Wet Bars of Soap

I originally wrote this in 2013 - the year I gave birth at the age of 43.  Pregnancy was never on my bucket list. Becoming a mother was.  I guess I should have never adopted because once you adopt then inevitably you get pregnant. At least, that's what they say.  Who the heck is "they" anyway?  A statement from The National Infertility association: " Studies reveal that the rate for achieving pregnancy after adopting is the same as for those who do not adopt."   I read elsewhere that statistic is just over 7%.  Here is another  interesting statistic that makes me a parenting freak.  At the age of 42 there is only a 5% chance every month of a woman conceiving naturally coupled with only a 40% to 50% chance of conceiving within a year of trying.  Compare that to a 75% chance of conceiving when a woman is in her 30's. We "tried" to get pregnant for 13 years.  And the final factoid that cements my status as parenting anomaly... The tw...

Bleary eyed at at 4:30am I reached into the pantry to grab the cinnamon for the cinnamon rolls that my kids requested for Christmas morning. Cumin had somehow found its was into my hand.  Imagine the utter dissapointment (and total disgust) my kids would have experienced if I had not realized my mistake before sprinkling the seasoning on my first time ever from scratch dough.  Yeah, that would have made for a rocky start of our much anticipated Christmas Day. Another baking misstep took place a few days before when I could not find a gingerbread man cookie cutter. The girls had been asking me for weeks to make the happy, little cookies to give to their friend but, of course, I procrastinated. What I came home with was a set of Hanukah shaped cookies cutters from the clearance table at the grocery store. Surely a Maccabee man could pass for a gingerbread man.  Well it did, but then the kids grab the menorah, Star of David and dreidel shapes and began pressing them in...

A couple of weeks ago when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake, I made no wish. I have everything I want, including the two best birthday gifts a girl could ever receive - my babies.  Upon turning 41, my arms ache from being full most of the day; my knees are dry and bruised from spending so much time on the floor; I rarely get a full nights sleep and my house is almost always in some state of messiness. But none of that matters, we have our girls! We have been parents for a crazy, fabulous, frustrating, amazing, tiring, wonderful three months!!!  So, since it is hard to cover three months since we have been home in one blog post and I am not a very good writer I will just hit some of the highlights in yet another bulleted list. We spent the first week or two completely jet lagged, awake at night, sleeping during the day and tried desperately to reset our circadian rhythm. Thankfully, our friends and family were so wonderfully helpful, especially my mom. W...

Never before have I been so sweaty, sticky, and stained and cared so little. On a sign in the ladies room at the US Consulate: Help keep our environment clean: Please keep your feet on the floor and not on the toilet seat. What the ...? My new diet and exercise plan - parenting twins. Hong Kong - ultra firm mattress, barely uncomfortable. Nanchang - surprisingly plush mattress, just right.  Guangzhou - what mattress? it really should be called a platform or plank.   Loving the people, marketing and salesmanship skills of the Chinese shop owners. I wonder if they have attended a John Maxwell seminar. He is popular here, you know. One would think that the country that built this thoroughly modern skyscraper , the second largest in the world, could come up with a way of making the tap water potable. Why are there so many Chinese people wandering around the hotel in their robes? Note to self - do not shake a baby bottle filled with very hot formula. Question:...

Today we transitioned from Nanchang to Guangzhou.  I actually felt some sadness upon leaving, mostly for the girls. This is where they were born, their heritage and their biological parents. We may never visit this place again. I truly felt the burden of their loss today. Then the plane flight. Oh, the plane flight.  The night before we had finally settled into a bottle feeding routine. Prior to this we had been struggling to get the to suck so we just spoon fed thickened formula and rice cereal mixture. Consequently, the girls were not urinating much. Until the moments before the flight.  The minute I placed Olivia on my lap she tinkled all over my pants. Her diaper was already full so it had no where else to go.  So I quickly changed both girls diapers - while seated in the coach section on a Chinese airline. Keep in mind that Chinese people are smaller than Americans therefore the airlines make smaller seats. Righ...

 I really wish I could have been posting to my blog right along but that was just impossible. Tonight since I have just a very small amount of energy left I am going to try to post for previous days. So let's see if I can even remember what we did yesterday. I will begin with the evening. All the adoptive families, and there are lots of them met at a local Thai restaurant for a meal.  The place was packed with babies, high chairs, strollers, diaper bags, tired parents, and cranky babies - one of our included. I can't imagine what the other customers thought, expect pure regret for having chosen that restaurant.   The food was delish, at least the few bits of red curry with coconut milk I was able to gulp down between feeding the girls rice congee and steamed veggies.  The clouds decided to open up while we were in the restaurant so we had to wait for our guide to run back to the hotel to get umbrellas. Picture Dave and I trying to push a double strol...