Ordinary Time

M. is at the beginning stages of working on her gold award for Girl Scouts. As part of the requirements, she had to attend a preparation workshop at the district office. The short synopsis of that meeting is that it was a bust...frustrating and uninformative. It seems (in my humble opinion) that much of Girl Scouts has accepted society's view of adolescent girls. This is the view which says that teenagers are only interested in what's "hip", that things have to be dumbed down to get them interested, and that they are incapable of taking on adult-sized projects. This is not the case with the young women I know (my daughter included.) In fact, they can smell pandering a mile away and have no patience with it what so ever. But back to the poor excuse for a workshop...to help them with the gold award, each girl must find a mentor. It was suggested to the scouts that they should probably look for a young woman in her 20's, who has a full-time job and is "with it.&

It has been pretty uneventful around here, not that I'm complaining, mind you. But there are events that happen which make one appreciate ordinary-ness. Such as the one that happened this afternoon. I'm standing in the kitchen working on dinner, when D comes in from outside screaming that he has something in his eye. I'm elbow-deep in dough, so I send B in to help D wash whatever it is out. I continue making dinner until I hear, "I can't see! It hurts! I can't see!" being screamed from the bathroom. I knew that great quantities of blood make me drop what I'm doing and run, but now I know that potential blindness also fits into that category. D still had an intact eyeball, so I was able to calm my initial panic. While I was flushing D's eye with water, I sent B out to get his father. In B's typical under-reacting way, B told his father that I wanted him inside because D couldn't see, in a tone of voice that one would use for a statement such

I guess that the passport processing offices are not as backlogged as they used to be. I was shocked to receive both M's and B's passports in the mail on Saturday. That was a week turn around time, though we did have them expedited. Had I known things were moving so quickly now, I might have saved myself the extra money and done regular service. Oh well, the important thing is that we have them...so we can get that call now...really, I'm ready anytime...just a few gifts to buy...it won't take me long to do the shopping. Did I mention we can are ready to get a call anytime now?

No, not THOSE travel plans (you know where we go to Vietnam), but plans related to them. For a while we have been wondering about the arrangements we would need to make for the five children we were leaving at home. Very close friends of ours offered to watch them. (In fact we had taken care of their children while they were in China last month.) But, that would give them 10 children, 14 and under, with one of those children recently home from China. In order to make room for the 5 extras, some common space would have been needed to be used for sleeping space. I know they were genuine in thier offer, but we somehow felt those of us in Vietnam with the grieving toddler and traumatized 5 year old would be having the better time. But, we a have a solution. I wish I could take credit for the brilliance of it, but the credit has to go to the above-mentioned friend. So, the answer to our child care conundrum is that we will be taking M and B to Vietnam as well as TM. This solves our

Mary at Ethiopia Adoption Blog had a four things meme that I thought I would jump in on. So.... Four Things About Adoption Four things I thought about adoption when I was a child: That adoption was a normal way to build a family (I had adopted cousins) That I wished my parents would adopt That I fantasized about children being left on our doorstep to raise That I wanted to adopt when I was an adult Four things I've learned since then: Adoption involves incredible joy and incredible loss It's not the "easier" way to have a child join a family Attachment is hard work...and that attachment goes both ways Love is a choice first and an emotion second Four things that are hard about adoption: Being at the mercy of governments and bureaucracies That other people don't see my family the same way I do Missing out on the early years of my child's life Not instantly falling in love with my child Four ways my adopted child has surprised me: How quickly he learned En