We are preparing for a camp out

I tend to be one of those people that over plan everything. I cannot help it. I enjoy the planning.

My dear sweet daughter is one of those people who spontaneously decides she wants to do something. She loves her DVD's and right now one of her most favorite movies is The Parent Trap. She does not watch the old one she watches the new one with Lindsey Lohan (back when she was thinking with her brain). Anyway, I won't start on that tangent but getting back to the point. In that movie Annie and Hallie go camping with their father and Merideth the evil fiance of their father. Emmie announces to me one day last week that she wants to go camping in a tent like Annie and Hallie.

I am not sure she has really comprehended what camping truly entails. I have told her that I love to go camping and if she wants to go camping we'll go. I then tell her that I hope she likes it because I really like it and we could go a lot if she likes it. She follows up with "I will like it! I promise!"

To that end I have been checking prices on tents and camping gear. I have been on a number websites and directly in the stores. Let me tell you, they have some tents that sell for more than $500.00. What is the point of that? I mean they don't have built in fire places, air conditioning or anything. There was one cool tent that had a built in lighting system but that one was smaller than I wanted and still it cost more than $100.

Today I went online and looked over the Sears website. I had forgotten Sears carried camping supplies. They had a two day sale and today was the last day of the sale. I found a tent on sale for $59.99 ($60.00 off). I had to buy it. It sleeps 8 which means there is plenty of room. We have room for Emmie and I and a queen size inflatable mattress plus all of our stuff. I checked the reviews on it and there were several people who boasted "LOVING this tent". One person wrote that they had had their tent for 13 years. The only reason they are in the market for another tent is that thier teenagers no longer want to be seen with them in public or sharing a tent. Another reviewer said they had their Hillary tent for 10 years and it is great. Here is a picture of our lovely tent. If Little Missy May decides she really does like camping we can up grade in a few years if we need to. I did not want to spend money on an expensive tent, use it once and Emmie decide she is never sleeping in a tent again. So, there it is. Below you can see our lovely tent. Tomorrow we will be setting it up in the back yard to see how it works. I think I'll set it up and take it down then set it up again. I don't want to get out in "the wild" and find myself unable to set the thing up. We'll post pictures of our backyard adventure.

After we picked up the tent at Sears, we went into Target to check out some of their camping gear. It was hot and the sun was shining. I am not sure how long we were in there but we left about two minutes too late. As we walked towards the parking lot, I could see it coming from two directions. It was pouring down raining at the edge of the parking lot and moving towards the building. I looked to the left and it was coming from that direction too. We watched it move towards us over about 5 seconds time. Had we made a dash for the car, we would have been soaked to the bone. Instead we sat on the rubbermaid tub we bought to hold camping supplies and waited it out. Only a few brave souls made the mad dash to the car and when they came back they were completely drentched even with umbrellas. When it let up to just a light rain, Emmie and I made our move and ran towards the car. For some one who does not like water on her face she was laughing hysterically by the time we got to the car. She was screaming like a girl all the way there and we were park in the second parking space from the handicap spaces. We got into the car and she was still laughing and "whewing" as she buckled her seat belt. She was a riot.

Overcoming fears is kids stuff...

Tonight Emmie had her cello lesson. We have cello every Tuesday night. Afterwards we go out for dinner as it is too late to go home and cook after her lesson. Usually she wants to go out for Chinese to get egg soup, dumplings and "that red chicken". Tonight she wanted to go to McDonald's. She said she wanted to play in the play structure which was very odd. She NEVER wants to play in those things. I have encouraged her to try it so many times I have lost count. They even have a really big one at Frankie's Fun Park but she will not play in it.

So we had a quick bit to eat and went out to the play structure. I told her that she would need to take her shoes off before she goes into the tubes. She hates to take her shoes off. This child gets up in the morning and puts on her shoes. When she gets out of the bath and her jammies on she puts on her shoes until she goes to bed. I thought the removal of the shoes would be a deal breaker. I thought wrong. She took her shoes off and put them in the sneaker keeper slots. She climbed into the first tube and started making her way up the interior steps. She climbed all the way up and started making her way through the tubes and was waving at me from the upper tube. She then made her way around to the circular slide and actually went down the slide. This was another first for her. She did not and would not go down a slide if she could not see the end. She has never been willing to even try to go down one of those slides. Tonight she went down it about a dozen times.

I was so proud of her. She has over come three of her big fears, climbing in the upper tubes of a play structure, going down a circular slide and leaving my sight long enough to have a little fun like a normal kid.

What makes a heart tender?

I have a very tender hearted little girl. It seems that having spent every night for the past three years, four months and 15 days with me with the exception of four nights due to a business trip, she would not be so worried that I was going away and not coming back.

She knows in her head that I will be at her school to pick her up no later than 6:10pm. She asks me every morning "What time are you going to pick me up?" or "You're going to pick me up at ten minutes after six?" I tell her yes. Still every night when I arrive to pick her up she is either sitting behind the sign in desk with the day care owner or assistant or she is in tears sitting with the other kids waiting for their parents to get there. Tonight she was in tears (still trying to hold it together) sitting with the other kids. When she saw me, she lost it. She came running to me arms stretched up for me to pick her up, her mouth wide open and tears streaming down her face. It was like she was so relieved I was there she had to let it out. It's as if her head knows I will be there for her but her heart doesn't believe. I don't know how to help her get over this fear.

Some people say I need to take a tough love approach with her and start leaving her with sitters, forcing her to stay away so she will learn that I will come back. That is not a wise option for adopted children. They have a history which consists of a birth mother who decided to make an adoption plan for them. In the heart of a little baby that translates the birth mother didn't want her or love her. She was placed in an orphanage where she spent the next twelve months. She started to feel comfortable with the nannies who took care of her. One day she was dressed and taken to an apartment full of people. There were babies crying and people talking, flashs flashing and pour chaos. She was handed over to a woman who she had never seen before. The nannies who took care of her and with whom she was familiar with just disappeared. She would never see them again. It's no wonder she is afraid I will leave her whenever we attempt something new.

When we go to the beach or the lake I am not permitted to get into the water or to even put my feet in. I told her "I understand that YOU don't want to get into the water but why do you not want me to get in the water?" Her response was "Because you will float away from me forever." I don't know what I can do to convince her that I am not going to forget to pick her up from day care or that I won't float away in the ocean or lake. It breaks my heart to know that she has this deep fear and worry that she will lose me in some mysterious way.

We are planning a Homeland tour for the summer of 2009. She will be 6 years old then. We are hoping to be able to visit her orphanage and see the nannies that took care of her. What she doesn't remember is that we went back to the orphanage 5 days after we became a family. Several nannies were openly crying when we left. They loved her very much. I am hoping that in some way this might give her closure to some of the fears she has buried deep in her heart. I am hoping that the nannies who cared for her while she was there will still be working there. If they have moved on to other jobs, I hope they can come back to see how happy she is. Most of all, I hope she can come to understand that they did not leave her, they let her go allowing her to move on to a normal life with a family who loves her more than life itself.

Happy Father's Day!!!!!

Father's Day is an interesting day in our house. We call my father (Emmie's Grandfather) and wish him a Happy Father's Day but we don't have a Father in our house. All week Emmie told me how excited she was about Father's Day. Out of no where she would say "Sunday is Father's Day?" I would tell her "Yes, it is. We need to call your Grandfather on Sunday." She would then say "I am so excited for Father's Day." I would I say "We don't have a father in our house. Why are you excited for Father's Day?" She would answer "I don't know." I didn't want her to be disappointed because she didn't have a dad to spend the day with.

My belief is that the Day Care makes a big deal about it; however, they do not always take into consideration that all children do not have fathers or their fathers may be absent in their lives. Last year and the year before when all of her classmates were making gifts for their fathers they helped her make a gift for me and her Grandfather each year repectively; which was great. They made me a Happy Father's Day Mommy gift one year and a Happy Father's Day Pawpaw the next. She got to participate and they let her know her Grandfather was important and I play both roles as mother and father. This year I was disappointed as the "special fathers day" crafts/gift specifically said "To My Dad" or "For My Father". I added "Grand" to one of the gifts they made but it was impossible to correct the other one.

Adopting as a single most of the time is easy. I don't have to consult anyone on how to I raise my child. I don't have to come to an agreement on the best ways to disipline. I don't have to consider whether spending money on a trip to a theme park is in the budget. The only times I feel bad about it is around Father's Day. Truth be told, Emmie doesn't want a father or at least that is what she tells me. Maybe she is just trying to make me feel better about not giving her a daddy. We had a conversation a couple weeks ago about my getting married one day. She said "I don't want you to get married and have a husband." I asked her why and she said "Because I like our family just me and you." Then she asked "Don't you like our family just me and you?" I said "Yes, of course I love our little family. I love that we have had three years just you and me but sometimes Mommy really wishes she had a husband too." She said "Well, you can marry me and I will be your husband." LOL Silly girl.

Today we we went to do something fun that we thought Grandpa would like to do. Emmie thought he would like to go to EdVenture again. Edventure is a wondreful Children's Museum in town. I convinced her that her Grandfather will most likely prefer a different musuem so we went to the South Carolina Museum instead. After going I think my dad would like that musuem but it is not one that Emmie wants to return to. She wasn't sure about a lot of the exhibits. Some were a little scary for her like the 30 foot replica of the Great White Shark that has been extinct for millions of years or the Wooly Mammoth. She thought it was an elephant with really long tusks. Maybe she'll be ready for it again in a couple of years. There were some things she thought were really cool like the replica of the first train that was on display. She could climb up into the seating are.

I don't want to go to the beach!

Today we had planned to go to the beach. However, my 4 year old decided she didn't want to go to the beach, instead she wanted to go play "mini golf" at Frankie's Fun Park. So instead of driving an hour and a half each way to the beach for a day of fun in the sun, we went for an hour of putt-putt fun 15 minutes away.

Emmie is becoming quite the putt-putt champ. She balances that golf ball on the little dot in a rubber square. She lines her feet up just right. Then she gets her hands set with her thumbs lined up. She pulls the club back and lets it fly. Then ball rolls backwards towards the hole we just finished. Ahh yes, putt-putt with a four year old. It is amazing that she can hit a hole in one on one hole and more than ten strokes and picking up the ball and moving it on the next.







We finished the day with a couple of frosty ones at the 19th hole. Nothing like a frozen Coke after 32 holes of golf.

Afterwards Emmie wanted to "go do something else that's fun". So we went to Pets Inc. It's a shelter for dogs and cats. She asked me what a "shelter" is. I had a tough time explaining it to her. I told her it was for animals who did not have families but needed them. People bring their puppies and dogs and kitties that they cannot keep to the shelter so that another family can adopt them and take them home. She said "It's kind of like an orphanage for puppies and kitties, right mom?". I had to agree. All I can say is that it is a good thing they did not have any small dogs. All the dogs they had were large breed dogs or we probably would have come home with one. Emmie thought she found a little one she wanted but it was a puppy with HUGE feet. I explained that he was a baby and when he was done growing he would be as big as another dog we saw. She said "Oh no! We are not taking a horse dog home. He will probably eat our kitty!" Where she got that I have no idea.

Welcome

Welcome to my family blog. We are Kim and EmmaLi Taghan. I adopted EmmaLi as a single in Feb 2004. We have met so many truly wonderful people along our way and continue to do so. EmmaLi was 12 months old when I first held her in my arms. I carried her in my heart for more than three years before we finally met and became a family of two. This blog will be used to discuss our daily activities, adoption issues, parenting issues, attachment and bonding and anything else that comes our way. Emmie wants her own blog too but I told her we could share this one and it can be our family blog. So she will blog on occassion as well.

I always thought I would adopt a boy from China as well but with China's new regulations that will not be possible unless I get married. Emmie has some ideas of her own on that topic.