Search Results for: blog traveling to our daughter part one

Are you making your kids weird?

Are you making your kids weird? I know I am. I love to travel. All year, I save so that I can go on wonderful trips. I’m not a big spender on things, but I love to spend on experiences. My daughter likes to travel too, and I enjoy taking her with me. We get to have adventures together, and they’re very educational of course. We’ve learned about the tropical rainforest by going there and walking through it. Most recently, we’ve explored great European works of art (and yes, ice cream and lots of carousels) by traveling through Italy and … Continue reading →

Spending Time With My Sister Part I

I recently spent a week visiting my sister, brother-in-law, and four week old niece. I made the ten hour drive with my two year old son and my unborn daughter. Pregnancy really has an impact on everything I do and being away from home did not change the fact that I still have to take my prenatal vitamins, eat healthy, and exercise regularly. My dear sister made all those things possible during my stay. As soon as my son and I arrived, we were greeted with a warm homemade meal of free range chicken seasoned and tossed with pesto and … Continue reading →

Traveling During Pregnancy Part II

The day planned for our long drive as arrived! 6AM: Wake up and make breakfast! I prepared the veggies for our omlete the day before and set everything up for my latte the evening before too. I am not going to sacrifice the most important meal of the day nor my favorite meal of the day for travel. While the vegetables and sausage are cooking, I fill the cooler with the perishable foods that we are bringing with us, and make my yummy latte and I get all my morning prenatal vitamins together. 6:30AM We are finishing up breakfast and … Continue reading →

Relief for Parents Traveling with Kids

There is finally some good news for parents flying commercial airlines with young children. If you are planning to take to the skies during the upcoming holiday season, you will find things a wee bit easier as you make your way through airport security. Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that kids 12 and younger will no longer be forced to remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints. In addition, Napolitano said that children will not have to suffer through pat downs as often, and those, who get selected for the extra screening, will do so at the hands … Continue reading →

My Last Blog

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This is going to be my last blog as the Adoption Blogger for Families.com. I’m looking forward to spending the summer with my kids, possibly working at their school, and taking on new writing projects. I may well guest blog occasionally for this or other Families blogs. It seems the Adoption Blog will continue, so I hope this blog, along with Families’ forums, can be a source of information and community for adoptive parents, adoptees, and birth parents. Yesterday I could think of a million things to say in my last few blogs and wondered how I would fit it … Continue reading →

Not the Way You Want to Start Your Vacation

“Hope for the Best. Expect the worst.” I think Mel Brooks helped make those words famous. Or maybe it was the person, who typed them up on small pieces of white paper, and stuck them into fortune cookies. Either way the idiom often becomes my mantra when traveling with children. I just survived a 10,000-mile journey to and from Hawaii with my young daughter, and yes, I hoped for the best, but expected the worst. Shockingly, things went fairly smoothly… unlike past trips. Despite two delayed flights and a few shoulder blows courtesy of the guy sitting behind me, who … Continue reading →

Ideas for keeping homeschooling fun: Prioritize your field trips

Homeschoolers know that the word “home” in homeschooling is hardly descriptive. We spend a great deal of time driving around to different activities for sports, enrichment activities, co-ops and more. To our surprise, we sometimes become focussed on creating a wealth of well rounded classes and activities, that we actually forget to schedule field trips. In my case, you would think that seeing my daughters interest in theater that we would have seen several plays. We have not. This past year she has participated in two plays, and that and her academics have taken up so much time that we … Continue reading →

Does Your Boss Have Kids?

If so, do you find that the status of “parent” makes him or her more sympathetic when your daycare calls demanding that you pick up your puking, feverish child NOW… and NOW is 10 a.m.? How does your boss react when you consistently leave the office at 4:30 on the dot to pick up your children from their after school program while the rest of your colleagues remain at the office until 6 or 7 p.m.? Does your boss feel your pain as you struggle to juggle career and family or does he or she resent your late mornings and … Continue reading →

Adopting When You Already Have Children: Travel Considerations, Part Three

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When deciding whether your children should travel with you to pick up their new sibling, think about how your child or chidren will react to the settings and events you expect to be in and encounter. If it is an area of extreme poverty, will it distress your child? Will he find it hard to see other kids in an orphanage who are not being adopted? Parents who adopted from China describe their first meeting with their children as taking place in a hotel where their children were brought to them. That might be an okay scenario for an older … Continue reading →

Considerations in Adopting When You Already Have Children: Travel, Part Two

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In deciding whether to take your children with you, consider the safety of the place to which you are traveling and the availability of aid in any emergency that may occur. Friends of mine initially planned to take their daughters on their trip to pick up their son. This was a region that required one parent to make an initial visit several weeks before both parents traveled for the actual adoption. When the father made the initial visit he was startled at the absolute lack of adequate medical facilities in the remote region and decided he was not at all … Continue reading →