Unsinkable

Got home late from an event at work today and a nice email was waiting for me.  Rose's birth certificate and the final paperwork we needed from Ethiopia to finalize our state clearance for Wisconsin and all that!  So, ten days to travel and still a bit of pushing papers, but this one is pretty cool, because it lists Charles and me as Rose's parents, and has an updated picture of her (looks like they shaved her head again!)  She's going to be totally punk rock for Dilon's birthday party.  We'll have to do a Sinade O'Connor or Skin look for her.

ONLY TEN DAYS LEFT BEFORE WE'RE ON OUR WAY! 

So, for those of you new to the adoption jargon, attachment is a big, important word.  It is foremost on most new adoptive parents' mind, and of course we won't be left out if there's something to worry about. 

Attachment: The formation by a child of significant and stable
emotional connections with the significant people in its life. This
process begins in early infancy as the child bonds with one or more
primary caregivers. A failure by a child to establish these types of
important connections before the age of about five years may result in
the child experiencing difficulties with a wide variety of social
relationships for significant periods of time in its life. http://glossary.adoption.com/attachment.html

But anyway, most of the readings we've done on this subject recommend that when you've returned with the child, you stay within your immediate family unit and spend time bonding and getting to know and trust each other.  But the rub is, most suggest that no one else comes over.  Which just isn't going to fly with most of the family… 

So I posted a question to our Ethiopian Adoption Bulletin Board that we participate in, and got some good feedback from folks, which I'm going to excerpt here without names as I haven't asked permission to reprint for you fine folks:

"For the first week, it was very much just us, though family did stop by
to say hello (always making sure there was no one else visiting at that
time).  No one made an effort to hold, hug etc, and we kept her in the
hip carrier during visits."

"I would say that we didn't go out much for the first two weeks, and we
are still keeping all visitors except for grandparents at bay."

"We really wanted our son to know that this was our house and that only
the 3 of us were his family. We do make sure when we have visitors that
they aren't to hold him, and if he needs something or gets hurt that we
should be the ones to help him. "

"It seems that he does fine when we are at a place where no one really
notices him specifically, but if he is
the center of attention, he gets very shook. So we
are extremely careful of that now, and won't take him to places and
functions where people are excited to meet him until he has been here
longer and we feel he can handle the extra attention."

"We were careful for a few months and then slacked off thinking we had
done our job. When our son saw our IAC Dr. one full year later, she
pulled me aside after the appointment with great concerns about his
comfort level with her at the visit. .. She actually had us talk to
friends at that point to have them back way off on their physical
affection with him. We were to really tighten our reign on him
emotionally, and draw very clear boundaries, because according to her,
he had none himself. Needless to say, we felt terrible that we had not
continued to guard him longer. He is the friendliest little guy with a
smile that wins everyone's heart, but according to her, that was not
his job anymore. He needed us to draw lines that had not been drawn for
him…at least not drawn long enough. I would absolutely error on the
side of caution on this one."

"If our daughter wants something from Grandma or Grammy they'll say, 'Let
me just ask your Momma if I can/should (whatever the request is)'  I
know all good things should come directly from us for the time being
but I do want to allow her grandparents into her life."

 I found these tips from other adoptive parents very helpful, so we'll be trying to implement some of them in our household.

Specifically:

1.  For the first week, it's going to be only the Collinses of Bender Road at the house with Rose.
2.  After that, only one or two new people at a time.
3.  Only me and Chuck pick her up.
4.  Ask us about ANYTHING (mostly just for show, in front of Rose, to indicate that we are her gatekeepers and caregivers)
5.  Try to remember that she is a small child, from another country, who has just been uprooted from every sight, sound, taste, smell, touch that she has known and been transplanted in a totally foreign place where she does not understand the language, the relationships between people, or just about anything.  Be soft, gentle, and kind.

So, Nic treated Chuck and me to a movie today <thanks, Nic!>.  We went and saw Pirates of the Carribean II, and it was pretty enjoyable in general.  And so during the movie I'm remembering this episode of "Between the Lions" that Dillon and I checked out of the library called "To the Ship!" and it's about gender stereotyping and the brother lion saying to the sister that she can't be a pirate because she's a girl. (That was like, the best treatment of that subject I've ever seen, it is fantastic!) And in "Pirates", Kiera Knighley is a total kick-butt pirate and has some awesome swashbuckling scenes where she's swordfighting with the best of them and sort of pokes fun at the damsel in distress and all that.  And I think, this is a pretty good movie, I'll have to buy this- because I love the action movies where the girls hang with the boys and blow stuff up and beat people up and everything…  And I'm thinking about this sort of role model for my daughter-not that I want her to grow up and be a pirate, but you know, action heros are cool.

But then I consider the portrayal of black women in the film.  And then you get the freaky medicine-woman and the cannibal tribeswomen with the bones through their nose, etc.  Which kind of presents a problem, you know?  And the lack of cool women heroes in action roles is compounded by the further lack of cool black women heroes in action roles.  Not like this is new-I wrote a paper on it in college many years ago-but I am just feeling that more acutely these days.

 Sort of like looking for some dolls, etc. to bring with for the plane ride home and being unable to find many with brown skin tones.  I wound up getting a "groovy girl" who resembles (in size, shape, etc.) Dillon's doll, Babycakes, but was dressed unpardonably, so I bought another outfit to put her in.  I also got two "groovy girl minis" which are smaller, poseable figures that I thought might come in handy on our thirty-hour flight.  And two "Staceys", one brown and one white, because the brown one came in a tutu but the white one came in a soccer uniform, so I needed to have that outfit.  But I was really surprised about the lack of dolls-of-color, so to speak, at a couple of different big-box retailers in our majority-minority city.  I guess I shouldn't be, because feminists I know have been talking about it forever, but while Dillon has a few dolls, we don't spend tons of time in the toy aisles at stores (since he sort of has an unreasonable amount of toys already) and so I really never noticed.  The one exception to this rule seems to be the Bratz dolls, but I am sort of anti-those right now…

Chuck looked at the bag of dolls and toys I was putting together and he couldn't believe I was packing five dolls to bring with to Ethiopia, but I am thinking, thirty hours traveling is a long time to try to keep a two-year-old focused on anything, so I'm bringing coloring books (with those magic markers that don't write on anything but the special paper-I'm thinking THAT will come in handy) and a few toys that we should be able to keep sort of all in one place.  I don't want to spend the flight on my hands and knees looking for a lego or whatever… 

I noticed the sense of elation I got from folding the little pajama sets I got yesterday to bring to Ethiopia for Rose (she's our kid the minute we get there, so we're supposed to have clothes, toiletries, etc. for her as soon as we arrive).  I wish I could bottle the feeling I get from looking at these clothes.  I'm sure in a couple of months it won't be nearly as exciting, but I hope I can look back and remember this.