That’s not true at all, of course. But I did manage to avoid two tantrums, take a stool sample, get him dressed washed & fed, and take A to the doctor’s for a TB skin test by 9am. Earlier, I also went to the gym and ran 3 miles. I felt like a real supermom.

From the doctor’s office, it was off to the playground. We got sidelined by a grassy hill near the parking lot, where A discovered how fun it is to go downhill on his beloved plastic tricycle. Mr. P was happy to hear this, as it bodes well for his future as an Olympic skier. We also encountered my new “friend,” an older woman with a dog who frequents the park in the morning. She struck up a conversation with me about A — we’re sort of a family that attracts attention — and she kept saying again and again what a wonderful person I was to adopt (a sentiment that, though well-meaning, makes me uncomfortable). During our first conversation, we started talking about our town and how it has changed since she was a girl. “I don’t like using this word, but, you know, the yuppies came in,” she said. I nodded sympathetically, sort of thrilled that she obviously didn’t consider me one, enjoying the conversation. THEN she started talking about Jehovah’s Witnesses and urging me to visit the temple. I keep her at arm’s length now, although she did get A to pet her lovely little dog.

A never wants to leave the playground. I only got him to willingly leave once, when it started raining heavily. Even then he was reluctant. At 11am, I started introducing the idea of leaving, using the fact that I didn’t have his snack as an excuse. He held firm. By 11:30, I decided to force him. This never goes well and we are trying to avoid forcing him to do anything, but sometimes, you just have to point in the direction of the car and say “Go.” He refused to move his tricycle, so I picked him up and started walking away without the tricycle. He went wild, screaming and trying to hit me. This was embarrassing in front of a busy playground, but my tactic worked: he got on the tricycle and we went to the car. Supermom!

For lunch, he wanted granola bars dipped in steak sauce. Yum.

After lunch, I tried half-heatedly to get him to take a nap but he refused, so I decided to take him to Drumlin Farm, a Mass Audubon property with caged birds and farm animals. “Andy, do you want to go see the cows?” We went there last week and he has been stuck on cows ever since. Most kids find the cows to be gross, but A can stare at them for a long time, murmuring “cow. cow. cow.” This trip, we discovered an antique tractor where kids could sit at the wheel. He loved, loved, loved it. Another family approached the tractor while we were on it, so I made A get off so another little boy could have a turn. This caused another tantrum, of course, but I was ready to leave anyway.

For dinner, I grated some carrots and zucchini and simmered it in ground veal and Ethiopian spices. To our great surprise, A willing ate it. It probably helped that Mr. P pointed it and said “Sidama,” meaning it was food from his native country. Not strictly true, but we have discovered a new tactic: exploiting his undying nationalism to get him to eat veggies.

A on the Tractor at Drumlin Farm

Andy’s favorite playground is next to Spy Pond off of the Minuteman Bike Path, where Mr. P and I used to run and bike on nice spring evenings after work. Now, we are discovering this whole new world on the playground. Andy cryptically calls it “funglasses” or something that sounds similar, which confused me because “sunglasses” is a very solid word in his limited English vocabulary. The playground is adjacent to the launching point for many young crew teams, and Andy enjoys watching the teenagers hoist the shells above their heads when practice is over. I’m not sure if this has anything to do with “funglasses,” but it’s impossible really to know what goes in that beautiful little head sometimes.

He is beginning to get the rhythm of the playground; when he encounters another child, he steadily returns their gaze and either yields to their progression or asserts his own. He was rocking the slide today, racing again and again to get to the top before another little boy (younger but not that much smaller) could.

And the ice cream truck came, of course. Andy looks up, staring at the truck with the hokey-jokey jingling, staring at all the other children as they perk up and start bothering their parents, staring at me with a questioning look.

“Music!” I say, using one of our few common words to comment on the ridiculous sounds inexplicably filling the air. I shrug, as if this is a commonplace occurrence in America: large white trucks just suddenly appearing to serenade crowds of children. Just for the hell of it.

“Music machina?” Andy asked, his eyes growing wide.

“Music machina,” I agreed. Yes, sweetheart, it’ s a musical truck, with absolutely nothing special or sugar-filled about it.

Riding Home from the Playground with Daddy

Two weeks? Has it really been only two weeks since A landed in America? Why can’t I remember what life was like before he came?

Yes, it only took two weeks for A to grow curious enough about that semi-solid yellow-white stuff that Mommy and Daddy are always eating and try a little sliver of Camembert. And, to Daddy’s great pride, he liked it.

Other milestones:

• Danced with Mommy to reggae (the only music we own that sounds kinda like the music of his native Sidama, although we often dial up some YouTube videos of Sidama dancing, which he can watch over and over):
• Can now play by himself for up to 10 minutes before demanding Mommy and Daddy join in the “fun.”
• The crying continues, and it has gotten louder. But it seems to be more typical crying patterns for a two-year old (tantrums) rather than driven by grief and insecurity.
• Can now manipulate Duplos.
• Has become addicted to toddler cereal bars and yogurt. Still no veggies… I’ve tried getting “creative” but there’s really no way to sneak mashed peas into a banana.
• Can now open the cap on a water bottle. Less happily (for Mommy, at least) he can also open the oven.
• Can now wave “bye-bye,” although we are still working on waving “hello.”
• Frequently demands to “go outside,” even at 8pm.
• Some days, he loves his bath. He asks me all hours of the day for a bath. He can’t wait to get in the bath. Other days, not so much.
• Ate chocolate, but only because it was shaped like a rabbit. He still vehemently eschews non-animal-shaped candy.
• Became momentarily interested in a nature documentary about polar bears. (He gets confused between “bears” and “birds.”) Television is still overall very boring for him, which the international doctor said I should absolutely just go with. “We were hoping it would help with his English,” I explained. “Do you think if you watched Japanese television that you’d learn any Japanese?” she asked. Good point.
• Accepts kisses, and occasionally even returns them.

I’m officially a working mom, thus I am officially losing my mind. My only “me” time is now from 5:15-6:30am on weekdays, when I rouse myself and drive to the gym, where I plod on a treadmill, toil on a spinning bike, or lumber on the stepmill before returning home and rousing the family. Today, while cruising at a barely manageable 5.3 mph, I watched the royal wedding with gross fascination: the ceremonial pomp, the portentous gravity, all leading up to the horrible, hilarious moment when the ring would not slide cleanly on Catherine Middleton’s finger, getting caught in her knuckle pudge.

Then I left the gym and was whisked back into existence: bananas, caca, car seats, and trying to convince a 2 year old who can’t understand English not to ride his tricycle in the street. Today A refused to take a nap, so I felt entitled to abuse my Mommy privileges by forcing him to go on a hike in the Middlesex Fells. He spent the entire hike lounging in my Deuter Kid Comfort backpack, the little slacker. Or not so little, I should say, give the ache in my back.

Hike Break

The honeymoon is over. A’s been home barely a week, and the crying fits have begun in earnest. They happen mostly at naptime and bedtime, with occasional flare-up if Mommy “disappears” or when it’s time to leave the playground. We expected this, as crying is a normal response for a newly-adopted 2-3 year old to deal with fear, anger, frustration and grief. All we can do is hold him and make soothing sounds. And then, when it is over, Mr. P and I hold each other and make soothing sounds.

When he is in better spirits, A is quickly developing domestic independence. He insists on opening all of the doors when we leave or return to the house and is trying to master the safety gate we placed at the top of the front stairs, not realizing that the gate is to keep him in — yesterday, when the gate became dislodged from the wall, he was very concerned. In some ways, this toddler instinct to do everything himself is good. I can tell him to “wash your hands” and he doesn’t need me to move the stool in front of the sink, put soap in his hands, turn on the water and then dry his hands. Then again, the liquid soap is rapidly depleted and there’s never any hot water.

Today will be a test. It’s a rainy Saturday hence no trips to the playground to keep A amused. He likes the playground not just for the slides and swings; we’ve noticed that he tends to stare at the other kids a lot. Yesterday he sat on a bouncy car for five minutes, watching at a group of older kids running and frolicking amid the playground equipment. When similarly-aged kids move into his proximity and look at him quizzically, he becomes wary, quiet, motionless. Sometimes he’ll demand to go on the swing. Is he scared by his lack of language? Is it because these kids look different from him and all the kids he’s ever known? Is he trying to figure out how to behave? All we can do is keep taking him and hope they will become less threatening.

Food is still an issue. Yesterday I took him to the grocery store and showed him every healthful foodstuff within. He rejected apples, berries, carrots, cheese, meat, pasta, cereal, etc. etc. He is still on his banana-and-peanut butter kick, supplemented by bread, orange juice, and yogurt. He showed some interest in a can of lentil soup, so I bought it and attempted to give it to him for lunch. But he took the tiniest sip and freaked out. Last night we tried to get him to eat a piece of celery smeared with peanut butter and he refused. Nutritionally, his diet is somewhat sound, although we are waiting to talk to the international adoption doctor to see if his protruding belly is as a result of parasites or is simply fat (as the pediatrician suggested when I told him that A was feed five times a day, including two bowls of high-protein high-fat gruel). It’s hard to believe that we’ll have to put our adopted son from Ethiopia on a diet, but that’s what the pediatrician suggested — I’m sure he would not like to hear that A eats four bananas and a half-cup of peanut butter a day.

The English language acquisition is slow-going, although immersion will eventually win out. A doesn’t want to actively learn any words unless they directly pertain to his routine. He can vocalize shoes, socks, jacket, banana, door, peanut butter, and bubbles. Like other Ethiopian adoptees whose first language was Sidama, he has trouble with certain letter blends, as he is accustomed to hard consonants (airplane becomes “air-o-pu-lane”; the letter x is “ek-es.”) We look at a Curious George dictionary three times a day. We cannot, and I don’t think we’ll ever, get him to call cars, trucks, or trains anything than “machina.” Yesterday he was outraged when I kept saying “truck” when he pointed to a picture of a fire truck. The poor little boy is unsure of everything else in this world, but he was adamant that was truck was a machina.

Playing the Cello with Daddy

Today Mr. P returned to work. He had taken 3 vacation days from work to help with the transition. We joked that his real vacation would not begin until he returned to the office. Ha ha. No, but really.

In the months leading up to A’s arrival, I had scared myself silly by reading about other people’s first-month experiences with adopted older children. I read about children who spit food, threw feces, and screamed. Just… screamed. I read about sleeping problems, eating problems, toilet problems, and a little boy who took off all his clothes in the supermarket and then threw soup cans at his parents. So, all things considered, my little A is an angel.

But he’s not an angel. He’s scared, confused, and totally isolated by his lack of English language; he’s also a two-year old boy. He has no idea why I freak the fuck out when he runs out the front door and into the street. When I put him in the car, he has no idea where we’ll end up: One time it was the bank, another time it was a playground, another time it was the doctor’s office. I can imagine how insecure he must feel, and sometimes even my most patient reassurances can’t stave off a heart-wrenching crying bout.

On my end, I’ve been experiencing periodic stir craziness while staying at home.  I’m on maternity leave until next week, when I will begin periodically going into the office and working at home. But today I had to subdue the urge to answer emails and work on a product requirement’s document as A picked at his bread and peanut butter. We paid visits to two different playgrounds today; as I watched A take endless trips down the slide, I mentally specced out an installation wizard.

I love the kid, though. Giving him a bubble bath is the highlight of my day. He had never taken a bath before Monday night; I had to bend his knees for him to force him to sit down in the tub, as he was accustomed to being sprayed with water while scrubbing himself down with soap. His pure joy and excitement about relaxing in the bubbles harkens my own childhood; it washes away any thoughts of the world outside our home, and makes my remember how innocent thiscrazy child truly is.

Today I forced A to watch television. Yes, it felt sinister. Yes, I will probably grow to regret it. But I have never seen a kid with zero interest in the television beyond banging indiscriminately at the buttons on the remote control and touching the screen to watch the colors change under the press of his little fingers. I finally dialed up some Thomas and Friends on Netflix, hoping it would catch A’s interest given his unwavering obsession with “machina” (cars, trucks, trains). This kid needs more motivation to learn English than wanting to understand Mommy and Daddy as they beseech him to eat a slice of apple.

His attention was certainly captured by the opening sequence of trains. “Machina!” he cried. “Mommy, machina! Mommy, mommy!” I love how he assumes I will be just as excited as he is. He laughed at the faces on the trains. He was momentarily enthralled by scenes of the trains racing along the tracks. But then the narrator started spieling the storyline and he lost interest, wandering over to his matchbox cars. I picked him up and put him on my lap, pointing enthusiastically at the screen. I could not believe I was force-feeding television to my child.

A gradually got into it, watching Thomas and Friends speed down the tracks and otherwise dally in the train yards. But he wasn’t at all concerned when I turned it off. Which is good, because my mind was numb.

Another breakthrough: Peanut butter. Peanut butter! I gave up trying to coax him to taste just a little bit of red pepper, a single pea, a bite of cheese and fell gratefully upon the tried and true last bastion for parents of picky eaters: peanut butter. When I put a spoonful of it on his plate, A turned his head away, pointing at it with dismay. Then he sniffed it, like he does everything we give him. Finally he accepted a little taste and his face exploded with joy. He liked it so much he made me say the name over and over again as he repeated: “pu-na-bud-a.” He dunked pieces of banana in it, and then slopped it all up with pieces of bread, like American-style injera. It made his day, and thus, it made my day.

For now, I’m going to skip over writing about my second trip to Ethiopia to fetch A. and launch straight into what has happened so far after the plane touched in Boston. As you can imagine, he was tired. Hell, I was tired. We had left Addis Ababa at 10pm, flew 17 hours to Dulles, endured an 8-hour layover, and topped it all off with another 90 minute flight to Boston, to arrive at 6pm Saturday night. Mr. P was waiting for us and we walked to the car, where we strapped A into his car seat and A promptly began crying. When he cries, it is heartbreakingly silent. His large brown eyes fill with tears that roll down his little cheeks and he makes little mournful noises. I tried to comfort him, but he just stared out the window. Can’t blame the kid, really. Overall he handled everything very well for a 2 yo but I’m sure the car seat was the clincher.

Luckily it is a fast 20-minute ride and he was in better spirits when we got home. He was elated to see the matchbox cars Mr.P had bought for him. This kid is obsessed with cars and anything that rolls, really. He began playing with the cars as I started to unpack and Mr. P rushed around to get dinner ready. I had texted Mr. P in Dulles that the only thing A had eaten on the plane was boiled potatoes, so he boiled more potatoes and carrots along with a lambshank stew. A didn’t eat a bite, regarding everything with profound dejection. We decided he was too tired to eat so I gave him a quick shower with a handheld shower (this is how they bathed the kids in the orphanage) and put him to bed. He refused to sleep in his bed. He has never slept alone, so I laid him down in our bed and Mr. P set up camp in the guest room.

We all konked out until 6am, when A woke me up. “Mama, mama,” he calls me, even though he was coached by the nannies at the transition home to call me Mommy and that’s how I refer to myself. I like how he naturally slid into that. He was pointing to the big empty space where Mr. P should have been, wondering where Daddy was. I took him to the bathroom (“shint bet? shint bet?” is the one Amharic phrase I use, aside from “teny”, which means sleep) and then I took him to visit Mr. P, who of course wanted to sleep some more but was excited to see the kid in better spirits than the previous night.

I prepared his breakfast: bread and bananas, which are the only surefire foods in our arsenal thus far. At the transition home, they ate bread every morning with a cup of sweet tea, dunking the bread to make it softer, so I attempted to recreate this with green tea, which he didn’t like. He ate some butter with his bread but wouldn’t touch the pieces spread with nutella. He is very wary of chocolate in general, a sentiment I guess I’ll go with, but the kid does need calories. He ate a banana, ignored the orange juice, and drank a ton of water. After breakfast I dressed him in his new clothes and then he romped around the house with his cars, pausing to explore his surroundings. He is particularly fascinated with technology, and loves the remote controls and DVD player, although he will not watch television. This is another proclivity that I’m sort of happy about, although we were counting on television to help him learn English.

I needed some time to decompress, and we wanted A to spend some time with Mr. P because he was still very attached to me and somewhat scared of his daddy. So we put on his jacket and Mr. P took him to the playground while I went to sweat a little at the gym. I was worried the whole time I was gone but when I returned, Mr. P reported that A had a ball at the playground, especially on the swings, and ate a banana and more bread for a snack. Later we had lunch, reheating the potatoes that he refused the night before and serving it with a fried egg and some sauteed zucchini. Again, A took issue with the potatoes but seemed to like the zucchini and ate some of the egg, although he didn’t like the yolk. All in all, he ate maybe five bites and then a small kiddie yogurt. I began to worry that he would be more malnourished here than he was in Ethiopia.

Nap time. He was resistant to laying down at first, but Mr. P and I flanked him on the bed and fatigue gave way to a deep sleep. I too napped, a rarity, and woke up at 3pm. Even though I’m sure he could have slept much longer, we didn’t want A to get an abnormal sleep pattern, so I roused him gently and we promptly dressed him for another trip to the playground. It is Patriot’s Day weekend in Massachusetts, and our town was holding their annual parade. We thought A would like to see all the cars and trunks, but he just looked stunned. It didn’t help that we put him in a backpack carrier and he was initially crying as we walked down our street. We abandoned the parade and continued onto the playground, where there were many more kids than there were in the morning. He tried the slide for the first time and loved it, laughing and running up the stairs to go again and again. Another kid his same age was also on the slide and A regarded him suspiciously; the kid talked to him briefly and then ran away. I’m hoping that other kids will be an impetus for him to learn English, although he doesn’t seem to interested in making friends. I guess being confined with 20 other kids for many months will make it difficult to acclimate socially; the nannies told me he prefers to play by himself, like most of the orphanage kids do.

We purposely ignored the ice cream truck — all the other kids perked up, but I’ll let him wallow in his ignorance for a little bit — but then we walked to the ice cream shop anyway. This time he wanted to go in his backpack carrier. He loved the banana ice cream, which he shared with Daddy. He laughed hysterically when a car drove by with bikes mounted to the top. He points at every SUV or truck that goes by and says happily “machina!” which means car. He loves them. Welcome to the land of machina, kid.

We walked home and I drove to the store to get a bath sponge and hair conditioner and oils for Black hair. When I returned, I found Mr. P and A watching my yoga DVDs. Again, he doesn’t seem to interested in what is on the TV but constantly wants to open the player to change DVDs, which he calls “cassettes.” He rubs each DVD on his shirt before he puts it in, which I bet the nannies would do at the transition home. He romped around the house some more with his machinas as I fixed dinner: shrimp with rice and swiss chard. He only touched the rice and then half a banana. He seemed extremely tired so I gave him a shower, dressed him in his pajamas, and laid down with him in his bed. He didn’t want to sleep, pointing to his cars illuminated in the nightlight, but soon he fell asleep and I tiptoed out of this room, feeling triumphant.

Love this kid. Love every moment of being with him, and I know it will only get better.

In Addis, blowing bubbles (which he calls “foo-fah”) at the transition home

At Dulles airport, eating a gigantic apple