The Gender Gap

Grace: “Mommy, today I saw a boy kitty outside.”

Me: “Really? How did you know it was a boy kitty?”

Grace: “Because it had a really dirty face.”

O is Me

This afternoon the girls were playing amazingly well in the front room while I sat on the couch and read a book (I know, moments like these are extremely rare for mommies of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. For those of you who aren't mommies of babies, toddlers, or preschoolers, think Hailey's-Comet-rare, or parting-the-Red-Sea rare).

Grace was busy "writing" on a magnetic doodle pad. Noticing that she was very intent, I asked her what she was writing. Without looking up she responded in a bored tone, "my name." Looking more closely, I saw a row of neat O's across the board.

"Grace, those look like O's," said the most-observant-mother-of-the-year.

"Yep, they are," replied my three-year old master of the obvious.

"Um, I don't think the name 'Grace' has any O's in it," I tried to tactfully interject.

Grace looked at me like I was a complete idiot. "Yes, my name DOES have an 'O' in it."

"Sweetie, I really don't think it does. Sound out the letters, G-R-A-C-E. I don't hear an 'O' sound."

In that special tone of voice reserved for the most dense adults, my pint-sized princess sighed.

"Yes, my name does have an 'O' in it. You say it all the time-- 'Oh Gracie!'"

I stand corrected.

Marriage, Mountains, and Misperceptions

Part of the doctrine of our religious beliefs is that marriages should be conducted in a holy temple, by someone with priesthood authority to seal, or bind, the marriage together eternally. Because admission to temples requires living a certain standard of worthiness, we teach our children from the time they are young to keep themselves pure and worthy to be married in the temple.

Well....at the moment I have two little girls who are completely obsessed with getting married. Thanks to the Rodgers and Hammerstein version of Cinderella, starring Brandy in the lead role ("Mom! That Cinderella looks like ME!"), my girls are convinced that a handsome, Asian-looking Prince is going to sweep them off their feet into a life of beautiful ballgowns, endless dancing, and romantic *married* kisses. (The kissing has been demonstrated on me so that I know exactly how the Prince will kiss my dimpled darlings on that magical day). No detail of planning their weddings has escaped my almost-three and almost-four year old princess wannabes.

Luckily for me, they also love the temple. They love to visit the temple, they love to talk about the temple, they love to walk around the grounds at the temple, and they especially love the idea that when that magical day arrives that they marry their own Prince Charmings, they can do it at the temple.

Several days ago we were curled up on my bed talking and I saw the opportunity for a brainwashing--er, I mean, teaching--moment.

"Mia, what if you meet a wonderful, handsome Prince and he says, 'Mia, oh Mia, I love you so much! I want to marry you. Will you please marry me--but not in the temple. I'd rather get married in our backyard.' What would you say, Mia?"

Mia looked confused, so I prompted her a little bit.

"Do you love the temple, Mia?" A vigorous headshake up and down. "Do you want to be married in the temple when you are a grown up lady?" Mia grinned and nodded. "Well then, if your handsome prince wants to get married somewhere else, you just shake your finger like this and say, 'No, no, no mister! I'm only getting married in the temple, mister, because I'm a REAL princess, and real princesses get married in the temple.' "

Both girls were instantly enthralled with this new role-playing exercise Mommy came up with. What's not to like about scolding an imaginary Prince and yanking your husband-to-be back onto the path of truth and right? Apparently even preschool age princesses enjoy bossing their someday-Princes around.

We played out every scenario that my tired Mommy brain could invent. What if the Prince wants to get married at church? What if he wants to get married on a boat? Or on an airplane? Each one made them giggle harder and shout louder, "No, no, no mister! I'm only getting married in the temple, mister!"

The last scenario I had was for Grace. "What if your Prince says, 'Grace, you are the most beautiful princess in the entire world. I love you and want to marry you. I want to be your husband and you will be my wife, and we will have a family. But I only want to get married on a mountain, not in the temple. Please, will you marry me on a mountain?' "

Grace's jaw dropped open. The giggling stopped. Her eyes were huge. She looked completely horrified.

"Oh NO! I cannot get married on a mountain! I would fall off and get hurt very badly!"

Time will tell if this teaching moment has lasting impact. I'm guessing by the time the girls are old enough to receive marriage proposals they'll probably find more tactful responses than, "No, no mister!" But heaven help the poor man who asks Grace to marry him on a mountain.

Heaven on Earth

For some reason I can't remember, recently the topic of heaven came up at our house. "Heaven" is a somewhat fuzzy, abstract concept for most of us adults, who, let's face it, haven't personally been there in this lifetime. So explaining it to small children was a bit daunting.

Gamely I started in, trying to paint a picture of heaven as something that would seem overwhelmingly positive, figuring that the girls have the rest of their lives to fear the process of death that will get them there.

"It's a very beautiful, happy place, where we get to be with people we love, like Mom & Dad, and sisters, and Grandpa, and cousins," I began. "We'll see Jesus again and He'll be so happy to see us. He will hug us and tell us He loves us. And we'll feel peaceful and happy in our hearts when we are in heaven. We will want to stay there forever and ever, because it's such a happy place."

No response. The girls just looked at me quizzically. Mia climbed off my lap and asked if it was snack time yet. Mercie started pulling at my leg and grunting. Grace had a confused look on her face, like she was trying to process this new idea, but wasn't quite sure how it fit.

Sighing, I figured at least I got brownie points for trying, and now that the concept of heaven wasn't new to them, maybe as they got older we could revisit the topic and it would make more sense to them.

Then I saw the lightbulb go off in Grace's face. Eyes sparkling, she said, "OH! It's just like our home!"

I am surely the most blessed mommy ever.

Why I'm Not Getting a Breadmaker for Christmas

Today as I was skimming through the Sunday newspaper ads I saw several breadmakers listed for pre-holiday sales. For a brief moment I was tempted to pass the ad over to my husband with a note about what he could get me for Christmas. Thankfully the moment passed.

About a year ago I started making bread every week in order to supply our family with our weekly allotment of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, french toast, and dinner rolls. This was a purely financial decision on my end--we needed to trim our budget and I have very high standards for the bread that enters our home--no pasty white cardboard crap here! Since $4-5 bakery loaves were now out of the question, my only choice was to spend Sunday afternoons baking.

I wasn't exactly a novice to bread baking. My mom owned a health food store, and making food from scratch, using whole grains and homegrown foods was a *natural* part of my childhood (haha--I just crack my punny self up sometimes!). In my single-girl, pre-marriage years, I frequently baked to satisy my own tastes for hearty, harvest fresh bread, and yes, I admit it, more than once to entice some eligible young man with my supreme domesticity in the kitchen. It eventually worked--my husband was suitably impressed enough to pop the question.

But as the demands of work, marriage, and especially of three children under the age of three, piled up, bread baking seemed a luxury that wasn't worth the time it took. Until, however, finances deemed otherwise, and the alternative (unnattractive storebought bread) wasn't acceptable.

While I rather reluctantly began my weekly baking schedule, within a few weeks it became a time I treasured in the kitchen. If I had to skip a week I missed it. I kept loaves stashed in the freezer to tide us over, but I came up with excuses not to use them so I could keep my weekly appointment with the mixing bowl.

It was something of a guilty little secret that I never gave much thought to until a few months ago, when my sister and my mom regaled me with the advantages of the breadmaker, how much they loved their bread machines, and what a fantastic addition to the kitchen it would be for me.

I found myself feeling quite protective of my old-fashioned breadmaking time, and disporportionately defensive about sticking to my handmade dough. That seemed silly--I'm not particularly sentimental, especially about kitchen appliances. I love my KitchenAid mixer, I use my slow cooker constantly, I don't know how people lived before food processors. But switching to a breadmaker was somehow threatening to me in an odd, irrational way.

It finally hit me today, when I allowed myself to consider for minute giving in and turning my dough over to a machine.

The thing is, I'm not much of a down-to-earth, back to basics woman at all. I shudder to think of a world without disposable diapers. I rejoice in the time saved by my microwave oven. I don't have a garden, and since I hate getting my hands in the dirt, I may never have a garden in this lifetime. The closest I get to the origins of my food is the occasional trip to the farmer's market. I don't beat my wet clothing out on a rock, I don't even do weekly ironing, prefering permanent press clothing for easy laundering.

There are only a few things in my life that lead to moments of supreme connection for me. Hanging laundry on the clothesline, rocking a baby, and making my own bread are teeny little spaces of perfect belonging in the universe. The rythmic, repetitive, meditative motion seems to put me in touch with millions of other women, past, present, and future, who have shared those motions, touched those same textures of wet cotton, downy soft baby heads, or yeasty, sticky dough. Time is suspended. For a few precious moments I am part of something bigger than my yard, my home, my kitchen. With hands busy, my mind drifts to a thousand places all at once, none of which I could coherently describe a few seconds later. It's a better-smelling, more productive form of yoga to me.

It's such an intensely personal ritual, yet it's all the better for being shared. Laundry is a family affair--we all help carry the big, heavy basket of wet clothes out to the line, then chubby little hands vie to bring me pieces as fast as I can clip them up. It's meditative and relaxing, but it's also communal. Rocking a baby can't take place without, well, the baby. Satisfying for mommy and baby both, it's personal zen time while also being intense bonding time. And bread....dumping ingredients in a machine and pushing some buttons would be so lonely. When I bake bread my girls climb up on stools across the counter to watch with big eyes. They wait for the finished dough to be pronounced ready so they can get the first tastes of pillowy soft dough (yes, what a horrible mother am I to let my kids eat raw bread dough). They clamber up again for the first slices warm from the oven, barely needing butter or jam or any other adornment. They are fascinated by the hand-crank grinder that lets me add a range of freshly ground grains to our weekly bread. They squeal and giggle when they see the loaves take shape and fit perfectly into the long pans. Perhaps best of all, they become part of the moment suspended in time. I learned to bake bread from my mother who learned it from her mother who learned it from her mother who learned it from hers, and all the way back as far as time stretches, and thousands upon thousands of mothers push the dough with their hands and crush the grains and carefully measure the water and oil and form it into loaves and feel the heat of the oven and watch the leavened mounds rise and break the bread to feed their hungry children who then are filled.

Every week the golden loaves lie stacked across my counter. They are warm and fragrant. They are soft and substantial and represent nurturing and sustenance and health and caring--a yeasty, crusty epitome of mother's love in a nine by five pan.

The glorious act of creation on a Sunday afternoon. I see what I have created. And I see that it is good.

In the Faces of My Children

Earlier today I had a brief phone conversation with a woman who worked for the adoption agency where we adopted our two older girls. She mentioned having seen recent photos of my girls, and then exclaimed, "They look so much like 'V,' don't you think?" 'V' is my daughters' birthmom, and yes, both girls do look very much like her. It's something that I notice frequently, sometimes taking it for granted and sometimes having my breath taken away by a flash of likeness that is so like 'V' I could almost reach out and touch her.

A small comment on her part, but one that I carried around all day long, so warmed by the thought that someone else saw a connection that I see everyday. While we have an open adoption with our daughters' birthmother, she lives several states away, and there aren't many people in my daily world who can say with firsthand knowledge that my girls look so like their birthmom. It made their connection to their birthmom somehow more real, more valid, more acknowledged not only by me but by someone else who is a relative stranger.

Tonight I took the older girls out for the second shift of trick-or-treating. At one of the last houses, Grace turned around as we were leaving to call out a Happy Halloween to our friends. Kim gasped and said, "Oh my goodness, Wendy, Grace looks so much like you! As she turned her head just now I swear that was a mini Wendy I saw!"

Kim's compliment (let's assume it's a compliment--Grace is stunningly beautiful, so I choose to take it as such!) is still warming my heart. Parents of transracially adopted children don't hear much about how their children look like them. My girls obviously don't share my genes, so I don't expect them to look like me. I love to catch glimpses of their birthparents in their faces, their mannerisms, their expressions. I also love the (rare) times when someone notices a similarity to me or my husband in the faces of our children.

We're certainly not alone--every time a new baby is born one of the first responses is to start figuring out who he looks like. Being physically like our biological families may be a blessing, it may be a curse, but it always reinforces a primal connection, an intrinsic understanding that the mysterious bonds of family can be physically visible at times. Something in this connection seems to transcend mere biology and border on the divine. Certainly Jesus Christ expressed something similar when He said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9, KJV). Maybe it's the inward made outward, our hearts visible on our sleeves (or faces, for a less poetic simile).

Whatever it is, I love the miracle of it. I love the fact that being raised in a different family, thousands of miles and a world away from their genetic roots, nothing can change how clearly my children are the obvious offspring of their birthparents. I love the fact that while I clearly don't share the same genes as my children, and in fact look so different from them that most people would see the differences as too extreme for any similarity, there are those who still see a tangible likeness between us.

It's a wonder to me--but then, everything about my children is a miracle, in my eyes.

What it REALLY means to be grown up

Yesterday was hairstyling day at our house. This is generally a traumatic day, because combing out three little 'fros is a time-consuming and often painful process. It's followed by scrubbing up in the tub--also traumatic for those who hate water in their faces--and then by more combing, twisting, braiding, and such.

By the time I got to the last braid on the last girl my arms were aching from six+ hours of working on nappy little heads, and my patience was quickly fading. Grace began a dramatic, overly-exaggerated cry. I snapped at her, "Grace, stop being a baby! If you have a real problem then handle it like a grown-up. If your hair hurts, tell me like a grown up; don't just sit there and do a fake cry."

Silence ensued, and even though I felt guilty for using such a cheap, manipulative, shaming technique, I was also relieved that it seemed to have worked.

I hit one last tangle in the braid and tugged. From her perch in my lap Gracie took a deep breath and shouted out, "OUCH! Dang it, that hurts me! Doggonit!"

She turned around beaming at her very grownup way of handling the pain this time around while I was turning the other way so she didn't see me laughing into the towel. Later that night I heard her explaining to her sister Mia that when you get hurt, you don't need to cry, you can just say "dangit" and then you will be a grownup.

Sometimes the thought that I am her primary teacher and mentor in life scares the pants off me.

The Other Woman

Yesterday Grace and Mia were sharing in one of their favorite activities, namely, hanging on Mommy's legs while I put on my makeup.

Suddenly Grace looked up at our bedroom wall as if she'd never seen it before. Looking at our wedding picture, she exclaimed, "Hey! There's Dad with a lady!" I should have let it die right there, but it was early in the day and I still needed more blows to my ego.

"Grace, who is that lady?"

"I dunno. It's just a lady."

"Grace! That's mommy! That's mom and dad when we got married before you were born."

Long pause. Grace looks at me carefully, then back to the picture.

"Nope. It's just a lady. It's Dad getting married with a different lady."

The diet started yesterday.

Well, in that case.....

Mia is quickly perfecting the art of being the ultimate annoying little sister. Her favorite is touching, poking, jabbing, and otherwise tormenting Grace, just enough to elicit a scream but not enough that she risks really getting in trouble.

The other day Grace was laying on the couch trying to drink her nighttime milk. Mia walked up and began poking her in the face with one finger. Eventually Grace yelled. "Mom, Mia's poking me!" Since I was sitting right there and had seen the whole thing, I responded in predictable Mom-fashion, "Mia, stop poking your sister."

Mia glanced at me to acknowledge the warning, then reared back and began headbutting Grace in the face. Much more sharply, I said, "Mia! I told you to stop touching your sister!"

With all the aggravated and injured dignity that a two-year old can muster, she corrected me: "I not touching Grace--I just bonking her."

Oh, well in that case, carry on.

Ah, toddlers.

Mothering, Identity & Loss

This is from a Mother's Day message I posted to an online infertility group.

I want to give a special mother's day note to those who have lost a child in some way, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, death, failed adoptions or any other way.

As this mother's day has approached I've been pondering how my life has been defined by either my lack of children or by having them. But for children who leave too early, there's like a fuzzy gray spot in my mothering identity. I am their mom, or I was their mom, or something...however it works out, it's real. They are real and I am real and my mothering role for them is real. But I'm aware that when my friends and neighbors and ward members look at me they are seeing me as the mother of my active little girls--they aren't remembering the ones we've lost.

In a sense that's okay--I don't want to wear mourning the rest of my life, and my trust in God's eternal plan is also very real and tangible.But sometimes I wish I could introduce myself as not only the mom to Grace, Mia, and Mercie, but also to the others, named and not-yet-named, because they are as much a part of my mothering heart as the children who have stayed. On the rare occasions when a past loss does come up in conversation, I find myself reluctant to say the names of those children we've lost. It makes it more real. That seems to be uncomfortable for those around me.

If you've been in this place you know that each little spirit you mother, whether carried in your womb or nurtured in your arms or loved in your home--each one permanently and eternally changes something in you. Each child changes your heart and therefore your identity. You always exist as the pre-child mother and the mother who has been forever changed by connecting to that little soul.

On a day when we celebrate and honor our identity as mothers, it can be so very lonely to remember the babies and children who helped create us as mothers, the ones who aren't remembered by others yet will always be deeply missed in our hearts.

So to all of you who have lost a child you loved, I just want to honor your mother heart and affirm your identity as eternal mothers. I know the Lord binds up our broken hearts, but I also believe that He gives us the gift of remembrance, which can be painful at times, yet serves to validate the eternal nature of our precious relationships.

Hugs to all you mommies.