Times and Seasons

When my first child Maija was born and I was home with her pretty much full time, I felt like with this blessing of a beautiful baby girl also came a new kind of challenge I'd never experienced before. I felt like I would never have any freedom ever again and that my whole existence revolved around feedings and diaper changes. It's that fog that a mother goes through with every new baby, but with the first it's the scariest because you don't know yet that at some point you will get more than 2 hours of sleep at a time.

It was during this newborn fog that I complained to my mother about my feelings of isolation and lack of freedom. My mother said a very wise thing to me. She told me that there are times and seasons for everything and the day would come when my children would be older, and I'd have the time and freedom that I missed so much. That thought has gotten me through many a difficult day of crying children, constant messes, and unending diaper changes.

One of the things that I gave up in order to focus on having, adopting and raising babies was my career as a teacher and future professor. I was a PhD student in Education when Maija was born and after a year of struggling to continue the program (and after being told by one of my professors that I had no business having babies while I was getting a PhD...story for another day), I finally decided to quit the program. Although there were a lot of things that led me to quit, the primary reason was my desire to have children and raise them myself. Several friends and family members tried to convince me to continue, but once I prayed about it, I knew it was the right decision for me. Although it was a painful experience, it ended up being a blessing for our whole family. I know now that if I had stayed in the program we would never have had Rebekah because of the pressures to not have children while in school.

Have I ever regretted my decision? No. Have I given up on being an educator and getting my PhD someday? No. Because I know that there are times and seasons for everything. Now is my time to raise my four little children and focus on being a mother. The day will come when I will have the time and freedom to continue school if I so choose. And, interestingly I have been slowly and almost imperceptibly moving into a new season with my children now that my baby is almost 18 months and we have no plans for any more babies (see my previous post here for more on that.). For the first time in six years I am teaching again as a substitute teacher, and I'm loving it. I'm able to pick and choose when and how much I work, and I can still be home most of the time with the kids. I feel blessed to be a mother and blessed to be a teacher again. I can see now that my mother was exactly right. Nothing ever stays the same, and we don't have to be or do all things at once. As women, we can have it all, but it doesn't have to be all right now!!!

Subliminal Baby

I had a truly frightening experience last night. I was visiting a friend who just gave birth to her third child a month ago. Her baby girl is absolutely beautiful. I was holding her (the baby, not the friend) and she looked in my eyes and smiled. That's when things got really scary. She started cooing at me, and I thought to myself, "I could do another baby."

What in the world? My baby is only 16 months old and is just barely walking and talking. I still have 2 kids in diapers and only one of my four children is in school all day. What kind of subliminal power did this baby have that caused such a crazy thought to enter my mind? Of course, I could never mention my scary experience to my husband; I'm pretty sure he would go catatonic. Please don't misunderstand me. I love my four babies, but I am so ready to get past the diapers, high chairs, bottles, urine, poop, and carseat phase. When we adopted Kiira, we both felt like our family was complete. And I think it is. Which is why my experience last night scared the crud out of me.

This reminds me of a study I read about years ago. Researchers found that when they showed women pictures of babies, their pupils dilated. However, they did not find the same reaction in men, although men's pupils did dilate when shown pictures of women. Go figure! I really do think that there is a biological reaction women have to babies. But, as sweet and beautiful as my friend's baby is, I was happy to have her smile and coo at me and then hand her back to her mommy.

8 Blissfull Years and Counting

Okay maybe not everything has been bliss in the last eight years. We've had our share of trials and challenges (hello, 4 kids in 5 years!) but at least the marriage part has been pretty close to blissfull. I'm so grateful to have married the best man I know. I'm not just saying that for the blog. Kent really is an amazing man, father and husband. I lucked out. Here's to many more years of traveling life's road together and beyond.

Colorado - Families Supporting Adoption

I am excited to be a guest blogger at the Colorado Families Supporting Adoption (FSA) blog. I'll be writing once a month. My first official post is about open adoption and the hesitation some people have about openness with their children's birth parents.

"To Be Open or Not To Be Open"

Why We Adopted Black Babies

Any adoptive parent can tell you that adoption related questions are often the most intrusive, insensitive and outright rude. That's not to say that other parents haven't experienced the rude comment or two from an occasional stranger. But, with adoption for some reason people often think they have carte blanche to say or ask whatever the heck they want.

I've been asked more times than I can count if my two adopted children are my "real" children (I change their poopy diapers and rock them to sleep at night, so I REALLY am their mother), if they are siblings (they are now), how much did they cost (how much did your c-sections cost?), do my two biological children accept them (huh? as much as any siblings accept each other, whatever that means), but the most jarring question I've been asked repeatedly is why we adopted black children. To be clear, I've been asked that by both white and black people.

It is a loaded question. Sometimes it's loaded with accusations or mistrust. Sometimes it's loaded with curiosity or ignorance. Sometimes it's loaded with racism. The answer to that question is even trickier. We did not set out to adopt black children; we set out to adopt children. When the agency asked us what race of baby we wanted, we said, "It doesn't matter. We just want the child that is meant to be in our family." We filled out our homestudy paperwork, did our fingerprints and background checks, said lots of prayers and waited to be chosen by a birth mother. Why did our children's birth mothers pick a white family for their children to grow up in? As much as people may want a logical straightforward answer, the REAL answer is that God led us all to each other.

The first time our adoption agency talked to us about Forest, the strongest, warmest feeling flooded my heart and I knew he was meant to be our son. We had just said no to the agency the day before about a white baby boy, not because he was white, but because it didn't feel right. He wasn't our boy. Forest was our boy, and even though we both felt so strongly that he was meant to be with us, his birth mother didn't pick us. We were disappointed and confused. Three days later, she delivered Forest and chose us to be his parents. We both cried when we got the phone call and eleven hours after his birth we were holding him in the hospital.

Kiira's story was different but just as beautiful. Forest was only 9 months old when I began having very strong feelings that there was another baby meant to be in our family. I was terrified to tell Kent, and he pretty much thought I was insane at first. But, after several days, he came back to me and said he had prayed about it and that I should go ahead and contact the agency. Kiira was born nine months later and after 2 failed placements. Nine months later. That meant that when I had the impressions that there was another baby, she had just been conceived. Kiira's birth mother chose us 2 weeks before Kiira's birth and being with her and her/our baby in the hospital was a spiritual experience.

There is a plan that is greater than all of us. God works in all of our lives to bring us to where and with whom we need to be. We adopted black babies because Forest and Kiira were meant to be in our family and they are black. Their blackness has enriched our lives in ways we never could've anticipated, and more importantly the essence of who they are, their spirits, have completed our family. None of us would've been who we were meant to be without them, and they will become the people God plans for them to be because of our being together.

I think most people who ask why we adopted black children are looking for a race-based answer or at least a racial justification. The honest answer, however, is spiritual and more than just skin-deep.

Follow-up: Why Saudi Women Need Drivers

I just read THIS article that the Saudi Arabian woman who was set to receive 10 lashings (see previous post) as punishment for driving has been released and the punishment rescinded. Good news.

Why Saudi Women Need Drivers

It seems my interest in the Saudi Arabian justice system is becoming a repeated blog topic for me. As I mentioned in 2 previous posts here and here, I lived in Saudi Arabia two times so my interest is more than casual. My experiences living in the middle east and in other parts of the world give me perspective on many issues we deal with here in the United States, especially as they relate to our individual freedoms.

A couple of months ago I wrote about several brave Saudi women who were audacious enough to DRIVE!! The nerve! That's right. Women in Saudi Arabia are not allowed to drive, so they must either have male family members take them everywhere or hire personal drivers at several hundred dollars a month. No soccer moms there, maybe soccer drivers, but the point is that it is a really really bad idea to drive in the country if you're a woman unless you're willing to go to jail. That's exactly what happened to the women who decided to drive in protest.

Now one of the women, Shaima Jastaina, will receive 10 lashings by whip for driving without permission. One of the religious mufti who enforce religious law in the country said about the ban on women's driving, "It's for women's good.". Apparently it's to protect them from having too much freedom which would lead them to sin. I have to say if there's anything that has led me to sin, it hasn't been driving a car. Sometimes my car was my escape from a questionable situation. And now that I'm a mom, staying home in isolation with no means of escape would be much more likely to lead me to do something crazy than being able to get in my car and just drive. Although having a driver sounds swanky, I often find driving therapeutic, except for driving in Korea which is a story for another day.

The Saudi ban on female driving applies to foreign women, too. Yes, my mother had to use a driver who was shared with other foreign women at my dad's company. Imagine the scheduling nightmare, just saying. No impromptu trips to the store or last minute errands. My mother handled all of that pretty well considering she had 3 children and my dad was gone nearly half the time on business trips. Her attitude was that we were guests in the country and we had chosen to be there. True enough, but for Saudi women this is a way of life not a two- year stint in some exotic country.

If you'd like to read more about this wave of Saudi women taking to the streets, you can read this article from the Associated Press and this previous post on my blog Suffrage Saudi Style

Why I Still Feel Like I'm Faking It

It all came out in a torrent of words, tears and emotions. It had been a tough couple of weeks with the kids and trying to keep up with everything. When my husband made a comment about doing the dishes so they don't sit overnight, I lost it. He wasn't suggesting that I do the dishes; he was offering to do them. But, to me it sounded like a very loud, "Can't you even keep up with the dishes?"

In the outburst that followed, I said something that keeps coming back to me. I was going on and on about the hard week I was having and how I spend most of my time and energy just keeping our four young children fed and alive. And then I blurted out, "I don't know what I'm doing! I don't know how to do this right.". After four babies in five years, I don't know what I'm doing? I don't know how to do this mothering thing? Really? What did I mean by saying that? I realized that somewhere inside of me I still feel like the new mom with a two-day-old baby who looks down on her child and thinks, "Is this for real? Am I supposed to know what to do with this child?". I still feel like an imposter. Like one day someone's going to see me for the fraud that I am and call me out, "Hey, you! What do you think you're doing pretending to be a mom?"

The irony of it is that amidst my daily mistakes and piles of things undone, my children actually think I know everything. My oldest, Maija, even asked me recently, "Mommy, do you know everything?". Wow, I'm pretty good at this faking it thing, at least in the eyes of my six-year-old. Unfortunately, I don't know everything nor can I do everything. I'm just hoping that when all is said and done, my children will look back and remember a happy childhood and will be blissfully unaware that I had no idea what I was doing.

When...

A good friend of mine once said to me, "The scales are always balanced." We were talking about the difficulties of raising small children. She had a child starting junior high and on the other end of the spectrum her youngest was a year and a half old. Her point was that parenting older children has its own set of difficulties and challenges. No matter what your situation in life or what stage you're at, life will never be without challenges. The scales are always balanced.

How many times have I caught myself thinking, "When he starts walking then at least I won't have to carry him around anymore" or "When she goes to school all day, then life will be easier because I'll have one less child at home" or "When I'm married, life will be easier because I'll have someone to go through life with" or "When I have children then I won't feel such emptiness and life will be easier"? By the way, the latter thought is the funniest to me now. When, when, when... Why do we suppose that one day life will be easier or better? As if life now were so terrible.

I can logically tell myself that life will always have its ups and downs, but for some reason I perpetually have that when in the back of my head. Today was a rough day and my whens went something like this - "When she starts preschool next week then I can focus more on him and he'll be happier so he wont' act out so much, and then I'll be happier. When he is one year older then he'll be able to communicate better and won't get so frustrated." Of course, the underlying "..and then life will be easier" is implied. If only I could remember that the scales will always be balanced. One day when my little ones are teenagers I'll probably look back and wish that my biggest problems were diaper changes, dribbling sippy cups and defiant toddlers. But for now thoughts of when often get me through the hardest days, and I'm not sure I'm ready to give that up.

My Own Personal Downgrade

As I have been telling my husband lately, I feel very overconnected. In fact if I were any more connected to the digital world, I'd have a neural implant in my brain that has 3G and wifi. Since I got my new iPad a month ago, it's almost ridiculous how much I use it. I'm not sure if it's been a blessing or more of a curse. Then there's my Blackberry which will buzz or ring in concert with my iPad when I get a new email or someone has posted something on my Facebook wall...or even if they've just posted something that remotely relates to me.

As if all this weren't enough, there's texting and now my parents and I have started Skyping now that they're in Finland. I can't deny how totally awesome it was to video chat with my parents and have my kids be able to see them. I even got to see part of their new apartment there. And being hyperconnected definitely came in handy on my recent trip to California driving between my aunt's house and my brother's house in different cities (see the only 2 pics I took below).

But there are some major drawbacks too. It's overwhelming to have so much information constantly at one's fingertips and the constant flow of communication... *ding* a new email, *ding* someone friended me on Facebook, *ding* there's an upgrade for one of my iPad apps, *ding* Kent texts me "Heading home" (my favorite ding of the day!). So... I have decided to downgrade my tech...a little. I'm going back to my old unsmartphone where I get those old fashioned things called phone calls and that's about it...ok, maybe some texting too. And I've been reluctantly turning off my iPad throughout the day so I can deal with the equally overwhelming input from the 4 little people in my life whose alerts are accompanied with cries instead of dings. Ah, the challenges of the 21st century life.

Photos: Drove to Capitola, CA in my brother's convertible Jaguar. Great vacation!