ReadySetMom

What I really want for Christmas...

It's a sad, sad day when what I really am lusting after for my Christmas gift is a good pair of snow boots. How is it I've lived in all these snowy cold places (Wisconsin, Illinois and now PORTLAND) and I didn't manage to hold onto any boots?

If that's not sad enough. I'll give you another one. I think my best friend right now is... my snow shovel. Nothing like going out and shoveling the driveway to work out a little snow-day-cabin-fever angst that builds and builds with each passing day as they declare snow day after snow day until I think I just might explode!

So please. Join me in the pity party. Fill in the blank: What I really want for Christmas is _________. Please make it good. I need a laugh. Even the supposedly funny video about cars sliding down the south waterfront hill isn't doing it for me today.

Mailing excess Halloween candy to troops?

Got an email from someone looking to mail excess Halloween candy overseas to troops serving in Iraq or Afghanistan. Anyone know where to how to do that?

Walk + Bike to School 2008 on Oct 8

This year we're not going to wuss out. Last year, unfortunately, we did. Lessons learned:

• Do not wait until Walk + Bike to School day to try walking or biking to school for the first time.
• Be prepared for inclement weather. This is OREGON, after all. Get your rain gear ready in advance: rain boots, rain coats, umbrellas, and rain bonnets for strolling younger siblings.
• Talk it up among your friends. Last year's "Punch Out Pollution" and Walking School Bus campaigns really made walking to school a social event. Trust me, it will be much more enjoyable if you're not the only mom out there trying to cheer-lead your kids to school in a downpour.

Walk + Bike to School Day 2008 is coming up quick on Wednesday, October 8. Is your school participating in Walk + Bike day? Will you?

Join ReadySetMom & Team QTips in the Race for the Cure!

I've always wanted to participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure but never got on the ball in time to actually do it. I lost my lovely Aunt Fran to breast cancer in 2001, and rejoiced when my Grandma Myrtle and Aunt Barb beat it. So this year I'm finally doing it. Jilly Gossett, a friend of mine and Renee's and frequent RSM commenter (aka JillyBean), has put together a team: Team QTips. This was all the incentive I needed to get Renee and my mom and hopefully a bunch more of YOU to join in the Race for the Cure on September 21. There are a couple of ways to participate.

1) Participate in the event: You can run, walk or sleep-in! There are several events from which to choose for both adults and kids. Renee and I are doing the adult untimed 5k walk (and we'd love for you to join us so we can all walk together). Each event starts down at Waterfront Park, and here's the schedule. Register on the Team QTips homepage. Shoot us an email if you'd like to meet up with us at the event.

2) Donate a little extra. Just registering for the event helps raise awareness of the disease, but doesn't provide additional money for research and treatment. I know the economy is tough and we're holding tight to our wallets. If you can't part with an extra $77 to fund a mammogram for a local, uninsured woman, then can you and six friends each donate $11? A $25 donation pays for a gas card for a low-income woman driving over 75 miles one way to get a mammogram. Every little bit helps. Renee and I are each going to bite the bullet and choose the $100 Save A Life package. If you can't participate in the Race for the Cure, you can make any size donation on the Team QTips homepage.

Seventy-five percent of donations made will stay in Oregon and SW Washington to help fund services for local women fighting breast cancer, while 25 percent will go to national cancer research. We hope you can join Team QTips and help us support local women and raise awareness of this disease that will undoubtedly touch us all in one way or another.

Oh, and did I mention the party Jilly is throwing for Team QTips a week after the race?

Would you host/have you hosted an international exchange student?

My family has always placed a high value on cultural understanding and international travel. We seemed to host a fair number of international exchange students during my childhood (especially during the teen years). Many of them were friends of my parent's friends, so it was all quite informal. I looked into programs such as AFS when I was in high school, but did not travel myself. I always befriended the foreign students who came to our school for a year (and not simply because I wanted to learn swear words in a foreign tongue -- I really found them much more interesting than my American peers). It wasn't until I was in college that I found my own exchange program. During my junior year, I studied abroad in the south of France, on a true student exchange between the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the Université de Provence at Aix-en-Provence. I started the year in halting, text-book French, but I finished the year fluently speaking French and holding my own in cafe society. 

Hosting a foreign exchange student is something I'd always hoped to do. I figured when the kids are older would be an ideal time. I'm not sure my husband will think it's such a great idea. In any case, there's a home-stay recruiter from PSU who's been calling me about it and it's got me to thinking about it now. Would you host a foreign exchange student? From the student perspective, do you think it would be a drag to be living with a family with young children, vs. older kids? Have you hosted an exchange student? What was your experience like?

Relocating to Portland: looking for special needs' parenting group

We received an email from Stacy, who is relocating to Portland with her family, and is looking for a parenting support group focusing on children with special needs:

My husband and I lived in Portland from 1996-1999 and loved it. The bleak job market forced us to move to Seattle (we shed many tears as we left Portland that September day) where we resided from 1999-2002. We have since been living across the water, on the Kitsap Peninsula, in a lovely little community (pop 1700) of Indianola with lots of kids, dogs and a lovely little beach. Most of us here are very "green" and very focused on community. My husband and I own a coffee roastery and are considering moving ourselves and staff back to Portland. Our son, Owen, (our first and only thus far) was born at home with major complications - this is the reason I write. Sometime during pregnancy (which was amazingly great) or L/D, Owen suffered from a prolonged period of lack of oxygen (hypoxia), even though he showed no signs of distress. We have spent a lot of time at Children's Hospital in Seattle. Owen has been diagnosed with cerebral palsy, is visually impaired, has a feeding tube and has difficult to treat seizures (we will actually be coming down to Oregon Health Sciences Univ - Dorenbecher Children's Hosp to get him started on the ketogenic diet to try control his 120+ seizures a day -he's tried five medications). He will be one year old this July. owenkeithmarshall.blogspot.com/.

The reason I send this is because we are in the exploratory phase. We feel need to be around a larger community with more support resources (connecting with parents who understand or who are/have experienced a special child like Owen), with easy access to mass transit, parks, farmer's markets, grocery stores, cafes, etc. Right now, we drive everywhere. Additionally, it is quite the ordeal to get Owen into and out of the car and so going anywhere in the car, is too much right now. I need to be able to walk him places...

Can anyone direct me to a parent's/mom's group that might fit for us? A parent's of special needs kids group? Any other suggestions or information are welcome. Anyone have experience with Dorenbecher? Any direction is appreciated.

Does anyone have any suggestions for Stacy and her family?

Donate used childrens' clothing to the Oregon PTA Clothing Center

I know we have lots of readers in the Wilson HS district:

Wilson is now an on-going collection site for the Oregon PTA Clothing Center—accepting donations anytime the school is open (with donation forms available from the office between 7:30 and 4:30 on school days). The Center provides free clothing to children living in the district, including infants and toddlers. Right now, the Center is particularly in need of Spring clothes, especially girls athletic and casual shoes in sizes 5-9.  There is a labeled white bin just outside Wilson's main office where you can drop your donations of clean, gently-used clothing, backpacks, school supplies and other useful items any time. Tax receipt donation forms are available from the office staff. 

Most Portland public high schools have PTA Clothing Center collection boxes, so give them a call if you have clothing to donate. Qualifying Portland Public School families can visit the Clothing Center, on the campus of Marshall High School, and receive free clothing for their children (from newborn on up), which they so desperately need.

If you are interested in receiving the Wilson district e-newsletter, The Spotlight, please contact lsdoyle [at] earthlink [dot] net.

Love Outdoor School? They need your help!

If there's one thing I've learned during my first year at Portland Public Schools, there's no shortage of fundraisers. Unfortunately, the need for them is huge.

Case in point: Outdoor School. I am not from Oregon, and we've only lived here since April 2000. We love the idea of Outdoor School, and hope our kids will attend Outdoor School some day. From my understanding, Outdoor School has been around since 1966, and helps introduce sixth-grade kids to the idea of caring for our natural areas and engaging them in conservation issues. Many area outdoor schools are struggling to survive or can't afford to send their kids.

In May, Metro will be deciding how to distribute existing funds to a variety of programs, including Outdoor School. The Friends of Outdoor School invite us to contact our Metro Councilors to ask for modest but permanent funding to support Outdoor School, which would serve all the students in the Metro region. Look up your Metro Councilor, and tell them you support funding Outdoor School. They're making it hard. You can write them a real letter (not an email); meet with them in person; or testify at the public hearings on April 17, May 1 or May 6.

But wait, there's more! Shop at Mountain Hardware (722 SW Taylor). Opening April 11, this new store/division of Columbia Sportswear will donate 10% of its sales for the month of April to Outdoor School.

Did you go to Outdoor School? Did your kids? What do you have to share about Outdoor School to those of us with no personal experience with it?

Child questioning differences pertaining to race: some easy and hard questions

My 6-year-old asks great questions. Some easy, some hard:

Why are your eyes blue, and dad's and mine are brown?
My ancestors come from dark, cold places where there's not a lot of sun. We needed light colored eyes to bring more light into our eyes so we could see better. Dad was born in a place where it's really sunny, so he needed dark eyes to block out a lot of the sun.
Why is your skin light and dad's skin dark?
Well again, it's about where we came from. Mom's people came from Europe, where it wasn't sunny all the time. Dad came from the Philippines where it's really sunny most of the time, so his dark skin is kind of like permanent sunscreen.

We had this conversation a few months back. I felt pretty good about how matter-of-fact it was. In recent weeks, she was asking me about the presidents. I think she was mostly curious about the dead presidents on our currency. She wanted to see a list of all the presidents. We started with George Washington, then worked our way to the current president. She wanted to know how many were living. Then she asked:

Are there any lady presidents?
No.
Why not?

This is where it gets hard. I told her that no women had ever run for president. But there was one running now: Hillary Clinton. She thought that was cool. I kind of wish I had stopped myself there. But I didn't.

Some people don't think women are smart enough to be president. But that's wrong. And there's another man running for president who is... His skin is darker than the other presidents'. So it's really cool that he's running for president. His name is Barack Obama. So far all the presidents have been people who look... exactly like your next door neighbor, and it's cool that people who are different are in the race.

I really wanted to shut myself up but didn't know how to. I got caught in the trap of feeling weird and awkward talking about race. Lots of that in the news lately, so I know it's not just hard for me. I think of my daughter as being accepting, color-blind, and kindness and sweetness personified. I feared  corrupting her innocence by informing her that racial discrimination exists.

Now, today, I got an email from a mom in my daughter's kindergarten class. Apparently, some kids on the playground told her son that they would not play with him because he has dark skin. As heartbreaking as it is to know that racial discrimination is being used to bully this young boy, it's time for me to get over my fear and awkwardness and make sure my daughter knows right from wrong.

Do you talk about racial, religious, sexual, ethnic or other discrimination with your kids? Do you have any words of wisdom to share?

Mom's group on the east side?

Ana has recently moved to Portland and wants to meet some moms:

I have another question for the group... I am looking to join a Mother's Club in Portland, but haven't been able to find one in the East side. Can anyone recommend a fun Mother's Club?

The only mom's group I know of is Portland Metro Moms, but they meet over here in SW Portland (though they do have members from all over the area). It's nice to meet parents from your own neck of the woods and not have to drive a long ways to do so. Any suggestions for Ana?