Why didn't she want her?

The honest question of a second grader.

While showing Sadie off at church this Sunday, a little girl exclaimed, "Aw, she's so sweet!  Why didn't her mother want her?"

I felt her own mother wince, knowing the social inappropriateness of blurting such a thing out.  But she really wanted to know - she was not judging, only trying to understand:  Why would a mama give birth and then give her child to someone else to raise?

There are many reasons...but at the root of them all, the mama loves her child and wishes she could provide everything the child needed...she just can't at this time in her life. And if your heart is broken by hearing this, just imagine the mama's heart.

So I answered this little girl who asked what adults wonder but are too polite to mention:
"Well, her birth mama and birth daddy actually love her very much.  They are just too young to be able to provide everything that little Sadie needs.  But here is the beautiful thing about adoption - they were able to pick out parents for Sadie. They are able to know and love Sadie as she grows. So actually Sadie is a very loved little lady. And adoption is a beautiful thing for Sadie, her birth parents, and us."

Sometimes adoptive parents get tired of hearing questions like this.  I don't. I wish everyone were so honest when they wonder about the hows and whys and logistics of open adoption. The questions give me a chance to teach, to share our story - because it's a cool story. A story of how God provides - for us, for our adopted babies, for our babies' birth parents.

And I think it is tremendously cool that this second grader, her older sister who was standing beside her wondering the same thing, and any adults within earshot will begin to understand this union of hearts, and might be able to one day counsel someone who has found herself in the perplexing situation of being pregnant and not ready or able to parent.

You know what that second grader said when she heard my reply? First, a light went on in her eyes, and then she said, "Ohhhhhhhhh, I get it."

I feel privileged to be part of her understanding this concept.

Other One-Month Pics

Sadie's One-Month Milestones

Weight:  9.5 pounds

Sadie can...

• smile when you stroke her cheek or smile at her
• smile spontaneously
• hold her head steady if she is being held or propped up securely
• lift her head and chest when lying on her belly
• stare intently at lights 
• startle at loud or surprising sounds
• focus on faces
• lurch nearly out of your arms if you are not paying attention
• mostly sleep for a three-hour stretch
• make a Cheerio mouth
• down five ounces at a time

Curious about Benjamin's one-month milestones?  I was...CLICK HERE. (Note: He was well over ten pounds by this time! Sadie's a dainty little girl.)

**I plan to photograph Sadie in this chair each month to show her growth.  This month, she had a hard time staying seated.

What we did today (actually, last Monday)

Put art in frames and hung them in Sadie's room.

Made bread. Which required making a mess.

Began weeding the garden. That's mixed greens growing there, by the way.

Put baby sister down for a nap. Several times.

Hung diapers to dry in the sun.

Blew up the pool. (With Mama's own breath. Whew.)

Ate star-shaped PBJ&banana sandwiches for lunch.

Delicious, can't you tell?

Washed bottles. Several times.

Napped with our stuffed buddies.

He adjusts, and I become a better mother, PART II

On Tuesday, we went to story time at the Starbucks in our neighborhood. One of the employees is a mama of two pre-schoolers and she comes to read stories and the kids get complimentary mini-hot chocolates in their sampler cups. The mamas chat, and the kids run around after the stories are finished.

On this particular Tuesday, Benjamin was totally testing boundaries.  I was talking to a mama while holding Sadie, he was playing with her daughter. They kept running off to places where we couldn't see them.  We corralled them until we all needed to leave.

Mama Monica's daughter responded with a sassy refusal to get off the rock she was climbing. I tried to help by telling Benjamin we were leaving, too, and asking him if he wanted to go in one minute or two.  He said two, so we waited and tried again.  This time, after some more defiance from the daughter, Mama Monica managed to get her daughter off the rock and ready to go.  Benjamin was watching this all quite intently. He would not look at me as I was talking, only watched this slightly older girl to see how SHE handled her mama.

So when I had to lay down the law (he was NOT coming down, but instead scurrying away from me - one side of the rock to the other...and I could not do much because I was holding Sadie), he broke into this loud shrieking thing that he does. He does this at home - sounding much like a school's fire alarm - but he has not pulled this in public before. Awesome.

He shrieked repetitively and scooted away any time I got close to him. I was helpless.  Mama Monica saw this and came over to help - she asked him to jump into her arms.  He did, and it was fun. Once on the ground again, though, he was running off. She held his hand and offered to walk us to our car. Gratefully, I said yes, gathered the diaper bag, my girl, and what was left of my coffee.

At the car, he fought getting into his car seat. I did not threaten - after all, what threat could I make that wasn't empty? But I was fuming inside. We do story time for him and he gets all kinds of freedom and fun time with kids after, and then he is a turd in order to impress an older girl. Oh, lordy. Foreshadowing the teen years, no? All I said was that there would be consequences for this disrespect and disobedience when we got home.

I did not know what to do. I prayed the whole way home that my anger would not dictate my approach to this. I know that further attention could only exacerbate the behavior, that anger would only alienate him further,  but that it was also inexcusable and needed to be addressed. 

How does God teach me? I wondered.

Gently, and with grace.

The aim is teaching, not punishing.

So. We arrived home, I put Sadie to bed, and he waited silently for me in the big chair.  I grabbed The Jesus Storybook Bible and found the story of Jonah. I prepped him for the story - saying how God asked Jonah to do something and he disobeyed. He was disrespectful and he ran away. But God loved him. God gave him a consequence because he loved him. And Jonah responded - he felt bad about his behavior, he apologized to God, and then he went and did what God had asked.

We then read the story and compared it to Benjamin's behavior. We did all this while sitting together in the big chair. I spoke kindly to him and he said a lot of sing-songy "ohs". It seemed he was really learning from this.

I could think of no appropriate consequence, and I really needed a break from him, so his consequence was going to bed early for his nap. He did not squawk, but went in and lay down.

I felt like I won that day.  I won self-control over my own anger which would have only been destructive if unleashed on him at that moment. I won over fatigue that would have lead me to simply lock him in his room so I wouldn't have to deal with him. I won over apathy that would have kept me from teaching, leading me the the quick-fix of punishment (which probably would have no lasting effect anyway).

I have no idea if Benjamin learned anything from that - the following day he was naughty for his MOPS teachers - but I learned something. I learned that parenting like Christ requires humility and creativity and thinking not of my own indignation, but of my son's need to learn and learn again of God's grace and holiness; and he will only learn if I take the time to engage during those teachable moments.

He adjusts, and I become a better mother, PART I

Benjamin is clearly in a state of adjusting to his new baby sister. The beautiful part of it all is that he likes to help feed her, he cuddles her, he touches her gently with his pudgy little (grubby) fingers, and he is eager to talk about his new "little sister named Sadie. She's cute."

But the other truth is that he has found it hard to patiently wait for my attention when I am feeding her, or to calm his ever-active boy body down when hanging out in her room. He is quite sensitive to noise (despite being able to make an awful lot of it himself), and covers his ear when she cries in the car. While he is capable of sweetness and compassion, I feel for his three-year-old self trying to be mature when he is just a little boy with needs of his own.

Since Sadie arrived, Benjamin has been far more emotional than usual.  To some degree, I don't know how much of the physicalness (needing to hit things and jump and stomp and run around and be so very, very loud) and emotional over-reactions are part of becoming three and entering another phase of development, or if it is more related to his adjustment to her. I do know that it is requiring a whole new level of parenting from me.

On Wednesday, while picking him up from the childcare at MOPS, I got the report that he was throwing things and running in the classroom. He was not respecting the teacher and he earned himself a time-out. This is normal behavior around our house, mind you, but completely out of character for how he acts around other adults. We are used to hearing how much his teachers love him, and how polite he is, and how he shares so nicely when other kids are grabbing toys out of each others' hands.  I guess this week's news was bound to happen at some point - I've just been lucky up til now.

I wasn't sure how to handle this, but here's what I've done. We talked about it immediately so he wouldn't forget.

Mama: I heard you got a time-out today.

LP: Yes.

Mama: What were you doing to get a time-out?

LP: What were you doing?

Mama: Did you throw things?

LP: Yes.

Mama: Were you running when the teacher asked you to stop?

LP: Yes.

Mama: Uh-huh. So were you respecting the teacher?

LP:  No.

Mama:  It's sad when little boys do not respect their teachers. It makes it hard to go do fun adventures like MOPS. We will talk about this more later.

I did not add my own punishment to the one he already received. And I did not give him excessive attention for his bad behavior - I do not want to encourage it inadvertently. But I do believe he needs to face the person he maligned and acknowledge his wrong-doing.

So I think what I am going to do is have him apologize to the teacher the next time we go to MOPS. And we will talk together, in front of the teacher, about the class expectations. Maybe I will even offer to have them come get me next time he needs a time-out so that I can immediately deal with it the way I would...just in case their version of a time-out is not effective. We'll see.

Now, for PART II.

Testing, testing

So. My friend is branching out into infant photography, and she is using Sadie as her test model. Sadie was not very cooperative today, but we still managed to get this lovely shot:

UPDATE: Susan posted other Sadie shots on her blog. Susan is a photographer based in Oceanside, CA.

A cardboard box

...is a fine place to take a nap.

Oh, Munchkin! 3 weeks old

I can't believe it's been three weeks of Sadie in our family - almost four, in fact. I'm feeling a bit foggy not only from the lack of uninterrupted sleep, but also from the whirlwind of activity required by the resident three-year-old. Let's celebrate the near-culmination of Sadie's first month with a few facts:

-- Until the last two days, Sadie pretty much slept all the time. She would wake only to eat, burp, or fill her diaper and then head back into Slumberland.

-- The last two days, she has commenced a new pattern...staying up for an entire 90 minutes about twice a day.

-- She eats like a champ - every 2-3 hours. And if she's feeling particularly frisky, every hour and a half. She's up a whole pound from her birth weight and is starting to stretch the seams on her newborn-sized onesies.

-- We have now been to two doctor check-ups. She was pronounced healthy and strong at both. She has also been to an Occupational Therapist to check out a minor injury from her rough entry into this world - she has healed nicely and only has a little bit of strength to yet gain in her right arm.

-- She is a noisy eater, which is terribly cute.

-- She seems to have a twinkle in her eye much of the time.

-- She is STRONG!  I've personally never held a baby that at this age can wiggle out of my arms.  She's been raising her head since we brought her home from the hospital. Little stinker is going to be able to hold her own against her big brother.

-- Sadie recognizes my voice. If she's crying out of hunger and I talk to her as I enter the room, she will quiet down.

We love our Sadie Lou!

BenTV 019: Benjamin's First Violin

A clip of Benjamin when we brought home his violin. Grandma is helping him get acquainted with it. He has now been attending lessons for about six months. He can't play any tunes, but he is working on rhythm, his bow hold, and following directions.

We Need More Cuteness

With such a long time between posts, I am sure you guys are needing a dose of cuteness. So here it is...

Benjamin sometimes goes out and rides his bike in the mornings...in his pj's, with bedhead.



Oh, wait. These were taken as the sun was beginning to set...in pj's, with bedhead. Ahem.

It was that kind of day.


Well, enjoy them, even if Mama is a little dull these days.

Sadie's first slideshow

The Warrior Princess' First Battle

Sadie's birth story is long overdue, I'd say. 

Just past 3:00 AM, Sadie's birth mother called me. The contractions were strong, they were only a few minutes apart, maybe this was the real thing?

I wiped the crusties from my eyes, informed Brent of the situation, and managed to get into the car fully dressed.  I picked up BM and we headed to the hospital. As the sun peered over the mountains, Brent dropped Benjamin off at a friend's house, sleepy and in his pj's, and drove down to pick up Sadie's birthfather before heading to the hospital.

BM had been admitted and officially given a bed in a delivery room. My cousin, Sarah, showed up to help. She's a doula. However, poor woman, she's a doula who also works nights at Children's Hospital. She came straight over after getting off a 12-hour night shift. (Bless her heart.)

Labor progressed. That's the non-eventful part - except for Brent's cheering every time Sadie's head could be seen (he would stand up out of his chair and shake his fists in the air).  It got really exciting during the last six minutes, for this was the Warrior Princess' first great battle.

After our sweetest warrior popped her head out of the canal, she got stuck. It turns out that her shoulder was wedged under BM's pelvic bone. As spectators, we did not know that. All we saw was a purply-red baby being manhandled by a midwife (who had an exceptionally authoritative voice and a British accent) and NOT COMING OUT. And then we saw this purplish-red baby losing any sort of redness. And then we saw her go completely purple. And then dark purple. And then the most unnatural color you've ever seen.  (Except for, perhaps, green. Humans don't really ever turn green.)

And then, we watched as the baby nurse practically flew across the room and leaped on BM, pushing down on her stomach and generally adding to the manhandling already taking place.

NOTE: This is the point at which I knew something was very, very wrong. I was praying like crazy, and I eventually had to walk away. I was seriously contemplating how my baby might die before my very eyes.

Somewhere in the madness the midwife (whose voice was growing more intense every time she spoke) called out some code, and someone broadcast it on the intercom. Not more than three seconds later, the two doors to the room burst open and a dozen people in scrubs came running in. Sadie's birthfather was tossed into a chair. Sarah and Brent and I were already hiding out hugging each other.

For all the drama leading up to that moment, it was suddenly over. It seemed like once everyone descended, and all that could be seen was a huddle of blue scrubs, the problem resolved. 

Sadie cried when she was supposed to and responded so well that her Apgar scores were 8 and 9. The midwife assured me that she was healthy (we would have loved her anyway). And despite all the manhandling, her BM was in good shape, too.

Thus began Sadie Eloise's adventures out in the world. It was a rough entry, but it has no doubt prepared her for future battles.