Peaceful Birth Day to Her

I once heard a woman who was adopted as an infant say that her birthday was the worst day of the year because it was the day of her most profound loss...that of her first mother. I admit, since then, each of my sons' birthdays comes with this secret melancholy as I think about the woman half a world away who is undoubtedly in pain. I don't plan to pass this mournful outlook on to my kids, but I subtly acknowledge their loss by placing two flowers (one for their mother and one for their father) in the undon vase we purchased for them and saying a prayer for peace in the hearts of their first parents. And then I fill the house with balloons and cake and presents and fun things and celebrate the heck out of my amazing boys and their new year.

And I hide myself away and blog a letter to the woman who I will always share the name "mamma" with. Because I can't help but think of how her heart must twist to wake up and relive in perhaps painful and beautiful detail how the sweet baby she grew and protected and loved inside her for 9 months entered the world. How she must cling to that first glimpse of him. And the last glimpse. What she might have whispered to him. Her pain and love must have been so intense that day, and it makes me so sad for her.

To her, on this second of many birthdays, I wish for peace. I wish for her to know, either through our letters or just by some feeling, that her big star is loved by so many people and is happy and healthy and adorable. I want her to know that I think her legacy lives on in him. I know enough about her to see what I can only assume is a strong similarity in both physical and personality traits. I want her to know she is loved by us and by her son. The world is a big place, but hearts are bigger, and she is always going to be in ours, whether he turns 2 years old, or 20.

And I want her to know he will always be hers. He's mine, too, but her role as his mother doesn't diminish because of mine. I want her to be able to celebrate his life, if she can. I want her to feel like she has a right to observe this day. And maybe she does, but if she doesn't my wish for her is that clarity someday.

Two years ago she gave birth to an amazing child who has already changed the lives of many people and is destined to be a big star in some way. I wish for her a peaceful day surrounded by those who love her. It's as much an anniversary for her as it is for our son.

I don't want to say thank you because everything she did was for her son, not for me. So instead I will simply say that I honor her and will always respect her role in our son's life.

The Great Debate

What came first, the fussy children or the cranky mom?

I'd like to think that my mood over the last 3 days can be blamed on my sons.  They are both going through some "emotionally fragile" phases due to the fact that they are toddlers and can't regulate their emotions.

Unlike their 30-year-old mother, who certainly can, but has chosen not to.

My kids have been all sorts of naughty, loud, grumpy, defiant, and generally annoying as hell the last couple days, but what I realized is that my sour, cranky, tense mood could perhaps be exacerbating, if not causing the higher level of...passionate expression...in our home.  Kids can tap in and feed off emotions, especially those of their parents, and perhaps my mood isn't really due to my kids, but my choice to eat less healthy and get less sleep the last few days, thus causing my kids' moods to devolve into toddler nastiness.  When we wake up in the mornings, who is the first one to frown lately.

I'm betting it's been me.

So tonight I apologized to my sons for causing what has been a relatively unfun and stressful few days and promised to try harder tomorrow.  One said "I waaab ooo, mama" and the other gave me a silly grin from behind his bottle.

And tomorrow, I really will try harder.

Mama

Almost 2 months to the day he came home, Little Bro started calling me mama (and Appa, dada).  What was noted in Korea as a speech delay has turned out instead to be a mark of impressive and hardcore stubbornness and a fondness for pointing and grunting to get his way.

Not that we've been cracking a whip or anything, but yeah, that wasn't going to continue long-term here.

Within the first month home Little Bro had picked up a handful of words, and in the last month his vocab has exploded. Granted, his most consistent words are a bit random (cheese, turtle, hi, hawk), but he's actually got more words than I care to type out, many of them functional and appropriate for his day to day life, and he loves to repeat anything we say (when in the mood).  He's also a whiz at picking up baby sign language, to the point where I have to go back and review his DVDs to see what he is saying.  He strings together multiple signs and enjoys communicating wants and needs effectively.  He's even using please and thank you consistently.

Cute and polite.  Be still my heart. Did I mention he's got the swagger of the Beibs and the cheeks of a Gerber baby?

But mama, he would not say.  I knew he could say it, as it's so close to omma, a word I heard plenty in our first weeks together, although not in relation to me.  I admit, this last week has grated on me, and I am not proud of the fact that instead of pushing more functional words, I pushed him to use this word; pushed, begged, bribed, and threatened (okay, not really that one).

But that whole stubborn streak...I could see his little lips tightening in a epic battle of wills as he refused to let the sounds pass his lips. Impressive, and pretty freaking scary for me to imagine what sort of show downs Little Bro will be able to whip up when he's 16.

But yesterday after his nap, "Mama, mama" slipped out as I held him in my arms, rushing around to get ready to leave the house.  Before nap = not gonna happen; after nap = sure, your name is mama.  He knew what he was doing, too, as he immediately started clapping for himself. Since then he's being using it A LOT, which I love, although it's mainly when he is whining for something that he busts it out. 

I'll take it though.  Hearing him call me Mama and point to Appa over webchat and exclaim "dada, dada" over and over is another little slice of normal that has fallen into place.  And tonight, as I listened to both of my little sons call my name in their little voices, my heart felt very full (and good thing, too, as they were both actually whining in an attempt to avoid bedtime).

The Joy of Parenthood

There are some days where the joy of being a parent just wraps you up in warm fuzzy happiness.

Today was not that day for Appa and I.

Little Bro is teething some pretty major back teeth (3), and it turns out that when you add one passionate and dramatic Big Star and three back molars, you get something that resembles a tiny but fearsome Korean monster whose unnatural war cries can immobilize its enemy with burst ear drums. The puking is a pretty neat trick to protest the pain meds, too. And of course, pain anywhere is pain everywhere, so the act of wearing shoes was probably something the United Nations would agree was torture.

I will be honest when I say it almost came down to rock, paper, scissors to decide who got the....pleasure....of putting our smallest son to sleep tonight. As I am typing this from his room while he rolls around and glares at me for stopping singing time at 50 renditions of the Elephant Song, let it be known that I took one for the team.

Little Bug, our gentle giant of a child, must have watched some National Geographic show recently on toddlers because he suddenly realized that he can and should be directly defiant or oppositional to EVERYTHING his mother or father say, suggest, hypothesize, consider, mentally consider, or send via smoke signal. And when the ten+ time outs get annoying, he decided to kick it up a notch and throw something at his brother's head, resulting in a nasty looking bruise and a NEEDED Mommy timeout so things didn't go freaking nuclear.

I love my children fiercely, I really do, but as soon as both my heavily medicated life joys are snoring away, Appa and I are cracking open a bottle of wine and toasting to the joys of bedtime.

Goodbye, Professional Mama

For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to be a mom.  For almost as long, I've wanted to be a teacher.  That is, until I realized about 8 years ago that I wanted to be an editor instead.  It was there, amidst the red pencils and stacks of papers and colorful track changes that I found a career that I loved.  Most people work because they need to, but I have been blessed to be able to work because I wanted to.

Last night I quit my job.

Being a working mother is all about sacrifice.  For me, choosing to work has meant sacrificing time I wanted to spend with Little Bug and Little Bro, even though I believe their current school is critical for their social development.  If I stayed home, I would be sacrificing a career for which I have worked hard laying a solid foundation.

Either way, I sacrifice something I love.   And I came to realize if I was going to sacrifice one of them, it shouldn't be my babies.

The precise reasons for my decision don't need to be hashed out, but the decision was both hard and easy all at once.  Making the right decision is easy...making the decision that comes with heartache is hard.  But my kids will benefit from me being home, especially Little Bro.  And that is what matters most.

Unlike every other time I have ever considered quitting my job, I feel a great sense of peace about my decision. I don't get all panicky when I think about it, and in fact I am pretty excited to get more invested in my home care and feeding my family nutritious, home-cooked food.  I'm still in the "figuring it out" phase (truly, I'm taking a long time getting a good groove down in the housework department), but even on the hard days, I still find myself thinking about how lucky I am to have this chance to focus on my children, my home, and my husband.  NOT because I don't think I deserve to be a priority too, but because I've been stretched so thin in the last year that I haven't been able to give as much to the people and things that mean most to me.  It makes me happy to have my overworked husband come home to a clean house, it makes me happy to see my kids eating real food made with ingredients I can pronounce, and it makes me happy simply to be in a clean house, connected with my kids.

Editing stuff made me happy.  Scratch that....editing stuff does make me happy.  But it turns out that, at least right now, being a domestic goddess (although a rebel one who is NEVER going to have a bow in her hair when the hubs comes home and who will likely always struggle with cooking and cleaning) is what makes me happiest right now.