i sit here on a chilly monday, looking out at the falling snow flurries, dinner simmering on the stove, awaiting your return from school, reflecting on the last year we've had together.
kidding!
i mean, i am thinking about the last year, but there is no dinner on the stove and i'm not exactly awaiting your arrival home from school. i'm rather relishing the quiet for a few hours. i'll probably throw a couple of steamables veggie bags in the microwave. maybe cook up some sausage or chicken. i might even get crazy and push the button on the rice cooker. i'm surrounded by piles of clean clothes (at least they're clean), and there might be more leaves on the floor of our house than in the yard. dirty Kleenexes litter the floor around the trash cans. stinky shoes, dull pencils, dirty dishes, crumbs, old homework, and did i mention clothes are overtaking our living space. it is a losing battle to keep this place clean and picked up, and i think i've just accepted that to a degree. i have to say, you three are very helpful at doing chores and cleaning things up when we all put our minds to it, but keeping things neat and tidy on a daily basis? forget it! but it's okay. i kind of like our house with this whole "lived-in" feel. part of me wants to include pictures of our house on a random monday, but i am not completely without shame.
we will be celebrating one year that you've been home on November 25. ONE YEAR! i can't believe it. i really can't. on the one hand, it feels like it's been a couple of months. on the other hand, it feels like we've had you for many years. dare i say we are functioning with comfort and efficiency these days? we are more than surviving. we are more than surviving with functionality. we are living life with efficiency!
it has been hard, but just like life in general we've had it easier than some and harder than some. i think we are blessed in that we probably have had it a bit easier than most. something i've come to realize is that much of that easier part has come from not having had biological children first, and so we did not have to blend families. i see friends around us who go through those unique challenges, and i'm in awe of the difficulties they navigate and how they do it with such grace and love for ALL their kids. but of course it was tough going from zero to three. like, we woke up one day and had three sons. boom! three sons who needed love, understanding, sympathy, discipline, food - lots of food, clean clothes, activities, homework help, and more than anything, a structured home environment.
a lot of people ask me what the hardest part has been. for me, i've learned the ultimate act of sacrificing self is having kids. i would've thought getting married was the pinnacle of selflessness, but wow, having kids is waaaaaay more giving of self. i don't mean that in a bad or regretful way. i think when one gives birth, you sort of ease into the whole "i am a mother now and my life no longer belongs to me" thing. when you adopt older kids, multiple older kids, it's like BAM. immediately, my life was not my own. i was pulled in a million directions in a million ways. i still hear "MOM, look at..." or "MOM, tell him to stop..." or "MOM, what is..." approximately 100 times a day. that is not an exaggeration. that's probably an underestimation. probably 75% of those come from Bennett, but God love him. i think it's gotten easier to give myself up so frequently, but i still notice it...so i guess it's not so easy when i'm still feeling pulled a million ways and often drained by nighttime.
i think i thought it would be physically draining to have three sons, but it's really been mostly emotionally draining. we get plenty of sleep. you guys get up on your own, shower on your own, dress on your own, make your own breakfast. you'd probably drive yourselves to school if we let you. you can navigate Netflix like champs, i can leave you in the car when i run into kroger for a few minutes (hours? kidding), and you can wipe your own bottoms. it's not as much the physical duties as much as it is the emotional.
wow. probably up until about 8 months of being home, it was constant. constant behavior correction, attitude correction, bad moods, pouting moods, disrespectful mouths, fighting and arguing with each other. attitudes of entitlement, ungratefulness, and taking things for granted. general exhaustive behavior that required CONSTANT monitoring and correction. then even if it wasn't bad behavior, it was massive highs that are almost as taxing. and homework. we probably have had more meltdowns than correct answers. homework continues to be the hardest part of my day, personally, and so i would imagine your day, as well. for a girl who was very blessed to never have problems with school work, my brain cannot understand how your brains work...or don't work. it's exhausting, but it is so important to me that you all succeed academically. so we press on. and on. and on.
i still see the clock at 2:45 pm and have equal parts of me go, "ugggghhhhhh, it's time to go pick the boys up" and "sweet, let's go get the boys, Lois!" i still look at the clock at 5:30 and think, "i have to make dinner. AGAIN. and when is jeremy coming home?!?!?!?" but i think that's general mom mentality, and not adoptive mom mentality. and that's something else we have achieved. we deal with kid and parent issues. we don't deal with adoptive kid and adoptive parent issues. in fact, i think we probably deal with fewer kid and parent issues than a lot of biological families do.
so let's talk about the amazing things we've done in one year.
we all love each other, and we talk about it a lot. we have three kids who are pretty comfortable saying "i love you" now. we have three kids who can use their words to talk about anger, sadness, guilt, and excitement. we have three kids who have huge hearts and talk about how they can help people.
in March, when we were in Deming visiting Grammy, nathan asked me if Grammy lived alone. i said, yes, she does live alone but she has friends and family that look after her. and he said, "mom, i am said for Grammy. i wish she could come live with us in Nashville so she wouldn't be alone." i had to leave the room and go cry alone for a few minutes. it makes me sad that my Grammy lives alone, and it killed me that my 9 year old felt the same. nathan, you are so incredibly sensitive and in touch with emotions that it scares us. you are an incredibly complex dude. you navigate your friendships with ease. you talk about your old friends at the center with such compassion and fondness. you understand sadness and misfortune and unfairness, and you talk about it for days after seeing a homeless person or sad story on the news. you still get furious at me when i go out of town or go out for an evening with friends or for work, but you've finally gotten to the point where you'll tell me it's because you miss me. major breakthrough, dude. you struggle with being perfect. making the perfect decisions. behaving perfectly. getting perfect grades. dressing perfectly. it throws you off the rails for hours if you get in trouble or don't perform well, but in the beginning it was days. now you recover in just a few hours. big progress!
edwin, you're more subtle about your feelings, of course. i've said before that you are our typical middle child. you just cruise, but every now and again you'll acknowledge someone or something and show what a big heart you have. i see this a lot with lois. you're the only one lois will ever play with or be calm around. she's usually on guard with your brothers, but she'll actually flip over and let you scratch her tummy for a while. there's a calmness and a peace about you that she recognizes, and dad and i love that about you. you are a true foodie. you love every kind of sauce available, and the more the merrier. you love preparing coffee for me, food for your brothers, and helping me in the kitchen. you even rock some dishes every now and again. you're always up for anything, but you're also quick to keep score and make sure everyone else is doing as much work as you. we find that we stress working hard and giving it your best a lot with you. school comes easier to you. sports come easier to you. you are comfortable relying on natural ability, but we hope you'll learn to work to be even better.
bennett. dad just posted on facebook that you've been walking around singing the Little Big Town song "Tornado," and how ironic it is because you are one. truth. you are a tornado of emotion, activity, love, smiles, chatter, and everything in between. you also have a good heart, and you are usually the first to share something with your brothers. typical youngest child. you eat constantly. you change outfits about 5 times a day. you love clothes, shoes, friends, girls, and dad. you and dad are best buddies, and it's a beautiful thing. you have never met a stranger, and sometimes we actually have to go peel you off of some other adult's lap because you've chosen to go be part of another family for a while. it's hilarious, and we think you'll be in entertainment or sales when you grow up. i've had the hardest time with you, buddy. no one can make me as frustrated as you can. i am daily working on my patience with you, but i do think we've gotten better with each other. you find it terribly natural and easy to be very disrespectful and rude to me. you disobey me more than your brothers combined do, and we've finally realized i'm your target when you get really tired. naps have helped, but i also think you and i have made a truce. i try hard not to lose my temper as badly anymore, and you try to snap out of the fog and ire that leads you to send me into a tailspin. it also helps when your brothers are looking at you with their mouths agape, saying "BENNETT!!! Why are you doing this?!" You tend to leave the room and settle down when even your brothers are noticing how bad it is. but, lordy, you are miss congeniality and it is impossible not to love you like crazy. recently you got in big trouble with a teacher at school for having attitude with her. come to find out, the kids around you had been making fun of you and saying that you kiss this teacher, that you love each other. so you tried to throw them off by being rude to her. really, we'd known that this teacher loves you, and your brothers had reported before that she liked to hug you a lot and kiss you on your head. i cannot express how much people love you.
all of your teachers at Harpeth Valley rave about you all. it makes this mom super proud. you may not get perfect grades, but you are polite, kind, joyful contributors to your classrooms, and we are proud of you for it.
you all finally, actually kinda like vegetables. peas, corn, green beans, kale, and raw carrots. you still won't do raw tomatoes. shepherd's pie has quickly eclipsed your love of all things chicken. bennett, you've suddenly learned how to be picky (possibly your friends taught you this curious food behavior?), and you claim you don't like beef or turkey. but you still eat it if you have to. you eat everything if you have to.
we recently finished flag football, and you guys were beasts! you literally could not throw or catch a ball. you had no idea what a first down was. no idea even what a touchdown was. by the end of those two months, you were all some of the best players on your teams. you excel at all sports - football, basketball, soccer and running. we now watch football together on TV! it's so much fun! you know most of the nfl teams, some of the players, several ncaa teams, and you "vote" for different teams all the time. still working on remembering that we "root" for teams, not "vote."
language. you guys still can't quite get the hang of he vs. she, him vs. her. understandable because Sierra Leone English doesn't have a feminine pronoun, but we still have to politely let women know the reason why you're calling her a him. nathan, you've become very aware of your accent, and you get embarrassed by it. kills me, because i could listen to those accents all day long. they're gorgeous! h's and r's are still absent, but it gives you such a distinguished sound! possibly my favorite word you say right now is "buffalo." buffalo bills or buffalo wild wings. you say it like boo-FALL-o wings. it is hilarious, and i never correct you because i love it.
i've read a lot of blogs and articles about tacky things people ask adoptive parents or kids. i always speak very openly about our situation and how we became a family. i proudly talk about your birth family still in Sierra Leone, and how we stay in touch and continue to be involved with them. i don't share dark and personal details, but i do share the loss of your birth father and how that has shaped you. i share the love i have for Konima, your birth mother, and how i think of her so often because she gave birth and partly raised three incredible boys that i get to call my sons. i daydream about going back to Sierra Leone to visit your birth family and visit your old caregivers and friends. we talk about your memories, good and bad, almost daily. i am so grateful that none of us are afraid to talk about those things.
some adoptive mothers are offended when people ask if we can have biological kids, and i know it's a natural curiosity as to why we would adopt first if we can have biological kids. it's not the way it's typically done, but we certainly aren't a typical family! i tell them that i assume i could give birth, but we've never tried to get pregnant. i tell them when dad and i were married for a couple of years, we talked about how we should probably start thinking about having kids because that's what good married folk do. and something just didn't feel right about it. we didn't feel ready. and it was never a clear reason like financial, physical, familial, or marital that it didn't feel right. i just wasn't really interested in having a child at that time. we knew we wanted kids, but something was holding me back from taking the big step of getting pregnant and giving birth. and just a few months into us casually wondering out loud if we should start trying to have a baby and me not feeling compelled to do so, we were asked to be your Forever Family. and then we started Skyping. and then Sierra Leone started processing adoptions. and then we met you. and then we knew for certain why we hadn't been so excited about starting a biological family. god knew we had a family already, but He needed a little time to bring us together. and he did it in an incredibly beautiful way.
so people ask now if we'll have a biological child. i don't get offended. i wonder about that myself. will we? i don't know. part of me wishes for a chubby, red-headed little girl that can look up to her big brothers and drive her dad crazy. part of me wishes for a little adopted baby who needs a loving family and who will complete ours. and of course, the biggest part of me is still holding onto faith that Kaday will someday be home.
all i know is that our family is not yet complete, but it's certainly full! full of stinky, huge, growing, happy, handsome, amazing boys that rocked my life in huge ways. i still love the surprise on people's faces when i tell them we adopted three brothers from africa. the notion is totally normal to me, but obviously not to everyone else. and i always just say, "yeah, we Spillmans go hard or go home. it ain't about easy or safe in our family!" and i thank Jesus every day that he gave us this mission and purpose in life. because yes, i AM that blessed person who knows every day what my purpose is in life, what me and dad's purpose is. what my meaning is in life. it's nathan, edwin and bennett, it's kaday, and it's hopefully so much more to come...
love,
mom
You're a great writer, Mel! I felt like I was there in your stories! Love you guys..
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