Talk-Text-Ticket

Early this morning, I dropped my brother off at the airport. He's been with us for about a month, a long visit from his new home in Ecuador after living with us for over 7 years.

On the way out, I noticed a shiny sign bringing traveler's attention to the new cell phone laws in Washington State.  Get caught talking on your phone without headphones or texting while driving,  and state patrol will handout a generous fine.

No signs forbid sobbing, so I cried my way home.

Lost in My Own Head

It sort of took me by surprise the other day when I realized my blog has been very quiet recently.  While I haven't posted much, I've been learning and thinking a ton and somehow thought all that would osmosis onto my blog.

One of the main inputs filling my days is an intensive class on attachment by Gordon Neufeld.  Bill and I are taking it with a dozen other parents from the Attachment Parenting International Seattle group.  22 hours of lectures (via DVDs) on attachment, development and maturation is seriously re-focusing how I see my kids, my marriage, myself and the world.  Having my brain rearranged excites me at many levels, but boy howdy is it all consuming.

Our adoption process went on hold for a few months.  Bill needed some time to think it all over, and I really wanted us both to be on the same page before moving into any potential situation.  We've learned and grown as individuals and a couple much over these few months.  Which is also rather painful and all consuming.

Homeschooling wrapped up for the season mid-June.  It ended with a frenzy of activities including guitar performances, soccer games and final tests.  The kids did great over the course of the year, and I'm proud of how much they learned.  I'm happy to brag that I've even submitted Theo's work to a certified teacher and gotten her approval back to satisfy our annual assessment requirement. Now we're down to a bare bones schedule that allows the kids to either dilly-dally and spread a little work painfully over the entire day or finish up quickly and go PLAY.

Theo read 274 library books last year.  Really, just library books - I don't record any reading of the many, many books we own, no comic books (of which we also own quite a few), none of the books he consumes at other people's houses.  I don't know whether to be prouder of him or our wonderful children's librarian.  It's quite a feat on both their parts.

Cake making with All Cakes Considered is one of the highlights of my week.  We're on cake 11 tonight (it's cooling as I type) - the Glorious Ginger Cake.  The cakes taste great, usually look wonderful and make me famous at our homeschool group's weekly park day as I tote in the leftovers.  So far my favorite is the Drunken Monkey Cake, but several of the recent coffee cakes made me moan with happiness.

Pact Camp starts in a few weeks.  We travel down to California each year to learn more about transracial adoption and figure out what is the next step for our family.  The staff and other families at camp bring so much knowledge, information and heart to the week, I feel honored to attend.  And looking, really looking, at where our family is at in meeting the racial identity needs of our children takes a lot of courage for me because I think we're always far behind where I wish we were.  I deeply want to be and provide everything my children need.  So preparing mentally for camp is a bit wrenching and quite consuming for me.

Good thing brains have high plasticity because mine is getting a serious stretch. Maybe I'll do NaBloPoMo in August and see if I can get some of these thoughts more fully formed onto the page. Maybe I'll just sit in the back yard, drink lemonade and watch my kids run through the sprinkler.

Women are Not Men

Duh.

But I'm fascinated by how NOT the other sex we are.  Being human, it seems reasonable to clump us all in the same category when trying to understand male and female homosapiens - either emotionally, intellectually or physically. However hormones and cultural conditioning hugely divert us from some imagined norm.

This article reports an interesting study that finds differences in how women and men's bodies handle protein.  The results are so reasonable and blow my mind all at the same time.

I am encouraged that the scientific community is stretching itself with viewing men and women as similar creatures that need to be studied independently.  I can't wait for the day when we begin to see results of studies on high vs low testosterone and estrogen people.

That'll really blow our minds.