Birthday Girl

Thumblini is now one year old.

It is hard to believe that we met her only 2 months ago, as she is absolutely the glowing bright light at the center of our world.
What on earth did we do without her...besides sleep?

Thank you to those of you who sent birthday greetings and gifts. Our family of relatives and friends is much larger than we'd ever imagined :) Here are some photos of our little sweetheart celebrating.





PS: TIP - Never feed a Gremlin after midnight, and NEVER feed a baby birthday cake after 7pm!..alas, if only our friends A & P had mentioned this BEFORE yesterday's candle-lighting, perhaps our little 'blini would have made it through the night without opting for the All-Night Jumping-Bean-a-Thon. Ay carumba!

- CM & DD

Beach Blanket 'Blini

No, it has nothing to do with you, Dear Reader. Me & the Mrs. have just been struggling to hold on to our best-intended blogging spirit. We continue to navigate the management of daily life as New Parents, and in-between gawking at Thumblini, working, attending to Chateau Nous, and remembering to eat, we are finding only the thinnest of slivers of "free" time. 'Spose this is the normal, natural way of things, but it does impinge on, oh, reflection and posting. So, a few updates and some photos are overdue:

1. We had a Christmas/Thanksgiving In January last weekend at my parents' house at the shore. Thumblini staggered under a technicolor plastic avalanche of goodies, and chased down every last rippable shred of wrapping paper. The adults fawned and doted, and Little T was overstimulated to say the least, but it was a wonderful time and a great visit.


2. We took her to the water ("the big bathtub") for the first time. She didn't know what was up with wave action, and she definitely was unimpressed with the cold sand on her foot (oops, Mommy!).

3. For ThanksChristmas, I got a lesson in oyster shucking. I even have my own gloves now. I will teach Thumblini as soon as she is cleared to eat raw shellfish and wield a 3" knife.

- DD

Missing the Munchkin

Dateline - My Office

Just finishing up for the week and reflecting on some major Thumblini Withdrawal. While the stouthearted Mrs. has carried the Parent torch with cunning and stamina (and binkies), I had to return this week to work from an unnaturally pruned paternity leave. Some might applaud the sudden ice water dunking (builds character after all, right?), but I’m of a different mind. At the beach, it’s toes-first into the surf. After a sensible period of time, we’re up to the shins. Some time before sunset, it’s (zowie!) thigh high. The Great Thumblini Adventure, with it’s Kazakhraziness, sudden twists and turns, button hooks, feints and 28 hour return trip has not disabused me of my desire to ease into my warm bath of comfort. Sure, I can take it, but now that I have my own bed, food I select, and plenty of access to non-rationed Pepto (if needed), I’d like to soak in the cozy, albeit bleary-eyed nascency of fatherhood. The Mrs. knows this and has promised to salve my misery by making frequent attempts to bring the Blini’d One by the office for coffee and juice as often as possible. Like today. That was real nice.

So what can we do but make lemonade from the lemony-fresh smell of baby wipes? Though my time with the child has been suddenly and drastically reduced, I am now home and I was able to end the week not on the slightly sour note of a cantankerous couple’s session, but on the sweet high of rocking Miss T to sleep after her mother had scrubbed her and rubbed her. I held the baby, sang a few songs and mangled some lyrics - but she didn’t care. And though I nearly woke her with suppressed chuckles (see other blog) after finding myself inadvertently promising that “if that muddy puddle don’t dry, papa’s gonna buy you a chicken pot pie,” she still didn’t care. Heck, after skipping her afternoon nap, she wouldn’t care if we were cruising down the middle of I-95 on a pavement grader.

Did somebody say "weekend?"

- DD

PS: I realize we're loading up on Thumblini-in-a-pen photos (and striped onesie to match), but by pure coincidence this is where the cutest things happen. Stay tuned, though, we're taking a little road trip this weekend, so we'll have more photos to share - maybe even some out-of-doors!

The Curious Incident of the Binkie in the Nighttime – or - How I Learned My Lesson

Each time Thumblini was placed into a crib in the Baby House, they would pop a pacifier in her mouth. This occurred whether she was tired or not. And there she would sit, binking away on that tiny sliver of comfort. No longer in the BH (!), but still in a major life transition, we didn’t feel comfortable taking away this aid in self-soothing. So we decided that we would let her keep the pacifier, and save the weaning for later. We did tons of research, and felt comfortable with our decision.

We understood that before she came to us full-time, she was getting by on only the absolute minimum of care. She was fed and diapered and bathed on a schedule, rather than according to her personal needs, but she never cried or complained - after all, what was the point? They’d just pop in a pacifier.

I was hoping that even though it might be more work for me/us, she’d start to feel entitled to cry sooner rather than later after starting her life with us. I wanted her to feel loved and attended to, and I needed her to know that she could let it all hang out and I’d be right there for her every step of the way.

So, over the past month since she started living with us full-time, her habits have changed quite a bit, and in particular, her nighttime sleeping habits. She began with us, sleeping like the proverbial baby through the night. If she rolled over or made a peep, I’d be there to make sure she was OK, or to put her pacifier back in her mouth. As the days and nights progressed, she started to figure out that I’d come to her every time she cried out, so she started doing this once or twice each night. But then, she began crying out more and more when she’d lose her pacifier, and by the time we hit this past Sunday night, I was popping that thing back into her mouth 10+ times! Needless to say, by yesterday “binkie sherpa” duties had worn me down to a nub, and I started asking for advice and input from doctors and friends.

Two things became clear as I talked it through with trusted people: First, my baby has awakened! She is beginning to “get” that I am here for her and will attend to her needs when she cries. This is the WONDERFUL upside to what felt like a very sticky situation. The downside, in case it’s not yet clear, is that while she has awakened, I cannot sleep! To remedy this, I had one friend suggest that I place lots of pacifiers into her crib so that when she wakes up, she can easily find one. Sounded silly at first, but I figured it would be worth a try. However, I also had a doctor say that this has nothing to do with pacifiers. It has to do with her attaching to me and the fact that she is testing to see if I’ll come to her when she cries out. I completely agreed...with both. It has become clear that Thumblini has been testing my limits to figure out how our relationship works.

So my sweet-but-sometimes-salty husband and I discussed it last night (I cried a lot and he bit his lip) and we decided to place a bucketful of pacifiers in the crib for the little one. We also decided that he would hold me when she cried, so that I would be comforted (and not completely tortured) as we let her search for her own pacifier. As we went to bed, I was scared that I was about to be EVIL MOM. How would I fare, let alone Thumblini?


The lights went out. She tried to get my attention in a myriad of hilarious and heartbreaking ways (did she really use her blanket as a distress beacon?). I had to discipline myself over and over again not to go to her. But each time, she would eventually cut her shenanigans short, fumble for a pacifier, and fall back asleep. This morning when she woke up, I peeked reluctantly through my fingers only to find...I was Evil Mom no more. Signed, sealed, and delivered with that perfect ear-to-ear grin on Thumblini’s face.

- CM

PS Special Thanks to DD - my dear husband and the managing editor of this blog - for helping to make this post readable....In my exhaustion it hasn't been so easy to write clearly.

Hold The Phone

Well, we’ve reached the end of our first week home in New England, and we are commemorating the 1st month as a legal family. (Previously outlaws, we went legit on December 4th at 6pm in the city of Semey (neé Semipalatinsk), in the former SSR of Kazakhstan. It was chilly inside and outside the courtroom, but we managed to ply our case (with considerable expert help), and with a stroke of the judge’s pen, we were grafted to Thumblini until the hereafter. Hurrah!

The little one? After her bath tonight, I carried her upstairs in a plush terry towel hooded with a sun and the approximation (in cotton, of course) of the sun’s rays. In my opinion, this getup transforms her from my beloved, Siberian Thumblini into a pastel-colored Aztec priest. Then she gets a baby oil spa treatment at the hands of the Mrs. I get to do the dishes.

So, yesterday, as part of the slow return to a routine, we went to the dry cleaners. The two sisters who run the place were so excited to see the baby, that they ran out in 17 degree weather, forgetting their coats. Then, of course, they ran back in (were the coats theirs, or just borrowed from the customer rack?) and returned, be-downed. One of them jumped into the car and sat with me, fawning over the baby. These women could not keep their hands away from the baby. They seemed compelled to reach for her as though she were a sliver of the True Cross, and entitled to reach for her feet and make what appeared to be gang signs in the air in front of Thumblini as they cooed, smiled, and otherwise contorted their tan faces (lovingly conditioned in UV booths). It was then I realized: babies are communal property. Babies are the touchstones to our dreams, desires, and our fantasies of regression, a sure shot back to a person’s own child-rearing encounters, and a window to what is profound about the human experience. The kid, in other words, transforms in a moment from the flesh-and-blood, spit-upping, gurgling, sleeps-with-the-pacifier-dangling-from-her-mouth human who is my daughter, into a mirror reflecting the person looking at her fat, rosy cheeks. Although I know it is futile, and that judgments will be made of her, and that people will experience her as they wish, and possibly to her future consternation, I must entreat:

People of earth: Co-opt somebody else’s kid. Me & the Mrs. have worked so dang hard to find her, and now you want to fill the air around her with so much pablum about how your nephew pees in his bed? You can’t possibly see the gravity and joy in our simple, family stroll through the aisles at CVS to select from among the four available flavors of Pedialyte. And you want to get your french-manicured hands on her tiny socks? Oh, she might look like a China Doll, but she can bench press 350 without breaking a sweat, so be warned, my friends...

OK, I know no one means any harm, but I resist the pigeonholing and the reductionism: yes, she’s a cutie, but she’s lived a heckuva life, and its a privilege to be in the same room with her. Harumph.

- DD

Presenting our Pre Post-Placement Post

Greetings and Salutations to our family, to our friends new (silver) and old (gold), to internet gadflies and to those who have inadvertently strayed into our li’l slice of cyberspace. Me and The Mrs. welcome you to the blog to end all blogs about New Englanders who fall in love with a Kazakhstani from the Steppes, name her Thumblini (among other things), and live ever after as they comment in perilous detail about the mundanities of life, adoptive parenting, the world at large, current events, politics, sartorial missteps, and the merits of the Diaper Duck. Yeah, one of those blogs. Oh, and we’re also planning to let it all hang out. You might find yourself encountering something that rings true for you (even if you’re not an “AP” as they say, or even if you’re not from Kazakhstan), or you might find something that’s more raw and emotional than you expect. We aim to please all comers.

In a previous blog, we documented the last six months of trials, travails and travels encountered on the road to meeting Thumblini (* more on the name in a moment). Home from Central Asia just five days, we already have to prepare our first of many post-placement reports spanning out into the future until the Little One is Of Age at 18. This first report is due in two weeks (!) to our adoption agency, which will forward it on to some Faceless Bureaucrat in the Kazakhstan Ministry of Education, Eastern Division. We figured this blog might be a good way to document what happens in-between these mandatory disclosures about how well we’re looking after the baby. If we have to submit these regular, official time capsules of checkboxes, short essays, frozen-smile photos and notary stamps, we thought we might at least digest, reflect, and make something of our parenting experiences that won’t fit on any form.

* Thumblini: contraction of “Thumbelina” (cause she’s tiny) and “blini” (cause she’s probably mostly ethnic Russian - and she seems to like pancakes).

Editorial note: We’re presenting this blog as a catchment for the slice-of-life moments we encounter and dream up, but as it’s fully public, we’re taking a lower-than-usual profile. To this end, we’re sticking with our noms des plumes and also (it is an autocracy in blog-land, after all), we’re pre-screening the comments. Feel free to comment early and often, but try to avoid mentioning us or using language that we simply can’t abide (there are minors involved, people). In advance, then, we apologize if your carefully-crafted comment is mysteriously disappeared. Likely, you inadvertently included names, home address and phone number. Oops!

- CM & DD