We Love Our Library

Mihret receives her first, very own library card at the Appleton Public Library. Now, to complete her collection... (Appleton belongs to one of two library systems in our area, and Josh and I also have cards for the system that encompasses Neenah and Oshkosh. We truly do love our libraries.)

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We've fallen into a pattern, not unintentionally, of reading books about milestones or situations in Mihret's life. (See "Diapers are not Forever," "Teeth are not for Biting," and "My Own Big Bed," for example.) One of Mihret's favorite books is called "Lola at the Library," by Anna McQuinn.

Mihret loves to hear about Lola, a little girl who looks a little like her, who goes to the library with her mommy. That book is not a library book at our house - It was a present from Grandma P. We've read it quite a lot this summer, and not so ironically, we go to the library quite a lot. It's a nice, barely-ten-minute walk further downtown from our downtown neighborhood, something fun to do when we all can get home and eat an early dinner.

The library is a place where Josh and I can easily lose ourselves for hours. I can't count the numbers of times I've been barely on time (even late) for appointments and meetings because I've been skimming the pages of new nonfiction, checking the shelves for a documentary or foreign film, scanning the sci-fi section or looking up "just one more" item on the computerized card catalogue.

Mihret doesn't know what to do first in the library. She zigzags across the children's department as soon as one of us unbuckles her from her stroller. She wants to sit in a cubby with daddy and flip through a book. Then she wants to watch an older child play a computer game. Then she runs between the stacks, grinning, like they're part of a corn maze, and expects us to chase her.

While I'd like her to just settle down and pick out some board books - we more often than not end up grabbing a small pile of interest just before the library closes - part of me is just glad that she's able to be in the library. It's like bringing her to church well before she can truly grasp the importance of being there. We do that, and we'll continue to bring her to the library, too, until she's older and can lose herself in the stacks by reading.

-Kara

A Tale of Color

The favored game in the bathtub these days is "cups." Mihret will say, "Cups, please?" And then some variation of the following will occur:

Me: Which cup do you want?

Mihret: Yellow one?

I place the yellow one on the edge of the tub. She now has four other colors to choose from: blue, pink, green, or orange.

Mihret: Orange one?

I place the orange one on the tub.

Mihret: Um... red one?

Me: You don't have a red one.

Mihret: Blue one?

I place the blue cup on the edge of the tub.

And so on, until she names all the cups.

Recently, however, we had two variations:

Mihret: Brown one?

Me: We don't have a brown one.

Mihret: Brown one?

Me: You don't have a brown cup. *a short pause, as I try to figure out her logic* YOU'RE brown.

Mihret: YOU'RE brown.

Variation two:

Mihret: Sing the cup song.

Note: There is no cup song.

Me: (Singing) Cuuuuuuupppppps.

Mihret: That doesn't make any sense.

I start laughing.

Mihret: Don't laugh!

I laugh harder...

-Josh

A Case of Clean

This one is for all the parents who, like me, have been spending the valuable toddler years trying to figure out how to get stains out of their kids' clothing.

The only reason I feel compelled to post this is because:

a) I spent months trying to find a formula that actually got my kid’s clothing completely clean more than 50% of the time.

b) I figured all the other parents in the world had this kind of thing figured out, until I talked to a mom at a playground recently who also lamented how quickly a lot of her two-years-old’s nice outfits were becoming play clothes after one use.

First, a quick list of things I’ve tried, and their level of success:

Stain Stick: Stain Stick has been a standby at our household since the day Kara and I got married and moved into an apartment together. Perhaps once a month or so, one of us would accidentally dump something on ourselves, and The Stick probably got everything clean, say, 98% of the time. The big problems were generally things like olive oil, which just plain doesn’t come out easily.

I will say this: Stain Stick works really, really well. The problem is context – kids don’t get one dot of sauce on an outfit. When my little one comes home, it appears that she was playing paintball.

You can run a Stain Stick over that, but you better not have anything planned for the night. So that became sort of worthless.

Oxi Clean: For some reason, parents love this stuff. You take a scoop, throw it in some water, soak the clothes, and presto! Nothing happens, and you’ve still got a bunch of dirty clothing.

Oxi Clean worked perhaps 50% of the time, but I’m convinced that the clothing that came clean would have come clean even if I hadn’t soaked the clothing in advance.

Oxi Clean Max: This is a spray bottle that informs you that once you spray something, it MUST be in the wash 10 minutes later.

I’ll say this for it – the spray works, say, 80% of the time. Unfortunately, it still has to be applied everywhere your stains are. So if the wee one looks like she’s been playing paintball, chances are good that you either a) miss a spot, or b) spend lots and lots and lots of time trying to spray every inch of her clothing on laundry day.

So it’s useful, but not practical.

Color Safe Bleach: This, folks, is the magic bullet, and I say that in all seriousness.

A story: The little one was having lunch with us. Pasta. Red sauce. New dress, with a white collar. Guess what happened? Right.

I tried soaking the dress, then washing it. It did not come clean.

I tried the spray, then I washed the dress again. It did not come clean.

I tried the Stain Stick, then washed the dress again. It did not come clean.

I figured, “You know what? The dress is wrecked anyway. If the bleach makes it worse, so be it.”

And guess what? I washed that dress, and you would never ever guess that the thing had ever been worn, much less sauce-smeared.

So, to all you parents spraying and sticking and washing and hoping to get more wear out of clothing, I say this:

Stick all the clothing that seems like a lost cause into a separate pile.

Find a washer with a “bleach” slot in it.

Put the color-safe bleach in the slot.

Wash the clothing normally.

Weep for joy over not having to spend an hour in your basement hunting for stains.

-Josh

Tales from Early Morning

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

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

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, 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