The Real World Sucks

This morning when I dropped Little Bug off at school, a small group of boys noticed he was heading over to play with them.

En mass, they all started chanting, "No, Little Bug, No" and hiding all the toys from him.

Little Bug stood there at the edge of the "friendship carpet" with a sad look on his face while these four boys chanted their cruel taunt. I know he probably doesn't get the full social implications of what they were saying (nor do these other little 2 years olds who are chanting it), but he gets "No, Little Bug, No" and he gets when kids don't want to share with him.

And it makes him sad.

I started to bend down to the little boys and nicely tell them we play with all our friends when the teacher swooped in to set them right.

Just in time because I was near tears. My heart was hurting so badly for my baby in that moment.

I gave Little Bug a light kiss and blew out of there, desperate to keep the tears from falling until I reached the car. The cool Fall air was the only thing that saved me. The minute I got in the car, I began to cry.

How will I ever be able to do this?

How can I spend the rest of my life waking up and letting my children leave my side when I know they might face teasing or taunting or bullying or hurt feelings. How can I bear knowing they might be sad or feel bad about themselves?

The plight of a parent, I suppose.

I know I can't protect my kids from this childhood reality. Every child will encounter it in some form. Every child will probably be the perpetrator at some point, too. Even mine.

All I can do it give Little Bug the best self esteem possible and hopefully teach him how to push past these incidents in a positive manner. How I will do that....I'm not sure.

I do know that me crying won't help.

So I've gotten it out of my system. I'm truly aware now that no matter how nice of a school or how experienced a teacher or how cushy the room, Little Bug is going to experience times where he is the odd one out. That's the nature of childhood.

I cannot protect him from the real world.

And the real world is going to suck at times for him.

But OH how it hurts my heart to think of it.

Unicorn Fluff

So this sleep book...the one about unicorns and kittens and rainbows and slumbering babes....it's still annoyingly upbeat and positive while our nights are not so much.

But it's actually really illuminating.

In the grand scheme of sleep issues, ours are minimal. To be frank, the reason I even started modifying the routine is because I want to be able to deal with the sleep-issues surrounding the upcoming (HA!) arrival of our second son without dealing with Little Bug, but I wanted to give myself months to deal with this transition to avoid having him just cry it out and keep me up more than he is. My selfish goal is to be able to have him go to sleep by himself and stay there all night long. I want that for him, of course, but even more, I don't want to be dealing with two crying babies on my own. I'd like to be able to deal with them at night in an orderly and smooth way.

Rainbows, unicorns, dancing fairies.

And as much as I like the warmth of my baby in my bed, my husband's chest is pretty warm the 3 nights a week I get to share a bed with him....and yeah.......I'd like that back, too.

Ahem.

So this sleep book. It claims that there is a certain amount of sleep most children inherently need each night. It states that if your child is getting wiggy around bedtime, instead of saying "Oh, poor Little Bug is starting to get tired" and going on with your evening, you should just put your kid to bed.

Kid is tired = parent should put kid to bed. No matter when the botanical garden closes.

Rocket . Science.

Sadly, this no brainer statement really hit home for me. Little Bug's 8 pm bedtime was arbitrarily chosen because it worked for my schedule and he seemed to do fine with it.....minus the 30 minutes beforehand when he would start sucking him thumb and whining. I just thought that was what kids did in the evening; it never connected with me that I might be keeping him up past the time his body inherently wanted to be up.

Another instance of "I'm a first time mama and have no idea what I am doing" with a healthy dose of "I'm being unintentionally selfish and inflexible."

Sigh. I hate you, book.

So this week I've been watching Little Bug in the evenings to monitor his mood and when he starts to go down. A few nights ago, when he started to get fussy and whiny, I just started his bedtime routine early and put him to bed.

He was deeply asleep 30 minutes before his "bedtime."

And mama is a believer.

It's going to be an adjustment for us all. As a working mama, my evenings are so precious with my son, and I am going to be giving some of that up. We've still not even attempted anything serious with the going to sleep alone or staying in bed during the night or the waking up during my morning showers and pounding on the door while sobbing "baf, Baf, BAFFFFFFFF" pieces of our life, but those will come. I also know that every kid is different and that what is working for my kid would never work for another kid, including Little Bro.

Kids are lame and awesome like that.

So although this book is just a big pile of unicorn fluff, it is giving me a new way to view my child and how much of his routine I can attempt to control, which has been very illuminating.

And possibly the stuff of unicorns, kitten, and rainbows....we shall see.

The Campaign for a Television-Enjoying Child

I think I might be the only parent in the world who is actively trying to teach my kid to watch television.

As part of some therapy, we've been asked to start trying to get Seth to sit still for periods of time. He doesn't have ADHD or anything like that, but after almost 3 years of a constant, almost-every-minute movement therapy-lifestyle, coupled with the fact that he is a toddler, Little Bug has a problem being able to sit and focus for periods of time. Television was suggested as a way to get him comfortable with just being still.

However, Little Bug has never shown a preference for the TV. He has a set of musical DVDs that he will watch religiously, and one 8-minute animated version of "Wheels on the Bus" that we had to hide for fear the DVD would break, but other than those programs and the 3-minute part of the Glee episode where they cover Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", he's not really interested.

For a long time, that was okay, good even. He was sitting still and listening to music, which is his biggest sensory stimulator.

But he's not learning much.

So it was determined we needed to switch it up and add some shows that have....words...into the mix. We tried all sorts of things, but nothing seemed to stick.

Wiggles...so, so. Thomas the Train....only when the trains are moving and not talking. Everything else...totally not interested. Even the shows that have a high singing:talking ratio.

You're killing me, Little Bug. Stop being such a perfect, anti-TV child, already!

Little Bug's godmother recently bought him the Thomas movie, and we've been trying to add that into our evening once a week or so. The most we have managed is about 3-5 minutes...basically until the trains stop moving and the plot starts.

Last night we had a pretty ominous storm roll through. Ever since an admittedly scary camping storm incident, Little Bug gets very nervous when storm clouds roll in, scared when thunder hits, and petrified when lightning lights up the sky. Little Bug made it clear last night that he was planning on riding this one out from the safety of my lap with my arms locked around him, courtesy of his baby death grip.

I'm only mildly ashamed to admit I used his fear to my advantage.

Knowing he was more likely than normal to stay close to me, I turned on our new movie and hoped for the best.

1.5 hours later, Little Bug was clapping as the credits rolled.

Do I think this means he will sit angelically through a movie whenever I need to turn one on in a pinch? No. Do I recognize that the storm has a huge impact on his choice to sit still? Yes.

But he did stay engaged with the show the whole time, "choo chooing," "ohh ohhing," and clapping in all the right spots.

So I'm declaring a small step forward in our quest to commercialize our son.

Mhnk, Mhnk, Mhnk

And thus ended Adoptivus.

Last night we were working on some sleep training. I've selected a program that is meant to "gently" ease my child over the course of months into wanting to sleep like a champion in his own bed.

How lovely and charming and idealistic. Rainbows, kittens, unicorns, slumbering babies, blah, blah, blah.

This book makes it seem so easy.

Stupid book.

Last night was bad. Like, very bad for our normal. Little Bug woke up at 11 pm and was seriously ready to play until 3 am. Appa and I got about 3 hours of sleep between us.

It was bad.

I was mad.

Forget this "gentle" crap....at about 1:45 I shut Little Bug in his room and held the door shut, hoping he would sob and pound and tug on the door enough to tire the umph right out of him.

Instead, he pitter pattered quickly to the door and did the last thing I expected.

He knocked.

He knocked over and over again, occasionally saying "mhnk, mhnk, mhnk" for emphasis. For about 3 minutes.

It only stopped when Appa and I could no longer suppress our laughter, and we let him out to come lay in our bed.

The rest of the night sucked, but those 3 minutes were enough to remind us that we actually liked him enough to want to try the "gentle" approach.

Adoptivus: The Prayer

My son was honored to have the founder of his Korean agency and one of the most amazing souls ever to grace this planet privately pray over him before he joined our family and left the only family and culture he had ever known.

"Precious lives, our angels, we send away these lives to foreign countries, with scarred memories of their homeland.

Please forgive our sins and allow Korea to be a better country, so that we will be adopting children from other countries, instead of us always sending ours away.

We send them for care. So please protect these lives and help them lead a happy life in their new homes. Always provide them with grace and intelligence, lead them to live by the rules of Jesus Christ, to have luck, to help benefit others, and to return the glory to our Lord.

It is our sincere wish that these lives will not forget their home country and the love of the people who took care of them.

Father, please remember the foster families who worked hard whether it is favorable or unfavorable conditions to protect these lives, and give them blessings for the benefits they provided with. By your blessings, these adoptive families will be full of love and be under your protection.

Now the children are leaving: Please make their way as easy as possible, lead them to the most pleasant life.

In the name of Jesus Christ,
Amen. "

I wonder if Dr. Kim knows just how much his own humble life has changed the course of so many others' lives forever.

Like mine.

감사함니다, Dr. Kim, for loving my son.

Adoptivus: Little Bug

Before we met Little Bug, we used to refer to him as a monkey (because all children must have an animal moniker, of course). Two years ago today, on the most intense day of my life that is too sacred and private to blog about in any meaningful way, I finally got the chance to begin to get to know my son.

Two things we immediately apparent as we began to parent this small child.
1. He was not going to be climbing about "monkey-style" anytime soon.
2. The kid was a serious cuddler.

During the 30 minute drive from our agency to our hotel, Little Bug fell asleep on me after looking around confused for a while. He nestled in and was so warm and darling. His foster mother had told us he liked close contact, and that was clearly obvious. As Appa and I were marveling over his sleeping form, I mused that he was a "little cuddle bug."

Besides a very sad 20 minute freak out, Little Bug earned that reputation throughout our first night together, allowing us (or more like allowing Baby-Hog Appa) constant cuddling opportunities. It was a night that went better and more joyful that we ever could have imagined (although the nights would soon turn more grim).

Somewhere over the Pacific Ocean the word "cuddle" was dropped, and by the time we hit American soil he was just a little bug. Over the next few weeks that turned into a nickname. Now, not a day goes by that our son isn't called "Little Bug" or "Bugs" or "Buggy" to his face.

And that is how, in a hotel room in Seoul on the day our son became our son, he also became Little Bug.

Adoptivus: The Hills

2 years ago today we set out on a mini adventure (complete with hijinks) to the city of Suwon, an hour or two outside Seoul. I've written a lot about our escapades on the bus ride and the history and freedom we enjoyed in the fortress. I've written about how we got back to Seoul courtesy of my handy flash cards.

But I've not written about the in between.

Once we got out of Seoul and before we started panicking about how we would get off the bus, Appa and I sat in total silence and watched the scenery change outside the window. It went from busy, trendy Seoul to very industrial areas. For some reason, this is what I expected the outside of Seoul to look like.

Eventually the landscape turned greener, softer, prettier. We passed through what seemed like valleys filled with meadows and streams. We passed a bright blue lake right off the side of the road, and I remember having the intense urge to go camping there. Surrounding us were what my Midwest head called "mountains" and my Western heart called "hills." Either way, they were covered in trees and moss. They were absolutely lovely and calming and natural and wild.

As I visualize it in my head now, everything has this hazy, soft blur to it, like a picture over treated. It was such a departure from everything else we saw on our trip, and coming after the day when we met Little Bug, my heart and head were in a happy place.

Seoul is amazingly advanced and sexy, and Suwon is a historical wonder, but the wild in between is worth remembering, too.