Forever Family Day 2012

Forever Family Day 2012, a set on Flickr. 

Every year, we celebrate our confirmatory adoption of Mr. D by taking the day off and doing something special, all together. This year's theme, apparently, was animals.


We don't plan this day out ahead of time (other than arranging to take the day off, if April 19th falls on a weekday)... part of the specialness of it is the ease we all feel, knowing that we have an entire day set out before us.


The visit to Bird Paradise was something of a information-gathering mission. Since Mr. D has been a bird lover for as long as any of us can remember, we can imagine that a companion bird might be in his future at some point. Before we hopped a train, we stumbled onto the excellent Amy's Omelette House, which we highly recommend, both for the stunning range of omelette options, and for the just-right level of service friendliness. The River Line train to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden is a treat in and of itself... a smooth and easy ride that takes you almost to the doors of the aquarium, qualifying you for a discount on the price of admission to boot! At the aquarium we oohed and ahhhed our way through a seemingly endless array of marine life... I think the part Mr. D and I both enjoyed the most was petting the stingrays (!).


We are so blessed to have each other, and I hope that we live into that gratitude every day. Still, it's lovely to have this one day where we're paying special attention to that "how did we get so lucky" feeling.

(For more Forever Family Day fabulousness,

check out the posts from 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011!)

Forever Family Day #10

We have made celebrating the anniversary of Tama's successful adoption of Mr. D a family tradition, and this year (#10! how is that possible?), we started off by sharing songs with a celebratory theme. Here are Tama & Mr. D listening to Kool & the Gang rock Celebration:

(Mr. D noticed that some people had clicked "thumbs down"
in the comments on this video,
and asked, "Who the heck doesn't like this song?!"
He's turning out nicely, we think.)

Actually, the first thing we did was treat ourselves
to a fancy breakfast of raisin challah French Toast.

Then the sound of a basketball being dribbled
in our neighbor's driveway called Mr. D's name,
so off he went...

(Nice body English, huh?)

Later, we went on a family bike ride to
our favorite bike store,
where Jay was able to show us a picture
of Mr. D's soon-to-be-delivered new bike!

The weather was not cooperating,
so we rode back home
and played several rounds of
Mille Bourne ("nice guy version").
(This version encourages players
to help each other out when they encounter
trouble on the road, and since the original version
is considerably more cutthroat,
"nice guy version" games tend to take a while.
No worries; we had all the time in the world.

Then, just as happened last year,
we found ourselves in the market for some 3-D movie action.

We give Born To Be Wild six thumbs up!

And we remain grateful for each other's
love in our lives... not just on Forever Family Day,
but every day.

(For more Forever Family Day fabulousness,

check out the posts from 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.)

Merry Merry

That was then...

...this is now.

The freeing the Christmas tree has become
a time-honored tradition in our family. I am
especially fond of the traditions that we've started
without even knowing it.
After that first year of cutting through the tree netting,
Mr. D had a pretty clear idea that it was his job.
And so it has turned out to be.

(Hope you all are enjoying
the gifts of the season!)

eBay and Beginner's Mind

Mr. D has gotten some great play out of his hand-me-down Bey Blades (thank you, Feldini's), and has long scorned the newer generation of this spinning top toy. Recently, though, he's started to realize that the older ones are harder to get (they don't sell them in stores anymore), and his friends have all moved on to the newer generation. "I think maybe I'll try to sell some of my old ones on eBay," he said to me matter-of-factly, "so then I can try the new ones out with some of that money."

"Great idea, buddy," I said. Then I said, "But I don't actually know how to SELL something on eBay; we've only ever been buyers. So we'll have to figure that out." Well of course it turns out that eBay makes it SUPER easy to sell stuff via their site, so within a half hour or so of poking around I was confident that I'd be able to help Mr. D achieve his goal.

The fact that I didn't know what I was doing meant that I was truly able to stay in that place of "beginner's mind." This led to all kinds of great conversations. Which Bey Blades should we offer? Should we do a "these are the actual Bey Blades you'll get" listing or a "You'll get two Bey Blades like these" listing? Mr. D and I talked about why some auctions are less specific than others about the actual items you'll receive. We also talked about the reputational ranking system that eBay uses to help buyers uncover less-than-trustworthy sellers; we'd been very aware of it as buyers, but it was quite different to think about what it means to EARN those ratings as a seller.

Once Mr. D had decided to opt for a full-disclosure, "this is what you'll actually get" style of selling ("because I don't like it when they don't tell me what I'm getting," he reasoned), we moved on to talking about presentation. Mr. D staged and art-directed this photo, which he felt showed off his offered Bey Blades in the best possible light:

Then we talked about how to describe the tops, spinners, and rip cords. Who would be reading the ad, the children, or the parents? People who knew about Bey Blades, or people who didn't? Probably all of the above, we decided. We wrote several drafts of "ad" copy before we came up with a final version.

Then we had to decide about shipping. Would we charge separately for it, or fold that cost into the total cost of the sale? We remembered that we sometimes sort our eBay searches according to asking price, and so we decided to take what felt like a little bit of a risk and list Mr. D's Bey Blade lot with a starting bid of $.99, free shipping. This meant that we might lose money if the winning bidder came in under the total cost of shipping (which we estimated would be about three dollars). Mr. D was confident that it was a risk worth taking, and his goal with this initial sale was "not to make money, but to build up our good reputation!"

Finally the big day came. We posted our carefully staged photo and meticulously edited description and opened up the bidding. If you click on the picture below you can see how the bidding unfolded, but first... how much do YOU think someone offered to pay for those Bey Blades? (We were thinking the total might come in around $8.00.)

It was so exciting to be on the receiving end of those bids! We knew from having been eBay buyers that some folks were actively bidding while others had set a ceiling limit and then let their computer do the rest. But we were pretty surprised when the bidding went above the $7.00 "Buy It Now!" option we'd built into our sale and then kept on climbing.

Mr. D. insisted on packing up his own merchandise:

And when the winning bidder, who lives in Oregon (we looked it up on a map), received her package, she gave us full marks for service, so our eBay seller rating is currently 100% positive; just what we were going for!

This entire process clearly made an impression on Mr. D; later on in the week he opted to give away a few Bey Blades to a close friend of his at school. It will be interesting to see what he decides to do with his remaining "old school" Bey Blades. I am looking forward to doing a lot more side-by-side learning with him over our upcoming break. Next up? SketchUp!

(I would love to hear about
some of your side-by-side learning moments
as a parent, friend, or colleague...)

The Alumni Notes Version

(Alumni Notes)

I had a fantastic time participating in a combined Twitter chat last night, with folks from both the Parentella (mostly parents) and CampusChat (mostly counselors) communities chiming in.

One of the things I love about these chats is the free-ranging nature of the discussion, even though that can also sometimes be a real challenge. I am grateful to both Amanda (of Parentella) and Kelly (of Smart College Visit fame) for their work in making it happen, and am still trying to wrap my brain around all of the interesting perspectives that were shared last night.

Several "take aways" for me came several hours later (have I mentioned that I'm a slow thinker?), as I continued to muse about the stream of comments that were related to what parents can do in support of their children achieving excellence.

Of course I thought of this Erich Fromm quote: "Few parents have the courage & independence to care more for their children’s happiness than for their success."

So one question is, what kind of excellence are we talking about?

It being mid-December, I also started thinking about students dealing with disappointment in the college search process (and in life), and that led me to thinking about the true-life stories we parents tell our children.

If you're a college graduate, do you remember the first time you read the alumni notes section of your school's alumni magazine? I do. I remember the sinking feeling I felt as I mentally compared my life's accomplishments with those of the people who had sent in descriptions of their triumphs. They were running their own companies, being named to advisories boards, welcoming beautiful children to the world, publishing novels... I was just trying to learn the admissions ropes at UPenn!

Of course then I quickly realized... it's only the people who are having amazing years who submit their class notes to the alumni magazine. Not too many people sends in a class note that says, "Spending every other weekend in NH with my ailing mother while struggling to make both ends meet since my partner lost her job in the economic downturn."

Do the true-life stories we share with our children represent the "alumni notes" version of our lives? Or do we let them see our struggles, too? Have your children seen you work and work at something that doesn't come easily to you? Have they seen you receive bad news and bounce back? Have they witnessed you clawing your way back up from a knock-down? Are we modeling persistence and resilience? I wonder.

(Cross-posted over on Relax. No, really.)
Kelly has already posted
takeaway tweets and a transcript,
so go check that out, too!)

It Got Better

(Photo by Jamee C on Flickr)

I changed my mind.

Those of you who know me well will be unsurprised to learn that my original plan to let our Mr. D and his school friend play together at school while we all tried to ignore the larger picture left a bad taste in my mouth. (If you're coming in late and feeling like you need the backstory, it's over here.)

"Would you like me to try to talk to your friends' parents?" I asked Mr. D, not really thinking it through, just wanting to make sure he felt supported. "I think I would like you to," he said after a pause. Gulp.

"Even if that ends up being like stirring up a hornet's nest?" I asked him.

"I think it would be worth it," he said solemnly. "Just in case it might help. Even if the odds are really bad, like a hundred to one." (Math boy strikes again.)

I had no idea what the odds were, but I could tell that our boy had some kind of faith in my ability to move mountains.

So I took myself over to the mountain... the home of his friend.

I aimed for after dinner, but before bedtime. When Mr. D's young friend came to the door, I told him I'd like to speak to his parents. He told me that his parents were praying. "That's fine," I said, "I can pray, too. I'll just wait right here."

So I prayed on the porch, and eventually the indoor praying was done and the friend's father came to the door.

I quietly explained the reason for my visit and wondered if the father might have any idea as to why Mr. D's friend would think they couldn't be friends any more. The father had a few ideas, but none of them really made any sense to either of us. "Let me talk to him," said the father. "I think this might be a misunderstanding."

"I can tell Mr. D that there's nothing to worry about?"

"Yes, of course," said the father.

So.

I came home and told this story. Mr. D's face shone with happiness. "A misunderstanding!" he exclaimed joyfully, as if it were his new favorite word. "Maybe it was the mom who thought we shouldn't be friends, but she only told my friend, and not the father," he mused.

We don't know. We may never know. But no one is crying themselves to sleep at our house tonight, and that is a very good thing.

(Thank you all
for your continuing kindness and wisdom.)

(PS: Do you know the superstition
that if you happen to glance at a clock
when it's 9:09 or 12:12, it's good luck?
Well, we happened to look at the clock today (10-10-10)
at 10:10am. Seems like a LOT of luck!)

A Hard Day

(photo courtesy of Stuart Seeger, via Flickr)

Yesterday our son came home with terrible news.

A dear friend and fellow third grader had explained that his parents had said the boys couldn't be friends anymore.

Both boys are confused and sad. We don't know what precipitated this declaration, but based on our son's story and some other prior interactions, we suspect that homophobia may be at the root of it.

As a lesbian parent, I'd been warned that this day was coming. But nothing really prepares you for trying to explain the inexplicable to your wounded child.

I'll be reaching out to my Muslim and African-American friends today for their advice and support. There are too many of us who live in fear of the day our children will come home with a broken heart.

And we'll be talking with our boy about civil disobedience again... for as much as we want him to respect the adults in his life, we also want him to understand that he is ultimately in charge of who his friends are.

Mostly, though, we're going to listen with love and empathy as he tries to process this.

If you know our son and you're reading this, please don't mention it to him unless he brings it up. We think there's a chance that the boys will "forget" the nonsensical edict and continue to enjoy each other's company — at school, at least.

This is the kind of private situation I would typically refrain from blogging about. But in honor of the memory of Tyler Clementi, who should have been celebrating his first month as a college freshman today, I am speaking out.

Homophobia and other forms of prejudice are fueled by fear of the unknown. As much as I believe, as a Quaker, in the power of centered and prayerful silence, I also believe that we have a responsibility to speak our truths as we are able.

So this is my truth: we all deserve to feel safe, respected, and loved.

Please join me in taking a stand against racism, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of soul-chilling discrimination in your schools and communities. Talk with the people in your life about the challenges you've faced and the steps you've taken to overcome them. And hold a good thought for my son and his friend.

(See the good news update here!)

Homecoming

Here's the backstory:

Over a year ago, Mr. D's school sent the second graders home with saplings on Earth Day. It was a nice idea, but the tiny trees weren't actually all that sturdy, and almost every one of them died. Including Mr. D's. He was heartbroken, and we headed out to our favorite local nursery in hopes of learning more about how to properly raise a tree.

While walking around the grounds, Mr. D spotted a tree whose beauty went straight to his heart. "No, sweetie," we said, "that's a full grown tree. There's no way we could even fit that tree in our yard, let alone pay for it."

"Maybe they have a smaller one," he said hopefully.

And sure enough, there was a smaller tree - albeit still quite large - and it was a variety whose elongated shape would mean that we might be able to squeeze it onto our little tenth of an acre lot.

Still, there was the money question.

"Buddy," we said, "grown trees are expensive. You have to pay the nursery for all those years of caring for the tree. If we got a tree this big, it would mean that would have to be your birthday present. And probably your Christmas present, too." (We thought this might be a step on the way to moving his sights down to an even younger, smaller tree.)

But by now Mr. D had learned enough about this particular kind of tree that his heart was made up. (Ask him to extol the finer qualities of the columnar hornbeam to you sometime. But only if you have plenty of time.) So we asked them to save the tree, and started saving our pennies.

Hornbeams are best transplanted in the spring. Mr. D's birthday (on which he took his friends for a hike in the woods) came and went, as did Christmas. This past week, our side yard was the site of an impressive and long-awaited transplant operation.

These pictures don't do it justice. But the tree will be there for a long time. You could come see for yourself.

Easter

For as long as I can remember, our Quaker Meeting has worked every spring to raise enough money to "adopt" the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen for a day. Members and attenders of the Meeting have also dedicated time and talent to a Good Friday Easter Egg Hunt at the soup kitchen, which I have been aware of but for some reason have never attended. The children of the meeting spend several Sundays making decorations and tucking candy into the plastic eggs that will be hidden. This year I decided the Mr. D and I would make the additional commitment of helping out at the event itself.

What a great day!

Watching the hunt

Easter Bunny Love

(D was concerned that this tiny egg hunter might need help...)

The space is not fancy.... but we make it so!

As we colored our own eggs
the next day,
we were still smiling
and trading stories about our time
at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen.
Hope and new beginnings, indeed.

First Political Memory

"Framing the Shot"

During the 2004 US Presidential race, our Mr. D was regular attender at local political events. He was three years old and being dragged along, so he doesn’t remember that much about it. My teacher friend Sassafras Mama asks her students to think about their earliest political memories, and I wonder now if our trip to the National Equality March (NEM) last month might someday qualify as Mr. D’s first political memory.

"No Justice, No Peace"

As parents, our approach to the social issues of the day – racism, immigration, healthcare, poverty, taxes, equal rights for the LGBT community – has been to try to “get out in front” and provide our Mr. D with some context. We tell our stories as the time seems ripe. He knows that our taxes help pay his teachers’ salaries, and that racism is still something we’re all working on. We have debated about how explicit to be about gay and lesbian issues, since those terms are not much a part of his everyday life, but we’ve heard from other LGBTQ parents that second to fourth grade seem to be prime years for a kind of aggressive monitoring and discussion of difference amongst students, so the National Equality March seemed like a good way to introduce him to the ideas that underlie our current struggle.

We went with a bus full of high school students, so spirits were high from the outset. Once we arrived in our nation's capital, the crowds were enormous, loud, and impressive in both their relative youth and racial diversity. Having previously attended national marches as a young student activist, it was very different to attend as a parent and quasi-chaperone. When the traditional call-and-response chant of “What do we want?” “EQUAL RIGHTS!” When do we want ‘em?” “NOW!” went up, I substituted in “YESTERDAY!” at the end, explaining to the students near me that my t-shirt (from a march in the late 1980’s) was older than they were. We got home around 11pm, and Mr. D asked some good questions without ever complaining.


In the weeks after the March, the race for the NJ governorship tightened, with Corzine (D) and Christie’s (R) stances on gay marriage being one of the starkest differences between them. Suddenly, gay issues were up for discussion at every turn, and for the first time in his life, Mr. D heard an older kid speaking out about the “grossness” of all things gay. Our son was much better prepared to put comments like that in perspective, having had some conversations with us about homophobia and the people who oppose equal rights for lesbians and gays.

I wasn’t sure how taking an eight year old to the March would work out, but I am so glad now that our Mr. D has seen a loud, large crowd of lively supporters of LGBTQ rights. In the weeks before the National Equality March, I’d told him that although his Tama and I aren’t married in a way our government recognizes, we think we are on the right side of history and that in any case, he doesn’t need to worry about us. “How do you know we're on the right side of history?” he asked.

In the quiet dark of the bus ride home, I reminded him of his question and said, “Did you see all those people who came together today? That’s how I know, buddy.”

(It's taken me a long time to process
this momentous event; finally tonight,
awaiting the results of the NJ gubernatorial elections,
it seemed like the right time to pull it all together.)

Lose the Training Wheels

Ways to assist a young person who wants to learn to ride a bike: Project confidence. Enjoy your own bike rides. Install training wheels. Spend time watching other kids riding. Smile encouragingly. Talk about caution, responsibility, and freedom. Model caution, responsibility, and freedom. Practice patience. Take the training wheels off. Promise to keep your hand on the seat. Run alongside. Yell words of encouragement. Start on a straight road lined with soft grass. Apply bandaids and kisses as needed. Require the donning of long pants. Put the training wheels back on. Tell true-life stories about your own learning. Allow breaks. Test the brakes. Watch for signs of returning confidence. Take the training wheels off again, this time for good.

~ ~ ~

This afternoon a friend told me the story of her daughter, many years ago now, falling in love with a school for the performing arts in another state and ultimately moving away to attend there. She made arrangements to stay with the families of several other students in order to make it work. As a sixteen year-old. Trying to imagine making that decision, I said, "It must have been so hard to say yes to that."

"I didn't say yes," my friend responded, "At least not at first. I tried everything I could to talk her out of it; I even dragged her back and re-enrolled her in the school in our town after I visited her at the school she wanted to attend. But two friends of mine sat me down and said, 'You have to let her go,' and they were right. So I did."

~ ~ ~

I am so fortunate. My learning network is well-stocked with thoughtful, courageous people.

In the past few months I've read several blog posts that resonated with me. Each dealt with the idea of supporting children's development as learners in a slightly different way.

In the first, Vicki Davis (aka coolcatteacher) tells the story of a white water rafting trip which she then relates to her goals for the students she works with:

We have got to come to grips with how to take children from walled gardens to a point where they can safely operate in public places before they graduate from high school.

In the second, author Maya Frost (The New Global Student), responds to articles on college search consultants by making an impassioned case for "breaking the cycle of learned helplessness":

When we rely on expensive services to prep kids for top schools, we are telling them that they can't possibly compete in the real world without our assistance — and our money. Parents who want their kids to be able to get great jobs they love after graduation (without their help) are better off teaching their kids how to flesh out an idea, research the heck out of it, and follow the thread that leads to the most thrilling and fulfilling opportunities.

Parents: If you are considering paying for college help, consider what you are saying to your son or daughter by hiring a consultant to do what most families handle without assistance. Think about how you might spend that money in a way that could give your student more opportunities to develop confidence, relevant skills, a clear sense of direction and flaming enthusiasm.

The biggest problem with learned helplessness is that it's contagious and hereditary. Stop the cycle now, and your kids will have a much brighter future.

Finally, just last week I read a post on parenting by C.C. Chapman over at Digital Dads:

What I’m getting at is that you need to make sure that your kids realize that the only way to succeed in life is to always work hard, to be strong willed and be the best you can be at whatever it is that you are passionate about. Yes, there are going to be plenty of people standing in your way, telling you no and gates set up to block them. But, I hope and pray that everything I’m doing with my kids is raising them to be a gatejumper who chases their dreams with every ounce of their soul.

I am interested in how these ideas play out in the real world. Most parents I know would agree with the idea that parenting is all about supporting their children's growth towards independence, but different parents are going to do very different things when confronted with the imagined reality of assuring some kind of "advantage" for their own son or daughter, or with the soul-gripping terror that can accompany the prospect of actually letting go.

Every choice we make is a reflection of the best information we have at the time, as seen through the values we hold. If I am reflective and transparent in my work with students and my work as a parent, will it help me "maintain course" as I move forward?

I want to be thinking, "Will this choice help move this child (student) towards a life oriented towards life-long learning, ethical and deliberate decision-making, and love?"

Or, more simply:

Will this choice move us all towards the day when the training wheels come off?

(Cross-posted at Relax. No, Really.
Hat tips to @sassafrasmama,
@yggiz, @coolcatteacher,
@mayafrost, @jonathanfields,
@cc_chapman, and Malcolm Gladwell)

Beware of Dog

(Photo credit: T. Feld)

Here's a guest post by my amazing sister, who lives in MD. Our son is currently down there visiting with his aunt and uncle, his two beloved cousins T & C, and their two dogs, Chance and Nina. Nina is a relatively new addition to that family, and this post is an excerpt of my sister's email to me yesterday:

It's very common for dogs to fear kids. Kids are louder, more physical, and far less predictable than adults.

Your son is awesome. He was pretty much attacked by our new dog THREE times. Every time, I slammed her to the floor and held her down by her neck and threw her out of the house, etc... to make sure she knew where he was in the pack (i.e. way the heck above her). She never got all the way TO him, but charged at him, barking, baring teeth, the whole nine. Then, I tried holding her in one arm while loving on him with the other arm and talking to him like he was the greatest. That's when she COMPLETELY freaked the heck out and went wiggy, flinging herself any which way to get the heck away from him, and cutting my nose with her tooth on the way (I really felt more as if she was running with knives and cut me on the way by than as if she actively bit me, but whatever it was, thank GOD she didn't get D, and WHO WOULD BLAME HIM if he a. wanted her banished from the house permanently or b. wanted to go home or something.)

But NO. Quite the contrary. He heard me talking to Steve about how D wasn't doing a thing to her and usually wasn't even NEAR her when she went off, and how we might need to get rid of her if she can't handle visiting kids (she has never had any similar reaction to adults). D said, "Oh, no! I hope you don't get rid of her! I like Nina. I think she's just really scared of me." What an amazing response. And he meant it.

Then, I thought about it and realized her reaction was totally wig-out fear-ish. I thought about eye contact. D had said that before each "charge" she had been staring at him for minutes on end. Well, for him to know that, he must have been staring at her, too (again, can't blame him a bit -- I would keep my eye on her, too). If she's wary of him, and then he keeps locking eyes with her, she will definitely take that as an aggressive sign (poor D was being anything but...)

I told D if he wanted, we would just keep her outside while he's here, unless he's at camp, or down in the basement, or in C's room w/ door closed, etc. I told him that would be completely understandable and fine by me. I told him too, though, that what I would prefer is to have her around some of the time, so she can get used to him, and put her out if she's staring at him, or making him at all nervous. He was 100% cool with that. I even asked if he was sure and he said "yes."

Then, I told him to completely avoid looking at her, at all, and loaded him up with treats. He carried those things like sabers! It was as if he felt safe as long as he had a treat! And without my urging, coaching, etc, he took the whole thing on like a little scientist, and began trying to offer her treats in different ways -- sitting down first, not looking, with voice, without voice, putting it on the floor, holding it in his hand. He was SO psyched when he got her to slink up and gingerly take it from his hand -- after at least 45 minutes of work -- her ears slicked to her little head. And, the whole time, he was expertly managing Chance (who needed treats, too, don't cha' know...) and C, who kept trying to "help."

Then, I told him that the most reassuring position for him would be to sit with his back to her, offering up his behind, so to speak. He said, "Okay, that's really scary." I said, "You're right -- forget it." Within 40 minutes, he said, "I want to try the really un-aggressive thing." Little sweetie. So, he did, and slowly, over the course of the evening, she eventually came up and began licking his outstretched hand, with him still not looking at her. He was on Cloud Nine!

This morning, we were all snuggling in bed, and I asked him to continue avoiding eye contact, and she came right over to him on the bed, rolled on her back, offering up her tummy and neck. I told him that was a great sign. He was still nervous every time she moved quickly, and we had to reassure him that she was coming to lick him, not attack him, but he really, really wanted to be her friend, so he hung in there through understandable fear. (She's still nervous when he moves quickly, too, so we will keep a very close eye, and not make any assumptions that everything's great now, etc...)

He is in charge of feeding her. After b'fast this AM, he said, "Tomorrow, maybe I can look at her!" He really likes her, God bless him. He's just been a gem, and I think the two of them will be fine now. And I intend to make it clear to him that he has really helped our family with his courage and his efforts to work with her. You should be very, VERY proud.

(Of course we are proud.
And SO grateful to my fabulous sister!
Our Mr. D has experienced the winning power
of kindness before,
when he tucked a non-English-speaking
classmate under his wing.
He knows about aggression from our conversations
about which games we approve of him playing,
and what makes a great wrestler great.
He knows about fear and violence because
as Quakers, we talk about the hidden roots of violence.
And he knows about the scientific method because
ever since he started asking "why" about everything,
we've been responding, "We'll tell you what we think,
but first, what's your theory?"
We have NO idea where he learned patience.)

Running

Mr. D has been preparing for the very cool Princeton Kids' Marathon. I am keeping him company on his training runs. Which means that I suddenly know several 1 mile running routes through our neighborhood. The journey of parenting certainly has some interesting twists and turns.

(I'm sure my sister is laughing,
and I would be too, if I had any breath left!)

Forever Family Day #8

Today was the anniversary of Tama's successful adoption of our Mr. D. We have wanted to celebrate our membership in the world of families that have been strengthened through adoption, despite the fact that we would probably have preferred not to have been forced to go through the process.

We spend Forever Family together, with no big plan beforehand. This year's celebration included hours of deep immersion in all things Lego:


But the day was too beautiful to NOT head outside, so we took ourselves into the Herrontown Woods:

Where Mr. D practiced his balancing...

... and Tama and Mr. D re-invented the see-saw.

This year, for the first time, I was a little nervous about our "no plan" plan for Forever Family Day. Would Mr. D experience the day as being truly special? Terri reassured me: all he really cares about is that we spend the day together. As usual, she was right.

(PS: The last two years' worth of Forever Family Days
looked like this and this.)

PPS: Easter was last week.
I'm a little behind.
These eggs are all gone now!)

Doing Our Part

Yesterday morning, I scooped D up and headed over to Pennsylvania to go camping with a bunch of (mostly) total strangers. The trip was organized by the good folks at Philadelphia Family Pride, and had been on our calendar for months.

And even though SuperT ended up having to work, and my going would mean missing out on the celebration of the opening of Princeton Friends School's new building, and the forecast included some rain, I got out the tent.

I'm trying to inoculate us.
When my partner and I were expecting, the high school students I would sometimes speak to as part of their school's Gay Awareness Day were concerned about D's as-yet-only-imagined life. "Aren't you worried about bringing a kid into a hard situation?" And I said several things, including that I was counting on them to make this less of an issue by the time our kid got to their school. And that I was pretty confident I could help prepare a kid to deal with anti-gay rhetoric and actions, having been on the receiving end of both.

So this weekend we hung out with twelve or so other families who are led by gay men or lesbians. The kids ranged from toddlers up to early teens. I don't know what kind of prep work other parents did with their kids in advance of the weekend; I didn't say much of anything to D. What was important for him was that he got to sleep in his tent, poke at a fire, explore the woods, and sing songs at the evening campfire. At one point he ran over to me to ask, "Can I give my friend a piece of our banana bread?" "Sure, sweetie," I said. "What's your friend's name?" "I don't know," he called back over his shoulder as he dashed off, beloved banana bread in hand, "but he's really nice, and he's the one I'm playing with!" He's keyed into what matters.

Another young friend, a member of the one family we DID know before this weekend, looked at me quizzically as our time together drew to a close and asked, "Is D a cousin of mine?" I thought for a moment, and said, "Well, not exactly. But I can see how it might feel that way."

Children whose families might not fit with some of their classmates' ideas of what a family should look like are potentially vulnerable to teasing and harassment. Kids are tough on all sorts of differences. But in giving our son another opportunity to see for himself that families really DO come in all kinds of colors, shapes, and sizes, I am hoping that he'll be somewhat inoculated against this particular line of attack.

I'll let you know how it works out.

Family

How would you describe your family's culture?

Those are the other two members of my family, Tama and Mr. D, right in the middle of a Ticklefest.

I'm not sure they even knew I was there. I don't know when Ticklefests got started, but they're now a mainstay of our post-dinner, pre-bedtime family time. Right up there with bike rides, wrestling matches, and board games.

We are big-time into fun. We like to make each other laugh. The laundry can wait a bit.

And here's a story that will give you some insight into the role music plays in our family life:

A year into owning an iPod (it was birthday present from those Ticklefesters up there... his idea, her money), I finally got the technology that enables me to play iPod music through the speakers in my car.

The day I got it all working I was juiced up, and after showing Mr. D how it works, exclaimed, "I'm so excited about my new toy!"

"Mommy." He looked at me sternly. "That's not a toy. That's a part of life."

Exactly. (If you haven't heard us sing together yet, there's a little audio clip in my full profile.)

So: we like challenges, and asking questions, and science experiments. We like lying on the earth and swimming in the ocean. We prefer our tents to most hotel rooms. We think maps and myths are cool.

Most of our friends live in families that are put together differently from ours. It rarely comes up. But for sure there are now a bunch of kindergartners and parents in this town who "get" two-mom families in an easy, organic way.

Still, we are sometimes frustrated by the larger structures that seek to deny what seems to us a simple and undeniable truth.

We are a family. And we're a part of life.

(Thanks to Mombian for getting the ball rolling;
I'm looking forward to reading about some other families!)

He Cares

Some mornings are a little bit slower than others.

Recently, Mr. D reprimanded me as I tried to urge a final sartorial decision on him. "Sweetie, it's getting late. Please, just pick a shirt!" I begged.

"Mommy," he said with 6 year-old sternness as he considered his options one more time, "I care about what I look like."

Okay then.

Here's some more evidence of the young gentleman's personal grooming instincts. Because he certainly didn't learn about the care and feeding of a baby mohawk from us!

(Can't wait to see Grandpa and Nana.
Also looking forward to Wendy's pictures of Satch's party.)

Forever Family Day #7

late spring —
the Earth invites us closer
and we accept

Today was our celebration of Forever Family Day, a term we borrowed from my friend Becky, who uses it to refer to the day when an adoption is finalized. (My fabulous T had to adopt our Mr. D because as far as the federal government is concerned we're just close personal friends.) We didn't realize how important this day was to Mr. D until last year, when he asked us sometime in February, "When is Forever Family Day?" We couldn't even remember what we'd done the previous year, so we asked him, "What is it that you're looking forward to so much?" And he said, "I just like that we're all together, just us, for the whole day, and we can do whatever we want to do as a family."

Put like that, it did sound pretty great. So we went out and had ourselves a day as he described. This year we did it again.

Pancakes for breakfast and games in the morning, followed by a noodling bike ride and lunch, followed by more games and a long romp in the Battlefield Park. Then a trip to the library, where we reconfirmed our deep and abiding love of reference librarians, returning home for a family dinner and a "Harry Potter bath" for Mr. D (he bathes, I read him some Harry Potter). It was a great day.

We are all tired and happy. And so, to bed. Happy Forever Family Day.

Getting a Late Start

We were well into our 30's by the time Mr. D entered our lives.

Sometimes, when the exhaustion seems bottomless, we wonder if maybe those folks who start their families while still in their 20's had the right idea.

But in our brighter moments, there are times when we feel quite clever. Before we became parents, my partner and I had been a couple for almost nine years. In that time we'd taken two three-week vacations (and many more two-week ones), gone tent camping in the Pecos Mountains of New Mexico, enjoyed the puffins and bald eagles of Nova Scotia, and an international fireworks competition over English Bay in Vancouver. We read a lot. We slept in. In short, we stocked up on all sorts of delightful experiences that are now somewhat out of reach to us as parents of a young child. The waiting to be parents seems to have made us less likely to complain about the changes Mr. D's arrival brought to our lives.

Because we thought about parenting for so long before we became parents, we've had plenty of time to think about what matters to us. We're big on manners. We decided before Mr. D was born that one of the things we were least prepared for was a child who whined, "I'm bored," and in our home the word "bored" has terrible connotations: boredom tends to afflict those whose brains are not working well. A medical professional may need to be consulted.

My partner's overarching guideline for parenting is, "Say yes as often as you can, and no only when you really need to." Similarly, mine is something along the lines of, "Legos first, clean up later." As older parents, we had lots of time to talk through our approach to parenting with each other. We read books, we talked about our own childhoods, and we watched our friends going through it. We rarely disagree about a parenting choice, and when we do, we've been pretty successful in talking it out. (The other day, I can't remember how it came up, I asked Mr. D if he thought his parents argued more than most, less than most, or about the same as most, and we were so pleased when he said, "I think you argue much less, because you hardly EVER argue.")

The piece about being an older parent that I am most grateful for is the patience and mindfulness that I am able to access with greater regularity now. In the last few years, for the first time in my life, I have started to feel the benefit of my experience kicking in. When I hit a snag, I can remember all the other snags, and calm myself down a bit with remembering how I managed to get past them. When I'm tired and hungry, I recognize that my darkening mood is connected to my physical state, and can sometimes even see my way to granting myself the gift of some time outside watching the sky. I've made enough mistakes that my apology muscles are in pretty good shape, and I crave the healing that forgiveness makes possible. In all of these things, I feel much better prepared to model emotional intelligence and stability for our young son — at least when I'm not tired and hungry!

So here's to older parents, hopefully making up for our relative lack of energy with all kinds of compensating strengths!

(Thanks to Kelley,
whose musings were part of the inspiration for this post.
In other news, it's national poetry month.
I'm going to see if I can write a haiku a day —
let's watch!)

Saturday Afternoon

We sat across from each other, each in our own world, but also undeniably together. He was working with colored pencils, me with rubber stamps, a white gel marker, and some glitter glue. We hummed while we worked, trading little snippets back and forth. We were not in a hurry. I found myself wondering, afterwards, which of these moments he may remember.

(Thanks to the folks at Thing-A-Day
for stoking the fires again this year.)