Birthday Boy, Picnic Pro

Last Sunday was Owen's second birthday. We kept things pretty low-key, with an afternoon at the park and a cookout with our immediate families. Owen rode the train and the carousel at the park and loved both.

I made cherry vanilla cupcakes instead of a cake, and like any kid, Owen enjoyed the frosting more than the cake part. He got a few nice presents, but we didn't overdo it.

We saved the overdoing it for this weekend, which was Nonstop Picnic Weekend. We had our adoption agency's picnic in Springfield in the morning, and a family reunion in Frederick in the afternoon. Today was Families with Children from Vietnam's annual picnic.

Owen held up well at all three events, but it was a lot of people to deal with. He played with some of the kids at the agency's picnic, and he met some new cousins at the family reunion. He's fascinated with older kids, watching them and imitating them for better or worse. At the reunion, he finally met his second cousin Todd, and they played with a cooler.

At today's picnic, he was more interested in splashing in the puddles along the park's path, requiring a full change of clothes and some scoops of Oxyclean when I did the wash tonight.

And he was the Tasmanian Devil at bedtime, twisting and turning and jumping around until he finally conked out. Being around large groups of people and a lot of noise is hard for him. He's very social and he does really well with being charming and friendly, but he easily gets overstimulated and it takes a while to settle down. Last night on the way home from Frederick, he babbled at the top of his lungs for 20 miles.

So how are we winding our way out of this extremely hectic weekend? By heading to the pediatrician's in the morning for another round of shots.

Owen Goes to the Dogs

We're trying Halloween costumes with Owen, but unfortunately, this one's too small. Back to Target it goes!

Temp SAHM

Today is Day 3 of going solo with Owen. Ray went back to work on Monday, so I'm here with the boy all day, no break, no tag-teaming it.

It's a little exhausting, but it's going well. We're getting along just great. He's down to about one good chomp on me a day -- major progress on the biting front. We're exploring local playgrounds, getting ready for his birthday on Sunday, and trying to settle more into a routine.

But now I have to make more of an effort to socialize and set up play dates. All day with a 2-year-old is going to be tough. We started Aquatots last week, so that's a start. Owen did great. He cooperated (mostly) with putting the barbell flotation device under his arms, and got a little squirmy during the "back work" section, but mostly he was grinning and smiling through the whole thing. And talking up a storm.

"My, Owen's an active little boy," the teacher said. Okay, he was a little more hyper than most of the other kids, but he was so excited to be in the pool again, he couldn't help himself.

Aquatots marked our first time out in the civilian population. I've been keeping my play dates and socializing to other adoptive families since we got back. There's so much to discuss about the transition and adjustment and transracial issues that I've kept us pretty insular. Of course, it's not like you can always spot the adoptive family, so who knows the composition of our class. One thing's for sure, I'm on the older side.

Likewise at the playgrounds. Monday and today, I struck up conversations with other moms who didn't look like they're 20 years younger than me, but they ended up being THE GRANDMOTHERS.

Also, yikes, I don't know the words to "The Wheels on the Bus." I felt like such a dummy at Aquatots while everyone else was singing and doing the motions with their kids.

I'll figure this out, and probably really get the hang of it by the time I go back to work in January.

As a matter of fact, Owen does go with my shoes and purse

Aaargh, aaargh, aargh.

Thank you, Adoptive Families magazine, for tipping me off to this column, "Adopting Asian Kids Becoming Latest Fad," in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review earlier this summer. Thank you for raising my blood pressure to dangerous levels. And thank you for calling the columnist, Mike Seate, a major tool in this month's "Thumbs-Down" feature.

Seate rebukes adoptive parents who provide forever homes for children from Asia instead of adopting domestically -- and even questions whether we want to be parents or make a fashion statement.

"Since when did Asian children become 'must have' fashion accessories for upper middle-class Americans?," he writes. "Along with Calloway golf clubs and season tickets to football games, paying $30,000 to $40,000 to adopt an exotic baby is suddenly viewed as the most chic purchase this side of a pair of Manolo Blahnik pumps."

Where to start? To call my child "a chic purchase" makes me foam at the mouth.

Also, dude, WTF? When I finally held Owen in my arms for the first time, do you think I was thinking of my friends R and MED, the Queens of Accessorizing, and saying, "Top this, bitches!"

The Tribune-Review was apparently deluged with angry letters from adoptive parents, but in a follow-up blog entry, Seate was unrepentant. "There is no, and let me repeat, no reason that any American family should be looking outside our own borders for kids to adopt," he wrote.

As if only children living in this country are deserving of families.

As if Owen shouldn't be here with me.

I've heard Seate's criticism before -- I've been asked "why are you going to Vietnam when there are children to adopt here?" It's a mildly annoying question -- with its underlying "buy American" assumption -- when it comes from a stranger or acquaintance, but it's infuriating when it comes from a newspaper columnist. You don't even need Google; just type in adoption.com, and in under 10 minutes you'd get an overview of domestic vs. international adoption, and maybe, if you had half a brain, you'd think, "Ah, so the processes are so vastly different that one might be more suitable for one person than another."

And you'd be able to report adoption expenses accurately.

That is, unless you are incredibly lazy. Or you have some kind of nasty personal agenda that precludes you from respecting others' choices and from having even a teensy bit of compassion for the millions of children worldwide who need homes.

Because let's face it, it's far more entertaining to write crap like, "if people really wanted to adopt children because of a desire to become parents, they'd just adopt babies, not fashion statements."

Seate had two opportunities in these columns to tell us how many children he's adopted, but was silent on that point. In my experience, it's always the case that the only people who judge you for your adoption choices never have adopted themselves.

I'd rant some more, but my little fashion statement is crying and needs his mommy and a bottle. Sheesh, if I wanted a trendy accessory, why didn't I just get a Hermes scarf? A Hermes scarf would never throw a temper tantrum at IKEA, like Owen did this afternoon.

English Lessons

Owen can say about seven English words now: bottle, hot, bye, Mom, Dad, Pop, and dog. He uses dog frequently, due to the constantly barking dog in the yard behind ours, and the pit bull around the corner, who charges the fence when we walk by. When either one of them barks, he says, "Dog?", and then goes "Woooof! Woooof!" Or, if he sees anyone walking a dog in the neighborhood, he gets excited and starts chanting, "Dog! Dog!"

So, the other day, we were having lunch, and Ray and I both asked Owen if he wanted more hot dog. More hot dog, Owen? Want more hot dog?

"Dog? Dog?" he said, looking at us quizzically.

Okay, I don't think he was imagining that we were actually feeding him dog for lunch, but I think he thought we wanted him to look at the dog, and where the heck was it in the kitchen?

From now on, we're calling his lunch item a wiener. Until he meets a wiener dog....