Teacher Gift Idea

As I've mentioned before, I'm a fan of the SPOON Foundation's mission to bring critical nutrition to orphans in developing countries. They have a great teacher gift idea for those of you who are looking for end-of-year gift ideas.

They have a dedication card you can give to your child's teacher that acknowledges their care for children and makes a donation in their honor to the orphan nutrition project by SPOON. Chances are the teacher doesn't need another coffee mug. But those kids do need - in a very desperate, heart breaking way - basic nutrition.

SPOON also provides information and tips for adoptive parents who are facing nutritional challenges with their adoptive children.  If you know anyone who could use that kind of support, their website is a nice resource.

Spirited and Stuff

Well, hi.  It has been a while.

Update: Looks like we aren't leaving Phoenix yet afterall.  How much longer will we be here?  We still don't know.  So that's my exciting update: we still haven't decided to stay in Phoenix and we still haven't decided to leave Phoenix.  Like any good lesson in being in the present, it is forcing us to just be with what is in front of us right now.  We managed an arrangement that gives us a place to live for the time being and leaves it open enough for us to leave.

I feel, like most everyone I know, perched on the edge of change.

Speaking of perched on the edge, here is a picture of Sukhjot perched on the edge of a chair.  She climbs onto these chairs and then on top of the dining room table about 500 times a day.  Okay, maybe not 500.  But it has to be at least 359.  But sitting as she is here, looking so innocent and like she not at all about to tear up everything she can get her tiny hands on, she is just waiting for me to help her down.  Because she can climb up onto just about anything in the blink of an eye but she can't always get down.  Cue sad whimpering.

And here's a play time pic:

And some backyard yoga:

We continue to be frequent library go-ers.  Two good book I've read lately have been Free Range Kids and Raising Your Spirited Child, both of which have provided some much needed perspective.  They were both helpful enough to me that I want to give them some mention.

Free Range Kids is about bringing back balance and sanity - looking at the fact that the world is the safest it has been in recorded history and yet we keep our children in paranoid bubbles of protection, denying them the freedom to explore and learn in some very basic ways.  We see horror stories on the news and all kinds of crazy, morbid stuff on TV that implant some very off-base ideas about the world and the people around us.  She gives lots of statistics and evidence based information that helped me reel in the crazy a bit.  Whew!  (For the record, I do not agree with all her information.  She gets into nutrition, breastfeeding, and other topics that seem more opinion based than evidence based and  I was not impressed on those topics.  But the safety stuff alone is worth the read.)  

Raising Your Spirited Child is described as "a guide for parents whose child is more intense, sensitive, perceptive, & persistent."  And I have one of those. That's Satvinder for sure and wow- that book has been helpful in giving me some re-framing on the challenges and plenty of ideas I had not thought of before.  It gets right into the tricky issues.  If your child is full of those particularly spirited traits, you might want to check this book out.

Going Places

We are probably about to do some traveling so it was very timely for me to be asked to write up a few tips for traveling with kids for www.YogaMint.com. I tried to also get a picture of both children in the car - and for the square shaped pictures that they use, the girls would need to be close together. Of course, when I got them close together and attempted photography, this is what happened:

Here's the article: Hit the Road Yogis, showing a smiling (not face clawed) Satvinder.

Juice

This afternoon I found the baby sitting on the kitchen floor, a big tomato in each hand, eating them like apples, with juice dripping down her face and onto the floor.  This child does like to eat.  What she doesn't like is all this putting stuff away in boxes.  Packing is not really a favorite task for any of us.

Our house closes at the end of this month.  We have about two more weeks to pack up and move out.  When we initiated this process, we thought that by the time of sale, surely we'd have a plan in place.  Surely something would stand out as the right thing to do.  But that clarity of direction hasn't come.  At this point, we are thinking we will put our stuff in storage here in Phoenix and head to Austin to stay with my mom for the summer.  And then see what life unfolds.

That plan could change, as it has about a thousand times already.

New words: Sukhjot says hot ("haaa!"), snack ("nack") and yeah.  She is quite the affirmative little thing - saying "yeah" all the time.  Yeah in response to yes or no questions (Do you want to eat? Yeah.), confirmation of things we say (You are cute, Sukhjot.  Yeah.), and yeah just for the sake of saying yeah to no one in particular.  Just yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And Satvinder.  Well, thank God for the library. She leaves there each week with a stack of books bigger than she can carry.  And then she comes home and devours them all.

So.  Last couple weeks in this house and then on to the great unknown.  It has been a good house.  Aside from my childhood home, it has been my longest residence.  Satvinder's entire memory is living here.  Sukhjot was born here.  Sometimes it feels hard to say "goodbye" but the whole process is a lesson in faith and trust and the constancy of change, which is moving through all of us one way or another.

response to the response

I want to update that the quote I posted yesterday was discovered to be not 100% the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Somewhere along the way someone paraphrased something he said - delivering the same message but not all in the exact words as he spoke them.  In any case, that quote touched many people and was spreading all around Facebook yesterday.  Even if the words were not all correctly quoted, the sentiment is still true and powerful.  I found it really exciting to see a message of peace spread virally.


In respect for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I wish to also share the quote in his words:

"Are we seeking power for power’s sake? Or are we seeking to make the world and our nation better places to live. If we seek the latter, violence can never provide the answer. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.' 

response

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that" --Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

Tired of Speaking Sweetly

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,

Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and

Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights,

He would just drag you around the room

By your hair,

Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world

That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly

And wants to rip to shreds

All your erroneous notions of truth

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,

And with others,

Causing the world to weep

On too many fine days.

God wants to mandhandle us,

Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself

And practice His dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants

To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down

And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear

He is in such a "playful drunken mood"

Most everyone I know

Quickly packs their bags and hightails it

Out of town.

-Hafiz

from The Gift: Poems of Hafiz

Translations by Daniel Ladinsky