Her Big Personality

That picture of her screaming at the clown statue was not staged.  It's just my Little Girl doing life in the very big way that is typical for her!

She is very loving and sweet and she's also loud and silly and feisty and bold and full of energy!  Before we ever met Little Girl, her reputation preceded her.  "She's spunky," we heard over and over again from people who met her in Ethiopia.  Our missions pastor at church, who our family has gotten to know recently, made the amused observation while watching Little Girl, "She's the spoon that stirs the pot," he said with a grin.  I've heard many times people say, "She has A LOT of personality!" or "She just radiates joy!"

It's all true!

And while usually it's fun and well-received, there are times when it's just too much.  I say this as her mother, who is pretty much her polar opposite when it comes to personality!  I am thankful that God made our Little Girl just like she is, and I absolutely believe her big personality helped tremendously with her transition at age 3 from life in an Ethiopian orphanage to life in an American family.  But it's also my job as her mom to help her reign it in a bit when needed.  Tomorrow I'm going to share a strategy we've been using lately that is really helping to calm Little Girl during times when her typical level of energy is not appropriate.  It's a skill that is becoming more and more essential as she gets older!

Do you have a wild child?  Please share what works to help you guys do life.  And stay tuned for our new strategy tomorrow.

Find more Wordful Wednesday here.

Twins with Different Skin!

My girls are taking a jazz dance class together this year.  Today was their first day.  I helped them get dressed in the required attire and jazz shoes and then had to run downstairs to help my 1st grader with a homework question.  My girls came downstairs a few minutes later in their matching jazz outfits loudly chanting a cheer they had just made up.

It went like this:  "We're Twins!  We're Twins!  We're twins with different skin!"

I just couldn't make up that kind of awesome!

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My 10 year old is now a banker!  His 5th grade teacher has a whole economy worked out for her class and the kids applied for jobs last week.  Of course my son had to try for the highest paid position in the class.  I even had to write him a recommendation letter.  I mentioned the 5 years he has managed his own allowance in the letter!  He gets a salary but then he has to pay rent on his desk, rent on his chair, there is a library fee, a trash fee, and a computer fee.  Also, kids get deducted from their accounts when they don't have their homework or get their agenda signed.

How awesome is his teacher?!!!

'Course when my son was leaving for school the morning the jobs were to be announced, I told him, "Even if you get custodian, you work hard as if you are serving God with your work." 

 I do have to say, as his mother, he knows a whole lot more about math than he does about cleanliness, so the teacher probably made a good choice!

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 Happy Friday, Friends!

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Life Lessons I Learned at the Black Hair Salon

I haven't written about the Trayon Martin case on this blog because I didn't want to be part of the controversy.  I don't know what happened the night he died, who was the aggressor.  Really it's hard to know the facts in news stories any more with even the press being dishonest.  All I know is that it makes me sad.  

And while I'm not sure how much race played into that particular case, I do know that the race relations debate that resulted bears some truth and though many conversations were offensive, many were also good. 

As a white mama to a black child, I know that we have come such a long way as a nation in the 50 years since Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech!  But I also keenly know that we are not there yet.  In this country people are often still judged by the color of their skin.

Before becoming an adoptive parent to my Ethiopian child, I was naively colorblind.  "Skin color does not matter,"  I probably would have told you.  Now I know that while that is a good dream, it is not reality.  And I cannot be a good mother to my black child if I do not acknowledge that she is and will be sometimes judged by her skin color.  That her experiences when she goes somewhere with her white family members may be different than when she goes places by herself.

President Obama said he could have been Trayvon Martin 35 years ago.  While I could not have been Trayvon Martin, I do feel like I could have been his mother.

I hurt with his mom that he is gone.  I hurt for the friends I have who have black sons and sat them down after hearing news of Trayvon's death and instructed them to "Never run through a neighborhood!"  I hurt for my own 4 year old Little Girl and fear the day she is old enough to understand and feel the sting of discrimination.

I recently switched Little Girl to a dance studio that has many black little girls in the classes.  At our previous dance studio my daughter was the only black child in her class, one of the few in the whole studio.  I found this other studio which is actually closer to our house and am excited for Little Girl to have a place to go where she is not in the minority but where many of the little girls look like she does.  I am also happy that the owner and founder of the studio is a black woman and a mother of three and can serve as a woman my little girl can look up to.  And in another good reversal, my white daughter will also be taking dance at this studio, yet she will be in the minority!

While not always comfortable, embracing some of the differences of my black daughter, rather than ignoring them or pretending they are not there, has been a growth experience for our entire family.  So much so that my 6 year old recently lamented that he, "wished his skin was not white because you have to worry about sunburns!"

Then there was the time recently when I took Little Girl to get a hair cut.  I shake my head looking back now on how nervous I was taking my youngest daughter to a black hair salon for the first time.  I knew with my Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost white skin I'd stick out like a sore thumb.  I worried that the ladies there would be condescending to me about Little Girl's hair, tell me I'd been doing everything wrong.  I worried they'd feel sorry for her for having a white mama.

I couldn't have been more wrong!  I parked in front and immediately noticed the Trayvon Martin sign and the first thought that popped into my head was "These are my people!" because the whole case with Trayvon Martin hurt my heart, too.  And some of my nerves began to calm.  I did still pray for Jesus to be near as I grabbed little girl's hand and walked in.

I was the only white person in the shop for the entire hour we were there but everyone could not have been nicer to me or to Little Girl!  The hairstylist we got is also the shop owner and she even commented on how healthy Little Girl's hair felt (which I totally took as a pat on the back for how I've cared for it rather than a condemnation of my care which I feared).

Little Girl really loved getting her hair washed in the special sink!

THEN the stylist and I began to talk about adoption and she told me she'd like to adopt.  She then proceeded to share with me about losing her only child, a son, as a young infant due to a genetic disorder several years ago.  My heart broke for her and we visited as two mothers, two women, about blessings and pain and life and hope. By the time I left we were friends.

I re-learned a life lesson that day in that black hair salon.  In all my worry that I'd be too different, too much of an outsider in that setting, I forgot something so key.  The ways we are the same are the things that really matter.

Celebrate the differences, but focus on where we are the same, that stuff is far more important.

Dear Tooth Fairy,

Really the tooth fairy ought to expect this sort of thing from us by now.  

No tooth under the pillow, we are not capable of keeping track of those tiny things once they fall out of our mouths, just a note asking for money. . .


























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Weird and Wacky Adventures

This weekend my husband and I planned some mystery field trips for our kids because it's just fun to load the kids up in the car and refuse to tell them where we're going!

First up, the beer can house.

Yes, you heard me right.  The beer can house.  Right smack in the middle of an otherwise normal looking neighborhood!  I think my family's reaction below is probably the same as most people's as they stare and wonder, "What?"  "Why?"

You'll be happy to know that nobody lives in the beer can house, it's just a tourist attraction now, but amazingly a couple did live there at one time!  The husband slowly transformed their normal house into this display of art.  I mean we all tolerate some strange things our spouses do but that woman deserves an award for her level of tolerance!

Next stop on the wacky tour:  The Orange Show

Which is not a show at all, but a place that appears to be an old, abandoned amusement park/circus, only it was never a functioning amusement park/circus but rather built to look exactly as it does!

All very strange, but our kids had fun exploring it!  And broadened their definition of "art".

Then we stopped for dinner before going to watch 300,000 bats fly out of a bridge near downtown.  We set out our blanket on the side of a hill next to the bridge, waited, and sure enough just after sunset tons and tons of bats did fly out from under that bridge, just like they do every night.  Who knew that was happening right here in our own city?  Creepy and cool!

Then today we started up again with a field trip to downtown.  We'd heard of a mysterious red button on a bridge over the bayou that you could press to create a big bubble in the water below, otherwise known as "burping the bayou".  

We took our kids to the bridge telling them we were looking for a button but we didn't know where it was or what exactly it did.  They found the button and were a little nervous about pushing it, not knowing what would happen.  

Finally, the oldest stepped up and pressed it.

The large bubble in the bayou below:

We ended the adventures with a walk through the fountains:

Because our city may be weird and wacky but it's also WARM!

How was your weekend?  Did you do anything strange?

The Uneaten Lunch and 3rd Grade Math

Back-to-School week has gone well.  It's been tiring, but we've survived and everyone is still happy with their new classes!  To really kick off the back-to-school feeling for me, there's already been the lunch that has returned to me at 3:15pm uneaten, in pretty much precisely the same state as I packed it at 7:15am.  Ah, yes, I remember.  This is what the school year feels like!

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I am not even exaggerating when I say that I spent 1.5 hours on Monday night filling out forms by hand for my 3 public elementary school kids, who are attending the same school as last year and we haven't moved!  Sweet mercy, somebody put those forms on-line and give me a box to check that says, "Our information has not changed"! 

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Homework has been manageable so far and doable even from the couch:

 

Although there was once this week when I was looking at some stuff my 10 year old wanted to show me about his class and my 3rd grader rattled off a math question she wasn't sure about.  Usually I can answer those without skipping a beat, but this time I was like, "Whoa, repeat that question!  What?"

I give you our 3rd grade math:

"A turtle crawls up a 12 foot hill after a heavy rainstorm.  The turtle crawls 4 feet, but when it stops to rest, it slides back 1 1/2 feet.  How many tries does the turtle make before it makes it up the hill?"

Don't you just love a good story problem?!!

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I was playing hide-and-seek with my 4 year old today while her older siblings were at school.  I hid first and it took her a little while to find me.  Then she hid and giggled from her hiding spot totally giving herself away.  I pretended to look for her, knowing all along where she was.  Once I finally "found" her she told me, "Mommy, you're supposed to make noise while you are hiding in hide-and-seek.  That's how you play the game.  Like you are suppose to laugh or make funny sounds!"

Guess I missed that aspect of the hide-and-seek rules!

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One evening as I was tucking my kids in bed, I opened the closet in the boys' room and began hanging their clothes for the next day on their closet doors like I do before every school day.  Sometimes if I set out a shirt for one boy and the other boy has the same shirt, I'll just grab that shirt for the other boy, too.  They end up matching but it's really just from laziness on my part, it's easier to just think up one outfit and have it work for both boys.  

But, this evening I paused as I was doing it and looked at my 1st grade son and asked, "Do you like being dressed like your big brother?"

His answer was hilarious!  He said, "Yes, because then if I get lost, you can just point to him and say 'I need to find a boy like that, only smaller.'  

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Happy Long Weekend, Friends!  I think after getting our kids to school on time  5 days in a row we've more than earned a 3 day weekend!

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50 Years Later

Today is the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" Speech.

So how far have we come as a nation in 50 years?

Dr. King's dream that "little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers" is achieved in my home, anyway!

And for that I am so grateful!

But, we still have a long way to go.

Another part of Dr. King's speech brings true pain to my heart:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character."

Because I have that dream, too, for my four children, but I fear that dream will not be reality for them.

May each of us do our part to get there.  So 50 years from now race is not an issue.  We are people, all of us created in the image of God!