Brain Power

Yesterday I got to be a student.  We sort of...  I attended a professional development day at the board of education called "Power of Design."  Basically the idea was for me to be able to sit down with my science department to design a unit/lesson around a hard to teach hard to learn concept.  We chose to focus our efforts on the concept of how the phase of the moon effects the size of the tide. 

What was really nice though, was having hours to really delve into one topic.  To really take a close look at the type of students I have, how they learn, where the struggle, where I need to build them up, and where I need to step back and let them discover the concept.  Normally, when we do this process as a department we will do it in 30 min. increments here and there over the course of a week or three.  Also, this is how we teach.  I have my kids for 47 min.  I have them hit the ground running with a bell ringer everyday, and I beg and plead with them to dive into the concept quickly because I only get them for a few precious minutes. 

What I learned yesterday, (and kind of relearned) was that this is not very realistic.  For the first hour we really spent our time warming up our brains, getting familiar with our topic, taking a close look at our Who.  We were very motivated to get our task done, we had all the tools, we had great help, and we still had to warm up our brains to get a good product by the end.  I find it good to think of it like our muscles when we run.  I coached track and field for years in Oregon.  I would never think of asking my runner to get on to the track and sprint their workout without first asking them to stretch, warm up and have a coaches outcome expectation meeting with my captains.  Why then do we expect our students to be able to hit the ground running with their brain muscles.  And why do we allow them 6 times a day a 4 min transition that allows them to totally shut their brain off, and go to a different task every 47 min.  I know I can't produce great work and deep thought in that time.  Why should I expect an emerging learner with a developing brain to sprint, go cold, then sprint again.  Something has got to change.  I am just not sure, yet, how to make that happen. 

A little of this a little of that

This weekend has been a great mix for me and the boys. John is swamped with 12 orders for garden beds on deck and a new stack of lumber to work with. The boys and I had a great Saturday morning visit with my sister and her two boys. We then rushed off to a birthday party at pump it up. I got to observe my boys with their friends and to see just how different they are from each other. Isaac must have gone up and down the slid 100 times. He was content with doing one thing really well, and was nice to those around him, but he really could care less about who was near him,so long as they let him go up and down the slide. Emerson on the other hand, needed to find his friends, needed to be accepted by his friends, and had to try everything, then do it again in a more dangerous way. They both had lots of fun, but Emerson fell apart when it was time to transition. He could not calm down enough to realize that we were going to a different room than he expected. I have recently started reading The Out of Sync Child. and I am finding lots of interesting insights into some of Emerson's neurological and sensory seeking behavior. We still have lots to learn, but I feel like I finally have a resource to get us pointed in the right direction. Last night after nap time we went to a friend's property out in the country. The boys excelled in the wide open spaces They ran around, sword fought, and climbed everything they could find. The best part of the night, was having Isaac choose to be a big boy. He helped by getting snacks out of the car, he made sure I did not get too close to the camp fire. When it was time to go, and my friend Martha mentioned that we would need a flashlight, Isaac ran through the dark woods by himself, without me asking him to, to go and get a flashlight for the family. His confidence was the greatest I have seen it in ages. Today has been a day of baking for me. I made the boys yummy energy bars for school snacks, I made a big batch of vanilla almond granola from scratch, I also made homemade tortillas, and a beautiful lunch salad from Swiss chard and kale from my garden. To top it off, we even got to eat outside on the porch again. R

A little help from above

I struggle with faith.  I like logic, plans, spreadsheets and predictable patterns.  Yet, life keeps giving me experiences that remind me that things do work out just fine, and all in good time. 

Take for instance, our chicken dalima.  And delima/saga it has been.  Here is a quick and dirty run down of our chicken timeline:

1.  Last summer John's friends Steve offered us 4 heirloom laying chickens that he was going to bring in the next 24 hours.
2.  We converted a potting shed into a chicken coop that day.
3.  We got four beautiful health chickens
4.  A week later we started getting roughly 4 eggs a day.
5.  Life as good.
6.  Three stray dogs show up at our house.
7.  John puts dogs in barn, calls the number on the collar and says come and get them
8.  John gets up the next morning, lets chickens out like he always does.
9.  John decides he would rather the three stray dogs go to the bathroom outside, rather than in the barn.
10.  John realizes that he doesn't even know the names of the dogs to call them to come back in the barn.
11.  John leaves the dogs out while he takes the boys to school because he does not want to go through the halls as the dad who brought his kids late AGAIN.
12.  He comes home to helter skelter.  The dogs killed one chicken, maimed another one that it died a slow and painful death, our "smartest" chicken survived, and another one had a big chunk of feathers missing.
13.  John now angrily calls the number on the collar again to explain that their dogs are murders and to get them NOW. 
14.  Isaac comes home and crys, A LOT.  He loved his chickens (mostly for their eggs, but still there was love.) 
15.  The dog owner comes and picks up the three dogs and drops off 5 chickens.  Two are ornamental and could not produce and egg larger than a quarter and the other three look like they fell off the Tyson nasty reject chicken truck.
16.  We begrudgingly take these replacement chickens feeling like the child who's goldfish died while they were away on vacation and the old switcharo was pulled on them.
17.  The replacement chickens are yucky diseased and eat my garden for months, and do not produce a single egg. 
18.  I am cranky. 
19.  The two ornamental ones get eaten by an owl.  I do not grieve but thank the owl.
20.  I have to kill the most diseased of the three Tyson chickens.  It is horrible.
21.  John refuses to get rid of the other two.
22.  I tell him to "man up" and just kill them or he can be that guy who drops them off somewhere hoping someone else will take care of them.
23.  He drags his feet, he won't do it, he will do it tomorrow.
24.  Finally there was an intervention.

Yesterday John is instant that I go and check out the chicken coop before I rush off to my mother's house for dinner.  I am in a rush and I can't figure out why his is being so insistent.  I go anyway, only to discover there are only two chickens, and the gross white ones are not there. 

I come back around the house and ask John if he finally "maned up" and did the deed.  He smiled and said, NOPE.  A hawk did it for me.  What luck for us.  Yes, we have a perverse view of luck, but really it was all for the best.  So thank you world, thank you hawk, thank you up above for taking care of one of our chores that we couldn't quite bring ourselves to do. 

I can't help but wonder, "What next?" 

Perception Vs. Reality

Alight, I asked for it, and I am getting it.  I wanted clarity and tonight it came in some odd stressful ways.  First, as always, I need to give some back story to my ramblings.  Two things weigh heavily on how I am seeing my family right now.                                                                            

One is that my sister and I are taking a class together called "Designed for Wellness."  It is a wonderful look at how we can morph into this new and incredible phase of motherhood, while also taking the time to invest in ourselves as people so that we can have the necessary strength and wherewithal to do the very difficult job of parenting (not to mention all of the other things we also need the energy to do.) 

The second thing is that I have recently joined a faecebook group for Kazakh families.  The other day a woman posted a great thread about the realities of parenting our adopted children.  The thread was rich with deep discussions about the things many of us are facing, that are not in the "norm" of kids who start off with more stable beginnings.  For me, it was an eye opener, because a lot of the behaviors, issues and struggles I have assumed were preemie related issues for Emerson, are being experienced with the same intensity for many other Kazakh adoptive families. 

So this leaves me up at 2am thinking about our night (or last night I guess) with a need to be humbly honest.  We went to our monthly family dinner at my moms.  Fortunately it was a smaller than normal group, because as much as I like seeing everyone, large groups of people that my children don't know well is a stress trigger.  Not to mention that it was poring down rain, which is a major pain trigger for me. 

Anyway, as soon as we get there Isaac immediately reverts.  "Hold Me!, Hold Me!" he shouts.  I do, but now he is 47 lbs. and he still does not really know how to hold on to me.  I go to sit on the sofa in a quieter room, but he is agitated.  He squirms uncomfortably while talking in baby talk, unable to be calmed and not listening at all.  I try to carry on a conversation with a very wiggly reverting 47 lb. 5 year old in my lap.  I can feel the judgment coming from others in the room.  I know what they are thinking "is he retarded" and I know it is not in a mean way.  I would think the same thing if I was an outsider looking in.  How do you explain?  Should I explain?  Is there any explanation that would even make sense?  Even for John and I, that know better than anyone else what is going on, find it mentally exhausting and at some level terrifying to watch our son careen through emotional ages and responses without having a great solution for him, for us, and certainly not for the crowds around us. I often wonder if the room full of "strangers" (I put this in quotes because to Isaac he still does not register the relationships with the larger family that is seen so infrequently, it is too hard of a concept for him yet) if this flashes him back to a room in China where he was transitioned from an orphanage worker to his 1st US family (that turned out to be a very poor match.)  I can't help but wonder given the severity of his regression if somewhere he associates the setting with being given away.   

Then, Emerson has a very different response to the crowd.  He is a sensory seeker.  People bowling is his favorite sport, and the bigger the crowd, the more he seeks out concrete and repetitive input from the senses he wants to really remember.  If you are just now starting to read this blog, Emerson has virtually no sensory filter.  He takes in everything at the highest possible level.  What I am learning right now is that he does not have the ability currently to organize this mass amount information.  As a result he becomes completely overwhelmed with too many details, and can't seem to move forward unless he gets stuck on one or two things.  Well, last night this was one of his cousins who he doesn't see very often.  I must have asked Emerson to give him his space over 100 times.  He grabs, pulls, pats, constantly makes physical contact.  It became clear to me last night that he is doing it to keep the thing he wants on the top of his sensory input, and it is how he stays focused with too many things going on.  Unfortunately to the outside observer, it makes me kid seem like an incessant brat, who can't mind his table manners.  Again, how do I explain it to those who don't really know it, or experience it, or who are not around it very often. It is annoying.  And I love my children with all of my heart, and it hurts me deeply to see them so stressed, and have such alienating coping mechanisms. 

By the time we get home, I feel as though I have run a marathon.  Running interference has taken it all out of me.  I have given all of my energy to the boys and I was so ready to read to them, and go have a sit in the hot tub.  Isaac is really into reading John's father's day book that tells Isaac's story of joining our family.  At home on the sofa he reminded me of those pill sponges you put in the sink that rapidly grow.  The baby I had with me only an hour ago, came back to being 5.  I finished reading to him, then started with Emerson.  I finished Emerson's book with my last reserves of energy and sent him off to bed.  Unfortunately, it was now time for the end of a chaotic evening melt down for him.  He wanted me to come lay down with him.  I explained that I needed a little "me" time.  I needed desperately to put my aching body in the hot tub, so that I could possibly get a good nights sleep. 

He would have none of it.  He became hysterical.  A deep sorrowful hysterical proclaiming that he needed his mommy, "don't leave me, I need you."  This was not your normal kids temper tantrum.  It came from a deep place of true fear that mommy needing her own time, means mommy is going to abandon me.  In my exhausted state, I held him and we cried together.  Who am I to walk away from either of my kids who know the true meaning of abandonment.  So here I am at 2am awake and writing and getting ready to go in the hot tub for the little bit of me time I can find. 

I am at a stage in my life where I could care less about judgments passed against me.  I am sure from a distant, I appear to be a lousy parent with out of control kids.  I know, my kids history, I know where we have come from and it doesn't bother me.  Yet, the mama bear in me wants to tell the world to back off, to understand that they are different, they are coming from behind world, so give them a break.  Sadly, I know the world does not work like that.  I cannot protect them from all that is out there no more than I can go back and erase their painful neglected beginnings.  For now though, and especially tonight, the world made it loud and clear that while our world might appear stable and normal for John and I, it is not so much for our boys.  Right now our adventure is learning how to heal little people into having enough trust and confidence to be able to take on the adventures of life with grace and truth.

Clarification

I recognize that in my past days I was one to up and move, just because I felt like it.  Sometimes, it was a big move, like the time I decided to go from bring a ranger at Sequioa Kings Canyon NP in California, to working at an Environment Education Center in the Catskills of New York, sometimes it was moving every semester during collage.  During that time, I could also fit everything I owned in my jeep or on the bike and kayak rack.  It was fun.  I got to see the country, really get to know an area and I learned lots. 

And...

I am not in that stage of my life anymore.  Moving now is a pain in the tosh, and just the thought of it makes me want to suck my thumb in a dark corner while rocking back and forth.  So, when I say that I have itchy feet, it does not mean the same thing that it used to mean for me.  Yes, in my past when I was flying solo, it is totally what I would do when I felt like life needed a little spicing up. This is not my idea of  fun anymore.

Now, I am in a new phase, and the seasoning I need is different.  I do feel like I am standing in my kitchen wondering what spice a great dish really needs, and not knowing what to use.  I just know it needs something.  Parts of me think it is another child to adopt, a puppy, an exchange student.. Who knows. 

For now though, I might just be in the phase of life that is not about my own spice.  Maybe I am the facilitator for our next generation, being my students and my children.  Maybe I am supposed to be grounded now so that I can learn loads about the intricacies of gardening and living of the land.  Maybe it is to really take a close looks at the innards of a school district and a teaching job that constantly adds to my professional depth. 

I do know this, all of my past experiences have been for a purpose.  I do not believe in accidental meetings, knowledge gained, or experiences.  For now, we are rooted, and we know that this new phase of life, is leaving us with cravings, but I suspect what comes next is a flavor we have never experienced before. 

Itchy Feet

I have been know in the past to be a person with itchy feet.  I don't really like routine that much, or being comfortable in the day to day bits of life.  I like adventure, new scenery, the thrill of doing something different and challenging. 

When we became parents almost five years ago, we put many of our "normal" adventuring aside.  Being a parent was quite adventurous enough.  I can remember just wishing for a boring day that went something like my original plan. 

Just when we started to really feel confident and competent and in a routine with one child, we adopted again.  Our second adoption was trickier.  We thought it would be simple, because we were adopting a 3.5 year old.  Little did we know that we needed to do intensive speed parenting to make up for the 3.5 years we missed in his life.  It has made for an adventurous year and a half of being the parent of two amazingly energetic little boys. 

I love being their mother, it is the highlight of my life.  I also love being a teacher.  I have been in my current position for three years.  I know my stuff, I get my "who" and I feel effective (or at least as effective as one can be teaching 126 students and only having them in my room for 47 min. increments five days a week.) 

With all that said, I am at an odd and unfamiliar place in my life where it all feels just a little too stable.  I know, poor me (insert sarcastic tone here.)  This might sound arrogant, but oh well... I don't feel like I have been given the gift of loving adventure, compassion for those with less, not personally needing much, or a love for the outdoors, just to waste it by living comfortably in the suburbs. 

John and I have made a promise that we will live "normally" while our kids are in elementary school.  After that, I can't guarantee much.  How we are living now is the "top" of our normal game.  This is the most conforming I can be, and it feels awkward, like I am wearing shoes that someone else broke in for me.  I know that I can't stand being in Alabama forever, on the grid forever, or in suburbia forever.  But  then again, the word forever scares me, except in the context of being a mom to my boys forever. 

In the meantime I feel like I am on high alert.  Like the next great adventure is lurking around some corner, or will come with the next e-mail.  Maybe it is another child who needs a home, maybe it is a puppy or two, maybe, maybe, maybe...  For now, I will keep peering around each corner with an open mind and heart, knowing that when the time is right, the opportunity will present itself. 

V-Day

Yesterday was V-day and what better way to spend it than an afternoon at the IRS then off to our multi-cultural adoptive family support group. 

For those of you who missed my lovely post about The Tax Man, you can go a few weeks back and find it if you are dying to know the details.  The synopsis is that we received a nasty-gram via certified mail explaining that we were being fined almost $3,000 for fraudulently claiming the adoption tax credit.  Mind you the government actually owes us a total of $14,800, not the other way around.  We have given them our paperwork twice. 

Upon the advice of friends we decided to go directly to the IRS office and talk to a person face to face rather than start with the 1-800 number.  This was good advice, because as you will later see, the phone would have been a bad place to start.  To get the mysterious IRS office we need to travel 45 min to get there before 4pm before they close at 4:30.  I have to bolt from work at 3:00 and get someone to cover my afternoon duty, that means I need to cover for them next week.  We finally find the building which is cleverly tucked away sending the message that we don't really want people to come here. 

We then go in, get a number and have a seat.  After about 30 min our number comes up and we are directed to desk 6.  All four of us trek back there with enough paperwork to reconstitute into a giant redwood tree.  We start off handing him our nasty gram and he just rubs his head and laughs.  I am thrilled he thinks this is funny and that he did not instead open up the trap door that whisk us off to prison. 

He says, "Well the IRS messed up a bunch of peoples adoption tax credit and I have seen 10 people this week with this report."  He then goes through and explains that it was a mistake and we need to call number 1, then ask for ____________office.  If they can' transfer us, we will need to wait 48-72 hours for a call back.  If we don't answer when they call we have to repeat the process (you know because teachers can always answer their phone whenever they want.)  Then we have to tell them %%%%%% (he gave us a script that might as well be in a different language.)  Then they will fix the error, and in 6-8 weeks we can expect to received our return. 

Seriously???  I get threatened with jail or $3,000 for a imaginary mistake, but when you make a mistake it will be resolved in about two months.  All whining aside, I am glad it was their bad and not mine, but seriously!

So our Valentine's day was more like victory day for us.  Like all things in my world, I will be sceptical until I have deposited my chunk of change.