We are not that creative. Nathan stayed up until 1am the night before Halloween making this awesome car. Seriously, he loved it.

Until he tried to put a piece of candy into the bag and discovered his hands didn't touch. Nor could they reach his mouth, which was actually kind of handy since we didn't have to keep telling him to put the candy away and stop eating it... It was a little reminiscent of Randy's snow suit in "A Christmas Story" Way funny. Especially when he dropped his candy bag, because he couldn't see anything underneath him. And then he had to try to bend down and pick it up. Nathan is a much better person than I, because he helped him right away. He did confess afterwards that he was really tempted to just see what happened... after all, Kai had bumpers. He wouldn't have gotten hurt.

 All in all, it was a really fun night. A first that we got to share.

Now back to trying to explain the whole, pilgrams, Native Americans and turkeys deal... You see, there were these people who invaded a country they had no right to be in and decided it was theirs, but then the people who had lived there originally took pity on them and gave them a bunch of food, so now we eat turkey and sweet potatoes with marshmallows on them....

Skills

My girl has got skills. Seriously... athletic scholarship here we come.

And here is some wicked cuteness. Can you tell a marching band practices in front of our house every morning? Mer is marching backwards directing and Hani is being a flag girl. Leah, their seriously sweet cousin, is being a good sport. And cute.

And there was much rejoicing...

I have a new camera cord!!
So, it has been so long since I took these pictures that I forgot that I had most of them. So glad to find them!
Here are the kids getting off their various school buses. Breaks. My. Heart.


With Nathan. I love them so.


At the skate park... which is much more fun than the actual park. The quarter pipe makes a great slide... if a little dangerous!


My sweet guy.

Hani

Not thrilled about being asked to smile for the camera... but they were all laying there so perfectly for a picture!

Hani again

Dooter

Mimi

Love this picture... especially Kai's grimace/smile...

That is the black walnut tree that my parents planted for me when I was born. The same one on which they have spent the last 10 years cultivating a swing worthy limb.

My seriously cute niece, Eleanore, getting baptized. Seriously... so cute.

A trip to Fargo for my birthday... we took the kids to Yunker's farm, which they LOVED. But I was cranky because we went to a children's museum on my birthday... not that it wasn't fun, but I wanted to do stuff that I wanted to do... but anything I wanted to do would not have been fun while chasing the kids around trying to keep them from breaking things. So we went this route. And had a lovely time.

I kind of love these pictures. I love how Meron is looking at his face.

And how Kai is absolutely terrified of him, but really wants to play with the statue like the big kids!

Mer and Hani went on their first ever Ferris Wheel.

Hani's first day of head start.

The birthday cake that Nathan and the kids made for me.

Just cuteness...

And Mer's best bad ass face.