468 Months Old (+2 days)

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Wow.  Not sure where the past 39 years and 2 days have gone.  Time just escapes me.  Okay, so I’m being a bit melodramatic.  But I’m 39 and get to be.

I am not sure that I am where I expected to be at 39.  I have done nothing in my life traditionally.  I didn’t go to college out of high school.  I didn’t choose my career until I was 30 and didn’t even begin to work in that field until I was 31.  I then only worked for 4 years and then stayed home with my son and then my daughter.  I have been in school the entire span of my 3rd decade of life and will be in school until I enter my 4th decade.  I never imagined this would be the path my life would take.  No one expected my life to be immersed in academia.  It still surprises my family when I talk about what I am studying (currently that is critical discourse analysis) and they wonder out loud if this is the girl they knew.

I guess that is the beauty of getting older.  I’m not the girl they knew.  The woman I am today was shaped by that girl, but she smashed through arbitrarily placed boundaries and has forged her own path.  A path that I am so happy I took.  It lead me to my husband, my children, and my career.  I wouldn’t go back and do it differently.  There is nothing in my life I’d like to change (well I’d like to be debt free–these student loans and the whole mortgage thing really get in a girls way of having a good time).  I am who I am inspite of what people expected of me.  I am who I am because of age and for that–I am happy to be 39.

This last year of my 30’s is going to be great.  I am going to finally get in shape and drop all the weight  I want to drop.  I am holding myself to that.  I owe it to my kids and myself to be in the best shape I can.  I am going to finally finish school–I won’t take any more classes after I am 40.  I’ll still be enrolled in school, but I won’t be a student.  I can’t wait for that.  So, here’s to my 30’s…you have been very very good to me.  I promise to pay it back and forward.

Another School Year Starts

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Noah started his second school year today.  He is officially a Newporter (his school has two pre-school classes Big Bend 3/4 and Newport 4/5).  He is already talking about how next year he’ll be in kindergarten.  Slow down big guy–mama doesn’t need you to grow up too fast.

He has been so excited to start back to school and he was excited to see all of his friends and to get to go to his classroom.  It was so awesome to see how much all the kids had changed and grown over the summer–I don’t think there were any “real” tears when moms and dads left this morning.  I am also happy to report that Noah is no longer the only brown kid in his class.  He is so excited to have another kid in class who looks like him along with the two other kids who are also adopted internationally.  There are also two other brown kids in the Big Bend class.  It’s nice to see the increased diversity.

He was ready to show off his completed summer book.  And play.  I know that this year will be a great year.  There are some challenges ahead.  One of the kids in his class–that he really likes to play with poses some difficulty for us–no need to go into details–but I am working with Noah to play gentle and quiet inside and that he is his own boy and can play with who he’d like to play with.  Noah’s a bit of a follower in some ways and I am encouraging him to think for himself.  We’ll see how it goes.

Sharing summer books.

I’m Not Sure He Can Say “The Dog Ate My Homework” Just Yet

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Noah has summer homework each year of pre-school.  It’ pretty intense.  We have to make a summer book.  Okay, I’m lying.  We so don’t have to make  the book–they do provide that for us and they should for the tuition we pay, but we do have to write in it and fill it out.  It will be of no surprise that I waited until the last minute to begin even thinking about the book.  I started to print out pictures for the book last night (it is due in school tomorrow).  What happens?  I run out of ink.  My printer has 6 cartridges and I usually have a bunch of extras.  So, I went down to look through my extra 8 cartridges that I have and did I have just one of the photo magenta?  NO.  Of course not.

So now, I am leaving work to run to get a cartridge to finish printing out pictures for the book that Noah has completely lost interest in.  He has written on a few pages and isn’t really that into it anymore because now there is stuff to look at and who wants to fill in empty pages when one particular 4-year-old who will remain nameless filled up two whole pages with superhero stickers.

He will “read” the stickers like a story, but when I ask him “tell me a story.”  He simply replies in the most annoying whine ever “I don’t know any mom.”

UGH!  So, tonight I will torture him by forcing him to “tell” me a story and to write the Spanish words he knows an when his birthday is.  So that we can bring our book in to class.  Ours won’t be the most creative (there are some who take this project/assignment a little too far–I’ll be keeping an eye out for those parents when science projects come around) but it will be filled with sticker and pictures and maybe more than a few words.  But it will be totally ours.

Noahversary Year 4

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Noah has a complicated “family” day or Noahversary as we like to call it.  Hubs and I arrived in Ethiopia on August 20, 2006.  We met and held Noah for the first time on August 21st–for a total of about an hour.  He was then taken back to the hospital, where he stayed until August 23rd when we demanded to keep him with us.  So, we celebrate Noahversary on Aug 23, although it always seems a  little off but the 21st just doesn’t work, because he wasn’t ours yet–legally he was, but we weren’t caring for him. We keep the celebration of this day pretty simple. We talk about meeting for the first time, we look at pictures and talk about love and family.  I want it to be a sober day that reflects on how families are created and what family means to us.

I can’t believe how fast these four years have gone by.  My baby, who was so frail and sick, is now a whirlwind of energy, love, emotion, curiosity and did I say emotion?  He is amazing and wonderful.  He is insightful and thoughtful.  I can’t imagine life without him–let’s be honest I’m almost too old to remember what life was before him.  He is completely our son and so clearly the off spring of two amazing Ethiopian souls–I hope they can feel in their hearts that he is amazing and loved.

Being a parent is so much more than I ever realized–mostly much harder than I realized it, but I wouldn’t change our family for the world.  Love you Noah.

Aug 2006, Aug 2007, Aug 2008, Aug 2009, Aug 2010–how he has grown.

I’m All About The “i”

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

When they were released, I really wanted an iPad. But when challenged by my fad technology sceptic husband (who works in technology), I didn’t really have a good reason. I wanted to be able to read on it–I thought that would be great but then why not just get a kindle? When I got my iPhone 4, I could read on that and then I didn’t see the reason to get anything in the short term.

I went to the bookstore on campus the other day to get my books for class. In the technology department (which is at the entrance to reel us folks in) they have iPads. I wasn’t going to look at them, because really who needs a glorified iPod touch?

Oh was I wrong. I need one. It has a word processing program, a presentation program, a spreadsheet program, etc. I can use this (I’m typing on my new iPad now) for my student teacher observations–which I take lots of notes about because it is part of my dissertation research.

Also, my iPad has access to all Kindle books (it has an amazon kindle app). So, I have been lured into more mac products not just by their shiny looks but also by their smart functionality. I have it pared with a wireless keyboard so that I can actually type quickly.

I love you Apple. Please stop making these great new products. I don’t know how many more purchases I can justify.