Last Day

Here are some reasons that it's nice to live in England:

Reason 1: It's very close to Europe, so we can go on holiday to Barcelona with only a two hour plane flight. Well, theoretically. We have only done it once, and J's work was paying (conference = holiday, right?) We had hoped to do it again two weeks ago, but a Spanish visa for an Ethiopian bebe turned out to be harder to procure than we had hoped. Boo. So instead (and here's reason 2) we just went for a two hour drive and got to go on holiday here instead:

Okay, not this actual place (this is Leeds Castle, which is nowhere near Leeds, for reasons that I would probably understand much better if I had bothered to read the guide book) but close enough to spend the day visiting. It was nice. There is nowhere like that in Australia.

Reason 3: Having returned from a holiday that was, as I said, less than two hours drive away, people asked - with totally straight faces- what the weather had been like there. I've been here nearly ten years, but continue to enjoy this part of British culture - weather is taken very seriously. It can be dissected and predicted for hours at a time. I once shared a house with a girl who liked having the smaller bedroom in that house because the window faced onto a busy street. Reason? It let her see what weight of clothing people were wearing that day in response to the weather outside, and helped her to make a more informed decision about what level of waterproofing she was going to require. I'm not making that up. If you value your life, here, you do NOT talk during the weather forecast. I like that.

Reason 4: We get royal weddings! Hard-bitten cynic I may be, but there is enough of the five year old girl left inside to squee just a teensy bit about this. She's going to be a REAL LIVE PRINCESS! Come on. That's fabulous. (And speaking of five year old girls... you've all seen Lori's latest post, haven't you? If not, go! )

Reason 5: Employers are legally required to provide 12 months of maternity / adoption leave. Really - 12 whole months. I know. And because mine couldn't actually start until the babies were in the UK, I've actually had 15 months. Fifteen months. Fifteen whole months off work. I know how lucky I am.

Really, I do.

But it turns out that even 15 months off work isn't actually infinity. I thought it was, but it's not. And mine is over. I know that if I complain (fifteen months!) you are all going to throw things at me (well, at your screen) so I'm not complaining. But I'm going to be honest and say that I feel sad, so sad about going back to work. And here's where you might want to throw things even more - I'm only going back two days a week, and J is going to be looking after the babies on those days. So my sadness has nothing to do with them. They will be fine, and more than fine. They like me, but they totally adore their father. Two days a week of Daddy's house of fun is going to be the best thing that ever happened to them. But dangit, I don't want to go!

Often, before I had children, people would say things like 'oh, motherhood is the hardest job in the world' and I would say 'uh huh!' and smile brightly, but I was always thinking 'you know what else is hard work, lady? WORK! Work is hard work!' and I still think that is true. I don't want to get into the whole "better than / more rewarding than/ less boring than / more fulfilling than / less likely to result in therapy than" discussion, because I think it's pretty fruitless. Paid work and full-time motherhood both have advantages, but choosing either means choosing a certain set of losses, too. I know that if I could pick, I would rather stay home, at least for another few years. But if I don't take my job back now, when they are legally obliged to give it to me, I'd never get another part-time job in my sector. Ever. And J wants to be with the babies, too. I don't own them. He has a long commute, which means when he's working full time he gets home from his job after they are in bed each night. This new arrangement is going to be so much better for the three of them. My head knows that.

And have I mentioned that on the days I'm working, they're going to be with their father? So really, there is no reason at all for me to be concerned about them. At all. And in a way, that kind of stinks because frankly, I want to be able to project my fears and anxiety onto something. I want to convince myself that all my heartache and paranoia is about them, rather than the prosaic truth which is that it is all about me. It's about me. It's just about me. I don't want to leave them. (Well, I do, but only to go and see a movie, or try on shoes. Not to work). I don't want to say goodbye in the mornings. And then when I get to work, I'm worried that I will have forgotten how to be a grownup. I'm worried that I will belch in the middle of a silence, forgetting that isn't appropriate office behaviour and nobody is going to giggle. I'm worried that I won't be able to solve any of my daily problems by singing or dancing. I'm worried that I'll be stupid and slow. I'm worried that I will have forgotten how to concentrate for more than ten minutes at a time. I'm worried that one day someone will ask me to produce some income / expenditure ratios and I'll say "No! And do you know why? Because I don't care".

But mostly, I'm worried that they wont' be all mine anymore. They will do things, and I won't be there. They are both right on the cusp of walking, the cusp of talking. I just assumed I would be the one who saw those firsts. And even when it's my husband who will get to see them instead, I still wish it was me.

It hasn't been an easy year, especially the last few months - September, October and November kicked my butt pretty comprehensively. But it was my year, and I'm going to miss it. And so today was the last day that they were all mine. And it reminds me that one day they are going to leave home, and get married and stuff. I know I should be philosophical about this, but I'm not. I just want to squinch them tight forever and keep them safe. I want them always to greet me in the morning by whistling. I want to always be able to tuck them in. I want them to stay snuggly and tiny and they won't. And I know that's okay. But today, it makes me feel sad.

It's Been A Year

Our adoption was finalised on October 27, 2009. That was the day we went to court, got some stuff stamped and signed, then went out for lunch, then went to the children's home one final time, took our babies back to the hotel in a taxi and became parents. Yikes.

We have video of all of us in the taxi on the way home. We seem calm-ish, but if you know us well there's an unmistakeable hint of hysteria in our voices. Rather than two well-prepared, rational adults, we seem a bit more like a couple who met in Vegas, had a few too many shots and are now walking out of the Chapel of Love wearing matching sweatshirts saying Mr & Mrs. Our voices are saying "we're so happy!" but our eyes are asking "what have we done?"

And we were happy, of course. But it was the strangest feeling to suddenly become parents. We had met the babies and spent time with them. We already loved them, but we knew that until the court made the ruling, they weren't our kids. Now, suddenly, they were. You know that feeling when you have eaten way too much and your tummy cries out "stop! No more, no more!" That's how my heart felt that day. It felt crammed full, too full of feelings. It was like being forcefed on emotions by a very insistent host. "Here! Have some happiness! It's excellent! Try the relief! Here, have more! How about the guilt? You like guilt? Ah, take a double helping! You have room for some gratitude? And please, you must take a little confusion. I see some more room on your plate! I'll put a bit of fear of the future on there! How about some generalised, non-specific anxiety? It's extra good with my specialty: feelings of inadequacy. Hey, look! All your happiness is gone! Okay, you must have some more! No, I insist!" You get the picture.

So, hearts full to the point of nausea, we took the babies back to the hotel and unwrapped them. I don't want to get all symbolic on you and start talking about chrysalises and butterflies, because if I do that you will all need to run off and find a container to barf into. But unwrapping them felt incredibly important to us - it was our first act of parenthood. They had been so tightly and thickly swaddled while in the children's home that they were always bathed in sweat. This is pretty dangerous for babies (duh!), and seeing it had always terrifed me. Every time we visited them, they were damp, and limp and underneath all the layers it turned out they had no muscle tone at all. But now we could let them move. We didn't change their clothes, because we wanted them to have familiar smells, but we massaged their little arms and legs and watched their huge eyes widen as they learned that their bodies could s-t-r-e-t-c-h. We held them and fed them and looked and looked and looked and drank in the fact that we were all together in the same room, a family at last.

Well, that's how it felt to J and I, anyway. We knew that this wasn't 'at last' for them - adoption issues aside, they were three months old and three month old babies don't really have a concept of time.

Eventually, everybody over two feet tall got hungry. Mum and J decided to go and get pizza from the shop at the end of our road, and I stayed behind to keep up the flow of milk. They left, and suddenly I was on my own with these two tiny humans. It was amazing. I remember putting baby I down on my lap to feed him. I pulled my knees up nearly to my chin and we stared and stared at each other. He blniked at me quietly and drank and drank while L slept. M and J can't have been gone for very long, but it felt like hours. Things would get really, really hard in about six hours time, and stay that way for weeks, but that first time on my own with my children (my children!) felt magical.

We'd been advised by the paediatrician to just let them drink as much as they wanted, and so that's what we did. That afternoon I think he drank pretty much his whole bodyweight in milk. Three month old babies don't know very much, but it turns out they aren't stupid. They had been, frankly, neglected. I am not drinking adoption Kool-Aid when I say that they obviously preferred the care of two imperfect, utterly overwhelmed parents to the life they had immediately before adoption. On that first day they learned that they could have all the milk they wanted, whenever they wanted it and they adapted to life on the milky train pretty quickly. I don't mean that they loved us, but they were perfectly happy to have us around. This was actually a bit of a surprise. I had prepared myself for some kind of writhing yellfest, but it really didn't happen. I know that all kids are different, and I know that babies process loss in ways that aren't always obvious. I'm not saying they were wearing badges with 'I love my new forever family!' written on them, but I never had a moment's doubt that they were better off (yes! I said it! Better off!) with us than they were in the orphanage.

Let me tell you something about that orphanage: it was awful. You know how some people get to say "oh the care our baby got was wonderful"? We did not get to say that. I've heard that things are better there now, and I'm really glad about that. And I know that, as institutions go, it was a pretty good institution. So relatively speaking, it was fine. But as a place to leave your child, it was not a good place. The guilt I feel (and believe me, I feel plenty of guilt) has nothing to do with taking the babies away from there. In fact -if you will bear with a digression - I think the main reason why so many conversations about ethics get derailed with the old saw about families being better than orphanages is because adoptive parents see, first hand, how visibly children tend to thrive when they leave an orphanage for parental care. It makes us think about butterflies, and I'm not the kind of person who often thinks about butterflies. I compare my children's life in the afternoon of that day with how it was in the morning and I know it was better. That makes me feel, viscerally, that our adoption must have been a Good Thing. But when I'm thinking clearly, I don't really think that the 'orphanage or family' question has very much to do with the heart of international adoption ethics. The real questions must be about this: why was that baby in the orphanage in the first place? Because if you stole my children from me right now, or paid me to relinquish them, or coerced me into it, and then put them in an orphanage, anybody who adopted them in six months time would have the same post-adoption experience that I did. Life with their new family would be infinitely better than it was in that orphanage, but if the children shouldn't have been there in the first place that isn't really the point, is it? But that's a whole different post. Okay, digression over.

And so now it's been a year. I'm so thankful. But there's a part of me that feels like we don't have the right to celebrate it. Like all I should ever say as an adoptive parent is I'm sorry, I'm a bad person. I didn't post about it at the time because I felt kind of weird publicly celebrating something that was making me feel so conflicted. I feel like there's a lot of anti-adoptive-parent sentiment out there, and sometimes I find myself buying into that out of guilt. And how can I write about something when I don't even know what to call it? This post is a great explanation of why I'm not fond of the term 'gotcha day'. I would lean towards family day, but there are times when I feel like even this is more than we should claim. I'm so aware that these are our first children, but we are not their first parents. They were born into a family before they were adopted into one.

And so, 2010. My mother was here with us again, and my father too, this time - so we swapped stories about our memories of the day, and kissed the babies a lot, and thanked God for all his mercies to us. We ate pizza and milk that day a year ago, and so this year we marked it by doing the same thing - milk for the babies and pizza for the adults. Next year I'm hoping the babies will actually eat some pizza too and not just fling it on the floor. So maybe we should just call it pizza day. And maybe we will. If we were being scrupulously honest about 2009, we would call it "pizza and milk, most of which got vomited up later" day, but that's not really something we're hoping will become an annual event.

But the more I think about it, the more happy I am to confidently claim Family Day too. Not just as a technicality, but as a celebration. Forming our family was difficult, ethically complicated and the result of tragedy. There's no disputing that my babies have four real parents. But J and I are definitely two of them. We are definitely a family. Our babies have to face some very sad anniversaries in the years to come, but October 27 is not one of them. So Happy Belated Family Day, babies. We're so glad we're yours.

I'm On Holiday

...and it's taken me until today to switch on the laptop, so ten points to me, yes?

Since I'm not posting anything while I'm away (because clearly this post is an optical illusion) I wanted to take this opportunity to point you all to my absolute favourite place on the web for intelligent, thoughtful discussions about race. It's a blog called Irene's Daughters and if you even slightly interested in having a transracial family and you aren't reading it yet, you are absolutely missing out. It's got thoughtful writing, it's got four women from four different ethnic backgrounds (including a transracially adopted adult) doing the aforementioned thoughtful writing, it's got a great comments section, it's got a particularly wonderful series on 'derailment', and my favourite thing of all is that it is always constructive and never mean. If you're white, it will really help you to think about being white, but it will not make you hate yourself for being white. Big difference. I was prompted to finally post a link when I read this very thought-provoking post earlier today. Don't forget to read the comments.


So go! Read! Enjoy. You can thank me later.

Right, now I'm going to get back to my holiday...

A Virus, A Win and Several Fails

The babies and I have been playing pass the parcel with a whole range of viruses for about 8 weeks, now. It's been pretty unpleasant. Last week was my turn again. I got this virus (and yes, I totally lucked out and got the ulcers and the tonsil blisters) which means that I spent most of the week popping codeine and covering my tongue in what is basically krazy glue, while ranting at my immune system for not rejecting what is supposed to be a childhood illness.


Thank you, virus, for ruining my week. The virus is why it has taken me so long to count up the entries (and the happiness tips), go to random.org, press a button and come up with the winner for the happiness giveaway. But now I've done it and can tell you that it's Imgnyc, aka Leigh! Email me your address, Leigh, and your book will swiftly make its way to you on the wings of the morning. And the rest of you all win too, because you all get to read this luminously beautiful post that she wrote a few weeks ago. I've been wanting to link to this for ages, but never quite had the right context. Well, now I do, because she won my giveaway. Huzzah!


Okay. So. Another thing I'm going to blame the virus for: I've come to think that I possibly should have dialled down the pain meds before pressing 'publish' on my last post. I've always felt pretty strongly about that issue, and I've been meaning (for more than a year) to write something about it. I was hoping that it might be helpful for people who haven't yet adopted to have a point of view to consider when thinking about how to deal with the issue when it comes up. What I really, really did NOT want to do was pass judgement on anybody who has made a different decision from the one that we made.


Another thing I really, really didn't want to do was to lay guilt on anybody. I really hadn't considered that I might hurt people who have talked (to parents, friend, whoever) and now wish that they hadn't. I'm really sorry for this - it wasn't my intention.


A few people asked for advice about what to do in this sort of situation. All I can think of is this: we all mess up. Parents mess up. Adoptive parents probably mess up more than average, not because we are worse people but because there is more stuff to mess up. I don't know what your personal messing-up areas are, but I know that I fail daily. I have ordinary motherfails: I lose my temper. I can be lazy. And while I may not face privacyfails yet, I have what might be pretty serious adoptomotherfails too, things I feel too raw or embarrassed to write about here. And I could try justifying them, but that's not the point - the point is that I have failed, and continue to fail. These things may be things that my children grow up to grieve far more than they would have if I had nailed their birth history to our front door. And it may be that there will still other things that I never considered that do it instead. What can I do about this? I can't turn the clock back.


I read a parenting blog ages ago (I can't remember which one, or I'd link) that was talking about goals for raising children. The author was writing from a Christian perspective, and she said: our aim as parents isn't to stop our children from sinning, but to teach them how to deal with their sin. (And a pretty basic definition of sin is failure to do what we should do, be what we should be). And as I've been thinking about my own failures this week, and pondering questions about privacyfails, I've been thinking a lot about this. We're never going to raise perfect children, and that's probably just as well because we are never going to be perfect parents, either. I'm not going to do a perfect job of being my children's mother. Not in the everyday ordinariness of parenting, and not the specific adoption parenting bits either. Please believe that I know I do not have all the answers. Far from it.


This is complicated, because while parenting failures are not unimportant, they are inevitable, and it's in facing our own human imperfections that we can help our kids to face theirs. A way I can really help my children deal with their own imperfection is to let them see me deal with mine. Firstly (and I'm going to keep this as brief as possible) I need to admit them - often out loud, to the person we've wronged. I think this applies both to small things like being unreasonably cranky (I'm embarrassed by how often I need to apologise about this to my children) or large things like talking out of turn. Secondly, our apologies mean nothing if we don't strive to correct ourselves. I'm working on getting less cranky. If you've been more talkative than you should have, you can not do that anymore. Thirdly, we can seek to set right any wrongs we have done. A few people asked about what to do when words have already been spoken that they now wish unspoken. All I can suggest is to speak to the people you've talked to, explain why you wish you hadn't and ask them to keep quiet about what they know. As several people have pointed out (on this blog and others) people do generally mean well. Trade on that. Fourthly, if you're a Christian, parenting drives you again and again and again to remember what it means to be forgiven because boy oh boy do I need forgiveness day by day for all the ways that I fail.

Adoptomotherfails. Crankyfails. Privacyfails. We need to face them, because they are a daily reality. Turns out this parenting lark is a whole new journey of humility. I was reading The Gospel Centred Family yesterday and there was a prayer in there that sums up exactly how I feel about parenting:


"Dear God, please have mercy on my children, because with a parent like me, they are sure going to need it".

All I can say is: Amen.

The One With All The Privacy

Before we met the babies, before we knew anything about them, I spoke to a group of friends who had adopted the previous year. I asked them if there was anything they would have done differently in their adoptions, if they were doing it all again. One told me: "I wouldn't have been so quick to tell people everything we knew about our baby's background". The other one agreed, saying "In our case, I wouldn't have been so quick to tell people that we didn't know anything, because it turns out that is a pretty big thing to tell, too".

We took this to heart, and J and I agreed, long before we got a referral, that we would keep all of our child's information private. We're glad we made this decision. Our reasoning is simple: it's not our story to tell. If the babies want to share, later, they can do that. If we do it now, and they wish we hadn't, we can never un-tell. Information only goes in one direction.

And so we brought the babies home, determined to stick to this.

"So why were they adopted? Did their real parents not want them?" a friend asks me casually. I draw in breath. Does he have any idea what he is asking?

I think about my babies' story, and I suspect not. Their story is not unusual for an international adoption. But stories that end in adoption are never happy stories, are they? I wish I could tell my children a story about their beginnings that wasn't going to cause them pain. But any story that ends with 'and then we took you home on an aeroplane' is going to start with something pretty difficult. Our children are too young to understand any of this yet, but one day, one night, they probably will lie awake wondering "Did my real parents not want me?" I feel sick at the thought, and I feel angry that my friend has been so casual.

I try to imagine anything in this man's life that might be a similar source of pain. I know he had a difficult breakup, a few years ago. He's never talked about it. Maybe I should ask him about that. Maybe I should ask him for details about why his girlfriend left. Was it because he had gained weight? Was it the back hair? Did she find him boring? Maybe I should think of every painful possibility, everything that keeps him awake at night, and use them to scrape my fingernails down the blackboard of his mind. Scritch. Scratch. And see whether he thinks that's an appropriate topic for small talk. But even that wouldn't really be equivalent, would it? Because he could tell me to shut up, or refuse to answer. No, I should strap him in a pram, gag him, and then ask his mother about it. And then see how he feels when she tells me everything she knows.

Okay, Claudia, calm down, I tell myself. You know he meant no harm with his question. And honestly, it seems that very few people do. It would be easier to shut these conversation down if the person asking was being rude, but most aren't. They might be asking about a painful thing, but their intent is not to cause any pain. Some people want to know about the babies' story because adoption is an interesting social experiment, and okay, they are a tiny bit nosy. Some people want to know because we are stuck making small talk and they have run out of things to say. Some people want to know because we are in the queue in the supermarket and they are just passing the time. Lots of people want to know about the babies' story because they genuinely care. Whatever the reasons, it does feel that pretty much everybody wants to know.

This means that sticking to our resolution not to talk needs committment because it is hard. It's incredibly difficult to refuse to answer a straight question. It's very socially awkward, because it implies the question was rude and Miss Manners will tell you that letting another person know they have been rude is, well, rude. It sounds trivial, but try it - it's not easy. And this social difficulty of refusing to answer is one of the big reasons we decided not to tell anybody at all the whole story, not even the grandparents.

Okay, maybe we had a specific reason for not telling the grandparents. When we started our adoption process, we hardly told anybody. We did tell some family members, making it clear that they weren't to tell anyone else. And yet, one of them did. And I've forgiven her*, but I've learned something too - other people don't care about our personal information as much as we do. Every degree of separation tends to make people fractionally less determined to keep what's private, private**. So I would remind prospective adoptive parents that before you decide to tell the proud grandparents-to-be everything in your child's referral packet, know this: your parents' friends will ask them, all interested and concerned, about what happened to that precious baby before it was lucky enough to get adopted by you. They will not mean any harm by this, but they will do it. And unless your mother has nerves of steel, it's unlikely she will be able to find a way to deflect the question because, well, it seems so rude. And then your mother's friends Raymond and Darlene will know, and maybe your cousin Jeanette, and then Jeanette's children. And after a few of these conversations, the person at the end of the chain has no committment at all to your children's privacy and it's just an interesting story to talk to their hairdresser about. And maybe your children won't mind about that, but maybe they will. I much prefer knowing that my parents, and J's, are saying "well, I just don't know what happened, Raymond and Darlene, because my freakish child refuses to tell me". I'd much rather be my parent's freakish child in this situation than my children's unthinking parent.

I think the point I'm making here is that I find it very difficult to politely, cheerfully put down a conversational roadblock when people start asking these questions, even though I'm extremely motivated to do it. If you want any privacy at all, I would advise thinking twice before expecting family to make this same committment.

And then there's yet another layer. When I think about the schools that our children might go to, I realise that they will probably be in the same year group as the children of a few of our friends. This concentrates my mind somewhat. As I watch people interact with their growing children, I realise that most people will tell their kids pretty much anything they ask. So I know that if we tell our friends what happened to our children, why they needed new parents, then their children will know as soon as they are old enough to ask the questions. I think it's a very rare person who can say "well, honey, that's an interesting question but I think that might be L and I's private information. We don't really need to know, do we?" I love my friends, but I don't think many of them are quite that rare.

And you know what? I don't want my children's friends, or even their cousins, knowing all there is to know about them. When I think about my children in a school playground, I don't want the other children to know things about them that would hurt. I feel like the bare fact of being adopted is enough to contend with. And being transracially adopted is more than enough to contend with. Personal details, the whole history, the what and when and why, the hard and scary stuff, that seems like too much.

I probably haven't made it clear enough that we don't want the babies to be ashamed of their story, or to think that it is a secret. Privacy and secrecy are two very different things, and it's the first one that I'm aiming for. I want them to be able to talk about these things to people that they trust, but I want them to be the ones who make the decisions about who deserves that trust. I don't want this to be a cloud that hangs over us; I don't want to be always hovering over them saying 'No! Don't say that! You might wish you had kept that private!' But neither do I want to regret that it was me who spilled all the beans when they are dealing with the fallout.

Because here's the thing: I don't get to decide how the babies are going to deal with their losses, and their story, in the future. I hope I can support them as they do deal with everything, but it's not up to me to decide that they aren't going to find some bits of their story hugely challenging. Origins can be an enormously important part of self-concept, and I can only imagine how hard it might be for them to work through all of this as they grow up. As if puberty isn't enough, kids, have fun dealing with this too! No, seriously, you're welcome. If it was me, I think I can guarantee I'd have gone crazy. But here's the other thing: these children aren't actually genetically related to me. There's a very good possibility that they won't inherit my tendency to overthink everything, and who knows, they might not inherit my tendency towards obsessive privacy either. My decision to keep their story private is definitely coloured by the fact that it is what I would have wanted done for me, if I was in their shoes. But they may be happy to share their story with everyone. Hey, they may just be happy**.

They may be. They may never see privacy about this as an issue. But I don't get to decide this in advance. I don't get to decide that they aren't going to want to keep their story to themselves, or at least restrict it to their close friends. And so I feel that it's just not my place to tell it. That's their decision to make. In the meantime, I'm keeping my trap shut.

And yet people continue to ask. I think that lack of respect for privacy about the babies' history stems from a lack of understanding about the losses involved in adoption. I think - okay, I hope- that if people understood what they were really asking about, they wouldn't ask. If they realised that they were asking for access to information that's actually very personal, they would be much less likely to do it. "This isn't really a suitable topic for chit-chat!" I want to say, but I never do. Because I know that honestly, I'm no different. I'm sure that I ask inappropriate questions about other people's lives, and they are endlessly patient with me. If it was my friends adopting, not me, I'm sure I'd want to know what happened, why these babies, where are their real parents?

So I'm facing my friend, and I reply to his question by saying what we always say. Big smile first, then: "I hope this doesn't sound rude, but we've decided not to talk about the babies' story to anybody else until they are old enough for us to talk to them about it first". And he looks at me a bit funny, but he shrugs his shoulders and says "Fair enough."

And really, I think it is.

*Honestly, I have.
**Ruth left a comment a few posts ago with her own harrowing grandparent tale, which kind of made my hair stand on end. So this one is definitely not just me!
***And speaking of happiness - you've got about 12 hours left to enter the giveaway!


To reward you for making your way through all of that, here is a gratuitously cute twin pic.

Happiness

A few months ago, I was in Anthropologie. I picked up a book that looked interesting, opened it in the middle and started to read. The author was talking about happiness, and the chapter I had opened to was about money and happiness. I only read a few pages, but I remember the author talking about how people have different approaches to purchasing - that they tend to be either satisficers or maximizers - Satisficers have criteria they are seeking to meet with their purchases (eg: I need a red shirt, not too low cut, flattering) and once they find something that meets their criteria they buy it. Maximisers, on the other hand, think I am looking for the ideal red shirt and will leave no stone unturned until they find it. The interesting thing about this phenomenon is that satisficers tend to be happier with their purchases, because the maximiser may have bought something nicer, cheaper, whatever than the satisficer but they are still thinking what if there was something better out there and I missed it?

"Huh!" I thought. "Interesting". And I kept reading, and there were quite a few other things that made me go "Huh!" again. And then I put the book down, and continued my quest for the perfect red shirt.

I found myself thinking about this book quite a few times over the next few weeks. I told my mum about it - my parents are trying to build a house and can't quite make up their minds about what it is that they need. I even used the concept I'd read to bring my 6 month sofa search to an abrupt end by saying to J: "Hey! This perfectly adequate sofa is hugely reduced! Let's just buy it!" and we did, and we're really happy with it. Without this book, I suspect I would still be googling "UK sofa vintage leather" in my spare time and frankly I'm glad I'm not.

Now, I wanted to read the rest of the book. Of course, I had no idea at all what the book was called, or who wrote it. And I wasn't motivated enough to do anything useful like call the store (which is in London), ask them to open up all their books to the middle, find which one talks about purchasing styles and then post it to me. So I kind of forgot about it.

Then, on Saturday, I was in London again, vaguely cruising for the perfect handbag. I found myself in Anthropologie again and there it was! The book!

It's by Gretchen Rubin, and it's called The Happiness Project*.

I forgot all about my handbag quest, went to the till and gleefully purchased it.

Then I got it out to read and thought what have I done? She's got this lovely, perfect life and she wants me to follow along on her quest to be more happy? Give me a break! and then I saw that someone had compared it to Eat, Pray, Love on the back cover and my heart sank even further because while I've never actually read that book, I've read this and enough similar opinions to make me pretty sure I would hate it. So I'm thinking Okay, it's got some good stuff about shopping but what have I done?

And then I started to actually read it, and it was wonderful. It's not a book about depression or adversity. She is very open about the fact that she has a great life, and talks a lot about happiness as a duty. My life is great, she is saying, I ought to be happy. I have no excuse not to be. And so she spends a year alters her own attitudes and actions. The most surprising thing about this book is that she is largely focusing on altering herself, not her circumstances. She writes about becoming happier in her marriage not by finding someone else but with the resolutions: Quit nagging, don't expect praise or appreciation, fight right, no dumping and give proofs of love. It's not about trying to change him, but changing herself. Each month focuses on a different area of life. I liked that she is so honest about how difficult this was. If she had said, at the end of the month 'and then everything was PERFECT' I would have been ill inclined to keep reading. But it's not that simple. She acknowledges all the complexities, and keeps on going.

When I began to love the book, I did find myself wondering, at times, how well this totally secular quest for happiness fits into my Christian worldview. Should I be loving this book as much as I am? She's wanting to be happy, but largely ignoring God. (I'm a Presbyterian at heart. We struggle with these things). And it's true that I did find the chapter on 'Contemplate The Heavens' the least satisfying. She learns a lot from reading about a saint, but has made what must be a very deliberate decision to totally leave out any discussion of God himself. Commercially, this was probably a very good choice, but I found myself thinking 'there is so much more here!' But while I was reading about her efforts to be happier - which are largely efforts in unselfishness - I found myself thinking that a lot of what she is striving for is what the bible describes as the fruits of the spirit: love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, patience, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. This book is full of practical wisom on encouraging these characteristics - that has to be a good thing. And Christians, we should be happiest of all, and so often we are not. Sometimes I say I'm looking for 'contentment' in life, when really what I mean is that I'm trying to spiritualise my grumbling. As a Christian, I felt hugely convicted by this very secular book - she is absolutely right. Happiness is a duty. Not selfishness, but happiness. When I confuse the two, I'm getting something very wrong.

I found this book compelling because so many of her struggles are my struggles. A sharp tongue. Cynicism. Well, when I say struggles, often I'm not struggling at all, I'm just coasting along and not dealing with them.

A quote she comes back to several times is: "It is easy to be heavy, difficult to be light". I keep finding myself thinking about this. I know how easy I find it to become negative about things. For me, this is the lazy option. It really is difficult to be light. And sometimes, recognising something as difficult is a good start in moving towards it. It's easy to think 'perhaps I'm not that way because I'm just not made that way'. But no - for me, I'm not that way because too often I'm lazy about it. I find it easy to think about what upsets me, what annoys me. I've always had trouble with Philippians 4:8: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things." I'm rarely thinking about such things. I'm usually criticising them in my head, instead.

This might make it sound like the book is very po-faced and worthy - it doesn't feel like that at all. It's about happiness, and it's a very happy book. One of the concrete ways she becomes happier is by targeting her time more effectively. This reminded me of the rule that J and I have for ordering in restaurants -we always look at the menu, look at each other and then say "order what you DO want, not what you think you SHOULD want". Sometimes this means I end up having a burger, even though it's a fish restaurant, but you know what? It really works. She's basically applying this principle to time - do what you DO want in your free time, not what you think you SHOULD want. Why didn't I think of focusing like that? Well, I will from now on.

I mentioned above that I felt like I was reading about my own personality struggles. Well, my most surprising moment of self-recognition was when she admitted to eating brown sugar straight out of the jar. I thought I was the only person who did that! (Yeah, don't accept cake at my house). I found myself convinced that she must be my soul sister, my long lost BFF. And I guess that is the joy of her writing - I suspect she will make you feel like that too, even if you don't have the same sugar issues that I have. She says often that what she is learning to stop being someone else, but instead to 'be Gretchen'. At the end of this book, after spending a year watching her learn about happiness, I wanted to be Gretchen. But not like a stalker, I hasten to add.

It's hard to review this book properly, because I think my babies have just woken up and there is still so much that I want to rave about. I particularly liked her secrets of adulthood - too long to type them all out here, but they're along the same lines as my restaurant rule above. Some of my favourites were bring a sweater, what's fun for other people might not be fun for you, over the counter medicinces can be very effective and people actually prefer that you buy wedding gifts off their registry. Ah, so true.

Have you realised that I think you should all read this? Since I can't forcibly march you all to the shop to buy a copy, I'm going to do the next best thing. I've never done this before, but it's my 200th post and I'm feeling a bit giddy so I'm having a giveaway. I'm going to give away a copy of this book to one of you, yes you. I'll choose a winner using a random number generator. You can live wherever you like - I don't think anybody reads this in the UK so if I closed it to international readers I would be buying a second copy for myself. I'll order the book from Amazon in your country (or post it if you don't have Amazon) so it doesn't matter. Just leave me a comment with your name - and you get an extra entry if you also leave me your favourite happiness tip, or one of your own secrets of adulthood.

You've got a week - comments close next Friday at 12pm GMT.

By the way, I've just done one of her resolutions, from November - give positive reviews. And do you know what? I do feel happier.

*Having just found this on Amazon to link, I've seen that it was a New York Times #1 bestseller. I guess that means everyone else has already read it and I'm terribly behind. I'm trying not to think negative thoughts about that.

Home Truths

Babies are such a joy. So many things in life are more fun with children in the house.

It turns out that renovations are not one of these things.

This last week, J has had our floor up. He's replacing the old laminate with oak flooring. It's going to look great. But in the meantime, I am going CRAZY. Not just a little bit crazy, but C-R-A-Z-Y. We can't use downstairs in the house at all. The living room and dining room have big holes in the floor, and the kitchen has a piano in it. Being confined upstairs is not fun. Trying to nap with a circular saw buzzing is not fun either, apparently, judging by the howling. And it's raining, and the babies are still crawling, so outside is a no-go. Being in the pram is an option, but the babies are at that go-go-go stage and they want to be DOING things, not stuck in a wheely thing. They don't ask for much, they just want some space to crawl, and right now they can't have it.

Oh, also they are teething again.

Have I mentioned I'm going crazy?

I keep finding myself thinking that this would all be so much easier if I didn't have to look after two little people. I get so stuck in accidentally thinking that the babies are the endpoint of our adoption story, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the happy ending. But on days like this my story feels neither happy nor ended and then I get all confused. How can I feel so fed up with my pot of gold? I must be a bad person. But I knew motherhood would be hard. Maybe I'm not a bad person after all. It's just that I got so sick of hearing people complaining about their children, before I had any. It used to make me cry. But then today I cried because baby I wouldn't settle and then smeared fish all over the floor. So does this mean that I think my complaining friends' attitudes were okay, now? No, I don't. I don't think it's okay to act as if children are a burden, a curse, a liability. If I didn't think they were a privilege, I would never have worked so hard to become a parent. But if I'm so convinced they are such a privilege, why am I so utterly frustrated with them so much of the time? Why do I get so resentful when they seem like such a swirling vortex of need? I just cannot deal with the cognitive dissonance.

I beat myself up about this all the time.

Am I the only one?

I'm really curious about this. Other adoptive parents, or people who became parents after a long and difficult journey - how do you deal with it? Or is it not an issue for you?

Tangled Web

Yesterday, I told a man about my labour and birth experience with the twins. You know, the ones I adopted.

I know.

Here's what happened.

I'd had a pretty stonkingly bad morning. The babies had their MMR jabs a few days ago, and they have been feral ever since. They have been making their displeasure felt by throwing themselves around - arching their backs when picked up, then arching their backs even harder when put down. J and I call this 'silly bending' (as in: "baby L! No more silly bending!") and it's by far the toddleriest thing that they do. On a really bad day like yesterday (and today) they both do it at once, yelling at the top of their lungs, and sometimes add in an extra little crab-scuttle-move where they fling themselves backwards across the floor, balancing on just their head and toes. Fortunately, they aren't like this very often because when they are, nothing makes them happy. If they had their way, I would be simultaneously holding and not-holding both of them at once, using the magical octopus arms that they seem to think I possess. The closest I can come to this is to lie down on my back on the floor and let them clamber on and off me as they please. Yesterday, even that wasn't helping. I felt sad for them, obviously; they must have been feeling very messed up to be that cranky. However, I had given them food, sleep, hugs and drugs and what more can a mummy do to soothe their pain?

Mummy can go into town and get a coffee to soothe her own pain, that's what mummy can do. It wasn't totally selfish - they are usually happier once they are in the pram and moving, and that proved to be the case. We live really close to the centre of our town; it's only a ten minute walk and I invent excuses to do it most days. I was waiting to cross the road and a man approached me. As soon as he opened his mouth, I could tell he was not quite functioning on all cylinders. I think he was just a bit inebriated, although there may have been other substances involved. I don't know. He turned to talk to me. This happens all the time - the babies and I get a lot more than our fair share of attention, and a considerable portion of it seems to come from the disenfranchised.

"Are they twins?" he asked. This is a standard opener.
"Yes!" The obvious reply.
"And how old are they?" Another classic.
"Fourteen months", I said, expecting the next line would be something about how cute they were, and that he would then go on his way. Instead, he said:
"I have twins". Ahhh. This happens quite a bit too. People who either have twin children, or a twin sibling, go out of their way to tell me about it. I think I can understand this - it must be strange, having been at least partly defined by this twin-thing, to eventually leave it behind when your children or (sibling) go their own way. I sometimes find myself wondering if I will do this in twenty years time, stop people at a street crossing to tell them about my children, now gone. I was still thinking this conversation was about to end, and I just said "oh, how lovely" and left it at that.

"Is it a boy and a girl? I have a boy and a girl" he said.
"That's right - this is our little boy, and this is our girl," I said, pointing.
"Which one was born first?" he asked.

And I paused. This is the point in a conversation where I always, always say "well, we adopted them so I'm not sure because I wasn't there" and move right on. And no, I'm not really all that happy with that answer either, but I can't come up with a better one*. I think it must be something about twins - people seem compelled by some cosmic force to ask questions about the pregnancy and birth. Which one is older is the most common question, followed by how much did they weigh and how much time did they spend in the NICU. I think people do this to everyone with twins, I'm pretty sure it's not just me. But I do wonder sometimes whether this is a way that some people decide to probe the adoption issue without actually quite asking about adoption. And I always say they are adopted - well, they are - and some people do look a bit TOO surprised as if to say 'oh, I had no idea!' even though the babies are clearly a totally different colour from me. Surely it's not that much of a shock, Random Supermarket Stranger? But once, a few days ago, for the very first time, I didn't say it. I just said 'oh, our boy is older' to cut the conversation off. The person I was talking to was elderly, and a bit deaf, and a bit confused, and not somebody we were ever going to see again, and I just didn't want to get into it. And then yesterday, taking this man's strangeness into account, I did the same thing. And that's when it all started to go wrong.

"Oh!" he replied. "Our girl is older. Did you have yours in the hospital in this town?"
"No" I said, truthful but squirming a little. Can't he just leave now?
"My wife gave birth last week. They're all still in the hospital now" and my heart sank. For this man, obviously, and his wife and their tiny, tiny babies who turn out to be just over three pounds each. But also for me and my own stupidity - it became clear that this was not a conversation that I was going to be able to brush away. I should have told the truth, while I had the chance. I made the appropriate noises of sympathy, doing my best to make them sound like empathy. It didn't feel like any kind of fantasy or wish-fulfilment, me pretending I birthed those babies. It just felt like the most paralysingly awkward conversation I'd ever had in my life.

"In the end, she had to have a Caesarean section" he told me. "Did you have to have a Ceasarean section?"
"No!" I said, glad for another truthful answer.
"But she was in labour for quite a long time before that. How about you?"
"Oh no, I wasn't in labour for too long" I said, a bit wildly, thinking please oh please oh please don't ask me any questions about dilation. I don't want to have to make any stuff up about my cervix.

I still couldn't quite work out whether he has had too much to drink or taken something much stronger. It had become possible that he was just operating under a thick, thick blanket of stress and grief. He was desperately worried about his little family, and told me that his wife isn't coping at all, and just cries and cries. But he didn't seem like a normal man under pressure - there was something else going on, either mental or chemical, and I realised that I wouldn't be able to figure it out so there was little point trying. If he didn't seem quite so vulnerable, I like to think that I would have apologised for giving him the wrong impression, explained that we had adopted our twins, and wished him and his wife the best for the future. Instead, I decided not to retract it and give him what comfort I could. The conversation continued for the better part of ten minutes, with me trying to tell as few outright lies as possible. He concluded by telling me how he and his wife had 'left things a bit late', and had to take desperate measures.

"We had to do the thing - what's the thing called with the artificial insemination?"
"IVF?" I guessed, taking the twins as a clue.
"Yes! That's the one. We did the IVF. But it was all my own sperm" he said, proud.
"Well.... that's excellent!" I replied, which seemed to be the reaction he was hoping for.
"Oh, and then when we found out it was twins... we just couldn't believe it! How did YOU feel when YOU found out you were pregnant with twins?"
Well, that part of me felt entirely fictional, sir, I wanted to reply, but just told him "We were so happy" and he beamed.
"So were we!" he said. "So were we!"

A few minutes later, he left, taking my paralysingly awkward lies with him. I went on, wracked with guilt, to get my coffee. At least the babies didn't understand that, I thought. Yet. One day they will.

Why did I get myself into that mess?


I really feel like I should be learning something through experiences like this. I only wish - I wish I knew what that something was.


*And before anybody freaks out about how much I share, we have extreeeeeeemely strict rules about no sharing ANYTHING about the babies' personal story with anybody. At all. Even including extended family. I'm going to write about this no-sharing thing in more detail at some point. So no, we are most definitely not giving people any details at all about their adoption story, just the fact that they are adopted, if this is something that comes up. And it's the fact that we aren't going to share anything further, and have to be polite about it, that makes so many of these conversations so exhausting.

Not-Wordless Not-Wednesday

When I decided, back in the mists of time, to try this photo-a-day thing, the website that told me about the project had a warning: You will reach a stage where you want to give up. Don't do it!

Friends, I have to tell you - I have definitely reached that stage. The last few weeks around here have had that low-level hum of slight unhappiness that comes from being at slimefest and two babies' sleep needs rearranging themselves in a decidedly un-synchronised fashion. There have been some lovely moments, but some very hard days.

The last thing I've felt like doing is documenting it.

To add irony to the situation, this was about the same point that I started writing my series on how to photograph babies. I have to keep reminding myself that this is exactly what that series was supposed to be about - getting pictures of what's really going on around you, in the midst of your ordinary life. So I'm telling myself that the fact that I don't actually feel like picking up a camera at the moment doesn't make me a fraud. It just puts me in a good position to remind myself of my fourth point:

4. Take Pictures All The Time
This point has already been mentioned by Annie in a comment after my first post in this series. She said: I keep remembering the words of a famous children's photographer who when interviewed said, "The best way to get good photos of children is to take a LOT of photos." This couldn't be more on the money. Partly this is about statistics: if you get a decent photo 5% of the time you press the shutter, you're going to have to press the shutter lots of times before you get anything worth keeping. But there's actually a lot more to it than that - taking photos all the time should increas the quality of your photos, not just the quantity. I'd say there are three main reasons for this:

Your children will get used to it and ignore the camera. This one is self-explanatory.

Taking lots of photos keeps the stakes very low each time you get your camera out. If nothing works, no big deal. Put it away. Try again tomorrow. However, if getting out the camera is a big occasion, something that only happens rarely, you're going to want results. When you don't get them, you're going to get cranky and frustrated and your children are going to start hating the camera. Don't let this happen to you.

Taking good photos is a skill, and skills need practice. I'd done quite a lot of photography before the babies came home, and found it a bit surprising that it wasn't immediately easy, but it wasn't. Each type of photography is a new skill, and child photography was one I didn't have. Kids add a huge element of unpredictability to everything. I've done a bit of wildlife photography, and photographing children is far, far more like that than taking a portrait of an adult. The main reason for this is that the adult wants the same thing you want - a great photo. Babies? Not so much. They don't care about your stupid photo. They are more like rhinos - they want food, and an opportunity to wreak as much havoc as possible. Minimise the havoc by getting lots of practice.

So, how does this fit in with what I said last time about photographing purposefully? How can you stay purposeful if your camera never sees the inside of its case? Well, I'd say that it's all about frequency rather than volume. If you find that taking pictures all the time means you're clicking aimlessly and your camera is beginning to sound like the wings of a hummingbird, set yourself limits. Take pictures every day, but only allow yourself to take ten shots at each session and THINK about each one. Ten minutes of practice every day makes much more of an impact on your brain than two hours every two weeks - at least, this is what my mother kept telling me when I refused to practise the piano.

For putting this into practice, I can't recommend project 365 highly enough. If I hadn't started doing this, I would have only a tiny fraction of the photos of the babies that I do now. When they first came home, I was always so exhausted that it never felt like the right time to haul out the camera - and when I did I wanted something really GOOD. Needless to say I never got it. Now, because I do it every day, I get out the camera even when I don't feel like it and I'm often surprised by getting something that is much nicer than I was expecting. Not always - obviously - but often.

So while I definitely do feel like quitting right now, I'm not going to, and here's the evidence.

Who is the fairest one of all?

no! It could be contaminated!

I thought I already WAS working it!

danger of imminent starvation temporarily averted

I thought you said this was going to be fun.

now THAT's a head of hair

baby I with our neighbour

you can try to blind me with your death ray, but I will not lose my iron grip

yo.

see? Wildlife photography.

quick.... I'll cover the entrances. You take sector 12.

(and when I say low stakes, this is a photo of his feet and they aren't even properly in focus. Looooow stakes).

all non-essential agents, evacuate immediately! They're multiplying!

sadly, she had to throw this one back

Take my hand! I've found a gap in the force field!

(by the way - this photo is an artistic writeoff but a VERY BIG DEAL. It took a long time for baby girl to realise that sippy cups were not The Enemy. This was a major milestone).

vaccinations. Ouch.

.... and that's when I met Elvis.

I can see the humanoids approaching. We do'nt have a second to lose.

There are very few supplies left. We'll have to be very cautious.

It's big, but I think we've rendered it harmless

Mission successful. All the prisoners are accounted for and we have neutralised their contaminants. Over and out.

Where I've Been

Been awol from blogging recently - the babies and I got a cold and unexpectedly ended up here: (click to enlarge)


so things have been a bit fraught and screamy.

And yes, I did spend breakfast drawing this rather than interacting lovingly with the babas. What can I say? Hopefully the festival will end soon.