Thanksgiving Day

A few images from the day, and I might add; the first Thanksgiving to ever give me real pause as I felt so grateful to have Morgan. Holidays are very different for me now. Heck - we're getting a tree this year, despite my being an atheist...(she'll eventually learn the origins of every holiday/religious practice and what was borrowed from whom when she's old enough to process the information). For now - let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Pictures:

Morgan with more teeth.

Meeting Aunt Edna and her son, Mike on Turkey Day and sitting for a group shot.

Cornholio

Chaz reporting:

I got home from work late tonight, so I was sitting down eating my dinner when Trish went into the nursery to put Morgan down for the night. Finished dinner, finished watching some slightly odd Hank Williams movie, and went in to check on them. It was 9:45 and Morgan was still not asleep. She spotted me looking in, so I had to go in the room too. I sat by her and the crib for a while trying to get her calmed down enough to pass out, and we played little games as we often do in this sort of circumstance (This Little Piggy being a favorite of hers). After a while she was grabbing my hand and moving it toward my face...I wondered what she was up to until she finally managed to maeuver one of my fingers up my nose.

It was at that moment that I *KNEW*, with absolute, unequivocable certainty that the folks in the Matching Room of the CCAA in China had picked the MOST PERFECT BABY IMAGINEABLE for us.

Not too many minutes later, as she was nearly out, she started singing "DAAAYYYY-OOOO" at the top of her lungs. She finally went silent about 10:00 PM.

Rewind a couple of hours...apparently not long before I had gotten home Trish wanted to reward Morgan for being a good girl all day by giving her a little Halloween miniature Kit Kat bar. Bad move. Beavis & Butthead fans will know exactly what I am talking about when I invoke the name "Cornholio" - the rest of you will just have to search out an appropriate episode and learn for yourselves. It would be no exaggeration, in fact possibly a bit of an understatement, to say Morgan *BECAME* Cornholio. She was running around the house, screaming nonsense, shaking her arms, her blankie, her Monster, her Elmo, empty oatmeal containers, chasing the cat and harassing the bird, and just generally going absolutely, completely, 100% HAYWIRE. Non-stop for what must have been an hour. I wish I coulkd post some of the video we took, had us in stitches watching it later. She *WAS* Cornholio, all that was missing was the shirt over her head. Here's a few shots, nowhere near the full-boat madness of the video, but maybe it helps get the point accross...




She was covered on her chest and belly with drool from yelling and shaking her tongue with her mouth open...this is just a preview.




An action shot...starts to convey the idea.


No more Kit Kats for Morgan, at least not after 2 in the afternoon LOL.

....

While I may have a slightly different view concerning the absence of an 'educational' retort, I appreciate the response given here.

I have already encountered a wide range of query and comment, varying from truly wonderful to absolutely insulting.


Dear Miss Manners,

As an adoptive mother of 3 girls from China I get a number of
questions. Most are from people honestly interested in our family and
I don't mind answering them if they are polite.

One of my daughters has a repaired cleft lip and her scar is quite
noticable. I get a lot of rude questions but the worst is "Did you
get a discount on that one?" or "Was she less expensive than the other
girls?" An honest answer doesn't seem appropriate because while our
adoption agency does give us a break on fees when we adopt special
needs children - I have more than one but her medical issue isn't
visible to the casual observer - I'm not comfortable explaining that
in front of my children.

The first couple of times that I was asked this question my jaw
dropped and I just stared at the person in horror. The thing is that
if I thought someone was genuinely interested I would ask to speak
with them at another time, but that never seemes to be the case nor
does it validate my daughter which is what my real concern is.

How can I give an appropriate answer that doesn't embarrass my child
and gives some real information? To me my daughter is priceless, is
simply telling people that too cliche?

Jennifer Hope

Miss Manners responds:

That children are not physical replicas of their parents is a fact of
nature that dumbfounds many people. Apparently, they were taught that
children are normally a result of cloning. Recessive genes, adoption,
stepfamilies and mixed marriages are novel concepts that spin them
into a frenzy of investigation.

"How come he looks nothing like you?"
"Where did the red hair come from?"
"Are you the real mother?"
"Are they by different fathers?"

If, by this method, inquiring mouths are able to find out that the
child was adopted or has gay parents, it opens a whole new line of
questioning.

"Where did you get her?"
"Did you use donated sperm?"
"Couldn't you have children of your own?"
"Why didn't his real parents want him?"
"How do you know what might show up in her later?"
"Did you mix your sperm?"
"Are they real siblings?"
"How much did he cost?"

Sperm is not considered a social topic, Miss Manners regrets to inform
them. They seem to be unfamiliar with the only acceptable comment to
make to a parent, which is, "Oh, what an adorable child!"

Speaking of whom, the child is right there while being spoken about.
Thus the parent who is asked impertinent questions has a triple
etiquette problem: How to stop this insulting nosiness, how to keep it
from upsetting the child and how to teach the child to deal with the
same problem on his own, presuming that the rude are forever among us.
Flinging back a rude retort and accusing the questioner of rudeness
would sabotage all of these goals, even if doing so was not against
Miss Manners's rules, which it most certainly is. The squabble would
embarrass the child, teach that rudeness is permissible as long as
someone else started it and fail to produce defeat. You really do not
want to hear the particulars of what the child's appearance and
provenance suggest to someone not inhibited by manners. Even less do
you want the child to hear them.

There are reams of jokey answers possible. One could also denounce the
use of "real" in regard to actual children and relationships. And
there is always: "Why do you want to know?"

But Miss Manners has never thought it a good idea to continue
conversations with people who have just finished demonstrating their
insensitivity. Not only does it encourage them to expand on their
offensive themes, but it also leaves the subject of the conversation
squirming. Even a child too young to understand will register from the
parent's tone that he strikes outsiders as peculiar and therefore
needs to be defended.

Miss Manners prefers silence -- but the right sort of silence. You may
not have known that there is a whole vocabulary of silences, but there is.
For dumb remarks and questions, such as the ones about red hair or the
lack of resemblance, the silence comes with a tired smile. Only the
lips move, and not to the extent that the cheeks also move. The notion
to convey is that having discharged an utterance that is not worth
commenting upon, the other person is now expected to say something
sensible.

Nasty questions about how a child was conceived or adopted should meet
another type of silence. The face should not move from a stare that
demonstrates unwillingness to believe that anyone would say such a
thing. It is the feet that move after the barest of excuses. To be
quizzed about such personal matters is insulting, and people who do it
do not deserve to be tolerated, much less answered.

The answer that is needed is for a child who then inquires what
happened. That is not the time to explain the child's circumstances
and the fact that the parent is happy and proud. It is the time to
explain that there are a lot of nosy and rude people in the world who
will use any excuse to probe others and that they do not deserve to be
satisfied.

Seriously silly

There is a face under that hair...





Morgan has this new thing...do you want to see her tongue? Just ask...

What a goof - I wonder where she gets it from? ;)

And another...

Chaz reporting:

I can't believe she left out my favorite picture of the bunch!



Halloween was a trip this year...first off we were coming home from shopping on the afternoon of the 30th and there were little kids in costume running around soliciting candy (and more than a few big kids, no costume, with charming one-liners like, "Uhhh, can I have some candy?"). Turns out on account of the hurricane our local governments decided kids should trick-or-treat on Sunday afternoon, before dark, instead of Monday night like the rest of the free world. It really just meant we had to sit out there and give candy to the kids two nights in a row instead of the usual one - 42 Sunday and 140+ Monday. Great idea. Where is it written that local governments have to turn stupid after hurricanes?

Add to this the joy of dialing 911 every 5 minutes over the-kids-who-have-no-clue across the street and Halloween was....*special*....this year. Of course seeing Sweet Pea handing out candy to the kids who came around made it all worth it anyway. She really did seem to enjoy it.

Halloween Images (finally)

Well, I have to admit that Morgan didn't get quite the same pleasure out of the event that I did as a child, but then again - she is only 21 months old and had never heard of All Hallows' Eve before...

Getting her to pose, much less hold still for the camera proved futile. ;)

She didn't much care for the idea of a costume, and smiles were rare. However, she DID truly enjoy handing out candy to the 'children' that visited as we waited outside the house (with our next door neighbor joining us).

I didn't think it prudent to take her out trick or treating, not finding any wisdom in granting her so much sugar...but thought it was a gentle lesson in giving (and sharing) to allow her to provide the alloted sweets for others as they came. She did have a sample of Hershey's Krackle bar and found it to her liking - the first chocolate that she didn't turn away.