This Christmas, I’m going to try really hard to buy handmade for everyone’s gifts. Even took the pledge to buy handmade.

If you want to buy handmade but don’t know where to start here are some of my favorites:

Ten Thousand Villages. Everything in the store is handmade by artisans around the world. And it’s fair trade. Double bonus.

Etsy.com. About a zillion talented people who make just about everything you can think of. Plus, my sister-in-law has a really cute shop.

A couple of my favorite etsy shops: SewYummy, Flaky Friends, Project8256, Junk Posse

The Black Apple. Art work. Very Cute.

Global Girlfriend. Shopping here helps fund microgrants for women. All the products are hand made by women around the world. Another fair trade organization.

Happy Shopping.

I copied this directly from Leah’s blog. Leah is the mother of Angela, who has Down Syndrome. Leah titled her blog post: If you love my kid, you won’t go! And although I probably wouldn’t have gone to this movie anyway, I do love Angela so I put this up on my blog as well.

I bet you’ve seen the trailers for the new movie opening this week “Tropic Thunder”, the new Ben Stiller movie. I’ll bet you thought the trailers were hilarious. I’ll bet you DON’T know what’s really in this movie!

Ben Stiller and his team put a lot of thought into this movie, trying to be very careful to not cross the lines on racial humor. They wouldn’t want to offend anyone of color or other nationalities in fear of loosing a lot of money in the movie.

But people who are intellectually disabled are fair game in the world of Hollywood. The word “retard” is the whole sub-plot for the movie. The term “Going full retard” has been coined and it’s been announced there will soon be a line of t-shirts appearing in your local stores with the term plastered across the front. If you take every time the word “retard” is used in the movie and replace it with the “n” word, or any other racial slur, the movie would be banned in the U.S!

And that, my friends and family, is what Angela has to look forward to when school starts. (Last year it was Napolean Dynamite pens that talked, with one of the phrases being “you retard!” which, after complaints, were quickly pulled off the shelves and banned by schools across the country.)

Yes, the movie is rated R, so young kids shouldn’t be seeing it. But they will. And their teen siblings and parents who DO see it will be coming home repeating what they think is a funny phrase, and kids will be coming to school with it. They’ll love the t-shirts as well.

I don’t understand how in the world it’s ok to to belittle this population of people, but if they were using the “N” word, or any other racial slur, it would be all over the news! Our countries schools have a zero tolerance policy against racial harassment, and you won’t hear certain words thrown around the hallways of your child’s school. But you WILL hear “retard” on a regular basis.

I know there are plenty of you who feel I’m overreacting. Well, apparently I’m with the 3 million other families in the country who are FURIOUS this film has been allowed to be produced the way it has. You can expect to see national and local protests about this film, as those of us who are overreacting demand that our children, brothers, sisters, cousins, and loved ones get the same respect that everyone else in the country gets, including illegal immigrants. That they aren’t set up for yet MORE harassment by teens who think it’s funny to mock our children because Hollywood has encouraged them to do so.

I hear the word by friends and family members all the time. I hear the “short bus” jokes. Most of the time I’ll call someone on the carpet about it, but sometimes I won’t. Sometimes I just get tired of constantly having to defend my child against the people who are supposed to care. Their lame responses of “I wasn’t meaning HER, it was just a joke!” Well, HELLO!!! Who do you MEAN then? Who are you comparing yourself or others to when you toss those words around? And my personal favorite “It just slipped out”. Funny…words that aren’t part of my every day vocabulary don’t “just slip out”!

My child, and millions like her, are intellectually disabled (that’s the proper term, by the way…”retarded” is going out the window because it’s become such a hateful slang term. School districts aren’t even putting it on their paperwork anymore!) Just as people of color don’t have a choice of what color skin they were born with, children with intellectual disabilities don’t have a choice but to ride “the short bus”, and so they become the brunt of your jokes. I’ve watched people who’s own children ride “the short bus” make the same jokes, without even realizing (or caring) that it’s at the expense of his/her own children. “Oh, but they think it’s funny too!” Do they really? Or are they laughing along while inside they squirm with discomfort?

These people don’t have a choice to have the medical term “Mental retardation” plastered all over their medical records. Those with syndromes such as Down Syndrome can’t even hide behind a “normal” appearance. It’s plastered on their face, leaving them open to hateful ridicule by their peers, and yes, even their family members.

So, if you’ve seen the trailers, and thought, “That looks like a fun movie to see!” Please don’t. My child…your grandchild, your niece, your cousin, your friend…. and those like her, deserve the respect more then Ben Stiller and his team deserve a few bucks!

I want this.

And Lexi would like these. Size 9.

Thanks.

Today was a fun filled day of getting free stuff and running errands. Lots and lots of errands. And then a few more errands.

This morning started with gymnastics classes for Lexi (or as Lexi calls them snacknastics). And they were free. A friend teaches the classes and invited Lexi to come for this session. It’s actually the same class we took this winter but now that she just a few months older she’s gotten really good at following directions and using the equipment the right way.

After we got home I went through the huge bin of material my mom gave me. Remember my love for fabric stores? Well free fabric is even better than a fabric store. Especially free fabric that has some great potential. I’m debating trying to make a stuffed letter alphabet, possibly a couple baby slings, or maybe a small quilt for Lexi’s dolls. Possibilities are endless.

Next up - free hair cut from Juut salon. Yup, free. Apparently, when you cut your hair for Locks of Love the hair cut is complimentary. I had an 11 inch ponytail cut off. And believe it or not I still had enough hair to keep it at about chin length. (Okay, so my entire trip to the salon wasn’t free - I also had my brows done and they talked me into buying shampoo - but still, free hair cut.) Oh, and if you are a new customer to the salon you also get a free book by the founder. It’s a page-turner.

When I got home we decided to go get dinner and run errands. It’s a long story but the short version goes like this:

5:30 leave for Rosedale Mall for dinner. Traffic sucked so we got there around 6:15. We were supposed to be at Barnes N Noble at 6:30 to drop off books to sell so we changed our plans and went there first.

6:15 Dropped 4 boxes of books to sell to Barnes N Noble

6:20 - 6:45 Eat dinner at the food court

6:45 - 7:30 Go to Victoria’s Secret to use the $10 off card I had. It’s the huge semi-annual clearance sale so I had to wait in line for most of that time to try stuff on.

7:30 - 8:00 Back to Barnes N Noble to see how much money we made on the books. They only bought about 20 of the books. Shopped for a while, bought 3 new books.

8:00 - 8:30 Drive to Half Priced Books to drop of the still full boxes because Half Priced books isn’t picky. They’ll buy anything.

8:30 - 9:00 Grocery shopping.

9:30 - 9:45 Get home and put Lexi to bed. And considering she was up 2 hours past her bedtime, Lexi was very cooperative for the whole evening.

There are 2.1 billion Christians in the world. And there are 143 million orphans in the world (according to UNICEF - although if you look at other sources the number varies between 50 - 200 million depending on how you describe an orphan. Living with family but parents are gone, one parent gone, both parents gone, parents alive but placed them in an orphanage, etc). So, if my math is correct the numbers work out like this: if 14% of the Christians in the world adopt 1 orphan then every orphan would have a home.
I’m realistic. I get that you can’t just sign up to adopt an orphan and I get that while one child is being placed with a family another is taking his place in the orphanage. And I know that the underling causes for orphans will not go away just because they each got a home. But there is a reason that God calls us to care for the orphans over 40 time in the Bible.

…a Tiny Rock Star! Check out this website. Fun clothes. Affordable Prices. Good Cause. ‘Nuff said.

Play a vocab game and donate 20 grains of rice for every correct answer. Go on try it. You know you want to….

I’ve started reading a book called “There is No Me Without You: One woman’s odyssey, to rescue her country’s children.” by Melissa Fay Greene. I’m only four chapters in but so far I am really liking this book. I tend to gravitate towards books in the “social justice” genre. Books that are written by journalists who live the life of the subject they are writing about such as “There are No Children Here“, “Ordinary Resurrections“, and “Among School Children“. This book is one of those.

The problem with reading those books is I usually read them and get frustrated, angry, sad, and fed-up with “The Man“. What ever the issue is in the book I want to be able to help. I end up slamming the book shut on the last page and start thinking, “how can I fix this?” and then get more frustrated because I can’t.

This book has lots of statistics in it that show the plight of Ethiopia and it’s people. And this while reading, I feel the sense of urgency that this is a country in need and for once, I am actually doing something to help.

Read the rest of this entry »

A couple weeks ago we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in my classroom. It was a very eye-opening lesson for our kids. I started by talking about racism and injustice. We did an activity to try and explain segregation. I put a circle of masking tape on the floor and all of the kids whose names started with the letter “S” had to stand in the circle. The rest of the class got to pick whatever toys they wanted to play with, play where they wanted, basically had free-reign over the room. The kids in the circle could only stand there. (I’ve never heard the phrase “but that’s not fair” said so many times or with so many syllables.) But it got the point across - it wasn’t fair that they couldn’t do what the other kids did, just because of their name. It really helped them realize how unfair racism is (they couldn’t chose their name, just like you can’t chose your skin color).

Then I read them the book Martin’s Big Words. It’s a great book that explains what Dr. King did for America as well as give a brief biography. The kids have never sat so still while listening to a book. After it was over the questions started: Why did they bomb his house? Why did they shoot him? Why do some white people like him and some hate him? Who shot him? Was he scared? and on and on and on. They were great questions from kindergarteners. I was really proud of them. For about a week after Marting Luther King Day, they asked me to read the book every day. And I did. It’s dropped down to an every other day request, but almost 3 weeks later they are still talking about how Dr. King “was really smart” and “a really nice man”.

It’s hard to put into words how emotional and passionate the class got while discussing his life and asking questions about him. They really understood the injustice and what Dr. King was trying to accomplish. They talked about things that they don’t think are fair in their lives. They talked about how they wished he were still alive today.

Read. Pray. Help.