Conscious Mom

OK. So yesterday's post was a little harsh. I was still reeling from a particularly insensitive comment made in front of my daughter. Perhaps venting into a blog isn't the best way of dealing with my anger, however! I think much of the reason why I get angry is that I can never come up with a good response in the moment. When it comes to figuring out the perfect thing to say 48 hours later, I'm the queen, but at the precise moment I need the right words I just stand there frustrated and flabbergasted. I've been reflecting recently on the enormity of raising a child outside her birth culture. This is nothing new, there are certain aspects of parenting ...

A few months ago I had a series of posts about what not to say to people who are adopting a child. I'm adding this to the list: Don't say anything to me about how lucky my daughter is that I rescued her from the dire conditions of her homeland. Yes, she needed a family, yes there's poverty in her country. But there's also beauty, kindness, spirituality, depth, joy, art, literature, intelligence, creativity, innovation. But speaking of 'rescuing' people, can someone rescue me from the arrogance, condescension, and rampant consumerism of my birth country? OK, something set off this rant, but I'm not going to say what it was. The details don't matter; suffice to say it unnerved me more than I've been ...

I found this at Everyday Yogini. Here's a game to calculate your environmental footprint. I got a 2.7 (I think this means we would need 2.7 earths if everyone lived the way I did.) The big surprise was that my biggest impact was in my food choices. I never eat meat and rarely eat dairy so I was expecting that to be my 'greenest' category. Apparently my 14 cups of coffee per week is wreaking havoc on the biosphere; even organic, shade grown coffee has a big impact on the environment when it is shipped half-way across the world to my coffee cup.

As other posts on this blog attest, Maia has been growing and thriving over the past year. We keep in touch with her birth family, sending them letters and photos letting them know how she is doing. We also sponsor her cousin to attend school. Adoption is an event of extremes: our joy was predicated on someone else's loss. I try never to forget that, never to forget her birth family and how had conditions been different, they would have been able to provide a loving home for her. So that fewer families ever have to experience the pain of loss and separation, there are many non-profits and NGO's working to improve conditions in Ethiopia and other countries so more ...

The coffee ceremony On Friday afternoon children from the big kids' house came over to the Guest House to say good bye to all the children who were leaving that weekend. A coffee ceremony is the traditional way of marking passages, honoring guests, or simply enjoy being together. During these ceremonies, someone roasts the coffee beans, then passes them around for everyone to enjoy their aroma; the the beans are ground and brewed into delicious coffee (actually, it was more like espresso, which is even better in my mind). I've hesitated to post pictures of other people here, but will make an exception to show the roasting and brewing of the coffee. While all this ...

This photo needs a caption. Any suggestions?

On our last full day in Ethiopia we left Maia in the loving care of her nanny Frehiwot and took a day trip north of Addis. (I'm a little out of order, but I didn't want another day to go by without posting something about the trip and don't have time to write a long post.) Typical houses we saw The Blue Nile Gorge A Gelada Baboon Stained glass window in a church

We've all seen them: articles in magazines devoted to attachment parenting and natural living that seem a bit, well, let's just say they don't apply to everyone's circumstances (i.e., 'How my baby emerged gracefully from my birth canal during my midwife-assisted homebirth'). And then there are the parenting magazines that can be a bit more realistic, but philosophically bankrupt ('Why you should absolutely definitely give your one hour old baby the hepatitis B vaccine, even though everyone who will come into contact with your newborn has either tested negative or had the vaccine themselves.') Here are some titles of magazine articles I'd like to see: Don’t wait until the 34th hour of labor to read this: How to know if a ...

Once we took custody of Maia our day began at about 5 AM. No one else's day started that early, so we hung around trying to be quiet until Sinidu, the cook, brought us coffee. Breakfast would be either oatmeal or scrambled eggs, with fruit and bread available, too. Sinidu or Eskedar, the house manager, would hold our kids while we ate. Sinidu was especially skilled at holding several babies at once with a combination of wraps and slings. Other families would then go play in the courtyard, but Maia seemed so small and fragile I hesitated taking her into the bright sunlight for too long. So we hung around inside, played on the bed, ...

I remember absolutely nothing about this day. I can say for sure that the distinction between night and day continued to be lost on Maia. Her schedule was much more like a newborn's than a 4 month old's. She did sleep a lot, but it was at random times throughout the day, and definitely not all night long. And I slept some, too. Some. Bodhi and I had talked about sightseeing when we were in Addis; in the weeks before we traveled we looked through our Lonely Planet guide, picking out things we wanted to see. But we ended up spending almost all of our time at Horizon House. Trying to take a day ...