Hair Donations Galore

It was a sad day for me when my eldest daughter decided to donate her beautiful long blonde hair. Yes, it was selfish of me, but there…. I said it. I was sad. I was also proud that she thought of others… and started a trend in our family three years ago.

I was glad when my youngest daughter decided to donate her beautiful long dark brown hair. Yes, it was selfish of me, but there…. I said it. I was glad. I was the one who had to comb through it and watch her overly dramatic face when I hit tangles. I was also proud that she thought of others… and kept the trend in our family going.

It was a HAPPY day for me when my eldest son decided to donate his beautiful long blonde hair. Yes, it was selfish of me, but there…. I said it. I was HAPPY. I was also proud that he thought of others… and continued a trend in our family last night!

I’m not quite sure how I feel about three of my four children being able to donate their hair….. I’m thankful that son #2 told me he would never grow his hair that long.  Thank you, Keeve!

On a side note, we researched the companies where you can send your chopped off ponytails for donations. There are some shady companies out there who sell the hair you send them.  Do your research before you mail your hair!

Three Years Ago Tonight…

We were a family of six, yet the sixth little wonder was 12 hours away from being in our arms!  We landed late at night to the cool, dark skies of Cali, Colombia and met our “already” friend and our translator.  What a blessed relief her welcome hug was to me that night when we got off our third airplane and stepped onto our daughter’s homeland soil.

We broke a few rules with our adoption.  I presume the three year statute of limitations is up and I can freely discuss a few happenstances from our adoption journey that have remained semi-covert until now.

We weren’t supposed to have any contact with our interpreter until we got “in country”, but we needed questions answered ASAP.  It was a Friday night when we accepted the referral and we were to fly out the following Wednesday, so the flights needed to be booked pronto.  I also had 27 million questions.  No one at the agency was available to answer our “last weekend” questions, so I called a gal across the country who had returned from Cali with her little angel a few months earlier.  She put me in contact via facebook with the lady who would be our interpreter.  She was a godsend, for sure!  She helped us with flights. She booked our hotel/apartment for our first few days.  She gave us a list of what to take/what not to take.  And then her smiling face met us at the airport near midnight.

We weren’t supposed to go visit the village where Nora was born.  We were told that this could cause bad memories or frighten the child.  As far as we could tell from the gargantuan paperwork pile, Nora had not lived in that village since she was a baby.  We had the name of the hospital and thanks to adoption blogs, I learned that we could take our final adoption papers to the hospital and ask for records.  So we did.  LaCumbre was an hour away up in the misty Andes Mountains.  The hospital was clean and shiny and had an open air courtyard in the center of the building.  Hanging plants and freshly painted blue trim did my heart good.  We requested a copy of the record from the day Nora was born and were blessed beyond measure to get information about her birth mama (health history, height, weight, medical history, etc.) AND we discovered that Nora’s birth weight was incorrect on our paperwork!  We also found out what time Nora was born and how long she was.  I couldn’t be more grateful for those little tidbits of information that are worth their weight in GOLD to an adopted child.

We were supposed to stay in one of the adoption hotels recommended by the agency.  We contacted three of them and the going rate for a family of six was $330 per night… and we were staying for three weeks. ($6930!) Now we are thrift-loving souls and frankly didn’t have that much to spend on accommodations/food.  The night before we left, my husband found a vacation villa a few miles out of town in the country in a gated community with a pool and a line of shops to meet all of our needs…. for $1,000 for the three weeks!  Thank you, God!  There were four bedrooms, two full baths, air-conditioning, a washing machine and beautiful surroundings.  We hired a wonderful woman to cook and clean for us every other day…. she also went shopping with me and picked lice out of our hair.  She was a saint!

We weren’t supposed to have any contact with the foster family who took care of Nora. We were told they might try to take advantage of us and our situation in the USA.  Unbeknownst to us, Nora came bearing a little heart-shaped notebook minus all the pages that used to be inside. I thought it a bit strange until she pulled out the back lining and revealed all the contact info for the foster family.  We had Nora call them and say one last goodbye the night before we left for Bogota.  We have since been in contact and they sent pictures of their home, Nora’s bed, the family, her friends, the school, the church and the neighborhood where she lived.  Another blessing to an adopted child!  We send them current pictures of Nora and have chatted with them online a few times.  They are very thankful for this contact as she is the only child they have fostered who they have heard from.

Usually I stick to rules like a fly to flypaper, but sometimes there are very good reasons to break a few rules.

Daddy’s Being Sly

Yesterday we went shopping at Goodwill because it was 50% off day! Whooo Hoooo!  I mean, really.  If you’re going to buy other people’s junk, you might as well go on the day when it is half off.  No, we didn’t pre-shop the sale on Friday night.  We didn’t even line up at 8:30 a.m.  We have relaxed a bit.  We waited until the LONG lines of the morning rush had slightly diminished before we hit the store for the goods.

As I was perusing the women’s clothing for Lands End, Anne Taylor and Coldwater Creek labels, Rick and Nora, the nine-year-old Colombian princess, were in the toy aisle.  Nora spotted a paper doll set that had a gazillion outfits for the three dollies and a Nancy Drew video game, both to die for.  EAch was marked $2, so they would be only one dollar!  Knowing that Daddy would probably make her pay for them with her own hard-earned money, she decided to work him.  “Daddy, if I pay for one will you pay for the other?”  And I’m sure she batted her long eyelashes and flashed her dimples at the weak man.  Of course he agreed, so she dug four quarters out of her wallet and handed them over to him, quite pleased with her negotiating skills.

We reconnoitered at the check-out and made it painlessly through the line.  On the way to the car, Nora confronted her father, “Dad, I gave you the money for my doll set but you did not use the quarters to pay for it.  My quarters are still in your pocket.”  This is called hyper-vigilant, which means that she is VERY aware of ALL that is going on around her at ALL times.  From what I’ve read, it is common with adoptive children.  Patiently Rick explained that he had her quarters but he paid with bills from his wallet.  She responded, “I know…… can I please have my money back?”  Oh did we howl.  We tried to explain it over and over but there was no comprendo on her part AT ALL.  She still thinks daddy pulled one over on her!

Good times at Goodwill!

The Coming Conundrum

This photo showed up today on facebook… and I shared it on my wall, like 29,368 other people did. Being an adoptive mama, I have mixed feelings about this on several levels.

For this beautiful 22-year-old woman I pray that she gets a glimpse of her birth-parents for no other reason than looking in the face of someone she is related to by blood.  That connection cannot be replaced, other than by having her own children. It would also be a treasure for her to learn of family history, possible siblings and birth grandparents, aunts and uncles.  In a peaches-and-cream-everything-always-turns-up-roses life this could be the start of a beautiful family expanding experience.  But I don’t know one single family where life has turned up roses and there aren’t real life sad situations to deal with.

However, there are the birthparents and their current lives to consider.  What if they never told ANYONE about the daughter they had when they were in the middle of high school?  What if the birth-father doesn’t even know!? There are many reasons for choosing an adoptive plan for a child and many more reasons for requesting it be a closed adoption.  I understand closure is desired by some who are adopted, but through this possible re-connecting are two separate lives who have moved on from the 22-year-old monumental decision they made to give life, love her to pieces, and make a better plan for her life than they could provide.  If found, they have the choice to embrace their long-lost daughter, or protect those around them and hurt their “secret” daughter again.

Because of our Colombian princess’s situation in her homeland, we do have quite a bit of information about her birth-parents.  Most likely, we could find them with a bit of sleuthing, thanks to the healthcare system in Colombia.  However, Colombian law holds all adoption records as confidential for 30 years.  THIRTY YEARS!  Good grief!  So it is unlikely that our girl will have anyone looking for her. It will be up to us.  Colombian law states that “every adopted person has the right to know about his/her origin and the character of its family links.  The parents (of an adopted minor) will decide on the moment and conditions in which it will not cause the minor harm to know such information.”  THAT is the conundrum.  No matter the circumstances of an adoption plan being made, there is the possibility of a real sense of abandonment for the child, and when has abandonment ever not caused harm?

I still believe in, support and love adoption with my whole being.  Yet someday we will face the heartfelt question, “Can we try to find my birth-parents?”  One day at a time.  One day at a time.

My Heart is STILL in Colombia!

It’s true.  We have been home from Cali, Colombia for 23 months with our little Colombian princess.  The adoption journey has had bumps and twists that we didn’t expect, but it has been so wonderful and rewarding.

Tomorrow is GOTCHA DAY number two!

TWO YEARS!!!  Hard to believe it has gone by so fast.  Sometimes our month in Colombia seems like forever ago… and sometimes it seems like last week.  I miss the lush greenness of Cali, the vast array of mystery fruits that were scrumptiously yummy, the glimpses of the Andes when the fog lifted, the bamboo forest we drove by to our villa, the coconut ice cream bars, the afternoon rain showers, the neighborhood boys who would come and ask,  “Is Austin Rick’s son?”, the sweet smell of the flowers, arepas filled white cheese, the stickiness of the night air and the pee-po pee-po LOUD evening serenade of the coqui frogs.

People often ask “Why Colombia?”  Quite a few factors lead us to the beautiful and tropical South American country.

1.) My husband, Rick, went to Valledupar, Colombia for a summer to build a church when he was 17-years-old.  He grew to love the warm-hearted people and the countryside teeming with unknown vegetation, never imagining that he would return to meet his daughter twenty-something years later.

2.) We have three bio kids who do not look like Rick AT ALL.  Ok, one does a little, but I was expecting little chubby, black-haired Indian babies when I married a Cree Indian.  Didn’t happen.  The Irish and Finnish genes dominated and we got two blonde-haired, blue-eyed kids and another slightly darker. So, when we had chosen an adoption agency, I looked through the pages for the countries they worked in….   I held up the two pages and announced to Rick, “El Salvador and Colombia are where the kids look like you.”  “Colombia,” he replied.  And it was a done deal.

3.) Not that I was anywhere near proficient, but I thoroughly enjoyed taking Spanish… back in the day.  Larisa also had Spanish courses and was mastering her second language quite nicely.  So a country in South America seemed familiar… somehow.  (Not distant in my mind, like, say, Kazakhstan… or China.) I related to Ellie from the movie UP…. her dream was to visit South America.  She tore pictures right out of a library book of the fascinating country.

I am as American as you could get.  I LOVE my country… the anthem brings me to tears.  Studying and teaching the history of our great land is a deep passion of mine.  But I have to say that my heart beats in thirds… a third for the USA, a third for Canada, where I spent my college years and the first 10 years of marriage, and now a third for Colombia where I fell in love with my daughter’s people and homeland.  My heart is still in Colombia. <3

From Wonder Mama to Blunder Mama

With the arrival of our Colombian princess’s second GOTCHA DAY next Sunday, memories of that time in our lives have been frequent, heart warming and still alarming in some cases.

November 25, 2010 the day we received Nora, is alive and well in my memory banks.  The morning began with my first Spanglish lesson of ordering breakfast from the kitchen in the hotel where we had arrived just seven short hours previously.  Translated from my lame Spanish back to lame English for your enjoyment….my order: “Eggs.  Milk.  Five people.  Juice.  Cooked bread.(toast)  Coffee.”  The kind person on the phone kept asking me questions and I had NO idea what they were saying.  I repeated my eight word order several times.  Surprisingly, we did get everything we asked for, plus hot cocoa, arepas, jam, honey and some fruit!

On our drive home from ICBF (Colombian social services), we were all jolted beyond belief in the traffic, on the steep hills and due to the driving style of our guide.  Thankfully we only had a 20 minute ride or we would have all been losing our breakfast.

Being the prepared official mother of four children, when Nora started looking woozy, I grabbed a gallon zip lock bag from my purse and she used it well.  Just a teeny bit of mama pride surfaced as I had anticipated the problem and solved it in the nick of time.  We also learned at that moment that she had been fed chocolate cake for breakfast.  LOTS of chocolate cake.

My mama pride dissolved into nothingness that same evening when we tucked Nora in for the night.  We all kissed her, Larisa brushed out her nine tiny braids before she was wrapped in her cozy new jammies and ready for beddy-bye.  My sweet husband has done the tucking-in for all of the kids’ lives.  He is such a thoughtful dad and spends time talking with them and listening to how their day went.  The kids love their Daddy time as much as I love my freedom time.  Rick went to put her in her bed in the second bedroom of our “apartment”.  I could hear him singing and talking to his new little daughter whom he couldn’t understand… nor could he speak a lick of Spanish.

About six or seven minutes into this familiar TO US ritual, I realized for the first time Nora was alone with this strange man whom she was to call Daddy.  The information we had about her past was sketchy, but it dawned on me that she could be terrified of my sweet, kind-hearted husband…. just because he is male.

As quickly as my little fingers could type into Google translate, I wrote the sentences “Your Papi loves you.  He will never hurt you.  He will always protect you and take care of you.  He is a very nice man.  He has never hurt anyone.  You don’t have to ever be scared of him.  He loves you.”  I unplugged the computer and rushed into the room where, as I suspected, she was clinging to the far edge of her bed with wide fearful eyes.  My heart broke… once more.  How stupid of us!  I read the sentences of love and assurance to her in Spanish and I visibly saw her relax and sink into the pillow with relief.

I went from Wonder Mama with the barf bag to Blunder Mama with the scary husband…. all in 11 hours!  I had a lot to learn…. and the learning curve was quite steep two years back.  Thank God for Google translate!

Gotcha Day is Fast Approaching!

Hard to believe!  November 25th we will have had our sweet Nora for a YEAR!  Twelve whole months!  I can’t believe how fast it has flown by…. on the other hand, it seems like she’s been here much longer than that.  She has fit into her forever family better than I could have ever hoped for.  All those scary “preparation” stories from our training never materialized at all.  God picked us to be her family from the beginning!  I have no doubts now.  She is doing so well… with everything!  I have to remind myself that she has only been speaking English for six months!  Amazing how God made youngsters’ brains to absorb languages so quickly.

Here we were sitting in ICBF only a half hour before Nora had a forever family.  So many emotions that day!

So, we know we are ordering Domino’s Pizza, because that’s where we ate in Cali, Colombia the very first night we had the Colombian princess.  Other than that….. I’m looking for ideas and suggestions.  What did you, fellow adoptive parents, do on your first Gotcha Day?  What do you keep doing every year?  Is it a BIG Colombian fiesta with salsa dancing until the wee hours? Or something a little more calm?  Please let me know…. I have a month to plan!

“As it happened….”

(Thank you, Jane)  As it happened…. we read the new report on the same little chunk of darlingness from Cali, Colombia.  She is healthy, happy and hearty.  The new pediatrician was favorable of the new report and helped us with where to go from here.  Her final statement to me was, “Make your decision and wait for your miracle!”  Oh, I loved that… almost as much as “As it happened” which means God has been Jehova Sneeky again.  Always working on our behalf, knowing what’s best for us and our family…. beyond what we can imagine or think.

We accepted the referral for Nora, but she has asked us to change her name….. but we don’t know if she means her first name, or middle name or last name.  So we don’t really know what to call her at this point.  “Zaza” still pops out because a nickname of 3 years….. sticks.

We were at peace with the decision and figured we would travel to get her on Jan. 15th when the Colombian courts open again.  But NO!  We are traveling THIS Thursday… yes, Thanksgiving Day, to go get our little girl.  I’m in shock.  Real life shock where you have to take a nap because you can’t figure out what to do first.

A friend of mine showed up today with her notepad.  She said she would decorate our house for Christmas while we’re away and she needed instructions.  She also is going to pick up my newspapers and keep my coupons up to date while I’m gone.  This is a true friend!  Another friend showed up with huge cookies.  That’s a true friend too.  Meet the basic needs in times of stress.

AHHHHHHH! We leave in five days!  So, I’m re-doing Nora’s scrapbook, since the original photos are outdated.  I ran and got my hair cut and colored, since we need to take a close-up photo of Rick and I and we’re not supposed to change our hair before we meet Nora on FRIDAY!  She is attaching to this photo on Monday!  My wise-cracker of a daughter looked at me yesterday in the height of excitement and frazzledness…. bed head, no make-up and sweats… and said, “We should probably take your picture like this since this is more likely what she will see every day.”  Very funny.  Very true.  But not going to happen.

OK, I’m off to count suitcases and see if my boys have pants that fit them.  Prayers for peace to reign in our home would be much appreciated.

Unbelievable… Inconceivable… WOW!

Last Wednesday, while I was minding my own business out on a wedding-flower-choosing adventure with my sister and a friend, my cell phone rang. The area code was 817.…. Texas. More specifically… Gladney Center for Adoption. I flipped open my phone (I know, old school) and jumped out of the parked car.
Yes, it was our case worker. Her first question, “Is Rick home?” made my guard go right up. I’m not getting my heart broken again by some darling little girl with a big toothy grin and black hair and pleading brown eyes. I will be WAY more cautious this time. I will not be swayed by darlingness. I will wait for the pediatrician’s report. I will not send her pictures to my family. I will not announce her name on Facebook. I will not frame her picture and bring it to Neighborhood Group. I will not get attached before we accept the referral … in writing… and I will wait until it’s faxed before I crack open my heart to my new daughter.

OK, that’s everything that went through my brain in the nanosecond that passed between our case worker’s question and my answer, “No, Rick is flying today.” Call me a chicken-hearted-lily-liver, but I’m trying to hold up a brave front guarding my tender-orphan-loving-soul.

Her first sentence had me extremely curious. “I don’t know how to start this phone call because I’ve never had to make a call like this before…..” I didn’t even respond…. just stood in the Glendale Thrift Store parking lot with my mouth hanging open. “We’ve hit a snag. Your file went back to Bogota but ICBF is asking you to reconsider Nora’s referral.” Still no response from me…. as my heart started quivering. “There is a new report available and we are wondering if you are open to us sending it to you. We are suggesting that you send it to a new international adoption pediatrician.” She read some of the report to me…. and finally my amazingly brilliant reply came out, “WOW!” Yep, that’s all I could manage at that moment.

NOOOOO! It’s the S A M E little black-haired cutey-patootie squeezing her way back into my heart.

If you are an adoptive mom, you understand that I was useless the rest of the day… totally distracted and staring into space… looking for some sky writing from God. My husband called right as I hung up with our case worker. I rattled off the whole scenario in 30 seconds and he asked what I told them. “I said, ‘Yes, send it.’”

Later that day he called and mentioned that there was a debate going on that evening at a local college that he would like to attend. I wasn’t too compassionate at that moment. I half yelled “NO! You need to come home and you need to bring food!” No, I hadn’t thought of dinner. I hadn’t thought of anything other than the strangeness of our circumstances. Do they normally ask parents declining a referral to reconsider? Do they send your file back to the national office and THEN ask you to reconsider, only to send it back to the same region again? And the inevitable question that we might not ever know the answer to, Why would this happen to us? To her?

So that is where I leave you, dear reader, in this Colombian adoption saga….……..

A Big FAT FAIL!!!

This past week I realized that I had not gone into Zaza’s room since we declined the referral on the 18th.  After mentioning this to my husband, he suggested I venture back into the golden-yellow oasis of flowers and butterflies and tea sets and dress-up clothes.  So I did.  Bravely, kind of.  Can you be sort of brave?

To my surprise, our son Keeve had moved back in during my absence.  His trombone, music stand and he has a bag of his personal items… more commonly referred to as his bag of junk… that scooted back in there and made itself a home.  (Hey, it’s better than a bag of hair… anybody seen Fever Pitch?!?)  It is a remnant of his days when he slept in the purple bed.  It’s a huge lime green with purple polka-dots gift bag that is ripped down one side.  We simply never found a home for that stuff when he moved back into the big bedroom with his brother.  It’s a good collection of stuff too: a photo of his friend Connor’s orange cat from California, an Iron Man mask, a few magic tricks like the disappearing penny and the three red balls that turn into two, and many hockey cards, some pucks, a few cardboard guitars, marbles and twist-tie necklaces that were made while shopping in the produce section of Walmart.  Good stuff!

I’ve never understood the “closing of the nursery door” that so many childless parents go through, until now.  I get it… a teeny bit.  Nora’s picture is still standing on my desk in a pale green frame.  At first, I didn’t even want to look at it, but my husband suggested that we keep it up as a reminder to pray for her and her forever family.  She keeps staring at me.  Reminding me that we said no.  I’ve also come to realize that if we received her referral later in life with none of our kids left at home, we would have accepted it.  That soothed my soul, somehow.  We weren’t saying NO to her.  We were saying NO to right now with these three children still in our care.  That soothed my soul too…. somehow.

In the dark of the night, I admitted to my sweet husband that I feel like we’ve gone through nearly four years of adoption emotions, upheaval, paperwork and disappointment to come out with a big fat FAIL.  F!  I have felt like it’s all over now.  We didn’t win.  We lost.  Game over.  I’ve been avoiding the adoption topic in my mind for two weeks.

In reality, we just hit yet another bump in the road to our little girl.  But I’m not fully back on the bandwagon yet.  I did venture off to a new Bookman’s store in Mesa and found two full shelves of adoption books that I’ve not read yet.  (This is what I do in the adoption low periods… I read tales of successful adoptions… reminding me that orphans do get forever families…. mommies do get to kiss soft cheeks… eventually.)  I narrowed the pile to five and then to three books.  I actually found a book about a family from San Jose, California (where I grew up) that adopted a five-year-old girl from Colombia!  It brought many fears and tears to the surface, but it did prepare me a little bit more for our eventual travel… to our daughter.