Category Archives: Parenting

First Few Weeks With Little K

I’ve been struggling with what to write about our transition with Little K, but I think I’ve identified the problem. See, I tend to write posts from the point of tension, conflict, grief or some new knowledge. It’s that creative writing 101 anthem of where’s the trouble. This is the problem. There is no trouble.

Little K is just pretty much perfect. The transition time in Dallas was great. The foster parents (FP) were so loving and caring and they had fallen madly in love with him. After the first day when we met him at the agency, we went to the FP’s house and we all played on the floor while he moved between us. He was so accepting and it was nice to be able to bring him back to his safe place at the end of every day. You could see him relax, exhale, sleep when he got home. It just gave us all a little breather and took the pressure off for a few hours. By the end of the week, he’d cry when we left the FP’s house without him.

The flight home was trying at times but nothing unexpected for a 1 year old. At home Josie was waiting for us outside and beside herself with excitement. She hugged him and kissed him and continued to play with him even after he captured two fistfuls of her hair. She bought him a red fire truck with sirens and lights and showed him how it worked.

Over the next few days, she gradually came to understand that she did not get to feed, change, and diaper the baby by HERSELF. She, of course, could help or, she could change her own baby while I changed K but that was never good enough. So, we’ve been spending some time coming up with a job description for a big sister and we’re open to your suggestions. What are the big sister’s primary duties?

The first week we were home, Josie went to school as usual and Paul and I watched him while he slept. He slept a lot but he also seemed to be adjusting just fine. He was fascinated by the dog and his favorite thing to do was stand on the couch and stare at her in the back yard. He likes to cuddle after his nap and he loves it when I chase him out of the kitchen. He giggles and shrieks and pats his hands on his chest as if to say hey, how do you like me now? He’s recently started clapping and he’s so pleased he can make that clicking sound with his tongue.

Things were going so well that first week that we decided to take long-scheduled vacation to the island the following week. The weather was awesome. We walked on the beach, swam in the lake. What more is there to say?

We see occasional glimpses into the difficult transition he must be feeling. Sometimes he has a hard time falling asleep at night or wakes up in the middle of the night, looks around and for his FP’s or previous caretakers. There’s lots of rocking then and if he really can’t settle down, we try the baby carrier (oh, my aching back!) or watch some Baby Einstein (awesome) at 3:00 in the morning.

Now Paul is back at work, Josie is back to school. I’m here folding laundry, weeding the garden, chasing the baby out of the kitchen and watching Baby Einstein and maybe an episode or two of The Office when I can’t fall back to sleep.

Confinscated at Security

More on Little K soon, but for now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

The last time Josie and I flew anywhere together alone she was almost exactly a year old and she had a stomach bug. She was young enough to be my ‘lap child’ so I didn’t have to pay for another ticket but Josie has never been much of a ‘lap’ anything. She was pushing 30 pounds and fighting mad the whole flight. She ripped magazines out of strangers’ hands. She threw toys. The movie on my laptop was of NO interest. She slept for 30 minutes of a 10 hour trip. By the time we arrived in Chicago, I’d been shit upon so massively (through her diaper) that I had to buy a new t-shirt in the airport.

We hadn’t flown together since and the short hop to San Francisco to visit my sister and family seemed like a really bold move. But, Josie is 3 now and it was her cousins 4th birthday and there was a bouncy house and cupcakes involved so we decided to give it a try.

The flight down was perfectly fine. She wheeled the luggage through the airport. When it was time for takeoff she yelled, This is so FUN. And all the well-seasoned business commuters had a good laugh. She was charming, well-behaved, a pleasure. Well done. Congratulations to us!

We had three days of cousins and sunshine and princess dresses. But she’d had an understandably hard time going to sleep in a new place with all the excitement, and by the time we left, she was a sugar-amped, over stimulated, sleep-deprived mess.

The problems started in security where Josie was dancing and singing while I piled our stuff on the belt. I had a hard time keeping her near me. Our line was stopped until the attendant checking boarding passes asked the person on the baggage scanner to expedite our line to get Josie thru. Bless her.

While we waited to have her cup of almond milk tested for explosives, she stuck her fingers in the nearby fan. When I asked her to stop, she ran across security to put her fingers in a different fan.

By the time we left security I was holding her hand, tightly, and she was screaming her head off and dragging her feet. Yes, we were that mother and child cliché and our fellow travelers were giving each other the requisite glances, speaking the universal language of god, I hope they aren’t on my flight. I’d been there. I wished I wasn’t on my flight too.

My goal became survival.

We managed to board early and kept our shit together through takeoff. Then I set up a movie for her on my laptop and plugged in her headphones. I took a deep breath. She was content. For ten whole minutes. Then she took off her headphones and pronounced that she was done. No. You. Are. Not.

What came next was one of my proudest moments as a parent. I offered her a piece of candy. Not a new toy, not a sticker, not a cookie, but a piece of candy – if she kept watching the movie until it was time to descend. I bribed my child. With candy. To watch TV. I’m super-proud.

But it worked. She watched until the flight attendant told us to shut it down. Then Josie shunned my bag of tricks and turned her focus to banging the tray table up and down. The guy in front of her turned around and gave me that look and I returned with a look that said something like – seriously, do you have any idea what I’m dealing with back here? I’ve got a sleep-deprived, sugar-amped three year old coming off a two day over-stim bender of bouncy houses and dance parties. She’s a fighter and a runner, who, just a few hours ago was bent on cutting her fingers off in the airport air fans. Count yourself lucky that a bumped chair is all you had to deal with. If that bribe hadn’t worked out, we would have had a new terrorist threat on our hands.

The Post You’ve Been Waiting For

On June 13th, I was in an appointment with Josie when my cell phone rang. We’d seen some information on a 10 month old boy a few weeks before and it was about the right time for the birth parents to make a decision. As soon as I could, I stepped out to check my voicemail. It was, indeed, the case worker from the agency, and she asked me to call her back.

Then my phone crashed and spent five minutes shutting down and restarting.

Finally, I was able to call and, yes, we’d been picked. I cheered and cried and skipped down the sidewalk, kissing strangers. Then I bought a bouquet of flowers and handed one to every person I met and I wished them a good day filled with rainbows and puppies and bunnies. Okay, not really, but I felt like doing all of those things. Instead I called Paul and got his voicemail. Super anti-climactic.

We didn’t know much about little K. We knew he had chubby cheeks that hinted at dimples, an adorable afro and hefty thighs with creases you could lose change into. He was up to date on his vaccinations and had been pronounced healthy by the agency’s pediatrician. He was developmentally on track and at 10.5 months he’d taken eight consecutive steps (OMG where are the baby gates?). He’d been in foster care for two months and had become quite attached to the foster parents. He was perfect.

I printed a picture for Josie. She carried it, folded it, loved it, slept with it and, eventually chewed on it. She brought it to show-and-tell at school and it sat with us at the dinner table. There was a lot of discussion about who his parents were, what he ate, and when he was, or wasn’t sleeping. One night I caught her whispering to it, “don’t worry baby, my mommy and daddy will be there soon. It will be okay.”

We had two weeks from the call before we traveled to Texas, then a week of transition before we brought him home.

The chaos began immediately. There was the paperwork, the calls with various social workers and pediatricians and agencies and the travel arrangements and the preparation for maternity leave. Oh, hello boss, CEO of a small business, I’m going on maternity leave in two weeks. Surprise! Bye! Of course, it wasn’t that easy, it involved training of a new person, preparation and even a few spreadsheets.

Then there was the stuff I wanted to get done for the book, then there was the blog, oh, well, the blog… You’ve seen how well that has worked out, but do not fear, I have some exciting posts lined up.

Then there was the BABY! There was the upending of the garage and me muttering about baby bottles, nipple flow levels, onesies, baby carriers, socks, shoes, crib set up and furniture re-arranging. Then there was the Josie preparation. My mom was coming to stay with her and there was food and schedules and another spreadsheet.

Then there was the panicked night-waking – OMG attachment disorders, we’re going to ruin our lives! OMG fetal alcohol syndrome! OMG a second child, what are we thinking! Then there was the buying of the attachment book and staying up late at night to read it and there were more calls to pediatricians and a lot of pacing and not sleeping and breath-holding.

Finally, there was travel. We arrived in Texas on the 21st and went to the agency the next day. We were settling into a couch in a big room when the foster mother walked in with K. He was everything they’d said he was. Healthy. Cute. He was attached to the foster mother, but friendly and social. After a few minutes, we were on the floor playing with a crinkly, shiny bag and a giant, stuffed, Cat in the Hat.

We left our first 2 hour meeting completely exhausted wrecks but utterly satisfied and hopeful that this was going to work out just fine.

And, after that, there was a big exhale, a giant nap, a little bit of letting go and a new kind of holding on.

To be continued…

The Peanut Puzzle Part II

To continue where I left off the last post, this is all summarized from “The Peanut Puzzle: Could the Conventional Wisdom on Children and Allergies Be Wrong?”

Since the conventional wisdom about when to introduce solid foods to babies was overturned in 2008, Doctors Sampson and Sicherer have continued to study food allergies. They have been experimenting with giving children low doses of the food they are allergic to, sometimes in a different molecular structure, to reeducate the immune system that the food is acceptable.

They observed, “…for example, that baking caused milk proteins to change shape in a way that could be less provocative to the immune system. The allergic person might be able to eat the altered proteins and become tolerant of them in all their forms.”

The article also follows Maya, a little girl with an anaphylactic reaction to milk. In spite of her parents’ vigilance she’d had some frightening reactions. On a family outing she struggled to breathe and lost consciousness after eating something labeled “vegetarian cheese.” Another time she was rushed to the hospital after eating a hot dog that contained milk protein.

Under the instruction of Sampson and Sicherer, and in the presence of a nurse, Maya was given a muffin that contained a small amount of milk. She took one bite and had no reaction. Then she ate the rest of the muffin and after a few minutes the vomiting started and hives appeared. They gave her an injection.

When the reaction stopped, they sent Maya home. Her parents received specific instructions to feed her baked goods containing milk every day. Maya came back six months later and they inserted an IV and had epinephrine at the ready. They gave her a slice of pizza. She ate the entire thing without a reaction.

“It was nothing less than miraculous,” her mother said.

Maya returned the next day and drank a glass of milk. As soon as she finished drinking she began vomiting but they were able to control her reaction with Benadryl. A few months later, Maya was able to eat macaroni and cheese but still unable to tolerate a full glass of milk.

“Even if she never progresses past this,” Maya’s mom said.  “I have no regrets about being in the study, because now she can go to a birthday party and have a slice of pizza. It’s huge.”

It is miraculous. So miraculous that I was considering doing some baking. Then I remembered Josie’s food allergies – egg, whitefish, soy and tree nuts. Codfish pecan muffins, anyone?

Sunscreen Report 2011

Oh my god, the sun is out, where is my sunscreen post?! Imagine me digging around in the piles on my desk. Oh, that’s right, I haven’t written it yet. Save the kittens!

First off, you can get caught up with last year’s sunscreen news here.

The big news for this year is concerns nano zinc and titanium particles. These particles, when inhaled, have been shown to cause cancer in lab rats. More studies are needed before we know if they have a similar effect when absorbed through the skin, but for now, they’re easy enough to avoid.

Same as 2010, we’re trying to stay away from oxybenzone (endocrine disruptor). Vitamin A (retinl palmitate) is still controversial but also easy to avoid.

Kathy and Statia over at Safe Mama have already posted an awesome sunscreen report. They have a short list of what you should buy, with many reviews and feedback about texture, consistence, scent and efficacy.

The Environmental Working Group also just released their list of the best sunscreens. There are some great mineral and non-mineral options.

As for me, I’m still looking for the holy grail of sunscreen – the natural lotion that won’t make Josie bright blue. This year I think I’m going to try these

All Terrain Kidsport Sunscreen Spray SPF 30.

And the Aubrey Organics Saving Face SPF 15 Sunscreen for me. I love their conditioner and I could get this one at PCC.

How about you? Do you have a natural sunscreen you love?

The Peanut Puzzle Part I

After my last post, I know you’re all relieved to know that we finally settled in around the one pool in the greater Las Vegas area that did not have loud music. It was a plain rectangle that was in the shade of the high rises until 1:00 every afternoon but we made do.

The highlight of my reading was this: “The Peanut Puzzle: Could the Conventional Wisdom on Children and Allergies Be Wrong?” Sorry, they won’t let you read the article.

Um… YES.

Since 2000 the “conventional wisdom,” endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, has said that parents should wait until a child is 6 months old before introducing solid foods. Then parents should start with the foods that are least likely to cause allergic reactions. This late introduction was thought to make children less likely to develop food allergies.

In the past decade peanut allergies have doubled. Clearly there’s something wrong with our “conventional wisdom.”

I hated giving Josie formula. Spooning powder from a can seemed like the antithesis of nourishment – it was the ultimate processed food. I was anxious to start her on solid foods, but I followed the conventional wisdom and waited until she was 6 months old to give her a bite of cooked sweet potato. In spite of my efforts, or maybe because of them, she’s currently allergic to eggs, soy, white fish and tree nuts.

Doctors Hugh Sampson and Scott Sicherer at Mount Sinai Medical center have found that food allergens are unavoidable and babies come into contact with protein molecules though particles in the air and on skin and in other food and that by giving them such small doses we are actually making their systems more sensitive and more likely to develop allergic responses.

“You can’t avoid food proteins,” Sampson, said. “So when we put out these recommendations we allowed the infants to get intermittent and low-dose exposure, especially on the skin, which actually may have made them even more sensitive.”

Based on a report submitted by Sampson and Sicherer, The American Academy of Pediatrics overturned this practice in January of 2008, stating – “Current evidence does not support a major role for maternal dietary restrictions during pregnancy or lactation… There is also little evidence that delaying the timing of the introduction of complementary foods beyond four to six months of age prevents the occurrence of [allergies].”

Now what? The retraction of the previous recommendation leaves a hole where the current advice should be placed, but there’s nothing there. At this point, all we know is that we don’t know what we thought we knew and I guess that’s a great first step.

When did you introduce solids? How did that work out? Does your child have allergies?

To be continued…

Vegas

We went to Vegas on vacation recently. Paul was there for work and, well, it seemed like it would be easy to join him for a week of sunshine and swimming.

We found a great condo and our accommodations were perfect. We had a kitchen, living area and big bedroom. We were upgraded to a corner unit on the 29th floor with a view of the strip and the desert beyond. The morning after we arrived Josie and Paul headed down to the pool at 9:00 am. I could watch them playing near the lazy river from our room. It was 80 degrees. It was perfect.

Then I went to the pool.

First there was the walk to the pool lined with monitors advertising a Vegas show that involved the shaking of bare butts. Please, could you make sure the hallway content is rated G? Then, we got to the pool and starting at 9:00 am every morning they play LOUD music. I mean so loud that I couldn’t read.

And, no, they could not/would not turn it down for the pasty white lady reading her New Yorker in the shade.

Then at about noon the 20-something’s descended on the lazy river. The pool bar sold fruity, boozy concoctions in gigantic plastic containers. I can’t call them cups because they were so much more than that. They were like 18 inches long, shaped like barbells and outfitted with long straws and lanyards so that you could wear your vodka slurpee around your neck. That way, if you’re too drunk to lift your glass you can still manage to get the super-long straw into your mouth. Awesome.

There was a guy in our hallway who was so drunk at 3:00 in the afternoon that he couldn’t get his zipper up. He stumbled over himself apologizing while Josie stared at him wide-eyed. I’m sure that was one of his proudest moments.

OMG, Vegas? What was I thinking?

We did eventually find one pool that didn’t have loud music and I did eventually get some reading time while Paul kept our girl from drowning in the pool. She, by the time we left, was swimming and breathing on her own and diving to the bottom to retrieve toys. I think she gained 5 pounds of muscle that week. Think of what she’ll be able to do when she reaches the ripe old age of FOUR. I look forward to watching her swim laps from the quiet shade of a palm tree somewhere other than Las Vegas.

PS – I intended to write a quick intro to this article I read, about kids and food allergies, but it looks like I’ve lost my way. That’s how it goes some days. I guess you’ll have to check back next time to hear about the important stuff.

Josie’s Middle-Aged Baby Sister

Josie and I were at a stoplight one day about 18 months ago, before we’d decided to adopt again, when Josie told me her baby sister was coming and pointed out the window. She said her name was Hona and I was super-surprised to find out she was a middle aged white woman wearing sneakers.

We made the decision to adopt again about a year ago but since we weren’t going to start the process right away and we knew how long the process takes we decided to wait as long as possible to tell Josie. So we still hadn’t told her when a friend said, “Hey, if you need any baby boy stuff, just let us know.” Josie was sitting on my lap and she turned, put her hand on my tummy and said, “You have a baby in dere?!” Oops. I told her, that no, I didn’t have a baby in there but that we’d talk about it later.

When we got home late that night she said, “Mommy, who’s Michelle?” Oh heavens. Michelle (name changed) is Josie’s birth mother. I looked at Paul, I guess we’re going to talk about this now… He nodded. So we did. We talked again, about Michelle and the women who choose families for the babies in their tummies.

Then I told her that she was going to have a baby brother or a baby sister and that she was going to be the big sister. She threw her head back and covered her face with both hands. She made a long yelling/laughing aaaahhh sound that could have been agony but that I knew was excitement. I knew the sibling-induced agony wouldn’t come until later, hopefully much later. I could see the smile even under her fingers. Hona would be with us soon.

Round 2

Warning: big announcement ahead.

We’re waiting for a baby. We’re waiting an indeterminate period of time, gestating without any delivery date, expecting without guarantee. It’s hard to know what to call this period in the adoption process when you’re in line but have no idea when the baby will come. I usually say we’re expecting. Actually, we’ve been officially expecting for a month now, I just haven’t had the time to tell anyone.

It tends to be something I casually drop into sentences, thinking that I’ve told the other person. Then: sorry, what the what?

The whole thing is a bit hard for me to believe. If I were pregnant, I could say something casual like, we were thinking about it and it just happened, all of the sudden. But it’s hard to say we fell into our 2nd child, casually, maybe even accidentally, when we spent hours and hours writing the 20 pages of our autobiographies, and pondering our childhoods and our parenting philosophy in an effort to portray ourselves in the most positive light possible – pick us, pick us!

It all just seems so much more carefree and cavalier than last time. By the time we adopted Josie, we’d been waiting for a baby for 3 years, since before I was diagnosed, then through a year of treatment in which we let go of our hope of biological children, came to terms with the possibility of my short childless life, then started the adoption process. I was kind of a wreck by the time we finished the paperwork. Wait, I was kind of a wreck even before we started the paperwork. Then we got a dud of a social worker for the placement part of the process. Then we started working with a facilitator who yelled at me. I was officially broken by the time we got the call about Josie.

Fortunately it worked out. We met our girl a few days later. I realize now that in some deep hidden part of my brain, I believed the gift of a child was permission to live. It was a grant, a concession from the universe, a permission slip to go ahead and resume “life as normal.” Carry on.

Of course, my rational brain knew this wasn’t how the world worked but that didn’t stop me from feeling it. The adoption of a child was a sigh of relief, a celebration of not just her life but the resumption of ours. I see that now and I understand the entirety of what was at stake.

This time, I know it will happen. The baby will come. No lives hinge on the delivery. I hope to relax and enjoy the process, even the wait, to enjoy the imaginary, indeterminate gestation. I have dreams of a wait time filled with preparation, nesting, house projects, photo books, and buying a few cute little baby things that I was afraid would jinx the process last time.

That’s a nice dream but in reality, my imaginary, indeterminate gestation is filled with a tireless three-year-old, endless book edits, a job, and a blog, but this is it, this is what normal life looks like. This is us as we carry on. This is us, busily waiting to greet our new baby.

Her Beautiful Friend

Lately my three-year-old brown baby has become aware of skin color. She points out all the black children at the pool and the store. Sometimes she seems pulled toward them. Other times she seems not to have any interest, she’s just pointing out a fact.

A few weeks ago, I bought the new Mavis Staples CD. When Josie asks for her it comes out sounding like mabitaple and she always wants to listen to her LOUD. I’ve told her teachers and grandparents that if they can’t figure out what she’s saying, she’s probably asking for Mavis.

We’d only listened to the CD a few times when Josie found the jewel case sitting on the front seat of my car. She picked it up and stared at the picture of Mavis. We talked about how pretty she is – what a nice smile she has. Josie started calling Mavis her bootiful fwiend and carrying the case around, holding it close to her chest.

For the rest of the post, click on over to www.mybrownbaby.com.