Two Empty Frames

Tonight after putting Little Bug to bed, Appa and I got all our Christmas decorations out to officially start our holiday season. I adore decorating for the holidays and have an elaborate ritual and order for our Christmas tree ornaments, which Appa patiently sits through while I bask in memories and tradition. I love him for that.

But tonight, after the tree was trimmed, I pulled out a grocery bag from one of our boxes and tears immediately sprung to my eyes. Tear I haven't shed in months.

Little Bro tears.

In my hands were two frames I had purchased last year with the total expectation that this Christmas they would be filled with a more crowded family picture and Little Bro's first picture with Santa (with us). Appa and I spent a great deal of time last year talking about how that would be our last holiday with just one son.

And it was, sort of.

I don't fault myself for the expectations of this mistake. We never could have predicted our acceptance would go to Korea so late in the year, and we never could have predicted a year-long wait to travel....and I never would have predicted both.

So instead of telling myself that I had dug my own emotional grave, I allowed myself some tears as I held those empty frames before wrapping them back up and packing them away.

Next year they will be filled.

And this year, just as Appa and I imagined, we are celebrating the holidays as the parents of two boys. We have monogrammed stockings hung for two boys and yearly ornaments nestled in the tree for two boys. Our holidays cards have the two cutest kids you will ever see gracing the inside. Our lives are so much different this year than they were last year, due in large part to a little boy who will be home for Christmas...next year.

And that makes me joyful.

Love is

Love is doing something you hate for hours and hours and hours to bring joy to your 3 year old's face.

Love is also proving your husband wrong.

Their Day

Today is my son's 3rd birthday. I'm so happy to be able to celebrate this milestone with him, proud to my core of the accomplishments he has made in the last year(s), and awed by the sweet soul he has become. It's his day, and I am blessed and humbled to be able to celebrate it with him.

But it's also her day. His birth mother, first mother, or, as I have taken to calling her in my head, just his mother, a title I can share with her without fear or guilt.

Today, 3 years ago, she gave birth to a baby boy who she carried in her body for 9 months. A baby she bonded with, loved, and cared for as he grew within her. A baby she was committed to protecting from as much of the ugly in the world as she could, even at her own expense. A baby that she loved.

For me, celebrating Little Bug's birthday is about celebrating his life, his growth, his spirit. For her, today is about the one day she had with her child, this unchanging moment in time. Only she knows what it felt like to bring him into the world, to hear the first breaths and cries of this amazing boy. The memories of his first moments are hers alone; his foster mother and I will never have those, can never share those.

Today is her and Little Bug's day.

I'm sure the loss she endures daily is more painful on this day, more raw, more heartbreaking, but I hope that she can find some peace. Peace that, although she might not know the particulars right now, her son is happy and healthy and loved. I hope that although she might not publicly share her observance of this day, someone will do something kind for her, brighten her day in some way. I hope she can be happy on this day.

So today, as I wish our son a happy birthday, I'm also wishing her a happy birth day.

911, What is Your Emergancy

Calling 911 is not the way you want to start a morning.

At 4:45 this morning, I was woken up by a loud crash and shattering glass which set off our home alarm. Appa is away, so it was just me and Little Bug. Within seconds, I was out of bed and calling 911.

Extreme, perhaps. But I knew if someone was in our home breaking stuff and I confronted them, chances are they wouldn't allow me to take a moment to head back to my room, lock the door, and call 911.

Turns out, not confronting a possible intruder is something the 911 dispatch agreed with, especially since I was alone with a child. So I waited in my room with the door locked as the cops sped toward my house.

In what I thought was a rational moment, but was probably not that smart considering I was going against the dispatcher's orders, I eventually tiptoed out of my room and peeked around our hallway to our main floor, ready to scream "I'VE CALLED THE COPS, A-HOLE."

The reality.......

.....a mouse had knocked over a bunch of glass jars of pasta sauces and canned goods from our pantry, spilling them all over our tile floor. The loud crash triggered our alarm (rightly so).

I was super embarrassed and tried to beg off the cops coming, but it turns out they have to come check things like this out, just in case someone was holding a gun to my head as I made up a story about a rouge mouse with a penchant for tomato basil sauce.

Fair enough, I guess.

So the cops came and checked our whole house for any sign of intruders. There were none. I went back to sleep sheepishly.

And that's hopefully the last time I have to call 911.

Bye Bye, Anne

A little over two years ago Anne came into our lives. I'll never forget the day I welcomed her into our home, just a couple days before I was set to go back to work after a 6 week maternity leave.

My precious 11 month old was sitting in his highchair, strapped in by a 4-point harness because his back couldn't support his weight enough to sit. His hands lay limp under the tray littered with Cheerios broken in half that I occasionally put on his tongue because he couldn't pick them up to put them in his mouth, nor could he handle an entire cheerio without choking.

Unlike the rest of the parade of therapists that had come through our home in the past weeks, Anne was immediately different. Polite and brash all at once, she got straight to business and within that first hour had determined my son's hypotonia extended to all the muscles in his mouth, including his tongue. I thought a speech therapist was supposed to teach your kid some words and signs, instead she opened up a world that interconnected speaking and eating and drooling and moving. She didn't just teach him; she taught me.

For the last 2 years she has seen my son every week. She's seen him since before he could creep on his tummy through everything up to his wobbly running. She's heard the "ommmmmma" and she's heard him say sentences with verbs. She is on his short list of people he talks about when I ask him about his day.

She's sat on the phone with me as I've cried tears of frustration and joy. She advocated for us when we had problems with our occupational therapists, even picking up the slack and incorporating more OT into her own sessions to make sure Little Bug's needs were being met.

Last Friday I sat in a room during an IEP meeting with seven women who professionally but clinically broke down every nuance of my child, using the word "significantly delayed" over and over. Although the tears were close to coming most of the time, the only time I truly let a tear fall was during Anne's comments, who had completely rearranged her schedule to come at our special request as an advocate for our family.

Because as this therapist spoke about my son and his amazing progress, her eyes welled with tears of pride.

If you love my child, I will love you.

Today was Anne's last day. Her position was as an early intervention resource, and Little Bug ages out of that program next Monday. Even though Little Bug will continue to get the services he needs with his new program, my heart is broken at having to say good bye to Anne.

Anne taught my son how to talk, how to sign, and how to dare to communicate, but Anne taught me how to advocate for my son so he can continue to do those things.

And she will be truly missed and not forgotten.

Taking my Hand

Tonight as Little Bug and I drove home from an uneventful diaper buying outing and fancy macaroni and cheese dinner, my little boy started to sing a common 3-word refrain from a song we were listening to.

The Midwest winter is rapidly approaching and the car was pitch black, so I reached my hand back to touch his knee in a sign of praise. Usually when I reach my hand back while driving he ignores it or bats it away.

Tonight he took his little hand and wrapped it tightly around my finger and held on. I caressed his hand with my other fingers and together we sang over and over. Every time I moved my hand he called "mama, mama" until I returned it to the proper place and he could grab hold again.

Although I couldn't see his face in the dark, I could see my reflection in the rear view mirror and saw the tears pooling in my eyes.

It's hard to explain how special this was. Little Bug isn't a hand holder....especially when sitting or otherwise engaged. Part of it probably has to do with his hypotonia and weakness in his hands that had created a habit of not gripping something tightly for long periods of time. Part of it is probably just his personality.

For him to want to hold my hand tonight the whole way home, to seek out my touch for no reason other than simply that it was my touch, leaves me feeling like another one of the motherhood pieces is falling into place.

For Good

Little Bug has been having some issues with his behavior (mania) and regularity (enough said) during and ever since our trip, so this weekend we secluded ourselves in the hopes that it was just trip-related issues and not the beginning of a larger illness. The verdict is still out on his illness, but that isn't the point of my entry.

It always seems that the big steps we take in growing Little Bug up happen with very little fanfare. It was yesterday, in the midst of his mania and poop fest, that we decided now would be a good time to give up the crib/toddler bed game.

For good.

What does that have to do with mania and poop? Nothing. I suspect it was mainly a distraction from the weirdness. But the decision was made spur of the moment to just do it, and so we did. Little Bro would most likely never have transitioned well into a crib or toddler bed, and by the time he comes home, he will be close to transitioning into a normal bed, so we just decided to put full/queen beds in both boy's rooms and be done with the crib/toddler bed business all together.

So, within an hour, the little toddler bed with the sweet nursery printed sheets I had lovingly picked out as I yearned for a child was dismantled, the sheets and bedding packed away, and my son had a bed fit for two grown adults.

For good. He could be in this bed until he goes to college.

And Little Bro. My baby who will never be a baby to me. He's going to come home to a nursery and sleeping arrangement that will be more familiar to him, but so different than what I had envisioned.

But it's not about me, or what I think looks best in a nursery or how much I am attached to the little orange crib sheets. Whether I like it or not (and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't), both my sons are growing up. I think when I get overly sentimental I tend to latch on to things, so it was probably best for us to just up and make the change without too much preparation.

And the pride and enjoyment my manic, poop-filled son has with his new bed is way cuter than those orange sheets.