As has been mentioned on most of my blogs, my son Sam had his fifth birthday last week. Since math is still a skill I can occasionally employ in correct usage, him being five means that I am fifty-six ... yes, there is a fifty-one-year-plus gap between my entrance on the world stage and his.

In a different time or another place, such a wide span between parent and child would not be possible. It wasn't all that long ago that the statistical likelihood of being alive after... more

Continued from the previous post, where we've been wondering if and how adoption impacts marriage, or vice versa.

Although it often falls to the hopeful mom to climb the Kilimanjaro of paperwork and whittle it down to a manageable pile with handy x's in all appropriate places, there's no saving the hubby some time-consuming and downright uncomfortable dealings as the process of adoption becomes more of a project than a pastime. Home study visits, physical checks, fingerprinting... more

In reading over the comments left on yesterday's blog about falling in love with my husband, I'm thinking this morning about how often I hear adoptive parents singing the praises of their mates and wondering if there's a correlation between successful marriage and adoption.

Not to discount the many single adoptive parents in the world. Not at all! Having been a single mom for a long time myself, I have nothing but respect for those who take on the mantle of parent without... more

Continued from the previous post where we've been looking at how new circumstances arising during the adoption process should be dealt with, and how some might encourage hopeful adoptive parents to keep information about serious illness to themselves. As I was just about to say ...

Excuse me? All that advice sounded not only shaky, but despicable to me, and I wasted no time before lambasting those who'd offered it up and suggesting strongly... more

Not that there's any warranty I know of that states without equivocation that under a certain age there will be no unpleasant surprises in the health department invading our individual realms, but even I have to admit that the likelihood does tend to increase as the years pass and we put more miles behind us.

Given that and the fact that adoptions these days are taking longer and longer to complete in many cases, it can happen that the rubber meets the road when older parents are waiting ... and waiting, and waiting some more ... to get to the point where... more

A comment from John on yesterday's blog put me in mind of something that should follow a post about an Invasion of Granny Accusers. (Thanks, John!)

My oldest child was born just ten days after my 18th birthday, so we are close enough in age to be siblings in some families ... the gap between my second and third child is 32 years, so 18 is an eye-blink ... and we look very much alike, although she is... more

So, there I was, standing on a pretty pathway in the middle of Pamplemousses Gardens watching Cj dash away a few meters to give her space to run as fast as her little feet could fly back into our arms with a squeal and a giggle, when some geezer Brit invades my world with a brash and strident, "Are these your grandchildren?"

Okay. So she wasn't brash or strident ... she was actually a bit shy and over-compensatingly... more

There's no doubt that I live in a rarefied climate and that life in the 'real' world is on a daily basis much different than the one passed here on this little rock in the middle of a big, blue sea.

One significant difference is the fact that the total population of Seychelles is only 85,000 which makes us roughly the same as a small town in America. There's more distance involved, so we're not so much in each other's pockets, but everyone does read the same newspapers, listen to the same radio station and watch... more

There are times when I can do little but sit back, scratch my head and wonder how in the heck so much time has passed ... and so quickly.

Birthdays ... and I have one coming up ... always prompt this.

"Fifty-six! How did I get to be fifty-six, when I'm quite sure I was thirty-five just the other day."

(Of course, that line of thought completely ignores the fact that I have a daughter about to turn thirty-eight, but that's really beside the point.)

Today, however, is where the rubber meets... more

A couple of stories in the news about older parents need talking about today. The first, this one that asks the question, "How old is too old?".

It's grandparents raising a child this time, and they must not have been spring chicken-ish when the son who is dad to the little one was little, as they're now 89 and 86, and have been parenting the child off and on almost since birth a... more