Uterine Wars

Food For Thought....

I read an article in the New York Times this week that I think I need to pass on, especially for those adoptive parents of transnational children.  Ron Nixon writes about a Donaldson Adoption Institute study on adult Korean adoptees (the largest internationally adopted population in the U.S.) and their perspectives on racial and personal identity.  Go read it, it's worth thinking about.

Letters From Soper

Dear NyQuil:

You suck.  Clean out your desk. You are fired.

Love,

Soper

Dear Mucinex:

Stop looking so smug. You suck, too.  Seriously, you and Nyquil together couldn't keep me from coughing until two a.m. last night?  The economy is really bad right now.  Did you see the latest unemployment figures?  Ten percent unemployment?  This is not a good time to be unemployed.  Think about that.

Sincerely,

Soper

Dear Robitussin:

I see you over there, trying to hide behind the box of Kleenex.  Don't think you are off the hook, buddy.  Let what happened to Nyquil be a lesson to you.  Get to work!

Even More Sternly,

Soper

Dear Immune System:

Hello?  Helloooo?  Are you in there?  Are you on vacation?  Oversleeping?  Just eating Cheetos and ignoring me?  I don't think it's possible to catch the Swine Flu three times in one month.  Let's stop trying to.  Do you think it would be too much to get up and, you know, stop letting me get sick all the time?

Yours forever,

Soper

*No laugh of the week this week, as there haven't been any.  Except for Moonpie telling me that God helped her get the toilet paper when she was out, then recanting and admiting that it wasn't really a miracle, she got it herself.   Guess we have to call the Vatican and let them down gently...

Yes, I know why Akeeyu shut down her blog, but I am not going to comment on it because she has been CHEATING ON ME with some chick named Mussolini or something for, like, a year. Or longer.

You just can't get the same level of internet fidelity that you used to. 

So, hey, look!  A bunny!   

Movin' on...

MOONPIE:  Mommy, I need new panties.

SOPER:  Why? Did you have a pee accident?

MOONPIE:  No, the squirt bottle I had in my pants leaked.

SOPER:  Were you using it as a penis?

MOONPIE:  Yeah, and it leaked.

SOPER:  Have we learned that maybe that is not a good idea to walk around with a leaky bottle in our pants?

I ordered Miyako Kanamori's Sock and Glove book and -- ee! Oh, the cuteness!  So after I finish the dolls for Moonpie and Shug and our friend who has Ichthyosis, then I think I'll make something from a sock.  NOT WORN.  Foot wart viruses cost extra.

Oh dear.  Am I turning into a craft blog?  Are sequined holiday shirts just around the corner? 

Thank you for the compliments on the new header.  It is courtesy of Siefert, who was extremely patient and willing to take "something Halloweenish, with Elvis and a blender" and transform it into an awesome new header.  The whole process was a lot of fun, and I think it really fits with my blog.

Until, of course, I turn to the dark side and start knitting these. With tassels!

Link(s) of the Week

So if I tell you Typepad featured me today in a blurb about using blogs for social change, and you go look at it, and then follow the links and end up back here, then that would be just plain redundant, wouldn't it?

I'm trying to figure out what to offer next in the Etsy store.   I just finished a set of anatomically correct cloth dolls* for Akeeyu (wow, this post is kinda crazy with all the links! Just wait, it's going to get even better).  They were totally her idea, and I had so much fun making them that I'm making more of them for Moonpie and Shug.  They fit preemie clothes, so if you had a preemie baby you can re-use some of those wee itty adorable outfits your baby wore.  Although making them anatomically correct led to me muttering "You know, I'm just not happy with Fitz-Hume's vulva."

And that is just something I never thought I would say.

So, what should I make next?  This?  Or this?  Or this?

* I had to take the picture down because Akeeyu got scared my amazing photographic sewing skillz would lead the internets directly to her door to kidnap her twins.  Or her cats.  Or Sam.  Although I don't think she would protest too much if you took Sam and left her a tray of lasagna in return. 

Open Arms

It has now been a year since Tron was born, delivered into our arms, then delivered back to his family.  The anniversary of his birth passed me last week almost unnoticed, until I was paying the bills and had to write the date.  His birthday.  I walked downstairs after finishing and mentioned it to D as I brushed my teeth.  Today is Tron's birthday.  Did you remember?  He did, but like me almost forgot. 

We both almost forgot.

Time heals, it is true, but parenting heals more.  There was little time for reflection that day, what with Shug and Moonpie and overdue library books to attend to.  Blissfully little free time to feel sad.  My great-great-grandmother lost three of her seven children in infancy.  Did she mark their anniversaries, I wonder?  Or, like me, did she push her quiet sadness deep down and focus on churning the butter and weeding the garden?

I care for Tron still, but I don't miss him, and I don't worry about him.  I doubt George and Gracie are still together, but from what they shared of their family situation I suspect Tron is living with his grandmother.  So I know he is ok, and that is enough for me. 

The assurance that Shug is well is what I try to give Jack and Diane every single opportunity I have.  They gave me their child to raise, the least I can do is give them access to her.  My family thinks I compensate too much, and I probably do.   We talk about them openly, breezily, mention them in passing the way you would any old friend.  Oh yeah, Diane said the exact same thing! Ha ha ha!  Oh, that sounds so much like something Jack would say!

It drives my parents crazy.  My father stands up and leaves the room whenever we mention Jack and Diane, whenever I stoop to take a video clip of Shug to send to them, whenever I answer one of their text messages.  It eats at him, the idea that there are other grandparents out there who have an emotional claim on his Sugarplum.

Trust me, she has him right where she wants him.

D's family, on the other hand, has been surprisingly supportive of the openness.  His mother tears up when I talk about Diane, grieving for her by proxy.  Asks intelligent, substantive questions about them and our relationship, fully accepts them as just another extension of our family.

It has been a learning experience. 

I am more comfortable in my role as an adoptive mother now that I can share the experience with Diane.  I wish so much that Moonpie's family would let me include them in her life, let me share her with them.  I want them to ooo and ahhh over her amazing drawings of  Superman (dressed as Watermelon man) and Spiderman, snicker at her silly faces, scratch their heads in confusion at the nonsensical stories she creates. 

Instead, they are floating in grief limbo, just like I am with Tron.  I only have tiny pieces of them to share with Moonpie, significant pieces, but small.  A single snapshot, the curve of Moonpie's chin on someone else's face, the same stony walled reserve I see in miniature whenever she faces a deep disappointment.  And the hurt in her mother's eyes, hurt she will not let me in to fix.

I'm left trying to heal too many people without any guidance, without any plan of attack.  I wonder if I'm smothering Shug with people who love her to make up for the stony silence in Moonpie's life.  As if I can somehow integrate Jack and Diane into both their lives to make up for the lack of participation by Moonpie's family.

Maybe my parents are right, maybe this isn't healthy.  I do know that it helps Diane, and it helps me, and for now it is working.  What tomorrow brings, well, tomorrow will bring.  Today, this is good.  For today, this is enough.

It has to be enough.

Laugh of the Week

Happy Halloween

More Irate Letters From Soper

Dear Guy From High School:

Thank you for trying to "friend" me on Facebook.  I must admit I was quite surprised to see your request, since in High School you never spoke to me once. Not once.  Not a single time.  You did not say "hello" to me in the hall, did not help me with my lunch tray that time I dropped it right in front of your table, did not, in fact, ever even acknowledge that I existed.  Wait, there was that time on the class trip you and your friends tried to film me naked through my hotel window, which I keep expecting to see pop up on YouTube someday, but other than that, you did a pretty good job pretending that I had the power of invisibility.  Which if I did, man, would my story be different.  I might discover a life of crime, like this guy.  Although if I had the intelligence to teach myself how to fly not one but like five different kinds of planes, I would probably also teach myself to land them.

Anyway, all that has me wondering why now.  Why sixteen years after graduation (and that one art show four years ago where I stood right next to you in the drink line and you, surprise, didn't acknowledge me) why now you have suddenly decided I am either hot enough, or cool enough, or ... what?  Talented enough?  Rich enough?  Are you so ridiculously juvenile that you really think people look at the number of "friends" you have and make some sort of correlation with your personal worth?  Or was it the red lipstick I am wearing in my profile picture?

It was the red lipstick, wasn't it?

Sadly, I will not be "friending" you back.  I will not, despite my urge to tell you off, write you a scathing message in response.  I will, in fact, take my cue from your behavior towards me and pretend you just don't exist, and that none of this ever happened.

And if you do post that naked film of me, I want a cut. 

Fake hugs and kisses, etc. etc.

---- Soper

Laugh of the Week

SOPER: (To D, after hearing low buzzing sound)  Is that your cellphone?

D:  No, that's a cow.

You know you is KUNTRY when you mistake a cow for your husband's cellphone...

In between Shug's newest hobby (throwing tantrums that are, because she is so very tiny, HILARIOUS) and Moonpie's oldest hobby (the whining. Oh God, please let it stop) I try to find a few minutes a day to search Etsy or Ebay for weird, wonderful, truly bizarre things to make me laugh.

Some people drink, I apparently collect ugly lamps.

Then it hit me today:  "Soper," I said to myself, "you really suck at blogging these days.  You used to be funny! And now you are just funny looking!  Why don't you share at least one of those funny links you love so much at least once a week? Like a feature! A really lame-ass, super-easy feature!"

"Why, self," I said, "what a marvelous idea!"

So here is my first Laugh of the Week for you:

REGRETSY

Enjoy.

Extraneous

I've updated the Etsy store with some new items for my Ichthyosis fundraiser.  Please stop by and check them out.  Also, remember I am always open to custom orders -- if you can dream it, I can try to make it.

Moonpie is now completely over the strep/flu combo, and is driving me nuts watching this video on YouTube over and over and over:

Anyone know what they are saying? I recognize lots of the place names, and something something "my Kazakhstan."   She really wants to know what they are saying, so a full translation would be AWESOME. 

A Plague Upon Our House

Dear Britax:

Hi! I am a big fan of the cute, cute, cute car seat covers you have developed in the years since Moonpie was a baby.  The cow print cover?  Unisex and adorable.  Love it.

However.

When the baby is projectile vomiting all over the back seat, and I am trying to mop up vomit on the side of the road so she doesn't have to ride home in a pool of predigested gunk, the Teflon stain repellent stuff is more annoying than helpful.  Having warm vomit trickle off the car seat while it is occupied is not as helpful as I am sure you were envisioning. 

Also, really.  Really?  You couldn't figure out a better way to engineer removing the cover for cleaning other than to completely dismantle the car seat?  And are you fucking kidding me with the handwash and drip dry shit?  Do you know how long it takes to drip dry a car seat cover?

Anyway.  Cow print cute.  Car seat design? FAIL.

Hugs and kisses, send me lots of free stuff,

--- Soper

For the past three weeks we've been dealing with strep.  Shug and Moonpie both got it, got over it, and then got it again.  With vomiting.  And fever. And diarrhea.  Being the loving, involved mother that I am, I jumped right into the fray and came down with strep, too. 

Only it wasn't just strep.  It was strep, twice, with H1N1 thrown in for hilarious diaper changing fun.

The up side of vomiting for two days straight is dehydration, which has revealed my awesome abs that have heretofore been hiding beneath a layer of ... we'll call it water retention.  Definitely not fat.

SOPER: (staring at flat stomach in mirror)  Look! I have a six-pack!  Or, well, maybe a three pack.  What would you call a three-pack?

D: A slow weekend?

I want what every mother with a sick infant wants.  A shot of tequila and an Italian pool boy   A magic shot/pill/suppository that will make the vomiting go away and my normal happy baby reappear.  I do not want the pediatrician to tell me to give the baby crushed ice and Popsicles and spoon feed her milliliters of water until she can take a bottle again.  I especially don't want my husband to cheerfully agree that is the best course of action and refuse the prescription for phenergan before trotting back to his clean, sterile office while I lug home a sluggish, vomiting mess.

Crushed ice, my ass.

I can't say D has been an ass about all this, though.  He has been truly helpful, mopping up Shug's vomit so I can go vomit, letting Moonpie watch t.v. until her brains leak out of her ears just so I can get a decent stretch of sleep.  Last night, as Shug screamed and screamed and screamed, even his calm doctorly reserve started cracking, and even he got scared.  After speaking with the pediatrician on call and helping strip Shug's bed (again) and change her clothes (again) he turned to me and told me he understood now how scared I must have been in Kazakhstan when Moonpie was so sick.  "At least here I speak the language and can call a doctor I know personally for reassurance," he confessed.  "You must have been terrified."

Uh, yeah.  It was nice, though, to have him get it, really get it, even if it was four years ago.  It was, at the time, the most horrible experience of my life, but in a weird way it was the best welcome to parenting I could get.  Yes, Moonpie was very sick, yes, all her skin peeled off, and yes, I was trapped in a foreign country being monitored by KGB and couldn't even call home for reassurance because a hurricane had knocked out the phone grid to the Southeast... Wait, is there a but in there somewhere?  Oh, yeah.  All that, but, once I was safely on the other side of it, I knew that I could handle just about anything that was about to come.  Parenting isn't about a pretty nursery and cute clothes and artfully done photography with cute props, it's about happily wiping someone's boogers with your bare hand when you can't find a tissue and letting someone who has just rolled over during a diarrhea diaper change cling to you bare bottomed while you clean the mess with your free hand.   And being glad that you caught the flu and strep from them, because now you have abs of steel moderately strong plexiglass.

So basically we are sick, and I am giddy from a lack of hydration and sleep.  And I'm sure there is a point in all this somewhere.  If you find it, please send it to me.  I'll be the one huddled under the blanket on the couch, apparently happy that we all have the flu.