Tag: Becoming Human

What’s Next?

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I don’t have anything knew too say about the adoption but thought I would outline what we can expect in the next few months…

Even though we know who Sofie is, we don’t yet have the legal proposal. Our Bulgarian and Canadian agencies have her file exclusively, so she can’t be taken by any other family. We are currently waiting for the official proposal to come through all the legal channels of the Hague Convention. Once we accept it we are then waiting for a court date.

Court will take place in Bulgaria. Our Bulgarian agency will go on our behalf and there the Judge will hopefully finalize the adoption and issue an adoption order! She will then be ours! I think I can then publicly share her picture 🙂 Anido then applies for her new Bulgarian birth certificate, passport and Canadian Citizenship. There will be a transit visa to go in her passport to get her to Canada. After this is all approved we can go get her!

The exact timeline is very dependent on how fast the Bulgarian MOJ act in getting our proposal through the Convention and how soon we get a court date. Pray that it is soon!!! The birth certificate, passport and Citizenship “shouldn’t” take too long, but a little extra prayers for those would be great too 🙂 We’ve been told 3-6 months altogether. I’m trying to gear myself up for the 6 month wait because nothing has been on the short side of the estimates yet. I can’t help but hope that there is a first time for everything!

In other news… There is not really any news. We are just maintaining our routine. I think Livi is getting a little board with me since we haven’t had many play dates or seen any non-family members. We have a few planned in the next month so that will be good for her. It is so hard when we don’t have a car and live so far away from everyone!

I have been trying new dinner recipes and loving it! I’m not good at meal planning but have really been making an effort. We have definitely been saving money and are using up all the beans, rice and meat sitting in our cupboard and freezer. I’m also trying to eat a lot more vegetarian meals and loving it! It is much cheaper and we don’t need to eat as much meat as our culture does regularly. I’m also loving all the spices I’m discovering. Jon is a little wary of my skills, especially when I venture from the recipe. I don’t know what his problem is. I maintain that it usually works out 🙂 If you have any fabulous recipes you’d like to share, send them over this way! Preferably easy and not too many ingredients.

Family

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*Warning * 
This is a really rambling post that I wrote just to get all my thoughts out of my head… 
I wouldn’t read it if I were you. . 

With our family dynamics about to change and things starting to progress relationally with my sister who has been estranged for two years, I’ve been thinking about family a lot lately. What are families supposed to look like? What do healthy parent-child relationships and sibling relationships look like? How do you raise your children to have good relationships with each other as children and in to their adult lives?

I have no idea! Jon and I were raised in polar opposite households and as many difficulties as my siblings and I have had over the years, Jon and his siblings have just as many issues between them. One up-bringing was not better than the other. We are both screwed up equally… That’s probably why we put up with each other so well! We basically just need to relax, do our best and accept that we are going to mess up the kids some how, love them each unconditionally and equally, and hope that we have given them the tools to be healthy people in every way possible. 

I probably have too high of expectations of what relationships should look like and have had those expectations brought down a few notches in recent years. Things are getting better with my sister. I don’t talk about it much but a lot of you know that my sister cut her family out of her life about two years ago. We’ve been going to family counselling for about a year now in hopes of rebuilding that relationship and just recently there has been enough healing to start seeing some progress in that relationship.

A few weeks ago my sister met Livi for the first time since she was two months old. That was a really big step for me. Livi is my world and introducing Liz back in to my world after so much hurt and mistrust was hard. I didn’t want to introduce Livi in to the drama that tends to be in my family. It went really well though. Livi was a little confused. She knew she wasn’t her Auntie Sessa but couldn’t figure out why they looked so much alike. It was a little weird at first but Livi makes things relaxed and she tries to get to know everyone. She is a pretty amazing kid. I relaxed and it was almost like old times. There is still a long way to go in my relationship with my sister and for the whole family to heal but we are moving in the right direction.

My family has had a lot to deal with… Less than some but more than others. I always considered us really close… especially us girls. As we all got older though, our lives started to take us down different paths. We didn’t have as much in common as we used to and figuring out those new dynamics was tricky, especially for me who had been in a parental role most of our lives together and has a controlling personality. I’m really close with my mom, some say a little too close. Because of the trials that we have been through together we are slightly co-dependent, but in the best sense of the word 🙂

With all the garbage that my family has been through we have had no choice but to be an open book. We’ve always communicated undisguised, with all the dirt and love that goes with it. I’ve learned to tame my mouth a little in recent years but authenticity and communication are still so important to me in any relationship. I don’t know how else to relate to people but by being honest and I don’t really even see the point. It is just too fake for me then.

I understand that there is a time and a place for true authenticity but I also don’t think we are truly authentic enough. I don’t mean that everyone should go and tell everyone the personal parts of your life that is not there business but I do think that family is where you should be free to be truly authentic and communicate openly. I know that as my kids get older there are things that they are going to keep from me and as a parent there are things that I am not going to tell them but I really do appreciate the openness that I was raised with… even though it was birthed out of dysfunction.

I hope to continue that level of authenticity and communication in my little family while still establishing and maintaining the authority and respect that is deserved as a parent. Hmmm… am I setting my expectations up too high again?

The Great Soother War of 2010

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There is a small window around one year old when most children are ready to give up there soother. We missed it or didn’t care enough about it at the time. Recently, Jon and I decided that this would now be a good time for Livi to give it up. We have been talking with Livi for weeks now about giving up her soother to the Fairy to give to the babies. She was on board with the idea and even excited about it. I came up with the idea, inspired from her ‘Olivia Acts Out’ book, to send her soothers “up, UP, UP to the moon!” to the Soother Fairy to give to the other babies. When she made it through the night soother free the Fairy left a present. In Livi’s case it was a baby doll with her own toy soother… we were hoping to reinforce the idea that soothers were for babies. 

 They are all tied on…
 One last pep-talk…
 Ready… Set…
Go!!!!
 
Wow!

The first night was hell. She cried on and off for 2.5 hours! 15 minutes of crying, 30 minutes of play… the hours went on like this. She eventually wore herself out and fell asleep. I think she woke up once that night, but I can’t be sure. It’s all been a blur. 


Each morning since she has woken up an hour earlier than normal or been up for over an hour in the night and slept in. She has not napped except for on the third day out of shear exhaustion. Getting to sleep at night has heard less and less crying every night but the quality of sleep has not improved. 

Surprisingly, Livi has only asked for her soother once the first night. She understood that it was gone but does not seem to have the tools to put herself to sleep with out it. We have tried EVERYTHING we could think of and even researched for new ideas on the internet! We extended her night time wind down routine, introduced a bottle for before naps, put towels on her window to keep her room darker, rocked her like I did when she was a baby, tried sleeping with her, tried to show her other things to suck on (thumbs, fingers, blanket, fuzzy), tried to teach her to rock herself in bed, tried white noise, let her cry it out, jumped to coddle her at the first whimper, gave her lots of praise for sleeping soundly, etc… NOTHING worked.

Yesterday was day five of little too no sleep for all of us. Livi was barely coping, not listening well, hyper and grumpy at the same time, not sleeping and I was officially sick with the flu. Sleep deprivation did not help my immune system. Livi wasn’t not napping because she was ready to give up her nap, she didn’t know how to put herself to sleep without the a soother. She needs sleeps for her health and development. I needed a nap. I needed my sanity! After one and half hours of Livi not napping yesterday, I was defeated. Livi had won. The Soother War of 2010 was over. I gave her a soother. She slept for 2 hours. I slept for 2 hours. I feel like a bit of a failure but we all needed our sleep. I had already discussed the possibility with Jon after he had been up with her for nearly an hour the night before. He almost gave it to her then 🙂

We gave it our best shot but realized she was not yet ready to be soother free. We are instilling more stringent rules around it now though… in hopes of maybe weaning her off of it instead of the cold turkey approach. She is only allowed to have it in her bed when she is sleeping. We already had a nap and night time rule but would let her have it during morning cartoons and evening wind down time sometimes. No more! Only in bed!

Am I being to harsh on Livi and myself? I think this soother thing is bothering me more than normal because all the literature says 2yrs is about the cut off time. She should be ready. Livi has always been on par or ahead of the literature. I know I sound like a total controlling mother/stuck-up cow but when you have a child as easy as Livi has always been, it is hard not to expect every parenting step to be just as easy. She is going to be a horrid teenager just because I said that, isn’t she?

I think the other issue going on here is my own. Realizing it has made me more okay with letting her have her soother back. I sucked my thumb until I was almost 11years old. I was very self-conscience and, I’m sure, teased about it. My mom tried EVERYTHING to get me to give it up. It turned out that leaving my birth father did the trick 🙂 It was a coping mechanism for me that went on for longer than was normal. I need to remember that Livi doesn’t have the need for that coping mechanism…. this is just a developmental phase that she is not ready to give up yet. I need to step back and watch her for when she is ready, not tell her when she should be ready.  Â