It is the day that my babiest baby boy turned 6!!!

We had such a fun and full day yesterday. It started at 8am - way too early for this mama who went out the night before and then stayed up until all hours wrapping presents. But it was 2 hours later than Mr. Birthday Boy woke up so at least there’s that!

He got to pick all the meals for the day which included donuts for breakfast, Incredible Pizza Co. for lunch and Sweet Tomatoes for dinner. I can not even tell you how sick we all felt by the end of the day. Buffets are fun but they generally lack protein and we all felt it! We ended the day with caramel cake with caramel frosting. Are you in a sugar coma yet?

In the middle of it all, Noah went to see Horton (where he had yet more crap to eat!) and really enjoyed it. Both sets of grandparents, his uncle and his Michigan siblings connected with him, he got ecards from distant friends and presents from our best friends here in Texas. He felt very loved!! He is now busy with the incredibly time consuming work of playing with all his new stuff.

So 6. I am loving 6. He started changing from this little kid to this big kid a month or two ago and I am loving every second of the new Noah. He is independent, funny, insightful, honest, curious. He would go to the ends of the earth for his baby sister and he is far more tolerant and patient of his older brothers than they usually are with him!

Things about Noah:

* his hair is turning brown, slowly, and he hates it. It’s sandy blonde, the color is so beautiful to me but he misses his white-blonde hair. His eyes are turning from blue to green but he doesn’t mind this so much. He has my eyes and Tony’s hair.  He had his first “big kid” haircut this year and looks sooo much older for it.

* he’s busy at work figuring out all about religion, the meaning of life, the existence of God.  And he does it all out loud so its fun to listen and be a part of. He’s the only kid who has really thrown himself into the Bible and the stories of creation. He has a lot of opinions and he isn’t always interested in what we have to say on the subject. Although he is, of course, still impressionable he can hold his own in our family when it comes to religious and spiritual opinions. I love that about him even if I disagree with his current beliefs almost entirely!

* he still loves what he loves. This kid is going to be great at the peer pressure game! He still loves things that are cute and adorable. He asked for a million stuffed animals and a few newborn baby dolls for his birthday. If there are size options, he always opts for the smallest. He likes the Teeniest Tiniest littlest pet shops. He likes the newborn furreal friends. But he is also grown into this wild and crazy big kid. He likes to wrestle and chase and play light sabers with his brothers. He likes to run around endlessly outside, he lives for the times when his brothers will play with him and let him join in in their games. And they are doing more and more of that as he is growing big enough to be “fun” for them.  Another funny thing about Noah is that he has great passion for toys for the 80’s. He asked for trolls (thank you eBay) and a pound puppy for his birthday, Moncchichi for christmas. He loves these old toys and he loves the old 80’s cartoons best of all.

* he learned to read and do math this year. He is a total testament to the unschooling philosophy. He has just never been willing or interested in learning these things including even basic counting past 10. But that all changed when he became a Kindergartner here at homeschool. He became a serious and passionate student. He doesn’t do that whole “gradual” learning business. He went from not counting beyond 10 to learning the entire number system, forward backward and inside out.  He adds and subtracts in his head and is learning multiplication as well. He taught himself to count by 10s and 11s. Last September he could not identify ANY letter of the alphabet and had no concept of letter sounds. Now he knows them all and can read at mid-to-end first grade level. He memorizes words easily and is eager to totally tackle the world of words.

* he has come out of his shell this year. He loves his gymnastic class, he had fun in soccer making new friends and he is eager to take swimming lessons and just about anything else I’ll sign him up for. He just LOVES going places and doing things. He is an eager and willing participant.

Things Noah Loves:

* cooking
* pasta and bread
* science experiments
* art kids and projects
* being read to and reading to us
* drawing pictures
* playing board games
* playing with his brothers, sister and friends
* roller coasters and sim rides
* helping me however I need it
* cute and small things
* making believe
* nice clothes & clothes shopping - he def has his own opinion on what he will wear, even for shoes
* his guinea pigs

Things Noah Hates:

* meat especially the smell of fish!
* sauces & soups
* bugs
* needles
* mean kids

Next year I’ll write him his very first “Dear Noah” birthday letter here because I KNOW he will be able to read it this time next year. Very exciting! To me there is nothing bittersweet about Noah’s growth and maturity - it is all SWEET to me!

or lack thereof….

Usually I have Addy’s nap, which is generally 2 hours, to do all the things I need to do without distraction. I LOVE 2 hour naps but there is generally no way that I can fit in all the things I need and want to do during those 2 hours alone.

Yesterday was no exception. I knew I had to work outside on this building project during the nap, for sure. I also really wanted to start writing my contribution to this month’s Roundtable discussion and I really wanted to get SOME content on this blog, too. I can usually jot off a quick blog post or answer an email really fast. So those things aren’t hard to do throughout the day but yesterday I knew I’d need more time than I had.

When Addy went up to play quietly in the gameroom near her brothers, I thought I’d grab a few quiet minutes to update my blog. Right after I hit “publish”, Dalton came downstairs - very calmly - and said “you might want to see the baby. She, and everything she is near, is covered in paint”.

I forgot Rule No. 1 of parenting: quiet = not good

I’m actually a little baffled and amazed at the sheer extent of painting involved here. It is like someone literally coated her every inch with paint. I’m fairly sure she decided it was “lotion” based on the application patterns! haha. I only wish you could see her hair in these photos!! At least she managed to avoid her eyes. I wish she had managed to also avoid my cream carpet or any number of books on the bookshelf nearby.

A quick bath and we were back in business.

I, on the other hand, have resigned myself to never having freetime and never mastering the fine art of Balance.

So most of you know that I run a collaborative blog aimed at discussing and educating interested parties about issues of ethics in international adoption, Vietnam specifically. I don’t get paid for it, we don’t accept donations at this time. In fact every month I *pay for it* out of my own pocket by way of hosting the site myself.  It is a labor of love, a calling. I am proud of it beyond words, I am proud of my partner, Chris, who has worked her ass off to provide rich content while juggling her own large family and I’m proud of our contributors and commenters who have brought much insight, information, depth and clarity to such complicated topics that were otherwise only being discussed on private lists and forums. These things need to be talked about openly and publicly to effect change. I am so proud that VVAI offers that opportunity.

But somewhere along the way I lost my passion to write. I think it happened right around the time a bizarre trend started popping up amongst anxious and frightened PAPs (prospective adoptive parents, for those of you who aren’t hip to the lingo): it appeared to be almost a movement to silence supporters of adoption reform and ethics, especially if they also happened to be supporters of the hard work and changes our government was making to help clean up adoptions. I was attacked personally, my work was attacked, my family was attacked, my writing was hyper-analyzed and criticized in many ways not even imaginable. All from the same small group of five or so PAP/APs. The strategy seemed to focus solely on shutting down those with a voice or those offering others a voice. I guess this was their own version of “activism”. I try to empathize with those who come at me with hostile viewpoints: they were coming from a place of ignorance for sure, guilt in a big way and, most of all, fear. But some of these people were so openly hostile and personally critical that, without me even realizing it, my flame sort of flickered. It wasn’t until my partner, Chris, took a family vacation (read: vacation away from VVAI) that I realized how little I had written recently. Compensating for her absence filled me with dread which is odd since the thoughts and words were and always are flitting around in my brain waiting to be applied to paper or screen.

But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized exactly what was going on. After an outlandish, derogatory conspiracy theory (whose only goal, from what I can imagine, is to further divide an already faltering adoption community) was posted to the largest Vietnam adoption email list, I got my Write back. I realize that I had let my own frustration and exhaustion get in the way of my own goals and affect my motivation and drive. But that ended yesterday. People don’t have to agree with me, they don’t have to support or visit my websites (not this one, not VVAI) and they don’t have to like me. But I have had enough evidence over the last year to know that the work we are doing is more important and more vital and more critical to the lives of orphans than I could have ever dreamed. This isn’t a debate: its work for protection of our littlest humans who have no voice of their own. My voice will not be silenced as long as tiny humans without voices are still being traded and sold like commodities and used for financial gain by unscrupulous American agents.

Although, like I said, the aim of that bizarre message seemed to have no goal other than to disrupt the community- it contained no helpful, new or useful info - it did have one powerful end result: I found me again! Ahhh. It feels so good to have found my voice again.  

And because I have my Write back it only seems fitting and kismet that my friend Melinda was inspired, at this exact same time, to create the awesome Women’s Discussion Panel. Melinda is incredibly organized and has amazing ideas that I know she will successfully implement to create a forum for women, by women, to discuss issues that are important and vital to women. To say I’m excited about this concept would be hugely understating the reality. I woke up at 6:30 am today thinking about it and if there is one thing I don’t do it is wake up early!

The other contributors are all amazing women with amazing voices and I know they will stimulate my mind in ways that it has not been stimulated - well - maybe ever! I can not wait. I constantly have thoughts and ideas swimming in my head and some of them really truly aren’t’ related to adoption (I know, crazy right?) and so often I don’t publish them here becuase, even though my blog is allllll over the place already, they would be truly out of left field. So now there will be a community for sharing these ideas and the timing could not be more perfect for me, personally. Thank you, Melinda, for spearheading this awesome idea.

 Expect to hear more from me at VVAI, on lists, on the Women’s Discussion Panel and within the community. I’m back.