Adoption thoughts September 30, 2007

The following was taken from a family who has adopted three older children from Ethiopia, as well as one domestic and one adoption in Haiti as well as raising their four grown bio kids and helping with their seven grandchildren five of which were adopted from Ethiopia as well… they are amazing… calm.. and happy!
They just got their two kids home today from Ethiopia. I am so happy for them, they were the start of our inspiration for our adoption when they adopted their first two sons many many years ago, my sister used to watch them when they were little, it planted a little seed in me for adoption:

“We know from experience that the next year will be filled with the following:

Grieving…It is an incredible loss to a child to be pulled out of one culture, people, way of life.
Celebrating…They are overwhelmed with the opportunity America creates. They are overwhelmed with a sense of “family” again.
Guilt…There is a profound struggle to be faced with the fact that they have so much opportunity and those they left behind don’t…helping them reconcile that is huge.
Learning…There is so much change. Most of us would fall apart if we had to face the amount of change they are being asked to face…
i. Language
ii. Customs
iii. Food
iv. Personal Care
v. Loss of Culture
vi. Forming new relationships
vii. Much more….”

My first bought painting September 18, 2007

I fell in love with this painting via the blog world, I am really happy!
Chck out her beautiful paintings:
http://mistymawn.typepad.com

Ethiopian Millennium 2000 September 17, 2007

D got home Thursday night from his LA business trip, most of the time he spent it on the phone with me while I was having a nervous breakdown… Ha.. and not so ha!!
I spent Wed at my parents house,My brother came in from LA, we ate outside by the campfire and got in heated talks about the war with my parents, its real civil at my parents!! Anna and I slept in the same bed, we had some girl bonding time, I was so wiped out from the whole week of non stop kids that I didn’t wake up until almost 10:30,

Thursday we went to the beach, my little but not so little brother(1 tried to get Basil who has only swam once to swim out 5o feet to the log they were all rolling over and around on, I know you are a life guard but COME ON, I was not the happiest chicken in the pen that day, big mama bear was coming out, I carried that boy for 9 Mo., birthed him, almost died doing so, breast-fed for 17 mo., and have nursed his many many many falls, cuts, taken him to the hospital for his kidney problems, stayed by his side during hour long X-rays, not to mention loved the heck out of him for 5+ years and I was not going to have him go that way, thankfully he is really smart and told my brother off for trying to convince him.
I love love my family but the thing that ticks me off about all of them except one who is 22, is that they hate confrontation so much that they will take the guilty persons side just to get me and my 22 year old brother to shut up, we love justice and love saying what we think, believe you me we are not the most popular, everyone was staying silent, I was like Um…. its like asking the babe to swim out buddy, and the bay is only like 55 degrees!!! enough said!!!!
Gotta love those guys, can I rant some more… and then “Pop” told the same little five year old to”GO RUN ACROSS THE STREET and get the certain 18 year old” that was pouting over the water incident, I was like “RUN across the STREET” those two words should Never come out of an adults mouth to a child!!!
Well I guess he didn’t die from the water so lets get him run over by a car, and D wants me to go away for a couple of days, Ya I think they would all be safer at home without the “adults” looking after them.

I got to meet newest baby of our awesome friends who really helped us come into the Orthodox church, we saw them at the hospital, the baby weighed 9lb 2 oz and he was darling, mama looked really tired but so beautiful as ever, they named the baby Isaiah but they are calling him Isai (ee-sigh)It made me want to birth another child, not now but someday a long long time from now.

We attended an Ethiopian Millennium celebration on Sat, I met some cool people, ate some really great Ethiopian food, Anna saw some of her Ethiopian friends, I saw some people I met at the adoption gathering, and I met some Ethiopian people, We drank some great Ethio tea, and watched some cool dancing, everyone was so nice, it was awesome!
Today we were in the big city again worked through some stuff with D, ate Italian food, went to my favorite store, bought D some cologne for a make up present, he loved it, went to Macy’s home looked at Mar ta Stewart rugs, tried on five pairs of flats, they were out of size 7 1/2, looked at every earring they had, I didn’t like any except one pair, got thai at our favorite cheap thai, the place is really really sick inside the bathrooms are GROSS, but there is something really special about their food its really cheap when we started going there 13 years ago it was 3.99 now its 5.50 for everything on the menu, the bathroom has not been cleaned for 13 years though, on the way home on our one hour drive we ate choco covered pretzels,unsulfured apricots, and lots of water!

Basil #5 September 10, 2007

Basil to do list
At age five basil wants to do these things
X ride bike (one try as well)
X Whistle
X learn to swim, (He learned in one try last week, the same week he learned to ride a bike)
X do a summersault
snap
read
tie shoes
He can count to a hundred, count by tens, and do basic math, but he throws a fit if I wash his face

Jim Caviezel and old dirty vintage handmade 1940’s clothing September 7, 2007

Today we stopped by this barn sale at a farm near our house, I had always wondered about this house, I wondered if it was abandoned or something, its completely surrounded by trees and shrubs, I forced D to stop at the “sale” we drove up but we were the only customers there, there was a small out building with tons and tons of unusable junk, there a couple of men really busy trying to get something out of the basement, everywhere you could see there was stuff laying around in piles really really old and unusable broken antiques and junk everywhere, did I say everywhere, the outside of the house was completely fascinating I tried to see something that could be used or fixed up and there was nothing, the lady in the shed said to go on into the house and make a offer on anything we wanted, we walked up the back worn steps into the eating area of the house there was no one inside but there was an old 70’s radio blasting old kinda spooky but appropriate music, there was a large table covered in misc kitchen things all antiques but completely worn and used out, I could not count how many cheap pots there were laying on the floor on the stove, my first thought is this place is a really crappy thrift store, but then looking around I realized someone used to live there, we went into room after room after room, I counted 17 rooms in the house, each room was the same in the respect that it had tons and tons of old dirty vintage handmade 1940’s clothing, books shoes in their original dirty boxes, in the room that looked to be the most recently used there was a pack of depends, a red 8o’s phone next to a dingy twin size bed plugged in, I picked it up to see if it still worked, and the weirder thing was a 1980’s economical size of listerine, the room was painted white and there was a small plastic crucifix nailed to the wall across from the bed,
In one room the ceiling had almost fallen in, there were stoves everywhere three in the kitchen and Fridges everywhere, every room had a 1960’s-1970’s Tv,
The living room was the most intact room it had a really nice fireplace and beautiful fixtures, the ceiling had a wooden beams going across the entire expanse, there was a wall of plastic religious art and a plastic bottle of holy water.
We went up the grand stair case, this would be the house to film a horror movie, there was a full room upstairs that had been made into a wardrobe room it was around 14/16-ft the whole room had vintage clothing all around the entire room, I thought this person was totally a clothing horse, I looked down and realized I was standing on the most worn out Persian type rug ever to be seen.
I can only say that the people who lived in this home bought and made everything they owned between 1940-1970 and NEVER threw out anything, we left the house completely scratching our heads to who in the heck lived here and what is going on, we walked out the three men were still working at getting the thing out of the basement, they looked our way with curious faces, I went over to the bearded one and I asked him what the story is with this house, he said my mother lived here and she just passed away, there are 8 of us kids and we are cleaning out the place, this other man came up to me and started telling us everything he said he is the oldest of the eight, he was a farmer he has 52 cousins,and his family is related to the famous actor Jim Caviezel, he also told me he knows my neighbors, there is a gold mine by my house, he put the roof on his barn, he runs a thrift store, and he has three kids, as well as he used to be Catholic, he was the sweetest man ever, the other man told me he used to be catholic but now he is Jewish.
It was truly an experience in a half.

The American Dream September 6, 2007

Buy Air-stream gut it, replace floors with some real looking fake wood, get new vintage upholstery, get custom cabinets built out of light wood or paint wood, retro flooring in bath, dot formica for counters, figure out configuration for sleeping seven bambinos and two parents, most likely triple bunk beds.
Travel country visiting friends and family in Boston, long Island, New york, florida, Virginia Beach, Dallas, Durango, and visiting Orthodox monasteries along the way.

Hey we traveled Europe for two months with four kids, never knowing where we would sleep on a given night, we toted our luggage everywhere, we had four bags and a small stroller, It was intense and exciting, there was one day in Rome when we called 13 different hotels there are “laws” in Italy that the room cannot exceed a certain number of people so we were pulling the Steve Martin trick and saying “there are kids with us, a kid, a few kids” finally we found a place four stories up, mind you its 90+ degrees with no air or ventilation, so we had to open our window straight down to street below that is a mothers nightmare with three young boys, all day /night long we heard a raving mad person across the street at our level yelling at the top of his lungs he was bleeding all over and screaming and going over to the window and looking out and then screaming, it was really really weird.
It got to the point about a month and a half in that our clothing was disintegrating from the lack of proper washing, when I had to throw my designer black crocheted top down the ten story garbage shoot I knew we were in for it, we made a couple trips to H&M and Zara, and restocked our four outfits only.
One day in Venice I tried to find this small children’s thrift shop to find some shoes for basil he was wearing his brothers Robeez and crying every step he took I could not carry him while I was pushing and carting the stroller over lagoons and stairs, we finally found the store and I found some shoes from Russia for him.
The most frustrating day was when we were leaving Rome for Sorento and they told us we needed to take a 6+ hour bus ride there because the trains were having problems so we kept asking people and finally someone told D that a train was just leaving for there via Naples, so we hopped on I felt very uneasy the whole time thinking this cannot be the train to Sorento no train goes straight there we have to transfer from Naples but no everyone was reassuring me on the train that it did indeed go to Salerino= Sorento, I was thinking maybe I don’t know the proper way to pronounce it I asked is it right on the water “yes” there are cliffs “ah no” ok this is not the correct town so we jumped off at Salerino we were the only ones to get off thats a really bad sign, we started walking to the correct platform the train was about ready to go 1 1/2 hours back to Naples where we came from we were throwing our luggage to the porter and throwing kids in the train and all of a sudden we here “don’t leave me!!!!!!” and little 2 almost three year old Basil is running down the platform quite a ways down ( he was mesmerized by the trains usually he rode on the back of the stroller) D and I looked at each-other and thought what the crap are we doing, I know we would have noticed right away that he wasn’t there but for those couple of seconds when we were running for the train we thought he was with us and he wasn’t, I thought we would have been safer in Bali ( where we were intending to go) trains are dangerous on so many different levels with young children.