the capacity to love

I've been thinking about this post for a long time and while I don't have all my thoughts worked out, I think I need to write it for ME.

A few people have asked me if I love Anna as much as Ryan. 


I'm always taken back a bit when someone asks me if I love Anna as much as I love Ryan.  But instead of thinking about whether or not the question bugs me, I thought I would write about it because I think a lot of people might have the question.  So here goes...

I think it would be more honest if I said I love Anna in a different way than Ryan.  In some ways, I love her so much that it breaks my heart, like when I think of her past and her future and the challenges that she is going to have with her surgeries, speech therapy and dealing with the fact that she was abandoned.  Obviously, I don't have any of those types of feelings with Ryan since he is biological and doesn't have any special needs.  But I will say that on the day we received her, our "Gotcha Day" I thought my heart was going to burst with love for this little girl.





Anna on Gotcha Day after she finally stopped sobbing after her nanny left.

In other ways, I will admit that I have struggled with Anna.  But I think it has more to do with our life circumstances than anything.  Bringing her home, starting medical appointments a few days after being home, having surgery 2 weeks after bringing her home, my business trip last week and the biggie - moving across the country next month.  All of those have been extremely stressful and have not allowed me any downtime to just enjoy her and love her.  I've been so stressed with the kids fighting and getting ready for the biggest tradeshow of the year and finding renters and a place to live that I haven't been able to sit down each night and read a book with the kids or play with them.  I've been putting far too many movies on the TV to babysit them while I get things done.

When I think about Anna, I am amazed at how well she is doing.  She has totally attached to each of us.  I got home very late Wednesday night - it was actually around 2am Thursday morning.  And when she saw me Thursday morning, she lit up and called out "mama".  That melted my heart as much as when Ryan calls me "mommy." 

Anna was very fortunate to have a loving nanny who took good care of her.  Anna was very attached to this nanny.  And I will always be grateful for the amazing care she received while she was in China.  We have been struggling with boundaries though because she had a full-time nanny who cared for her round the clock.  I also think Anna got her way a lot.  But other than that, she has been great.  I've already mentioned what a great sleeper and eater she is!

And when I have moments of exhaustion and feelings of being overwhelmed, I think of my favorite scripture:  "Pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that he may be filled with this love (charity)". 

Unfortunately for my little family, I have had to pray to be filled with love a LOT over the past month.  But it isn't just love for little Anna.  I've prayed for love for Ryan and Tony too. 

So do I love Anna as much as Ryan?  I would say absolutely yes but I also have to work at it just as I have to work at being a good mother and loving Ryan and being a good wife and loving Tony.  I believe we all have an unlimited capacity to love, the key is how hard we work at it.

But I will say that it feels like Anna has always been ours.  And most of all, with Anna, our family feels complete. 

mama

Today is day 5 with Anna and this morning she called me mama. And yes, my heart melted.  We've had two days just to ourselves and have gone on walks and spent time just playing, reading and getting to know each other. And I just have to say, I love what I've learned in the past few days.



Day 2

This girl has spunk and she's stubborn. But she's no match for her mama. When she does or doesn't want something, she let's me know. A podcast called "traveling with your newly adopted child" had some sage advice "do not worry about creating bad habits or reinforcing existing bad habits while you are traveling" and I am trying to do just that. But that is much easier said than done. Because I feel like she is attaching much more than I expected, I'm already setting a few boundaries which she clearly doesn't like, but she accepts after a mere 5 seconds of crying or so.

She loves to laugh and be tickled. She has the cutest little raspy laugh. In the beginning it was hard to get her to smile, let alone laugh, but now everything is a game and is funny. She still has moments of darkness when she seems confused - mostly when I am putting her to bed at night or she when she first wakes up in the morning, but other than that, she's a pretty happy little girl.

She's pretty smart. When I say, "let's go Anna" she picks up my flip flops and hands them to me (remember, she doesn't know a lick of English). I can show her something like how to put a lid on a water bottle and she will remember what that funny blue object is for. And, she's learned the baby signs for "more" and "bread" in one day, she's copying sounds and starting to respond to her name "Anna".

She's a great eater - so far she's only turned away honey dew melon. She's eaten everything from American to Chinese food - I'm hoping this will rub off on chicken nugget Ryan.

She's a fabulous sleeper. After we get past the first fearful minute (it's so sad to see her scared little face), she just lays down and eventually drifts off to sleep. Knock on wood that this will continue!



Day 3 - touring the Shoulin Temple

All in all, she's doing great! I don't have any recent pictures since Tony left because my hands are full and he took the good camera home, but the pictures here are from day 2 and 3 so you can see she's doing pretty well - and it just keeps getting better day after day!

reality check

Another adopting mom who is traveling in the same group as us recommended an amazing "Adoption Parenting" book for me to read.  It is about 400 pages and I am on page 26.

But I did want to share an amazing analogy from that book that I will paraphrase:

Imagine you've just married the man of your dreams. You are very in love and feel like you've found your soul mate. On your wedding night you fall asleep thinking how wonderful life is and how blessed you are. The next morning, you wake up, look over at the other side of the bed and a different man is sleeping next to you! You recoil in horror. Who is this man? Where is your beloved husband?

You ask questions of the new man, but he doesn't understand you and you don't understand him. You search the house and even your home is different - each room is completely different and you can't find any trace of your former life.

Weeks pass and you cry and cry over your loss. The new guy tries to comfort you. You can't sleep, the food tastes completely different from the food you know, you can't understand anyone around you.

More time passes and the man takes you to a different home and there are lots of people who hug you and kiss you. You can't understand anyone and you don't know anyone and you are even more confused.

And the analogy continues on and on going through the different stages.  I understood the parallels of the analogy pretty quickly, but I've never had anything explain so clearly what little Anna is going to go through.  My heart aches for her already knowing how scared - no terrified - she will be leaving her nanny and everyone who loves her and being placed in a stranger's arms.  I am hoping and praying that my Asian looks will go a long, long way.  In fact, I've never been so grateful to be Asian!

So many people have asked if they can help with anything.  Well, I am going to ask for your prayers on Monday Sept 2nd for our little girl as she is placed in our arms.  And while you're add it, pray for that little girl's mommy and daddy because heaven knows, we are going to need all the help we can get.

shifting ground

I'm not going to lie.  Lately I feel like the ground is shifting under my feet.  When I started this blog, I promised myself that I would not sugar coat things and that I would write honestly about the good, the bad and the ugly.  So be forewarned, this posting is not about the good.

 

[The pictures don't really have anything to do with anything, but aren't they cute?]

The past few weeks can best be lumped into 3 categories:  annoying technical/credit card problems, anxiety about moving to North Carolina and anxiety about the adoption.  I guess there's always the on-going fourth category: concern about my mom (who is doing "ok" but dang it, I really, really, really hate that she feels so sick and tired).

First, the annoying technical/credit card problems (and I will try NOT to make this a rant).  I got home from Atlanta last Sunday night.  On Monday morning, I turned on my laptop and it promptly crashed on me.  Big crash.  I had to ship it overnight to my IT guy in NC and do my best working on Tony's laptop.  But then my backup crashed.  What?  Who does that happen to? 

Tuesday morning I had a message from my credit card company about suspicious charges in Los Angeles.  Long story short, Edvard Montevosian stole my credit card somehow and the cops caught him in the act.  Yes, we had the charges reversed and yes, the credit card company cleaned up everything lickity split, but how annoying is that?  You've heard about people putting scanners in ATM machines and gas station credit swipe machines...here's a TIP from Sergeant Suttles:  Use stalls that are closest and in view of the attendant.

Later in the week we received our TRAVEL APPROVAL to pick up little Anna from China.  The problem was, they wanted us to travel on August 30th instead of the first week of Sept like we were hoping.  It turns out China has a host of holidays, festivals i.e. office closures in September so they don't do trips in September.  OUR problem is my mom was going to watch Ryan but obviously can't any longer and Labor Day is not a good time to find people to watch Ryan.  Auntie Patty, my sister, lots of people are going to be out of town.  After a brief meltdown, Tony and I went to lunch and talked out the possibilities.

We got the babysitting figured out, got our consulate appointment and our official travel dates of August 30th.  Now I'm working through the intricacies of Delta's reservation system.  I've been hoarding mileage for this event and I thought we had enough miles for me, Tony, Joy (who will switch places with Tony half way through so Tony can come home to Ryan and I don't have to fly home by myself with a new 18 month old baby from China...yikes!).  After literally hours on the reservation system, I realized with horror that 2 year olds DON'T fly free on international flights and a mileage for a one-way flight for Anna is just as much as a round trip.  Now I have 440,000 Delta miles which is a lot, but not enough for 4 round trip tickets.  We could possibly pay for part of a ticket, but honestly, the entire adoption expense, the upcoming medical procedures and the upcoming move, have me worried about the outlay. 

And that is where I'm at at this point.  At one tearful moment with Tony, I told him it's too hard.  Even if everything works out, what if Anna has severe medical issues that we don't know about and aren't covered by insurance?  What if we can't get all her medical issues taken care of before we move in November?  What if we can't find someone to rent our house in Utah?  What if....

You can see the state of mind I'm in.  I even broached the subject of not going through with the adoption.  With mom's cancer, with moving to North Carolina in November, with everything else, it just seems too much to bear at times.

But then I see little Anna's face in my mind and I know the answer.  Tony also talks me down off the ledge and assures me that we can do this.  But that is the problem.  I know WE can do this, but there are a whole lot of factors (medical insurance) that weigh heavily on me.

So that is the state of affairs in the Smart Family home.  But we do feel fortunate - we have a handsome little boy who loves his mommy and daddy so far and are adding the most adorable little girl into the mix.

I think I might have had a bit of an anxiety attack yesterday (I need to google symptoms) where I just felt sick to my stomach and it hurt like I imagine an ulcer would feel like.  But it was no match for a heartfelt prayer.

So I feel better, but I do wish the ground would stop moving! 

My wish on Mother's Day

On this Mother's Day, my heart is full.  In part because of this wonderful little boy who calls me Mommy and the life we are able to enjoy as a family.  As we enjoyed our Saturday yesterday, I felt we were truly blessed.  And I am very much indeed, thankful for my blessings.

I have another reason to be grateful this day.  Her name is An Jing.  She was born March 28, 2012 in China and in a few months, if all goes well, we will be bringing her home to join our little family.

She was born with a cleft lip and palate.  Her cleft lip has been repaired, although you can see she will need plastic surgery on her little nose.  We will have her cleft palate worked on when we bring her home.

We received our initial pre-approval this week which means we can start telling people, share her darling pictures and we can also send her a small care package.  I can't believe how much we love her already.

An Jing was abandoned on a dirt road when she was a few days old.  Now your initial reaction might be something like "how could a mother abandon her child? and on a dirt road?"  May I tell you how I feel about it?

I believe that the dirt road indicates that An Jing's family was not wealthy or even middle-class.  I think that the dirt road indicates they lived in the country and were poor.  Perhaps very, very poor.  And when this poor mother in China gave birth to a child to had a cleft lip and cleft palate, she knew she would never be able to provide the medical needs this child needed.  It's likely that medical resources weren't even available to her.

And so this mother bundled up her child with all the love and care in the world.  She left her on a well-traveled road where the authorities were sure to find her.  And I believe this mother hoped and prayed that someone would care for her daughter and love her as if she were her own flesh and blood.

And so on this Mother's Day, I want to tell that mother on the other side of the world that we will.  We will love her daughter and care for her.  She will have food in her tummy, a warm bed to sleep in, medical care and attention and most of all, we will love her as she is, our very own.