Coming Out to the Birth Family

When we adopted our two children at the ages of 9 and 11, they had to come out twice. In no particular order on their first day at their new school, they came out as having lived in foster care and as being adopted into a household with two moms. They moved in on a Monday, started a new school on Wednesday, and hadn’t even had time to consider which aspects of their lives they would and would not immediately want to make public to their new classmates and teachers.

We had screened both of our potential home schools for their familiarity and experience with same-sex and adopted families. Neither of them had any. The deciding factor about which public school to send our children to was made when the principal spent an hour talking with me instead of dealing with a child who had been sent to the office for some behavioural infraction which she happily told me all about. We choose the other school.

As parents, we want to protect our children from homophobia and every discrimination they may face throughout their childhood - from being taunted in the playground to losing play dates. We strive, as much as possible, to keep their interactions with those who may not be accepting of our family to a minimum.

Since we adopted Bella and Bubaloo the biggest ‘outing’ I’ve been dreading is the one that would happen at the time of the birth parent reunion. This is the ultimate coming out that could go either way and result in acceptance or damage to our family unit.

Our kids always made it clear that when they were 18 they’d like to find their birth mom. We’ve always been supportive of that.

The files Children’s Aid had on our kids didn’t exactly make it easy for us to assess the possible tolerance and acceptance levels of the kids’ birth families.

Looking at religion alone, we were presented with a mixed bag. The grandparents’ who primarily raised the kids were Mormon. Bella herself, without any actual knowledge of the religion and how it works, identifies as Mormon. The files on their birth mom, however, revealed that at the time she handed over custody she identified her religion as Pagan.

Socioeconomic and education levels, if one were to make a sweeping judgement, were more likely to reside on the side of intolerance.

We reviewed the paperwork trying to elucidate further clues, with no success. The only thing we were sure of was that it would be a gamble to try to predict how the birth family would react to having Bella and Bubaloo being raised by two lesbian moms. With a safe seven years to pass between the adoption and the first probable contact with the birth families, we pushed it aside to reside in the deal-with-it-much-later-when-it-happens file.

One year later we were found by their birth mom. This was six years ahead of schedule.

Within moments of speaking to her on the phone, we came out. Her reaction? She was pleased. Happy, actually. She never disclosed to Children’s Aid that she was a bisexual and she thought it was great that her kids had coincidentally been placed in a household that would embrace and celebrate that part of her personal identity.

As the kids grappled with having two moms, their sometimes desire to have a dad, and how different they were from their peers in yet another dimension in addition to being adopted, we relished the moment that we were able to share that little piece of knowledge.

Knowing that their birth mom was bisexual, that they too could have been raised in a household with two moms had of they stayed with their birth mom, gave them a little injection of strength. It made the outspoken Bella a little bit more outspoken. It made Bubaloo, who was having a hard time at school with teasing, a little more proud.

This kids talked to their birth mom last month on the phone. For the first time in nearly six years.

They talked about lots of things. Activities they liked, favourite colours and foods. They reminisced about pets and family members. They shared stories of the things they do with their new forever family and adventures we have now.

It was casual the way they were able to talk about their adoptive family with two moms. It was no big deal. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just another day.

There was no big 'outing,' for which I'm grateful.

This post is in honour of the 4th Annual Blogging for LGBT Families over at www.Mombian.com.

Where All the Good Fishes Go

We said good bye to Treasure this weekend. She was Bella’s easter fish. Treasure was a member of our family for less than a month because she got sepsis and died.

The fish hadn’t been doing well for about a week or so. It wasn’t swimming and had difficulty breathing. Wifey did some internet research which enabled us to make a diagnosis.

On Saturday, we knew it would be time to say goodbye to the fish. We discussed it with Bella and we decided to flush her. Well, in actual fact, Wifey would be in charge of the actual transferring the fish from one bowl to another and giving Treasure the ceremonial flush back to the ocean.

It didn’t happen quite as we intended.

Wifey and I had a quick errand to run. Treasure was looking real bad and the time was near. Since we really needed to do this errand (which I cannot now remember what it was so I guess it couldn’t have been all that important after all) and didn’t want to get into what was anticipated to be a long fish funeral, I hurried us along and said we’d deal with it when we got home.

We left, ran the unmemorable errand, and returned. Only when we got home Treasure was no longer in her bowl. She had disappeared. Gone. Vanished.

It took me a moment to connect the disappearance of the fish to my daughter. In our absence, Bella had peered into the bowl and took it upon herself to scoop up her pet and end Treasure’s suffering. Only there wasn’t any ceremony. Or a goodbye. There was just a plastic baggie and a kid who doesn’t connect her head to her heart too well. A kid who took this action solo.

As we were the crappy Mommies, in our absence, our daughter had euthanatized her fish.

My heart tugged for her. I was amazed that she had opted to take this on by herself. I didn’t even want to be part of the fish’s death and had nominated Wifey to deal with it. If I couldn’t handle it, how was Bella going to? We didn’t want Bella to feel directly responsible for Treasure’s death.

We wrapped Bella in a hug and tried to insert a little goodbye with a few kind words for Treasure. We tried to use metaphor that Bella had stopped Treasure’s suffering and she was now enjoying a swim in the great ole’ fish pond or the big wild ocean.

We were trying to distance her from the grim reality of the situation. But Bella’s a realist. She knew that her fish wasn’t going for the trip of her lifetime.

That’s when Bella took the opportunity to educate us on the water and sewage treatment process.

Clearly, Treasure was not swimming in the ocean. Treasure was floating in a pond of poopy water that we’d make clean and one day drink again. She watches “Dirty Jobs” and knows all about sewage treatment. I, on the other hand, now know more than I ever wanted to.

The Looking Glass Forgot to Tell Me About This

My mother took me to see a psychic. This was years ago. The psychic spent an hour telling me about my future and wrapped it up with five minutes reading my palm. None of the things she prophesized, to my recollection, have come ever come true.

But the highlights from the palm reading stick with me.

I will have one, perhaps two, children. She oscillated on the specific quantity and finally settled on somewhere between one and two. The only certain thing is that there would definitely not be more than two.

One mark represented the intersection of my life with Wifey. A notation of soul mate met and partnered with.

The proliferation of x marks on my hand tells the story of a life to be lived with many ups and downs, highs and lows. All of those crosses enabled her to tell me that my existence is going to be hilly, rocky and not in the least bit dull.

There are moments where I crave a simple mundane existence. Where I’d love to not have checklists, projects, drama and child antics. When all of that dissipates and regulates, if only for a day, I’m not able to just be in a non-chaotic life. It’s discomforting. In the absence of full, I want nothing more than to get tossed back into the ebb and flow of the daily tide. When back in that current, I want nothing more than stillness.

This week the children’s birth mom came back into the picture.

She found us two years ago through the internet and has been in and out of my life. She calls us repeatedly a few times in a short time period, asks about the kids, we hold her off and then she disappears for months. This cycle repeats itself. This week marks cycle four.

Only, there is something different about it this time. Something more pressing. This time she asked to speak with them.

Perhaps we’re tired of lying to the kids. Perhaps we’re worried that the time we can shelter them from this is limited. Perhaps we know it’s only a matter of time before they find their entire extended birth family on facebook or twitter.

So we’ve decided to let them know we’ve been contacted and let them make the decision about what they want to do. Do they want to write a letter, talk on the phone, or see their birth mom?
I thought that when this moment came I’d feel threatened as their Mom. I’m not. In the least.

What I am concerned about is what this will do to them and the family balance that’s been created in our house. I’m worried that this could destroy them. That our kids could regress to the hurt beings they were before and we’d have to spend years undoing that - again. I’m worried that they’re going to feel conflicted. I’m worried that she’ll not be the person they constructed in their minds and will be sorely disappointed.

I’m just, well as any parent would be, anxious, concerned, protective and fearful. And yet part of me is hopeful that this could be a good thing for them.

Fish Can’t Live in Puddles

After much debate, hemming and hawing, we finally made the decision to let the kids have pets. One pet per child. Pets in the form of fishes.

We have a dog who is somewhat lovely. Other than the barking, herding and jumping. But he’s our dog. I mean, he belongs to Wifey and I. We adopted two children and they’ve never really adopted our dog. They see him as part of the family, but not necessarily as their family pet.

Turtles, lizards and hamsters were quickly rejected as additions to our family because of our pooch. Aside from my frugality and fear that I didn’t want to be an active participant in the possible starvation of a living creature to help bolster the responsibility personality trait, these animal forms wouldn’t fit into our family.

The aforementioned dog doesn’t really have manners and we’d inevitably spend more time trying to rescue the new family pets from his jaws. The dog really doesn’t understand the difference between 'pet' and 'dinner.' Kinda like most typical two year olds.

The announcement of “fish are welcome here” was incorporated into our annual easter egg hunt. It was the 3rd clue given via two glass fish bowls and matching packages of fish food. One for him and one for her.

On the following day we treked to the local Petsmart so that Bella and Bubaloo could choose their new fish. Before we even arrived at the store, Bubaloo had his heart set on a beta fish. He was determined to get a really cool one.

For those who’ve never explored the world of fishes, beta fish for some reason are not kept in aquariums. They’re usually kept in small separate containers. I think this is because they’re fighting fish? I don’t know how they’re shipped or how they’re kept prior to being placed on a shelf for purchase, but they are kept in clear plastic containers around the size of a sippy cup.

Bubaloo picked out several colourful beta options, all of which Wifey vetoed. They’re all sick she said. She diagnosed some as being listless and others as having some sort of gill disorder. Over 15 fish were selected and declined before Wifey finally okayed one to bring home.

The fish is in his new digs. He’s not doing too good. He’s not very active and has refused to eat a few meals here and there. I’m not sure what his predicted survival rate is, but I’m crossing my fingers that I won’t have to deal with tears and a toilet bowl flush this weekend.

Bella has a regular ole’ goldfish that is doing just fine. But she is not okay with this fish business. Not one bit. She’s infuriated and this sense of justice has propelled her to take action.

Instead of doing her homework, she sat down at the table and wrote a letter of complaint. Completely unprompted. Quite a surprisingly brilliant letter, actually.

She’s let Petsmart know that she doesn’t think what they’re doing is okay. Fish can’t live in puddles, she wrote. Those are her exact words. In little kid writing and all.

The letter is now in a sealed envelope and should make it to the mailbox today. My daughter is a little activist. How cool is that? I just can’t wait to see how the store responds.

Gauging Winners and Losers in the Ultimate Power Struggle

When we returned home after our first ever family-out-of-the-country vacation in January, the whole family was out of sorts. Easing back into the daily routine was challenging for all, especially given the changing nature of each day being exacerbated by snow storms and the transit strike.

On a particularly horrific morning, Bubaloo and I butted heads. He wasn’t listening, wasn’t getting ready and was going to miss his school bus. The very bus that had been giving me a daily headache due erratic pick up times which often made me very late to work.

It was the last request that led to this disaster. I asked him to do something simple like brush his teeth. I asked him again. Then I asked him again. And again. And again.

He was in a state by the time he got to the bathroom. When I came up the stairs behind him, only moments later, he had LOCKED himself in there. Normally I would have gone straight to lock picking, but that very child on the other side of the door had broken the lock by jamming it with a piece of plastic a month earlier, and we hadn’t got around to fixing it yet. The only option left in my arsenal of parenting skills was reasoning.

Things were already heated. My patience had already evaporated under the exercise of my temper. This was the power struggle of all power struggles – I wasn’t going to lose. The kid was about to miss his bus, which would result in me having to drive him to school, which would add an hour on to my commute making me even later than I was going to be initially.

I knocked on the door and asked him to open it. Silence. I asked again. Silence. I then pounded on the door and threatened him. Silence. I then pounded on the door and pleaded with him. Silence.

Quickly my mood went from pissed off to terrified. The child who had locked himself in the bathroom was the same child who had lit a toilet paper on fire in the bathroom a few months earlier. He was angry and frustrated and silent. Possibly up to no good. All I could visualize was the possibility of my burning house.

I panicked and issued an ultimatum. I told him if he wasn’t out of the bathroom by the time I counted to 5, I was coming in there. I told him I was going to kick down the door.

Slowly I began to count. 1. Silence. 2. Silence. 3. Silence. 4. Silence. 4 ½. Silence. 4 ¾. Silence. 5. The door was still closed. So I “Chuck Norris-ed” it.

With one deft, cleanly placed, martial arts inspired kick that door was open and the kid flew off the toilet and out of the bathroom. I banished the child to his room.

I was so angry by this time. Simmering. But I was also triumphant because I did not lose that power struggle. I was also pretty amazed that I kicked that door open so easily. I was slightly impressed and in awe of this untapped skills. Then, I looked at the door and felt a twinge of regret. Wifey was going to be pissed.

I called her to fill her in on the situation and she came home immediately. School and work were out of the question for both Bubaloo and myself. We needed to resolve this conflict.

Wifey came home and was angry. She was mad about the door. Mad about being called home from work. Mad about Bubaloo’s poor choices. Mine too, apparently. She admonished us both.

She called a family meeting and wasted no time in mediating a resolution to this issue. The door would need to be replaced, and Bubaloo and I would be responsible for that. We’d have to go to Home Depot to get another one and we’d have to split the cost 50/50. With a job that pays slightly more than $5 allowance per week, I got the better end of the deal, or at least I thought so until I got entangled in sorting out the ensuing complications.

It took three trips to order the door.

On the first trip we discovered that we’d need to order a custom door as our 76 inch frame was much shorter than the standard 80 inches. We went back a week later with the measurements, only to be told by a different salesperson that a custom door requires more measurement than the length and the height of the door. He sent us home with a worksheet. On the third time we went back, we finally had the information we needed to place the order, and after 45 minutes of dealing with a very nice but not so computer savvy gentleman, we had finally placed our order.

The new door arrived last weekend and today I set aside some to work with Bubaloo to install and paint it.

We went to put the hinges on the new door and they had milled it incorrectly. We grabbed a chisel from the garage and quickly chipped away at it to make it work.

When we hung the door, we noticed another issue. While we knew the frame wasn’t square, it became evident how unsquare the frame was. While the door is 5mm from the frame by the hinges, on the handle side, it’s much sorter. A ½ inch much more noticeably shorter.

Then, because the door is no longer square, it wouldn’t actually close with the handle into the lock hole. We had to chisel a new one of those, too.

Four hours later plus another five where I decided to repaint all the trim upstairs because the can of paint was already open, the door is painted and the hardware installed. It sort of closes. It just needs a little extra firm push.

When I reflect back upon this, the 3 month process to get and install the door, plus the back and forth to Home Depot, I’ve learned some pretty valuable lessons.

1. I will replace doorknobs with broken locks as soon as they break. It’s worth the $25 cost and 30 minutes of my time (plus another 10 minutes to find the screwdriver that no one claims to have taken from the toolbox).
2. Always know whether or not you have custom doors before you decide to let your alter martial arts personality loose.
3. Call Home Depot and let them know about the crappy mill work and numerous trips just to order the stupid door and they’ll cover the cost of the door for you.
4. Think about it, if only for 5 more seconds, before you ever utter the words “I’ll kick down that door if you don’t...”
5. When you’re in the midst of door replacement suckage, and you’re about to lose your cool in frustration, just abide by the mantra “It was so worth it to win that power struggle, because if I hadn’t I’m sure I’d have to be fixing other little disasters because my kid wouldn’t have counted on me to follow through.”
6. Always, always, always win a power struggle. No matter the cost. As the grown up, however, you should probably be a little bit smarter (i.e., quickly mentally evaluation the financial, time, spousal and pain-in-my-ass cost) about which situations you make into power struggles.

My Kids Love Me

One perk of adopting older kids, at least when they write on the furniture they don't use marker. This made my heart melt.

Crimes of a 13-Year-Old and Her Adoptive Mother

I spoke too soon. All is not well in the portion of the humpty dumpty house that is occupied by the 13-year-old. The same goes for any part of the house that I have to occupy alongside her.

This week Bella has had the luxury of attending a week-long program at a local art school. With this great freedom have come copious opportunities to make poor decisions.

Here’s a short list of her (irritating) crimes:

1. Getting some kid to buy her candy and then not being able to pay her back
2. Getting me to give her an advance on her allowance to pay back the kid
3. “Losing” the allowance advance money on the way to art school less than 10 minutes after getting it
4. Then borrowing money from the art school’s receptionist (who thankfully happens to be a good friend) to give to the other kid
5. Confessing to #3 & 4 when getting caught on the items below, but with no intention of paying back the receptionist
6. Biting into an apple (against the requirements of her recent dental surgery) and breaking one of the dental chains (for the second time in less than two weeks)
7. Taking an enormous box of granola bars to give to her art school “friends” leaving nothing else for anyone who resides in the household
8. Leaving art school at lunch to wander around the market and being late to return to class in the afternoon
9. Everything else she hasn’t been busted for yet

I hate lying. I hate dishonesty. I hate that I have to spend all this time dealing with this kid on stupid stuff. I hate that all this stupid stuff is totally able to get my blood boiling. And, I hate that all this stuff makes me like her less than I already do and it’s not like her likability was all that high to begin with.

This is the crux of our attachment issue. We haven’t attached to Bella and she really hasn’t attached to us. She’s nearly 14.

We spend all this time trying to make it work, and I worry that it just won’t. We spend a lot of time worrying and wondering if what’s broken can even be fixed.

I worry that we may want to begin actual work on the Maybe Baby next year and I’m terrified that we could face the same issues with another kid. I’m resentful because the Maybe Baby may never be part of the plan because we may not have the space, food, money to have another kid as what I need to have a Maybe Baby I have to spend on this kid that I’m not all that crazy about. You can’t trade up or out on kids. But this totally isn’t what I thought I was getting into.

I feel awful and guilty about this all the time which really can’t be helping whatever attempts I make at bonding with the kid I already have. I’m consumed by this day in and day out. It’s horrible.

Brother and Sister Love Story Meets Battlestar Galactica

When Bella and Bubaloo first moved in with us, they were children who didn’t know how to self entertain.

Coming from a foster family where there were 3 bio kids in addition to the 5 other kids who frequented the home-based daycare, the house was constantly filled with people. It was a house where the TV was always blaring and there was someone always around. The family had each of their children enrolled in an uncountable number activities, topped off with regularly scheduled family outings, so Bella and Bubaloo often spent much of their time in the family van being shuttled back and forth from one thing to the next and waiting in the van for any given activity to end while being amused by a DVD entertainment system.

When they moved in with us they experienced an immediate culture shock. Saturdays weren’t planned out weeks in advance. There wasn’t a constant influx of entertainment, outings and activities. It wasn’t go, go, go. It wasn’t one thing after another. Both kids were beside themselves and didn’t know what to do. It was also quite surprising that as kids they were quite lacking in the imagination department.

Then one day they dreamed up The Game. Although, it wasn’t called the The Game at this time.

As Bella and Bubaloo began to discover one another as siblings and playmates, they did this through pretend play that can be likened to a verbal rendition of Chinese Letters. Instead of creating a story line by line on paper, they would sit for hours constructing elaborate narratives alternating weaving a shared tale. This wasn’t an action-oriented game. It was totally verbal with the kids sitting across from one another.

One munchkin starts with an idea, and the other builds on to it with their own idea. The idea can only be one sentence long. It also has to be linked to the previous idea by the phrase, “And then...”

In action, it might sound something like this. “And then, they were on a pirate ship searching for gold. And then, out at sea there was suddenly a big storm. And then, the boat was tossing in the water. And then, it began to fill up with water because the pirates had sailed too close to the shore and hit a rock.”

In the early days, this was very secretive. It was as if they were almost embarrassed about the discovery of this new imaginary world. They wouldn’t play within earshot of the grown-ups. And they liked to play behind closed doors.

Before we knew what it was they were playing, and how it was played, we inquired as to what they were talking about all the time. Bella responded, “We’re playing a game Brother and Sister Love Story.”

Before I jumped completely to conclusions, but already half-way there, I asked her to share a little bit more about what this was. “Well,” said Bella, “it’s about a brother and sister who live in a far away land and have adventures on pirate ships and slay lots of dragons.”

There’s nothing inappropriate about that, so I had to ask why it was called Brother and Sister Love Story. There was a big piece missing here.

“Because it’s about a brother and sister who love one another.” Simple. Matter of fact. Appropriate. Since we explained to the munchkins how Brother and Sister Love Story didn’t really best describe what they were playing, we suggested they come up with a different name. This is when The Game was born.

The kids love The Game and it’s become a staple of how they play together. Now that they’re 11 and 13 it hasn’t died down one bit. They don’t have marathon 4 hour sessions any more, and The Game is leading to more sibling squabbles, but they love it and play it all the time.

This morning, I came down to get a cup of coffee and they were at the kitchen table eating their breakfasts while playing The Game. Fully engrossed they didn’t even notice or acknowledge me. That’s when I my ear latched on to the phrase, “Battlestar Galactica.”

A few weeks ago, when the adults were down for the count with the flu, we actually let them watch lots of TV/movies and in a moment of delirium we allowed them to watch this show. I love Battlestar Galactica because it’s such a brilliant and intelligent show, but the sex and killing in the later seasons doesn’t really quite make it kid-friendly. They only watched the initial mini-series, but they’re completely hooked. They're fascinated by humans creating machines and space travel. They ask to watch it all the time and we keep on finding ways to distract them.

I hadn’t heard anything about Battlestar Galactica for a few weeks, so I thought interest had finally waned. Waned it has not. It’s just completely permeated their play.

LGBTQ (Adoptive) Parents

Right now, I’m sitting in the Porter lounge having just doused my pants and laptop with a latte. I think I was a little overly enthused to sip some of my free latte. I’m here catching a flight after having attended a weekend-long conference on post-adoption peer-to-peer supports.

With 28 moms and 2 dads, I was the only queer person in the room. This only reinforced my need for LGBTQ-specific post-adoption supports in my community. All of us had one major life-changing thing in common – we all had at least one adopted child. Despite this, I wasn’t able to connect with any of these people.

In part it could perhaps be because I was an average of 10-20 years younger than all the other parents. The generational gap was evident every time I didn’t get one of their cultural references. Who the heck is Davey Jones and why was running into him at a hotel such a life defining moment for you? (Apparently he was from the Monkees and had a huge teen scream-your-head-off-and-faint following).

It wasn’t a one-sided generation disconnect; it was mutual. Any time I mentioned Facebook they didn’t see the networking potential or the future challenges posed by our kids being able to search for birth parents and relatives.

I’m still flabbergasted by the number of people who assume that birth children are not a possibility for us or that we have not faced an extensive infertility challenge. As far as I know, both wombs are functioning. We just lack the sperm to allow an egg to take up residence there. No matter what Wifey and I do, any child in our home will not be the biological likeness of both our parts. So, why should adoption be any different for us in this respect?

There was even a general disgust in the room of referring to themselves as adoptive parents. Not parents who adopted children. Nor parents with 4 children - 1 adopted and 3 biological.

I love being an adoptive parent and referring to myself as such...if only because I commonly use the specific phrasing to disassociate myself from having had any role in my children’s public display of poor behaviour. Sometimes, I just want to avoid judgmental people who I clearly see thinking “how did such a smart girl get pregnant, not once but twice as a teenager.”

My family is complicated and messy. I’m out. Sometimes more than others. My kids are out and constantly out me. I just spend so much time trying to sort out how my identity puzzle fits for me and has a place in the larger world.

So yeah, I’m going to make me another adoption splinter group and bring together the queers!

How to Make Friends

Our kids have really poor social skills. Like really bad. Their skills are so bad I'm no longer surprised by the immense difficulties they experience at school and in other social settings.

Bella is a bossy, know-it-all, control freak. Bubaloo is a belligerent, belittling and downright mean dude. While we, as their parents, know where these issues come from, other children do not and do not have the patience to stick it out.

We had an inkling about what they were experiencing at school and having seen them play with the neighbours over the past few days, I'm horrified at how bad they are. I'm not even sure after yesterday if the new neighbours will even play with them again. They are no longer friends with the handful of other kids who live on our street.

Our kids just can't seem to make friends or acquaintances, and without the ability to befriend other kids, how will they ever learn how to build a friendship?

We've put them in extracurricular activities. No click. We sent them to summer camp. No click. We've arranged play dates with other kids from LGBTQ families. No click. They go to school everyday. And still, no click. How do we help these munchkins?

We repeatedly re-visit what makes a good friend. Because often the kids they choose to hang around with don't inspire the best behaviours in our children. We see our kids being used for some troublesome purpose (like stealing chocolate bars out of a cupboard at school) or engage them in unbalanced friendships (like only being a friend when everyone else is mad at you) which negatively impact our kids.

Yeah, kids can be pretty cruel. But in turn, we know our kids dish it out back. Or, dish it out first.

Neither child has ever had a single good chum. And, we're at wits end to help them develop the skills they need to help them out. How do you help your kids negotiate the intricacies of friendship?

Command and Control

Last week when I picked up the munchkins from school, I was swiftly swooped upon by the Educational Assistant (EA) in Bubaloo's class. Not Bubaloo's EA mind you, the EA of another child, because Bubaloo doesn't need an EA according to his Individual Education Plan (IEP).

She was quick to talk to me in the voice she uses with the grade 4 and 5 students to explain all of Bubaloo's unacceptable behaviours. She went on and on about how inappropriate his was acting in class. The whole matter was related in a voice to convey the seriousness of the situation which could be likened to the world coming to an end.

What was Bubaloo's crime? He chose to read in class while he was supposed to be doing other school work.

It's not that he was being rude, aggressive or impulsive. He wasn't physically or verbally lashing out. He wasn't running away.

He didn't know how to do the math and was too embarrassed or frustrated to ask for help. He had completed his science cover page in black and white, and didn't want to colour it, and threw it out when that was requested of him.

We set up a meeting with his teacher to discuss.

When we arrived, his teacher knew nothing about our kid. He hadn't yet bothered to read his IEP or student record. He hadn't met with any of the special ed team to talk about supports and effective strategies in place for working with Bubaloo. He was walking into this meeting blind and expected us to fill in the blanks.

We filled in the blanks for him. Only, he didn't listen to a thing we had to say.

I can sum up his teaching strategy with these notions he repeated over and over - "I can't have one kid not following the rules or doing exactly what the other kids are doing because they'll all want exceptions, too. When we're doing math, he needs not to be reading. We need to tell him to do something once, and we expect it to be done immediately. We expect him to act in the way grade 4 students are expected to act. Are we on the same page?"

No, we as parents, are not on the same page as you.

While I understand and empathise with teachers working in our province, we chose to send our child to a school in the public education system that had an alternative program. The alternative program is supposed to be learner-centred and employ a variety of strategies to teach children. It's not supposed to deliver education as a cookie cutter one-size fits all.

Bubaloo's primary educational challenges are behavioural. The kid, as we found out in one of our last meetings with our social worker five months after the kids were placed with us for adoption which is an entirely different story, has been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder (ODD).

You cannot tell a kid what to do and expect him to do it right away. You cannot expect him to take accountability for all of his actions immediately. You can't expect him not to argue with adults.

The teacher knows nothing about our child. The teacher doesn't care to learn anything about our child. The teacher doesn't care to stretch his skill set to uncover effective strategies for working with our child. It's command and control. That's it, that's all.

It's going to be one very, very, very long school year.

Direction North

We visited the in-laws over the holiday weekend. Nine hours to drive there and nine hours to drive back. Gus, our dog, was the least cranky and best behaved of us all.

We went fishing, played croquet, saw the sights of my Wife's childhood, admired Nana's garden, feasted on heaps of food, explored Papa's junk yard, rode on an ATV with Pepere, and fed squirrels and chipmunks from our hands.

We still haven't managed to get the timing right for these visits. This time, we took two full days for travel and had a three day visit. I think we were all ready for us to head home after the second day of visiting.

The grandparent's don't know how to interact with the kids. They feel they should love them, have some bond with them. But they don't yet. That's laced with guilt. We all needed to be reminded that this was only the second time meeting Nana and Papa.

The kids are overwhelmed at discovering this whole new big family that has a history that pre-dates them. They only met four new people this weekend - an aunt, a cousin, Memere and Pepere. They both were overwhelmed and said it was too much.

Bella is phony and fake. Just as we thought we were discovering a realness in her, an essence of whomever she is, it quickly becomes shielded in a sticky, sweet fake. She crawls into strangers laps, albeit they are now relatives, for cuddles and professes her love. Tears stream down her face when we leave because she's going to miss Memere, Pepere, Nana and Papa, so much.

None of this emotion feels real. It often alienates and estranges her more from the ones she professes to love.

Worry creases the brow of all the adults in the room. We all see the danger in her actions especially in the looming teenage years. Bad boyfriends. Unhealthy relationships. Easy sex. Pregnancy possibilities. Yet, none of us know what interventions we can take to help.

Building self-confidence and self-esteem takes time. And, with our now 12-year-old daughter time is something we are lacking.

Who Are the People in Your Neighbourhood?

Having kids makes you out and come out all the time.

We're pretty out. We're pretty big activists within the queer community. Having children makes you out, everywhere, all of the time. It makes you out to that huge mainstream community of which we were often only peripherally a part of as a couple and are now part of daily because we have kids.

While I've never had an incident or experienced overtly hostile homophobia, I'm always a little fearful when having to disclose that I'm a big old homo to new people. Even more so now because I want to protect my kids from any possible negative reactions others may have. I recognize that this fear is mine and I have to own it.

Most often when I come out to someone new, I get to hear all about a gay aunt, uncle, sibling, distant relative, high school friend, college buddy, co-worker, neighbour or random acquaintance. For the record, telling a queer person that you know someone else who is queer as a way to show that you're okay with queers in general is really quite bizarre. Even more bizarre is when you tell me about a same-sex crush or the homosexual experience you had when you were a kid, in high school or university. I'm left wondering if you tell me because you also needed to feel a huge sense of relief in finally having disclosed this big, dark secret to the only other gay person you happen to know.

Driving the kids home from camp earlier this week, we drove past a neighbour on another street who has fabulous rose bushes edging her property. I like to drive by and ogle her garden. But this time, the roses were gone.

I commented on their absence and Bella filled us all in on all of the details.

She's a lesbian Bella told us. She also had dug up the plants and sold them.

When we asked how Bella knew she was a lesbian and how she knew about the plants, Bella let us know that she had been chatting with this neighbour and shared that she is going to a summer camp for kids with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans parents.

The lady then shared with her that she's also lesbian and a mother and two other gay guys live down the street from her. Not the same two gay postmen who live on our street.

While it's great to know that we live in queer central, we were more than a bit flabbergasted when we had to point out to Bella that the woman she was talking to was a stranger and she's not supposed to talk with strangers, and especially not share all the details of our lives.

Bella's come out about her family, we've been outed to a neighbour, the neighbour has been outed to us through our kid and has outed some other people in the process. Apparently, by fluke, we've purchased a house in Mr. Roger's very gay neighbourhood.

Scrabble is Educational and Leads to Educational Moments

Over our two weeks at the cottage, Scrabble emerged as the family favourite board game. I’m not quite sure why the kids love it so much and request to play it ad nauseum. I know that Wifey loves it because she has usurped me as the household champ and regularly achieves scores over 400. As a parent I love it because it involves language arts and math!

We’re using Scrabble to build our kids’ vocabulary and explore the world of words. The kids need quite a bit of assistance still, whether it is in deciding where on the board to play, what to spell or how to become a master in using all of your tiles laying only three letter words.

During a game earlier in the week between Wifey and Bubaloo, Bubaloo thought of a 5-letter word all on his own. Only he didn’t have the letters to spell the word correctly.

On our most recent game, he begged and pleaded for help again. Wifey quickly eyed his tiles and let him know that he now had the word he had wanted to spell the other day but didn’t have the letters for.

That’s when D-I-N-K-Y came into play on our Scrabble board. I raised an eyebrow and laughed.

Later that evening D-I-N-K-Y was replayed in conversation. Bella asked what it meant. I offered that it has two definitions: 1) small or tiny; or, 2) another word for weenie.

As in all good spelling moments, a definition is useless without putting the word in context. Before Wifey and I could offer up a sentence, Bubaloo came to the rescue.

“My dinky, as in my weenie, is dinky,” he exclaimed while pointing to his groin area and then making a small gesture with his thumb and pointer finger.

We all fell to the ground the laughing. But he wasn’t finished yet. In earnestness he continued on.

“My foster dad, even though he had never seen me…you know…naked…always used to joke that my weenie was dinky. I wonder how he knew that?” Bubaloo shared with a confused expression.

More and more laughter erupted from the family. But, the dinky conversation wasn’t yet over. Somehow it morphed into an opportunity to talk about circumcision. So I explained. While they now get what it is and the why, it was really difficult to give them a good visual picture of the difference between a circumcised and uncircumcised penis.

They requested photos. I suggested that we go to the library to find a book. They rolled their eyes at me and then asked, as if it would be a huge, taxing effort to go to the library, why I didn’t opt to use the internet instead.

Gee, I Want to be Like You…Sorta

Here's a snippet of conversation lifted from our day.

Bella says, turning to me, "Mom, I want to be just like you. I want to be just like both of you. Except for the lesbian part. I don’t want to be a lesbian."

I'm not even going to bother going in to detailing the lesbian processing that occured with that one - both with, and without, Bella.

I'll Have a Dash of Tact With That Ice Cream, Please

Today it rained, and rained, and rained and rained. All of this wet was accompanied by a show of thunder and lightening.

The family was laid up in the cottage, listening to the CBC and the crackle of the fire in the woodstove. Wifey and I read while the munchkins worked on some crafts of some sort.

When the storm temporarily broke in late afternoon, we decided to take a drive into the town of Westport to explore the tourist trap and get a spot of ice cream.

After looking at boat upon boat tied to the pier, we stopped into a local ice cream shop. It was a terrific place in a fantastic old house, with art on the walls and posters advertising local happenings. It sported a variety of ice cream flavours, which included moosetracks (my favourite!).

The spot was nearly perfect. The service, however, was not.

Before the kids even had an opportunity to look in and read the labels on all 32 flavours, the server was already badgering them to make up their minds.

To take the heat off the kids, I placed my order. Bella then settled on Bubblegum which the server made her taste before she dished out because it was a special type of Bubblegum that wasn’t to everyone’s liking. It past the taste test and Bella got a dish along with explicit instructions how not to eat out of a waffle dish to avoid it breaking.

While Bella and I dug into the ice creamy goodness, Wifey was patiently helping Bubaloo make up his mind. She was reading him the various names. She was asking what he liked. He also took this as an opportunity to taste test multiple varieties.

Loosing what little patience hadn’t been there when we first walked in the door, the server barked at Wifey, “Don’tcha know what kind of ice cream your kid likes?”

When Bubaloo was at the table safely out of earshot, Wifey politely let the server know as she handed over the money to cover the tab, “We only adopted him four months ago, so ice cream is one of the many things we’re still learning.”

Finding Bella and Bubaloo - Part 1

We discovered Bella and Bubaloo quite like Wifey and I discovered one another. Through the internet.
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In September 2005, one week after our wedding to be exact, we went to an adoption information session at the Children’s Aid Society (CAS). We’d heard that only a small number of children became available for adoption each year in our city and it would take 3-4 years to be placed with a child. We were eager to have our names placed on the list for timing purposes – we would be ready to have a child when one became available for us.

The session confirmed for us that in Ottawa approximately 80 children are up for adoption each year. People wanting children under the age of three need not apply. Older children with varying needs were the hardest to place.

We approached the worker after the session and laid out our adoption scenario. Older child. Special needs were okay. Behavioural issues were also okay. She told us that we could be matched with a child and placed before Christmas, a mere four months away. Shocked and overwhelmed, we ran from the room without placing our names on the list.

Our adoption plans were temporarily shelved.
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The following spring, my biological clock began to tick furiously and I once again hopped on the family starting train. This time, Wifey and I had series of long, serious conversations about adoption.

I began to read book upon book on adopted children and the issues we could anticipate as adoptive parents. I found little published on public adoption and adoption of older children. It was then I turned to the internet to scour for blogs. The ones I liked, I read from beginning to end.

It was during my travels on the virtual highway that I stumbled upon an adoption website that actually allowed you to view children and read profiles of those waiting to be placed. With a single click, AdoptOntario quickly became my favourite site and I checked on it with feverish frequency. I could tell from the counter indicating the number of posted profiles when more children were added and when ones finally found a home.

I celebrated for a child when their profile was taken down and it saddened me when more children were placed for adoption.

AdoptOntario was a last resort for many of these kids because they were hard to place and efforts in their own communities hadn’t been successful. Sibling groups. Global delays. Severe disabilities. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome/Effect. Non-white children (as agencies often were holding out for a racial/cultural match).

Then one day “Rachel” and “Brad” appeared. Call it a gut feeling. Call it intuition. Call it mother’s instinct. I knew we had found our children.
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In that moment of finding “Rachel” and “Brad” our lives changed. The mentally mapped life we had envisioned instantaneously changed from one child to two. Everything that we had imagined was turned on its head. Our plans of adopting a boy and birthing a girl flew out the window. Suddenly, we were compelled to adopt two and we had to redesign the blueprints of our architected life maps.
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We expressed our interest in adopting “Rachel” and “Brad” through AdoptOntario. The children featured on the AdoptOntario website could be living anywhere in the province.

My phone conversation with the coordinator was quite enlightening. She requested the name of our social worker. I responded, “We don’t have a social worker at this time.” She asked if we could forward our homestudy. I asked, “What homestudy?”

It turns out that Ottawa was piloting a new intake model. Instead of sending all prospective adoptive parents through the intensive screening and homestudy process, they’d pre-screen prospective parents and send them through a training about fostering/adoption before determining their eligibility and putting them forth to complete a homestudy.

Adoption agencies across the province were apparently holing an abundance of parents they were unable to match with children. They were the wrong kind of parents for the kinds of children with varying needs that would be in the care of the CAS. Unrealistic expectations. Wanting babies or very young children. Not wanting children with special needs. Not understanding or wanting to erase the myriad of issues that adopted children face.

In lieu of having none of the prerequisites prospective parents normally came with, we were mailed a huge package of forms to complete. We completed the paperwork after an abundance of lesbian processing and really had to ask hard questions of ourselves that revealed some not-so-great things that we had to come to terms with.

Why would we be willing to adopt a child who was HIV-positive or deaf, but not a child who suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome or was blind? Why did we not want a child affected by global delays or of significantly impacted intelligence?
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In choosing adoption we encountered ugly truths that we needed to reconcile within ourselves. Unlike biological parents, we did have a choice in the basic make up of our children. We got to pick and choose from a checklist of traits and issues that would be used to help match our family with children. It’s like genetic screening from a pool of children. Pick a desired age. Pick a desired personality. Weed out all that is not desirable to you.
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We received a call from AdoptOntario shortly after submitting our paperwork to pass along the name and contact information of the children’s adoption social worker. We had passed our first test.

The social worker’s name was P. She worked with the Ottawa CAS. From anywhere in the province, we had chosen children living right in our own backyard. Coincidence #1.

We called P. and requested a meeting. Two weeks later, we met with her for the first time.
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As spring had turned into early summer, we still noticed water seeping into our basement from the western side of the house. Having been apprised of the minor issue during the house inspection the previous fall, we’d already attempted the first level fix. Worst case scenario, we were told, we’d have to tear up the driveway near the house and pay around $4,000 to have the exterior wall waterproofed. We opted to explore the second level fix – to locate where the water was coming in and have only that section waterproofed.

Now that we were getting serious on the child front, we didn’t want to have the possibility of any environmental issues in the basement as a potential threat to their health.

I set up a series of consultations with foundation companies. The first one was scheduled to take place the day after our meeting with P.
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In the two weeks before the meeting took place with P. we cautiously spoke about the adoption with random people. Namely, those of our acquaintances who were current and former foster or adoptive parents. We spoke in hypotheticals. We didn’t dare utter any of these hypotheticals with our families or closest friends.

It was during one of these aforementioned conversations, that Coincidence #2 was revealed. It only served to further solidify my belief that these were our children.

Wifey was chatting with colleague N., a current foster parent and decided to disclose that we were looking at a child-specific adoption. Wifey related the events to date and the colleague asked for more information on the kids.

As Wifey racked her brain to recall details from their profiles, N. began to prompt her on these details. N. knew as much about these kids as Wifey did. That’s because N.’s foster kids were the ones we were interested in adopting.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Gone Fishin'

We live in a city, only 10 minutes from the downtown core, and yet two blocks from our house is a huge park that runs along the river. This is one of the many things I love about Ottawa.

Last night, we piled into the car in search of a bait shop as learning how to fish was one of the top three things our kids wrote on their "I have to do this summer or I will die" lists. We got to the bait shop fifteen minutes after it closed.

I turned the car around and headed to Loblaws. Armed with two fishing rods, some hooks and a package of hot dogs, we went to the park where we ate our picnic dinner and Wifey gave her first fishing lesson.

The munchkins had only been fishing once before in their lifetime and that was with their foster family. On this trip, they caught Bubay (their toddler foster brother) twice which quickly ended the adventure before a hook even had grazed the water.

The kids stood out in the river for about an hour learning to cast and while I watched bits of pseudo fish bait, the hot dogs, fly everywhere. Hot dog, it turns out, is quite tricky to hook for adults and kids alike.

Once the dog figured out that the bait was hot dog, he was the only animal in the whole entire river interested in what was on the end of the fishing rod. A few times, he almost forgot his manners, and tried to bite the hot dog right off of the fish hook.

The sun was starting to set. Bella had long ago tangled her line beyond repair and was catching minnows in the shallow weeds, and Bubaloo was hooking his final piece of hot dog. Wifey and I were taking self portraits on the shore and had given the munchkins their five minute pre-departure warning.

Bubaloo threw out his last cast, and moments later yelled to us, "I got a fish."

Thinking he'd caught another bunch of weeds, Wifey and I were slow to react. I then looked at the line and saw it moving in the water. Wifey dashed into the river, Bubaloo reeled the fish in, and they placed it in the net.

There stood my beaming son with his rod in one hand looking into the net at the first fish he'd ever caught. And, are you ready for this? He somehow had managed to catch a foot-long bass.

The whole way home he kept on telling me how proud he was of himself.

The whole way home I thought my heart was going to burst with happiness and joy for him. I was so proud. And, so fiercely protectively proud of him and his fish. This was the first moment of parenting like this for me. The "ah ha" of watching your kids succeed and grow by leaps and bounds in a single moment.

Exposed!

One of the complexities of adopting older children is what I will term “the nudity factor.”

When babies are born, they emerge naked from the womb. We count fingers and toes, inspect them from top to bottom,examine and count up all their body parts. Daily, through diaper changes or baths, we see our children’s naked bodies.

For adoptive parents with younger children, I’m assuming that early in the relationship, they become familiar with all of their children’s naked parts. Five-year-olds need help in the bath. A two-year-old may need help on the potty. A six- or seven-year-old may need help getting dressed. In the course of daily living, the naked body makes a regular appearance.

We adopted Bella (11) and Bubaloo (9) who are perfectly capable (at least, we think) of bathing, eliminating and dressing themselves. There’s no everyday circumstance where we would just happen to see our kids naked. As a parent, it’s quite a bizarre thing to have never seen your kids’ bottoms or to know whether or not your son is circumcised.

Even more so, as our kids are older, nudity has been a site of awkwardness in the home. Before kids, Wifey and I would sleep naked or walk around the house as such. With kids, we don’t do that, but especially more so because these kids are older kids and carry the entire social stigma around bodies with them. Our kids are no more comfortable seeing the naked parts of the strangers that became their mothers’ overnight, than they are parading around in their birthday suits. Mix the privacy needs of their age with the presence of strangers and we no longer have a naked house.

Over the past two months, as the familial bonds and intimacy have been slowly building, we’ve seen more and more of their naked parts. Seeing a chest while putting on a shirt. Looking at the wound on a leg. Running around the house in their underwear. The oldest one has seen more of us naked than she’s wanted, as she doesn’t understand that the invisible cue given by a shut bathroom door is not “enter” but “knock first.”

With the little one, building that bond of trust and comfort have been ever more prominent in my mind because we do have some medical concerns.

He had a hernia removed over a year ago somewhere in the region covered by underwear that was only discovered accidentally by his foster father when Bubaloo was walked in on in the bathroom. Apparently the hernia was the size of a baseball.

Bubaloo had a few anxious nights before he finally shared with us that he was worried because it looked like the hernia was growing again. After a Dr’s visit he checked out okay.

We’ve also have some concerns around his bladder and urination.

Swimming lessons for us have turned into an opportunity to challenge the nudity factor. We use the family room, and to make sure we get out of there in a reasonable amount of time, I’m directing the kids through changing so they can see what our expectations are.

Showering after the swim lesson has revealed the soap touches every part of Bella’s body and Bubaloo doesn’t believe that washing involves any amount of soap.

For the most part, the kids have been changing from swimsuits to street clothes behind strategically positioned towels. I’ve also showed Bella how to hold onto the towel if she’s not comfortable with being completely naked while changing.

Last night, we got our full exposure in this change room event.

Me: Okay, kids time to get changed.
Bella: Okay Mom. (And she gets right to it.)
Me: Bubaloo, would you like me to hold the towel for you?
Bubaloo (as he points to his sister): I can’t change with her in here!
Bella (already standing stark naked): But we’re brother and sister, Bubaloo! It doesn’t matter!!
Me: Okay, Bubaloo take your swimsuit off while I’ll hold the towel as a screen.
Bella (still standing naked): Bubaloo, it’s okay. See, I’m your sister.
Me (parent with a sense of humour): Bubaloo, why don’t you moon her?

Bubaloo, naked as a jay bird, drops his towel to shake his front three times and then turns around to shake his rear another three times.

Not only have we overcome the nudity factor, as his did his sun and moon dance several times in succession for us, we also had to explain that a moon is the butt cheeks only.