Normal

My friend Debbie posted about how couples who build their families through pregnancy don't get comments from their kids that are simply "normal" for children of adoption.  We are a mixed bag here at LameSAHM, with birth and adopted, but I still totally get what she is saying.  We hear some pretty funny things around here.

• Now that we are in an open adoption with Levi--and talking quite a bit with an actual person, whom the children have seen and talked to--Randy keeps wanting to know who his birthmother is.  I keep telling him that I am his birthmother and his forever mommy, and he looks really disappointed each time!  Sorry kid.  Facts is facts.
• My sister has five children all by adoption.  Around the time they finalize they have them Christened in the Episcopal church.  The whole family comes and it is a special time of prayer and commitment. The kids have come to equate the ceremony--which I guess would seem a whole lot more official and binding to a child's mind than standing before some strange man in a robe--to "being adopted."  When Abby accepted Christ and was baptized at age eight, my nieces and nephews all came for the service.  Afterwards, they kept congratulating the master and I on finally deciding to adopt her!  They clearly thought it was about time we got around to that. 
• Before we brought Levi home, Marina kept asking if the baby was a boy or girl.  I was really getting concerned that she wasn't able to remember this simple fact, and when I questioned her as to why she continued to ask the same question over and over again, she revealed that she thought boys were born and girls were adopted.  So naturally, it was confusing for her that we were adopting a boy.   I did my best to explain it to her. Sure hope that has been cleared up in her mind and heart, but with Marina you never know.  She adamently believed for years that we went to Russia, I gave birth to her there, and then left her in an orphanage.
• My children assume that all bottle-fed babies are adopted.  Several times I have been SO embarrassed by them going up and blurting out, "Where did you get your baby?" I've learned to just grab their hand and pull them away, because once when I corrected, "No, she is the baby's birthmother," they gaped at the woman, dumbstruck, and demanded, "Why you not give your baby breast milk?"  Can we say, AWKWARD??!

These are humorous, but there are poignant ones as well.  I love that my children totally get the spiritual concept of adoption. You can have a fairly deep conversation with them; they've lived it.  I love how angry K gets at Disney's Finneas and Ferb cartoon because it refers to one of the characters as being a "step-brother," when in actuality the story line tells us he is adopted.  I can hear him now, shouting at the screen, "If he is adopted, he is not a step anything, he's just your plain brother!"  And I cry whenever something makes Marina think of Russia and she sobers and says, "But I wonder about the other orphans there."  This is normal for us.