A few good reads from this week. As always, I don’t necessarily agree with all the opinions expressed but do appreciate that they were expressed and provided perspectives worth considering.
“It’s Been a Year” over at My Fascinating Life – on the one-year anniversary of adopting their twins… and how different the experience was the children, versus the new parents. (I always appreciate reading parents who are able to step back and examine themselves as they may be coming across to their kids, so they get a big thumbs up from me for that!)
Was reading over at Latina-ish that her family has a favorite YouTube video for learning the Spanish alphabet. Went to comment on her post with the link to ours, and now the boys are begging me to keep playing it. So with the music playing over and over in the background, I thought I’d share it with you all, too!
El alfabeto español, compliments of YouTube:
I’m sure our family is responsible for about 52,000 of the 352,809 visits currently listed on their site.
Spent some time learning how to fiddle with my html code (Thanks, Fred!), so THIS week’s links features my new Blog Roll, organized by category. (Lower right sidebar.)
I’ll go back to individual post-links next week. Only so many hours in the day, and I’m looking forward to regaining one with this night’s sleep!
People ask me all the time if the twins have different personalities. From now on, I’m just going to pull this post up on my iPhone.
Here’s where each has spent the last 2 1/2 solid hours of the afternoon. Upon their own volition; Mamacita had nothing to do with it, except for not-interrupting-them.
I keep reading that there are tons of blog posts about this being National Adoption Month here in the U.S. But my personal Google Reader is fairly silent on the matter. So apparently I’m not running with the cool kids, with a couple exceptions.
So here’s some info and my personal take, for what it’s worth.
History of “National Adoption Day/Week/Month”
The idea of generating a public awareness of the need for adoption of children who would otherwise simply “age-out” of foster care seems to have originated in the State of Massachusetts in 1976 when then-Governor Michael Dukakis declared an “Adoption Week.”
That idea spread and finally hit the national level when President Reagan designated the first National Adoption Week in 1984. [Side note: Reagan was himself an adoptive parent of his son Mike, who he and his first wife adopted as an infant 40 years earlier.]
In 1995, President Clinton expanded “Adoption Week” into “Adoption Month.”
I’ve hit that mid-semester point where I’ve run out of my pre-planned home schooling stuff, so day-to-day prep is taking up most of my time and brain space. Hence my posting tardiness … just a couple weeks behind!
There is ONE thing for which I am not allowed to be late, however: our family’s quirky tradition of putting up our Christmas trees before Halloween hits. We made it again this year, with only hours to spare! (Wouldn’t have been so close if we hadn’t beaten all the stores selling the string-lights we needed!)
During our stay-cation this past weekend, Fred and I did some just-driving-around; and I decided to take him by the first house I lived in. It’s a little far-flung from our usual stomping grounds which is why he’d never seen it before. In the 9 years we’ve known each other. Ah well.
But anyway, we hit the end of the street and there it was:
It’s still early Fall, but we can tell this is the school year to start the in-depth conversations with the boys about discussing their race with others.
They know about race, have been able to rattle off from the age of three that they’re Latino; that their ancestors and Fred’s and mine came from different places on the globe (even before they really understood what “ancestors” were); and that that’s why our skin and hair and eyes are different colors. As we’ve studied different countries of the world, they’ve learned that people in different regions look different, eat different foods, have different customs, but also have many global similarities.
Fred and I have a thing about the number 11. Both our birthdays are on the 11ths of their respective months. Our first kiss was on an 11th. The twins’ adoption finalized on an 11th. And then when we asked for a baptism date at our church? Yep, another 11th.
It’s really a little weird.
But amidst all the 11′s flying at us, there was ONE over which we actually had control: our wedding day. (And no, wecouldn’t control that first kiss…)
7 years ago today, we officially started our family.
A few good reads from this week. As always, I don’t necessarily agree with all the opinions expressed but do appreciate that they were expressed and provided perspectives worth considering.
“The Painful Truth of ‘Better Off’” by Mei Ling at Shadow Between Two Worlds – a very honest and open expression by an adult who was internationally adopted as a child, what it’s like to juxtapose the common sentiment that she “is better off for having been adopted” with the loyalty and love she also feels for her first family.
“Tangled Web” on My Fascinating Life - a humorous anecdote about trying not to have to explain the adoption of her children to a total stranger… who just won’t drop the conversation… Read the rest of this entry
