I GOT BLISTAS ON MY FINGAS!

(Please tell me I'm not the only one that knows that line ... ) On top ... or should I say, under? ... reading, writing and researching for today's two thousand words or so of bloggity-blog-blog I was compelled to get down on my hands and knees and scrub my kitchen floor. It is mopped daily, but you know how it is ... gunk builds up in corners and along baseboards, cracks fill with an amalgam... more

What's the number one concern for older adoptive parents? Living long enough to see our kids through to adulthood.

It's not quite that simple, however, as it's also important that we're reasonably healthy through those years that lead to our children's independence, and beyond, if we're to avoid becoming a burden to the kids we brought home later in our lives.

An article in the new issue of AARP Mag titled, "Never... more

Some older parents adopt orphans, and some adopt orphanages.

Say you're a middle-aged couple ... late forties, early fifties ... and after raising six great kids to successful adulthood you're looking for something else to do in the way of contributing to the betterment of the planet. Adoption may have entered your mind, but perhaps first you'd like to learn more about what life is like for some of the world's orphans.

How... more

One consideration I would guess creeps into the minds of most of us older adoptive parents goes something like this: Will my kids be embarrassed about having a geezer for a mom (or dad) when they're teens? I'm thinking the answer to this question will always be ... well, yes.

The good news is that every teen is embarrassed by their parents, and every teen thinks their parents are geezers, even if said parents are... what? ... like thirty-five? Yeah. Thirty-five. (That's how old my mom was when I was 15, and MAN! was she ever ancient... more

Today was for Sam. He's on school holidays for three weeks ... year-round schooling here, so it's shorter breaks more often instead of a straight three months once a year ... and he's been SO good and helpful.

A couple of days on the beach at Grandma's with his cousin Emilie had him pretty well pooped and needing some R&R at home last week, but too much of the time he's been patiently waiting for me to stop working, shut... more

Feeling at all special this month? Well, if you're an older adoptive parent in the USA, you should be. May is Older Americans Month which should mean just about anything you'd like it to mean.

It used to be called "Senior Citizens Day", but between the 18th of April, 1963 when President Kennedy issued the proclamation that designated it so and now, President Jimmy Carter renamed it.

The original point of making May Yank Geezer Month... more

Okay. I can stand it no longer.

I may have managed to nudge away the irritating poke in the ribs that is the Urban Outfitters new t-shirt that's getting chatter on some of the groups I read often long enough to not include any rants about it over on the International Adoption Blog today, but the nagging aggravation will not be ignored.

Maybe it's because I'm an older adoptive parent. Perhaps if I was young and cool and hep and groovy ...... more

Is it harder to be a kid in 2007 than it was in 1987? Is it harder to parent a kid now than it was then? An article out of the UK points out what may be a clue to why today's children might be less likely to connect with life on important levels.

A long-term study conducted by the Institute of... more

Is it harder these days to raise kids right than it was in days gone by? I'm not talking about the dinosaur days of the 50s and 60s when we were kids, but going back only a few years to the time when Atari's Pong was all the rage ... the computer equivalent of a chipped-flint ax tied onto a length of tree with a piece of sinew ... when... more

Although there are plenty of us 'older' folks who are totally comfortable with throwing ourselves into the deep end of life's pool by adopting children, not everyone would choose to parent into their golden years. (Excuse the upcoming tangent, but why is the time of dotage called the "golden years"? Silver, I could see ... although even that is euphemistic ... but golden? In my case, anyway, advancing years have taken almost all the blond out of my hair and made a rich, golden tan much harder to pull off with worries about the debt I'm paying... more