Our Family

My Family

* My husband and I are coming up towards our tenth anniversary.  When we were two young, passionate, introverted intellectuals, we never imagined the journey that we would go on together!

* My husband has a bachelor's degree in music and an MBA.  He runs a business-to-business manufacturing company based here in town, which sells its products all over the world.  This keeps him busy, and traveling, and his gentle and thoughtful approach to leadership is respected by his employees.  He also plays guitar for a local jazz big band, and when Broadway shows come to town.

* My oldest daughter, Hibiscus, is 7 1/2.  She is in second grade in our local Waldorf school.  She is passionate about anything she thinks about, and full of life and energy.  She loves studying ballet, and is gradually learning control of her wild body, with grace showing out of her long, slender limbs.  She has a distant crush on horses, and spends her free time in imaginitive play, drawing, and looking at books.

Hibiscus joined our family at age 6 1/2.  Like many children who spend their formative years in a chaotic environment without consistent love, nurture, or trust, she has a number of emotional struggles.  She has difficulty with sensory processing, and is a "seeker" in all areas  -- everything needs to be louder, faster, higher, noisier, brighter, and more exhilarating in order for her to register and process it.  She also has extreme executive function delays, which means that her impulse control and ability to make calm decisions about something are operating at a level much closer to a toddler than a grade-schooler.  She has a great deal of difficulty self-calming and self-regulating.

Also for children adopted at an older age, bonding with the new family is always a concern.  Hibiscus has a loving, open heart, and feels confident and involved with our family.  I don't think that she has had trouble in bonding, but she is simply many years behind.  She has the need to both catch up on her baby-and-toddler loving skills, as well as relate to us like the growing girl that she is.

Above all, Hibiscus is resilient, strong, intelligent, and joyful.

* My son, Sunflower, was born at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Day, almost six years ago.  I am incredibly blessed that I have been able to spend almost every day of his life with him.  Through our journey together, I have learned about becoming a parent and a mother -- and I've learned that it's harder than I expected!  Sunflower has always been intense, strong-willed, focused on mama, and perfectionistic.  He also is a charmer; one of those kids whom everyone loves.