The Scene:
Kara is trying to wake up after a week off of work. I, the husband, have been unemployed for almost three months.
Mihret sits on the bed.
Me: Wake up, mama! Time to bring home the bacon!
Mihret: I eat the bacon!
Kara: Aajgksdoijf...
Annnd... scene!
-Josh
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Motherhood often a shared journey
Post-Crescent column: May 9, 2009
My daughter Mihret has two mamas. Every time Mihret looks in the mirror, her Ethiopian birth mother, Mama Delame, looks back at her.
When Mihret studies herself in the glass, something she loves to do at age 2, I often watch her and smile. I can't help but notice how she is Mama Delame in miniature.
Mama Delame will always be with her, in her serious, solemn look that's well beyond her years, and in her smile that flashes her teeth and shows her dimples.
I don't feel threatened that we share the title of mama, or Mihret's heart.
Ever since Mihret came home from East Africa with me and my husband Josh as a 6-month-old, we've shown her our photograph of me and Mama Delame standing together in a dusty care center courtyard in the countryside, our arms tucked behind the small of each other's backs.
We're both wearing long skirts out of respect for the occasion, our first meeting. I'm in awe of this slender yet strong woman, barely out of her teens, who breastfed and sang to Mihret and told us about her dreams.
As we're about to celebrate Mother's Day, it's bittersweet. The sweetness is our daughter, our precious joy, and the trust Mama Delame placed in us to parent her child. The bitterness is the tang of missing my sister in Christian motherhood, and knowing we may never meet again in this lifetime.
For an early Mother's Day gift, Josh and Mihret strung together a special necklace for me at the Building for Kids in downtown Appleton. Miss Patty, who runs the art studio there, chose for Mihret a stone from Zimbabwe as the necklace's centerpiece. Five beads surround the stone on each side to represent our family: Josh, me, Mihret, Mama Delame and Mihret's birth father figure, her Grandpa Demesse.
As Mihret grows into a young woman, she may wrestle with ever-changing emotions, with all that's sweet and bitter about life after adoption.
We — all of her family — are her constants. And her Mama Delame will always be with her, wherever she goes.
-By Kara Patterson, Post-Crescent staff writer
www.postcrescent.com
My daughter Mihret has two mamas. Every time Mihret looks in the mirror, her Ethiopian birth mother, Mama Delame, looks back at her.
When Mihret studies herself in the glass, something she loves to do at age 2, I often watch her and smile. I can't help but notice how she is Mama Delame in miniature.
Mama Delame will always be with her, in her serious, solemn look that's well beyond her years, and in her smile that flashes her teeth and shows her dimples.
I don't feel threatened that we share the title of mama, or Mihret's heart.
Ever since Mihret came home from East Africa with me and my husband Josh as a 6-month-old, we've shown her our photograph of me and Mama Delame standing together in a dusty care center courtyard in the countryside, our arms tucked behind the small of each other's backs.
We're both wearing long skirts out of respect for the occasion, our first meeting. I'm in awe of this slender yet strong woman, barely out of her teens, who breastfed and sang to Mihret and told us about her dreams.
As we're about to celebrate Mother's Day, it's bittersweet. The sweetness is our daughter, our precious joy, and the trust Mama Delame placed in us to parent her child. The bitterness is the tang of missing my sister in Christian motherhood, and knowing we may never meet again in this lifetime.
For an early Mother's Day gift, Josh and Mihret strung together a special necklace for me at the Building for Kids in downtown Appleton. Miss Patty, who runs the art studio there, chose for Mihret a stone from Zimbabwe as the necklace's centerpiece. Five beads surround the stone on each side to represent our family: Josh, me, Mihret, Mama Delame and Mihret's birth father figure, her Grandpa Demesse.
As Mihret grows into a young woman, she may wrestle with ever-changing emotions, with all that's sweet and bitter about life after adoption.
We — all of her family — are her constants. And her Mama Delame will always be with her, wherever she goes.
-By Kara Patterson, Post-Crescent staff writer
www.postcrescent.com
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Random Photo Gallery
Mihret's teachers at day care school helped her make this precious, personalized vase and "flower bouquet" for me for Mother's Day. The felt flowers are her hand outlines and the flowers on the vase are her thumbprints.
This time, I remembered to raise the blinds so our Africa/Ethiopia stained-glass suncatcher, handmade by our cousin Hanni, is visible too!
This girl has hair! Konjo (Amharic: beautiful) hair! She is ready for the big-time braids.
Mihret sitting and "copying" Auntie Rachel, a dear friend of ours.
Our peanut - the girl of many facial expressions. I love this one, for some reason.
Two new family photos on Mother's Day. (We were visiting Great-Grandma Peg and Great-Grandpa David in Oshkosh.)
Mihret pays homage to the new Star Trek movie, which we (Kara, a hard-core Trekkie, and Josh, a semi-Trekkie) are planning to see next week. Maybe Mihret will watch it in a decade or so.-Kara
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Saturday, How I Love Thee
Saturdays are great fun at our house for many reasons, but one of the biggest of those is that we're (usually) together, all three of us, for big chunks of the day.
After a week of talking with lots of people and writing lots of stories (me), talking with lots of people, writing some freelance pieces and networking with people on the job search trail (Josh), and hanging out with cool teachers and tiny peanut friends (Mihret), we're all ready for weekend togetherness-time.
Mihret is juggling a lot of milestones at the moment, and we're trying to figure out the best way to handle them all without being either lax or pushy. The parenting dilemma that transcends ages.
She's sitting well at the table like a big girl (still in a seat on top of the seat, so she can reach the table) and eating from her plastic Hello Kitty plates fairly well.
In other business, today Josh printed out "Mihret's potty chart," which we posted today up on the side of her bedroom cubby. She picked out her first Minnie Mouse sticker (she likes the "Ms") for telling us she had to sit on the potty, and then sitting on the potty. (By the time she got there it was too late for her to be productive, as it were, but her new princess Pull-Ups are helping her to at least feel when she is messy and associate that with the need for pottying.)
Perhaps the most fun for us is to watch Mihret grow in her capacity to learn, create and express herself. Today at the Building for Kids, our local children's museum, Josh took her to make me a Mother's Day gift in the art room. Mihret wanted me to open it right away. She handed me a tiny, square cardboard box and said, "Here's a present for you, Mama!" I lifted the lid, and teared up. There was a necklace with five small beads on each side of a large, black stone. Josh told me the stone was from Zimbabwe, and he'd helped Mihret string on the five beads on each side to represent the five members of our family: Josh, me, Mihret, and Mihret's family in Ethiopia, her Mama Delame and her Grandpa Demesse. I said I'd consider the big rock in the middle from Africa to represent God. I put the necklace on right away.
To end this post, a humorous out-take from our day. It goes like this:
It's lunchtime. Josh is helping Mihret with something related to mealtime. As I walk back into the dining room from putting away some provisions, I hear:
Mihret: "That was an immense help. Thank you, Daddy!"
We did a double-take and asked her to repeat herself. She said it again.
"That was an immense help."
Words are awesome, and tiny peanuts who say them are awesome. And the Saturdays during which they say them are .... you guessed it. Awesome.
-Kara
Monday, April 27, 2009
Mihret Does Faces For You
Note: Uncle David face is a face that my brother taught her. He's a good guy. He just needs to learn that we will turn such things around on him.
-Josh
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Loving Lists
I'm a big fan of lists, and I thought I'd let the blog be my electronic Post-It note today to share some observations about Mihret and the simple yet amazing ways she fills our days. We'll go with ten.
1. She loves pepper from the salt and pepper shaker, and she now asks for "Pepper, please" to put on almost anything at dinnertime. I doubted she could pepper her hummus without dousing it, but she was very gentle and she actually ended up asking for MORE pepper! We think that having the treasured gift of breastfeeding from her Mama Delame in Ethiopia may have prompted a love of somewhat spicy foods.
2. Her two favorite books right now are "Curious George and the Monkey" and "Zoo Animals." She can recite most of the first book, and names most of the animals in the second. When we climb up on our bed for storytime, she now brings the following items: 1) as many "babies" as she can carry; 2) the new pink rubbery ball and the new tiny Koosh ball she got from Grandma for Easter, and 3) her wooden cross that we haven't yet hung on the wall, that says "Jesus "heart" Me and I "heart" Jesus." We're working on having her keep the balls and the cross out of her mouth, but she is doing really well with not biting her books. Yay for good behaviors!
3. When it started to *snow* the other day after a weekend of (comparably) warm weather, I grumbled about it in the morning before I headed to work. Mihret looked at me and said, "Mama, it's _just_ snow." I guess I need an attitude adjustment. :)
4. Mihret has learned her colors and loves to point out what is purple, what is pink, what is yellow, etc. etc. Her "Hello Kitty Colors" book and her vibrantly colored bath toy cups have helped reinforce this. She kept mixing up "blue" and "red" for the longest time - I thought there'd be a better chance she'd mix up "red" and "pink," for example - but now she's getting most colors right about 95 percent of the time.
5. Josh found a way to help Mihret cope with getting her hair done in the morning. He took the play mirror from her talking purse and asked her if she wanted to watch while Daddy did her hair. She has been so much more cooperative since then. Her teachers at day care school have done her hair a few times (the cutest 'do was the four-poof 'do) and she loves that, so we're hoping to bring her to the stylist for a hair health checkup and a 'do that's a little more complicated.
6. She's taking to her big girl bed arrangement in her crib very well. She's also taken to bringing her stuffed platypus from Uncle Dave to bed - it lays on her pillow alongside two of her favorite "babies." Sometimes Grover gets to join them - sometimes he's relegated to a toy box.
7. Josh told me he's noticed she's figured out that when he plays the piano and reads the sheet music, there are directions on the pages that tell Daddy how to make the piano make music! Hopefully next year he will start teaching her some piano basics. For right now we're just openly letting her (respectfully) explore the instrument and seeing if she keeps up her interest.
8. She's growing to love Ethiopian pop music! We dance to it at home and watch Ethiopian music videos on YouTube.
9. She still points out the outline of Africa everywhere she sees it.
10. She fills my heart with such joy.
-Mihret's Emaye (Kara)
1. She loves pepper from the salt and pepper shaker, and she now asks for "Pepper, please" to put on almost anything at dinnertime. I doubted she could pepper her hummus without dousing it, but she was very gentle and she actually ended up asking for MORE pepper! We think that having the treasured gift of breastfeeding from her Mama Delame in Ethiopia may have prompted a love of somewhat spicy foods.
2. Her two favorite books right now are "Curious George and the Monkey" and "Zoo Animals." She can recite most of the first book, and names most of the animals in the second. When we climb up on our bed for storytime, she now brings the following items: 1) as many "babies" as she can carry; 2) the new pink rubbery ball and the new tiny Koosh ball she got from Grandma for Easter, and 3) her wooden cross that we haven't yet hung on the wall, that says "Jesus "heart" Me and I "heart" Jesus." We're working on having her keep the balls and the cross out of her mouth, but she is doing really well with not biting her books. Yay for good behaviors!
3. When it started to *snow* the other day after a weekend of (comparably) warm weather, I grumbled about it in the morning before I headed to work. Mihret looked at me and said, "Mama, it's _just_ snow." I guess I need an attitude adjustment. :)
4. Mihret has learned her colors and loves to point out what is purple, what is pink, what is yellow, etc. etc. Her "Hello Kitty Colors" book and her vibrantly colored bath toy cups have helped reinforce this. She kept mixing up "blue" and "red" for the longest time - I thought there'd be a better chance she'd mix up "red" and "pink," for example - but now she's getting most colors right about 95 percent of the time.
5. Josh found a way to help Mihret cope with getting her hair done in the morning. He took the play mirror from her talking purse and asked her if she wanted to watch while Daddy did her hair. She has been so much more cooperative since then. Her teachers at day care school have done her hair a few times (the cutest 'do was the four-poof 'do) and she loves that, so we're hoping to bring her to the stylist for a hair health checkup and a 'do that's a little more complicated.
6. She's taking to her big girl bed arrangement in her crib very well. She's also taken to bringing her stuffed platypus from Uncle Dave to bed - it lays on her pillow alongside two of her favorite "babies." Sometimes Grover gets to join them - sometimes he's relegated to a toy box.
7. Josh told me he's noticed she's figured out that when he plays the piano and reads the sheet music, there are directions on the pages that tell Daddy how to make the piano make music! Hopefully next year he will start teaching her some piano basics. For right now we're just openly letting her (respectfully) explore the instrument and seeing if she keeps up her interest.
8. She's growing to love Ethiopian pop music! We dance to it at home and watch Ethiopian music videos on YouTube.
9. She still points out the outline of Africa everywhere she sees it.
10. She fills my heart with such joy.
-Mihret's Emaye (Kara)
A Prayer for the Journey
A blessed Easter - Christ is risen!
Mihret's new word Easter week was, "Alleluia."
Our continued prayer is that God would help us be the parents Mihret, and He, need for us to be. I pray regularly for the support team of loved ones in Mihret's life who will surround her - those we know and those whom we haven't yet met - who will show her God's life, love and light, and eventually point her to Him. I hope someday to rejoice with her as she receives her new life in baptism - the outer symbol of her personal choice to live for God. Please, if you feel moved to do so, lift up a prayer for our daughter's someday choice.
-Kara
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
