As the Academy Awards approach, I’m once more reminded that in eight years of marriage, Tim and I have been to exactly one movie. Atonement on our 5th anniversary. I read other people’s blogs and see long, long lists of movie recommendations. Or read postings on Facebook about movies people have seen on their release day.

Not us.
I’m the one to blame. So far, I’ve been unsuccessful at finding reliable babysitting. And it often seems as if when I do find one, we pay dearly the next day. Unfortunately, I haven’t been good about enforcing bedtime on the rare occasions when we are out. So when we return, the kids are still awake and monumentally overtired.

I want to see a movie on a big screen! At night, on a date with my husband.

The babysitter search begins now!

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Mateo walks into the kitchen as I’m unloading the dishwasher wearing his red pajamas with the fire engines on them. He turns to the side so I can see his profile, and from that angle he looks like an extremely short, three-year-old Jackie Gleason: all stomach.

“Look, Mommy,” he says. “I have a baby in my tummy.”

He lifts up his fire engine top and there, tucked inside his undershirt, is his stuffed green sea turtle, Tortuga.

“How nice!” I say. “A little baby for Mateo.”

“Baby grow big.” He opens his eyes wide for emphasis.

In Mateo’s world, babies in tummies are everywhere: The aisles of Safeway, the playground, and the pediatrician’s waiting room are filled with babies in tummies. The Lion class teacher and the assistant principal at his preschool have them, as does his speech therapist, Ms. Cydney. Even the substitute babysitter we hired last Friday night showed up eight months pregnant.

But the one tummy that doesn’t have a baby in it is mine. That’s one tummy that’s never had a baby in it.

I turn from the dishwasher and crouch to Mateo’s eye level. He knows both he and his sister, Olivia, were adopted. I tell him the now-familiar tale of how he was born in Guatemala in another lady’s tummy, his Guatemalan mommy. I fill in the details as I know them, ending with the plane ride home to San Francisco. I assure him that Mommy and Daddy love him more than any other little boy in the whole wide world.

After I finish, he crawls into my lap.

“I like that lady,” Mateo says, referring to his birth mother. He calls her by name. “She nice.”

“She is nice,” I agree.

“I want to be in Mommy’s tummy,” he says, pouting. He pushes me to the floor and lifts up my t-shirt. He pulls it over his head and snuggles into me. “I love Mommy.” His voice is muffled.

I hug him through my t-shirt. He’s such a little boy, but must understand so much. My own life with biological parents and siblings seems so easy and straightforward by comparison.

“I love you, too, Mateo,” I say. We sit on the floor for a long time.

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Mateo didn’t say a word until after he was almost three. I went into a bit of a panic and signed him up for the services offered by the County of Marin. No fooling around there. If he had a delay, I wanted to know about it. Much better to face an issue head-on than to ignore it.

We attended speech therapy for year, with a lovely young woman named Cydney. She and I had a special bond because we were both adoptive mothers. Halfway through the year, she became pregnant, and is now the proud mama to a daughter and son.

Mateo and I loved speech class. We broke down words: “hel-i-cop-ter.” “ce-ment mix-er.” Kit-chen.” Cydney tapped the syllables out with her hand as Mateo said them. A very fun game. At home, I talked to him constantly. Tapped out every conversation. Had him blow through a straw to make bubbles. Made vowel and consonant sounds from morning till night. In fact, I talked so much I thought maybe I wasn’t letting him get a word in edgewise. Olivia talks a lot, as does Tim. Poor Mateo, maybe he got tired of trying to make himself heard.

Finally, after about a year of speech, Mateo suddenly started in full sentences, whole paragraphs. It was as if he’d been storing up all his ideas and could now, finally, let them out and express himself.

He hasn’t stopped talking since.

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Tim and I knew when we married that we wanted to adopt. No questions there. We wanted to become parents, and the best solution for us was adoption. Olivia was born in 2002 and Mateo in 2004. To the question so many people have asked us: different birth families, different part of the country.

That’s one thing you get used to pretty quickly as an adoptive mom: People asking questions. All the time. Actually, it’s slowed down as the kids have gotten older and people in our small orbit know us. But it still happens, most recently at Mateo’s preschool. One of his teachers said, “Are they really brother and sister?”

“Really? Yes,” I responded. “Biologically? No.”

I’ve found that answer to be the quickest, easiest one that people understand.

I keep meaning to ask my sisters if anyone ever asks them similar questions, but I think I already know the answer. As a transracial, adoptive family you just have to accept that people are curious. You can’t let it bother you. A small price for being a mother.

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I met my husband, Tim, on a 400-mile bicycle ride in 1998. He lived in San Francisco; I lived in San Diego. He was born in New Jersey; I grew up in New Jersey. We married in January 2002 and now live in the Bay Area.

When my mother heard the news, she threw her hands over her head and screamed, “It’s a miracle!” She was right. I was 39 when I met Tim, divorced for 11 years after an unsuccessful early marriage, and I lived in Southern California, where it seemed as if everyone else was already married, or else had no intention of ever being so. I got lucky. Now I tell all my single friends to get on their bikes, or go for a hike, or do whatever it is they love most. The right person will be doing the same thing, and already you’ll have something in common.

These days, Tim and I rarely ride our bicycles together. With two young kids, one of us usually stays home while the other exercises. But we’ll get back to it eventually. Soon enough, our children will be riding alongside. Or better, we’ll be following them.

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