It's the start of Daddying Season

Summertime! School is out! Do you know what that means?

Daddy has his days free. As of today, he is now officially spending more time taking Cloud out of the house and leaving me behind.

The plan to have an adventure a day, some small, some bigger. I get a chunk of each day with Cloud, too, while Daddy goes off to work on his Daddy projects. So it's not like I'm being left out.

The timing couldn't be better, let's just say. The house needs a Major Cleaning, and I'm gonna spend all this alone time doing it. Clean house, here you come!

Also, I think AwesomeCloud is starting to exit his "all Mama all the time" phase and maybe... maaaaaybe.... start to prefer Daddy a little bit more. He still loves me. But he seems pretty cool with time away from me so far.

Also, I'm reaching a stage myself where I'm tired, I'm emotionally distant, and although I'm still being Mama, maybe I take advantage of Daddy's increased availability a little more than I absolutely have to. Maybe a little alone time will be good for me. It will certainly be good for the house.

It's that time... language comprehension time

Do you ever find yourself saying something that you wouldn't want your child to hear, and then look at him and shrug it off because he's far too little to understand? I do that aaalllll the time. I've always known that I'd have to stop sometime; I couldn't keep talking "grown-up talk" around him forever. But at first, it wasn't a pressing issue. All he heard was my tone of voice and the general patterns of the English language. It didn't matter what I actually said or who I said it to.

Well, that time is beginning to come.

Cloud can follow directions better and better. He listens to explanations of what we're going to do in the immediate future and more-or-less understands what to anticipate. He still can't talk coherently, and that's a little misleading. The fact that he asks for milk by saying, "Guh? Guh?" and pointing at the fridge doesn't make it seem as if gossiping in front of him is any big deal.

We have to stop and think about what we want him hearing, because he's starting to be able to hear it now.

One big issue that's relevant right now is whether we want him to grow up with parents who relate his adoption story over and over to any stranger who asks. A lot of strangers ask. It seems polite to answer questions posed to us, so we do. It's a social norm. Lonely old ladies at the mall, or people at your church, waitresses at restaurants... you don't want to be rude to the people who, these days, qualify as your neighbors - even if you'll never see them again, but, y'know, you still might. People being friendly to each other have to talk about something, and AwesomeCloud is awfully cute, and his story might be awfully interesting.

But I don't want that for him. My mother hardly ever went up to random strangers and told them all about me, but when she did mention the occasional personal fact, I got annoyed. Why wouldn't Cloud get annoyed, too?

If I'm aware of this problem, why do I keep doing it? Because I don't know how to stop.

I need to practice stopping.

First lesson: walking away. Look around for something that would interest Cloud. Point it out. Take his hand and walk over to it. Say, "Bye!" over my shoulder at nosy stranger and then lead Cloud away from her to the interesting object. Become completely engrossed in object. Don't look back.

That "Bye!" part is important. Otherwise she may try to follow us to continue the conversation.

I'll find other conversation-ending techniques, such as the semi-polite retort, and add them to my list of alternatives.

Yes, we encountered such a person today, and my first approach was to sideline the conversation with a question of my own, which failed. Finally I thought up the "walking away" technique and unfortunately left my poor, hapless husband to finish the conversation alone.

He's not that hapless. He likes to talk. Sometimes.

But, yeah, I can't help thinking back to my own childhood, when I resented being talked about. I try to imagine what it would be like to hear your own adoption story over and over and over and over again, retold for every schmuck your family meets in public, and I think it would be horrible. Just horrible.

Yes, our family is in the "obvious adoption" category. You can look at us and guess half our story, and maybe think the details would be just as interesting. But it's still horrible to be the one whose story it is and have to endure listening to it that way repeatedly.

I have to find a way out of the politeness trap. Why is it so hard?

Because, years ago, I vowed I would not turn into one of those people with social anxiety who ducked and sidestepped every human encounter that came my way. I would smile and be pleasant. I would enjoy the company of my neighbors. I would chat and not be awkward.

I'm just following a behavior pattern that I've worked hard to teach myself. I didn't know it would lead to this.

Cyclone hits inside of house

This house looks like a cyclone hit it.

Which is odd, because we don't have cyclones around here. We have hurricanes.

Must be a freak act of nature.

AwesomeCloud saves O'ville Library

AwesomeCloud and I have been invited to go to O'ville Library tomorrow morning to be interviewed for a library fundraising project. We'll be asked to explain why we value the library and why it deserves a brand shiny new building with a working septic system.

We had plans for a new building, but the architect passed away 3 or 4 years ago. He was a pillar of the community, and the whole village mourned him. The post office put its flag at half staff. The funeral procession passed my workplace. Many of my customers expressed sadness as they ordered their sandwiches.

The library plans faltered. For a while, the architectural drawings were displayed, but over time, the status quo took over. The library fundraisers went back to paying the utility bills and draining the septic tank.

Then we had a recession, and all that.

Now the new library plans are back on track, it seems. And we are among the local people chosen to sell the project on their fundraising media.

It's not tomorrow anymore. I just got another call from the organizer saying she has to postpone it to another day. I'll keep you all informed.

Life is so wonderfully strange! I'm glad I'm keeping a blog. There's no way I'd be able to remember all these little adventures and newspaper appearances and tell Cloud about them when he's older. My mother and I were talking about my early childhood last night, and even though she told me a thing or two that I hadn't known already, it struck me that so many of the details have been lost forever.

The beginning of Cloud's life is shrouded in mystery, and may always be inaccessible. (Unless China changes a lot of its social policies, which we keep hoping for.) But this stretch of his life is being well documented, and that's a plus.

Do leukemia patients think about interracial adoption?

Does your family get stared at in public? When you do, do you assume that people are staring at you because you're a multiracial family? Do you wonder what, exactly, they think of your situation? Do you think they're making pleasant or unpleasant assumptions about you?

Today AwesomeCloud and I passed by a teenage girl in a wheelchair with a scarf over her bald head and a surgical mask over her face. She gave us a good, long stare. The person pushing the wheelchair gave us a brief glance, the kind you give when you don't find a passing stranger interesting at all. Or when you're too polite to let on that you may find a stranger interesting.

I gave the girl the same kind of glance. AwesomeCloud stared.

Did the girl think we were wondering about her? Was she hyper-aware of our attention? Or was she momentarily too intrigued by our differing races to think about herself?

When strangers stare, do you feel like you're always the center of attention? And if so, do you get tired of it?

Weird baby names

I admit it - I'm fascinated by the new baby naming trends. They're so... weird! No boy named Jasper or girl named Peyton would have gotten away without merciless teasing when I was a kid. I love reading baby name articles and laughing, cringing, or boggling at the creative names. People not only took the time to dream these names up, but loved them to the point of choosing them for their children, above all others.

Here's a sampling of all kids' names I found from a random blog search here on Blogger:
Mackenzie
Abby
Eliza, Delia, Andrew, Joshua, and Sophie
Robbie, Alexa, Rachel, and Cole
Cali, Nyah, and Carson
Elianna
Fisher
Galla, Ryken, and Paisley
Oscar and Pippa
Sadie and Trent
Caden and Aliayah
Chase


There are some familiar ones in there, and some not so familiar. The current Top 50 lists are looking a bit unfamiliar too.

But it occurs to me that AwesomeCloud won't think these names strange at all. In fact he'll be growing up in a society that has, to some degree, lost its stigma over unusual names.

What a dramatic change. And this change is thanks to people of my generation (and a little younger). We were the ones who dared to buck social norms with our kids' names, and by doing so, we have changed social norms en masse! It may be a fad, but it's a fad that genuinely changes the way people think about each other. I wonder what naming conventions will occur in the next generation, when our kids have kids.

(Note: AwesomeCloud's legal name is an old timeless standard, so when I say 'we', I'm not necessarily including my husband and myself. But it's not out of the question for our hypothetical second child. We'll see.)

AwesomeCloud's ghost tour

Last Saturday, our friend Joe came to visit, and in the course of trying to find something to do, we decided to attend the Barnstable Ghost Tour. I'm not sure how many two-year-olds go on the tour. The guide warned that there would be darkness, and therefore possibly crying, but he didn't seem terribly concerned and welcomed us along.

AwesomeCloud was awesome. He was so good. He got to run around in a grassy field (AKA a cemetery) and eat a muffin (from the haunted general store, which was kind enough to stay open while we wandered the aisles looking for grey-haired ladies out of the corners of our eyes). He even made a new friend - the college student assistant. By the time we got to the old Barnstable jail, which is 400 years old, it was quite dark and we only had the guide's flashlight to see by. We all gathered in the largest jail cell and the flashlight was turned off.

Pitch dark.

We grownups looked around us hoping to see a ghost - since it was too dark to see anything real.

AwesomeCloud giggled. Stomped his little feet imitating the guide. Giggled some more.

Then we stopped for a diaper change, and went to the last house on the tour. While the guide told the scariest stories of all, AwesomeCloud got to sit on a stone wall, hold Joe's bottle of cola, and go up and down the handicapped ramp. And he got to say, "Woooooooo!" in a creepy voice.

All in all, a very enriching experience for him. Not a trace of crying! Not a trace of ghosts, either. But we got something out of it, too. Daddy enjoyed the history lesson, and Joe showed off some of his impressive knowledge. And I... I ate the other half of the muffin. Yum!

It turns out the Ghost Tour has a Part II. Rick and Joe are attending it now. We decided it was too late to bring the Kiddo - and too long. And too boring. It involves listening for ghosts with a tape recorder. Rick made some jokes about pointing his camera at streetlights and saying, "Look, it's an orb!" Apparently, he did that on his last ghost tour. I wish I'd been there that time.

The problem with the tape recorder method is that the ghosts tend to be very monosyllabic. The guide asks a yes or no question and then you can hear a very faint "Yessss."

If I were a ghost speaking into a tape recorder, I'd go ahead and be long-winded. I'd tell them more than those living humans ever thought they'd wanted to know. I'd go off on tangents. Then again, if I'd been God, I would have gone ahead and told Moses all about evolution. And germ theory, while I was at it. I dunno, I guess the spirit world would consider me pretty offbeat.

Fortunately, I enjoy the state of existence in which I'm still pretty offbeat, but reasonably so.

Only child

There's something to be said for having an only child. You don't have to give up your lifestyle so much; you just integrate the kid into it. You may have to ease up for a few years, until the kid is old enough to tag along on your grand adventures. But you don't have to give it up for good. You don't have to become those parents who wail, "Children RUINED my life!"

Those people do exist. I've seen them leave comments on other people's blogs.

Once you add the second child, familyhood becomes The Thing. It replaces any former kinds of lifestyle you may have had. Getting two kids to tag along is probably more than twice as hard, I'm guessing. I don't know. I've never tried it. But I do know that my two siblings and I did not travel well, and my parents were very reluctant to bring us on grand adventures. By the time they tried, two of us were already teenagers, and by then it's too late. Or it was for us, anyway.

I'm just thinking about this because it's time to plan for the fall convention season. Our grand adventures are on the convention circuit, and our lifestyle involves our small business, hotel rooms, and dealer tables. I can totally see AwesomeCloud getting absorbed into this lifestyle. What I'm not so sure of is having two kids along for the ride.

Maybe I shouldn't compare my kid(s) with my siblings and me. We are all different people. And our parents have different expectations. My parents expected my siblings and me to be all kid, all the time, and we were. My husband and I expect AwesomeCloud to participate in all levels of family activities, and we're already getting in lots of practice. We take him to events that are far above his age level, like the Audubon butterfly garden. (Children of any age can enjoy a stroll through a butterfly garden, but we're the ones who maintain it - Cloud has to tolerate hour-long weeding sessions and wheelbarrows full of mulch, and he does great, all things considered. He'll do even better as he grows up thinking this is normal.)

Same thing with dealer tables. We're easing him into it, testing his stamina, and as he grows he'll get used to the convention culture and it will be normal for him.

But how would we do that with two?

We're currently assuming we'll adopt another someday, and that may happen, but I want to weigh the pros and cons. One could say, "Who cares about your stupid comic book business when there are kids to be concerned about?" But, see, there aren't 'kids' yet. There is only 'kid'. If I'm going to have this thought process, now is the time. Now, before we drop the money on another adoption process. Once we sign up, we're going all the way.

Another one of my concerns is that if we sign up now, hoping the process will take awhile and give AwesomeCloud some time to grow up a bit, we'll end up rushing again and have our second child too soon. We say we're going to drag our feet, but the referrals came quickly last time - less than 8 months after we first signed on with our agent, we were matched with AwesomeCloud. There was another match, earlier, that we rejected because it was too soon. And then at the last minute I was actually considering adopting two at once, just because the opportunity was there.

A couple of adoptive mom bloggers are in the middle of discouragingly long waits, and I feel bad for them, but that doesn't happen to us even when we want it to. You say you're going to take your time accepting a referral, but when you get caught up in the process, you forget to wait. You just want to adopt everyone! Right now!

It's a lot to think about. Am I happy now? Will I have self-control if we try again? Does the benefit of a sibling for AwesomeCloud outweigh the benefit of the convention circuit? If having two children kills Dandelion Studios, will I regret it? Having one child could have killed our company, but it didn't. It just got us a junior partner (a very junior partner).

You know he'll be minding the table by himself by the time he's ten. And you know we GOTTA go to San Diego now. There's no way around it.

What a great childhood that will be.

Would a second child share that childhood, or prevent it from happening?

I don't know. You can't predict these things. But it's important to consider them.

Baby word counts

Today at Early Intervention, AwesomeCloud uttered 10 separate, distinct words. The EI lady thinks he's capable of around 15.

I'm not sure what the cutoff line for "distinct" is in language. One of his words was "crash," which sounds like "gah" to me. By that standard, he has at least 50 words, maybe up to 80 or 90 now. There are 15-20 words that sound like "gah." 10 or so words sound like "doo," and at least 20 words are pronounced "da." The esteemed Dr. Miller seemed surprised when I estimated AwesomeCloud's vocabulary at 40-50 words a month ago. I guess I was following different standards - I was counting words I could understand, and she was counting words she could understand. (She was also unimpressed when I told her AwesomeCloud could imitate five birdcalls and meow very convincingly like Ban Lu.)

I've done it. I've become that mama who has conversations with her incoherent toddler. Wahooo!

However, the number of words in his official paperwork is 10. For all official purposes, he currently has a vocabulary of 10 words, because that's what his assessment says.

There's a difference between official reality and actual reality, it seems. I knew that already. Anyone who's ever gone to school and had their complex hard work reduced to a letter grade knows that. Anyone who's ever paid taxes knows that.

There may be such thing as hard truth, but most truths are soft.

AT LEAST 80 separate and distinct words, I'm telling you.

Advice to my son - be nice

Someday I'd like to tell this to my son:

Be nice. Be kind. Be upstanding. Be honest and fair.

Show kindness especially to the people who you feel are below you. There will be kids who are a little bit odd, socially awkward perhaps, unkempt or poorly dressed, sad or serious, shy or clumsy. The other kids will tease them and it will seem to you that you should tease them too, just to be safe. Don't do it. Be nice to them. Maybe they'll never be your close friends, but if you're cruel to them, you will forever be their enemy. If you're kind, you may become their ally. If you think you don't want to be their ally, just wait. You may change your mind.

If a classmate says something careless or hurtful, stand tall. You don't have to smile; you don't even have to answer. But don't let yourself be crushed, either. Everyone says mean things sometimes. That kid probably said something thoughtless or mean to some other kid yesterday. If he's trying to push your buttons, don't let your buttons be pushed. If he's being offensive by accident, forgive him and let it go. You have more power by ignoring him than by reacting to him. If you ignore him, he's helpless against you.

Share. Especially if you have food to spare. Nobody can truly dislike a person who offers him food. Especially cupcakes. One of my closest childhood friendships started with cupcakes.

Kindness won't solve every problem. It won't guarantee that you'll be the most popular kid in class, with everyone clamoring to be your friend. It won't fend off every bully. But it works a lot better than a lot of other things you can try.

Remember, the nice guy always wins. You may not win immediately, but just wait for your reward and it will come. Even if your reward is just better self-respect, that alone is worth it. You know you did the right thing, and that's worth it. All those kids being mean to each other - they're going to regret it someday.

There will be times when you can't be kind, you forget to be kind, or being kind is not the best thing. There may be times when letting the other person have their way will actually hurt you, and you decide to stand up for what you want instead. That's okay. In time, you'll learn when it's important to oppose someone. But even when you do oppose someone, do it respectfully and honorably. Don't kick them when they're down. Your adversaries are people too, and if you're kind to them even while you compete with them, they'll remember.

Most important of all, be kind to weird people. Having some weird people among your friends is valuable. You'll find out how valuable they are as soon as you make some weird friends. Just trust me on this.

The babysitter can touch the lights

It's Memorial Day Weekend. Tomorrow marks the official start of tourist season, with its traffic jams, mini-golf, crowded ice cream stands, traffic jams, bike races and 5Ks on the street, half-naked pedestrians in big hats, traffic jams, weekend fishermen, lost flip flops, and traffic jams.

It's the day when locals start thinking about Labor Day.

It's the day when the newspaper editorial says, "This is supposed to be about our fallen vets, not beer and cookouts!" to be hardly glanced at by thousands of beer-drinking backyard partygoers.

Today we've decided to keep our plans low-key, in case of traffic jams. We went to church, where I talked briefly to our new babysitter's father. Our babysitter is a 13-year-old boy adopted from China - not that AwesomeCloud cares right now. But we the parents care. Anyhow, the boy had never had a babysitting job before - he just got his certification last month or so - so we were his first clients. It was an easy job - we got Cloud ready for bed ahead of time, so all the boy had to do was play with him for a while, then put him in the crib and entertain himself for 3 hours.

His father asked, "You you have any suggestions for improvement? Anything he could have done better?"

Well, the boy hadn't actually done much of anything. He might have petted Riley and he might have sat on the sofa under the one lamp we'd left on. The house was so exactly as we'd left it that the only way I'd have known he was there was that he was still there when we got home.

"He can turn on the lights," I said. "He can eat the snacks, listen to the radio, and adjust the lights however he wants them. He was using them; not us."

"Oh," said the father. "Okay."

Then we went to a flea market, where Cloud tagged along willingly, but didn't start having a good time until we gave him a cup of frozen lemonade. With a straw. He spent the rest of our flea market time dragging his feet, playing with his straw and cup. He loves those things.

Now is naptime. Then, at 5:00 PM we'll all go to Audubon and release some captive-bred spadefoot toads into the wild. Spadefoot toads are very, very rare. They live near salt marshes, and, well, there just aren't that many salt marshes along the East Coast anymore. Humans keep building stuff on them. The few salt marshes that are left are badly polluted, because by nature salt marshes act as repositories for all sorts of pollutants. We have no idea unless we go out and study the polluted salt marsh phenomenon.

APCC, a different organization that my husband and I have done work with in the past, has made great strides in improving the conditions of certain salt marshes around here. So who knows; maybe the tiny young spadefoot toads will have a fighting chance this time around.

It's time for childhood sports

AwesomeCloud is two years old. That means in a year he'll be three, and when he's three, it'll be time to begin the process of choosing sports to enroll him in.

Three. Really? I played soccer for one year when I was ten, and I didn't join Brownies until I was eight.

So I was always the oldest kid whenever I finally joined something. We're not going to do that to AwesomeCloud. Other people start their kids early, and we'll... give it some thought, at least.

Here are my specific thoughts:

Hockey: My brother said it's important to get the kid on ice skates early, or else he'll struggle to keep up with all of his teammates who were skating at age three. This may be so. I can't stay upright on roller skates, so there's no way I'm teaching him how to ice skate. The equipment is expensive, the games are at 6 AM, and the hockey parents are insane. (Maybe not all of them, but the ons in the news are.) Verdict: No.

Tennis: I was a very casual tennis player. I could serve, but after that the game tended to fall apart. However, the more you play, the better you get, and once you learn to get it over the net with some regularity, tennis is a lot of fun. It can even be relaxing, if you're not McEnroe. Plus you can wear normal clothes, you can use the same tennis racket for years, and the tennis courts are right across the street from our house! Will he be playing real tennis at age three? No. Will we get him a toddler racket and let him whack balls around? Yes.

Football: Easy one. Not until high school. Then he'll have to beg and plead and present a good case for why football won't give him brain damage and end his career prospects as a neurosurgeon. Even then, the verdict may still be No.

Soccer: I like soccer. I played it for a year. It's simple, easy to play even without a full understanding of the rules, and popular all over the world. No matter where he goes, from Belize to Borneo, he'll be able to find someone to play soccer with. (Or futbol.) At age three he may be barely bigger than the ball, but he may still be able to kick it, and that's what counts. Verdict: Yes.

Basketball: What, my little pipsqueak? Besides, three-year-olds don'y play basketball. Three-year-olds play toss into a toddler-sized basketball hoop. Cloud does that already. If he wants to play kids' league in coming years, I'll let him, but he may be too short to get very far. Verdict: Sure, I guess, we could try it.

Martial arts: Yes, yes, many times yes! What small child doesn't like dressing up in a loose robe, going barefoot, and kicking up high in the air while shouting "Hi-ya!"? I wish I'd done it. Martial arts build self-esteem right from the beginning, and they don't have seasons or tons of special equipment. The rules can be added as they learn. We'd sign him up for Kung Fu, of course. Gotta go with the Chinese arts. Verdict: Absolutely, let's go, sign him right up!

Baseball: I like watching baseball. My husband didn't like playing in little league, but some kids do. I don't see anything wrong with baseball. If he's interested, Yes.

Okay. After he's settled into sports, we'll evaluate his options for musical instruments. I'm thinking drums.