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!

Nora-isms: Skills of Language Acquisition

Until our Colombian princess learns how words are spelled, she will continue to pronounce them the way she hears them, which is not always clearly nor correctly.  It may be contributed also to our lazy speech or the rapid-fire delivery we occasionally use.  It makes me laugh.  Have a glimpse into our kitchen this afternoon:

Nora: Mom, will you paint with me tomorrow?

Me: Sure, I will paint with you.

Nora: What is taint?

Me: I don’t know what taint is.

Nora: You just said taint.

Me: No, I said paint.

Nora: Oh, ok.  What does taint mean?

Me: (thinking that I don’t want to explain a tainted woman) Nothing really.

Nora: Isn’t that where you put the gas in the van?

Me: No, that is TANK.

Nora: Oh, I thought it was taint.

And so our lives go on as she learns to carefully pronounce words in English.  I distinctly remember the Colombians laughing at my Spanish.  I’m sure I had some doozies as well.  Later today she asked if I wanted to watch a movie with her. Sure. 

Nora:  How about Robin Hoove?

Me: What?

Nora: Robin Hoove…. you know with the wolf and the chicken.

Me: Oh!  You mean Robin Hood, and he’s a fox.

Nora: Hey, just like my book I read Sox the Fox!

Me: Yep! 

Nora: Can we start Robin Hoove now?

Her words make me laugh over and over again.  And the word Congratulations has lots of syllables.  Too many to remember sometimes. 

Later I asked her to pause the movie so we could eat dinner.  She replied, “Yes, man.” 

Me: What?

Nora: Yes, man.  I learned that on a Focus on a Famly story.  The boy kept saying “Yes, man” to his mom.  She said it was good matters. (manners……)

Me: It is actually, “Yes, Ma’am.”

Nora: What is?

Me: Yes, Man is supposed to be Yes Ma’am.

Nora: Oh.  I wondered why he was calling him mom a man.

And later again, we were in my bedroom looking for matches to sterilize a needle….

Nora: Did you look under the covers?

Me: No, why would I keep matches under the covers?

Nora: I seen them there before.

Me: YOU DID?  (Reflecting back 15 years ago when Larisa tried burning the house down by lighting matches in our bed!) Who’s bed were they in?

Nora: What do you mean bed?

Me: You know what a bed is.

Nora: Why would you keep matches in a bed?

Me: That’s what I want to know.   (She stares at me like I’m stupid.)

Nora: (Exasperated) Look under the covers in your bathroom…. I seen the matches there.

AHA!  Cupboards = covers.  Good grief!

The English language is a beast.

English 101

Since the addition of the Colombian princess to our happy family, the English language has been under much scrutiny in my mind.  Our little girl, who only spoke Spanish when we met her, is now only speaking English.  I remember the adoption agency telling us that at four months she would be speaking English.  I hoped and dreamed that would be true for each of the 120 days leading up to the four-month mark. 

My eldest daughter and I had some grasp of mangled Spanish when we headed to Colombia, and with the addition of Google Translate (that speaks aloud for you!) we did communicate fairly effectively, I thought.  A year after the fact, I now believe that there was a lot of smiling and nodding going on without much comprehension.  But we survived those early days!  Whew!  What made me sad was that Nora’s daddy couldn’t talk to her at all.  My sweet husband simply spoke louder…. as if that would help the translation somehow.  My mother also was a bit uncomfortable being left with the care of a little girl and a big language barrier.  The sooner the four-month switch occurred, the better!

At three months, three weeks and three days, I was getting exasperated with the translation between our little Colombiana and the rest of the family.  It didn’t seem to me like she was understanding English.  She wasn’t using that many words in her new language.  What I didn’t realize was that her little brain was storing English words.  In little filing cabinets… that could be referred to later.  After four months.

Then four months ended.  And POOF!  She spoke English.  Spanish was gone.  English had arrived… the switch in her brain took place ON CUE at four months and she has not looked back.  I don’t think she even realized what happened.  It was as if the Spanish filing cabinets were closed and locked.  The English filing cabinets were opened and readily available for use.  Unbelievable how God made young brains to absorb language.  Unbelievable!

As she continues to experiment with the English language, I have had to think through a lot of her sentences, words and syntax…. to try to discover WHY we say things like we do.  It is confusing.  Tonight she told me, “You don’t have to fed the dogs.  I did.”  ‘Fed’ is past tense.  ‘I did’ is past tense. I can see how it seems right… sort of. 

One time I asked Nora to close the back door.  She stood still, eyes roving the room as her little brain tried to grasp…. something….  Finally she held onto her shirt and said, “I think this is clothes. How do you clothes a door?”  Made perfect sense to me.

And the -ed ending to words is so confusing.  Go…. goed.   I saw the bird…. I sawed the bird yesterday.  Eat… eated.  Run…. runned.  Sat… satted.  Drive… drived.  “Well, -ed is usually how you add past tense….. but not this time, Honey.”  Witnessing the transition has been a blessing and an awe-inspiring adventure!  Adoption stretches you in ways you never expected.  Ever.  And I love it!

The World just got a little Smaller

For the first time since we have been home from Colombia (15 months ago) we Skyped with our Colombian friends who live across the street from the house we rented.  Oh, we miss them.  Oh, we miss Cali.  Oh, we need to go SOON!  They asked when we are coming to visit.  The plan in the back of our heads is when Nora is older… but how older?  I don’t know.  I told our friends maybe when she is 12.  That’s four years out…. that seems so long not to visit with them and hug their necks.  It was so heartwarming to see their smiling faces and hear their rapid Spanish…. that I can hardly understand!  And of course it was on a night when I looked THE WORST! I had a massage earlier and my hair was greasy… no make-up.  But I’ve never smiled so big!  Nora came and said hello to them and asked why they weren’t speaking English.  In her logical little mind she speaks English… and she used to be able to understand them… so they MUST speak English!  Oh boy.  We need to get her back into speaking Spanish before we travel.  Skype made the world just a little smaller this week!  Thank you, Skype. 

WordPress, who posts this awesome blog you are reading, recently started a new feature that shows where your readers are on a map of the world.  This expanded my view of this humble blog and made the world just a little bit smaller in my mind.  Last week there were readers on MSJ from 54 different countries!  I couldn’t believe it either.  This brought even more questions to my mind…. do they read the English language?  Did they stumble on MSJ because of pictures that have been posted?  Are they all service men whose US wives tell them to read MSJ?  Do they come back and read again?  Are they copying down my insightful ideas and spreading the love in their own country? And where in the world are Myanmar, Anguilla and Seychelles?  So as the world shrinks and we begin to sing a round of We are the World, I wanted to extend my international WELCOME to the many faces who come here!  I am honored and humbled (and stunned, quite frankly!) 

It’s ALMOST Comical

Yes, I’m talking about one more glitch in the adoption process.  Yes, we have adopted the Colombian Princess.  Yes, it is final in Colombia and recognized in the USA.  She is ours. We are hers.  Done…. with papers to prove it.  She is an American citizen and we have a pretty paper to prove that too. BUT, we are in the process of re-adopting in our state so we will have an US adoption decree, an US birth certificate and the final name change decree, which the courts in Colombia wouldn’t allow. (Even though she asked for her name to be shortened, they wouldn’t change it because she was over 5 years old.)  We all know how important it is to prove that you are a natural-born citizen OR have hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover up that you aren’t…. but I digress.

I assumed re-adoption in Arizona would be easier than an international adoption.  It is slightly. Of course we had to get our fingerprints done for the ninth time.  Since our eldest daughter turned 18 in the process, she also got to join in fingerprinting fun.  More financial statements.  More home visits.  More paperwork.  You may recall a blog about the need to prove that our dog had the rabies vaccine too.  (Do they really think the type of people who go trough this whole rigmarole to adopt a child would not get their dog protected against rabies?) Seriously.

We are so close to getting our final court date here in AZ, but come to find out, we didn’t have an English translation of the Sentencia, the final Colombian Adoption Decree.  Ironically, I could not get a straight answer out of anyone at the County Attorney’s Office as to whether this translation had to be certified and/or notarized.  Our social worker was eventually able to pull some strings and get some answers for us.  We sent the Spanish version off to our friend in Colombia for translation, and we received an email back that said there is a mistake on the original, official, final, Colombian Sentencia.  This is almost comical.  Thankfully, our friend could go to the court and get it changed, so we don’t have challenges later.  OF COURSE this includes more time, more money, more paperwork.  Really?

If you are adopting from Colombia, make sure you get a translated copy of the Sentencia BEFORE you leave Bogota!!!

One translating step forward and two adoption process steps backwards.  Some day we will be done.  Some day.

4 out of 4… I’m Golden

As it happened, I have completed the task every homeschool mother wonders if she will be capable, able and successful at finishing: teaching your children to read.  My first daughter was subjected to a charter school for kindergarten and grade one (that’s how we say it in Canada… not first grade) and I did not have the joy of teaching her to decipher the alphabet code.  But I figured, HEY!  How hard could it be???  Well, son number one, who followed daughter number one, had a brain that was wired quite the opposite of my first child reader.  She read with ease at five years old.  When my son turned five he was quite proficient at spitting, throwing rocks, yelling and doing everything at the same rate as Speedy Gonzales.  Reading was not on his list of interests….. until he was almost NINE!  Made me wonder if the kid would ever read.  Sheesh!  What good is a teaching certificate if you can’t even teach a kid to sound out three letter words?  Or simply remember the letter F?  Eventually some synapses connected in his overactive brain and he could read.  It happened while we were on a three month sick-leave trip touring national parks on the west side of the United States.  It had nothing to do with me.

Son number two actually read before son number one.  Assuming that this would provoke determination in son number one was completely incorrect on my part.  Son number one read after he had successfully toured Zion, Yosemite, Walnut Canyon, Fort Bowie and 14 other parks, caves and forts.  Had I known the national park tour was a prerequisite to his reading ability, we would have taken the trip three years earlier.  See?  Nothing to do with me.

Last week, I had the joy and privilege of teaching the Colombian princess to read.  She has been diligently learning her English phonograms and we have completed the first 26 of 72.  She asked me in frustration, “When am I ever going to be able to read WORDS?!?”  It was then that I realized she probably could with her vast knowledge of phonograms.  I put three phonogram cards together… c…….a……..t.  She sounded them out three or four times before her eyes popped open and she pronounced in her amazing reading ability, “CAT!”  Then we went through run, ran, hat, dot, hop, up, pop, cup, mop, tip, sip, and, hit, and even jump!  She was so excited she could not stop giggling!  I called for her sister and brothers to come and listen to her READ!  Her dimples were showing the rest of the day! It truly is a joy to see her succeeding by leaps and bounds and she hasn’t even been speaking English for 6 months yet.  It is also a true joy to be able to teach her. 

Back in the day when I taught kindergarten to several classes of German speaking kids, they did learn to read and I was proud of them for learning English and reading…. but nothing compares to it being your own kid who has broken the scribble code and can make sense of the English written language.

Four out of four.  I’m golden!

I’m a Poser

I figured it out.  I’m a poser.  I’m not a real homeschool mom.  It all came crashing down today as I sat at my fellow-homeschool-mom’s kitchen table.  Books, planners, test guides, lists and schedules were strewn from one end of the kitchen to the other.  She was busily slipping pink sticky-notes into each literature book before they were stored in the red plastic box that nobody is allowed to touch except her.  The queen mother of homeschooling.  I mean, good grief, the lady’s got six kids.  And no twins.  Each hot pink note said something different:   “Read Aloud”  “Jimmy”  “Easy Reader”   “Lisa”   I’ve never seen anything like it.  Mounds of books.

To my credit, I’ve done more planning this August than all of my past ten Augusts added up.  I’m branching out this year.  I’m not using the tried and true curriculum that has served me well for ten years.  I’ve always taught all of my kids together on the same topic.  It’s so much easier to teach that way!  But this year?  No.  Well, yes and no.  We are studying American History with a vengeance, but not like any unit ever tackled in this house of school.  My two high schoolers are in my US History class, so they are on the same page, albeit at drastically different levels. My junior higher is in for the shock of his life.  I just finished writing his assignment for the YEAR…. literature, history, vocabulary and math. (He’s taking a science class from the homeschool mom mentioned previously… with the booky kitchen table.)  I have NEVER written down a year’s worth of assignments for anyone, including myself.  I’ve always flown by the seat of my pants…. planning a week or two… or miraculously a month in advance.  Not this year.  This is a ton of work.

My level of comfort was surpassed when it dawned on me…. early June… that I am teaching English as a Second Language to a youngster… for the very first time in my life.  Our girl can sound out words in Spanish… she can write a handful of words in Spanish… but we are swiping the slate clean and starting at square one in English.  It’s been a while since I looked at phonics… a, ay, ah.  The more I learn the 27 phonograms, the less sense the English language makes.  Spanish is so much easier with every letter making ONLY one sound.  Brilliant.

The plan is set in stone… .like never before.  Even if I get carried off by gypsies the kids will know what to work on until late May.  They may not even notice I’m gone!  Even their dad could hold down the homeschooling fort!  All this planning does make sense to me…. but what it we have a hiccup?  What if we fall behind?  What if I need fieldtrips… LOTS of fieldtrips???  What if? 

So, fellow homeschool moms.  I’m with you this year.  My planning is done.  I’m not posing this year as a mom-educator with children at home who has it all together.  I do actually have it all together.  First time in TEN years!

Routine…. finally.

Nora, our little Colombian princess, is fitting in so well to our family, crazy as we are.  One of her English sentences is “_________ is funny!”  Fill in a family member’s name when appropriate!  We do laugh a lot and that’s a good thing.  Laughter is healing.  Everyone could use some healing.

We are somewhat into a routine these days, being our sixth week home from Colombia.  Nora is still sad on days when she discovers Daddy is gone to work, but thrilled to talk to him on the phone.  THAT is one funny conversation to listen to… Spanish on one end and English on the other.  I listen and laugh. 

One of our routines is morning bath time.  I shower first and as soon as I’m dressed I get the bathtub ready for Nora.  Depending on how hurried our morning is, she may or may not get bubble bath.  Her bath toys consist of “the pirates who don’t do anything” from VeggieTales and their ship.  She plays while I do my hair and make-up.  Today she was scrubbing the soap up and down her arms when she paused and told me that her brown arms were no good and my white arms are good.  I explained in lame Spanish that I love her brown arms and legs!  I told her they are beautiful and they are mommy’s favorite color.  If she only knew how much I’ve spent on fake tanning beds and rub-on tans!  It made me sad because I didn’t know if it is part of a phase that she is going through…. saying the opposite of what is true…. or the truth.  She isn’t a whole lot darker than her daddy…. I wonder what she would say about his arms?

I didn’t plan on starting Nora with schooling until her English improves (or shows up!)  But she is so eager to “do school” with the boys!  Under duress, I purchased a curriculum for her in the coloring book section at Walmart… on clearance for $3.97.  Imagine how thorough it is!  Now she sits at the kitchen table with us fills in her pages with numbers and letters.  I pray she is always this interested in learning!  It will serve her well!

Anyway, lately we have more days full of smiles than days stained with tears.

Another Badge! YES!

One balmy afternoon as we were lounging in the villa in Cali, Colombia, our guide showed up to take the “boys” out on the town for go-cart driving and other frivolity that boys would eat up.  Our little Colombian princess had been with us for about a week at that point.  She was sitting on our guide’s lap when miniscule white bugs were discovered in her luscious black hair.  My failing eyesight had not detected them.  Maybe this is why it’s good for “older” parents to adopt… they can’t see what’s REALLY happening in their care!  I ran for my reading glasses!

My only experience with lice was in 1991 when I was substitute teaching in Fort Vermilion, Alberta.  It was a kindergarten class, that I had completely under my superb control, when the school nurse made a surprise visit to check for the little white bugs on the heads of my pupils.  Eight of the kids left the room after the inspection and I continued to scratch my head the rest of the day.  Just the thought makes my head itch!

Fast-forward to 2010 in Cali when one of MY children is bug-laden.  Immediately I ran to the little grocery store in our compound and asked for lice shampoo.  A small single-use packet was produced and purchased… and I didn’t scratch my head once while in the store.  By this time, our boys were on their way into the city and realization hit that we should all be checked for BUGS in our HAIR!  Thankfully, our sweet cook was more than willing to search through our heads AND apply the insecticide shampoo to the little princess.  Lo and behold, some of the critters had made the jump to my scalp as well!  This took me several hours to come to grips with.  I could not understand how little creatures could be living on my head AND I DIDN’T NOTICE!!!  I notice everything… well, except lice living with me.  Back to the store I went, somewhat humbled at the thought of asking for MORE lice shampoo.  The teller actually laughed….. LAUGHED!  I told him in my lame Spanish (translated back to lame English for your enjoyment) “NO, the laugh!” 

As my new daughter was having the rather nice-smelling shampoo rubbed into her head, I was on google looking up lice statistics, translating them into Spanish for the aid of my self-image.  I kept reading lines to our cook like “The term ‘head lice’ is searched globally by Google users 450,000 times in a month.”  That made me feel better because I was in good company!  “Lice are attracted to CLEAN hair which is why they are more common in girls than boys.”  “Every year, between 6 and 12 million people worldwide get head lice.”  See, how can that many people be wrong!?!  Later, our guide in Bogota explained that ALL the kids have lice and need to be treated! 

Finally it was my turn to have a thorough scalp massage (albeit with insecticide!) and sit for ten minutes while the death cream did its duty.  My older daughter was mortified that I would make a note on facebook as to our daily adventure.  She was obviously my daughter because she had also wrongly associated head lice with dirty people.  It’s not true!  I read the clean hair preference to her again.  Didn’t help.  She was horrified that her friends might find out her family had bugs on their brains.  Flabbergastedly, she asked, “Why do you want people to know about this?” In the spirit of adventure from the movie UP! I explained that on the scout sash of my life, I just earned my Lice Badge!  Just like Russell earning his Assisting the Elderly badge.  She was still not impressed!  Hey, another day…. another bit of drama!

Ironically, our little Colombiana never wants to use my hairbrush because she thinks it’s dirty because there is hair stuck in it.  Sheesh!

School Starts Today…..bahahahahahahah!

Yes, that was my sinister laugh. You see, we homeschool.  We don’t start today….but the rest of the kids who live in Phoenix do.  It’s 9:23 am and two of my three kids are still asleep…. happily dreaming of sugar plums and their favorite mother/teacher who doesn’t want to start school until September.  We are in a co-op for the boys that starts on the 31st.  So I guess we will be starting in August…. barely.  We’re studying Africa for four months.  Should prove entertaining.

My junior in high school starts this Thursday with one class, Economics (only on Thursdays).  That gets her warmed up for next week, when she starts Spanish 2 (only on Tuesdays). THEN the following week she starts Chemistry (only on Tuesdays, too.)  So she’s slowly starting her third year of high school….. not the cannon-ball style… the wade-in-slowly-while-you-get-used-to-the-water style.  Algebra is an ongoing force in her life.  And I still need to pick an English course for us to do together!  Yikes! (Hey, I have two more weeks!)

I’m not ready for school to start.  Usually by now (two weeks and counting down) I am full-blown into planning and gathering needed supplies and books.  Not this year.  I’m terribly distracted by our coming Colombian princess.  I knew I needed to finish her room before school started… and I finished last night!  Whooo HOoooo!  I asked the boys what they thought of starting school in November.  They smiled and thought it was my most brilliant idea EVER!  But it was a cruel joke.  My heart is in Colombia…. not Africa.  What doesn’t help my motivation is that we will travel to Colombia during the school year… which will wipe out about six weeks of school when my mind is mush.  I always thought I would have the kids bring at least math with them to Colombia.  I’m not thinking that anymore.  Spanish immersion is enough.