What you do for love.
Mar. 10th, 2010 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgIn two days, it will be a year since we left to go pick up ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
xanxanbell from Taiwan.
Believe me, once we got home, time started getting marked off in fractions of hours, not months or weeks anymore.
And that's how the year has passed. There's no doubt that this has brought the additional level of texture our lives had been missing. The huge amounts of empty time that were going to waste (not to mention the amount of lifestyle doing much the same) are gone.
He's getting the benefit of having older parents who really, truly, wanted him here. That said?
I cringe at how it all came together. It easily ranks up there with the worst things I have ever been a part of. Best intentions, hard work - all of that - and I still have tears in my eyes when I think of how we brought him home, complete strangers to each other. Nobody deserves that. He has wondered where his foster family went - he cried for them for months. When I was finally able to tell him they were not coming for him, I can only imagine what he thought, how he felt at that betrayal. How could they? How could we? I hope he'll forgive us. If we can ever teach how to do that, of course.
I will have some explaining to do once he has enough onboard to support the explanation. (He needs to know where babies come from. He needs to know the concept of foster parenting.) We're working on that. Working that in around the demands of preschool, parenting and just being a 4.5 year old kid (and pressing hard to reach 5 year old benchmarks early, just like he did last year).
Keeping things stable, secure and trustworthy.
There's a lot of this I have not liked myself much about. I'm also very sure that's not uncommon. Loving your children is not like loving your pets, your friends or your lover. You can't expect reciprocation, but just keep tossing it over, hoping they get it.
I can now see how much he didn't like us initially, because he treats other caregivers as badly when he'd prefer to be home with the two of us right now. And I apologize and acknowledge it - and thank them from the bottom of my heart. I know how it feels to be treated like that - he can break your heart without trying very hard.
Parenting him is very rewarding - you put effort in, he just eats it up and grows in front of you.
I can easily see how my mother could say to us 'I love you, but right now I don't like you very much.'
That's a year.
Also? I've just booked the travel and started making the plans for us to go back and see Jim's side of the family for a week in June.
I've spent less going overseas, to be blunt. I'd like to go to Seattle. I'd like to go to Austin. I'd like to see New York. I'm going to Berea, KY. Because it's needful. I'm trying hard to find a way not to resent the heck out of it, but there you go. I can't do that and the things I'd find fun - this is a needful trip. And just to make it even more fun? There's a ton of family drama right now with a recent divorce, hookups between high school sweethearts 30 years later (and the kids these two people had with other people are grown adults going WTF OMGNOOO)...um. I might be able to get some knitting in. I may be kid wrangling so much of the time I won't get any rest at all. I'm building a lot of escape hatches into the plan. It's going to be work, plain and simple. Hooray for my one vacation this year.
That's love.
I'm hoping for fireflies.
I literally fell asleep holding my DS last night at 8:30. That's my life. Rey gave us a massage kit when he came down last, and it's gathering dust. I remember both of us looked at it like it was something foreign and unknowable. And frankly? It is.
xanxanbell from Taiwan.Believe me, once we got home, time started getting marked off in fractions of hours, not months or weeks anymore.
And that's how the year has passed. There's no doubt that this has brought the additional level of texture our lives had been missing. The huge amounts of empty time that were going to waste (not to mention the amount of lifestyle doing much the same) are gone.
He's getting the benefit of having older parents who really, truly, wanted him here. That said?
I cringe at how it all came together. It easily ranks up there with the worst things I have ever been a part of. Best intentions, hard work - all of that - and I still have tears in my eyes when I think of how we brought him home, complete strangers to each other. Nobody deserves that. He has wondered where his foster family went - he cried for them for months. When I was finally able to tell him they were not coming for him, I can only imagine what he thought, how he felt at that betrayal. How could they? How could we? I hope he'll forgive us. If we can ever teach how to do that, of course.
I will have some explaining to do once he has enough onboard to support the explanation. (He needs to know where babies come from. He needs to know the concept of foster parenting.) We're working on that. Working that in around the demands of preschool, parenting and just being a 4.5 year old kid (and pressing hard to reach 5 year old benchmarks early, just like he did last year).
Keeping things stable, secure and trustworthy.
There's a lot of this I have not liked myself much about. I'm also very sure that's not uncommon. Loving your children is not like loving your pets, your friends or your lover. You can't expect reciprocation, but just keep tossing it over, hoping they get it.
I can now see how much he didn't like us initially, because he treats other caregivers as badly when he'd prefer to be home with the two of us right now. And I apologize and acknowledge it - and thank them from the bottom of my heart. I know how it feels to be treated like that - he can break your heart without trying very hard.
Parenting him is very rewarding - you put effort in, he just eats it up and grows in front of you.
I can easily see how my mother could say to us 'I love you, but right now I don't like you very much.'
That's a year.
Also? I've just booked the travel and started making the plans for us to go back and see Jim's side of the family for a week in June.
I've spent less going overseas, to be blunt. I'd like to go to Seattle. I'd like to go to Austin. I'd like to see New York. I'm going to Berea, KY. Because it's needful. I'm trying hard to find a way not to resent the heck out of it, but there you go. I can't do that and the things I'd find fun - this is a needful trip. And just to make it even more fun? There's a ton of family drama right now with a recent divorce, hookups between high school sweethearts 30 years later (and the kids these two people had with other people are grown adults going WTF OMGNOOO)...um. I might be able to get some knitting in. I may be kid wrangling so much of the time I won't get any rest at all. I'm building a lot of escape hatches into the plan. It's going to be work, plain and simple. Hooray for my one vacation this year.
That's love.
I'm hoping for fireflies.
I literally fell asleep holding my DS last night at 8:30. That's my life. Rey gave us a massage kit when he came down last, and it's gathering dust. I remember both of us looked at it like it was something foreign and unknowable. And frankly? It is.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 08:33 pm (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 08:40 pm (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 08:41 pm (UTC)And it's been a year already?? There should be a party!
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 08:45 pm (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 10:02 pm (UTC)(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-11 04:00 am (UTC)And woot for fireflies!
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2010-03-11 05:47 am (UTC)(frozen) Children...
Date: 2010-03-13 06:22 am (UTC)I am very sorry that you feel trapped into going to a stupid family reunion with a bunch of neanderthal hillbillies but I can assure you that I will be enjoying myself with people who want me around. NO, I will not be at the reunion I will be with my 'Hook-Up' doing more constructive things like knitting.
I hope that your 'perfect family' never experiences reality or in the absence of that, time with your mother-in-law. Have fun in Kentucky ya'll.
Chris 'Hawkins' Bell
(frozen) Family. *sighs*
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--
You know what. I mentioned no names, on purpose.
If you want the world to know who you are, and if you're a good person or not - you can do this.
I didn't.
You're talking to someone who defied her family to marry a type I diabetic. And then again when she married someone she found writing fan fiction on the internet.
You'd better get used to people having opinions of their own, that's all I have to offer. If you can't do that without blowing a fuse, you're going to have a very hard time of this, no matter how you look at it.
Perfection is boring, BTW.