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I look back at pictures and can’t believe he looks so little.
Those beautiful black-brown eyes. The chubby cheeks that have since thinned out. The contagious smile that, even from age 2, could light an entire city with one little flash.
All in one tiny, perfect package our family waited one what-felt-like never-ending year to meet.
Our prayed for, longed for, perfectly and wonderfully made Superman.
Today, turning 7.
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Last week, Superhero 1 turned 12. I asked him if, as a right of passage, he’d like to contribute a guest post to this blog. I told him his perspective as a sibling in an adoptive family was incredibly valuable and that he could write about any topic he wanted. Even though writing is not this introvert’s jam (nor is speaking, using more than two words to describe his mood or producing more than a paragraph on any given topic), this passionate superhero jumped at the opportunity to address the question he receives most often: What is it like to have two adopted brothers? This is the uncensored, unedited view of a boy who has had brothers from other mothers for four of the last 12 years.
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They’re not twins, and the event wasn’t planned, but Superhero 1 and Superhero 2 share the same birthday.
People ask us all the time how we managed to deliver two babies on the same date exactly three years apart.
Count back nine months from April 4 and you’ll see that July 4th is an extremely important holiday in our home.
Fireworks outside, fireworks inside. Just call us patriotic.
We may have also made the mistake of telling Superhero 1 he could have “his baby” when he turned 3.
We just didn’t realize that God would hold us to our word EXACTLY when Super-Spouse was stuck on a broken-down plane in Germany and my water broke in the United States.
In the booth of a TGI Fridays.
While singing “Happy Birthday” to the boy who got a baby as his gift.
(Thank you, waitress at TGI Fridays, for rushing my order on that burger when I refused to leave the establishment without my lunch. We hope the generous tip my daddy offered as he helped wrap me in a trash bag and waddle me to the car made up for the inordinate amount of placenta we left at Table 9. Don’t worry. We will never, ever, ever be back again.)
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I can’t even believe it’s been four years (and two months, because, well, the blog post I had intended to write on December 16 was derailed by this thing called “life” – let’s just pretend these reflections are not two months late).
We fell in love with Superman on Christmas Eve of 2012, and on Christmas of 2013, we were holding that boy we’d dreamed about all year in a hotel room in Guangzhou, China.
Every year on December 16, we celebrate Superman’s Adoption Day, the day we held him in our arms, not just our dreams, and every Christmas since that Christmas four years ago, I can’t help but replay those special first days in China in my head.
Superman came to us tender and tentative and sensitive and would break down if we even looked at him in what he viewed as a disapproving way.
But it didn’t take him long to settle in.
Before we ever returned from China, we saw glimpses of his joy and contagious belly laughter and the LOVE he had for others, even in the face of a broken past.
And oh, the miracles God has performed in his tender little heart since then.
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Before we had Superhero 2, I told Super-Spouse we were NOT getting a minivan.
Two children fit plenty comfortably in our humble four-dour vehicle, and there was no reason we needed to upgrade when our vehicle was already paid off.
One week after delivering our little man, hubby and I were on a road trip to celebrate a family graduation, and, with a rear-facing infant car seat directly behind me in the passenger seat, I ate my knees for two hours up and two hours back … and promptly told him, “I told you we needed a larger vehicle.”
He wanted a minivan.
At 26 years old, I told him there was no way I was trading in my cool kid cards to drive a minivan. Minivans were for parents with mom jeans and triple strollers and big, huge bags that had “soccer mom” embroidered across the back. They were for people who carpooled and listened to Light 99.9FM and frankly, were just OLD.
I was a judgmental, young, hip mom with two, not six, children, and I, in all my young mom pride, refused to take the plunge.
So, the very next day, we spent a day at the car dealership and ridiculously drove home a gas-guzzling SUV we couldn’t afford instead.
And the first time my sweet oldest son opened his SUV door straight into a newly painted red convertible, which I then left a note with my name and insurance carrier on the windshield of, I cried on the phone to my then-traveling husband, “Why didn’t you let me get a minivan?!”
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