I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family and to help myself remember this time, process and think through these struggles, and save the story for my children for the future day when they will need to process their memories.
But my writing goes beyond that, and I hope to reach out to friends and strangers to provide support, new ideas, and information. I hope that by sharing my own story, my joys, the little details of my days, and most importantly, my frustrations and sadnesses, that it will help others in their own lives. I especially reach out to other mothers, as I know my own mothering and self-knowledge has been aided by reading others' stories.
I am including different kinds of stories, but also attempting to focus my musings on a few different topics. If you are interested in one of these areas, I offer suggestions of what "label" to click on, and you will see a variety of stories on this topic come up. (November: I am still going back to put labels on older posts, so this isn't fully working yet.) Please also feel free to share links to your own stories, to post comments and let me know if there is a particular subject you are interested in, and to link my blog to other places that discuss these subjects.
Older child international adoption: Our stories are still some of the least-discussed in the adoption world. I write about my understanding of the situation in general, and some of the specific challenges (and successes!) my 6-year-old daughter and I are going through.
Try searching older-child adoption, bonding, becoming a family
Life in a foreign country with young children: This is always a fascinating subject -- those of us who live it know that we have new surprises all the time!
Try searching ex-pat life, traveling with children, culture, missing home
Parenting spirited children, or children with "alphabet soup" special needs: I try to write some practical posts about how to manage day-to-day life with three high-needs children. In our family, we are working with some things like sensory processing issues, executive function issues, physical delays, emotional delays, anxiety issues, dealing with prior neglect and abuse.... basically, a random alphabet soup of wonderful children-ness!
Try searching family policies, discipline, mothering
Adoption: Some of my stories might be helpful for other parents contemplating or going through the process of Ugandan adoption, some are about general adoption issues for other adoptive parents, or for others who might want to develop a better understand of the unique things that their friends or neighbors' adoptive families might be going through. I haven't been able to focus on as many of these abstract issues lately, with all the day-to-day turmoil, but they are on my mind!
Try searching Adoption, Adoption Issues, Administrative details
Related, try searching Bonding, Becoming a family, Sibling bonding, Older-child adoption, Food issues, learning English..... almost everything on this blog fits this category!
Wrapping and Baby-wearing: This wasn't the original focus of the blog, but it's a passion of mine and I've had a lot of interest in it. I am particularly passionate about sharing the message that we can wear our big kids! Most of the tagged posts are about wrapping in our daily lives, but I am also interested in adding more technical information for other babywearers, including wrap reviews or tutorials, which will be labelled.
Try searching Wraps, Wrapping, Baby-wearing, Big-kid wearing,
Christian Parenting: I am not focusing specifically on theology, but my journey of faith informs everything in my daily life. At least, that's the goal! If that sounds like you...
Try searching God's dream, prayers, little-kid theology, challenges... but there's a lot more scattered in!
Hi :) I found your blog (which is really cool) because we are considering moving to Uganda to work with an organization that is about to be setting up in Gulu. We are from Canada, have 6 children, and I am trying to find out if there is a gymnastics 'scene' anywhere around. One of my daughters is a competitive gymnast and we would like to find somewhere for her to train, even just a little bit, while we are gone. I realize this was not the point of your post, lol, but if you wouldn't mind telling me what you know, I would appreciate it. Thanks!!
ReplyDeleteShort answer.... no. Competitive gymnastics is not compatible with living in Uganda.
DeleteLong answer.... there might be some kind of studio in some upscale, muzungo-filled (eg. ex-patriod) neighborhood of Kampala somewhere, probably with a few pieces of doubtful equipment poorly installed. But I never heard of it. In fact, I never heard of any kids taking any kind of after-school activities (although I didn't live in the ex-pat area of town). I asked and asked, and was told that after the long school day, kids played with other children in their compounds and watched TV. That's all I saw. Even publicly accessible playgrounds (which still had a fee) were very few and far between, and not equipped with things like monkey bars.
Outside of Kampala, there's nothing. The next largest "cities" are incredibly small, and not at all westernized.