Time

I have been thinking a lot about time recently: how it goes so fast and so slow and seems to bend and distort depending how you think about it. I think some of the distortion is an adoption thing.

Little Bear is relatively new to my life. He has been with us a mere 14 months. Just a baby. But he isn’t. My youngest baby is rapidly growing up. He might have only been here 14 months but he is in fact over 4 and a half years old now. He is going to his friends’ 5^th birthday parties. After appearing tiny when we first got him – his head fitted in my hand like a baby’s would and he easily fitted in 2 to 3 years clothes, he seems to be getting bigger every day. I desperately need to get Big Bear’s old 5 to 6 things down from the loft otherwise Little Bear will have nothing to wear. I feel as though I have only just put the 5 to 6 things up there but in reality Big Bear is wearing 9 to 10 now so I can’t have done.

How have my Bears got so big so quickly?

When Little Bear grows out of his clothes, I am giving them away to charity because I’m pretty sure I won’t have a use for them. However, I am not feeling that comfortable about waving goodbye to all the 3 and 4 year old stuff. It seems sad that my boys are not little enough for them anymore. Ditto the dressing up costumes. Little Bear does still squeeze himself into one occasionally but in reality they are half-mast and bursting at the seams. Soon they will need to find a new home too.

I am starting to see why people continue to have more children. It is sad to think that I won’t have pre-schoolers pootling around the place any more, with their chubby cheeks and vivid imaginations. Big Bear is getting all tall and stretched out. With his grown-up teeth and distinct lack of chubbiness I almost didn’t recognise him the other day, in head to toe football gear ready to go to evening training. A friend had her first baby this week, a boy, and I couldn’t believe that over 7 years had gone past since that was me. That time has passed incredibly quickly, especially the last 3 years of it. I feel as though someone has been holding down the fast-forward button.

I wonder if children grow up quicker now. Big Bear might only be 7 but he is very knowledgeable about the world. He has opinions on Donald Trump and Brexit. I wonder whether he seems older than he is because of it and if it makes time feel as though it has gone quicker than it should.

I have been relying on Little Bear to be the little one. The one I can still carry about and pick up and rub chubby cheeks with. However, he doesn’t seem to have got the memo and is rapidly growing up anyway. I think some of it comes back to the fact that we missed the first 3 and half years of his life. Everything has gone quicker. I only had him at home for a year before he started school. His developmental delay gave us a bit of a false feeling of him being littler than he really is but it has also meant that now he is in the right environment, he has flown through developmental stages far quicker than a child usually would. Nobody normally goes from wearing nappies, sitting in a high chair and barely being able to speak to starting school and working on phonics in less than a year. It makes time feel skewed and a little confusing.

I am so happy that Little Bear is progressing as he is, of course I am. But a little part of me does wish that both of them would stay little a bit longer.

This was the point, when Big Bear had started school that I started feeling I was ready to adopt. Part of me thinks it’s happening again, that my nest has emptied and I’m getting urges to fill it. However, despite Little Bear rapidly growing and progressing, he has only been here 14 months and he is nowhere near ready for another sibling. He still needs A LOT of time and energy and I don’t think it would be fair for anybody to try and make him share that time.

Big Bear is pretty settled with having a sibling now but that has taken time too. Yesterday he allowed Grizzly to bring his Hot Wheels track downstairs so that all three Bears could play with it together. That has taken 14 months. There are still lots of toys in his bedroom that he won’t share and his door remains locked. I think another sibling would undo a lot of the good progress he has made so family expansion is certainly not on the agenda for the foreseeable future.

Time is definitely needed for an adoption to “bed-in” and feel normal for all involved.

As time ticks by and we are moving through our second year of having Little Bear, it is nice to look back and know how things were for him at this point last year, rather than wondering how they might have been. In November 2015, Little Bear was here with us. Things were hard and I was not looking forward to Christmas. I had literally no festive spirit. I spent time wondering how things had been for him the previous year and the years before that. What had his experiences of Christmas been before? Had he ever been to see Santa? What presents did he get? How did he cope with the whole experience? Did he wake up really early? How would he cope now he was with us? Were we in for a rhetorical battering?

This November I can look back and think what a shame it was that I didn’t have any Christmas spirit last year. Our turning point came just before Christmas 2015 and in the event we had a really lovely time over the festive period. Little Bear coped well and his behaviour settled down. He started sleeping and we all felt much better. When I look back this year, I know that he was safe last Christmas. I know that he had a lovely time. I know that he was excited and experienced the wonder of it all. I know that he was loved and spent the festive time surrounded by family and fun. I know how he coped with different aspects of it and I will be able to approach this Christmas with prior experience. I won’t feel so much as though I’m making it up as I go along and as though I don’t quite know what to anticipate around each corner. Time has helped us in that way too. It will be nicer still when Little Bear has had more time with us than with others but we are a way off that yet.

Although I would like to press the pause button on the Bear’s childhoods, I would be lying if I said there weren’t moments/ days/ weeks when I’ve wished time away. In the early weeks I definitely spent a lot of time counting down until bed time. I would choose tasks/ activities that passed time with the least effort. I was shattered. I was missing out on 2 to 3 hours of sleep in the middle of each night and Little Bear was very challenging during the day. We needed to re-iterate rules and consequences over and over and over to show that we really meant it and the rules weren’t going to change and we were still going to be there no matter what. It was repetitive, challenging and sometimes gruelling work. It sometimes felt like an endurance event and the best way to face it was keeping things as easy as possible. Each day passed was another under the belt and (hopefully) one closer to some semblance of order.

Now that I have sufficient energy reserves to do so, I try to make the most of every snippet of time. I try to say yes to playing and ignore my phone. I try to take all the opportunities to develop Little Bear’s language, even if I don’t really feel like repeating a phrase for the 4^th time or answering the 87^th question of a car journey. I try to leave my jobs for later and give the boys my time. At the weekends, it is almost all family time. I’m all too aware that one day I will wake up and they will be 18 and their childhoods will be over. And if whoever it is doesn’t take their finger off the fast-forward button soon, that day will be here far sooner than I want it to be.

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