Pictures, which I AM legally allowed to use!

You know, WalMart / Target will usually print any digital pictures you send them, but sometimes they get persnickety about "professional" prints. Anyway, this picture WAS purchased in digital format from Sears by my mother!

Merry Christmas! (not "Happy Holidays")

Merry Christmas everyone! Not "happy holidays" - as Brad Stein says, "there are a bunch of holidays in February too, but no one says 'happy holidays' - they call it what it is! 2000 years later, Jesus is still intimidating people". :)

I'm really on an acapella (Firefox doesn't seem to know that word) Christmas music kick this year. I've been listening a lot to some slightly older stuff from

Manhattan Transfer who also has a new CD out (well it came out last year, but I just got it this year) and Rockapella (another Rockapella CD)

There are a few new Christmas CDs out which I've enjoyed a good bit. Christmas music is about the only music I buy any more. When I buy it from ITunes or import it into my music library, I always make it a point to change the genre to "Christmas" since it seems to always come in as "holiday" :)

OK, I don't know why, but Blogger has an "Edit Html" pane, but it hijacks anything you do (sort of like Microsoft but much worse). If you want to not allow HTML editing, don't. Offering this half-baked solution is completely bogus.

Anyway, scroll waaaaayyyy down for the rest of this post.

	This is my favorite new CD this year - it's also where the Brad Stein quote above comes from.
	This is the best of the "various artists" offerings of 2007 IMO.
	There's a really awesome song on here "Quiet Christmas Night" - probably my favorite new Christmas song of the year. The other 2 tracks are all right, but not as good as Jaci's Christmas CD from a couple years back.
	This band's pretty good for a Disney band. They are Christians, but the songs on their other CDs is not written from a Christian world-view. This CD's quite good, though.
	I enjoyed this CD, but there's really not much Michael W Smith on it - it's more orchestra and choir.
	I am actually a little ashamed of Relient K for releasing this CD - since almost all of it is exactly the same tracks as their "Deck the Halls Bruise Your Hand" CD. I should have just bought the tracks that were different - but if you don't have the other CD, buy this one.
	This CD has some awesome tracks, although there was 1 I really didn't like at all because it was a bit raunchy. Maybe they think they made up for it by reading from Luke 2 on another track?

This One's For Bernie

If you were at MO 5 or more years ago, and involved in Children's Ministry, you knew Bernie. Why I'm talking about him today involves one of his controversial practices...

Breaking news to the 5th graders

that

there

was

no

Santa Claus.

Why am I remembering Bernie today?
Yesterday Mr. Clean came home from school and told me I had to mail a letter to the fictitious man. I told him I wasn't going to do it. He told me that it was an assignment and was very, very distressed that I said there was no Santa Claus when his teacher had told them all about seeing a reindeer with a red nose in the sky and that it was Santa practicing.
So it was a parents vs. teacher evening, and quite frankly, in his eyes, the teacher wins. I don't blame him really, because he is on his best behavior at school (he received the responsibility award 1st semester) and he is not at home - so he gets consistently good feedback from her and both kinds from me.
I got emotionally involved because it drives me INSANE how the public school system says that they can not teach anything about Jesus, or the reason why Christmas STARTED or even really why it's called CHRISTmas without the ACLU closing in. But their employee can work on instilling a faith in a fat man who breaks into your house while you're sleeping.
I really have nothing against St. Nick himself. I enjoyed the fantasy as a kid, but I'm a literalist and always have been. Tell me the whole truth and nothing but the truth or I'll feel betrayed. I promised myself that my kids would always know the truth about Santa Claus, negative numbers and ellipses. (Yes, I remember finding out that what I had been taught to believe was wrong about each of these things and wondered why the adults couldn't have just told me the truth from the beginning). There's a magic to the Santa Claus story.

BUT

If you can't teach faith in the public school -
DON'T teach my children faith in a myth that is currently about getting more stuff when our world is consumerist enough already.

I guess I should use my soapbox to dismount from my high horse. Daddy had to help me with what to write for the teacher.

Mr. Clean - there IS NO Santa Claus. There WAS a Christian Saint where this all started - but no fat man will be bringing you Thomas trains this Christmas. There are grown ups who love to give presents in secret - and that's a good memorial to Saint Nicolas. I wish you could believe me instead of her.

Maybe Daddy will chime in with his moderated thoughts about my emotions so you can get his side.

In the Middle

I opened the can of worms.
I have no idea if anyone is reading, and if so who - I don't know my audience. 4 people have talked about the blog in recent history, one of them being Daddy, so I may just be talking to myself. I don't know how to check. If there is a wider audience, I've been ruminating.

I don't want to defend myself. I believe my children needed a parent and I desperately wanted to be their parent. I do want to be introspective, because I can't afford to not try to understand the issue of race better.

My last post could alienate me to both sides. To the people who have lived their whole lives on the island of Caucasia, where travelers from other ethnicities visit but don't live, I'm almost a traitor to acknowledge that racism still exists.

To the people who live on some other islands - by trying to say "I've shared that experience." I've only proved that I don't understand part of the nitty-gritty of their life.

I'm never going to be African American. I'm never going to be Ethiopian. I can't even "pass" for having a gene tie to my children to people of African descent - if he or she says "mom" they say "So, you adopted" and not in the form of a question.

But as their mom I need to work on this gap between white privilege and racism. The disparity between the experiences and treatment. There is no guarantee what types of experiences my children will have, but the world is far from perfect. While I hope the balance is tipped towards the times they feel loved, accepted and included, I know there will be times when they feel left out, different and outside. I need to learn how to help them deal with the things that are unfair.

I don't know where to go with this one. Racism exists, my children will experience it in their lives in ways that I can't. I hope that some of my experiences can help them, but I also need the experiences of people who have experienced "walking in their skin" to help them. I'm a light-skinned woman who has a vested interest in race issues, who is aware of the color of my "world" and who spends time trying to understand race in dialogue and study. I'm also the mother of children with skin of deeper hues but I don't have the generations of knowledge of how to cope with and fight racism without being broken by it.

In the middle.

Racism

I feel like I may have just put my foot in my mouth again. I was reading Tracey's blog, a fellow adoptive mom that I've met in Real Life and I felt compelled to reply to a post.

But did I just sound like an ignorant white?

There are experiences that people of color have because of the systemic racism in society. Things where people act out of wrongly held assumptions, pigheadedness, ignorance and bigotry. Sometimes I feel compelled to say "Me too." I've been mistaken for the store employee: "Do you work here?" irregardless of the color shirt I'm wearing or lack of smock. I don't know what the visual clues are, but I've come across the people who aren't looking for dark skin or textured hair.

Likewise, I've been trailed in stores as a potential shoplifter. Not so much with kids, I like the pretty knick-knack stores. I don't go in them anymore, because they don't work well with a toddler. But I regularly had an employee shadow "Can I HELP you?" while eying where I might have pockets. So I guess it was discrimination against people under 30 who like coats with lots of pockets.

I've been ignored and overlooked because I've been "too young". I've been discredited and discriminated against because of the color of my skin "My mom told me I don't have to listen to a white teacher." And I've been told that a stranger might be a better parent for the child I've cared for because he isn't the same race as me.

I guess what I want to say is that discrimination and mistaken identity - I've been asked if I'm the sponsor for my children - since it was the best explanation for the worker at the international market. She took what she saw and tried to make sense of it. A late twenties light girl with straight hair and an adolescent Ethiopian girl doesn't automatically read as "mother-daughter" for the majority of the population.

We all need to be stretched. We try to understand the world based on what we've known to be true of it in the past. Some people have a lot of mistaken untrue beliefs that they use to filter the world - wrong beliefs about women, people who look different, people who speak with an accent, people who are too young to have the same life experiences or those who have had so much life experience that we think we can discount them because they are outdated.

In addition, so much is misunderstandings. There is overt calculated devaluing of people, there are the subconscious decisions that we make based on what we believe is true. Then there are the accidents, the misinterpretations. Tracey wasn't talking about them in her post, but I live in a life of blunders. Some people of diversity believe it's discrimination when a white person won't look them in the eye in a public place. Then there's me. I don't always have the self-esteem to look strangers in the eye, and I'm just as likely to "snub" the person who looks like my grandmother the same way I just snubbed you. And I've had enough classes and read enough articles and books (WHY do they think it would be in his best interests to be in a different family?) that I know there are people who don't think that I should be their mom... and I don't want to invite a confrontation in case they are a member of the National Association of Black Social Workers.

I know, I'm a wimp. I'd rather not have a negative social interaction so often I choose to avoid social interactions with strangers. Sometimes I force myself into them, I join groups and attend meetings... Very often I do not know what to say to people. Like "Please tell me what I don't know about locks."

I don't have a way to wrap this up, so I'll just leave my ending hanging.

Autumn

It's November and I am so completely unprepared for the holidays. I am barely keeping my head above water with school right now (is there a course for how to manage all the stuff that comes with your children being in school so that you're not behind in EVERYTHING or is it just that much easier when you start with one in Kindergarten that people "catch on" faster?)

We're still here, we're getting by. We've done 4 birthdays in the last 3 months and have one to go. Being a scrooge, I asked if we can pick a significant birthday and just let people have parties on the significant birthday - like only for turning 10, 13 and 16 or something. I didn't manage one a month very well. I think the answer was that Daddy will take care of birthday party planning next year.

Her Royal Highness has grown a lot this last year, and only someone who has adopted an older child from a place of malnutrition can understand the fullness of what I'm saying. When you compare her and princess, and princess is wearing her clothing from Jan/Feb, if the waistband is elastic, Princess has a small waist, it's very difficult to comprehend that a person can grown and change that much in such a short time.

Little is on the rampage. It was driving me to despair, but I'm feeling more in control. The nutritionist suggested that it was the terrible twos come late... "Praise the Lord!" because it's healthy and normal. I was so miserable, I wanted her to say "I have a supplement that makes them stop raging like a possessed person." "You're right, he's taking eating too much _______." (You know, blame it on refined sugar, or red dye 40 or something). This couldn't be normal, this must be the result of intense emotional issues and I don't know how to discipline it. I finally googled "terrible twos" and it is descriptive of what we have - the name calling, the toy throwing, the tantrums, the hitting, biting (he bit my thigh yesterday!) the disobedience is described as part of that developmental stage where you realize your own ability to impact the world and your competence to do some things for yourself.

Ai-yi-yi. He would have been much easier to contain and discipline when he was the size of a one year old. But we didn't have terrible twos... there was nothing terrible at all about two. So normal development is necessary and I guess..... this is a .... good.... sign? I suppose at least I can make a plan based on this... terrible twos are a stage that doesn't last forever and there are techniques for dealing with it (although I don't see the advice for when they are breaking the siblings things... or throwing shoes at your head... most 24 month olds don't have the aim that Little does).

Mr. Clean is doing well at school, 1st grade is a good fit for him and the worst he's brought home so far was Halloween stories, which .... would have been nice to skip but at first grade were tame...

Princess forgot her glasses today. I'm partially inclined to believe that there may need to be an "on purpose" after that. Both girls are convinced they don't really need them and try to get out of wearing them. She's fine with 2nd grade math and 1st grade reading/language arts. Social Studies and Science is hard, with vocabulary and "______ dead?"... the concept of the flow of time is not quite there. Regal Highness also has an incredible amount of vocabulary that makes those subjects difficult. We are planning on partially enrolling them for the spring and doing social studies and science at home.

Royal Highness is painfully aware that she's the oldest child in the school... something we didn't expect when we enrolled her. Her classmates are Princess's age mates - at the field trip yesterday Princess "fit" in size wise (although I'm afraid a lot of the information was lost on her... "James mother dead?" Regal Highness replies "George. George Washington." Princess is concerned about if he's dead and how many brothers and sisters he had... I was hoping we'd learn a bit more about the first President of the United States. I think Mr. Clean's learning experience was that Anne's classmates are fun to play soccer with... I guess I should be glad we didn't invest a lot of money in the experience and when we revisit George and his mother Mary there may be a glimmer 0f recognition (like hatchets are a fun birthday gift?).

Tangenting... in our current society, would it even be legal to give a minor a sharpened hatchet as a gift? The toy aisle in Target... sharpened tools with warnings on the packaging saying "Contains sharp parts, not suitable for children under the age of 13." No way I'd give one of my boys an object of destruction to be their very own any time in the next several years... the tour guide asked the student actor what he thought he'd say to his son when he presented the gift... my answer was "Don't use it on the furniture. - oh wait, I'd never give my kids that gift in the first place." Augustine Washington... you definitely lived in a different world than I did. "George, remember you can't take that hatchet on school property, or you could be arrested."

More later... hopefully you won't have to wait 2 months. I thought Daddy was going to be posting to HIS blog in October...

Schooling

Let me begin with a disclaimer - Don't get too excited by the last post. We're in the research phase because we want to reduce the dreaded waiting phase to a bare minimum. This hasn't been so easy that we've got the process down to it's simplicity and we're looking for the challenge.

But God does command His people to care for widows and orphans, and I'm convinced that we are to open our home again at some point (and Daddy votes for "soon" because of retirement).

Regarding schooling.

I am totally convinced that homeschooling is a wonderful, ideal thing. I believe that parents are THE people with the responsibility to make sure their children grow up being taught the important things about life and unfortunately many public schools can not be trusted to help with that job without teaching a lot of bad stuff on the way.

We homeschooled from the time the kids came home (January) through August. Daddy said we were sending them to school and after struggling (my own struggles with pride, rebellion and submission to authority) and giving it over to God I submitted to his lead.

Her Regal Highness (and was she pulling that one off today - submitting to the authority of the parents is hard for anyone her age, the selfishness and pride that make one chafe under authority were rearing their ugly heads) and Princess are attending a University-Model School.
They attend on Tuesdays and Thursday and their teachers at the school hand over the lesson plans for Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and I teach those days.

Mr. Clean (I wish he could be persuaded that he NEEDS the lotion after the bath instead of fighting it) is attending the local public school.

Little (let's not leave anyone out) is becoming all grown up. Another reason why I need a baby. He's potty-trained. He's talking in complete sentences most of the time. I have a book for him when he wants to "do" school but he's learning quickly and with the shared language teachable moments are everywhere. So he's being homeschooled the way many "2 a haf" year olds who are really almost 4 (yes, he doesn't answer the question "How old are you?" correctly) .

Daddy felt that Mommy and Mr. Clean needed space from each other. And he was right. Despite my convictions that I was supposed to be his best and primary teacher there's a whole lot of dynamics that work better in this family with us having our separate spaces for a portion of the day. And the public school came highly recommended from various sources. We were going to send Princess there, until ESOL talked about putting her in 3rd grade.

Which is lovely about their school. Princess is in 2nd grade and attends 1st grade for Language Arts. We're actually mostly on her comprehension level although her math computation skills are away and beyond the curriculum (but it's good to have something be easy and gives her the space to learn things like graphs and word problems). Her Regal Highness is in 4th grade (she told her Dad that she is bigger than any of the other girls in 4th-6th grade) but the work is largely on her level as well (Language Arts being the difficult thing - but it's sticky to put a girl who's hit puberty and stands over 5' in 3rd grade).

So my life has calmed down. I no longer fear the tantrums because I know that I have the space and resources to deal with them. I don't have to be "on alert" for large portions of the day because of inter-child dynamics.

I hated the idea of sending my children away to school because I knew I was capable of homeschooling and I believed it was the best option for anyone who was capable of it. The thing was, while I have the training and know how to teach, I don't have the emotional and I guess psychological reserves to parent high structure high nurture and teach with all 4 in the same place. There are too many needs that people want met RIGHT NOW and after a certain amount of stress the nurture flies out the window and you have crazy Mommy.

I think we found the right balance. There are still days that are crazy, but I believe at this time God has called us to use the support of public and private school educators to teach our children. I didn't think I would be able to entrust my children to a public school especially after my experience teaching here. (Unfortunately when we taught there it was a poster school for all that can go wrong with public education in the US. Looking at some of the recent data -I left the school after the 00-01 school year - things have improved).

So that's what we're doing here. Today I worked with the girls and spent some time with Little without too many outbursts from any of them and no hitting or kicking that I know of during the hours that Mr. Clean was at school. I don't have to worry about what to teach him or how to motivate him and now that I don't have to make him do his assignments (because the ones from school are easy/fun and/or it's a lot more fun to please your teacher than your Mommy) he has fewer opportunities for defiance and chooses not to be defiant more of the time (instead he has so much to tell me about what happened that day in 1st grade). The girls have the individual teaching time that they need to learn the subject matter in a new language. And Little and I have 2 days a week at a slower pace which makes both of us more sane.

So -that's what happened with school.