It's A Hard Knock Life

when i was a kid i saw the musical "annie" and wanted to be an orphan so badly that i didn't talk to my parents for 3 days.  true story, and case and point of why my parents should have known then that nothing in my life would be ordinary.  i remember thinking it would be so glorious to have daily musical numbers with all of my friends whose beds were lined up down a row from mine and swing mops around as props.  to this day i still want a dog (that's right, i never had a dog as a kid. don't you feel sorry for me?) for the sole purpose of naming it miss hannigan.

fast forward about 20 years and guess what?  i still don't live in an orphanage...  

but my kids do.

in november of last year i became involved with 2 year old twins in an orphanage located in sierra leone, west africa.  in february of this year the adoption ban that had us contained to weekly skype calls and annual visits lifted, and i stated my intent to adopt gerald and geraldine (couldn't make those sweet and hilarious names up if i tried).  that very same week i met my boyfriend.  oh yeah.  what a super sexy package i was.  "oh hey cute guy, i'm adopting twins. you want in on this baggage??" i mean, who wouldn't?  oh yeah that's right, every single guy everywhere.  every single guy except mine.  he jumped right on board.  then a week before my first trip to go meet the twins their older brother and sister, mohamed (6yrs) and mamie (5 yrs), became available for adoption... sooooo... we are currently in the process of adopting 4, yes 4, kids.  go big or go home.  

so no, i never got to live in an orphanage.  but this summer i got to spend 8 days with my kids at theirs. and it is a wonderfully happy place.  they are well cared for and loved immeasurably by their caretakers.  they are wholeheartedly provided for by a variety of generous sponsors.  they go to school. they go to church.  they even go to the beach.  in my opinion, they hit the orphan jackpot.  while they are waiting to come home to us they are happy.  and happy is a hard feat to accomplish when you're working in orphan care.  (shout out to the raining season, the organization that runs the orphanage)

emily over at the anderson crew started an amazing link up to her embrace the camera project.  after realizing that she was all too often the photographer and was never in her photos with her kids she decided to flip the camera around.  after my one week adventure of 24 hour a day parenting and my incessant need to document my trip on film so i wouldn't forget it when i had to return to the states, i learned that she was dead on.

here are some of my sweetest and sweatiest moments with my kids in my arms:

ps - thanks mama kat for the perfect writing prompt today.  i'm off to scrub my bathroom til it shines like the top of the chrysler building.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Cry

i didn't get to skype with g&g today because the orphanage didn't have an internet connection.  that means i'm at three whole weeks of not seeing or speaking to the babies.  that also means that by the time next tuesday rolls around it will have been a solid month since we have skyped.  not cool, orphanage.  not cool.

i had a mini meltdown this afternoon.  instead of being grateful for all of the times that a third world country has had an internet connection that's allowed me to see my kiddos i pouted over the small handful of times that they didn't.  instead of being grateful that i will be on a plane to see the twins three weeks from tomorrow i teared up over a mom that was picking out a book with her daughter in a bookstore.  instead of giving myself a pep talk that included phrases like "pull it together, soldier!" and "that kid was bratty you wouldn't want them anyway" i leaned against a shelf in the history section, where i obviously stood the best chance of not being seen by another human being because history books are b-o-r-i-n-g and very few people want to read them much less buy them, and cried.

it wasn't my finest moment.  it wasn't the best i've felt in awhile.  it didn't make me proud of myself.
but it was honest.  and i needed to let it out.

so here goes...

today i am sick of looking at families with their kids and i'm sick of feeling the responsibility to either help raise $35,000 or feel the burden of 96 kids again being without a home or family (can't even begin to talk about this one today, will get to this nasty road block tomorrow) and i'm sick of not being able to buy my kids anything because i don't know if they'll be too old to play that certain game or read that certain book by the time they are officially mine and i'm sick of this new important life and miss my old selfish one and i really really really miss shopping and spending silly amounts of money on myself and my closet and my god i need a pedicure before the bottoms of my feet scrape through my flip flops and i'm sick and damn tired of being the kind of girl who just cries in bookstores at the beach. (oh yeah, at the beach.  because only i could stand in the middle of paradise and whine about my life being so rough)

i, seeking sympathy, texted an adoptive mom-in-waiting friend of mine who told me that yesterday at 1:30pm she ordered a whole papa john's pizza, answered the door in her robe, and devoured it in bed by herself.  

it made me feel better.  and jealous.  but mostly better.  but i love pizza.  but better...

days like today are exactly why we shouldn't judge people by single encounters with or stories about them (right? please say yes and cue the full house danny tanner 27 minutes into the episode hug music).

xo,

m