Tina Fey Rocks!

This is too, too funny. I had to share :)

Soccer!

As a big sixth grader Kiana gets to join the schools soccer team! Although she states she enjoys basketball more, she is doing pretty well for her first time playing. The first day Kiana said to me: "Its so much running Mom!".

In preparation for Kiana's first game Kai spent some time perfecting his moves.

Time out! Runny nose break...

Aagghhhkk!

A good luck kiss

It bounces off another baby gate....

Wrong ball??!

Kai tries to explain soccer to dad: "now you see..."

Very serious stuff...

"What don't you understand?"

Teething ring and water, what more could you want?

The ball went that way!

Bad call ref!!!


Almost a goal...

Better luck next time hug :)

Could you believe that call?!?

Silly Rowen...

Now listen closely....

Equal?

Talk to me about the difference between a stay-at-home-mom and a go-outside-the-home-mom. Is the work equal? Different? The same? What is our value system based on? The amount of duties or directives accomplished? A schedule followed through?
I have noticed often times when I am hanging out with Kai Misikir time seems to just fly. It can start out with a messy but enjoyable breakfast which turns into a bath which then eventually becomes a blissful nap. Suddenly half the day is over and I'm worried about what I didn't accomplish. At the office it seems to be so much more straight forward. Am I crazy? Am I reading too much into this?
Of course not, there's a thousand books on the subject. What do we, as a collective body, value in woman? Do a man and a woman, or a husband and a wife, hold the same equal footing if only one of them creates the income?
In our country I have to make a decision that many woman face, and struggle with. If I lived in Sweden or Denmark it might not be so difficult. But I think it is very challenging to be the partner in a relationship that is at an economic disadvantage. By choosing to work "inside" the home you are exchanging one form of contribution and energy to the family unit for another.
So my choices are:
Create a crazy schedule at my outside work place where my children would need to come to work with me after school until Fred was done with work where he would then pick them up from my job and bring them home(18-20 miles each way for both of us). I would miss dinner, homework, bedtime.
Or I could pay 50% of my hourly wage to a day care/child care situation and the other half to my health insurance. Let's not even talk about the price of gas.
I know there are many woman out there that choose to stay home with their children and some even choose to home-school. How did you make the transition work for your family? I have seen many books concerning the challenges of heading back into the work force after staying home, but not so many the other way around.

And then I'm laying in the grass with Kai swatting away the bugs and watching his expression change with the different noises. I listen to him try to mimic sounds or patterns with his voice. He's learned how to hold the edge of the couch cushions and walk forwards and then backwards with his pudgy little feet. He loves his soccer ball and can push it so that it moves across the floor and he watches it intently, almost seriously.
I don't want to miss a second, hes changing with every moment.

Sometimes Fred is jealous that I get to spend so much time with our son, other times I think hes relieved. Sunday nights I have been working which means Dads home alone from 2:30pm-11:30pm. He must call me three or four times each shift. But I think its good for all of us. There are many changes to adjust to, and thankfully we have each other to help navigate our way through them.
So honestly, help me to understand. What exactly is equal parenting responsibilities and how do we weigh the importance of each contribution? How do you create a balance between your roles as mom and dad and wife and husband? (or dad-dad, mom-mom, husband-husband, wife-wife).

end note: i have been experiencing some camera challenges but i promise photos are on their way...

Angels in the Dust

I watched this movie by myself last night and found it so moving. The children are so brave, so beautiful. I loved Marion. Her no nonsense, realistic yet caring outlook on the situation she was witnessing around her is right on. You cant help but be full of respect and admiration when you see this family work their loving magic.

I loved her Angels metaphors. Marion and her family are a gift.

Progress

I wanted to share this article after discovering it through another blog. I think it is amazing progress. Unfortunately not all the comments in response to the article are very encouraging.
I know after visiting AHOPE in Ethiopia I exchanged e mails with someone there and was informed there is actually a wait list right now for children under four infected with HIV. So at least one orphanage is seeing change slowly in progress.


Americans adopting HIV-positive kids from Ethiopia
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Solomon Henderson inherited just three things from his birth parents, who left him at an Ethiopian orphanage when he was 1 year old: a picture of Jesus, a plastic crucifix and HIV.
As one of some 14,000 Ethiopian children born with the virus every year, Solomon's prospects for survival — much less adoption — were grim. But Erin Henderson's heart stirred when she saw him, and she decided, on the spot, to adopt him.
"They told me that they weren't sure he would live through the weekend," Henderson said by e-mail from her home in rural Wyoming, where she lives with her husband and 11 children, two of whom are HIV-positive adoptees from Ethiopia.
Solomon, now an active 2-year-old with chubby cheeks and a shy smile, is part of a small but growing movement: Americans adopting HIV-positive children from abroad.
Figures from U.S.-based Adoption Advocates International, the agency that arranges the majority of HIV-positive adoptions in Ethiopia, show a clear and steady rise, from two such adoptions in 2005, four in 2006, 13 in 2007, and 38 either completed or pending this year.
The U.S. Embassy corroborates the trend, although its numbers are slightly different because it counts adoptions according to fiscal year. So far this year, the embassy said, Americans have adopted 25 HIV-positive children from Ethiopia, up from seven the year before.
Ethiopia is at the forefront of the trend, in part because it is a well-established adoption hub. But countries including China, Ghana, Haiti and Russia also have seen increases, although the numbers remain small — fewer than five children in each country this year, according to U.S. adoption agencies that work with HIV-positive children. The figures could be higher, however, as many nations do not ask if a departing child has HIV.
The motivations are wide-ranging — some parents say they were driven by religion or a desire for social change, or that the disease is more manageable than ever before. Others, like Julie Hehn, gave more personal reasons.
"I was just scrolling through these pictures, and I saw the photo of Tsegenet, and I said, 'Oh my God, that's my daughter,"' said Hehn, a 53-year-old elementary school teacher from Edmonds, Wash.
Hehn said she was not looking for an HIV-positive child when she decided to adopt from Ethiopia.
"I fell in love with Tsegenet and it just happens she's HIV-positive," said Hehn, who has 27 children, 19 of them adopted from Ethiopia and five adopted from the U.S.
At a recent goodbye party at an orphanage in Addis Ababa, a 9-year-old girl who was heading to the United States with her adoptive family gave a shy smile as her friends ate doughnuts and sang farewell songs.
The children — all of whom have HIV or AIDS and are looking for new families — belted out an Ethiopian hymn called "No one is ashamed of you."
Ethiopian adoptions to the United States peaked at 1,255 in 2007, and the adoption of HIV-positive children is growing in step, according to U.S. government figures. American adoptions in Ethiopia have steadily risen from 135 in 2003, to 289 in 2004 to 440 in 2005 to 731 in 2006.
So far, none of the children adopted through Adoption Advocates International in Ethiopia since 2005 has died. The oldest is now 13 years old.
Margaret Fleming, the founder of Chances By Choice, an international HIV-positive adoption advocacy group that connects parents with HIV-positive children and adoption agencies, said her group also has overseen adoptions of children from Haiti, Guatemala and Russia.
Fleming said her group has helped bring about 52 international HIV-positive adoptions since 2002 from assorted adoption agencies and countries, including Ethiopia.
Fleming, who has three HIV-positive children in her own brood of 12 children, said she wanted to make a difference in the world.
"I feel like I'm on the cutting edge of making an impact on this epidemic," Fleming, 72, said by telephone from her office in Chicago. "It's given us a chance to be ambassadors, and our children to be ambassadors."
Over the past decade, HIV has become a manageable, chronic disease, rather than a death sentence. Some children, like Solomon, require daily medication that can cost between $700 and $1,500 a month, though all parents planning to adopt children with HIV are required to carry health insurance, so costs are usually less.
Others, like Tsegenet Hehn, have been told by doctors that the low levels of the virus in their blood mean they don't need any medication.
"She doesn't get sick any more than my other children," said Hehn, who said another daughter, who has a condition that makes her react violently to wheat and gluten products, requires more care than Tsegenet does.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt said HIV-positive adoptees pose no public health threat in America. Congress is set to repeal legislation that requires those with HIV to get waivers to enter the U.S. For adopted children with HIV, the waiver requirement can increase the nine- to 12-month adoption process by about two weeks.
"The American people are compassionate people," Leavitt told the AP on a visit to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. "I applaud their compassion and I'm delighted to know they're doing so."
But parents overwhelmingly say the reward is theirs.
"I have learned so much from Tsegenet," Hehn said. "I have learned to be more patient and kind through Tsegenet."
Like some parents interviewed, Hehn says she insists on being open with everyone about her daughter's condition.
"I'm a teacher. I want to educate everybody I can educate," she said. "And I believe it is the only way we can erase the stigma. I am not going to tell her that there is not one part of her that is not beautiful and wonderful and pure."