Portland Parents

From the 2nd to the first of September, you can travel back in time 200 million years and across the globe to witness China’s most spectacular Dinosaurs. China’s Ancient Giants features twenty complete skeletons ( casts and fossils ), interactive touch screens, and even a “dig pit” where kids can dig their hearts out!

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[ The AAC is the American Adoption Congress ]

AAC’s 29th International Conference
Wednesday, March 26 - Saturday, March 29, 2008
Portland Downtown Waterfront Marriott
1401 SW Naito Parkway
Portland, Oregon 97201

Adoption in the Global Community:Redefining Kinship in the 21st Century

For more information, visit our website.

The AAC is comprised of individuals, families and organizations committed to adoption reform. We represent those whose lives have been touched by adoption or other loss of family continuity. We promote honesty, openness and respect for family connections in adoption, foster care and assisted reproduction. We provide education for our members and professional communities about the lifelong process of adoption. We advocate legislation that will grant every individual access to information about his or her family and heritage.

Thursday, March 27 Adoptive Families Day
AAC welcomes families formed through domestic and international adoption, including transracial adoptions, and families parenting children through assisted reproduction and donor conception. Sharon Roszia, MS, BSW - More Than Global: The Ever-expanding Constellation of Adoption!

Adoptive/Foster Parent and Youth Program - Workshops addressing significant issues in adoption, including identity and attachment, plus a specially designed series of workshops for youth. Teens are FREE with registered adult!

Friday, March 28 Professionals’ Day 
Dr. David Brodzinsky, PhD - Lifelong Development Issues for Adopted People and Their Impact on Best Practices and Policies 
Kevin Campbell - Family Finding: Strategies Being Used Around the Country
to Find Lifelong Supports for Children and Young People in America’s Foster Care System

Saturday, March 29 Celebrate Measure 58
10-year Anniversary of Access to Information for Oregon Adult Adoptees 
Barbara Bisantz Raymond, MS, BS, Author of The Baby Thief - Adoptive Mother/Author Discovers the Truth About Adoption
Alison Larkin, Author/Comedienne - Join AAC for a Comedy Treat! “Knock! Knock!” “Who’s There?” How My Adoption Turned Me into a Stand-Up Comic. Internationally acclaimed comedienne Alison Larkin entertains and reads from her hilarious, poignant new novel, The English American, coming from Simon and Schuster in March ‘08. In her novel, Larkin draws from her experiences as an adopted English woman who finds her birth parents in America, and weaves them into a compulsively readable work of fiction.

Do you have kids?
Do you have a will?

In A Parent’s Guide to Wills & Trusts, Don Silver will explain why wills and trusts are so very important to parents. He’ll do it in 250 pages, with a striking question and answer format that will leave you with few questions. Each section is clearly marked out, and each question is answered in plain speech. In fact, each question is at the most 5 lines, and an answer takes up about a page, rarely two pages. This book is concise yet thorough and makes an excellent Bathroom Reader; or anywhere else you have a few minutes to grab a page or two. Are you a little early collecting your daughter from school? Read up on how to protect your kids’ and grandkids’ inheritances in the sad case that they get divorced.

I definitely recommend this book. Don won’t lead you wrong.

PS I’ve been informed that you can get a six dollar discount at the publisher website!

When your kid’s in elementary school and they’re reading hundreds of books a month, you don’t think you need to worry about this. But you’re wrong.

Eighth graders are a lot more busy than fifth graders. More homework, more rehearsals, more time spent with their friends. And what loses out? Reading, of course. Part of it is, in the words of one teen, “After all those words in my homework, the last thing I want to do is read more.” But students who read on their own become the strongest readers and writers, and they get the most out of our cultural and intellectual atmosphere.

According to the Oregonian ( 2008-1-27,A11), eighth grade “students who never read for fun are a year or more behind the class in reading ability.”

So what’s the deal? How can we help our kids keep reading? The best way may be to restrict them from reading. One sneaky teacher convinces kids to read John Steinbeck by making the kids get parental permission first. Another good way is to read yourself, and to have lots of books around. School librarians have the best chance of being able to match kids and books, but if you spend the time reading a stack of young adult books, you could at least talk with your kids about the books.

It could be your own private book club!

Just a quick heads up; trimet has dropped its proposal to “turn off” fareless square at night. Stay tuned for more news.

Tri-Met is trying to figure out how to make fareless square work better. On one hand, some people would like to abolish the whole thing. On the other, Tri-Met seems to feel that Fareless Square encourages drug merchants to hang out downtown; all they have to do to relocate is hop a bus.

Fareless Square was a lifesaver for me, when I was a teen. I remember walking home from Washington Park in the middle of the night ( never you mind what I was doing, as a teen, in Washington Park in the night ). When it was raining out, I could get a few blocks’ respite by hopping a bus. It was a lit place I could sit down and not worry about the other predators I was sure were out to get me downtown.

“Before you do away with something that has given our city a great reputation . . . and, in fact, is uniquely Portland-esque, start with the problem — not an arbitrary, idealized, absurd notion that somehow if you just make everyone pay, the system will change,” Uris said.

source

I’m anti-closing the Fareless Square. And the Portland Mercury seems to agree with me. In my humble opinion, fareless square, even during the nighttime hours which don’t necessarily support shopping and touristing, still have benefits that Tri-Met isn’t considering.

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Portland Public Schools is having a celebration highlighting more than 100 schools, their staff, students and programs! It’s Feb 2, from 1 to 5 PM and at the Expo Center.

Highlights include: Neighborhood school information and resources, student performances, enrollment, transfer information, the transition years and an art exhibition!

Get your kids to eat healthy by sneaking their vegetables into normally innocent-looking foods that they would normally eat without a complaint. For instance, steam and puree cauliflower into their mashed potatoes. Sounds yummy! You can even conceal broccoli in their chicken nuggets!

While I’d prefer to have the kids volunteer to eat their fruits and vetetables, there’s something to be said about “spinach brownies.” Less arguments around the dinner table and more vitamins and fiber in their diet has to be a good thing, right?

All is not butternut squash casserole, however, in the land of the delicious, Missy Chase Lapine claims that Seinfeld’s cookbook is plagarized from her own work in “The Sneaky Chef.” However, the two works do appear to be more different than skin deep, although they of course share a few similarities. For instance, both encourage parents to puree vegetables into mashed ‘taters, but the Lapine book recommends a blend of cauliflower, zucchini and lemon juice and the Seinfeld book recommends just cauliflower.

I suspect that the recipes in the Jessica Seinfeld book ( pictured at right ) will be more simple and easier to follow than the ones in the Lapine book. Your mileage may vary.

Roger Ebert loved the Golden Compass. He thought it was a great classic kids fantasy movie and that it would be a hit.
He was disappointed by the uproar about the movie, and how many people refused to watch it without even giving it a chance.

People are comparing it to Chronicles of Narnia or Lord of the Rings. As far as the movie production goes, and the fantasy story around it goes, it’s in the same ballpark as those two movies and so a kid who liked those two movies would like the Golden Compass. However, Phillip Pullman wrote his trilogy as pretty much an exact opposite to CS Lewis’s Chronicles, and the film is, according to Ebert ( I haven’t seen the movie but I’ve read the book ), “viciously anti-god.”

That shouldn’t keep you from seeing this movie, however. It’s not an “athiest film” … ask yourself why an atheist would feel the need to “attack god.” In fact, in the end, good overcomes evil, and characters willingly make sacrifices to help one another.

Roger Ebert is a Catholic who has read the Bible cover to cover, and he can’t find anything wrong in this movie. Maybe you should give it a chance too.