Neverending Adoption Stuff

Woohoo! My second Mother's Day! What a strange weekend it was for me. I was kind of emotionally weirded out. Last year, being my first Mother's Day and all, I was just all excited and thinking that finally I was a mom and got my day. This year I kept thinking about Marcus and Will's birthmoms. It is almost like I finally got the whole reasoning behind open adoptions. I look at my boys and see how amazing they are and think all the time how I hope their birthmoms know how much they are loved. The truth is though, they don't know. They never will know. They made the decision on a giant leap of faith that their children would have a better life than what they could provide for them but they will never know. That just breaks my heart.

We spent Mother's Day at home and invited over Greg's parents. We had a yummy dinner of tamales! (There are a mere 66 of them left!) It was just a great time getting to hang out. Greg's parents played a lot with the kids. Greg did the dishes. I got the job of making sure the couch didn't get cold.

Today it was back to life as usual. Things have been a bit stressed around here. Marcus is just insane. I am not really sure how else to put it. He is constantly running, jumping, talking, grunting, changing direction, up, down, spinning, throwing, waving, falling down, getting up, dancing, squatting, and stomping. Will, who is generally the one to just stand by and just watch this insanity, takes time out from his observance to whine and throw temper tantrums. I recall when Marcus was Will's age that he went through the same thing but that still doesn't really help me deal with it any better. This week I decided to be a bit firmer of a parent. I was going to stop with all the threats of time out and just put Marcus in time out. (Can "driving mommy crazy" be a reason to put a kid in time out?) I also decided that with both my kids, I was done getting mad. I was going to be calm, firm, and let them know that I was in control. All in all, the day went better than a few of the days last week. Marcus was still insane but he soon got the message - after sitting in time out - that if he didn't listen that there were going to be some real consequences. Will only threw one major temper tantrum and this one only involved crying for 10 minutes straight instead of that screaming until he loses his voice stuff.

We went to story time at the library today. We haven't been for a few weeks since the kids were sick for awhile. Marcus and Will tend to be complete angels when they are out in public which is certainly a blessing. (They save all their craziness up to use in the privacy of their own home.) We had a great time during story time. The library was having a book sale going on. I knew it was going to be a bad idea to attempt to go look for some books when I was outnumbered by toddlers but I went anyway. At a point in my life when I was thinking that I must be doing this parenting thing all wrong to have two kids behaving as they have been, I got a glimpse of a mom who was completely out of touch. As soon as we walked into the book sale area, a little girl probably about a year of so older than Marcus, came running at him with a book. She then proceeded to start hitting Marcus on the head with the book. Marcus ran away because, well, wouldn't you? Then the girl decided they were playing a chasing game and kept running after Marcus. Marcus was just trying to get away from her. I was yelling at Marcus to come over by mommy, getting all the attention of every other person who was in there looking at books, making them think I had an out of control kid. Where was this little girl's mom? I have no idea. While I tried to look at a few books, this little girl kept handing books to Marcus and then taking them back off of him. She went to the other side of the bookshelf and pushed the books on that side making a huge stack of books fall out onto the floor next to me. Then she started climbing on a table, fell off the table, and landed on some woman. Turns out the woman was her mom who said, "Where you on the table?" The little girl said no. Then the mom turned back around and the little girl got back on the table. I had to get out of there. As I was headed out with my grand total of 3 books towards the exit, Will decided he had had enough too and started whining. Then Marcus started making some weird sounds and I looked down at him to discover that he somehow managed to get one of his arms out of his shirt and was stuck, half-way clothed. I set Will down so I could fix Marcus's shirt which caused Will to start to throw a temper tantrum. I was so out of there. I practically ran to the elevator. Another lady got on the elevator with two kids. She looked at me. She looked at my kids. Then she said, "Oh! Are you watching these kids for someone?" I said, "No, you narrow-minded half wit! Why don't you start thinking out of the box and begin to realize that families are made in different ways!!" Okay, so I really didn't say that. I said, "No, they're mine," and maybe, just a little bit, had a bit of an insulted tone to my voice. Really, it probably wouldn't have even phased me the least bit if I wasn't stressed out already. (I just want to thank my BFF for suggesting that this woman probably only said that because I look like I am still a teenager and although not at all impossible, most teenagers don't have two little kids. I realize I look young but you don't have to rub it in! Jerk.)

One of the books I managed to get out of there with was a book on Guatemala. It is probably about a 4th or 5th grade reading level but Marcus took a break from his insanity when we got home to sit down with me to look at the pictures. On the first page was picture of a family. Marcus pointed to the man in the family and said, "Dada!" The man was Guatemalan and certainly didn't look anything like Greg. Being the fabulous adoptive parent that I am, I said, "Do you think that is what your birthfather looks like?" Marcus said, "Birthfather." We talked about the book and we turned several more pages. Then suddenly Marcus started jumping up and down and waving his arms in frantic excitement. Then he pointed to a picture of a little girl and started shouting, "Lola!! Lola!! Lola!!" Lola is Marcus's girlfriend that we have play dates with sometimes. Lola was adopted from Guatemala too. About the only thing that Lola has in common with the little girl in that book is the same hair color and ethnicity. I didn't even know that Marcus knew Lola's name.

Finally, we are taking the last step to finish all this adoption stuff. (The adoption stuff never really ends, but hopefully this will be the end of the paperwork part of it.) I called some sort of county office to get the forms that we need to register our adoptions. Marcus and Will are both US Citizens already so as far as I can tell, we don't have to go through the whole re-adoption process. Once everything is filled out and filed, we will be able to get US birth certificates for both kids and we will finally get their names changed. Things got so mixed up with Marcus's name that I am not even sure what his real name is at this point. Then we will just have to go through the process of getting their name changed on every other document we have of theirs. Yay!