Jessica no longer qualifies....

for Early Intervention! I knew she was close to age appropriate development so she would be discharged but we went through the official re-evaluation. I had to work but Mike was here. Four therapists came and played with her for an hour. Jess is 32 months old. Her skills ranged from 31 months to 34 months in all domains except self-care. She scored at 29 months in self-care because she's not potty trained yet (we're working on it!). It is so amazing how far this little girl has come in a year!

What exactly is a "non-mom"?
Well, according to NBC and the Today Show's contest for America's favorite mom it's a mom who hasn't physically given birth to her child. I first heard about this contest yesterday through an email from an adoption Yahoo group. I went to check out the links and there were several categories to enter your favorite mom in - working mom, stay at home mom, military mom, and, the one which set the internet wires ablaze, the non-mom. I'm guessing NBC was a little unprepared for the furor they caused. Within hours of getting the original email from the yahoo group, I got a reply to my email to NBC saying that they apologized for their insensitivity and that they were changing the category to "adopting mom". Better but really, why does there have to be a separate category for parents who adopted their children? Whether a child is born under your heart or in it, he or she is still your child. When I meet people, I say I have two children. Unless it's pertinent to a conversation, I don't say that I have one biological child and one adopted child. They're both my children no matter how they came into my family.

A Year in Pictures