The Naked Ovary

The Thing That Goes Bump in the Night (and the morning, and the afternoon....)

Part One: The Beginning

I had a rough start breastfeeding Bo. From the beginning, I was determined to nurse her, because I hadn't been able to have that opportunity with MP. I looked into adoptive nursing, but MP was already 13 months when we adopted her, and it would have been a very difficult journey--drugs, machines, tubes. I wasn't up for the challenge. I just wanted to enjoy having a new toddler without all of the added stress and huge possibility of failure.

And I wanted to enjoy every aspect of pregnancy, since I had waited so long for it--7 years--and been told I would most likely never get pregnant. With an official FSH of around 15, I was pretty sure I would never get to experience pregnancy. But I somehow did, and once pregnant, I put every ounce of effort into learning about breastfeeding. I was a fiend. I took classes, bought books, and watched videos. I bought pillows and a top-of-the-line pump and even got my schedule at work reconfigured so that I could pump. I reserved a room in the nurse's office twice a day (I work at a school), resigned to waking up at a horribly early hour so I could nurse Bo twice AND pump once, and bought lanolin and awesome nursing bras that were a cross between a medical bandage and stripper gear.

Bo nursed immediately after birth. The pain was exquisite: somewhere between your flesh being squeezed in a vise and your entire body coming out of frostbite. I was simultaneously screaming and swooning. Bo nursed and nursed. The nurses who came in to check on us were shocked at how eager and accurate she was.

They told me not to fall asleep holding her, but she wouldn't stop nursing, so that first night in the hospital, I remember falling asleep with her little leech body stuck on me sometime around four AM. (She was born at 9 PM). They took her from me, but brought her back promptly. She was screaming, waking up all the other babies. One nurse remarked that she was a "little pig." I was pissed and looked at my daughter, frantically sucking away. "She's just hungry," I said, proud.

I had a huge bruise on my breast that morning, though, that the lactation consultant--who finally visited me later that first full day--told me came from Bo latching off the nipple and onto the skin next to it, probably when I was sleeping. It was so black I didn't even identify it as being a bruise. My daughter had given me a boob hickey. The lactation consultant showed me a few tricks, but said that we were pretty much doing it right.

A few days later, we were back in the hospital; Bo had jaundice, severe, and I, according to the head of pediatrics, was to blame. "My kids did fine on formula," she yelled at me. "She's not getting any of your milk. She's hungry. Feed her a bottle." I was hysterical. Actually, I have never, ever been so hysterical in my life: I must have cried for six or seven hours straight, so much that my eyes were mere slits and I couldn't recognize myself. (We had also locked Bo in our bedroom that morning and Random had had to break down the bedroom door, and then we had gotten in a car accident on the way to the hospital, so there was a lot going on.) I was convinced I was a failure. My greatest fear was that I wouldn't be able to nurse Bo; for some reason so much was tied up in it--my ideas of what, for me, it meant to be a good mother to her; my ideas of what the total package of getting pregnant and giving birth meant; the justification I could give for having such a large chest (I was truly pornorific at this point--way, way above my normal 36C/D, way above a DD, somewhere in the G range, I think).

I called my mother; she told me that she had had a similar problem--her breasts had swollen with milk, but nothing had come out. And so she had shrugged, and given up, and worn hot compresses. I refused to give up, but my baby was hungry and it was my fault. I gave Bo a bottle, which she sucked down in less than a minute--I sobbed the entire time, hating that bottle--and then I started to pump.

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I was so confused. Wasn't my milk supposed to come in by now? Was it the induction that had messed it up? I was induced, and I became convinced that maybe my false beginning to labor was what had confused my body.

I produced a coating of thin yellowish milk and fed it to Bo, but we had to continue to give her formula for the next day. We got home Sunday night; I continued nursing her and feeding her bottles of formula. I called a lactation consultant the next day. I was in incredible pain; every time we nursed, it was as if someone was clamping my breasts in a fiery vise. But I was stubborn, and I persisted. My mother asked me why I cared. My husband told me he didn't care if I stopped; he thought I was awesome no matter what. I couldn't stop. And every bottle we fed her killed me a little, inside. I saw other new mothers blissfully feeding their babies bottles, and wondered why I couldn't do the same thing, what demented part of me was keeping me from being okay with it. Theoretically, I had very little against formula; yes, I know breast is best, but I am not going to tell anyone what's best for their families. And I almost resented other women for the ease by which they fed their babies. But I knew they might be wrestling with their own demons.

I was trying to feed Bo one day out; she was under my nursing cover. A mother who had been feeding her newborn a bottle came over. "You have no idea how lucky you are to breastfeed," she said. "My son was born with a cleft lip, and couldn't breastfeed. I breastfed all my other three children, but not him." All I heard was that she had successfully breastfed; I also wondered at her assumption that breastfeeding was so easy for me. I didn't see her pain because I was so focused on my own lack of success.

The lactation consultant came, interrupting a family dinner, and--long story short--determined that the milk was there but wasn't coming out. A week and a day after giving birth, she showed me how Bo was latching on the wrong way; she showed me  how I could be more successful at getting Bo to latch using a tube that went into a bottle of formula. The tube was taped to me. I hated the system but promised to try it. She left telling me I'd need at least another session. Bo was underweight--she was way below her birth weight at this point-- and if I wanted to make this work I was going to have to pull out every big milking gun she could give me. I was to pump whenever I wasn't feeding. (I couldn't fathom this, but I did it--I woke up every hour at night when Bo slept in fits, and pumped. I was so tired I fell asleep with the pump on me, sucking nothing but flesh. ) I was to use the supplementary nursing system. I was to sit in bed all day and let her nurse whenever she wanted. I was to make special tea and go to the nursing store and get herbs to make concoctions. I was to eat oatmeal every waking moment. And, of course, there were the lure of the drugs, not available for use for nursing in the US but available online. I was completely crestfallen and convinced we would never make it. I had so little energy at this point.

Bo nursed ALL THE TIME--cluster feeding didn't even begin to describe her schedule,. But that night, after seeing the lactation consultant, something magical happened: I had my first letdown. This was a week and a day after giving birth, and I recognized it right away. I whooped. After that, the milk mostly came regularly, although I helped it out with the drugs I ordered from several strange island nations. When I wasn't nursing, I pumped, even after going back to work. My entire life revolved, it seemed, around breastmilk--procuring it, preparing it, freezing it, defrosting it, pumping it, feeding it, wiping it off everything (Bo was a HUGE spitter upper).

I'm telling all of you this because, believe it or not, I am still breastfeeding almost two years later. That's right, I'm one of THOSE MOMS. "Extended breasfeeding" (is two years extended?) has brought me a lot of good and a fair smattering of strange. And now I'm ready to stop, but I don't think it's going to be easy at all--because Bo won't let me. Just this morning, for example, she breastfed from 5:30 am to 7:40 am STRAIGHT.

Eeyow. Randomsuggests I have her weaned by the end of June, which won't happen; I'm hoping for September. But I'm guessing that if Bo has her way, it's not going to happen by then either.

*****************************************

Part Two coming soon.

 

 

The house is sleeping, the babes are peeping

That is, of course, until Knock-A-Doodle-Doo shatters our peaceful slumber at the glue-eyed hour of 2 AM.

"Knock-A-Doodle-Doo" is my new nickname for Bo, our youngest, who at barely 19 months hurled herself over and out of her crib twice after making herself puke from crying, rendering said crib useless. I literally cried myself when this happened, realizing that her force could no longer be contained and I would no longer have a safe spot to store her when I do those ridiculous extra-Mommy things like "shower before work." MP was much older when we moved her to a big girl bed, and she wasn't prone to create devastation wherever she went. Leaving her alone and unshackled in a room at night did not pose major health or sanity risks. You can leave Bo in a padded room and she'd find a way to rip the stuffing out of the walls and choke on it. She is far too devious and hell-bent to leave alone for more than 30 seconds; her other nicknames include "Destructor," "Holy Fuck What Did You Do Now ," and occasionally "Demon Spawn."  

Knock-A-Doodle-Doo can occur at any time of the night between the hours of when I go to bed and right before my alarm goes off at 5:50 AM. It begins with a somewhat patient knocking, rat-a-tat-tat on the door, that awakes me from whatever paltry sleep I've managed to patch together. Bo sleeps on a mattress on the floor because nobody trusts her on any sort of elevated platform. Even with a mattress she has ended up stuck under the defunct crib in the middle of the night, having rolled her way across the room. So first the almost polite knocking. And then the plaintive cry: "Mommmmmy." And then more knocking, a bit more deliberate now, like "come get me Woman" type knocking, peppered with a few more "Mooommmmyyyyyys." And then the frenzy will begin--screams of anger, furious knocking. I lie in bed trying to burrow under pillows in the fruitless hope that Knock-A-Doodle-Doo will realize the error of her ways (IT'S FUCKING THREE IN THE MORNING!!!) and go back to her mattress on the floor. This never happens. The knocking will just eventually set the dog to bark, and then the husband to awake, and then Big Sister MP to groggily emerge from her room to announce that "Bo woke me up" and pee fourteen hundred times. And procure fourteen hundred more "night time drinks." And Knock-A-Doodle-Doo will have won again. She will be stationed happily in our bed, doing her thing.

Errr. Yeah.

More on that later. (It's a whole slew of posts, her thing.)

(Below: Knock-A-Doodle-Doo looking Impish as she contemplates what fresh hell she will bring.)

Going through Bedtime Ritual is like planning, organizing, and attending a wedding every night. There are multiple parts and chances for things to go abysmally wrong and time panics ("holy SHIT it's nine fourteen I will have NO TIME TO WATCH HOUSEWIVES ON TIVO") and crossing of fingers. Each child's bedtime is really a perfect storm--all components have to come together for the night to run smoothly.

After bath and brushing teeth and running around naked like a madwoman and jumping on beds and throwing blankets around and reading books and doing workbook, It takes MP a bit to get to bed--first, she has to whisper the same thing to me that she whispers every night--that she wants party hats at her birthday. I agree and say I want them also. Then, she tells me how she wants Fudgie the Whale ice cream cake at her birthday; once again, I agree; my favorite, which I have sneakily convinced her is also her favorite so that I can have it twice a year (Random is in hot pursuit of this title, pushing his "Strawberry Cream Cheese Torte" on her like a drug dealer; the crux of the problem there is that I have to make that dish, and it's not easy. Plus, who doesn't love a frozen whale with chocolate crunchies?)  

After all that adorable nonsense, she says "If you have to go downstairs..." and I finish with "that's just for a minute," which is essentially a load of hogwash since I definitely go downstairs for longer than a minute. And then as a finale she'll ask if I'm wearing socks, which unless it's January I'm definitely not, so then she has to take off her socks. We do this every night. If we forget a part, or if I don't sufficiently hug and kiss her, she will come into our bedroom where I'm putting Bo to sleep and yell-whisper until I run through the whole thing with her properly.

Sometimes I'll have just gotten Bo to sleep when MP comes barging in with her demand that I wear socks because if I don't we will not be twins. Or, her revelation that her spider Silly Bandz "SHINES IN THE DARK" and isn't that SO COOL, SHE DIDN'T KNOW THAT!

I especially delight in waking MP up in the morning. She is already a surly teenager in that regard; she refuses to wake up unless it's five am on the weekend. Her sister has sat on her head before to wake her up (Bo is a brute as well as a menace) and it did not work. The only time MP is remotely tired is in the mornings that I have work. Usually it is as if she has snorted an entire box of sugar.

Below: Beautiful MP ready to bounce off any available surface

 

****************

I have two incredibly sweet, funny, entertaining, beautiful girls who make me laugh all the time. I am the luckiest person I know. Each girl entered my life in a way I never would have imagined, at exactly the right time. I went through six years of severe infertility before we adopted MP, and I would do it all over again if I knew how it would turn out.

I have so many things to write about that it almost seems impossible to know where to begin. Writing about their sleep habits seemed as good a place as any;  stay tuned for adoption updates, Bo's thing, Interviews with MP, videos of MP singing American-Idol style, pictures, and all kinds of maudlin accounts on motherhood. Oh yeah, and I'm also going to try to do Fashion Friday once in a while, which is where you allow your child to choose an outfit and take her picture (Good Lord, you have no idea how that might go in this house), Product Placement Day (where I will gush on and on about a product I adore because I am a product junkie), Trash TV, and Adventures in Occasionally Drunken Vegetarian Cooking.

Thank you so much for being here and for the welcome back. It feels really good to be here again, and I hope to meet all of you all over again very soon.

 

 

 

 

Is anybody out there?

Hello.!!!

I am back. If you are reading this, you are either A) crazy (in a good way) or B) asking who the hell I am because you stumbled here. But thank you either way.

It's been a long time coming, this return. I've been putting it off because I've been wussy scared--this blog stood in for my real life for so long. And then when my real real life and my blog life met, it was too worlds-collide and I chickened out and shut down. Plus, someone--a measly stranger-- online saw a picture of me and said I looked sort of fat. And when you've gone through what I went through, hearing you look fat is not something you can easily swat away like an annoying bug; it was the final thing, and it snapped me like a cheap twig.

But now I've decided to resurrect my beloved old stomping ground--partly because I have no idea what the hell is still there, and partly because I want to read it all. And mostly because I want to write again, and read again. My archives feel like they are from another life, like they were written by another person.

You were all here for me through one of the toughest times of my life, and I have missed you so much. I have so many new things to tell you.

One of my daughters, the younger one, C, will turn two in a month. She is outside right now with her dad (AKA Random), playing on a swingset that actually shouldn't be played on because it's not attached to the ground yet.

My other daughter, M, the one I waited a very long time for, is sleeping upstairs. She is going to be five.

You're going to hear all about them, if you want to stick around. And you'll hear about me, too, but I'm far less interesting.

I've missed this, and you.

So here we go. *Deep breath*

All done.

All done is what MP says when we are all done with something.

I am closing shop. I am all done.

I've thought about this for a while, but recent stuff has made me realize that I can't keep NO up the way it's been any longer. The biggest reason is that I have a daughter now, and I need to spend my time with her. And a lot of people read this weblog, and although so many of you are incredibly nice and supportive, some people reading....are not so nice.

Writing means a lot to me, so I'm going to try out the world of magazine and whatnot publishing. And I might start another weblog, somewhere else. Or! Maybe I'll try a private diary with a lock, heh.

The Naked Ovary has meant so much to me over these years. Sheesh. You have all meant so much to me. A few days from now I will go password protect, but I won't be writing anything else here. The password protect will only serve to give me time to get my archives printed out.

I wish I could end with some kind of awesome quote--but Maya is crying right now and it's time for lunch.

I love you guys. Thank you, thank you a million times for all of your support.

I'll have a smattery bit of all of it, thanks.

That was a cool discussion.

(And for those commenters who feel I overthink language: I always have a good chuckle when someone tells me I'm overthinking language. For the love of all that is Fisher Price and requires 4 C batteries and a screwdriver--this is, after all, a blog, made up of mostly words. Plus, I have based my entire career on language. So of course I'm going to think about the words that we use. And I do think they are important. Sticks and stones may break my bones--but it's words that I think can do the most harm. Words can break your heart. I mean, dudes, I read Playboy for the articles. Ha.)

Anyway. A smattering of several things:

1. Maya is currently able to identify seven body parts: her foot, her tongue (which she sticks out), her ear, her cheeks (which she squishes in both hands), her nose, her butt (which she smacks), and her belly. Of course she will name none of these parts whilst out in public, so everyone thinks we are lying jerks. Next up: We're going to teach her to point to her spleen.
2. It's been three months since we made Maya our own (Happy Usversary!). Her first photos were all screams and nothing could placate the babe except for special rice cookies. How far she's come! Now nothing can placate her except A) I stop typing or B) I give her a rice cookie. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
3. The Swiffer Vacuum thinger is the greatest invention since the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Um, that and the headband, Mom's Best Pal. Which brings me to....
4. I haven't been to a hair salon since the beginning of July, back when I posted pictures of my haircut with a big pink face photoshopped onto my "real" visage. Yes, that's right. No haircut or professional color in six months. My mom said to me the other day "boy, you sure do need to get your roots done. I guess it's hard to do when you're the only one watching Maya, huh?" Yes, mom, it is. Here's hoping blackish stripes down the middle of one's head come into style soon. Oh, and when the hell did my natural hair color become blackish? (Actually it's more of a sewagey "blonde." The Danes call it "government blonde.")
5. Um, people keep asking us about #2.

#2. Ack.

In May the China Center will implement about forty thousand new changes which will make it even more difficult to adopt from there. And the wait time is steadily increasing to seventy billion years. So I will be....seventy billion 35 by the time #2 arrives from China, if we get past the hellish new requirements.

Korea is currently, last I heard, standing still.

Vietnam is about to slow down as vast hordes of China a-parents defect.

Those are the countries we would consider right now.

And then, there is also (oh dear god) More Treatment.

Random and I have been In Discussion, although most of the discussions go like this:

Person #1: China is going to take forever.

Person #1: Vietnam is going to slow down.

Person #1: Korea seems to be at a stand still.

Person #1: Ugh, we could do more treatments. IVF #80, anyone?

Person #1: Wouldn't it be neat to see how suckhole my eggs have become in the past two years? I bet my FSH is so high it breaks the measuring tool.

Person #1: But it would be so much fun to bring Maya to the waiting room. Ha, ha.

Person #1: Do you remember that woman in the RE's office who ran over my foot with her stroller the day my IVF was cancelled? Man I could have punched her.

****

Yeah. So #2, I'll let you know what we decide when there's anything. There WILL be a #2, it's just the "how" that's up for grabs right now.

In the meantime Maya has come to the conclusion that everything that is round and red is an apple, I have started having nightmares about daycare, and I continue to marvel that I am actually a mom.

While Maya is putting markers in my Uggs

I thought I'd get all serious on you, yo.

I've noticed something after adopting: People feel the need to tell me that I love Maya as much as if I had my "own" child.

"The love is the same," a neighbor told me.

"My friends love their adopted children as much as they would their own," a very good friend (whom I love dearly) told me.

Neither woman has adopted, but both have been very supportive to me. (Which is somewhat more bothersome than if they had been unsupportive to begin with, because it shows how ingrained this thinking is. It's almost like they were reassuring themselves.)

I'm not sure why they told me this, because I wasn't lamenting my lack of love for my daughter. I wasn't saying "I'm afraid my love isn't the same as a biological parent's." It was just something that came out, slipped out easily, like water, during the flow of conversation.

Here is why these statements bother me (and these two women are incredible--so it's not the women I'm upset with, it's the fact that these statements are such "normal" things for people to say).

First: That it was so easy to say. When you read it again, it's almost consoling: there, there, you're a real mom too, your love is real. It implies something needs to be said. And it's so ingrained in our lexicon that if you say something back, you get the overused "you know what I mean." (The other day a veryclose family member said to me, "He never wanted to look for his real father." I said, "real father? Am I not a real mother to Maya?" The family member said "You know what I mean." I said "Yes, unfortunately, but 'real' is not the right word to use.")

Maybe we need to change the words we use to reflect what we really mean instead of expecting people to extract and discern meaning from the sub-par words we use.

Second: The dreaded use of "own." I HATE the use of "own" to describe a biological child. And it is so prevalent in our society--it's very much part of our common language. I read those words all the time, and I hear them at least three times a week--from family members who are ecstatic we've adopted, to very good friends, to casual acquaintances, to other adoptive parents. "I wanted to have my own, but I couldn't, so I adopted." "I know this couple who has one adopted and one of their own." My parents have used these terms also. This is what I usually say: "One of their own? Adopted or biological?" Or "You know, after you adopt that child is your own." Usually the person doesn't even notice I've said anything. Because I'm supposed to know what they mean.

But "own" carries a lot of (perhaps unintended) meaning. Something your "own" belongs to you. Own implies belonging. So a child "of your own" is one that "belongs" to you, a child "of you." And the membership button to announce belonging is blood (at least in our society). The flipside is a child not of "your own," not "of you," a child who does not "belong." And this is not a message I want to give my child, who very much belongs, who is very much our "own" AND her own person. She has someone's dimple in her left cheek, someone's infectious laugh, and someone's shiny black hair, but she's starting to pick up mannerisms from Random and me--she tries to dance like I do (God help her), she is starting to love books (like me), and she adores shoes (like me). Maybe these things also came from her genes, from her birthfamily, but to say that she is not Random and my "own" child suggests that she doesn't belong with us, that she is not "of" us--and although she is not of our blood, she is part of our family.

Third: Saying "she loves the adopted child as much as she would her own" suggests that the love for a biological child is the supreme, trumps-all love that other meager loves have to live up to. (And yet we all know that blood ties do not automatically equal love.) But there doesn't need to be a comparison. It's like comparing an apple to an apple--love is inherently love, pure and simple, it doesn't need to be compared. You don't need to tell me that I love my Cheeks as much as I would a biological child--when I look at her, I don't think "I love you like you came from me," I just think "I love you." Saying that an adoptive parent loves their child as much as they would a biological child would be like me saying "she loves her biological child as much as if she'd spent two years compiling paperwork and traveled across the world to adopt her." Silly, right?

Fourth: Well, there is no fourth. But this morning Maya climbed on my lap and gave me a spontaneous hug. Then she pulled away, looked me dead in the eye, and patted my chest. "Mama," she said. I smiled and said "yes!" And then my daughter kissed her hand--MUWAH!--and placed her hand on my mouth.

There is no "I love my daughter as much as if...." There is just "I love my daughter." I don't need to clarify or qualify. Maya  may not have been a part of me for those nine months in utero, but she is a part of me now.   

24 Hour Maya

Smart Maya

Maya walks J the dog now. She does a fantastic job and as long as I'm holding her hand I don't get nervous--in fact, J seems to walk differently with her (and he's not a run-away dog--we could take him out without a leash if we wanted). Yesterday J started going poop, and Maya looked down at the leash and reached for the baggie holder, which is attached to the handle. She pulled out a bag. To, you know, pick up the poop. Harvard called later on to say they have one slot left for 16 month olds.

Monkey See Maya

Maya likes to imitate to the point of hilarity. She will imitate everything. She pants like J when he pants. She makes noises like barks when he barks. She makes any face or sound you make. Unfortunately she doesn't imitate Mama on the bed going to sleep. *Sigh* (Naptime is still a suckhole of a struggle around here.)

Bad Habit Maya

Just started picking her nose. Well, actually, sticking her finger up there, till it's like she must be hitting brain, and looking at me like, well, what? What's so funny? And she farts and laughs. And she burps. And she fake sneezes to psyche us out.

Tall Maya

Met another Chinese girl today who just turned two. Maya was almost as tall as her. (Of course we were in a crowded area and of course the girl's mom is yelling across the room at me, "SO HOW LONG HAVE YOU, YOU KNOW?? HAD HER?" and I'm trying to be all incognito and such, but obviously failing because my kid is jangling my keys and toddling around and the mom is all "SHE'S TALL FOR HER AGE, HUH?" and the other toddler is yelling at Maya because Maya is trying to steal her keys (because Maya MUST have what you have, too bad!) and I'm saying "Sweetheart, it's okay, she won't take your keys forever, she just wants to check them out" and the mom is saying "WOW SO ALMOST HOME THREE MONTHS!" and everyone in line, about twenty people, is looking at me. Yay!) But yes, Maya is tall.

AhhhEhhhh Maya

MP has started making this whiny ahhhehhh noise all. the. time. In the supermarket (ahhhhhhhhhehhhhhhhhhahhhhhhehhhhh) until I pluck her out of the seat. In her carseat. In her highchair. If I'm not one hundred percent focused on her she is making the sound. (She's not making it now but that's only because she just finished making it for like twenty minutes straight).

And she is doing some serious preferring of me over anyone else and sometimes she cries hard when Random takes her away from me and holds out her little arms in desperation. Yesterday I lost it (more on that below) and so at the end of the day when Random came home and Maya was screamy and crying for me I couldn't help it. I picked her up instead of letting Random take her, like I should have. Thus ensued--well, you know. Not a great night. Although it ended okay with cheese enchiladas and a beer (I've started drinking beer, all of a sudden. I went ten years without drinking a beer and now it's a beer every night. Hello, beer belly! Woo hoo!) Random is such a great dad but it is so hard for me to listen to her freaking and easier for me to just take her--although I know that is not the best thing to do.

Still Apparently Looking Like a Boy Maya

This was just kind of funny. T'other day I was in Buy Buy Baby buying Maya presents for the upcoming holiday (okay, how many presents do people buy 16 month olds? Do you guys go crazy? I mean my good friend J has already bought her munchkin a whole kitchen and a dollhouse and all kinds of wondrous whatnot and MP is getting a set of stackers and a wooden puzzle so far. Go us!) and Maya was wearing a pretty outfit and a BOW. A honking big bow. I put a girlie hat on her. A woman was standing nearby. This conversation ensued (and I am not making this up).

WOMAN: Is that a girl's hat?

ME: Why yes, it is. *Taking off hat, fixing bow on Maya's hair, putting hat back*

WOMAN: Oh, are you sure it is a girl's hat?

ME: *Looking at hat* Yes, it is pink and white....and has a sparkly cat on it...I think this is the boy version *Showing woman the boy version which is blue and orange and not sparkly*

WOMAN: Oh, but you put it on him so I thought it was a boy's hat.

ME: *Looking at Maya, whose BIG LARGE BOW is RIGHT THERE, in plain view* Um, what do you mean?

WOMAN: *Also looking at Maya* Well you put a girl's hat on a boy so I thought that was the boy's hat.

ME: *Baffled* That's not a boy. She's a girl...see the bow? *Pointing to very obvious pink bow in black hair, not to be missed unless you are colorblind pink/black*

WOMAN: Oh that is a girl? Oh oh. My daughter has a boy so I just thought....oh sorry. I thought. Oh sorry. *Flustered, like her whole world has been rocked*

ME: No problem. *Walks away chuckling to self, duh what silly billies!* (Apparently I need to get MP seven "I'm Not A Boy" t-shirts for every day of the week. Currently I only have one and it is sitting in the washing machine right now festering in old dried poo. Shut up all you washers-of-dirty-clothing-right-awayers.)

(On my favorite sitcom last night, The Office, Pam the receptionist said to a woman, "oh what a cute little girl!" The woman sneered "he's a boy." Pam said "But he's dressed in all pink!" The woman said, annoyed, "It's his favorite color!" Too funny.)

Stinky Nap Taker Maya

Stinks at taking naps. I've tried it all. Some days, I can't be bothered to go through all of the required steps (or, hey! I have Important Stuff to do! And I can't spend four hours trying to get her to take a fifteen minute nap!). She definitely needs naps--if she doesn't get one, she is a little demon spawn--but they either require A) a drive at exactly the right time or B) a serendipitous high chair lunch or C) a stroller walk at exactly the right time, and somehow all forces have to align perfectly for her to fall asleep and stay asleep for more than five minutes. So needless to say with no one around to help all day and me alone with her all day sometimes Random comes home and he just laughs because, well, do I really have to say why?

*Losing It* In a Quite Hilarious Way Here and There

Apparently I really don't like it when I'm trying to change Maya and she puts her hands in it and then I see the crayon she was holding is now a new color and the dog is barking and she is screaming and there are suddenly no wipes and the diapers are scattered across the room because I forgot to put them back in the holder after MP used them to coat the floor and, well, apparently that's when I start to get a little hot under the collar. *Flaps arms and quacks like psychotic duck*

Back To That Present Thang

Could you share with me what you are buying kids this holiday season? I need some ideas.

(And thanks for all your thoughts on MP's scar....I think bite of some sort is probably right. And I looked more closely at the scar yesterday and it has definitely faded since we first met MP.)

Just a simple scar

Maya has a scar on her right leg, on the calf. It's round and quite big, about the size of a cigar. We didn't notice it right away. When we first met our daughter, she was crying so hard that neither of us wanted to do anything that would upset her, let alone remove her clothes and inspect her. Yet--this is what every new parent wants to do, right? Check their kiddos for ten fingers and ten toes? Count moles? Kiss the freckle on their upper arm?

I finally undressed Maya in the late afternoon that first day. She was wearing a onesie and a pair of overalls, and I wanted her in something new, something that was just hers. Random told me to let her stay in what she was wearing because she was still so upset, but I needed to do this. She was so upset I just remember sliding on her new clothes without doing much looking at her--figuring I'd save the closer looks for bathtime, when hopefully she would be happier.

But bathtime came and I still didn't see the scar--instead I saw the fine dark down on her back, the scattering of light spots on her that could be moles or freckles or, as the ped said later, maybe chicken pox scars--and I saw her mongolian spots. Mongolian spots look like bruises, and many Asian children have them. They are on her back, near her tiny butt, and they should fade in time. I saw her amazing belly button (I am obsessed with it--partly, I think, because it connected her to her birthmom, partly  because it's so different from mine and completely perfect). I saw the second toe on her left foot, the way it sits above the rest of her toes, defiantly. But I didn't notice the scar.

I didn't notice the scar until the day we visited Maya's orphanage. At the end of the trip, the orphanage director gave us a personalized CD with pictures of our child from early days to present (we are so thankful for this gift). Random and I put the CD on when we got back to our hotel room, and clicked on picture after picture--there must have been 50 or more--of Maya, watching her evolve from a very tiny baby to a pre-toddler. The orphanage had even put in a picture of us holding Maya on the CD , so that the entire effect was a continuum--Maya as a newborn, Maya through the seasons, Maya with her friends, Maya the morning she met us, Maya in our arms. And there was one picture: Maya on her stomach, 11 months old, with a big raised scar on the back of her leg. I remember seeing that picture and pointing--"What's that!??!" I asked Random. It was hard to miss. We both went over to Maya and pulled up her pant leg. And there it was, the scar, healed and smooth, but there.

People have mixed reactions about scars--some people love them and see them as a mark of a struggle, or a souvenir from a significant moment in time. Some people hate them and see them as disfiguring. But most of us have the luxury of knowing the story behind our scar--and when people ask us, as they always do, "where did you get that scar?" we can tell the story. I have a nasty vaccine scar, and I remember how I got it, the doctor digging with the needle, my mother yelling. I have a scar on my stomach from where my brother bit me and wouldn't let go. We all have scars that we can point to, and those scars bring back memories. One of my favorite poems, "The Time Around Scars" written by Michael Ondaatje, talks about how scars can shape and define who we are. "We remember the time around scars,/they freeze irrelevant emotions/ and divide us from present friends," Ondaatje writes. Scars do allow us to remember pieces of our lives.

At first, seeing Maya's scar, I was alarmed and concerned. And I still am. I don't know how she got it, and I almost want to show the picture to a doctor and ask them what they think. Random thinks a bug bite; but it looks too nasty for that. How does a baby get a wound like that? What is that shape, that size that would make that kind of mark? What physical pain surrounded the scar? Did she cry for a long time? Were her caretakers worried? What happened to my child? What branded my baby?

And what will Maya do, how will she react when someone asks her about this scar? She will not know what happened. Perhaps some day someone will trace its outlines and ask her how she got this scar. She will have no answer, only a picture of the wound in a nastier stage. She has marks on her body with no story, no way of knowing how they got there. How would any of us react to this--to the one thing that we know, that we own irrevovably--our own body--being altered in a way that can never reveal itself to us? And yet the scar is a small mystery compared to the mystery of her origins and birth family, but it is significant nonetheless. It is a small piece of the entire picture, but the picture is fuzzy at best.

And, perhaps most of all, the scar on Maya's leg is a reminder that there are, most likely, other scars that my daughter carries--ones that I cannot see, and may never see, no matter how hard I look.

Pictures, because my writing bone is currently in bits and pieces

A PHOTO ESSAY, BY MP

Mama's Uggs fit just fine but they sure do make my feetsies smell like ass (DadaRandom in background doing Very Important Work on computer)

Here Mama, I think this shoe might be a squidge too high for me, plus it tastes kind of yuk, but I hold it out for your approval.

My Thanksgiving was so exciting I refused to take a nap, thusly falling asleep later, at the tray (after I made sure to eat my fill, of course)

And I sure did look purty in my new dress

The beach was fun because I got to walk J the dog

But after a while I needed a hug from Da

The beach rocks! Get me one of these!

Home again and Mama thought the Internet should see the face I make when something disgusts me because it makes Mama pee her pants (can you read my bib? Grandpa hates this bib because he really doesn't want me to be what the bib says, which I'm not....yet)

Talking on the "phone" (she's cradling a piece of egg up to her ear, and yes, she did say "EH?" and try to talk into it like she does with play phones)

Now Mama has to get off her butt and give Da a break because she's been lollygagging at this computer far too long helping me type this.

**************

(Not to spoil this photo essay with angst, but did you hear about this? Big Ovary thumbs down to Madame Tussaud's--the following from this site.)

Waxworks:  We know Madonna's always fair game, but now her little man from Malawi, David, is being greeted in London with some mild celebrity ridicule, by being "imortalized" in wax at Madame Tussauds. In Touch shows the bright-eyed boy pictured in front of the Material Mom in a cradle bearing the sign, "A-List Baby Adoption Clinic. Takeaway Today." But at least Her Madgesty is in good company, because joining her at Madame Tussauds orphan boutique are Brad and Angelina.  Still, we continue to be mystified about why adopting needy children is bad. Our take: Maybe Madame T should adopt a new 'tude.

(And before this, Brangelina's daughter was immortalized in wax by Tussaud's in a scene featuring the new baby, Brad, and Angelina, but Maddox and Zahara were conspicuously left out. Madame "T" can bite me.)

Bond....Mother Daughter Bond

Craziness at Casa D'Ovary with the holidays and the traveling and the whatnot (we're away right now, so computer access has been hard, thus my suckly posting). What the past week has taught me is that my bond with MP is still fledgling, as hard as that is to admit. (I guess my frequent kissing attacks have not succeeded in their mission yet.)

MP is very attached to me when we are around strangers, and she won't go to people she doesn't know, but this week was the first one we've left her  (with grandparents) and she was absolutely. fine. Which--I will admit--kind of broke my heart a teensy bit. Because I am an evil wench who wants my child to despair when I leave. (Ack!) Random and I went out for about five hours during the day, and MP didn't bat a pretty little eyelid when we left and seemed to barely notice when we returned. I could have been the fuller brush guy. She didn't cry the entire time we were gone, either.

She seems to need me and only me to put her to bed--she won't have anyone else, for the most part--but otherwise she seems very okay to go to her grandparents whenever, to hang out with other people, to watch me leave the room. This is killing me. I know we've only been her parents since September 11. I know I should chill and let her grow into us. And it's horrible to want my kiddo to be upset when I'm not around--I mean, that's not nice to wish for, right?! I said to Random--maybe it's because she's so attached and secure-feeling that she's okay when we leave, she knows we'll come back? But part of me thinks--nah, it's probably because she's not really sure you're her parents for good yet.

Otherwise, MP is freaking awesome. Pictures coming, once we get back on home turf and I can get back to our routine. Until then I'm going to glue her to me and continue to annoy her with my constant smooches.