Beyond the Sea

Time marches on. Life changes and we change with it. This is good.

Since my last update we’ve had 2 birthdays and a funeral. I am getting my legs under me as a mom and starting to explore new interests. Our family is complete. We are growing together, and things are good.

But, I find that I have little time to keep up with this blog. Life is very full, and there are things I could be sharing, but the stories are not all mine to tell anymore. The stories I tell here are the boys’ stories too. And I don’t feel as comfortable about sharing them anymore.

Plus, I sort of feel that my reason for writing this blog is now past. Once, I was an adoption blogger, trying desperately to create a family across many miles and against some pretty steep odds. Now, the adoption and the transition are complete, and no longer such all consuming parts of my life.

This blog will stand as a record of the journey we made to become a family, but now that journey is mostly at an end. We went through hell – and by we I mean all of us – but we made it through. We’re just a regular family now, with our good days (mostly) and bad days (occasionally).

What will become of this blog I don’t know. I have no plans to shut it down – it’s a historical document of our family. I’d like to print it out for the boys so that they will have a record of our family’s beginnings.

But as far as writing, I think I would like to change the focus of what I write to be less personal about my family and kids, and a little bit more about the OTHER things that interest me. As my kids get older, I think that they deserve respect for their privacy and the opportunity to grow up and make their mistakes without their mom blabbing it all over the world wide web.

But I still enjoy writing and blogging. So I think that I will continue to do that somewhere else. What will I write about, though? And where?

I don’t have an answer for that yet. When I get it figured out, I will post here with where you can find me.

Thanks for reading!

Edited to Add: You can now find me and read about my adventures on my new blog –  Eat and Run Mom!

From Dickens by way of The Muppet Christmas Carol,

Life is made up of meetings and partings. That is the way of it. I am sure we shall never forget Tiny Tim or this first parting that there was among us.

Although we didn’t meet our boys in 2012, there was a meeting in the sense of finding out what our family would be like with them as part of it. For the most part things have been great. We do struggle with some of the usual things that parents deal with – listening, and tantrums – but for the most part they are pretty good kids. We have been home over a year now, and with the exception of some particularly persistent Russian pronouns, the boys are speaking English only. We tried the bilingual thing for the first few months but in the end, we had to go cold turkey off Russian to get the boys to acquire English.

Now that we’ve been home long enough for our family to start feeling permanent, and language skills are starting to improve enough where naming feelings is possible, the time has come to start helping Max unpack his emotional bags. We know that he experienced loss and trauma at an early age, and from early days we have seen that anger and frustration are very difficult feelings for him. There are times when he has a lot of doubts that he is loved and lovable, so we think now is a good time to begin working on some of those issues as well as to get some insight on how to parent in a way that is more supportive while he is dealing with these issues.

There are also some partings that took place in the last year. Eric and I both lost a grandparent within the last year. Eric’s grandmother passed away in the Fall, and my grandfather passed away on Saturday, two days ago. I had been scheduled to go visit him in a few days – which would have been my first overnight trip away from the boys, but my grandfather was gone before I could get there. I am very sad not to have seen him again, but I also knew every time I said goodbye to him that it could be the last time. And I like to think that death really is just a release of the soul from its prison of the body – so not an ending as much as a new beginning. My Papa lived a good life and was a very special person. I will miss him but just as with my grandmothers death 14 years ago, he will live in my memory.. It’s hard to feel that he is really gone when I can see him in my minds eye as plain as day, and hear his voice calling me Ydnas.

So I am feeling okay about things, sad and yet somehow relieved to know that while I will miss him, he is finally free of the body that had been failing him. But talking about his death has stirred up some big feelings about love and loss in Max also, perhaps triggering things long dormant which are starting to surface now. We are working to deal with this lovingly and help him understand that this too is part of life, that happy and sad are two sides of the same coin. It’s challenging as a parent to know how to send the right message that is developmentally appropriate but he seems to be getting it, so hopefully we are doing okay.

Another parting also seems to have occurred in one of my oldest relationships. This is one that I can’t even mention to the boys because I fear either they wouldn’t understand, or perhaps, they would understand all too well. They have, after all, experienced something similar themselves. We all have notions of what certain kinds of relationships are supposed to be like, but the reality is that not everyone is capable of meeting those expectations. In most long term relationships a certain amount of give and take and forgiveness of mistakes is necessary. People make mistakes and no two people see the world exactly the same way so it is only natural for feelings to get hurt through misunderstandings and thoughtlessness. This too is the way of things and happiness depends on not taking things personally every time differences arise. Grown ups can’t go running for the hills whenever things get hard, and sometimes you have to agree to disagree. But some people aren’t capable of that and instead choose to become angry and end relationships when there is a disagreement.

It makes me sad though, because this parting represents the loss of someone that has always been one of the most important people in my life. I would and have forgiven much because I so valued the relationship. And I would forgive yet again if I could be sure that this person valued me or my family and that it was simply a misunderstanding. But it’s not.

The fact of the matter is I think I’m not valued or even particularly liked by this person. I wonder now if I ever was, and perhaps that’s something I will never know. Who, after all, ever truly knows what another person feels? All I know for certain is that even though once upon a time I would have fought to prove myself “worthy” of this person’s love, things are different now that I am a mom. I can’t keep trying to save a relationship with someone who treats me or my family badly, even if I might want to, because of the example it sets for my kids. This parting is hard though, because it isn’t nature taking its course, it’s simply a matter of two people being unable to see eye to eye and valuing relationships differently. The first is something two adults should be able to handle amicably, but the latter is harder to work around. It is avoidable and a failure on both parts. Unlike death at the end of a long life, it’s parting by choice – not something that had to happen.

After Oleg’s Actual birthday, the rest of the week got a little weird. Eric’s grandmother died, so he had to make plans quickly to travel to Iowa and be with his family for the memorial. He left on Wednesday and came home on Friday night. Due to the boys’ school and the cost of last minute flights, the boys and I stayed home. I also needed to be home to prepare for Oleg’s party on Saturday.

The first order of business to prepare for the party was to deep clean the house. Because that is something I pretty much hadn’t done since coming home with the boys. Most of the time, it is just about maintenance, so at best the house gets tidied, and those areas most likely to get gross will get cleaned as needed. But rarely is there time or desire to do things like dusting, washing curtains, etc. so those things were in need of doing. The payoff for all the cleaning was that I received the ultimate compliment for any control freak with kids, “wow, it hardly even looks like kids live here!”

Though, that’s actually kind of unfair to them, since they are pretty tidy as kids go. Max even makes his bed every morning without being asked, because he just likes it that way. They trained him well at Detsky Dom #5. He experimented briefly with not doing it over the summer, but it didn’t agree with his Felix Unger tendencies. Oleg, on the other hand is more of an Oscar, but even so he is a good helper – he likes to vacuum and wash windows. And they are both pretty good about putting away their laundry, which is more than I can say for Eric and I (least favorite job in the whole house and neither of us can explain why we hate it, we just do).

Anyway, the house got cleaned, Eric came home and then it was time for the party. Everything went about as well as you can expect when you are throwing a party and are not sure how many people will attend. We got about 30 people, which is what we had guesstimated, so I bought enough food for twice that many because that is just how I roll.

The party was a lot of fun for both boys. I let Max invite a friend from school, and a bunch of our friends with kids came. I invited a couple of local “Russian moms” with their little guys and that was fun too. We think everyone had a good time and I know Oleg did.

We may not all remember turning four, but if Oleg’s demeanor the last few days is any indication, it is a big deal. For one thing, he can actually count to 4 all by himself, which is cool because when he was 3 he couldn’t count at all. Now he knows how many 4 is. He can even show you how many it is with the fingers. He also knows that his next birthday he will be 5, which to his mind means he will be a big kid. Although the odd thing is that if you ask him to count without it being about birthdays he says “1, 2, 3, 4, 9.”

Anyway, if 5 is big, then 4 is almost big, which means maybe he doesn’t have to listen to grown ups anymore. That was his theory for a couple of days anyway.

Monday was the big day, and an exciting day it was. The first present he opened was his new backpack. He was so happy to have a backpack that was his very own, just like mommy and big brother Max.

The next gift he opened was a set of Curious George books from Totya Betsy, which was actually for both boys. I always remind them that books are for sharing. As far as they know, that is true, so no problems there.

Then he opened his Magnadoodle from Grandma. The Magnadoodle immediately became a bone of contention between the boys because they both thought it extremely cool. However, they are doing a good job working things out.

Those were the presents opened before breakfast and then it was time to get ready for school. This week was the first week that Oleg was old enough to go for a longer day at school, as well as adding an additional day. He is now going to school from 9 until 1245 on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

After dropping Max and Oleg at school, I had parent teacher conference at preschool, where his teacher told me what a little angel Oleg is, how smart he is and all the wonderful things he can do and what a great cleanup helper he is. And then she told me how she thought he might even be ready for early entrance to kindergarten. Meanwhile I was sitting there thinking, are you sure we are talking about the same kid? Because he is a great kid and definitely whip smart…but an angel he is not. (Neither is he a little devil…just a regular kid with a lot of brains who likes to get into a little mischief here and there – that is the Oleg I know). And he has only been speaking English since January so has a lot of catching up to do academically in my opinion. However, evidently he is a little sponge at school and is picking things up really quickly. Also, as of Monday he was the only kid who had never been sent to the naughty chair, and it was clear to me that he had managed to ingratiate himself in a big way with his teacher, Ms. Tatiana.

After school, we opened the next present, a three wheel scooter. Oleg was very excited to try it out but unfortunately, he quickly developed a love hate relationship with the scooter that soon evolved into outright verbal abuse. At one point, I found Oleg screaming at it in the alley and calling it stupid. It’s gonna take some practice.

After papa got home from work we opened a few more gifts, including pajamas and clothes, a Spider-Man action figure that rides a truck, and some Hot Wheels cars with a wall mounted track. The boys were in absolute heaven about the Hot Wheels, but the clothes and pajamas elicited this reaction:

I believe that is what they call a stone face. At the end of all the present wrapping when the living room was knee deep in wrapping paper, Oleg showed himself to be a true American by looking around the room and asking, “is that it?”

Yup, it was. He took the news of no more presents well and when I asked if he was happy with everything he got he said yes, which made me feel good that his first real birthday was a success.

After presents were opened, we ate a special dinner of macaroni and cheese, peas and birthday cake. Oleg was a fan of the cake and suffered gallantly through the rest of the meal to get to the best part. Then too soon the fun was over and it was time for bed.

The next morning Oleg had school again. All was well, but when I arrived for pickup a very frazzled looking Ms. Tatiana met me at the door to let me know my little angel had started showing his horns for the first time. I let her know I thought it was probably all the birthday excitement but she told me she would still be keeping an eye on him to make sure that adding an extra day and more hours to his school schedule wasn’t too much too soon for him. So I was a little concerned on Tuesday that maybe we would have to be dialing back the school, but then today (Wednesday) she let me know that he was back to the angelic, helpful self that he had been previously. And I could tell she was relieved!

At the end of my last post, the boys were all dressed up and ready to go trick or treating. They were pretty excited about it and it seems that the experience itself did not disappoint. Our first house we trick or treated at was HunterAnn’s because she had jokingly posted on Facebook that she was worried they wouldn’t get anybody to come by.

Then we went to Alderwood Mall because the stores were supposed to be giving away candy. The weather was kind of iffy that night with lots of rain, so I thought we better preload the buckets in case we got rained out. Unfortunately we got there right at 6 and the trick or treat hours were from 4 to 6. There were still a few places giving away candy though, so it was not a total bust. And Godiva Chocolates was even giving candy to moms, so I was glad we went. I was also impressed with the boys’ ability to tell “fancy candy” from regular candy and go right for the good stuff.

Then we arrived home and I handed the boys off to dad for trick or treating around our neighborhood. Just as the boys were getting ready to go, their friends from down the street came by so they all went together. Apparently one of the houses in our neighborhood actually had a DJ and a dance floor set up in their garage and the boys were going to town, dancing to the music. When they got to their friends’ house, Max reached his hand into the candy bowl and got a scary surprise when it had one of those monster hands that comes out and grabs your hand. He shouted at it and called it a Stupidhead.

Then it was time to come home and have a late dinner with more kids still coming to the door. With all the distractions and candy in a bucket, it was not easy to get anyone to focus on dinner…so finally we just gave up and sent the kids to bed. Now we are doling out candy at a rate of 2 pieces a day and judging by what’s in the bucket they’ve each got enough to last until the end of November.

On Friday, we went down to the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma because the boys hadn’t been there before, and also because my aunt Betsy was in town and we thought she’d enjoy a visit. Highlights of the trip included a territorial display by the resident Sumatran Tiger, complete with peeing on the window, and the kids playground. The boys can’t resist any opportunity to run, swing and slide.

Now we are ankle deep in preparations for Oleg’s birthday, which is on Monday (tomorrow). I am TRYING not to get too crazy but I think that as with Max’s birthday in March, I may have gone a little overboard. We’re hoping he likes all his presents. We got him a scooter of his own, but because he’s not quite as coordinated as Max we got him a three wheel scooter instead of a Razor like Max has. I think he will have more fun with it than if we got him something that would be too hard to ride. We also got him some new clothes and pajamas, and a wall mount Hot Wheels track. He’s got some books coming, plus some Hot Wheels cars. I bought Candyland and Chutes and Ladders so we can work on taking turns and following rules, social skills that Oleg in particular needs to improve. And I got him a stuffed rabbit – for my baby bunny. Because whenever he’s in trouble he reminds me that he is the baby bunny from the book about the Runaway Bunny. It’s too cute.

Oleg’s birthday party is going to be on Saturday the 10th. It’s a Spider-man theme so I got a Spider-Man pinata, tablecloth, balloons, games, etc. I also ordered a Spider-Man cake from a friend of mine who is starting a cake business. She sent me her drawing this morning – we will put an action figure on top, so I think he will love it. I am really excited to be able to support my friend’s business, because she has been making some really amazing cakes!

Quick post to follow up about Maxs parent teacher conference on Monday and to post a sneak preview of Max’s costume while the boys nap (it is still early here).

I had PT conference with Max’s teacher first thing on Monday morning and basically she said that while Max is still a little behind grade level, he is doing great socially and soaking everything up like a sponge. He has been identified as an English Language Learner, but in Kindergarten they keep the kids mainstreamed in the regular classrooms. She feels he is really picking things up quickly so she has no concerns about him either academically or socially. We are really grateful to have such a great kindergarten teacher this year.

Literally if we could have picked the perfect place to have Max start school it would have to be THIS particular school, where the principal is an adoptive mom herself (via Guatemala) and where his kindergarten teacher is a former foster mom with a good understanding of attachment and adoption issues. Not that there have been any real issues with him at school because he tries so hard to learn the rules and abide by them. She understands where that trait comes from and agrees with me that it will be nice, someday, to see him relax in the school setting and show confidence in his ability to do right rather than fear of doing wrong. But for now she agrees he is doing great and she has no concerns about his progress.

We did discuss some difficulties we have had at home around homework, and tantrums related to that. She said that it is common with most kids this age and given his background not surprising that he is saving all the “good stuff” for me. We just need to make the message that we still have to do things even if they are hard and keep working on ways to help him work through his anxiety/frustration about homework so that he can complete the work and learn from it.

And now, here is your obligatory Halloween costume pic of Max at his Kindergarten Pumpkin Party this morning. As you can see he’s very pleased with his ability to pin the nose on the witch!

And here are both boys dressed up and ready to go. Watch out bad guys!

The last couple of weeks have been kind of crazy! Lots going on. Let’s start with my husband traveling to Germany for a work thing, his parents coming to visit, pumpkin farm visits and carving of pumpkins, fall hikes and more. safe to say it has been a busy couple of weeks.

Once upon a time my husband Eric traveled for work all the time, and in those footloose and fancy free days before kids I often would travel with him to some of the more interesting locales using frequent flyer miles. That was how I got to visit Frankfurt, Paris, Prague, Bangkok, and Taipei all in the space of a couple of years. Then we started getting serious about the adoption and had to save those miles, plus Eric switched jobs and didn’t travel so much. So in the last few years since about 2009, trips to Russia were kind of the only travel we did. And for the first few months we were home, Eric still wasn’t traveling much. But now in the last couple of months Eric has started to travel a little more. We’re trying to make it easy on the boys so that they will feel comfortable that if Eric leaves, they can be sure he will come back.

This most recent trip – to Germany for 5 days – was the longest he’s taken since we’ve been home so it was a good chance to see how it affected the boys. They handled it pretty well. You can tell they are not thrilled but they are not freaking out about it, either. We tried to liven things up for them by having the grandparents come out in the middle so I think that made things easier…although the boys really seem to roll with things pretty well these days, so mostly it was a nice for me to know that I could take a break if I needed to and the boys would be in good hands.

While the grandparents were here we tried to keep up with our fall festivities. The day after E got home we took the whole clan out to the pumpkin farm to take some Fall pictures and get our pumpkins. The boys had a great time, although Max also had one of his first public meltdowns in a long while when I declined to allow him to ride some goofy and totally unsafe looking tractor pull ride they had going in the pouring rain and hail. Oh well, we survived and the boys had fun anyway. We picked out some good pumpkins and took them home to carve.

Turns out the boys love carving pumpkins. They also LOVE eating the roasted seeds. As in, the seeds were all gone within two days. We let the boys pick what kind of pumpkin we would carve and they chose a Spider-Man design and an Iron Man one. This is to match their Halloween costumes, which they are very excited about and talk about constantly.

The grandparents stayed through the weekend but had to go home on Tuesday. The boys don’t quite understand why everyone doesn’t just live together – so they are always sad when visitors have to leave. They are getting used to it though and they do seem to take comfort when you tell them that they will be seeing grandma and grandpa again soon.

After the grandparents left there were still some fun things in store for the week. Oleg got to meet a real live firefighter at preschool, and Max’s kindergarten class went out to another pumpkin farm, where Max got to pick out yet ANOTHER pumpkin. This is exciting for him because it means we will have more seeds. Exciting for me too because this time I am going to stash some before they all get eaten.

We also finally took the boys to apply for a US passport this week. It went fine and they earned a trip to McDonalds for good behavior. We are hoping to go up to Canada if the passports come before Thanksgiving weekend, thereby bypassing the whole Black Friday thing entirely. Also, i won’t have to cook!

We also got Oleg’s birthday party invites out this week. It is going to be a Spider-Man party and he is pretty stoked about it. I figure it will give him another chance to wear the costume if nothing else. Can’t believe he is four already! Hoping he gets a good turnout because he considers every person he’s ever met to be his friend, and he told me he hopes all his friends will come. Fingers crossed! Hate to disappoint the little guy.

I guess the last big piece of news is no news. I ended up having to reschedule my doctors appointment about the female troubles until December. So that is kind of a bummer not to know what is going on but hopefully when I do go it will be good news.

a random assortment of news tidbits follows.

School seems to be going well for Max so far. He is working at grade level and brings a good attitude with him to school most days. He has made some friends and is having fun. There have been a few minor things here and there but considering the challenge laid before him he is really doing great. He pretty much has the alphabet down, has learned his numbers through the teens and twenties (except for thirteen and fifteen, but they are weird ones that could take a while). I have been volunteering in his class one day a week which has enabled me to be in close contact with his teacher as well as observe for myself how he is doing and I would say he pretty much fits in, behaviorally and socially as well as academically. By which I mean he has good days and bad days…but they are mostly good days. That’s my impression anyway. We have PT conferences the last week of October so if I’m reading the situation wrong I guess I will hear about it then…but I don’t think I am.

Oleg is also doing really well in preschool. We are really blessed that the church we go to has this small preschool where Oleg can be around other kids and learn his Preschool curriculum and some bible stories in an environment where his teachers really care about and support him and our family. These were the folks that prayed us home, so they are kind of like a bunch of aunties who dote on him and think he is a pretty special kid. Not sure it is the most rigorous environment as far as kindergarten prep but that is not what we need since he won’t start kindy for two years anyway. And what kind of crazy world are we living in where that last sentence even makes sense? I remember kindergarten as mostly being about circle time, recess and snacks. The idea of having to “prep” for it does seem kind of ridiculous. Anyway his preschool teachers have also been a good support for me – a couple of the teachers are grandmas/experienced moms and are patient with my “am I screwing this parenthood gig up?” type of questions. They say not, which is reassuring.

We went camping down at the Long Beach Peninsula a couple of weeks ago, and the boys loved it. We took along their bikes, so the trip encompassed several of their favorite things: bicycles, camping and the beach. We were super lucky with the weather – it was the last nice weekend before the rains came. It’s been raining off and on since Friday of last week now and the air is really cooling down. Feels like Fall is here and Winter is not far behind.

What else?

Lets talk about my female problems, shall we?

I haven’t really posted about it but for the last couple of years I’ve been dealing with some health issues that I had to put on the back burner until the adoption was complete. A few years ago, my periods started getting closer together, which was consistent with low ovarian reserve – the cause of our infertility back when we were trying to obtain small humans in the standard fashion. (I also had fibroids but the docs never really considered this to be the issue…it was more the fact that my eggs were cooked that was the issue.)

Then I also started having some spotting, which had never happened before, but I just wrote it off as weird perimenopausal stuff.

Then in Winter of 2010 when we were in the middle of the adoption process, it started to become straight up bleeding at odd times of the month. I got concerned enough to ask my doctor about it. At first she said it was probably the fibroids and not to worry as I didn’t fit the profile for anything serious like uterine cancer. (The profile being, overweight smokers.)

My response was, well, how do we know its not cancer…it’s rare but not unheard of for women who don’t fit the profile to get cancer, right? She just kind of rolled her eyes – I could hear it over the phone.

Anyway, long story short, she finally agreed to do an endometrial biopsy just to put my mind at ease (or shut me up, take your pick). The results came back positive for complex endometrial hyperplasia without atypia, which is considered to be a precancerous condition with about a 3% chance of progressing to cancer. If it is WITH atypia your odds of getting cancer go up to around 30% and they pretty much rip out your uterus on the spot. But without atypia, you have some choices.

The treatment for this is usually to take a low dose of progesterone to get all the hormones in balance and reverse the hyperplasia. I did two rounds of that without any results. At the end of the second my doctor referred me to a surgeon for a D and C and to begin discussing other options, such as a hysterectomy.

The surgeon is pretty convinced I need a hyster, but then, that is his job – removing people’s lady parts. He tells me alarming things, such as that when people don’t fit the profile and don’t respond well to hormonal therapy, their condition tends to be more aggressive if it does progress to cancer.

I personally am hoping to avoid the hysterectomy for a couple of years, since you are not supposed to be doing any heavy lifting for a long time afterwards, and I have two very heavy boys who do, upon occasion, require some lifting. So we are trying some alternative therapies. I am now taking Megace, a high dose of progesterone that is given to young women who have uterine cancer (or precancer) and want to preserve fertility. Megace can sometimes reverse progression of the disease but there has not been a lot of study done on how it works for women my age – usually for older ladies, hysterectomy is the preferred treatment. Why give those pesky lady parts any more chances to get into trouble? By the time you get to be 40, they’ve already had their fun.

Realistically, I expect I will eventually have to have the hysterectomy. Probably sooner than later. I am not trying to take risks with my health, I am just hoping to keep the situation under control and put off surgery until it is a more convenient time. So for now, we are trying Megace…the downside of which is that it is also given to late stage cancer patients of all stripes to get them to gain weight.

I don’t know what is going on in my uterus yet, but I can tell you that the weight gain thing is working like a charm.

So that has been on my mind a lot. I have an appointment on the 24th of October to find out if the Megace is having any effect other than making me fat. I haven’t had a period since I started taking it in August so it seems like it is doing something, but other it is hard to know very much until I get another biopsy. And I will be glad when the appointment day comes…I’m a little trepidatious, but sometimes it is nice to get an answer even if it isn’t what you are hoping to hear. Then at least you know what you are dealing with.

Anyway other than the female problems things are good. And even the female problems aren’t so bad – at least we are on top of the situation so that we can prevent it from becoming something more serious.

So recently a well meaning person sent us all 3 installments of the Stuart Little movies. I normally try to vet these things ahead of time, but having read the books as a kid, I thought, “How bad could it be?” So I popped the movie in and we watched…for a while.

Well, turns out the movie is pretty bad. Its especially bad for families like ours.

In the books, Stuart is human, just small, and there is no adoption theme. In the movie, adoption is a central theme – not in a good way – and they break out every cliche in the book. Including Stuart’s “real” mouse family coming back for him, and his adoptive family just hands him over to some random mice claiming to be his birth family (and of course in the movie they dont use that terminology, they instead say, “real” family) without even checking ID because, you know, they just “look right” together – WTF?  Prior to that there is the obligatory scene where he is “picked” in the orphanage. Really confusing for preschool age kids. And really not appropriate for kids who have lived some of this and are still figuring things out. Ugh!

I don’t object to movies that touch on adoption themes, because if handled sensitively they can be a good jumping off point for for a discussion about real life experiences. But it seems like the majority of times adoption themes are not handled sensitively, and it winds up just being confusing to everyone. Confusing to kids who are adopted, and confusing to kids who are not adopted, by reinforcing stereotypes that weren’t even true 60 years ago, let alone today.

How do you talk to your kids about negative adoption stereotypes?

We here in the Seattle area start school nearly a month later than kids in other areas of the country, so it was not until September 5 that Max actually started kindergarten. I am not sure why we start so much later than everyone else, other than, summer doesn’t really start here until so late that our best weather usually comes in August and September. It would be a shame if the kids missed the only sun we are going to get all year, and I am sure most of the folks in the teacher’s unions feel likewise, thus, we get to take full advantage of summer’s dog days before the school year starts.

Max is only doing half day kindergarten this year. We debated this, and opted for half day for a couple of reasons. One is, our district charges for full day, while half day is free.  The half day class actually has a much smaller class size, 16 kids in half day as opposed to 20-some in full day, so Max will be able to get more individualized attention. Also, Max still takes pretty long naps most afternoons so I am not sure he would benefit from being at school during hours when his body would rather be asleep. Finally, we opted for half day because we are still in our first year home and we think it is probably best to ease him into it with a workload we know he can handle and keep his main focus in life here at home, versus overwhelming or confusing him and possibly souring him on school.

So far we feel like we’ve made a good choice. Max comes home every day raving about what a good time he had, and his teacher says she’s been pleased to see him engaged and eager to learn and fit in. So he goes and spends his morningswith Mrs. Wilson, then he comes home in the afternoon to our normal routine. We aregrateful that his teacher (the aforementioned Mrs. Wilson) has a no homework policy for kindergarten, but we are going to require Max to do some additional work in the afternoons after nap to keep building his skills and help him fill in some of the gaps he still has academically. However, unlike the cram course kindergarten prep I’ve been forcing down his throat since April, most of what we will be working on is more games oriented, less drilling…and I think keeping it a little more light will help him stay positive and focused on the fun of learning (which now that things are starting to make sense to him, he is better able to see the fun in it).

Anyway, so far school is going well for him and he seems happy. Now I just hope he can make a couple of friends, then I will be able to breathe a big sigh of relief. I feel like that is going to be a bigger hurdle than the academics, simply because of the language issues. I am glad that he has started making friends around the neighborhood, and I am pretty sure it will happen for him at school too…but it might take a little while.

Oleg also started school this week. He is going Monday and Wednesday mornings to the little preschool that is run by our church. There are just a few kids in the school so Oleg will get to have a school experience without being overwhelmed in a large class. He is also familiar with and fond of the teachers from the week that I sent he and Max to vacation bible school. So it seemed like a good fit. Next year I may put him into a more academic setting to prepare for kindergarten, but for now the smaller, friendlier preschool at our church seems like a good choice for him. Mostly what i want out of it this year is a chance for him to socialize, and to be around other kids besides Max to help him with his English language development.

Today was Oleg’s first day and he came home very happy and excited to be going to school like his big brother. For him the best part was probably getting a backpack to wear, and snack time. He was a happy camper about the backpack, and of course snack time is his favorite time. So cute how such little things can make a kid so happy.

One last change to our schedule is that swim lessons start tomorrow afternoon. The boys are signed up for swim lessons at our local YMCA and it is about time. They are a couple of water loving kids and not being able to swim has not only considerably cramped their style, it’s actually a bit of a dangerous situation. I will be glad when they can actually swim, instead of just thinking they can.