"What is an Adoptive Mother?"

My mom came across this article and sent me the link. I loved what it had to say about the love involved in adoption. Here are some of my favorite lines (which apply to adoptive fathers, too!):

"Adoptive mothers are embracers, not only of the child with many hugs and kisses, but of the child’s heritage and history. She embraces the facts of her child’s past with strength for herself and the child."

"Adoptive mothers are experts at finding lost objects, but understand and validate the profound, deep loss left by adoption. She allows the tears to fall and grief to be felt, allowing the mourning of the mom not there. She is secure in knowing that she’s not a replacement, but a finisher of a race for someone who, for whatever reason, could not run any longer."

"This role is not for the weak of spirit, or the easily wounded. Loving a child not born to her but calling him her own, but this is what she does, it is her calling. She is a mother."

We are so eager to adopt again. But we're still waiting for the background check in Utah to come through. Our clearance in California came through...right about the time we moved. We had to start that aspect over once we got here. I've been fingerprinted (for this and for teaching) four times in six months. Grumble!!

So LDS-Family Services won't even post our profile on their website (itsaboutlove.org) until we're approved. Understandably, they don't want a birth mother who is due tomorrow to decide we are the family for her, only to learn we're not ready yet. Still, I just want our name and face out there! I finished the application in August of last year...and for nine months have been waiting for first the California clearance and now, having moved, the Utah clearance.

I will stop whining. I'm just eager to grow our family! Like I've said in the past, please spread the word for us. We found David's birth parents because I gabbed with a doctor at a concert. You might bring us to our next child's birth parents.

All I Wanted Were Cookies

What a mess!

On My Mind: Twelve Little Cakes

The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery


rating: 5 of 5 stars
I adored this book. Dominika has the spunk and spirit of an Eastern Block Scout. Since I lived in the Czech and Slovak Republics in 1993, I liked getting a very human peek into their histories. I liked the way she could point out the silliness of the Communist system but do so without bitterness. I laughed at her father's ability to rope Communist spies into doing his dirty work (working in mud in their backyard!) and was delighted by the old-style Christmas rituals she described (as well as her loss of innocence surrounding them!).

I highly recommend this book to all!


View all my reviews.

On My Mind: Outliers

I've said some of this before, but you know I'm on vacation when I:

• write on our blog
• exercise!
• read!
• respond to anyone on facebook

Spring Break is this coming week, so you'll hear from me!

Taylor's brother Ryan was in town for a few days. Those boys stayed up till 1 or 2 each night playing games! I'm not much of a game person (though I do like "Guillotine", which was among their games), so while they played I read. I finished Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers: The Story of Success. His most basic argument is that success is due not only to hard work, ambition, and intelligence; it is also inextricably tied up with family, birthplace, and even birth date. Those things open the doors and give the opportunities that make the difference between Chris Langdon, perhaps the smartest man in the world -- yet one whose impoverished background and a series of unlucky incidents denied him the chance to flourish to his highest potential -- and Robert Oppenheim. Langdon is smarter than Oppenheim, but doors were closed in his face repeatedly, whereas Oppenheim had the background and charisma and luck to have doors opened (and major infractions, such as trying to poison his tutor!! ignored).

To make his cultural argument, Gladwell asserts that the very agricultural system of rice paddies is one of the reasons for Asian success (not some genetic predisposition for math). Unlike our Western wheat and corn-based agriculture, where fields mush lie fallow (this fact influenced our very idea of how "much" kids can learn at a time!), rice has 2-3 growing periods in a year and a very short winter season. You don't turn to fancier equipment and bigger fields to increase your rice cultivation (the population squeeze makes that impossible). You weed more meticulously, cultivate a better fertilizer, watch the level of water more carefully.

These traits are vitally important to success. Gladwell discusses the TIMSS, a test taken to compare the educational achievement of one country with another. Interesting: Students must also fill out a questionnaire beforehand -- one with 120 questions! It's so tedious and demanding that many students leave as many as ten or twenty questions blank. Researchers realized that the "countries whose students are willing to concentrate and sit still long enough and focus on answering every single question in an endless questionnaire are the same countries whose students do the best job solving the math problems" (italics mine). In other words, what is more important to success on this test? Math mathematical ability, or the ability to concentrate and focus and endure? I have a student right now who is pretty bright but who simply fills in the bubbles randomly -- he's unwilling to concentrate and focus on the task. I have many students for whom diligence is the bigger problem than brains when it comes to their success (or lack of it).

Another study Gladwell cited really made me think. I teach school, and sometimes I'm so worn out by spring that I rejoice in summer. (And I spend the first month just catching up on errands that have accumulated over 10 months! Such is Spring Break, too!) But research shows that the main reason lower class kids are falling behind high and middle class kids is NOT because the schools are failing them. It's because of what happens (or does not happen!) during the summer.

The test scores of lower and middle class kids actually rise at a faster rate than those of upper class kids during the school year. But if you compare June scores to those the next September, you find that lower class kids's scores have dropped, whereas upper class kids' scores have risen over the summer. Clearly, upper class kids are given enrichment outside of school that lower class kids are not getting. (This came up in a NYT article I read later, too.)

This is validation as a teacher. Teachers and schools are blamed for students' achievement. For the most part, however, what makes the difference is the opportunities their parents are giving them.

Anyway. I could go on forever when I've read an interesting book. In any case, I recommend this one! You can also see his website on it.

Tri Again!

In 2002 I did my first triathlon...and then three more! The next year I did two, and I may have done one in 2004. Then we went through our period of trying to get pregnant. With the infertility meds I had to take, and the constant hope that soon we'd have success, I backed off from signing up for something 3 months down the road. That was always in the range of "maybe we'll be pregnant then!"

In 2007 we learned that we would not be able to have kids biologically, save a miracle of the sort Sarah and Abraham had. We were so blessed to adopt David! I don't have any excuse for not training since he came along -- after all, my body didn't go through pregnancy for him! Still, fertile or barren, motherhood keeps you busy (as does teaching). I'm a morning exercise person and it's hard to get something in before school, and hard to do much besides stroller walks/runs in the afternoon.

Well I'm proud to say I signed up for a tri again! And I plan to sign up for at least one more this year (but the one I want, recommended by my friend Matt Sherry, isn't taking registrations yet).

I'll be doing the Utah Summer Games tri at Sand Hollow Reservoir in Southern Utah. We have friends in St. George we'll see that weekend, too, I'm already very excited. I signed up for the sprint length -- 750 m swim, 14 mile bike, 3 mile run. Not too bad, though I still have a long way to go before I'm ready!

Anyone want to join in? It'll be a blast!

Mom & Dad in Town!

My parents rented a UHaul and drove out all the junk that Anna and I had left in their home. They're building their dream home in Corvallis, and hope to move in June. So they were happy to get rid of the extra boxes! I also inherited an organ from my Grandma Alice. I delighted in playing it as a child -- I guess more than any other grandkid -- so she left it to me. Now it's downstairs and David had fun playing it today!

Even though Mom is sick with a bad cold, she and Dad jumped right in to any fix-it projects they could find around the house! I came home after work on Friday to this scene:




Taylor had noticed a crack in the leg of our table. My dad fixed it with glue and screws (and noticed that the crack was already there from the very beginning, as indicated by the stain!! Grr). He bought spackle and started filling the many holes in our walls. He had to knock on lots of neighbors' doors since we didn't own a lot of tools, and finally purchased us an early anniversary present of a drill and other tools. He attached a holding device for those tools in the garage. He found a really close match to the paint, so we can paint over the fixed holes. He found a near-matching chair well piece, and then sawed it to match more perfectly. He applied that in the guest bedroom and painted over the bright pink square that "adorned" the wall. (Whew!) He walked with me around the yard this morning so I could ask him questions about garden and grass and landscaping and compost. Wow! I wish he could just be out here for a full week during my Spring Break, so I could work with him and learn techniques that come so naturally to him.

Every time David sees this, as we pull into the garage, he says, "Gumpa!"
Yes, Amazing Mr. Fix-It Gumpa!

Mom bought David some alphabet magnets. He LOVES them and played with them for 20-30 minutes straight this morning. He recognizes many of them, and will spell the letters on my Stanford sweatshirts (and then say, "Stanford!" However, if I spell some other word to him, he also says, "Stanford!" So his understanding of letters is still pretty shallow! :).




About noon Dad and Mom left for SLC, to watch the final session of General Conference with Judy Norman. Dad has to be at the airport at 5:30. Mom will be back for one more night at our home, then will drive back to Oregon with Anna and the boys. They'll get a wonderful week in Oregon! Wish I could be there.

Amazing Anna

Anna ran a half marathon today. She has run a few 1/2s in the past, as well as 2 marathons. But this is her first since having babies. She trained for a few months, but then was sick last week. Still, she felt better and so went ahead and ran it!

We were supposed to get there for the end of her race. In the morning, I woke and made pancakes for those at our house (Mom, Dad, Taylor, myself and David). Then Dad started showing me how to spackle. Suddenly Mom said we needed to be out the door in 10 minutes. I hadn't showered, and we were to go from the race to the Fowlers then to Conference.

So it was kind of my fault that we got there ONE MINUTE after Anna crossed the finish line. That was really disappointing to my mom. We made Anna re-enact her finish so you can see that here!




Anna does so very much good in this world -- for her boys and hubby Jim, for the cleft families she supports, for the ignoramuses she educates (see this post from her blog, for instance!), for her ward and stake. And for me -- tonight she left a little note in my pocket:

"Dear Lisa, I love you so much! You are such a great sis and I look up to you in so many ways. Love you, Anna."

I look up to YOU, sistah!

The race was promoted by "Your Cause Sports."
Anna ran for TeamAmericaFace.org, a cleft organization.

On My Mind: NYT Article

The New York Times carried a blog article called "Ban the Breast Pump." Since our children will all be adopted, this is kind of a non-issue for me. But reading it did lessen some of my worry/guilt on this issue. It refers to studies that have shown that breast-feedings advantages have been overstated.

Breast-feeding is great for so many reasons:
* the physical closeness it gives mother and child
* the nutrients and antibodies provided
* the lack of extra expense and of extra packaging waste

However, some of us won't breastfeed. Cleft palettes (which my nephews have been born with) make breastfeeding impossible. I was glad to hear that we aren't radically disadvantaging our children! Besides, there are bonuses too. Primarily, in our care: Taylor wields a bottle just as well as I do! And since he sleeps lightly and I sleep like the dead, he gets to do the baby duty at night. Hey, he got through most of the Harry Potter books on tape during the nighttime feedings David's first 2 months!

Happy Groundhog-Spring-April Fools Greeting

I swore you'd see a "Christmas" card by Groundhog Day. It didn't happen. (Moving in happened, and starting at a new school with new curriculum happened, and weekends spent buying furniture happened.) I then made Taylor set a new deadline for our card -- the first day of Spring. Still didn't happen. (Creating our library happened, and teaching David the alphabet happened, and grading too much happened, and a fabulous visit from Richard and Kathy happened.)

I didn't even try to make Taylor commit to the next deadline I had in mind, April Fool's. I kind of knew it wouldn't happen, though I told myself I'd find time to work on it on my own and then show Taylor all he had to do was help with stamps and envelopes (daunting enough).

I have Spring Break in 2 weeks, but you know what? The card isn't going to happen then, either. Instead, what I hope happens is:

• grading student essays
• filling my file cabinets (and all the organization attendant)
• time with David and evenings free to enjoy time with Taylor, not grade
  
• yardwork (no one live in our house from April to Jan, so the yard is full of weeds!)
• sewing torn cloth diapers
• exercising (I know I'm on vacation when I actually exercise!)
  
• deciding on [note I'm no longer thinking I'll actually paint then!] paint color
• more updates to our adoption profile (here's our blog; soon we'll also have a page with LDS-FS's website)
  

Create

Becca sent me this clip with the message title "I LOVE THIS CLIP!" I do too.

As I've considered what I would write if I ever participated in NPR's "This I Believe", it would be that I believe in creation. President David O. McKay has "ten rules of happiness," the second of which is "Joy comes through creation - sorrow through destruction." I appreciate President Uchtdorf's reminder of the variety of ways we can be creative.