How quickly things change!

As my wife noted in her recent post, Caroline has been home for a month.  As I look back, I am astounded at how much she's changed in such a short time:

--- We're both convinced that she's gotten noticably taller.  We shall find out "officially" at her upcoming checkup.  I have also started marking her height on a corner in the kitchen, though this is not easy with such a wiggler!

--- She has more hair, enough that I suggested today that it was time for a trim.  My wife pointed out that Caroline is a girl (I HAD noticed that...), that having hair over her ears is not a bad thing, that she will most certainly not be getting whitewalls, and that I can take AR670-1 and shove it up... um... I can forget about it

--- She walks with more confidence each day.  This is, of course, a mixed blessing as this makes it harder to keep track of her, what she's doing and what she's putting in her mouth.  Is paper REALLY that tasty???

--- While she still eats a good bit with her fingers and still makes something of a mess at table, her skill with fork and spoon is pretty good.  No more oatmeal facials like a month ago.  Good heavens, I recall having to give her by hand almost every bite of food and every drop of liquid!  Was that really only last month???

--- She increasingly "understands" toys: give her a push button and you may be confident that it will be pushed, especially if noise results

--- She is learning to get out of her car seat.  For whatever reason, this has been so remarkable to me.  A week ago, she would sit immobile after I unbuckled her.  A few days ago, she started playing with the buckle as if trying to figure it out.  Now, she pushes the straps off her shoulders after I unlock everything and is starting to climb out on her own.  Amazing!

--- She babbles almost constantly.  When she finally learns to form words, I think we're going to have quite the little chatterbox on our hands

--- While she doesn't dress herself, she's getting increasingly helpful, i.e. she understands how to pull a shirt down over her head and push her hands into sleeves and feet into (usually one each) legs

--- She laughs a lot, either at us or at some joke in her head.  I recall my wife remarking while we were in China that Caroline had "old" eyes.  I'm thinking that this was less "old eyes" than simply confusion and grief over the loss of her foster family.  Now, she generally looks happy and playful (I say "generally" as she most certainly DOESN'T when it's time for a nap or a bath)

Then

 

Now

--- She seems to recognize herself in photos now.  I recall wondering in China whether she was self-aware: did she recognize the reflection in a mirror as herself or simply as some other child?

I wonder what she makes of her new life.  Does she remember China and her foster family?  Or is all of that - her first eighteen months - like a dream to her, one that she remembers less and less each day?

I confess that, when I stop to think about it, the whole thing is incredible.  This little girl, born on the other side of the world, is my daughter, my beautiful, giggly, active, bright, charming daughter.  Had she climbed out of a crashed spacecraft, the story could hardly be more unbelievable.  I don't expect her to lift the back of my truck... er... my Subaru, I meant to say, or to fly or run at 100mph, but I think she's pretty super.  As do her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.  And we are so, so, SO lucky.

4 WEEKS HOME

We have been home with Caroline for 4 weeks now.  It may seem like a short time, but I already cannot imagine life without her.  She is such a wonderful, happy child.  She loves to wear hats and play in the dirt.  I thought I would share some of the photos I've taken over the last few days.

For the adoptive parent

A blog post that I found very interesting and bring to your attention:

When we are children, we do not give too much thought to our future as we do when we get older. We do not look at who we are and ask ourselves how we identify ourselves in the world. As a result, we miss out on opportunities to learn about ourselves. That is why, even if a child shows no interest in their heritage, you should still educate them about it. Make it a fun learning experience for them and have the whole family get involved. Later on when or if they become interested, they will have that background knowledge to build upon. I was very sheltered at a young age...(*)

It seems to me that the principle job of a parent is to prepare his child for adulthood, to give him the mental, physical and moral "tools" he needs to understand the world and make his own place in it.  Questions about race, culture, ethnicity and origin generally don't arise for parents with biological children or children of the same race / origin, but they can be very tricky for parents of trans-racial adopted children.

It's very useful to me to have these sorts of perspectives on the issue.  As I remarked on Red Thread Broken, I think that many (most?) white Americans don't think much about race and ethnic culture / heritage simply because, for most of us, our ancestry is such a muddle that these things don't play much of a role in our self-concept and likely far less than other things in our lives such as where we were born, where we went to college, what branch of the military we served in, or even what sports teams we root for.  So, it's perhaps a bit harder for the white parents of a non-white child to understand and explain them to the child; we have no personal point of reference.

As I've written before, I have no idea how much Caroline's Chinese heritage will mean to her as she grows older.  My task is to educate her about it as well as I can so that she will be prepared to make that decision when the time is right.

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(*) http://myownrace.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/parents-of-adoptees/ 

via

http://redthreadbroken.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/parents-of-adoptees/ 

EAT LIKE YOU MEAN IT!



Somebody likes chocolate.  Oh, yes, she does!

 

 

Hat or helmet?

I frequently wear a hat, either a ball cap or a fedora (a habit generally lost among American men due to President Kennedy).  I also loved to play War as a boy.  How gratifying, then, to see my daughter doing... well... one of those things!

Haute couture or ready for the front lines?  You be the judge!

Pleasant Goat and Great Grey Wolf

And now for something completely different...

My wife found on YouTube some subtitled episodes of a very popular Chinese animated cartoon called "Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf"*.  While I've only seen a few episodes, I enjoy them.  They hearken back to those thrilling days of my childhood when I could watch uncensored classic cartoons such as Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Woody Woodpecker, and other uber-violent fare generally denied the more delicate children** of today.

The plot of the cartoons, so far as I can tell from the handful that I've seen, is pretty predictable:

A colony of rather juvenile sheep, under the leadership of their very wise, VERY slow elder (he is often shown being outrun by snails), live in bliss behind a large wall, put there by their ancestors to stop a pack of marauding wolves.  Life is good... until the Great Grey Wolf and his wife, the Great Red Wolf, move into the neighborhood, enticed by legends of a place where the sheep are numerous, fat and tasty.  Happily for the sheep (and the viewer!), Great Grey Wolf has quite a lot in common with a certain well-known Coyote: he is vain, pigheaded, and never manages to see the fatal flaws in his deeply-laid schemes to break into the sheep village.  Throw into the comic mix that he is very henpecked by his wife who, though she can't be bothered to try to catch the sheep herself, excels at post mortems when her husband returns, empty-handed and usually via crashing through the roof, from the hunt.

The animation of "Pleasant Goat" is primitive to say the least, what one might expect from a video game targeted at very young children.  However, the characters are interesting, the violence amusing, and the wolf especially an engaging character.  For those with small children recently home from China - or for big children who like animated slapstick a la Loony Tunes - this cartoon is worth a search on YouTube.

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(*) 喜羊羊与灰太狼, Xǐ Yáng Yáng yǔ Huī Tài Láng

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasant_Goat_and_Big_Big_Wolf


(**) There was a successful lawsuit against the producers of "Pleasant Goat" after two small boys injured themselves trying to imitate a scene from one of the episodes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-25447851

Maybe it's not such a bad thing, after all

During the adoption process, I had some lurking fears that I would have trouble accepting my daughter as... well... my daughter.  Those fears, I am pleased to say, have proved groundless.  While I'm still getting used to parenting, I (shall we say?) recognize Caroline as my daughter just as I recognize my mother and father as my parents, Chrystal as my wife, etc.  I don't think of myself as her "adoptive" father or her "other" father or her "second" father or even her "real" father, but simply as her father. 

I wonder: did the long adoption process help with this mental transition?  Did the "paperwork pregnancy" prepare me to accept her just as the father pacing nervously in the waiting room has been prepared by nine months of ultrasounds, doctor visits, weird cravings, etc. to accept the child that will soon be presented to him?  Would I feel the same about my daughter if she had been handed over to me after a few days instead of several months?  I think not.

Maybe that long wait isn't quite such a bad thing, after all.  Some things ARE worth the wait.  Very much worth the wait.  I also add as an aside that, while I was doing some yard work this morning, she came to the window and smiled and waved at me. That was pretty nice.