parenting curriculum

i found this on another friend's blog and had to share...

Really. We have childbirth preparation classes. I found mine so useful that I eventually qualified to become a prenatal instructor, and did that happily for about ten years. Loved it! But are there Parenting Preparation classes out there? If not, there should be! A friend sent me this great curriculum outline this morning, and I thought I’d share it with you.

Lesson 1
1. Go to the grocery store.2. Arrange to have 75% of your salary paid directly to their head office.3. Go home.4. Pick up the paper.5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2
A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.4. Set the alarm for 3AM.5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work. (Work hard and be productive!)*
Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 4 – 7 months. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 3
Can you stand the mess children make? To find out…1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed and then rub them on the clean walls.4. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.5. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 5
Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle Cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 6
Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can accomplish this easily, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 7
1. Hollow out a melon.2. Make a small hole in the side.3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon bypretending to be an airplane.5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.6. Tip half the remainder into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
You are now ready to feed a nine-month-old baby.

Lesson 8
Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.**

Lesson 9
Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 10
Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

open mouth, insert foot

ever had one of those situations where you said something and immediately wished you could put your foot, calf, kneecap and even thigh in your mouth? or have you ever asked an honest question and received a suprisingly awkward response from the person in question? well this post is one i am copying from an amazing family who has adopted transracially and has put together a sort of "adoption etiquette" list. hopefully this will save you from a humiliating moment, and from a less than polite response from a protective momma. :)

"Where did you get them?" I politely inform them of the agency we used and the city they were born in.

"Are they foster kids?" No, but even if they were that's not right to ask. If we had foster children, pointing that out only reminds the child of the situation with their first family. They need to feel loved and chosen, and not reminded all of the time they are only here for a little while. They aren't my adopted kids either...they are my children! They just happen to join our family through adoption. It's not a label, just a part of their story.

"Do they have the same parents?"- Yes, my husband and I are their parents. No, they do not all share biological parents. And why does that matter anyway? Questions about birth families are generally off limits. I will tell you what I want you to know. That is very private information and very intimate to my child. I want them to understand their story first before everyone else does. I could not say that enough...be very sensitive to the subject of birth families.

"Do you have any of your own?" - I really don't like this one. What makes a child more my own than these three? Please use the right words: biological children. And no, we don't have any of those, we chose not to. This wasn't our plan B.

"Do they call you mom?" No lie, I got this one yesterday. Lady...come on. Have you never known a child in an open adoption? Yes, I am their mom and they call me that. This one was almost laughable. But so many people have questions about open adoption. We often talk about how our kids have 2 moms that love them very much. We know less about their birth fathers, so we don't talk a ton about them except for in very quiet moments.

"How do they feel about open adoption?" First, we never say that "open adoption". They just know adoption and they know their story and it's very natural for them. They have no weirdness that adults put on kids about having relationships with their birth parents. That's all bunk in my opinion. That's adoptive parents making excuses for why they don't embrace birth families. Kids pick up on how parents feel about their birth parents. They will be weird about it if you are...and I seriously believe it will become an issue down the road. They will embrace it if you do, and your closeness with your child will deepen because you are loving and accepting ALL of who they are.But some of the worst things are not questions at all, but what people think are compliments.

These make me want to gag.

"They are so blessed to have you." Are you kidding? We are BEYOND blessed to have THEM!!! I mean, I think we are good parents, but every family is blessed to be together.

"You are doing the ultimate mission for God." NO! This is not a mission, these are my children. I didn't save them. Yuck. That's awful for a child to hear that someones sees them at "outreach" or a good deed. Please don't adopt children because you feel this way. Can you imagine what it must feel like for a child to be brought up feeling this from home?

"I just couldn't do it. I couldn't handle losing a child." Well, life is not about you. How come I have never heard someone say that of marriage? One in every 2 marriages fails, and yet no one says I just couldn't get married because chances are we'd be divorced. No one could walk into this wanting to lose a child, but it's well worth the risk. We are not super heroes, we are parents and we have to take that risk because it's a part of the journey. Don't act like we don't have feelings and intense bonding and deep love for every child placed with us. God carries us through, it's not by our own strength.

One of my sisters wanted to know what IS okay to say. She sees families like ours in public and wants to show her love and support. Yes, we have a need to talk to everyone in our family! Here are things I love hearing and we actually get a lot of these:

Your family is beautiful! Sorry but we just couldn't keep from staring.

Your family looks just like my family. I love seeing that!

Your children are gorgeous. They behave like angels too (just kidding, just wanted to see if you were still paying attention!)

Your kids are beautiful. We have always talked about adopting, do you mind if I ask questions?

Your family makes me smile.

2010 year end review

ok so i know it's mid-december, but to be honest i can't see how 2 weeks will change anything and i am not sure i will do it later if i don't do it now, so just give me this one. :)

this has been a year. (i would like you to reread that sentence and stress the words "a year"). it's been every single emotion, sometimes with the polar opposite emotions running rampant at the same time. but i am going to do my best to break it all down, mainly for myself to look back at years from this moment because i want to remember it all.

january:
chris and i started the year off by submitting our formal application right at the close of 2009, so entering january we were excited about moving forward in our adoption process. in fact, i was so excited that i deemed 2010 "the year of baby lawson". towards the end of the month we started working on our taxes and realized we owed 1200 bucks. super fantastic news to the couple who is trying to scrape together the money to adopt. we were very irritated, but God provided for us and we didn't have to dip into our savings for the adoption.

february:
this was a busy month for our adoption prerequisites. we did full day of required training and had several parts of our homestudy done. we purchased a crib and dresser/changing table combo that was in great shape and matched our current furniture on craigslist, and found our bedding on clearance at a store in north carolina. once again, i continue to press on believing strongly that we will be parents in the very near future. i also started back at my old branch working with the girls at the west knoxville branch and could not have been happier to have gotten out of the branch i was in and back to familiar territory.

march:
oh blessed march. a season marked by new beginnings, thus, new challenges. march was an expensive month. i had a minor wreck, got 2 traffic tickets, chris had dental work done, oh and lest i forget, my car had to have almost $2000 of repairs done. we really struggled with the car and how to repair it- finance, sell drugs, set it on fire, etc. and when we were pouring our hearts out to our good friends jesse and leslie, God showed us exactly where He wanted us to take the money from- our adoption savings. march was a pivotal month in our faith journey part of the adoption process. at this point we had not run into any real obstacles with the adoption and had already begun saving a good amount of money, and this really stretched us. but we submitted to God's plan and trusted that as we took this flying leap off a cliff that He was going to catch us and provide in ways we couldn't understand. this is also the month when we began our cookbook fundraising campaign. i also got to spend several days with my sister who flew out here to visit me during her spring break.

april:
i turned 27 and it was emotional, for reasons that i don't really understand. the only thing i could really put my finger on was i always expected that by the time i was 27 i would have at least1 child, if not 2 or 3 and here i was with none. but i believe it was about this time that i had to make a choice to rejoice for the time i had with my husband, uninterrupted by the demands and needs of a child. in april we had wrapped up our homestudy's with our caseworker, i had spent hours upon hours creating our 3 identical profile books for the birthmom, and we were able to turn in the final application fee.

may:
on ma 14th we got our approval letter from our agency letting us know that our profiles had gone live and we were an official waiting family. that phrase is so funny to me because we had been a waiting family for years prior to that letter, but i guess the :official: part is what makes this different! :) i believe it was may when my sister in love, maggie, came down for the weekend and i got to help her purchase things for her upcoming wedding, and just spend some great time together.

june:
the 10th of this month marked 4 years of marriage for chris and me. we were very reminiscent of the past 4 years and really looked at where God brought us in not only 4 years, but really just the past 6 months in the adoption process. we really began to see how His plan is so much better than ours and we were able to rejoice for what adventures and journeys we will face in the coming years. we were presented with a potential situation out of memphis with a baby boy, but the birthmother chose to find adoptive parents outside of the bethan christian services network. i saw an amazing family go through the heartache of an adoption disruption, and come out on the other side looking more like Christ than i could ever hope to in a similar situation.we were also immensely blessed by 2 anonymous families at our church with a large financial gift to go towards our adoption, and then several other wonderful families in our Bible Fellowship class donated as well. i wish this was all for june, but unfortunately, i had a little slip up at work on some water and injured myself pretty seriously and even knocked myself out cold.

july:
chris turns 27 and we had a big soiree at the house with loads of kabobs and homemade ice cream, and big chunks of a tree in our backyard falling on our power line. thankfully our friend, Mike (aka Gary Bunyon, Paul Bunyon's brother) came to our rescue and helped move it off the power line before it snapped. july is when doubt and fear began creeping in that we were not going to have a baby by december 31st, but i continued to place my trust and hope in the Lord. for the 4th of july we were able to hang out with some new friends we had made at our monthly adoption meetings and it was a grand ole time meeting more of their support system.

august:
we found out that we had been selected as the top family for a baby but at the hospital the birthmom decided to parent. we had never been informed of the situation because the staff at bethany was afraid she was going to waver, and through their infinite discernment, they saved us some heartache. it was still very emotional to think that we could have had a child, but the reminder that we have a special birthmom and child for us helped us get past it all. we were also so thankful to know that we are chooseable! I believe it was the end of this month when we got a grant from phillip and tiffany rivers for the remaining balance of our adoption fee. More than what we spent on my car in february. :)

october-present
i haven't written since october and even now it's hard to break down everything that happened month by month so i am just going to write a generalization of events. at the beginning of october i had a miscarriage, the night before i was scheduled to go out of town to shoot bridal portraits of my sister in love, maggie. the miscarriage was my first indication that i was pregnant and the shock of what was happening and what had been growing in my womb rocked me to my utmost being. my last post was probably the most raw and open post i have ever shared with such a large audience. through the next several weeks, in fact, almost the beginning of december, i had some medical issues with this miscarriage that were scary, frightening and at times overwhelming, because this one was so different from when i miscarried kya joy. i was in such a different place this time on so many levels. i wasn't expecting a pregnancy becaus e i was so focused on adoption and seemingly so close to expanding our family via adoption. a great friend of mine made the comment to me that perhaps God allowed me to get pregnant in order to remind me that adoption is His plan for us right now and that if He wanted us to have a biological child, He can do it. and how true i believe that statement to be. i have held on with both hands and my teeth for dear life to that statement. i absolutely have to, because if i allow myself to ponder the what if's of this loss, i will literally go insane and i will miss out on the blessings of this journey. do i mourn for what is lost? absolutely. but i have never been more confident that adoption is God's plan for our lives right at this moment.

as i go into 2011 i am going expectant. expectant to hear and feel God's voice and presence guiding chris and me through life and through this painful, excruciatingly difficult journey we are on in our efforts to expand our family. trying to plan it all the way i wanted it to be has obviously not worked out the way i intended it. and how bold of me to act as though i have some say or control in how it will work out for who knows where and how it will end up but God?
so 2011... the year of baby lawson? hopefully. but even if it isn't, it will still be the year of expectancy. because i am expecting God to continue to blow our minds and rock our world with His faithfulness and goodness in our life.

40 Days

in the Old Testament there is a beautiful story about hannah, the mother of samuel. she goes to the Temple and kneels before the Lord begging of Him to give her a child. she prays so fervently that eli thinks she is drunk and reprimands her for coming to the Temple inebriated. she explains her distress and heartache and eli sends her on her way after he tells her the Lord will bless her with a child. as hannah leaves she turns and asks eli to continue to pray for her.

chris and i have embarked on a 40 day prayer journey in hopes for direction and guidance about having a child. we have enlisted the support and prayer of some friends and family and are praying every day for 40 days that God will give us a child. selfishly we would like to create a child, but that is not what we are praying for. we are asking specifically that God will reveal His plan for us in the pursuit of a child. particularly whether to adopt, foster to adopt, go to a fertility doctor, or be patient and wait. we know that God could create a child within me in these 40 days, but we are not holding out for that. direction is our main goal because trying without God this past year has been entirely too challenging.

like hannah we are fervently praying and opening up our hearts and minds to whatever it is God might do in us. and also like hannah we are asking people to pray with us. we are on day 6 now and believe in power in numbers. if you feel within your heart to pray with us we would appreciate and covet it. i am anxious to report back in a few weeks about what God is revealing to us. oh and as a closing thought, we think mollie might be having puppies. :)

be blessed.
cassie