So, we were invited to a church by someone in Rotary, and we have been kind of discussing going some time for the last month. I brought the girls over to our house for the whole weekend. This morning, I got a call from our friend ("friend" meaning someone who knows someone who has met you once, and is therefore fully prepared to go out of their way to host you) offering to pick us up at a convenient taxi stop if we met them at 10:30. I thought we could get out of the house before 10:30 and, with that excellent and complete logic as well as general complaisance, I agreed.
A couple hours later, I was contemplating a recent email exchange with a friend, where she was discussing not taking her excitable daughter into high-intensity situations unless she was well prepared to deal with wildness or running away. It was a little hard to remember the details, as the music from the worship band was blasting out of the speakers, the a/v was swirling colors around, and the couple hundred or people around were dancing and clapping and swaying as they sang. I was impaired from chasing my highly excitable children by the fact that I was holding the very mild-tempered one in my arms. I comforted myself with the idea that at least this was a church, and at least the people around here don't seem intimidated by interfering with someone else's children, and moreover the whole complex was gated, so probably no one would be able to get into any trouble that had a life-long effect.
Besides, we might as well be here, because:
A) We have to leave the house as a group at some point, and an outing that is half by private car has a great deal of advantage; and
B) It had to be better than staying at home, or at least different. The drama that Hibiscus and Emerson had been producing for all of Saturday had to be at least equal to several hundred people in a rousing worship service! Each day that we spend together, they seem to be focused on figuring out the exact limits of a different boundary. Yesterday, the theme was Hibiscus hearing the word "no." Every time this happened, whether something as simple as it was Emerson's turn to unlock the door to something more premeditated like when she drew on her skirt and I took away her pen, she cried and wailed for minutes and minutes and minutes, writhing like she were in her death throes. This might have been a difficult conundrum for me, because I knew part of her tears were experimenting with the new concept that someone cares about her if she cries, and I might have tried to figure out how to help her feel supported in her sadness without supporting her doing what I had told her not to. However, since there were three children involved, it was pretty much guaranteed that someone had a clearer need than comforting crocodile tears, so she pretty much got ignored until she decided to stop. It did not increase the general feeling of household peacefulness, however. Meanwhile, she and Emerson were either grabbing and yelling at each other, or bonding by being incredibly rude, which is about the funniest thing in the world at that age. So I apologize to all our apartment-building neighbors, that it took me several minutes to go out into the stairwell and put a stop to the three children screaming at the top of their lungs to hear the echo; it really seemed like a better option than anything else they might be doing.
My parenting abilities for Hibiscus are so severely limited by what we are able to say to each other. Some amount can be communicated through touch and expression and a few words in each other's languages, and this seems to work pretty well for two-year-old parenting, but falls way short of the logic and explanation that a six-year-old desperately needs. So not only does she have to learn all my new rules, she has to learn them without the benefit of being told what they are, and without being able to understand why I have created them, and furthermore she is not allowed any learning-curve transgressions without the local four-year-old police saying "but MAMA! we're not allowed to talk like that in our family!" So something like "food must be eaten at the table" is comprehensible, but it involves me physically taking her bowl away as she wanders outside, which creates the obvious interpretation that I am trying to starve her to death, and probably furthermore I plan turn around and give her bowl to Emerson. After adding ice cream and chapatis. We eventually arrived at the correct interpretation, which was her returning to the table to finish and me being pleased with her, but there was some serious distress in the middle. A time or two or three or four. (The last couple times were mostly to make sure that I would actually go to the trouble of chasing her and her bowl down every single time, and what manner of growling or wailing would make me decide to not bother. Hopefully she will arrive at a conclusion soon.)
So we had an outing to a new church which was a great deal more overwhelming than I had expected, but my over-excitable kids were so busy staring at all the drama around them, and deciding whether to make friends or run away from the other small children, that they didn't make it any farther than up and down the aisle. So I had significantly more trips up and down the aisle than any other adult, but kept them pretty much always in sight. And I was rewarded with each child giving me a huge grin as he or she clapped along to the rousing music.
At least in the first 10 or 15 minutes. After an hour of loud music interspersed with occasional praise, the kids were more than ready for Children's Church, even patient little Buttercup. So they headed out with the general exodus, until it was time to sit down, at which point they each decided they didn't want to be sitting in Children's Church. Buttercup just plain didn't want to be sitting, but was pretty happy to drag her little plastic chair back and forth. Emerson got the idea that I might leave and go back to the service, and he didn't like that. Hibiscus, I think, was just plain grumpy. I think my little clan's attitude towards Children's Church would have improved greatly if they had served the snack at the beginning instead of the end of the hour!
After a little while, Hibiscus actually settled in pretty well, because the format is pretty similar to the way school works here, so she knew what to do and became attentive. Emerson went through mixed feelings, from interest in the story to whineyness, that I think would have basically been happy if he weren't so hungry and the whole process weren't so very long. Buttercup was totally happy, and I pulled her out of the outdoor room where all the other children were trying to concentrate (more or less) and she wandered around nearby and climbed up and down and banged on tables and pulled and trees and basically acted like a little toddler -- which is actually quite a notable accomplishment for this extraordinarily reserved child -- while I followed her around and kept her from falling off of things.
The final biscuits were immediately followed by our host bringing us to lunch. (See, I told you they should have come at the beginning!) The church and everything else took place in a complex centered around a restaurant and a garden, so a group just kind of moved from the meeting hall/sanctuary to a large private dining room, where we had an Indian buffet. A Canadian group was visiting and had provided the music and and some other leadership, so there was a large group gathered on their behalf. It was a pleasant break for me to get to speak and hear ordinary American-style English, and be able to assume that the assumptions behind the words were what I would expect.
It was also a treat to be able to assume that the people around me had a reasonably accurate guess to why a white woman was shepherding around two little African girls. The idea of adoption outside your own family or clan basically does not exist in Ugandan culture, so some people get very confused about what I am doing. It will be a cinch to deal with stares in America from people who are amazed to see a mixed race family, compared to strangers on the street cheerfully asking "why are you carrying our child?" or, upon being given an answer, replying "why would you want to do that?" (To give credit where it is due, a pair of young women also stopped me to shyly say "thank you for taking care of our children, you are doing a very good thing.")
At this gathering, I was introduced to a woman who had adopted and fostered kids of her own. Although unfortunately she was sitting at the other end of the table, so I didn't really get to talk with her, we were introduced in the food line. She stopped and really made a point to connect with each of the three children, and then since everyone was hungry she helped me through the food line. She started with "what can I do" but then she answered herself, "I'll fill these plates for you, because the children NEED to stay with you, and not anyone else." It was amazingly rejuvinating to hear that validation for these relationships that are very much under construction at this point.
Buttercup sat on my lap and shared my food, wielding her fork with amazing determination. (She absolutely refuses to eat with her fingers when anyone else has silverware, despite having surely spending most of her life eating with her fingers and being at the age where most children of silverware-cultures don't actually use their silverware.) Hibiscus plowed through what I am pretty sure was four entire plates of food, and "plow" is a pretty accurate representation of her eating style! Emerson, I believe, spent an equal amount of time rearranging the food on his plate and eating three pieces of potato.
I won't describe the complication of taking all three children to the bathroom. And it was a fairly clean, spacious bathroom where I felt like it was even safe to be in separate stalls. I do not yet have a game plan for dealing with ordinary Ugandan bathrooms, and, respective of my one-day-at-a-time philosophy, please do not ask me to develop one.
There were other children around too, and so after a while they did a little playing together on the other side of the room.
Our hosts drove us all the way back home, which was a great relief. The minibus ride had gone well in the morning, but with all three children so very tired, it was nice to be able to avoid mid-afternoon. Buttercup fell asleep in the car, and I got to learn that, although she is incredibly amenable to taking naps and can tolerate a great deal of noise while she is sleeping, she has the ordinary toddler problem of the 10-minute nap in the car, waking on transfer, and feeling like she's completely lively again. Hibiscus wanted to nap, but Buttercup wouldn't stop singing and jumping on her, so all three children were out and about within minutes of getting home.
I was very pleasantly surprised that the rest of the afternoon went much more smoothly than the day before. Either they had gotten enough of their crazies out at the church-marathon that they didn't feel so inspired to pick fights with each other, or the act of being in a large group of strangers made them feel more solidarity with each other. Quiet and peace, we did not have; but it was happy kind of wildness.
They had to go back to the orphanage tonight. I felt that one overnight qualified under "spending plenty of time with them without completely taking over their care," as the Probation Officer encouraged me to do. Hopefully the paper will be signed and sealed tomorrow!
I noticed several steps that we took towards a bonded family relationship this weekend. When the children were at Children's Church, Hibiscus wanted me to stay and called out to me once or twice when I followed Buttercup out of her immediate sight, she didn't just assume that I had left her behind. Buttercup was happy and attentive in a new place among strangers, as long as she was sitting on my lap or in my arms. When Emerson wanted her to come and play with him, she was a little hesitant but happy to go with him, but she LOOKED BACK AT ME three times as they walked across the room, and then settled in to play when she saw that I was stationery and content with her. Visually checking in with parents is something that attached children do constantly and naturally, and unattached children don't do at all; I've felt as well as observed this difference at the orphanage, that the children lose their entire engagement with me as soon as I am not directly interacting with them.
When we got home, Hibiscus actively sought me out after she fell and hurt herself, twice. When we first got her, Hibiscus would not only pretend to ignore obvious pain, but if she couldn't hide the pain she would hide herself. Emerson told me several times when he had seen her upset or in pain, but she didn't want me or any of the other adults to see. Since she didn't expect any comfort, it must have just felt like weakness. So that she is willing to cry out, wail dramatically, come towards me (I very actively seek out both children if they have any sign of distress, to demonstrate that I take care of them, so she didn't have to come all the way), and then sob in my arms for several minutes, all over a small scrape on her ankle, shows an amazing level developing emotional openness and trust.
Meanwhile, Buttercup was gallivanting around, actually screaming as she played. This is a much more physical type of openness developing, that she is simply confident enough to express herself. I fed the kids a snack, asking if they wanted each ingredient (she still doesn't know how to answer questions like this, but I keep asking), and after hearing the question and getting her bowl, she started chanting "ba-NAAAA-na, er-i-EEEV-u" (which is the same word in both languages), and the older kids were amused and laughed and then chanted along with her. She was so amazed and proud of herself. I think that is the first time that she has initiated anything obvious enough for other children to join in.
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