Tragedy Strikes Coop

Early Tuesday morning, a sad fate befell our two favorite hens, Daisy and Peaches. A whiskered intruder, probably a raccoon, made a meal of them. The surviving chicken, Sharpay, was distraught and missing a tail. Needless to say, I will be locking her into a safer coop each night, with our teenager, Amelia Bedelia. Of the 12 chicks shipped, 11 remain, one having been incurably injured.

In other news, Mareshet participated in the local high school cheer squad at a football game last Friday. Nur and I enjoyed the marching band, hot dogs, and watching Mareshet shake it with real pom poms. She has some moves! I don't remember much about football, but I'm guessing that dropping the ball with one foot to go to the end zone is not cool. I felt bad for the kid, particularly given that he was on our home team.

Finally, we all spent Saturday on Bainbridge Island, as part of the Open Arms Perinatal Services strategic planning retreat. I really enjoyed getting to know the staff and new Board members better, and I think we agree that our mission and vision are hard to improve upon. We will tweak a few words but the passion for creating a world that really honors and protects the birthing woman and her family, is one that is still strong. For more information, or to to participate in our annual auction, go to www. openarmsps.org. I love that all of our kids are friends (the Adjunct Board) and got to play together at the children's museum and on the ferry ride. We are really blessed to be part of such a community.

Best Adoption Books

Saturday we went to hear Seattle Women's Chorus sing all about families of every persuasion. They used video clips from Rosie O'Donnell's documentary about families, including a beautiful lesbian wedding that involved their two sons, and clips of kids talking about what families are. Basically I cried through the whole thing. Then we all, including two other single moms and their adopted kids, went out for Ethiopian food. Lately we have been talking about adoption a lot, and fortunately there have been natural opportunities to talk about Mareshet's birth mother and father, and her earliest memories. She can remember an older sister as well, who went to live with another relative. I think constantly about returning to Ethiopia to find more relations. All this prompted me to blog about our family's top 5 adoption books for kids. These are basically great for older children who remember finding their forever family, and life in their family of origin. First on our list (10 out of 10 according to Mareshet) is Star of the Week: A Story of Love, Adoption and Brownies with Sprinkles, by Darlene Friedman and Roger Roth. It is the story of their daughter's adoption from China as an infant, and how she decides to tell about herself when she is Star of the Week in kindergarten. Mareshet took this book to class when she was Star of the Week last year. With its colorful illustrations and straightforward language, it can help an older child with some of those questions that are sure to arise in school. I hear it is going out of print, so grab some copies quickly! Second place goes to The Best Family in the World, by Susana Lopez. This story is about little Carolta's dreaming for a family-- the most exciting family ever. Will they be tiger trainers, pastry chefs, astronauts? Find out how Carlota's dreams come true in this new book. Third place is Yaffi's Family, by Linda Pettit. Just off the press, this book with beautiful watercolor illustrations, touches on the grief adoptive kids feel at leaving family, friends, and caregivers, even as they find love in a new forever family. It speaks also to the openness of the adoptive family in honoring and loving a child's birth family. You can get this one at amharickids.com. I have always loved Stallaluna, by Janell Cannon, one of the best books in exploring culture shock. Little Stellaluna the fruit bat baby is separated from her mother and taken in by a bird family. She learns that her ways are not welcomed by mother bird, and learns to adapt to fit in and get her basic needs met. Eventually she is reunited with her birth mother, and she learns how her special adaptations make sense in bat culture. Finally, we recommend God Found Us You, by Lisa Tawn Bergren. When Nur was born, I found another book by the author about how a baby comes into a bear family by birth. I always wished that she's write one about adoption-- and luck for us, she did! Baby fox doesn't look like his adoptive mother, but she reassures him that they were made for each other. She explains how much his birth mother cared for him by finding him a forever family. It is a very cute book and I am partial to it because the Mama Fox is likely a single mom. Mareshet and Nur often ask for each of "their" books to be read before bedtime. By the way, the girls think that we should do a Top 5 Ethiopian stories blog sometime. So stay tuned.

Corn Maze

This past weekend we, together with friends D. and his son R., went to a corn maze. It was a lot of fun, with the cornfield in the shape of Washington State, the barn kittens, the hay bale maze complete with slide, duck races, and pig show. I liked seeing the baby alpaca and all the rabbits, and the hay ride was fun too. But the best part was getting to hang out with this amazing pair of dudes. All together, we posed as a family unit for the purposes of entering under a single ticket. We were: joined together by birth, adoption and fostering, from Jewish, Muslim, and Ethiopian Orthodox Church heritages, gay and straight, and a passel of ethnicities all rolled into a single family for the day. How cool to recognize the many currents that brought us together, world over.

New chicks!

Enjoy this video clip of our 12 beautiful new babies, which arrived yesterday. The darker ones (that look like chipmunks) are Welsumers, a "chocolate" egg layer. The yellow ones are Red Star, which are also a friendly, backyard-friendly bird. While it is quite frowned upon to do any kind of fundraising for adoption by the Ethiopian government, and this is not a blog that will bandy about the f-word... if you would like a beautiful hen for the backyard garden that lays rich brown eggs, we'll give you one in the spring and thank you in advance for supporting our adoption! I received word yesterday that there are many new kids who came into care in the kindergarten age range. I am going to redouble my efforts to get my Dossier complete in the hopes that one of these little girls is a match for us. I also can't stop thinking about a little girl from AHOPE named D. She is about eleven at this point. I know that she was really trying to win me over while I was there, sidling up to me for hugs, and quietly a presence. But it worked! She is definitely unforgettable. Earlier in the year I emailed to see if she already had a family and I never really got a complete answer. But she is still on the list of waiting kids, so I presume that I could ask to see her file as well. It's really interesting to hear the girls talk about adopting again. You would almost think that "the new girl" as they call her, is already here.

Harvest

I love this time of year. When straw-stuffed scarecrows are propped in gardens, when bushels of apples are pressed into cider, and pumpkins line porches. We harvested our potatoes, beets, and tomatoes. Surprisingly, we are still getting the odd strawberry. Each morning our hen Daisy leaves us a perfect, cafe-au-lait egg. The other two hens, now plumped up, should be ready to lay soon. The air is more crisp, and it feels good to pull a wool blanket up to my cheeks each night. Last weekend, we were in Walla Walla which is a perfect place to celebrate harvest. We drove out to Klickers to look at the antiques and peaches. Our friend Clare loaded us up with zucchini bread and tomatos. Yum! And the Henckels plied us with blueberry pancakes and turkey sausages, then the Hoffs with turkey burgers and homemade fries. Seriously, I have some great friends!

It all made up for the week of drama following an infestation of lice. Poor Mareshet was sobbing as I combed through all those curls again and again. She always had her hair close cropped at the orphanage, in the event of lice, though she said she never had them in Ethioipa. She has desperately wanted to grow it long ever since we came home, and a year later it falls in ringlets to her shoulders. I couldn't cut that hair, not for a thousand dollars. So it was up nights until two am, combing. I kept scratching the imaginary bus on my body for another 10 days. I'm finally free from the PTSD, and hope to never go there again.

Today I've realized that the past year has not ben very conducive to physical fitness. The hardest part about single parenting is that I can't just go for a run or spend time swimming laps like I used to. I never have anyone to watch the kids and I don't have extra hours of child care to allow me to squeeze in a workout after work. So today we went to the gorgeous new Y and signed up. I love the Y for their Family Camp, which we attended this summer. I love the gleaming new pool. Best of all, I love the single parent family rate. While it's not like I have extra nickels, I feel okay about signing up because women in my family live to be nearly 100. I figure, I'm not yet 35. I have a WAYS to go yet, God WIlling. I don't mind a little plush, but I think that I need to keep my ticker in top shape. The Y has a child care facility, it has swim lessons. I am going to try to get myself moving, and my kids can have fun too. They are old enough to be in the same space together, and perhaps this will help with separations. Wish me luck- I have about fifteen pounds of post-adoption, post-divorce, post-pregnancy (five years ago) weight to shake off.