birthday girl

Lee has been a bit impatient with Alex lately because he’s unable to be quiet in the mornings unless I’m there with him reminding and shushing him, because he spills something at every meal, because he climbs on things he shouldn’t climb and crashes his toys and does all the things that I thought she wanted when she said her ideal child was a “naughty boy.” Today, though, she was awake for a change when he popped out of bed, which is what happens as soon as I turn on the lights in the morning. “Leeeeeee! Is today a nice day — for you to open presents because it’s your birthday?” She was so delighted and really emotionally overwhelmed by that.

So yeah, it’s Lee’s birthday. Leah (her birthmother) sent her a card yesterday and she opened it and read it, which is good. I love that connecting to Mara’s sadness and to Mara’s family has pushed how she feels about her own. She’s been hanging old family pictures from both branches of her family in the hallway toward our kitchen, and I love it!

I’m also super proud of Lee because initially she’d hoped I could get Alex and Val to stay with their former family caregiver for the evening so we could have a family dinner out, then decided that they’d realize it wasn’t fair to them. (I was pushing for a babysitter and a dinner for just the moms, but that may have been for reasons that were more selfish than celebratory.) After looking at her options, she decided the best thing to do was go to dinner together as a full family and then a basketball game at her school. That’s the kind of decision I’ve wanted her to make for the whole time Val and Alex have been with us, and so she got all sorts of praise from me for that.

Then it turned out that the basketball game wouldn’t start until 7:30, when the kids need to be in bed. And then today we found out it was actually canceled. So she gets the credit for being willing to go, but a friend of hers who was supposed to go to the game is going to come over so we can sing and do presents and then they’ll go out together while I do kid care. Once the kids are in bed and Lee has had some fun and got to feel like the kind of grownup who has fun, she’ll come back home and she and I can watch a tv show or something before we fall asleep.

It’s been such a huge help to have Lee as a more active parenting partner lately. I understand some of her reservations and hesitations before, but she’s embraced her role and is making great progress. The fostering part of this year has been so tough on her and thus us, but she’s thrilled about being Mara’s adoptive mom. And we managed to buy a house, move into it, and start making it our home! (Oh, and sell our old house, which was also a huge relief.) She’s a year away from one of those huge milestone birthdays and I think Mara and I and whatever other kid(s) we may have at the time will be better able to make it a celebration than I was this year, but she has a lot of people who love her and have benefited from her presence and activity in their lives. She and I are still learning about what we can do as parents and as partners, but we’re managing to do it in ways that pull us together rather than dragging us apart. That alone is a big one.

So happy birthday, love, and I’m glad you don’t read here but that you respect that blogging helps me and that sometimes visiting the friends I make from blogging helps me even more. Once Alex and Val go home, I think we’ll take a trip to a big city where I can see some blog-adjacent friends and we can build some exciting new memories as a family. We have a lot to look forward to before then, too.

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