On The Fly – A Parenting Blog

Short week; short web round up. Top 3 things I found on the web this week:

• Make a “rocket” out of a tea bag. OK, so this would probably have been more useful a few years ago when I could have impressed my friends with the trick at a bar since I’m not about to show my 3 and 5 year old how to light tea bags on fire, but it might make a good physics lesson for anyone out there homeschooling (Hat tip DIY: Happy)
• A new study on the fact that parents with larger families die younger. While this might be true, I’ll bet they die happier and isn’t that the point of this thing we call life. (Hat tip MetroDad at Strollerderby)
• And finally, a wired article about a guy that ran 50 marathons in 50 days. I’m just not sure weather to be impressed or just think he’s crazy. (Hat tip Lifehacker)

It has been an amazing week in our house.  We enjoyed our first Christmas as a family, which no words can describe how great it was to see our three kids enjoyment in the holiday.  We started off at the end of last week with baking.  That was especially fun for my four year old who always brings his stool everywhere and states, “I want to help you.”  My kids also worked on making Christmas ornaments to give out to family members.  We were working on the giving aspect along with the getting aspect of the holiday.    Then on Saturday we spent the day at Sea World.  We enjoyed a holiday Shamu show and many other festvities at the park. On Christmas eve we spent time with family.  We opened many presents, and enjoyed the time with the family.  Santa came on Christmas morning bringing our oldest a Barbie bike, and the younger kids a play kitchen which, has provided hours of entertainment.  We enjoyed church on Christmas and then visited with more family in the afternoon.  On Tuesday we took the kids on a bike ride at the lake.  Two parents helping two kids with training wheels and  pushing a fussy toddler in a stroller makes for quite a relaxing afternoon for the parents. Although the kids were nervous about riding their bikes downhill and are still getting the concept of pedaling there were no major falls and fun was had by all.  This weekend we will be going out of town to visit with more family.  As the holiday season comes to an end I realize how much more enjoyable Christmas is now that I have my kids.  I also realize I can’t imagine my life before them.  They are so much a part of me.

One more photo with the cool Black and White + a little color trick. I’m not sure why Yordie is more likely than the other kids to be in photos that are conducive to this technique. Maybe it’s that the other kids can sit still for a photo.  Can anyone who owns this kid I-pod figure out what else I did to the photo?

Merry Christmas

from our family

to yours

Top 5 things I found on the web that I thought you should see:

• How to make a photo BW and then add back some color, like the photo I showed you yesterday. Note that in the comments there are suggestions on different ways to do it as well as a better way (Channel Mixer adjustment layer) to make the photo black and white in the first place (hat tip Lifehacker).
• Apparently Angelina Jollie thinks adoptive parents are more fit to be parents than those that come by it the natural (but highly unregulated way). I wonder what the nation would be like if we required all new parents-to-be to take a class or read a couple of books? (hat tip MetroDad)
• Staying on the adoption topic for a second, we have a tribute to a father by his son who was adopted as a teen out of the New York Foster Care system. Kind of long, but pretty moving if you’re in the mood for that sort of thing (Hat tip Jason at Dad Centric)
• This one about kids peeing may only amuse the dad’s in the audience (do they even read my our blog; they certainly don’t comment).
• And finally, don’t forget that the North American Aerospace Defense Comand (NORAD) is tracking Santa again this year if your little ones want to follow along before their eyelids get too heavy. I’ll bet those dang Europeans get visited by Santa before us again this year.

More links in case you’re new here and need more to read.

That’s Yordie with her cousin Zane who is 3 months her junior. Want to know how to make a photo like this?  The link will be in tomorrow’s Web Round Up.  Susan has a good post below this one if you haven’t checked it out yet.

It has been an amazing time, this my first Christmas with my three kiddos to see how having children changes the whole holiday season.  As I sat on fire engine ride with my four year old a week ago at a Christmas festival, I thought, I don’t even remeber this ride being here last year.  But, mostly likely, I didn’t notice that attraction.  To watch my children dance to Christmas music and talk about how many days are left til Santa comes down the chimmney make the holiday season great.  I also find humor in what they determine or learn from friends at school about the holidays.  The other day, my five year old just randomly stated, “Santa is kind of fat maybe he shouldn’t eat desserts everynight.”  My four year old’s favorite song is “We miss you a Merry Christmas.”  I have also watched them grow and change in the last 8 months.  My 5 1/2 year old told me the other night, “We didn’t live here last year on Christmas.  Christmas was different in Ethiopia.  But it is very far away.” She told me that they had watched a video about Ethiopia in her class, and she told all her friends that Ethiopia is where she is from. She also has  been so immersed in American culture now.  She waits for Santa to bring her the Barbie bike and other toys she asked for and can’t imagine a world not only without television, but without TIVO.  She recently asked me as we were watching live television, “Can’t you fast forward through the commercial?” 

My son has also changed.  A couple of weeks ago he was having surgery and he was in recovery and the nurse asked me”Does he speak another language?”  I quietly said unforuantely not anymore.  He also has his friends, Chuck E Cheese and a world where people ask “Where is he from? Here or somewhere else?”  He unlike his sister does not like to talk about his past.  He prefers pizza to Ethiopian food if given the chance. 

I wonder about our 19 month old who knows no life, but America.  What will she be like?  So my wish for my kids this holiday season is that, as we do at every meal, we pray an Ethiopian prayer that they recited the first day we met them.  They do not know what it means anymore, but it centers our day around the two worlds that my husband and I try to unite for our children.  So we can raise amazing Ethiopian American adults.  I look forwad to the week ahead and Santa’s arrival at our house.  Peace.

I’ve told you why you should switch to firefox already: Because it’s faster, prettier, and more powerful. So I’m sure you’ve already switched. Here’s the latest trick I’ve just found.

You can search any search box on the web from inside your address bar. My 2 most helpful ones are “map XXXXXX” which automatically searches google maps and “dict XXXXX” which searches dictionary.com. But you can set up your browser to search any search box on any webpage. Maybe you’re constantly searching Mary’s site for how to clean up vomit? You could add “OH XXXXXXX” search function. Or maybe, you just need to know how much that present would cost at Amazon? Rather than going to the site, finding the search bar and typing in your search, just type “amazon *product name*” into the address bar. This website shows you how to add new search functions and even includes a download for a bunch of common searches to get you started.

Yep, that Works for me.

In case you hadn’t taken a look at my sidebar recently (if you’re reading this on the single post page, you’ll have to go to the main page to see it), I’ve been racking up a lot of wins at Avery’s “Caption Me” contest where he puts up a photo and you get to add a caption. Now while I think I’m a pretty funny guy, the more likely reason I’ve been winning is that only a few people submit captions, so the competition is slim. This week, I’m the only one that has an entry. So, please go and leave a comment so that I don’t win by default.

I’m not sure what I expected from a government agency that changed its name twice in 6 months. But I was surprised to open Yordie’s citizenship paperwork  and find out that she was listed as a male. Now at first I was excited since Estifanos, Dylan (the dog), and I are out numbered 3 to 6, but my fantasy was broken when I remembered that I had been changing diapers for a couple of months and knew for sure that she was a girl. Then I got freaked out that maybe she was listed as a male on her passport and wouldn’t that be fun to change from 9000 miles away. But you’ll be relieved to know that she was listed as a female on both her passport and her US issued visa. Now you would think that in this day and age, her vital statistics would be transported (and used to fill out the certificate) electronically, but apparently there’s a guy in the back of some office filling these things out on a selectric. I guess this really shouldn’t surprise me since they have a form which they send to all international adopting parents that has an expiration time crossed out and a new length of time it’s valid typed in at the bottom of the page. Now I figured that they just had stacks and stacks of these blank forms around and that they were saving trees and tax payer dollars by filling out the information on the old forms and having the word processor mark out the old expiration length and type in the new one. But no, I was in their office and they fill out the whole form and print it from a word document. No one thought to just change the expiration time rather than enter it with the cross out and the new time at the bottom? Maybe that requires an act of congress or something?

Anyway, there were instructions on how to get it fixed that came with the certificate (apparently this happens a lot), which included needing a new passport sized photo. Have you ever tried to get a passport photo of a 14 month old (yes, this was a few months ago, I couldn’t post this until we got the final one back lest the agency read it and hold up our certificate). Our attempts at getting the picture are under the fold.
(more…)