What We're Trying These Days

If I had a dime for every time someone told me that kids like routine...well, I'd at least have enough for a latte.  We do find that the parts of our days that follow a predictable pattern tend to go well.  Even the glitches get predictable, and so easily overcome. 

We've been taking a free class for adoptive parents, taught by a therapist with 14 kids, most of whom are adopted.  She talks a lot about how she raised the first seven, compared to the last seven, when they had actually figured out what they were doing.  The class has given us several ideas about adding to our routine.  With a three day weekend here, we pulled together a few elements and are trying it out.  We got Inesa to bed a half hour earlier than usual (our goal is a full hour), so something went right.

Step one is reinstating kitchen help.  We'd had that going last fall, then Sasha started wrestling 3 nights a week, I went back to work, and it started to feel like more trouble than it was worth.  Tonight Sasha helped with dinner, and Inesa with dishes.  They'll swap each night, with Fridays off.  Helping with dinner means making salad, setting the table, and any other tasks designated by the cooking parent.  They like the power of being the salad maker (Sasha used minimal lettuce, unpeeled cucumbers, no bell pepper, and lots of tomatoes and pickles), and they like having the rest of the family thank them for dinner.  Dishes are a harder sell, but once they get going, they like the water play aspects, and with both jobs, they are getting individual time with a parent, and the knowledge that they are contributing to the household.  Inesa and I both like to sing, so that makes us great dishwashing partners.  There are always exceptions, but it feels like often our cycle is "the kids are misbehaving, so I'm working hard and stressed out, so I want a break, so I'm going to let them watch DVDs/go over to their friend's/squabble for a few more minutes..." OR "We're actively engaged with the kids, so they are relaxed and happy, so we're enjoying being with them, so if they start to misbehave I can handle it approrpriately and get them back on track..."  Working side by side with them definitely contributes to the happier cycle.

Step two is new.  Working side by side is great, but only when they are working with you instead of competing for your attention.  To make this possible, we put together "quiet boxes."  In a plastic box, there are about five different small toys or simple projects.  The kid who is NOT helping is to sit on their blankie and entertain themselves in the living room.  The rules are basically that the person with the quiet box can't talk to the rest of us, and the person helping in the kitchen can't walk on the Quiet Blanket, or otherwise harrass their sibling.  I think we've sold it well as a special treat.  Quiet Box toys are not in general circulation, and the kids can only play with the QB at the designated time.  The therapist said the kids need to learn how to do quiet, independent work--not relying on us to entertain them, not engaging in mindless squabbling with their siblings, and also not distracting their minds with physical activities.  She also said we need to work it so this work happens at the time most beneficial for us.  So rather than having to have two kids underfoot, or have both parents equally busy around the dinner work, we hope this will be the way to occupy the "waiting" child. 

Step three is setting a more formal schedule.  We all know that after dinner, Mom helps Sasha with homework, and Inesa has to entertain herself or hang out with Papa.  Somewhere in there we get dessert.  They brush their teeth, I read some stories, and then we each get one kid to sleep.  We've known for awhile that Inesa probably needs to get to bed earlier, but we couldn't figure out on the fly how to make it happen.  This weekend I finally sat down and worked out a timeline.  First this, then that.  What each kid's schedule needs to be, where each parent needs to be at each step to keep it all moving forward.  I think it went pretty well tonight, given that we made it halfway to our goal of an hour earlier bedtime for Inesa.  Of course, I heard Sasha's voice at 9:45, which is half an hour AFTER he should be asleep, and there were a few times when people thought they were in trouble for being off-schedule (possibly because my tone, posture, and even words were giving that impression), and I had to take a deep breath and say "This is our first time.  We're testing it out and finding out what we need to adjust.  You're doing fine." 

Winter Break photo dump

Jon emailed me the other day to tell me that as he was getting the kids to the bus stop that morning, Inesa announced that Sasha is her best brother.  Jon chimed in that she is his best daughter, Sasha is his best son, and I am his best wife.  The humor was perhaps lost on the kids.  He says there was general agreement that we have a good family.

Inesa's been talking about missing her birth mom a lot lately.  It touches a few nerves, but it's also really, really good that she feels comfortable talking about her and trusts us with her feelings.  Still, it felt good to me today when we were roller skating and she said, "That girl asked me if that lady over there is my mom, and I told her no, YOU'RE my mom!  Because you ARE!"

And now, a bunch of pictures we took over winter break. 

Sasha with his dog Tiny on Christmas morning

 





Inesa with Sparkles

 

 

 

The kids weren't that into baking or even eating cookies, but they loved decorating them.

 





Playing with our new toys.  We got some very generous gifts from friends far and near!

 

We've gone roller skating twice now, as of today, and they love it.  Non-stop for three hours this afternoon.  It's a pretty tough activity on beginners, and I was proud of their persistence despite repeated falls. 

 

Extremely goofy playground photos

Metaphors Be With You

Lately, everything I do has seemed like a metaphor for parenting.  (I blame it on Anymommy, who finds meaning in life's most mundane moments--if only I could also write like her...) 

I took the kids roller skating last weekend.  I knew how to get there from the neighborhood I grew up in, but it seemed silly to detour out there instead of just driving in from where I've lived for over 10 years now.  I never got lost--I knew where I was at all times--but I kept getting confused about how to proceed, and it took me several trips around various blocks to get on the right bridge.  The whole trip took a good twenty minutes longer than it would have if I'd just gone back to the old neighborhood first.  The kids, however, had no preconception about how long it should take, and since I got us all there, were oblivious to all the stress and confusion.  It all felt so MEANINGFUL to me.  There was that sense of not being truly lost, yet not being sure how to go forward from here.  And I found great comfort in the realization that we got there safe and sound, so who cares if it didn't go smoothly along the way? 

Then after a lousy day at work on Monday (first time in 15 years of teaching I've had a parent yell at me), I was driving in again Tuesday morning.  It was dark, and drizzling in a way that my windshield wipers just smear across the window, unable to clear.  At first I thought it was some sort of metaphor for going into work feeling negative about it, then I decided it was just pathetic fallacy.  Then I decided that I really am an English teacher, huh. 

Language

At six months in, their English is phenomenal.  The other day I took them roller skating for the first time, and afterwards, Sasha was describing it to Jon.  But he said, "ice skating."  Inesa corrected him.

"No, we were roller skating.  Ice skating is when you have, um things on the bottom of the skates..."

"Blades," Jon supplied.

"Yeah, you have blades on the skates so you can glide across the ice."

Glide?  When did "glide" become part of the beginning ESL kindergarten curriculum?  Jon says it's from one of her Barbie movies. 

They no longer say "sbottom" to talk about their rears.  That was a really endearing confusion from the summer, when Inesa heard me refer to "Inesa's bottom," and took it as "Inesa sbottom."  Around the same time they were introduced to a wonderful treat they called "Pirate's Moody" for quite awhile. 

Sasha, however, still calls squirrels "squares," although it seems to be morphing towards "squarels."  They both refer to being "orm" instead of warm, and they "ooze" things that your or I might use. 

And they've spoken only English between themselves for months now.  I keep waiting for them to figure out that instead of whispering, they could just use Lithuanian when they are plotting mischief.  Not that I'm complaining.  Our big task will be helping them maintain their native language(s). 

With thanks to Tracy for the cute pajamas!

Night Before Christmas.  Inesa puts on a deserving face and poses with her present from her brother.

Christmas morning.  Inesa opens her gift while Sasha looks on, barely resisting the urge to do it himself.

And it's...a tiara!  With a wand!  He chose it himself, and she was mighty pleased.

 

 

Unbeknownst to me, Sasha also wrapped up a gift bag for Jon, complete with an ornament he'd made at school (and kept secret for five days) and a necklace made out of a Hot Wheels car and yarn.

 

Santa brought both kids a Big Dog.  Sasha named his Tiny, at Jon's suggestion.  Inesa named hers Sparkles, because that's the name of the dog in her current favorite Barbie movie.  Sigh.

 

Christmas afternoon, playing with their new toys on their new blanket. 

 

 

Christmas Eve, and one creature is stirring

The other one is laid out flat on the couch with a horrible cold.  I've been mentally preparing myself for a few days of insane energy, rambunctiousness, hysteria, etc.  So of course, instead Inesa is completely wiped out.  She keeps kind of wimpering, "I don't want to lay down all day!"  I tell her, "You can get up for a little bit if you feel up to it, honey," and she answers, "But I'm too sick!"  Her nose is red like Rudolph's, with dark circles under her eyes, and she keeps pulling her blanket over her head because the daylight is too strong.  She's used up most of a large box of kleenex, and refused breakfast.  I coaxed a little homemade mac and cheese down her just now, and she was done after five bites.  She doesn't even want to watch a movie or have me read to her.  Sasha just told her, "If you feel this bad tomorrow, and you don't want to open presents, you can open them another day."  It's a sign of how miserable she is that she didn't panic at this thought, but just said sadly, "Tomorrow is supposed to be a fun day."  Poor baby girl. 

The smartest thing we've done lately is NOT put the presents under the tree.  There are a half dozen there, from friends, the kids' gifts to each other and dad, but not the insane number of presents Jon and I got them, nor the ones my family gave us.  There is a fair amount of excitement around those presents, but because they know what half of them are, and there's only so many times you can shake a box, they are able to not obssess about them. 

With one out of comission, the other one has been slightly easier to keep calm.  He finished his project for Papa this morning, and when I got out the art box, consigned me to cut out a felt seal which he then added a face to.  He used the garlic press to "grate" me some cheese for the mac & cheese, and I brilliantly killed a half hour by telling him to take a bath.  Oh, and he got clean doing that too, I guess, though I tend to think of bath time as a non-electronic way for Mama to get a half hour break.  Now he's outside with his skateboard and his remote control car.  This is probably a combination that should be supervised, but instead I'm sitting with my sick kid and writing this.  He re-watched his video from Santa (Portable North Pole sends amazing, personalized videos for free), and we checked out both Reindeer Cam and NORAD's Santa Tracker. 

This is fun.  Well, not so much for Inesa.  But being a parent at Christmas time--definitely a good thing.

We believe.

We finally got the tree in the house last night.  I was initially stressed, because years ago when I had a particularly large tree, I bought a big tree stand, and ever since, we need to wedge things between the tree and the stand so it fits, and the whole thing is invariably precarious.  So I wanted to get it set up and strung with lights before the kids got involved, but they saw me too soon, so I was kind of snapping at them to back off.  I didn't have Christmas music on yet, I hadn't poured myself a glass of Baileys, I wasn't ready.

Then I mentally shook myself and adopted a more welcoming tone of voice.  Jon suggested we put the ornaments in piles, so they'd have an equal amount to put on the tree, and the more fragile ones could be in our piles.  There were literal gasps of amazement as they started looking through their piles.  They were thrilled with the whole process.  When I pulled out the pottery manger scene my sister made in the early '70s--the one the artist herself didn't claim from my parents' house because it's so wobbly and the angel is gone and the wise men's crowns are all snapped off--I told them what the figures represented, and that we should put the wise men a little bit away from the manger, because they aren't there yet.  The immediately got into it with the same enthusiasm I had as a kid, putting them over on the piano and deciding to move them a little closer day by day.  Jon showed them how to step back from the tree and eyeball the bare spaces instead of lumping everything together. 

"It's the most beautiful tree ever!" said Inesa.

"I think Santa will like it best," said Sasha.

They each got to pick out their own ornament a few weekends ago.  Sasha's says "Merry Christmas" in silvery script.  He said, "We need to put this so Santa sees it and feels happy to be here!"  We set it up facing the fireplace, so he'll notice it first thing on entering the room. 

One ornament got broken, by a small girl who didn't realize what would happen if you squeezed the shiny glass ball.  She was immediately contrite and became very vigilant about how she was handling them from then on.  I never did get the holiday music going, and we didn't get our festive drink until after the kids were in bed.  But it was perfect.  I keep telling myself to keep my expectations low, that the stimulation and novelty is going to lead to chaos and meltdowns.  All the same, the magic of the season is very much alive.  Writing Santa, choosing their stockings, buying the tree, making cookies, and now decorating the house--to see the joy in their eyes makes it more than worth it.