It included the words “bandwidth”, which made me pretty sure that this was a hosting issue, not anything I could solve on my own. Lucky for me I am on a first-name basis with my hosting service, eh??

I emailed my friend and internet server host, Dan, and I was up and rolling in minutes. Later that week at dinner, we talked about what happened.

Turns out, for the first time in Gotchababy history, I had exceeded the bandwidth he’d allotted me. So I asked how that had happened, and he took me into Box Crush headquarters for a peek at my server stats to explain. I’m probably missing a few key elements, but here’s what I got from our conversation:

Bandwidth is the space on his server each website takes. Each website has an amount that is preset for each month.

Articles or blog posts, along with images, on the front page of your blog/website take up a certain amount of bandwidth. Each time a visitor comes to your site,  she takes up that amount of bandwidth. So the more traffic you get, the more bandwidth you use. The more posts you post, along with more images, the more bandwidth you use.

So let’s look at last week:

I posted about the Jr.’s birthday with photos.

I posted about Father’s day with photos.

I participated in IComLeWe, which bumped up my traffic.

I also participated in Works for Me Wednesday, which bumped up my traffic.

Kind of a perfect storm for using up bandwidth, especially toward the end of the month.

It’s still not as easy to measure as, say, user minutes on a mobile phone, but it does make a little more sense– did I miss any key points, Dan???

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For reals, today’s post is just a link….did you know that The Adoption Writers at Grown in My Heart has a review/giveaway site? Sometimes I forget myself. Then I take on a post to write, and it’s all, hey! there’s this secondary blog with some fun things on it!

SO.

My first post over there is about the Energizer Ultimate Photo Contest and a battery giveaway that goes with it.

**In my defense, I’m coming off of the four-day business trip of BgK, which was sort of out of the blue. My tactic for coping is to keep the children as busy as possible. So I’m kinda tired…..

Day 10 DOWN.

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On the video page there’s a link that says “share” and it says I’ve shared it successfully on WordPress, but I sure can’t see where it’s been shared.

So here’s the link– http://www.colts.com/sub.cfm?page=video&content=98c2c079-79b2-458c-839e-f2c49b5232ba

The boy now sits, riveted, saying “And-roo, football, again!” over and over as the video plays. He’s the boy in the still photo at the beginning of the video (looks similar to the one above) and he’s running toward the end zone around the :50 second mark (in the #44 Dallas Clark jersey). You know it’s him by his crazy hair!

Day 8 of NaBloPoMo is done! Phew!

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So racism doesn’t really come into play in our lives as a component of adoption. But of course, as a white family in midwestern Americana, I know racism does exist. Indiana has an awful history of racism and hatred. In my day-to-day life I don’t see it, but that’s because I’m white.

Anyway.

My daughter attends and I teach at a very nice suburban preschool. It is probably one of the most diverse private schools in the metro area, if not the state. My classroom is nearly 50% non-white.  Many of my daughter’s friends are children of immigrants. Children who visit grandparents in Pakistan, Kenya, New Zealand, India and South Korea. There are children who’ve been adopted internationally (and bi-racially). In central Indiana, this as diverse as it gets.

My son attends the daycare where Mam did. It’s very different from our little preschool, but his class is still nearly 50% non-white. His friends speak Spanish at home and English at the center. His first three caregivers were African-American, as are many of his playmates. I feel like my children have been exposed to as much diversity as we can get in the middle of Indiana.

Given that my children do see faces of people who don’t look like them on a daily basis, I’ve always sort of approached race by not approaching it–my thought was always not to point it out, and my children wouldn’t see it. Or they would see it, but they wouldn’t think much of it.

Then I read Nurture Shock. And realized I was wrong. The authors of Nurture Shock illustrate how children naturally sort and classify the world. If a group of children is divided by say, the color of their t-shirt, they automatically assume allegiance to their color. It makes sense. They further go on to illustrate answers children gave in regards to race, and how they do segregate the world by race, only they don’t talk about it because they’ve learned from their parents not to talk about it. Oh boy. I’m not explaining it well, but suffice it to say, after reading it, I feel like I’ve been doing a disservice to my own children as well my students.

Oh. My. Word. I have some explaining to do to my kiddos. I haven’t quite figured out how to talk to them about this, but I will. I have to. I’m their mom. If I don’t, who will????

Have some thoughts about racism? Link up at Grown in My Heart!!

Help support GIMH! Vote for our Room of Your Own at BlogHer!

Log-in to BlogHer and then vote as an attendee.(you don’t have to actually be going)

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Judy has a new project on the horizon, Parenting Your Adopted Child: Tweens, Teens and Beyond with Judy M. Miller and the other day we sat down with some delicious Skinny Cinnamon Dulce Lattes to discuss it.

Judy has developed and will be teaching a class to help parents of adopted tweens and teens, beginning Weds, February 10th. What? You don’t live in the Indy Metro area? Good news–the class format is via email. Judy will send out assignments, you will complete them, and then there will be discussion online.

Judy created this class with hopes of reaching parents as their children enter an age wrought with emotions and new understandings about adoption. As a mom to four children (one biological, two from China, one from Guatemala), she’s living through her own children’s adolescence and observing what sort of questions and difficulty her children are having in regards to their being adopted.

Each week, Judy will email a topic for introspection, and participants will then write on that topic. Judy said each week’s assignment will prompt participants to “go deep”. The messages the parent sends to the child lay the groundwork for that child’s journey to discovering himself. The topics are ones that will most likely come up in conversation in the tween (8-12yrs) and teen years, but Judy encourages parents with children as young as four or five to consider signing up.

You can learn more about and register for Parenting Your Adopted Child by visiting Judy’s website. There is also a spot to sign up for a newsletter that I know will be great. I always LOVE the time I spend with Judy, and I know you will too!

Judy is a fellow contributor to Grown in My Heart, her personal blog is The International Mom’s Blog.

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