It's late here and the house is nice and quiet. This is actually my favorite time to work strangely enough. There's something I love about the stillness of the night. Of course when I'm up with babies don't quote this back to me! We are all moved into our new home, boxes piled everywhere including the backyard, but it's lovely. We'd been looking for the right house and neighborhood for two years then I walked in here. My first visit I thought it was nice, but then the house 'stuck' with me. You might think me odd but it's like the house chose us. It just felt right, and didn't leave us. It took about 3 months for them to accept our offer and we had to be patient while the house went into escrow with another family, fell out, and negotiations proceeded with other potential buyers. It all worked out, and here we are. We are home. It's just one of those houses where the day you move in, without being unpacked, you're home. I have a sense of peace here that I haven't had in a long time and I'm so grateful for that. Finally after months of upheaval we are starting to get back to normal and prepare for our babies to come home. I walk around my kitchen knowing that in a few months it will be full of all 3 bunchkins baking and having fun. I love that. I love that when our movers were unloading the truck I could say "take it to the babies room!" I still have all The Beans baby stuff and I can't wait to be able to unpack it and use it again. After I had her I had never intended for that to be it so I saved her stuff for her sibling. I've even dragged it across the country with us when we moved to the left coast. I guess I'm sentimental but that means a lot to me the idea of handing things down, be it clothes, toys, traditions, family stories. When my marriage to her father fell apart I still held onto them, not ready to give them up, probably because I wasn't ready to think about giving up the thought of more children. You see I love being a mummy. I mean really love it! Being The Bean's mom is one of my favorite things I've ever been. Now here we are. Soon I'll be able to unpack the playdough cut outs and books and toys and clothes... We do have a standing joke in our house though that since we have plenty of girlie girl stuff we are sure to get two boys!!!
During our vacation I was able to get some reading done that I had been wanting to get too. I read The Connected Child, and Toddler Adoption. Great books. They did however really make me think about the huge adjustments our toddler would have to go through after coming home. One book asked me to imagine having my 4 year old whisked off to another country and how scared she would be, and that I could really hope that whoever was taking care of her had compassion for her as she adjusted. Wow. Heartbreaking. I realized I have a lot more to learn and ask about when it comes to this so I can hope to be as prepared as I can. The subject hit home pretty hard, and while I was trying to figure out why I realized it was because it brought up some of these things for me too. It's not been relevant to mention here before but I'm from England. My parents brought me and my younger sister here when I was 13. A difficult age to move especially to a new country. I loved living there and had just fallen into my groove at school. The summer we got here I remember everything smelling so strange, vegetation and architecture looking so different. The stores were startling with choices, even graphic styles on packaging were so odd. Social mores were very different, and the language was only half the same. I missed the taste of the cold, clean tap water, and the taste of milk and cream. I still do! I grew up in a family though where it wasn't acceptable to talk about anything that wasn't going along with the program. It was never said out loud but I'd learned that saying that this was hard, or i wanted to go home, or I wasn't happy wasn't ok in our family. I realized I'd never grieved for the losses. It was that hard for me and I was 13 and with my family. It put what a toddler might go through, unable to verbalize their wants and losses into perspective, and I hope will give me extra understanding and compassion on the tough days that they are adjusting and coming to terms with their new life. Mostly I pray I do better. Be open to hearing the emotions in whatever manner they present, have extra patience, listen, have it be ok for there to be the feelings they have, try to support them so they know they're not alone. Pray some more that I do better. I also pray that I keep being a good Mom to The Bean and help her cope with the changes, and giving up some mummy time. I have learned to have faith. That helps.
