Sunday, January 10, 2010

Our New Blog Address: Unveiled.



MamaCandtheBoys Second Edition.
Leaping to our new home.

Enter (click) here.

A big request to those of you who have been so generous as to include me on your
blogroll-can you please update to this address?
http://mamacandtheboys.com

Saturday, January 9, 2010

A Retrospective

Impossible to pick my favorites.
Good, the bad and the ugly?
(Behavior or parenting or both?)

Besides, that is why I am writing the book. So you don't have to scroll backwards in time to relive all your favorite Mama C mishaps.

This blog is my co-parent.
My witness.
My confessor.
My ally.

Building an audience has been like saying your are going to have a reunion and having new members of your extended family calling everyday to say; I'm there.

I'll repost this post at the new home, to build my roots there.

I spent the day getting a crash course in html, font kits, cascading style sheets (makes it sound so pretty) and patience thanks to my brother. He is also the one who taught me how to drive stick shift twenty-five years ago. This was easier on both of us. Chain Bridge Road up hill at rush hour in the rain in Washington, D.C. The man personifies patience.

Mama C and the Boys First Edition-Posts Of Note

1. Buy Paper Plates-the essay that started it all. Action in the form of flying slippers and my perceived not so eventual demise. One mom, two kids. Oh dear. (First published in SMC quarterly, effectively launching my professional writing career.)

2. For Posterity's Sake- I interview Sam. He tells you all you really need to know.

3. Living with an 18 year old. I decide to pull some from one daycare and back into another because he insisted. Blog as co-parent at end of day. Best part-listening to him turned out to be the right choice.

4. Divine. Convertible and sun glasses. Check it.

5. He's Got the Whole World. The rewards of listening to Sam (for those of you who like happy endings!)

6. Ghost Story. On birth parent's real and imagined. One of my favorites.

7-8-9. Rage and adoption and other light observations: Open Fist and You are not my real mom take one and two.

10. On a lighter side--some singing turkeys to close with.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Packing it up.


Official unveiling of the new Mama C and the Boys home this Sunday.

A fare-the-well blogspot, you've seen us at our best list of my favorite posts from the last two years to be posted shortly.

Sam is busy preparing the dance floor in the new virtual playroom.

I have been honored this week with being featured on the blog of the aforementioned ultimate in adoption resources Adoption Mosaic, as a blog not to be missed. (See their shout out here.) You can also reread my now signature piece, Black Enough, featured as the poem of the week on the literary blog devoted to women writers of color- Color Online today. Huge appreciation and gratitude to both of these sites for their ongoing recognition, encouragement, and support of my voice and work.

I have been drafted for the post dinner soccer game between the polar bears and the tigers. Face painting Friday at school and Uncle's fabulous Friday Night rice and beans and frog gut guacamole has us all wound up!

Le Jour de Roi et des dot coms!


The Islanders celebrating Le Jour De Roi.
Haiti on the left, Guadeloupe on the right.
E by way of her parents, me by way of my mother and maternal grandparents
claim our Jour de Roi-ness

The hats we used last year only fit our heads.
Sammy's rested at an angle, while Marcel's looked
more like a bracelet.

Uncle started from scratch.

Quiche Lorraine (also know as cheesy-pie for those
who would prefer to only eat cheese + pie)
and Eddie's Galllette des Roi.

King for the day?
We shared the title of the Gifter of the Magic
as we toasted a new blogdom about to be unveiled
with her design and help.

The song of the night; Mama's got a brand new Dot Com!

Official unveilling on Sunday.
Sneak previews for our loyal readers here.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Mama C's Manuscript, Marcel's Desert and Honeysmoke

Today I received a slick, 168 page, indexed and bound copy of my manuscript. Well, a draft of it. I ordered this blog from inception to my Solstice post through the blog2book arm of Sharedbooks. I paid over $60.00 clams, and it was well worth every one. They lay it out in a very satisfying way, and include almost all the images (no rhyme or reason as to why a few were omitted). It looks like a book, smells like a book, and Sam just about bust a gut seeing it on the counter; "Mom your book is published already?"

How much do I love the fact that Sam knows the word published, and attaches it to me so freely?

I explained to him that it is a draft of the book that will be coming eventually.

"When? By my next birthday?" he asked.

So here it is: the beginning of the story of how Mama C becomes a published memoirist too. I am going to blog about the stages of turning my blog into a book. O
f what I add, what I take out. Of how I write my proposal, and how I decide who to send it to. I'll attach rejection letters, and words of praise. I will chronicle the process here, so that I can document how it came to pass, and what I learned from the process so others can benefit, contribute, caution and support the odyssey. In my new blog I've already started a category called Mama C the Book to organize the trip there. I thought putting it out here to you, my faithfuls would hold me to it even more than my own thrill at the prospect has thus far.

+++

My review of Mike Tauber and Pamela's Singh's Blended Nation is enjoying a new home on the blog Honeysmoke as of this evening. I encourage you to check out her blog, as it has been a source of real inspiration to me of late, for content and format alike.

+++

Dry.
Completely.
Marcel.

All day.
While wearing big boy pants!
(As in underwear for the gleefully uninitiated in potty training.)

Translation: I am very nearly
the mother of two
non disposable undergarment wearing
children.


Translation: more money every month,
and my strolls down that aisle in the grocery store
will be limited to the occasional bottle of Pedialtye
from here on out.

Amen.

Monday, January 4, 2010

Odd ducks, Goats, Wise men, and the Anti-Racists Who Love Them

Mom: Marcel you are an odd duck.

Marcel: No I'm not.

Mom: Yes dear you are an odd duck.

Marcel: No Mom I am not a duck!

( I happen to believe he knows what odd means, or else it is not so funny.)

+++

Marcel: Uh oh peh-tea-goat.

Mom: What's a peh tea goat?

Sam (my Marcel translator) : spaghetti-o Mom!

+++

While rinsing Sam's hair in the bath as he is laying back the length of the tub he says;

"Mom is this what it felt like when you washed my hair as a baby?"

"Yes," I say smiling slow across my face in a soft way. His smile mirrors mine as he replies;

"When you smile like that I remember being your baby too."

+++

Blog update: I am weighing a zillion options. I won't bore you with them here. My designer/art student/all things fresh and clean guru forbids me from revealing any more details until we work things out a bit more. I want your input. She insists that I wait.

+++

Incredible resource that I would challenge you all to read on Love Isn't Enough website on how to be an Anti Racist Ally. I have printed it out and put it by my bed because it feels that important to me. There is also a conversation after the post where one of my comments invites all sorts of responses. I felt attacked. I felt ashamed. Then I responded from my experience. The conversation that ensues could be another blog entry somewhere... One of the women who came to my "defense" has another transracial via adoption family blog that might be of interest to many here.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Growing Pains


Like a child I am feeling the after effects of being exposed to CHANGE
and GROWTH last night. I am over tired, cranky and unsure of myself today.

As the old timers know, Mama C is looking at a new home for this blog.

With the help of the magnificent E we visited some a very promising spaces, and pictured where we'd put the kids room, my writer's desk and the like. The boys would have so much room to play there, and I could expand in all the directions I crave.

Then this morning, waking up in my comfy little Blogger bed, I hear myself asking, isn't this enough?

Sigh. Change is good I tell the kids all the time, allows us to grow, even if we're not sure of ourselves at first. Not all choices are the right choice. It is what we make of it that matters. Blah, blah, blah!

I promised myself and the kids I'd not be stuck to this keyboard today, on our last day of winter break. So I entreat your patience new friends, and loyal readers alike. A day to consider, and a day of play is what this hot diggety-digger mama and her boys need.

Gulp.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Teetering and Outgrown?
















When Sam sat on this teeter
totter. He proclaimed; "Mom this
is too small for me now."
I had to ask him, if perhaps he wasn't too big for it?

I am feeling same about this Blogger format.
Not that I am too big for it,
but perhaps the format is no longer the right one for my
blogger/writer aspirations.

This blog has been my life line this year especially.
What has emerged out of this year of writing here is:

1. The more I write, the more I write.

2. My mainly free verse style is most conducive to my voice on most topics.

3. Adoption, race, single parenting, transracial parenting, and reflection are the areas that feed this blog, and my thinking the most. But there are others too.

4. I have a book to publish, and it came in large part from this blog, and the first five years of my parenting. Sharing that process, and how I get there from here feels important too.

5. Sam's fifth birthday was a marker in ways for both of us I haven't begun to understand. So it feels like a natural launching point-and stopping point for the first book (single parent/choice parent parenting, open adoption, race, transracial family and all that means for starters)

6. You, the reader, are now part of my daily consciousness.

7. Inviting your comments/feedback in an easier way feels increasingly necessary to me.

So tonight Eddie, Sage and I are going to work together and look at what I am imagining, and where that might lead me. Uncle will have the boys, and we'll hole up in some cozy inspiring wifi environment and consider: Can I stay here, and use it differently? Do I need two blogs? Would another format meet my needs, and feel like the reader can navigate to areas of importance to them more easily? Hiring a twenty-two year old art student to set me up for my next blog chapter feels like an arrival all ready!

I am a Pisces. We have an amazing year ahead of us according to my favorite astrological report and the twelve year in the waiting return of Neptune apparently.

Stay tuned, and fear not. If we leap-you will be able to get there from here, and the two sites I have been assured will be able to link together in all sorts of ways.

If you have an opinion, or expertise you'd like to share on the matter please do.

If you see me not budging an inch, it is because those two fish are always swimming in opposite directions!

To following the right fish!

Mama C