Peter's Cross Station

New BlogHer Post

Do you argue in front of the kids?  We do and we think it's a good idea.  You?

New Gig

I am now officially a contributing editor at BlogHer.com.  Looks to be fun.  Here's my first post over there, (on finding balance).

On Early Reading

In a comment on my apocalypse post below, designermama wants my "tips" for early readers.

I don't really have any tips, but here's our story.  (It's good for me to write about it today because one week from today is Nat's first day of school and the early reading thing is causing me some consternation--do I mention it to the teacher?  or not?  if so, how?  will she think I'm an ass? etc.)

Nat has always had an interest in letters and words.  It was right at 17 months that we realized she knew all the upper case letters and most lower-case ones, too, because that's when she started hollering them out to us from the back seat of the car etc.  At 18 months she was fingerspelling N-A-T and declaring "Nat!" whenever a stranger asked her name.  By 2 and a half or thereabouts, she was sight-reading about two dozen words.  But if I showed her a word two or three times, she'd have it locked in for the next time she saw it.  I remember the first word I noticed her reading and recognizing out of context, as we drove by a truck stop and she read the side of the building "look, Mama Shannon, T-R-U-C-K, truck!"  This was when Selina was about 9 months old that would make Nat just at 3 years.  After that it just went rolling like a tumbleweed and she was picking up words far faster than I could keep track.

She could also sound out words phonetically before she turned three, but didn't distinguish between real words and nonsense sounds.  We had a wheel at the playground with three letter combinations you could spin for--it would come up "cat" or dog" or "net" or "cap" and Nat would read these out, spelling the letters then announcing the word.  But she'd also announce non-word, like "D-I-T, dit!" for example.  So I didn't consider any of this real reading.  Certainly some fab pre-reading skills, but not reading per se.

It was when we were in our rental loft last fall (Nat three and a half) that I started seeing that she was really starting to read for context and meaning.  "Duck for President!" she read, "like Barack Obama!"  Or a sign on the wall near the grocery store, "Let.  Us.  Help.  You.  Let us help you!" she lit up when she realized these word combinations meant something and were giving her information.

After that--about September of last year, her reading for meaning took off and she has progressed by roughly a half grade-level per month in her reading skills ever since.  I keep track by putting text from various books she's reading into various reading-level analyzers online.  Thus "roughly," but it keeps me abreast of her progress and remembering that she is progressing quite rapidly.  I'd say she's at about a rising 4th grade level at this point (at 4 and a half, a week before beginning preschool).  She reads almost exclusively by sight these days and so is quite fast.  If she comes across a word she doesn't know by sight, she'll hastily rush through it and kind of make something up that has the correct first two or three sounds.  I sometimes stop her and help her read it one part at a time by covering all but the first syllable, the the first two, etc. until she's got them all and put them together.  Sometimes I stop her and just tell her the word.  Sometimes I let her move on.  I try not to spend too much "teaching" energy on it, because obviously, she's fine.

As she began this bizarro journey, I did a few things that encouraged it (though again, I have NOT spent any energy trying to get her to read.  I have always, always, always, let her take the initiative and just kind of poked her in directions she was already headed).  Here are a few:

1.  I put ABC magnets on the 'fridge' that spelled out N-A-T.  Then, under the N, I put a bunch of other consonants that would make A-T words.  Every now and then we'd play the game of changing the initial magnets and reading each Nat-rhyming words.  Works great with the name Nat.  Not so much with Selina.

2.  When I'd be watching the News Hour, and Nat would be on my lap, I'd magna doodle whole words for her and she'd read them.  That's why she knew a couple dozen at two.  "B-O-O-K" she'd read as I wrote, then "book!"  We used all familiar words from her immediate environment, plus the names of family members.

3.  When reading aloud, I'd sometimes stop and point to a word in the book--usually one of the ones I knew she could sight-read.  I did this more and more as she got more and more literate.

4.  I tried buying some of those early reader books, but (and this is still true) the ones at her social level were way below her reading level and bored her to tears.  And I don't want her reading stories geared to 3rd or 4th graders yet.  She doesn't (and shouldn't) get them.  So we have given up on that.  We like Frog and Toad but she's blown those out of the water for months now.

5.  When we read bedtime stories (etc.) now, I ask her "do you want to read it, or me to read it, or us to take turns?"  If we take turns, it's by the page.  I totally defer to her on the choice.  Most often, she wants me to read it.  But if I do ask her to, she'll take turns or read it herself.  I guess I don't totally defer, because about once a week I want to checkin with where her skills are and I ask her to read something for me.  If she gets tired or bored I let her stop, though.  Burn out is probably the number one danger with an early reader, from what I've heard.

6.  Another way I encourage literacy without reading lessons, per se, is to ask her what she think is going to happen next as we read stories, or asking her what happens in a story we have already read, or asking her to pretend to be in a story we've read, etc.  She initiates the pretend part.  One of her favorite things to do a few months ago that was super cute was pretend to be a North-Going Zax and asking you to pretend to be a South-Going Zax and walk slowly toward each other until you bumped heads and got stuck like that.  Simple, but funny!  Now she and Cole make up their own stories with a set of stock characters every night.  Nat tells a piece, then Cole tells and piece etc. until Cole falls asleep.  Nat has also started invented spelling on her own and writes mostly single words this way but has also written a few sentences.  I was trained in teaching literacy with invented spelling a million years ago in a former life, so when she reads her words to me, I say "that's great!" then rewrite them the correct way beneath her inventions.  Last week, after I did this, she copied my corrections (while I was paying her no attention cleaning the kitchen or something) and she came and showed me.  She likes now, to have me write words and simple sentences that she dictates, then copies them herself.  Given her fine-motor limitations, I have not really attended much to correcting her handwriting, with the exception of making a connect-the-dots "S" for her now and then to practice writing S, as her Ss are more like Zs left to her own devices.

And there you have the story of Nat's reading journey thus far.  You can all say you virtually knew her when she's the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with dreadlocks to her butt.

Two Over Two

Selina's second birthday has come and gone (Saturday) and was, I have to say, a huge success.  She was aware this year, that she was the birthday girl (she remembered Nat's birthday from February and knew what it meant) and enjoyed--really for the first time in her life--a real place at center stage.  Nat was a gracious supporting cast member and terrific big sister, helping (no, really just helping) Selina open her gifts and appreciate her cake.  Well, Selina didn't really appreciate her cake at all.  I had hoped she would recognize Sandra Boynton's hippopotamus, but for one reason and another, she didn't seem to.

  Nat did, though, so that was nice.  Actually, it was pretty amusing.  For the party I had veggie crudite and dip, plus some whole apples and pears.  Selina usually gets cut fruit, but Nat can eat a whole fruit.  So Nat had been munching away on an apple, but when she heard cake was imminent, she handed the apple to Selina, who was really excited about getting a big, whole apple, like sister usually gets.  So the cake sort of didn't register in the wake of her excitement about the apple.  She held it in her hand while I tried to get her to blow out the candles.  Cake was really underwhelming for her.

She did like eating the cake.  But I am not sure she liked it more than the apple.  (Nat did, though!)

Mama Fern was here (along with Grammy and Granddaddy, Babysitter J, friend Krystal and her guest, Justin and neighbors K and D) , which was nice, as she was unable to get together for Mothers' Day this year.  I have to let you know something, though.

I have decided not to blog much about our specific adoption experiences here anymore.  I will still be blogging about adoption in general and about our family on a surface level, but I have been unable to figure out where the line is for me in sharing too much of others' stories.  Since the kids are too little to help decide how they feel about sharing their own stories, and since neither of the first mothers in our family have computer access, I feel too much responsibility for the control of the story.  I am going to err on the side of telling too little, rather than telling too much.

I guess I've had this policy for a while, unofficially, but now I'm letting you know.

Meanwhile, I want to also let you know that if you ever want to email me and ask to hear more of our experience in order to help you sort out your own, please do feel free.  I don't have a problem discretely sharing with you as an individual.  I just think publishing on the WWW is a bit too much for me at this point.

Suffice it to say that we have what I think of as successful open adoptions in the sense that all parties are doing all they are able for the best interest of the children.  But that doesn't mean we have happy, rosy stories. "All we are able" is sometimes quite short of perfect and that is the case in our family.  But I also feel that "all we are able" is something the children will understand and appreciate as they grow up.

I will also say in vague terms that open adoption is HARD.  Sometimes I fear people will think it is easy for others and so when they don't find it easy themselves, they decide it must be wrong for them and they close the adoption.  I will say it again, I am finding open adoption to be a serious challenge.  A struggle.  Painful.  But all in that way where you know the pain is good for you and means you are growing.  I am especially convinced that it is good for my children, which is why I work so hard at it, however challenging I find it.

I think both kids--especially Nat--are beginning to really understand some things about their families in an age-appropriate, organic way that will prevent sudden surprises that might really hurt them and turn their realities upside down to learn later.  So again:  hard but good.  And again, feel free to write personally via email to share your story or hear more of ours if you feel it will help in any way.

And now we are off for family adventure day at the aquarium.  We hear the dolphins and whales are back from "vacation!"

Thinking Out Loud

I feel so differently about adoption, biological reproduction--assisted or accidental or somewhere in between--and parenting in general than I did before we adopted.

We never had the "gotta hava babee!" fever, but we did just sort of think "baby? huh, sure that would be fun (for us)."  Now I find my skin crawling at anyone who thinks of baby procurement as being about the parents almost at all.  It just really bugs me when people want children because children will meet some need of theirs.  But where the heck is the line behind being overjoyed at the idea of a child in your life and wanting a child to meet some need of yours?  It's a fine, fine, fine line.  It's not like only grim, unemotional people should be parents.  Obviously not.

And it seems that babies always start by somebody just wanting one.  And I am pretty convinced that wanting a baby is always a selfish thing.  It's never about the baby.  Especially when the baby isn't born yet.  And that's obviously okay.  We don't look kindly on the "rescue" model of adoption either, do we?  Besides, that really turns out to be all about the parents too--how heroic and sacrificing they are, right?  (If you are wondering who "we" is, I guess it's self-defining.)

I mean, I definitely start feeling this way after getting into it with people about various ART things.  I am starting to really chaff at the notion that questioning the ethics of certain reproductive decisions, based on how a child born of those decisions--and the adult she will someday become--will experience them, is automatically judgmental of the person making the decisions and therefore, de facto bad.  (Sorry, long sentence.  I don't even know what I just said.  You're getting unadulterated stream-of-consciousness, here.)

But it's not just ART stuff.  It's more the attitude that ART accentuates that underlies so much reproduction, whether you conceived on the first try or you had medical interventions for 4 years and finally went to Khazakstan.  It's the attitude that babies--however you get them--are commodities to be "gotten" at all.

I'm also annoyed at the attitude of entitlement from straight people, that babies are somehow a natural right and if they don't come easily, equipped with the best parts of each partner, the would-be parents are being denied a part of themselves they ought to have been able to take for granted, like tehy take their very bodies for granted.  Why would anyone ever take the ability to make a baby for granted?  That is so far outside of my worldview I am breathless in the presence of that entitlement.  Yet I know it's really common.  It just is what people expect.

And this Madonna thing?  Talk about entitlement!  You know, if she wants that child so badly; if she really is bonded with her; feels like her mother, then why doesn't she set up house in Malawi for 18 months?  That's all they wanted from her when they denied the initial request.  Now the bio-dad is involved which complicates it, I know, but initially, it was 18 months of residence.  I mean, how many residences does Madonna have, anyway?  How much skin off her nose would it be to add a hut in Malawi?

But this stuff just has nothing to do with the people who are minors (or embryos, for that matter) when it all goes down.  It's all about the adults and what possession of these minors will mean for them.  And I'm just getting fed up with that.

I don't want to give embryos rights.  That's not my point.  My point is that we ought to be thinking of what these people will be facing when they aren't our little doll-babies anymore, but are live, grown, human beings who want to know who they got torn from in Khazakstan or Malawi or the south side of Chicago.  Or to meet their gestational surrogate.  Or dealing with "existential debt" as some donor-conceived adults are now calling the burden of having to be grateful for their very lives to a protocol they now want to challenge and change. (Found this term in "Voices of Donor Conception: Behind Closed Doors: Moving Beyond Secrecy and Shame" ed. Mikki Morrissette.)

I guess listening to a lot of adult adoptees at the conference last month got me headed down this path.  But it's also a parenting preoccupation of mine to worry about making sure I always think of my children as future adults with their own agency and their own questions and their own values, which will in all likelihood, overlap, but not completely match mine.  I want to be able to look those adults--equals--in the eye and know I did everything I could to make it as right as I could for who they would become, not just to please myself or gratify my craving for a baby.

Anyway, this probably makes very little sense, but I'll publish it and you let me know.

Why Adopt? Part II

Apparently, I heard the question wrong.  Probably because the question I answered is more common and I'm used to getting that one.  But here's some clarification from paragraphein:

...for me the question isn't "Why adopt even in an unethical system?" but rather "Why adopt at all?" Why invite all this pain and complexity in, on purpose? Because the pain and complexity is there even if it is (somehow) done 100% ethically.

For me it's not a question of ethics, it's a question of adoption itself.

I didn't realize that was the question, because it would never occur to me that the answer isn't obvious.  My family is worth any amount of pain and complexity.  I love my family.  I love my children.  The give me untold joy every single day.  I am a great parent.  We have a terrific family.  The pain and complexity that would be a part of my children's lives--regardless of who adopted them, whether they were adopted or not, whether they grew up in the foster system--is something I am more than willing to help them navigate, teach them to understand and grow through and simply be here to comfort them when it is too overwhelming.

I do not discount any pain or complexity of adoption.  In fact, my understanding of adoption's difficulties increases every day as I live it out.  Would I go back and do a single thing differently with regard to my family-building choices?  Never.  I would do it all again.  I may yet do it again (adopt) and if I do, it will be a situation with yet more pain and complexity because I am beginning to feel that as far as ethics go, the less desirable a child on the "adoption market," the more ethical the adoption (as a rule of thumb).

No matter how complex, how paradoxical, how painful, there is no way anyone will ever convince me that my family is not a gift--a gift to each of its members and a gift to the world in general.  Yes, I am including my children's first family members in that assessment.  I truly believe that placing their children with my partner and me was the best option available among a few pretty bad options for my children's mothers.  (Okay, maybe not with my partner and me specifically, but with people like us--adoption in general, open adoption in general, adoptive parents with our philosophy of family more specifically--we aren't the only ones on the planet.)

Life is complex and painful and riddled with messes we couldn't have anticipated.  Parenthood is complex and painful and riddled with messes.  Any kind of family is a big disaster waiting to happen.  Am I wrong here?  Look at all the disfunction and difficulty in families everywhere--all kinds of families.  To choose to become a parent is to invite, on purpose, suffering into your life.

Adoption doesn't have a corner on the complexity and pain market.  It may have a rarer type of complexity and pain, since it is not common compared to biological family relationships, but if avoiding complexity and pain were on my agenda, I'd have to retire from life.  I don't even know where I'd go to do that.

And much as I agree that lots and lots--perhaps even the majority--of adoptions are unnecessary, there are adoptions that are the best available option for the people involved.  If some folks at least, didn't feel adoption's particular complexities were something they could handle, where would these people be?

I realize that too many people assume that every adopted child is a child saved from some terrible fate--even death.  And I realize that is actually true only in a small minority of cases.  In fact, that is a caveat here at Peter's Cross Station--adoption is very, very rarely about rescuing anyone from anything.

And yet, I do believe that adoption is needed.  I do believe that work as we might to reduce adoption, to encourage and support women in crisis pregnancies to raise their babies, those women deserve the option to place their babies in adoption as truly as they deserve (and I fervently believe they do) the option to terminate a pregnancy.

Asking me why I would be willing to adopt in spite of the complexity and pain of adoption is, I feel, like asking a young, single mother why she would keep her child instead of placing it for adoption.  That path has complexity and pain too.  But a mother is a mother.  Her child is her child.  And that's my answer too.

Thinking about School--Sort of!

One of the main reasons we want to home school is that we figure we'll never find a school with a curriculum we like, with any decent number of children of color, for tuition we can afford.

Except we just did.

We found a Montessori school near us that actually has a serious commitment to diversity and it's working.  There are at least 2 or 3 African American kids per 15-20 kid class, and lots more non-Black kids of color, too.

The curriculum is classic Montessori, which I mostly like.  I like the multi-age classrooms (each "level" incorporates 3 years), the individualized "work plans" for each student, the complete absence of grading (quarterly anecdotal reports) and the physical classroom space.  What sometimes squicks me a little about Montessori is the emphasis on orderliness and the idea that there is One Right Way to do everything.  But this particular school (we went for a private tour) seems to have a flexible enough attitude not to be too awful about that.  I do like the emphasis on respecting the materials and each other and tidying up after yourself.

I wish Montessori didn't insist on calling everything the children do "work."  I realize this was Maria Montessori's way to emphasize the importance of children's play, I just wish we could respect play, as play and not call it work.  But that's kind of a semantic issue and I can get over it.

I am also not ready for Nat to be in a full-time school and don't think I will be for a long time.  This program is three hours/five days.  We might very well skip Fridays on a regular basis, if she goes, since Friday is usually "yea! Cole-mom is home, let's hang out with the family all together" day and Nat did so terribly when asked to just spend 45 minutes tap-dancing on Fridays last Fall.

If she goes, it will be in the Fall when she's four and a half.  I am telling myself it's okay, because I am getting roughly this many hours of baby sitting, now, so it will still give me plenty of time to do all the same home school things I do now (or plan to do this spring, after not being able to keep on top much last fall during all our moving and settling).

Nat would get two full years of part-time before she went into the 6-9 year-olds class for an 8am-3pm day.  I don't know how I feel about 8am-3pm days for a 6-year old.  Maybe we can keep taking Fridays off or something, if we decide to do this school at that point.  And Nat's birthday is in February, so she'll be fully six and a half then.

But this brings me to money.  We can afford the half-days, as the money for that is slightly less than I'm paying for baby sitting now.  The trouble is, we'd still need some baby sitting, because of Selina.  But not as much.  And the nice thing is I can spend the time when Nat is in school (and Selina isn't with a sitter) hanging out with Selina so she can get her own good strong home education going between now and 4 if we do this same thing with her.

I'm also reminding myself that we can not go to the 6-9 year old class if we don't want to or it doesn't seem like the best decision (or we can't afford the full-time tuition, the very same year Selina would be starting to do the 3-6 year old half days).  I had been pleased to learn that school is not compulsory for kids until 7 years old in Illinois, and was thinking seven would be the first time I'd even consider school, but probably wait until nine.  We could, theoretically, bring her home again for the 6-9 years and send her to the third level ("upper elementary" they call it) at nine and a half.

On the other hand, the Montessori place is small, with a 1:10 teacher:student ratio and it follows a lot of the same philosophy that attracts me to home schooling.  Its weaknesses are music and physical education, but we'd have time (in the half-day years, anyway) to keep Suzuki and church choir and capoeira in our plans.  I don't want us to be rushed and stressed and over-scheduled when Nat is only six, because she's in school full-time and trying to cram in "extracurricular" things.  The school does keep to a half-hour homework limit after the kids hit the 9-12 year old class, so that bit seems reasonable.

We will apply for the fall and see what we see.  I do think Nat will really enjoy it.  It's totally up her alley.  She will thrive with the freedom to explore the room and choose what she wants to do, and she will enjoy playing with the same other kids--at a range of ages--every day.  I think she'll handle that "One Right Way" to do everything without getting a perfectionist or compulsive hang up, like some kids definitely do.  I just hope she doesn't get bored with the One Way, or if she starts inventing her own ways, they let her.  Because that's how she is.  When she finishes out the learning curve for something, she complicates it.  Most commonly, she complicates it by turning it on the adult who's trying to "teach her" and tries to teach the adult.  "What sound does B make?" she'll ask "b-b-b" I'll say "Good, Mama Shannon, I'm so proud of you!" she'll praise.

Can't you just see her doing that with the counting beads to her Montessori teacher?

It will be an adventure, I guess. 

Good Answer

Scene: Nat is sitting on Mama Shannon's lap discussing various people we know and she refers to babysitter, J, as "she" in one of her common pronoun gender slips.

Mama Shannon: Is J a boy or a girl?

Nat: a boy!

Mama Shannon: What do we say for boys?

Nat: "he"

Mama Shannon: so we say "he" for J.

Nat: no, he's a girl.

Mama Shannon:  J's a girl?

Nat: well, maybe she's a boy.  She's a boy and a girl.

Mind you, J is a fairly conventionally male person, if sensitive and quite likely "in touch with his feminine side."

Mama Shannon:  Well, everybody is kind of a girl and kind of a boy, but most people choose one or the other.  What about you?  Do you want to be a girl or a boy?

Nat: Well... I want to be Nat!

I congratulated her heartily on her choice and told it was a good one and she can certainly always be Nat.

Online At Last

I think this year's sentence will be "The family moved twice in three months and five days after the second move, hosted 17 people for Thanksgiving at which Shannon roasted 17 stuffed Cornish hens."  But I never decide until the year is completely over.  Because you never know, we could adopt triplets before Christmas.

Probably not, though.

The hens were a hit, and really, it was as stress-free as these things can realistically be.  I made a little flow chart of the work involved in the meal and did everything ahead of time one step at a time over about 72 hours so that all I really had to do was pop the birds in the oven and braise the greens an hour before sit-down and we were good to go.  I also had a couple of willing and charming sous-chefs along the way.  No one makes a better sommelier than a gay godfather and we had two on hand.  Unfortunately, Mama Fern had to work, but we're having a private do-over with her this Sunday.

The new place is fantabulous.  Really.  Words fall pathetically short of describing my joy at being here.  Perfect location, perfect space, perfect neighbors, just plain lovely.  The master bedroom is obscenely huge, so I have a plan for adding a fourth bedroom, should those triplets arrive on the doorstep.

Yes, I can't shake the idea that I want more babies, even as the babies I have are becoming more and more overwhelming in their demands.  I suppose it comes of Selina being 18 months old this Saturday and not really my baby anymore.  At this point in Nat's life, we had been on the waiting list for number two for six months or so already.  And this time, our foster license has expired and our home study is returning to dust.  I guess we're done unless Rose or Fern needs us again or until Selina is a good bit older and we start looking into toddler adoption.  There's a big part of me that wants 3, or 4 or 5 kids.  Other parts of me shake me, while screaming "have you lost your tiny mind???" and slap me to snap out of it.

You can't always get (everything) you want.  Because there are also things I want that sort of require having fewer than three children--like some modicum of personal freedom before I'm fifty.  Plus, I love this place we just moved to, as I have said, and there may be room for one more, but even that would be a squeeze.  There's certainly not room for more than one more and I don't want to move again until Cole retires.

Meanwhile, Selina calls her Pooh Bear, "Bear Pooh."  Or "Bear, Pooh."  Or "Bear: Pooh."  I'm not sure which it is, but it so cute it makes me break out in hives.

Cole has been going hither and yon to teach on the prairie and return to us for long weekends (though more recently she was here for the long holiday) and it is going pretty well.  I have 5 days per week of afternoon baby sitting split between two marvelous sitters, both more or less overqualified to baby sit, but happy to do it nonetheless.  One is C and one is J.  C, among other accomplishments has Head Start teaching experience and an MSW, J has no degrees, but a year's nannying experience for a baby and a half-dozen younger siblings he was often responsible for.  His life's aspiration is to be a SAHD and I have to say it would suit him perfectly.

I have been working in cafes which can be okay, as long as I don't end up spending whatever meager amount I've mede in three hours on tea and scones, which can be a challenge.  I may work at home a bit more when the wireless is up and running, but over the winter the kids will be staying at home more for baby sitting and Nat is not of a mind to leave me alone if she knows I am in the building, so I will probably continue my hunt for the perfect Internet cafe as the weather worsens over the next few months.  I tried a new place this week and it is a great candidate--cheap, laid-back, free wireless with no password required, not too busy so if I sit there for hours I don't feel like I'm taking the space of a paying customer.  The only problem is that on my first (and so far, only) visit there, I set the toaster on fire.  It was a toast-it-yourself bagel operation and the butter that dripped from my bagel was the camel's last straw in the bottom of a crumb-filled toaster oven and the flames leapt wildly.  I unplugged the thing and called the sole worker's attention to it.  She left some customers hanging at the counter, came over, opened the oven door and started blowing at the fire, which of course, only made it burn stronger.  "Close the door and it'll burn itself out" I shouted, "but there's air in there!" she shouted back, as the smoke alarm began to wail.  "Now there is" I thought to myself, as the flames finally slowed and stopped.

"Ah, there" said the cafe employee-of-all-work, "do you want a new bagel?"  But it was just charred slightly on one side, so I said no thanks and went back to work.

I bet you ten dollars they have A) not replaced that toaster and B) not even cleaned that toaster and I'm afraid to go back, because I don't like raw bagels!

See you all at Strollerderby.

A Year and a Half Later It's A Lot Easier and So Worth it

Tonight I was thinking "wow, I'm so glad we have Selina." I have to tell you, I've always been glad we have Selina but I haven't always been glad we have two kids--if it's possible to somehow speculate in a detached way from your own specific children.

Some of you may recall that only days before we brought Selina home, we had informed our agency that we wanted to be an only child family and to take us off the list. They ignored us and called us with Selina.

Obviously, they knew our ambivalence was deeper than we realized, because we jumped on the offer of this newborn baby. Next thing you know, all my predictions about how much having a toddler and a newborn would suck came true. So much of it sucked. It was soooooo hard. (I know, YOU have six kids, I admire you, I'm even jealous. For us, two was very hard.)

But almost immediately, all the good things about having siblings came true too, even though I had not expected them to for, oh, 30+ years or so. Nat adored baby sister, baby sister adored Nat. Any jealousy or frustrations Nat had, she took out on me, not Selina. Selina she cooed and sang and read to. That happy surprise helped pick me up in the midst of the sleepless misery of so much of the rest of it.

Then pretty soon, Selina developed this little personality that was so different from Nat's yet every bit as charming. She and I would exchange secret grins. She was overflowing with affection and completely easy-going. She bumps her head, she rubs it and moves on. She trips and falls, she giggles and gets up and moves on. Sister grabs a toy away, she cries. I make Nat apologize, but by the time she can say "sorry Selina," Selina has forgotten the problem and is just thrilled that Nat is talking to her.

The other day I realized that at some point recently, Nat turned a corner and became Selina's sister as much as Selina is Nat's sister. That is, Selina joined Nat in the family, but Nat had already established herself. Now, they've been together for so long that they both exist in relation to each other in the family. It isn't Nat and her baby sister, it's The Sisters. Nat's language reflects this. Instead of asking me for things for herself, about half the time at least she says "two girls need something to eat" or "two girls need to get down now and do some jumping" (and they did, as I'd had them at the table watching videos for a hour while I washed dishes and other things I didn't want them getting into). "Come on, sister!" Nat says when I tell Nat to go play in her room for awhile. And in the morning, if I have left a cup of milk and a sippy cup of formula in the fridge the night before, Nat will get them both, take them back to their room and they have their milk together before waking me up.

But most of all these days, I'm glad Selina is here, because she is just a little ball of sugarplum sweetness right now. Not only is that great in and of itself, but when three and a half-year old Nat is making me tear my hair out, I look at sweet, grinning Selina and remember that no so long ago, Nat was that compliant and easy-going and just plain cute and it reminds me to cut her some slack. She's still my sweet little baby, she's just growing up. Selina will do it too, and go through her own terrible threes (and I have no doubt they will be most terrible--she has a nasty temper when she shows it--it's just that she's still little enough that her tantrums are comical and cute instead of exasperating).

So as good as Nat is for Selina, Selina is doing Nat a big favor too. They are really well suited together and I can't imagine either of them without the other. I'm so glad we put up with the misery of that first year (and it did get increasingly better all year anyhow). It was so worth it!

(No word yet, on our speculations about adding a third. I still look at moms with three and feel a pang of jealousy, but that doesn't mean I'll do anything about it--necessarily!)