Life with Lotus Maria and Lucian Stone

Lotus and I jaunted up to Portland for a quick trip before school got to hectic to meet my new niece Mila. Who clearly I love so much that I didn't take one picture of her. Really not one, what is wrong with me. I did take a lot of pictures of Kaiya and Lotus. They are ridiculous together, though Lotus really personifies that line in the Pretender's song "it's a thin line between love and hate". She loves Kaiya so much and gets so excited to see her that she hits her, in the face, with a spoon, a metal spoon. Here is a photo moments before Lotus hit Kaiya.

Then when Kaiya is crying she gets upset and says "What happened to Kaiya?" Kaiya is pretty amazing and doesn't hit back (though no one would blame the girl if she did) and seems to love Lotus even with the sort of immense physicality of the situation. We had a great time. My sister is amazing, she does it all with two kids and I barely hold it together. Lotus flew really well, she loved seeing Poppa and we even made a quick trip to see her other cousin Katya and Roma. The girls are all so cute together. It's enough to make me want to move to Portland, especially when I saw my dream house for sale at a price that wouldn't get us a garage in SF.

I keep hearing the weather is terrible, but SF is not that much better. Though after all the trouble it took to get Lotus into preschool we are not going anywhere anytime soon.

In February we attended the annual Tamale Party for Families with kids from Guatemala. This was the second year we went and it was so much fun. The weather people had threatened terrible weather, so I was worried we wouldn't make it, but we braved the elements and treked down to Palo Alto. Even with the bad weather there were about 50 families there. We saw some old friends and made some new ones.


It's tough right now for us Guatemala adoptive families. There have been some terrible salacious and and sometimes down right false media reports about adoptions from Guatemala. The international adoption system is currently shut down in Guatemala. We have been lucky that we haven't gotten too many comments. Though I have become a mad woman writing letters and commenting on blogs anytime someone reports something erroneous.

I crave these events because we can relax. I don't have to try and decifer the weird look someone is giving my family. I don't have to deflect or reeducate the seemingly harmless comments. The families are all great. We have made great friends and it is so darn cute to see Lotus and the other kids play so well together.




The event commences with the smashing of a pinata and then the free-for-all candy madness. Lotus had a great time watching the bedlam, but we thought it was best for all is this year she sat out the blindfold and a bat. I mean seriously who thinks of these ideas.