The Honeymooners

Amid all the confusing cultural moments, we’re having a honeymoon with Jem. Parents don’t normally get to spend two hours a day bonding with their new child—laughing, playing, bottle-feeding, exploring, hugging, and kissing—and then leave others to do the diapering, clean-up, sleep duty, and health care. One of the reasons we chose Kazakhstan was that we really liked the idea of a bonding period. We weren’t comfortable with a cold turkey start date to family life. We couldn’t quite imagine being handed a child we didn’t know, and then boarding an airplane for countless hours to take her to the strange land of our daily American lives. That sounded too traumatic for all three of us.

We wanted to date our daughter first. To get to know her. A little wining and dining, maybe. You know, early romance.

Most parents would envy that we’ve gotten to fall in love with Jem before entering the more complex arrangement of being fully responsible for her safety, security, and well being. We’re ecstatic to take that on, but it’s been much more comfortable for us to get to know a little bit about what makes her tick before we clock in.

Though our visits with Jem are brief, they’re intensely focused on connecting with her, listening to her, engaging her, pleasing her, helping her—all the while building the beginning of a family relationship for the three of us. It’s everything we’ve wanted, packaged into a two-hour time block. Sort of like an exotic excursion, every day.

But like most journeys to a foreign land, we need a vacation to follow the vacation. We come home desperate for a few hours of sleep. In this way, our schedule resembles Jem’s: eat, play, naptime. Luckily, Pampers don’t come in our size.

Watching Jem emerge from the chrysalis in which we met her has been nothing short of amazing. In just over a month’s time, we’ve seen her develop from an adorable warm stone into a baby girl with a personality of her own. From a slackened little pile of flesh to a sturdy sitter, with frantic frog legs that are starting to gain the necessary traction to propel her. From a remote, complacent Buddha, to a girl who loves a good tickle. From silence to raspberries to a ducky, little voice. Even her whine makes us happy; we’d like to believe that it indicates that she’s trusting—perhaps for the first time in her life—that the people orbiting around her are going to do anything they can to respond to her needs and desires. She’s not one of eight or 18 children with us, she’s the center of the universe that is our budding family.

Which brings us to the queasy place our honeymoon is headed. Strange as our experiences in Kazakhstan are, we’ve gotten kind of used to day-to-day life in adoption land. But three weeks from now, we’ll return to the world of daily responsibilities. Back to our jobs, and all their demands. Back to stressful negotiations with our condo association. Back to extra unexpected meetings and committee time. Back to driving everywhere and needing multiple stores to get anything done. (Ah American convenience!) And if we felt like we couldn’t quite take care of it all before, it’s clear that we’re about to enter our own space-time continuum in a big, spanking, new way.

Just like every parent does. We shouldn’t make much ado about the responsibilities that come with the relationship we’ve wanted so badly. We’ve just been lucky to begin this new life on a part-time basis. Not to mention the gift of loving a little girl who finds Mr. Froggy incredibly compelling, over and over again. We wish that kissing Mr. Froggy—something we routinely do—would turn him into all the things we want for Jem. But the responsibility is about to be all ours. And we’re at least a little noivous.

In a week, our Jemmy moves in with us. Seven days left of the life we usually understand. And for our first two weeks together we’ll be stuck in Kazakhstan, far too far from everyone we love and rely upon, leaping into parenthood and an endless series of unknowables.

What if she won’t eat? What if she can’t sleep without all the other children around? What if she doesn’t like the way we do any number of daily things we don’t yet know how to do? What if she senses our newness and thinks she’d rather be back with the old pros at the baby house? What if...?

Stay tuned.