I Make Her Head Hurt

Last year around this time, Brock & I attended an older child adoption training run by Bob & Katherine Sanford. They came back to Rochester to do another one today. We were asked to give a brief testimony on our own experience. I was excited to share our story and encourage others on their own journeys.

We wore matching adoption shirts.

I went early and bragged about how great Shaling is doing.

But.

She clammed up. It's not the first time, and I've come to expect it when there are a lot of adults around, but no children. She thrives being around hordes large groups of children. However, she turns shy and reserved when around groups of adults. Preston, however, did share a bit with the crowd.

At least one of the couples is getting a boy from Shaling's orphanage and after we spoke, they came up and chatted with us in an informal capacity. She taught them how to pronounce his Chinese name. He is 8-years-old, so he is her "little brother", as she told them...in English, not Chinese.

In the car on the way home, Shaling told me, "Mom, you no say me China." She was basically telling me not to talk about her being from China. Concerned that she might not be proud of her heritage or that she thought we were making fun of her, etc., I asked her why. She said, "you make my head hurt."

I guess that's her way of saying that we overwhelm her when we ask her to talk about China to groups of people.

Today as an entirety hasn't been real smooth. Brock was pretending to be 21 instead of 40 playing basketball this morning and severely sprained his ankle. The pain was bad enough that he crawled up our stairs instead of walking so that he could shower before going to prompt care. He is now on crutches.

While he was off playing hoops, I was driving the kids home from Father's Day shopping. We spotted a turtle at an extremely busy intersection close to the interstate. I went up the road and did a u-turn to go back and move it. By the time we returned, it was in the middle of the road and had two lanes of traffic backed up. I parked the car, telling the kids to stay put, and jumped out to grab it. As I scooped it up, it loudly cussed me out hissed, retreated entirely into it's shell, and proceeded to display just how gratified it was to be saved by peeing all over my foot. Yes, I literally scared the you-know-what out of it.

Surprisingly, I didn't drop it. I ran back to the car and told Preston to open the door. As I put it down on my floorboard, I said, "it peed on me". Preston said, "that was pee?!" I'm not sure what else he thought it was, but found the question amusing. We drove to a nearby boat ramp and set the turtle down a couple of feet from the water. We stood and watched for a few minutes, but it never did come of it's shell, so we just left so that it could calm down. I'm guessing from looking at it that it was a type of turtle called a "red slider". It was roughly 10 to 12 inches in diameter. Shaling was quite disappointed that we didn't bring it home...she kept telling me, "so cute".