Are You There, Parapet? It's Me, Head.

you have been warned

Recently, two of my (online) friends have announced that they are starting the process to adopt from Ethiopia. Both made the announcement with some level of trepidation. Both were clearly concerned that they were going to be attacked for their choices.

Other friends of mine - friends who are nearing the end of looooong waits to adopt - have been reluctant to ask for support during this last, most horrible phase of waiting. They are worried that the tide of sympathy is turning, and that they can't really ask for support because people no longer approve of what they are doing.

J and I began our Ethiopian adoption in 2008. I guess that things are different now, and that means that people who happily put their names on waiting lists in 2008 can be prone to a bit of sniffy judgementalism about people doing it in 2012.

I have a few words to say about that.

I was thinking: what's different about adopting in 2012 rather than 2008?  Here's what I think.

On the Ethiopian end, there is more oversight.
There are more regulations.
There is better scrutiny of paperwork and procedures.
There is at least one fewer dodgy agency operating.
For adopters from the US, your embassy is also much more serious about investigating paperwork irregularities.

There is more information around, too, of course. Over the last few years, some really awful horror stories from the recent wave of Ethiopian adoptions have come to light. I think that's why people can look askance at those who are choosing to start an adoption now - as if they are saying "but don't you know what could happen?"

However - and I'm saying this cautiously - I don't think that this new knowledge is a reason for us to criticise people who are starting adoptions in this post-Fly-Away-Children era. They are certainly not a reason for those of us who were part of this first wave to feel any kind of superiority to those who are adopting now. After all, those horror stories are from our wave of adoptions. I think it's fair to say that we were much more at risk, ethically, four years ago, than new Ethiopia families are now, for all the reasons above.  And if we didn't  know that there were ethical risks back then, it can only be because we were not paying attention.

I know that the evidence is there now. But the evidence was there then, too. It was always pretty clear that there were going to be risks and there were going to be charlatans. There are risks now. We know it. But the same was true two years ago, and three years ago, and four years and always. Anybody who went into an adoption in 2008 thinking that they didn't need to be really, really careful about ethics was not paying attention. 

Which is not to say, of course, that I think every Ethiopian adoption now is a good idea, or that we shouldn't hold each other accountable for making super-dumb (or dangerous) choices. Anybody who goes into an adoption now without being really, really careful about ethics is doing something inexcusable, obviously  Anybody who goes into an adoption now should be incredibly careful, incredibly wary, incredibly sober-minded, incredibly willing to question themselves and everyone else, painfully willing to change course if red flags start to go up, incredibly aware of what those red flags might be, incredibly honest with themselves about the realities of how long the queues are (and I think that goes well beyond infant adoption in a lot of cases now), incredibly open and honest with themselves about what their real motives are, incredibly aware that most of the world's 'orphans' have living family, incredibly educated about post-adoption family reality and - of course - incredibly patient.

But that's always been true, and it always will be, whether international or domestic, infant or older child, special needs or not.  From time to time, a new place becomes the big thing in International adoption and it just seems like everything is going to be fine there - that there is a big room somewhere full of lonely babies and it's not like Guatamala, it's not like Vietnam, no, of course not, there won't be any corruption, the people of this country love children too much. It can make us feel like we don't have to pay attention. And now, I guess the PAPs for somewhere else are talking about how its not like Ethiopia. People, I bet you ten million space dollars that it is. Pay attention.

I seem to have become sidetracked. I just want to counter the idea that Ethiopian adoption was okay then, but it's somehow rotten now. That's far too simplistic. I don't think it's true.

Oh, and friends - you know who you are - I'm really, really, happy for you. Congratulations.

The Thing About Pinterest

I promise this is the last time I will mention my children's birthday, but I have a few words to say about the cake I made them. I will concede that the icing (that's English for frosting, y'all) was incredible. It was so soft and fluffy; it was like licking a pillow. But the cake itself tasted like an old boot, and I ran out of m&ms in the colours I needed, and the icing got totally full of cake crumbs (because the cake was so dry) and overall it failed to deliver the amount of self-satisfied, smug pride I was hoping for.

What happened was this: rather than finishing it and thinking 'hey look, I made a perfectly adequate cake!' I stepped back and looked at it and felt a huge rush of disappointment.  Because it looked like this:

Hey look! A perfectly adequate cake!

But in my head, of course, I was thinking it would look like this:

Now that's what I call a cake!

 So yeah, there was a bit of an expectation gap.

 Why would I feel disappointed? Why would I expect that my children should have some kind of food-as-sculpture experience for their third birthday? Frankly, I could have iced a shoebox and they would have thought it was great, so my disappointment was definitely not about them.

I blame Pinterest. And this is about more than cakes, and more than Pinterest. It's about how easy I find it to be disappointed with every aspect of my life, when I compare it to what other normal people are doing in the online-o-verse: blogs and facebook and all of it. I can ignore magazines - everybody knows that stuff isn't real - but these days there is a new level of voyeurism (and, okay, exhibitionism) about ordinary people's ordinary lives. I feel like every aspect of other people's lives is displayed on my laptop screen, and what I'm looking at always seems so fabulous.  

If I'm being honest, I find it weird and sometimes difficult, being surrounded by this much fabulousness. I find that after too much time on social media, I feel like I must be unusually blobby and uncoordinated, live in an unusually small house, work in an unusually boring job, sew an unusually small number of hand-printed hand-woven organic toys, eat an unusually bad diet which is unusually low in kale, overall live an unusually mundane life and  - also - make unusually bad cakes.

I wonder: is it because people stick whatever it is that they are best at all over social media? The cake people cover pinterest in cakes. The amazing photographers fill their blogs with lust-worthy photos. The people with incredible houses show us their spectacular interiors. The super-fit post their running updates. The crafters display their creations. The people with fabulous, flexible, jealousy-inducing jobs tell us about their schedules and their travel arrangements. And I...just have to admit that the conglomeration of all of it makes me feel bad about myself. I feel like everyone else is doing everything because I can see all of it all at once.

I know in my head that it is very, very unlikely that anybody is fabulous at all of these things. But somehow, that head-knowledge doesn't matter. All of this stuff blends together in my consciousness, and it feels like everyone blends together into a perfect, all-capable internet woman. She's vaguely crunchy, conscious, and intentional about everything she does. She's not perfect - oh no! but she's imperfect in an interesting, self-deprecating way, rather than a messy, boring, selfish way (like I am).  In short, she has the  'I made it myself during my layover in Hong Kong and then I used it as a teachable moment and then my children wrote a song about it' life that I feel like everybody on the internet is living except for me. 

(Please don't tell me that I shouldn't feel like this. I know I shouldn't feel like this, but the thing is, I do. And see, I think that you are judging me for feeling this way because you are Internet Woman, and Internet Woman doesn't give in to negative thought patterns like I do).

So the problem with Pinterest - and the rest of the internet -  is that sometimes, it makes me really dissatisfied with myself and my  life.


Apart from that, of course,  I think it's fabulous. 



I was talking a bit to my father about this (my parents have been visiting; hence the lack of posts) and bemoaning my lack of mad cake skilz. I had to make a second cake (a few days after the perfectly adequate one) for all the grandparents and he offered a solution culled from his favourite female columnist. (Incidentally, do not get me started on columnists - is there ever a job that was more alienating to the 99% of us who have to go and sit in an office to earn money? It seems to me that being a lifestyle columnist means being paid to write about problems with things that most of us will never experience. Maybe it's a UK thing, but it always seems to be witty anecdotes about how their favourite organic deli was out of cruelty-free salami or how the nanny doesn't speak fluent Japanese. That is NOT A REAL PROBLEM. Do you know how to get puke out of a twenty-dollar IKEA rug?  Because that's the kind of life advice I need right now). Anyway, apparently this woman isn't that kind of lifestyle columnist, and I warmed  to her when I heard the cake solution - basically, forget the cake. Buy a tub of icecream, buy a whole bunch of sweets (that's English for candy, y'all) and press the sweets into the surface of the icecream as if it was an iced cake. 


I thought this was genius.

I'm going to cut a long story short here, people, and just tell you that it was a hot day. Hot day + ice cream + trying to balance large round chocolates on the edges of a rapidly melting tub of ice cream = NOT SMART. NOT SMART AT ALL.  The takeaway here is that in a fight between gravity and a malteser, gravity is always going to win.  And an idea that sounds too good to be true probably is.

And because I would hate for any of you to ever think that I am Internet Woman (not that I think there's much danger...) I'm going to show you a picture of the finished product, complete with m&m avalanche. Yes, I really served this to guests. So, jJust in case any of you struggle with feelings of internet inadequacy, I've got two words for you:

Pin THIS. 

This blog is not about to become all cute kids, all the time, I promise. But if I don't post this now, I never will, so:


Happy third birthday, kiddos.

Moar Fotos

My mother gave me a sound telling off about not updating my 'Family Blog' often enough. (It's been - ahem - about ten months). She was about to revoke my membership of the human race if I didn't get my act together, so I pulled together some holiday photos in a hurry. Since I've been frantic overwhelmed totally overwhelmed utterly overwhelmed busy lately, I thought I would share them here too because I certainly wasn't going to get the chance to write anything else in case anybody needs to know what nearly-three-year-olds look like in the rain. 

They turn three tomorrow, actually. I had planned to write something lyrical about what they are like, on the cusp of three-dom, but see above. I will summarise it by saying: mostly they like Thomas the tank engine, Hello Kitty, Peppa Pig and yelling at each other. Okay, now that's done - here are the pictures.

They are always doing this. Okay, maybe not. Alright, I totally told them to kiss, but hey, they did it, so I figure I win at parenting. For once. 

Pink on the carousel in Honfleur. As you can tell, she loved it. Blue, on the other hand -
"I NOT go on carousel! Carousel too scawy!" This joins a long list of things that are too scawy, including watching Finding Nemo and eating meat.

After two minutes on the carousel - already feeling pretty nonchalant about it. Carousel? Whatever.

Whatcha doin, twins?

Uh.... just hanging around.  (Sorry, had to be done).

More kissing. I guess I win at facilitating grandparent / grandchild relations, too. 

The beach! It was very warm and sunny. Obviously.

 It was a gorgeous beach, actually. This was pretty much the only two minutes of sunshine we got all week, but those two minutes were lovely.

 Giving us the look that sums up one of her favourite phrases: "I BUSY!"

 so grown up.

 such a baby.

  

 So beautiful.

So unaware that he is not actually a dog.

 We went to an aquarium. There were lots of fish.

 It was freakishly, ridiculously, insanely rainy. It rained every day. Actually, it poured every day. This day, Blue and I ran down to the beach to build sandcastles in the rain - J and Pink were too chicken tired. We got thoroughly, utterly, bewilderingly wet. And for ten minutes, as we got soaked to the skin and I kept digging in the sand with my boy anyway, I truly felt like a good mother. 

Ten minutes after that, of course, I told him that we were going go back inside, and my mum got these pictures. Please note how self-satisfied I look, due to aforementioned temporary feeling of competent motherhood. However - wearing this wet wool cardigan is probably the only time I have ever stood next to him and realised that I smelled the worst of the two.   

 

 More kissing. I'm sensing a pattern. However: I don't want to criticise my two-year-old's technique, but please note that I am not the one going straight in with an open mouth. French kissing indeed. 

And that's it, I think. Freaking out a bit here. Tomorrow, they are getting their very own potties (with Peppa Pig and Thomas on them, of course). I know they are ready - this isn't just because they are turning three. So, um....anybody got any tips for potty training? AARRRRRGGGHHHHHHHH!

Back

We are back from France. The compensation for British weather is that France is only a ferry away. You know how I said that I probably wouldn't have any internet access while we were away? Well, I didn't really think that was going to happen, but it did. Two weeks with no wi-fi, so I've come back to a pile of un-checked email (including some moderately important work stuff - oh, well) and several hundred unread blog posts. You'd think I might have used all the non-internet time for getting useful stuff done, but no- mostly I was just eating butter. (Did I mention we were in France?) The area we were in (Brittany) has this amazing butter which is unsalted -creamy and almost sweet - but studded with big flaky salt crystals. Honestly. Honestly. It's like having your mouth filled with dancing angels. Why don't the rest of us demand that our own butter manufacturers get on board with this? In the first four days, we had to go back to the shop three times to buy more butter because we were eating it so darn fast. Also - the other regional speciality is this same salted butter boiled up with sugar to make salted butter caramel. Salted butter caramel everywhere! Why did nobody tell me this? I would have gone years ago. 

On a related note - she who goes to France without elasticated waistbands is an idiot. Ahem.

Anyway. I'd say that it's good to be back except it's not - it stinks to be back. I feel discombobulated and discomposed and cranky. Why isn't my fridge full of salty crunchy creamy butter? Why aren't my parents getting the children up in the mornings?  Why isn't there a beach outside my window? I don't want to go back to work, and I don't want Jay to go back either. Why can't we go to the aquarium instead? Also - why did I think that it was a good idea to book the children's first dentist appointment tomorrow? 

I love holidays. I really do. I just hate how, for the first few days back, I always feel like this:

In Which I Get My Comeuppance For Being So Smug Last Week, Also Some Stuff About My Book

I guess it serves me right for posting so smugly last week about my uh-may-zing relationship with my boy - this week has been an unremitting nightmare. The children have been awful, I mean awful, i mean the kind of awful that makes me want to shout "are you HIGH right now?" at them.  And throw things. I asked Jay whether he had signed them up for some kind of psychotropic-drug clinical trial without telling me, because that's what this week feels like. He says no, but is clearly lying - I hope he is being well paid for his perfidy, that's all I can say. 

So that's incredibly annoying. Anyway. In other news, I'm inching closer to finishing this book that I keep talking about. Some people have now read it (most nerve-wracking thing I've ever done, I think, asking for that feedback) and in response to their comments, I'm going to start re-re-drafting while on holiday next week. (Which reminds me - I'm on holiday next week. And the week after. Probably with no internet access). 

I've been back-and-forthing about whether to seek traditional publishing for this thing, or do it myself, and after a ton of research I'm thinking maybe the latter. I was planning to write a post on publishing, but that's probably boring for 99% of you, and I think I can sum it up in a few sentences so I'll do that instead: 

1. Self-publishing is not as uncool as it used to be, what with Amazon Createspace and all. We can call it 'independent' publishing now too, which makes it sound forceful and dynamic instead of a little bit sad. As in: "I am independently publishing my book, because I am that creative and gung-ho", rather than "I am self-publishing my book, because I am that desperate". Yay. 

2. Every 'should I self-publish, or seek traditional publication?' article says 'If you are writing for a niche audience, you may find that self-publishing is your best option. Traditional publishers probably know no more about distribution channels in your niche than you do". The Adoption / Loss / Infertility crowd is the very definition of a niche audience, aren't we? 

3. Related to the above: I think that approximately 89.4% of adoption books are probably purchased online. Getting into bricks-and-mortar stores isn't a big deal like it would be for, say, crime fiction. 

4. Something I didn't know until I started researching this stuff: a large chunk of the books about adoption (except those written by established authors) are self-published. (Sorry - independently published). You can find this out by googling the name of the publishing company of each book, which can be found by looking at the Amazon listing. I didn't know most of these books were independently published until I did this - I had read a lot of them, and I would never have picked up on it. They weren't full of typos. Some of them even had really good covers.  I mostly found them at amazon - my local bookstores don't carry any books about adoption at all, no matter who publishes them. Which comes back the point in 2, I guess.

So anyway. If I do this, it means I have to do (or contract out) everything that a publisher would do to get this book finished and printed.  So I've been thinking about book covers, which is a lot more fun than fighting with my temporarily-psychotic children. Suddenly, I can see why there are so many bad independently published book covers out there. I mean - seriously - how can you visually represent an entire book with one image?  I can understand the temptation to just pile everything in there, like the author is saying -  It's a picture of a tree, because that represents growth, but also wood because the love interest is a carpenter. And the sky is pink because that's that's the heroine's favourite colour. And the stars are out, because there's a great scene in a planetarium, but it's daytime because of that thing that happened with her aunt in the last twelve pages. Also, the heroine owns a bakery so the tree is full of cupcakes. And one of the cupcakes is shaped like a cat. Get it? A CAT!

Yeah, I don't want to do that. I also don't want anything to do with the adoption staples of orphans, Africa or travel. It's not really a book about travel. It's about my life, and I'm not an orphan or an African, so those visual cues aren't right. (Also - both 'orphan' visuals and 'Africa' visuals tend to creep me out bigtime. Can you spell c-o-m-m-o-d-i-f-c-a-t-i-o-n?).  I was thinking about maybe something to do with a baby bottle, but that would make La Leche angry (and frankly, I'm frightened of them) or a pacifier (but we couldn't actually get our kids to take a pacifier) or something else that says baby, but well, I kind of got distracted. 

I'm not at all sure I've found the picture I need for this book, but I have found pictures for the front covers of these forthcoming publications, which I thought I would share with you: (I don't own these photos. You can buy them at shutterstock).

Sadly, I didn't get time to mock up Twenty Weeks Gestation is Not Too Early To Have Your Therapist On Speed Dial. But wow, searching around, I sure found that pregnant women really, really love having their photos taken. Often - very disturbingly - with props. While I get this - kind of - I don't really understand why photographers think that these photos are going to sell to other people, people who are related to neither mother nor fetus. Pretty much every search term I used brought up artfully posed pregnant bellies, sometimes (but not always) with heads and legs attached. Rubber duck? Pregnant torso. Baby Bottle? Pregnant torso. Seriously, who is entering these tags? Somewhere, someone is searching for 'Israeli / Palestinian conflict' and getting a pregnant torso. Well done, internet. Because I am totally planning to publish this: 

So anyway. That my life right now, and that's what's happening with the book. Enough of this silliness, and back to the hard work of editing parenting. 

Lessons From The Lightroom

Recently, I got a copy of Adobe Lightroom. (Well, technically, I've downloaded the trial version but it's so fabulous that I'll be getting the real thing as soon as my trial expires). I got some free presets - also fabulous - and was thrilled to find that I can finally get some decent black&white conversions of my colour pictures. Call me stupid, but I've never been able to get the hang of doing this properly in Photoshop Elements - my black&whites were always annoyingly flat. But now: 

Yay, right? This is Pink against a brown wall - look at how well it brought out all those lovely midtones with just a few easy clicks! So, buoyed by this initial success, I shoved my big memory card into the computer and started looking for other pictures to mess around with. I don't know about you, but I use my primary memory card as an extra backup  for some of my favourite pictures.  I download photos to the computer, and delete most of them off the card, but I always leave a few from each session saved, just in case the house burns down or the computer and external hard drive both expire on the same day. (You know, but my camera is somehow miraculously okay. Whatever. It makes sense to me). Anyway, the card I'm currently using is absolutely huge, so it has about two years of stuff on it, ranging in time from this:

April 2010

To this: 

This last weekend, June 2012. I love the way he sticks his tongue out when he runs. In fact, I love everything about how he runs.  Remind me to tell you about the cat stuck down the front of his Tshirt some other time. 

Two years worth of Us, all appearing in front of me at once. And wow, it brought back a lot of memories. Some of the time I just kept catching my breath because wow those babies were cute. I mean, seriously:

So squishy. 

But one of the weird things about seeing all the photos in front of me at once was seeing what wasn't there. When they were small (not tiny-floppy-infant small, but the next size up) there is not one. single. photo. of Blue looking relaxed and happy in my arms. His father, yes. Me, no. 

There are a few awkward photos of me trying to get us in that kind of pose - which I will spare you, for the sake of our dignity - but nothing that worked. And seeing those awkward photos - me smiling tightly, him turning away - brought it all flooding back to me, how when he was little, he didn't want to snuggle. He didn't want to burrow his head into my shoulder. I don't mean that he never did it, but it wasn't his default. Not by a long way. He liked me a lot - he loved me, in his little baby way, I think - but I wasn't a totally safe space for him. He wanted to interact with me, but he wanted to do it on his terms, often at arms length. 

I knew it wasn't normal. I had seen enough infants and mothers together to know how that particular dance goes. He never rejected me, but I knew that he didn't think that we were a part of each other, either. It was sad.  

And it seems so strange to remember all this now, because things are so different. How long has it been like this? I can't remember. But now, just when all of his friends have begun to separate from their mothers, he has drawn nearer. Much, much, much nearer. I used to say 'oh, I know what you mean' when friends would moan how their babies wanted to go to the bathroom with them, and couldn't bear for them to be out of sight. I was lying, though - I really didn't know what they meant, although I didn't want to admit it. My children were pretty much happy for me to go to the bathroom alone, and some days I wondered whether Blue would notice if I never came back.  But now - now -  Blue stands outside and says 'Come too? Come too, Mummy?' and I'm yelling 'No! This is Mummy's private time!' and wondering if I can have a two year old arrested for stalking. 

 This is something I wasn't really prepared for. I suppose I thought that his early attachment issues meant that he would always be less close to me than an average child of the same age. But that's not how it has worked for us at all. Instead, he seems to be making up for lost time. It seems that he is eager, now, to get all of the intimacy we missed when he was a little baby. I can't put my finger on when this started - it was a long time ago, I guess - but I feel like our relationship is playing out backwards.  In so many ways he is closer to me now than when he was an infant. He has a deep need for closeness, for physical touch. This in itself isn't quite normal either, but I can give it to him anyway. That's something I can do. Given the choice between this year's borderline-anxious and last year's borderline-avoidant attachment, I would choose anxious every. single. time. (But nobody does get to choose, do they? Not the children, not the grownups. That's partly why this all feels so hard).  

In some ways, at nearly-three, he's a bit like a baby, my snuggleupagus. He's like a different child. Has it really taken this long for him to build up the trust to let himself need me in this way? Once again I'm amazed by how deeply his early life has affected him, by how differently it has affected his sister. 

Today, after his nap, Pink was still sleeping and Blue and I went and played on my bed. I tickled him (he's always, always loved to be tickled) but we lay there with our arms around each other, too, him babbling away about bubbles (his current obsession) and me nearly falling asleep in the afternoon sun - still unable to believe that this boy wants to be close and be hugged, that this boy sees this mother as a physical refuge, at long long last. 

I think what I am trying to say is: take heart. If you are a new adoptive parent, and you know in your heart that your child is holding you at arms length - take heart. It can get better, and I think that it usually does. I'm not saying that everything is going to be easy from here on in, but sometimes it does my heart good to look back and see where we've come from and say: we've come a long way, baby. 

Now With 15% More Aster*sks!!

On an entirely different note, I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who left comments on my post about anatomy. Some of the things you said have really really helped me to think about how we talk about bodies in our house. If you're interested, here are some of my updated thoughts -shamelessly stealing from all your incredibly helpful comments (and if you haven't read them - do! People are smart.  I'll wait).

First up, I realised why talking about girls is comparatively hard. For boys, everything is simple. They've got one piece of equipment that does everything. What do you see when you look between a boy's legs? A pen*s! What does a boy use to wee with? A pen*s! Which part of his body is used in the act of babymaking? A pen*s! 

One thing, three functions.And I think that's why it's so hard to immediately answer the question boy is to girl as pen*s is to ________________.  Because - what function are we talking about?  If we're going for anatomical correctness, I guess the equivalents are, in order,  v*lva, ur*thra, vag*na. We ladies certainly are complicated creatures.  (Fancy on the inside! Thanks to Amy for that hilarious quote). 

So that's three options, so far. I'm thinking we've got a good few years where weeing is much, much, much more relevant to our little girl than s*x. So surely, if we want to just be accurate, the word we should go for is probably ur*thra. But! Even once we've sorted out which function we're talking about, there's a lot more to consider. I hadn't really thought about most of these until y'all raised them.  From what people wrote, and from my own feelings, I think there are three ways of choosing what to say. Because seriously, nobody says ur*thra. Do they? 

Firstly, What is the correct anatomical term? Secondly, What word will help them to be comfortable talking about their body - both for toilet training now, s*x education later, and also to help them be confident in speaking up if anybody was to touch them inappropriately? And thirdly - What word is everyone else using? 

Big lightbulb moment for me - sometimes these three questions have different answers.  I've been feeling like there should be one word that is somehow the 'right' choice, but thinking about all these options has made me think that probably, that's not the case. The English language is full of synonyms - we use different words in different situations, even when we are talking about the same thing. Why should this be any different?  In my house, growing up, the focus was very much on anatomical correctness. I think the logic was: if something is correct, how can it be embarrassing?  But anybody who has stayed silent rather than say the word v*lva out loud knows that the answer is well, some words are just made for cringing.  And I didn't really feel like I was 'allowed' to say anything else. So while it's been driving me crazy that people say vag*ina when they are talking about the whole area - girls do not wee out of their vag*nas! And that's not what you see, either! -  I'm realising that probably, that's the word that other children my daughter's age are going to know. And no, I don't want her having long discussions about that area of her body for a good few years yet (and that specific area - not until she's married, please) but I don't want her to be confused because she thinks that other girls have something in their underwear that is different from what she has in hers. And therefore,  I want her to know that word too. 

So. My takeaway from all of this has been that we are going to deliberately use a whole lot of words. V*lva - because that's what you see. Vag*na - because that's what she will be hearing from other kids (although I'm yet to actually make myself say this in context. Call me old fashioned, but I don't really think little tiny girls should need to know they have one of these. If someone touches them inappropriately, it's wrongwrongwrong LONG before it specifically gets to touching that particular part). Private parts - because that's what they are. And if a cute word makes her comfortable, we'll use that too. 

So again - thank you very much for leaving such incredibly helpful comments. On behalf of myself, my daughter and her future therapist - it's much appreciated!

Telling Stories, Telling Lies

Wow, it's really complicated having kids who suddenly want to talk about stuff.

Kids in Britain (and America, I think) live in this really weird space where every story that we tell them is positive and joyful. Their storybooks are full of lions and crocodiles, and in these books those vicious carnivores gambol happily with an assorted cast of prey-animals, with nary a thought of dinner. If they fight, it's not a to-the-death bloodbath, it's an argument about something cute, with a moral, like who is going to help Mr Leopard bake a special birthday cake for Mr Rhino. And in the end, they all help, because they all have different skills and everybody is different and that's just what the world needs.  (The biggest exception on our bookshelf- I really want to eat a child.

 This book about a hungry crocodile is hilarious, in a slightly-wrong, very French way. Unlike most of us, the French don't seem to feel the need to make children feel safe, and it makes their books pretty confronting for British and American audiences. A few times in bookshops I've looked at books that have made me go Whaaaaaaa? and then I've looked at the back and seen translated from the French by..... and though oh right, okay then and usually I put it back down again and pick up something lovely by Sam Lloyd).

Anyway. We are still very much in this rainbows and unicorns stage in our house, and I think it's an entirely good thing. Life is going to get hard soon enough - I want them to have a period in their life where the world feels as safe and calm and secure as possible.

Except.

We look at their 'special book' a lot at the moment. And they want to hear so many stories about themselves, all the time. Pink, in particular, has a need to hear her adoption story again and again and again. I think a lot of this is just normal little-girl-ness. She's becoming very aware of family relationships and working out her place in the world. She's working out (because duh, I'm telling her) that she was born from another lady's body and so we talk a lot about how we adopted her and how we are a family. Right now, I know this is absolutely the thing that we need to focus on. Security, certainty, family. And the stories always include how we said to the judge 'yes! We want them to be our babies forever!' and she beams and I tell them both how happy we were when they were finally ours. And they are used to hearing this; they know that it's true. I know that their little minds are thinking 'well of course you were happy when I turned up; I am awesome. What was not to be happy about?' (Also, Blue is thinking 'enough with the stories. Can we have cake now?')

But of course, truth is, I wasn't really all that happy to start with. I was totally freaked out. I was practically having kittens.  I wonder about this a bit sometimes. I find it hard to know - when we tell them stories about their lives, where is the line between developmentally appropriate and outright lying? Even if I had been outrageously happy, there's a lot about their story that isn't happy. How much of that do we talk about now? There's a lot of adoption loss that we need to talk about, and that we do talk about.  There's a fair bit of information out there on how to talk about birth family and the complicated emotions that surround that, but that's not really what's complicating things for as at the moment. As well as skating lightly over Mummy's slight and temporary nervous breakdown, I'm totally stuck on how to talk about where they lived before they came to us. At the moment, a lot of their interest centres around the care home where they lived before they met us. They want to talk a lot about it, and I always say positive things - because they are two- but actually I want to shout that place was horrible! Being in that place nearly killed you! Instead, I'm all oh, look at all these lovely children in the pictures! and hoping my pants don't catch on fire.

There are lots of really good reasons why they needed to be adopted. There are not lots of really good reasons why, for example, their care home was so bad. I still feel angry about it (can you tell???) and I know that some of that anger makes it hard for me to be objective about how we should talk about it.  (Just for the record -this place was not like an American agency care home. Believe me when I say it was bad). There aren't really any good reasons why I struggled and struggled during the first few weeks they were with us, either, but that's the way it was, although I don't really think it would do them any good to hear it.

We need to keep their story simple for them at the moment, because they are only tiny. But the story itself is far from simple. I don't want to give them more than they can handle, before they are ready for it. But I also don't want there to be a horrible moment when they realise we've been sugar-coating bits of their life story and the reality was actually pretty different. I'm sure that a lot of this is not just adoption-related. Mothers who had post-natal depression must have similar issues when they look through their children's baby books with them, I guess. Sometimes it's hard to reconcile what my kids need right now with the fact that they also need truth. I don't want to be one of those mothers who keeps things cosy and it's too late to get real. Also - to be honest - Pink has started talking a lot about how she wants to visit Ethiopia (Eee-feee-o-papa, she says - it's adorable). We want to take her - of course - but she keeps talking about how she wants to visit the care home, and I've suddenly realised that when we do that, it's a loooong, long way from the image she has built up in her little baby head and I know it would distress her - both the place itself and the disappointment, the difference, between what she expected and what it really is.

I guess that is what started me really thinking about this whole thing. I was hoping that writing this down would give me some clarity, but it hasn't.

Advice: I want some.

(Warning: This Post Has Lots Of Aster*sks)

(oh wow, they were beautiful babies). 

So, as you know, I have twins.
Boy / girl twins.
Boy / girl twins who bathe together. Get changed together.  Do pretty much everything together. Often quite nakedly.

And yet, neither of them ever seemed to have noticed, ahem, you know, the whole  boy girl thing.  It was actually getting kind of insane. I mean, these kids are nearly three.

And then a few days ago, I was changing Blue. I stripped him off, then Pink peered over and and pointed at his groin and said Mummy, what is THAT? And I said That's Blue's pen*s. (Because, well, it was).  And she looked at me and said Pink have a pen*s? And I said No, Pink, only boys have pen*ses.  After that, there followed a conversation about who, specifically, in her life must therefore have a pen*s. Names were named. (I will spare you the details of that conversation).

Aaaaanyway.  This conversation, of course, led onto a technical discussion about what girls have. A discussion that we have now had about twice a day ever since.  She points at him and says what's that? and I tell her again, and then she points at herself and says what's THIS? and I say....  well, actually, I keep saying different things because actually, I have NO IDEA what word to use for that particular area.

You'd think it would be a simple question, but there isn't a good word, really, is there? I know some people go for vag*na in these circumstances, but I'm not really happy with that. I mean, reproductively, I guess that a vag*na is the equivalent of a pen*s, but when you take a girl's nappy off, that's not really what you see, is it? Is it? I'm embarrassed to say I'm kind of stumped. And what's the internet for if not to answer these awkward questions?

So, I wanna know.  Got any advice for me on this one?