Toward the End of October 2007

Since finding out that the Lehigh University Board of Trustees voted to approve my tenure and promotion I have felt kind of zonked. It does not feel anti-climatic to me, it just feels like a big sigh of relief. I have a desire to just enjoy the simple things of life and let everything else go -- at least for the time being. For the past few days we've sort of been gliding here. Letting dishes and laundry and messes pile up. Letting the To-Do Lists just grow longer. Letting the blog go without updating. Letting life pass us by, in a good way. The passing of time is something so interesting. So often we mourn it. But in this phase of our life here, I'm thinking of all the good wrapped up in it. Time passing is not always bad. Time passed is a good thing when you're just on the other side of the tenure hurdle. That hurdle had been looming for a solid 12 years for Braydon and me. It is a good thing - that passing of time. We feel a huge sense of accomplishment and relief that it is over. I've also been thinking about the goodness in the passing of time a lot in terms of K & O for this whole past month. The month of October is an important one in our family. In 2005 October marked K & O's 'hump month' --- that month they passed a mile-marker in their lives: just as much time spent out of the orphanage as in it. By the end of October 2005 they had been out of the orphanage over 8 months... longer than the the 8 months they had spent in. It was a big deal. Our social worker had told us that it would take as long 'out' as they had been 'in' before we'd see a lot of their post-traumatic shock behaviors resolve. In the case of K & O it was true, almost to the precise day. By the beginning of November all of the heavy-duty issues were gone, our boys were happy and content virtually all the time, and it was clear to us that our family was fully bonded. Now, with October 2007 barrelling along, I have been thinking of that time two years ago. And I've been thinking a lot about how good the passing of time is. Of course I miss the little babies, and then the toddlers, that K & O once were. But these past several days I've been thinking about how happy I am that they are who they are now. K & O are 3 years and 5 months old right now. Here are just a few of the things I adore about them as they are today:

• they go to bed with relative ease, and sleep through the night almost always
• we can go to a relatively nice restaurant and be pretty confident they'll behave very well
• they play together every day like inseparable best of brothers
• they love their school and they already have formed a very strong group of friends from school
• they can't even consider going to sleep without their loveys
• regularly they tell me that I'm "beautiful"; tell Braydon that he's "so funny"; and tell us that we're "the best mommy and the best papi in the whole world"
• they love babies and talk about babies every day; they can't stand to hear any baby cry
• they eat us out of house and home
• their twinship is just as strong as it has been since we've met them
• their imagination is running wild, 24 x 7
• they regularly invite people (friends from school, neighbors, random strangers) to their birthday party, even though May 8 is many months away
• their favorite thing in the world is to jump on an airplane and go somewhere -- anywhere
• they are soooo happy sooooo much of the time
• they still have no real clue whatsoever what tenure is all about