Welcome Welcome Welcome (back)!

It's been a while, it's been a looong while.  But Amstel's back in action TODAY.



Where to begin?  I visited my sister in the NC mountains and had a blast at her rock party, went on not one but two family vacations (San Diego & Tampa), moved into a new place on the hottest day of the entire year, went with Robbie to visit Deanna on her 5th birthday (July 11th), picked up some new responsibilities at work, was diagnosed with a sleep disorder (excessive daytime sleepiness), was banned from Web MD by my family, had a quarter-life crisis, and then realized I hadn't blogged in nearly two months.  A lot has happened!  But I can't complain. Life is good, and I love being a professional, independent, (most of the time responsible) young adult.



I came across a really neat article in Newsweek called, "Why Birth Moms Deserve Respect" by Raina Kelley.  If you haven't seen this yet, please read.  It's worth it!   My favorite part of the article is the last few sentences:  "By indicating that placing a child for adoption is a selfish or painless choice when it’s not, or talking about birth mothers as if they were all crack-addled prostitutes or at the very least wayward youth, we not only limit a woman’s right to choose but also shut out the possibility that there are other people out there who would love to adopt. Why not try respecting these women as mothers able to make the best decision for themselves and their pregnancies—even if that decision is not to parent?"  Just thought this was worth sharing with all of my fellow birthmothers out there. 



In case you were wondering, 5th Deanna's birthday party was great.  She had a joint-birthday party with her friend at a gymnasium, and I do believe that the adult men had more fun than the children...

Robbie and I gave Deanna the "band in a box," and we made sure to tell her that Don would love to be woken every morning to the sound of clashing cymbals.  On that note, I'm out!  More good stuff to come soon on Amstel Life.

Mid-June Updates

I'm heading to the NC mountains this weekend to visit my sister, Michelle.  Woohoo!  It should be a great time.  She just moved into a new house and is having a "rock party" which means that instead of bringing a housewarming gift, we're supposed to bring her a rock to put in her yard.  As you can see, we're very extravagant. 



So Deanna's 5th birthday is coming up in less than a month, and I have no idea what to get her!  Dolls?  Crafts?  Games?  I'm running out of good ideas.  De said that Deanna wants to have a pirate/dolphin/mermaid birthday party theme.  Can you tell that she has been to Sea World recently?  I'm thinking maybe some kind of mermaid doll for bathtub play time or a cool craft set would make a good gift for a 5-year-old. De told me that Deanna has been really into tye-dye lately, so maybe I can incorporate that into her birthday present....ideas are welcome!  



De called me a few weeks ago and told me that Deanna has been organizing things lately.  If you know me personally, you know that I am the queen of organization and neatness.  De had to call me immediately and tell me that Deanna had taken it upon herself to clean out her top dresser drawer and neatly organize her underwear into tidy piles.  She did this all on her own without being asked!  What kind of  4-year-old does that?   When De walked into Deanna's room and saw what she had done, De started laughing and said, "We need to call AmyHutton!" 



It's interesting and fun for me to hear these kinds of stories from De and to piece together how Deanna has become the person she is.  She really is a little bit of everyone!   



She gets her neat/organized side from AmyHutton.  Example: As I mentioned before, Deanna organizes her underwear into neat piles without being told.  That Type-A personality is already shining through.  When Deanna was 3-years-old, she made certain that the hair bands tied on each side of the handlebars of her bicycle were matching and perfectly aligned. 



She gets her crafty/creative side and her good heart from De.  Example: Deanna LOVES crafts. Absoluely loves them.  And when she was in preschool last year, Deanna walked up to her teacher and told her, matter-of-factly and completely out-of-the-blue, "I'm going to pray for Ava."  (Ava is a little girl in her class).  

How sweet is that?



She gets her tough/sporty side from Don.  Example:  Deanna had a Wolfpack mobile hanging above her crib since the day she was born.  (In case you're wondering, yes, it played the NC State fight song.)  A die-hard fan, Don has ingrained the phrase "Go Pack!" into Deanna's head.  I think that may have been her first sentence.  And when Deanna starts to cry, Don will tell her to say, "I'm tough!" 



She gets her silly/hyper/rambunctious side from Robbie.  Example: Deanna came to my house on Mother's Day with Don and De.  She was the most hyper-active individual I had ever encountered.  She was bouncing off the walls!  My roommate Emily commented, "She is just like Robbie!" and we all laughed because we knew it was true.   Deanna has a BIG personality, and she definitely gets a lot of that from the Robster.



And of course, outside of the four of us, Deanna has gotten a plethora of great characteristics from all of her many extended family members as well.  Open adoption is certainly multi-faceted, and each person who cares about Deanna has in some way molded her into the amazing nearly-five-year-old that she is today.  



Alright, off to the mountains!  Now if only I could find a really cool rock...

Memorial Day 2010

I've been trying to decide the topic of my next blog post for the past few days.  I'm still undecided, so I'm going to just start writing and see where this goes.  As we say in the media business, "buckle up!" Okay, we don't really ever say "buckle up" but it sounded kind of thrilling before it sounded weird.



So I went to Charleston, South Carolina this past weekend for a mini-road trip.  It was absolutely beautiful!  I would so go back again.  On the way back home to Raleigh, we stopped in to Myrtle Beach for a quick little babe visit.  Don, De and Deanna were all on the beach, so we changed into our swim suits and headed to the beach to see them.  (Along with a few Amstel Lights of course.)



When I first walked up to De, Don, and Deanna on the beach, they were hanging out with some friends from Don's work.  Deanna, who was playing with their son, ran over and gave me a huge hug.  She said, "Hi AmyHutton."  What happened next sort of caught me off-guard.  I watched as Deanna ran back to her little male companion, and she told him excitedly that I was her birthmother.  She said it proudly and with confidence.  Like it was something she was excited about!  That just made my day. The little boy didn't understand what that meant, but he just smiled and nodded.  He didn't have to understand what it meant, but it was obviously something great, something cool.  "That's my birthmom!" 



Heather @ Production, Not Reproduction offered another Open Adoption Roundtable prompt:



Imagine your child as an adult describing their open adoption experience. What do you hope they will be able to say about you? How did you view their other parents? In what ways did you support their relationship with them? 



My hopes for Deanna's adult life are very optomistic.   I don't worry as much as I did before that Deanna won't understand why I placed her for adoption or that she will be mad...I optimistically think (and hope) that Deanna will think about everything she has, not what she doesn't have as a result of the adoption.  I'm sure she will have lots of questions and thoughts as she gets older, but ultimately I think she will understand.  Someday I hope that Deanna will still be able to excitedly and confidently say, even when she is an adult, "That's my birthmom!"  And I'll probably still smile the same way that I did when I heard her say it for the first time on Memorial Day of 2010.



My relationship with Deanna is close and evolving.  Deanna will be 5-years-old in July, and I feel like she is really starting to grasp our true relationship.  Yes, I'm just another person in her family who loves her and wants the best for her, but we share something that is so close and so special.  Even Deanna's relationship with Robbie is so natural and close. When Deanna becomes an adult, I hope 1) that Don never allows her to date and 2) that she will always treasure the relationship we have been building for the past years.



I often think about how lucky I am to have Don, De, and their families in my life.  It means so much to me when Don's mother, Priscilla, sends me sweet messages and tells me how much she admires and appreciates what I have given her family.  Priscilla is an amazing woman...she told me recently that she promises to be the best grandmother ever to Deanna.  That meant the world to me!  Everyone in Don and De's families have welcomed me as one of their own, it's awesome to be able to call them my family.   



Look how much fun we had this weekend! 

And in case you're wondering, I did not injure myself doing the recreational gymnastics in the sand. 

Happy 4th Mother's Day!

I've decided to seriously consider eliminating the space between "Amy" and "Hutton" and just make it one word: "AmyHutton."  That's how Deanna says my name anyway.   She says "AmyHutton" super quickly like it's just one short word.  Like Madonna. Or Bono. Or even Cher.  AmyHutton.  I like it. 



I realized yesterday that De and I will forever share the same Mother's Day anniversary.  Yesterday was our 4th Mother's Day together.  It's kind of cool to think that we both became mothers on the same day.  Isn't that a special and unique bond to share?  I only made this obvious realization as I opened the card that Deanna had made for me, and I saw that the front of the envelope said, "Happy 4th Mother's Day Amy Hutton!"  Has it really been 4 years already?   That I cannot believe.  



So how did I spend my Mother's Day?  Don, De, and Deanna stopped by my house yesterday for a quick visit (they were in town visiting Don's mom and dad this weekend).  Deanna hopped out of the car, performed an impressive display of gymnastics, and watered the flowers, plants, and large wooden swing in my front yard. (Apparently the swing still had some growing to do.)   Then we took some Mother's Day pictures, and Deanna gave me a card that she decorated especially for me.  It was really sweet.  



This Mother's Day wasn't nearly as tough as some of the previous ones I've experienced.  In the past, Mother's Day used to be a day filled with self-pity and sadness. Woe is me.  But yesterday was different from the others; I'm not sure why that is exactly, but I do know that I am feeling more at peace with my decision than I ever thought possible.  Not only that, but instead of feeling like a forgotten mother, I had a plethora of family and friends saying "Happy Mother's Day" to me. This was a small, simple gesture that really meant a lot.  It's nice to feel appreciated.  :)  Not that it's always going to be easy for me from now on, but at this point in my life, I am at a place of acceptance and complete faith in the Lord.  I know that I made the right decision.  I know that my life, Deanna's life, meeting the Dollars, were not merely accidents or coincidences.  And I know that God has amazing things in store for me.  I'm not sure exactly what yet, but I've got a great feeling about this upcoming year. 

 

3 Tools for Exploiting the Wifi During Presentations

Coming as I do from a background in language teaching that emphasises that the teacher should shut up and get the students to do the talking, I often feel uncomfortable doing conference presentations, many of which still follow the format of; speaker gets up in front of audience with presentation - does presentation - audience listen (try to stay awake) and desperately try to think of a few questions at the end to prove they were awake and listening.

One of the gifted- Jamie Keddie.

There are of course a few gifted speakers who can hold the audience’s attention for a full hour and keep most of them listening and awake. If like me you’re not one of those, then here are a few tools that, thanks to the increasing availability of wireless connectivity at conference centres these days, might help to turn your passive listeners into a bunch of multitasking audience collaborators.

Set up a backchannel
One of my favourite tools to use during presentations is Today’sMeet http://todaysmeet.com/ . It’s a great tool for setting up backchannels. A backchannel is basically what your students create when they talk among themselves or text each other during your lesson.

• The advantage of setting one of these up to allow your audience to do this is that you can capture and share what your audience is saying while they are listening to you and enable them to collaborate and share with each other what they know about the topic and links to any relevant resources.
  
• It can also help them to type in questions as they think of them rather than waiting for you to ask at the end, and for me it’s a great way to pass out URLs to interesting websites to give the audience some hands on participation during the presentation.
• It’s also a good way of getting the audience to brainstorm and do tasks together, just ask a few questions and get them to type in answers, and they’ll appear in the backchannel window for everyone to see.

Setting up a back channel with Today’s Meet takes about 60 seconds. You just type in a name for your channel and launch it. You can select how long you want the channel to be available (from two hours to a year) and if you have people in your audience posting updates to Twitter, you can select a hashtag (#) specific to your talk so that their ‘tweets’ appear alongside the backchannel chat window.

• You can read more about backchannels here ‘Tap into the Backchannel in Your Presentation’

Live polling
Getting audience response during presentations can be done quite easily by getting a show of hands, but I tend to find that pretty unsatisfying in terms of capturing and sharing data, so I’ve started using a polling / survey tool called Urtak http://urtak.com/ during presentations.

• With Urtak you can prepare a number of short online polls to to get your audience to do during the presentation.

• Just send the URL to them using your backchannel and then you can show and capture your audience response live during your session, as Urtak collects and shares results as soon as people vote.
• If you are logged in during your presentation it’s even quick and easy enough to create short polls on the fly and pass out the URL through your backchannel.

Here’s an example one I created for a presentation on digital teaching skills that you can look at: http://urtak.com/u/1826 . Urtak even enables the audience to add questions if they register and log in.

• You can read more about Urtak at ‘Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak’

Make note taking collaborative
Many listeners at presentations do their best to keep notes during presentations, so if your audience has wireless connectivity why not get them to do this collaboratively? A great tool for doing this is Sync.in http://sync.in/ .

• It has a desktop launcher that your simply click to create an online collaborative note taking pad. You then share the URL for each pad with your audience and they can then work in groups to assemble notes and comments on your presentation as you go or work on collaborative tasks that you can set them.
  
• The texts can then be saved by each person at the end of the presentation or they can even continue to refine the notes after the presentation is over. Sync.in also has a handy text chat room which runs alongside each document that’s created, so collaborators can discuss things and ask questions as they work. See Collaborative Text Editing Tool for more information on Sync.in.
  

Of course these tools aren’t just useful for conference presentations, but can be used for online training webinars as well as classroom teaching if you work in a wireless enabled classroom environment. Be sure to practice with them one at a time first for short tasks as you gradually build them in to your presentation skills repertoire.

Good luck and I hope you find these tools useful and soon have your audience multitasking as well as listening.

Related links:

• Let us Now Praise Famous Women
• The Web 2.0 School of the Present
• Social Networks and the Web 2.0 Revolution: Part 2
• Creating Social Polls and Questionnaires Using Urtak
• Survey Creation Tool for Students
• Create Quick Online Polls
• Create an ESL EFL Video Quiz
• Make your own chat room
• Express Your Opinions

Best

Nik Peachey

Yesterday Was The Day

Don Dollar says (via my facebook wall), "It's time for another blog post."  Don, you know how I hate to disappoint. :)  Conveniently, my Breaking Free bible study wrapped up this past week, and my plan is to ease back into the blogging world slowly and cautiously.  I'm ready to pick up where I left off, but instead of feeling an obligation to blog every (x) amount of days, I'm going to blog whenever and wherever I darn well please.



So yesterday was the day.  The day of the Second Empire 5K Classic in downtown Raleigh, of course.  If you don't remember from several of my previous blog posts, this was a 5K race in the heart of downtown Raleigh held by Second Empire Restaurant & Tavern owner, Kim Reynolds, to benefit Hopeful Parents, a nonprofit organization that assists prospective adoptive parents in preparing to adopt and provides community support to adoptive and birth families.  Kim and her husband, who adopted their son a few years ago, are active members of Hopeful Parents.  When they spotted the Mother's Day story in the News & Observer about my open adoption last May, Kim contacted me about helping to plan the race.  Jumping at the chance to promote adoption, I was so in.



Having the opportunity to be a part of the planning committee was nothing short of a privilege. I had the opportunity to work with so many great people who truly believe in celebrating, supporting and promoting adoption.   There were 500+ runners at the event, adoption agencies on-site to answer questions and provide resources, music, mascots, and spectators.  It was so neat to see how many people came out to support the event and celebrate adoption.  What I like best about Hopeful Parents is that the organization strives to provide continued support for adoptive parents, birthfamilies, and adopted children.  No member of the adoption triad left behind!  Which of course is not their slogan, but I'm thinking that it probably should be.



A particularly memorable moment (for me) was before the race began and one member of each side of the adoption triad (adoptive parent, birthmother, adoptee) addressed the crowd on stage.   First, Lea, a board member of Hopeful Parents who adopted her son a few years ago spoke about her experience as an adoptive mother and about Hopeful Parents.  Next, I hopped (literally) up on stage and spoke for a few minutes about my experience with open adoption and my goal to start a birthmother support group here in the Triangle.  (Here comes the memorable part) --> The adoptee, 10-year-old Allyson, spoke about how grateful she is that she was adopted.  It was precious.  I could see a few teary-eyed folks in the crowd as Allyson read from her hand-written list all of the things she has been able to do because of her adoption -- playing on a soccer team, learning to play the violin, having a little brother that she adores, etc, etc, etc.  She noted the fact that she would never have been able to have these things if she had not been adopted. 



I couldn't help but get a little misty-eyed myself, thinking about Deanna as Allyson spoke.  I hope that Deanna feels similarly about her adoption when she gets older.  I hope that she is able to understand how much she has been able to experience because of her adoption and how much she would have missed out on had she not been placed with Don and De. Things like playing soccer every week, being enrolled in a stellar gymnastics program, living at the beach, having a stay-at-home mom and a stable home life are just a few examples of the things that probably would not have been possible for Deanna if I had tried to do things on my own.   While I don't constantly dwell on Deanna's future adoption inquiries, these tough questions are something that I have tried to mentally prepare myself for.  Allyson's speech gave me hope for Deanna's acceptance someday. 



And then I ran the 5K.  I wasn't planning on running since I was speaking literally RIGHT before the race began, but I decided at the last minute that I would just do. Seriously, I almost died in the 90+ degree weather, but I actually ran the entire race without stopping and came in 5th in my age group.  I'm so glad that I decided to challenge myself.  Unfortunately, today I am dealing with the intense repercussions of 1) not stretching well before the race  2) not warming up before the race and 3) not lathering sunscreen on my shoulders/arms/back/chest. 



I'm beginning to realize more and more as I get older that my parents are always right.  Yeah, I admit it.  "Always wear sunscreen, stretch before you exercise, remember to say please and thank you, etc, etc, etc." And the list goes on.   My parents have drilled these concepts into my head time and time again, and it's sad to think that as a 23-year-old, I've only placed the utmost importance on the "remember to say please and thank you" part.   I'm finally beginning to realize that there is a logical explanation behind all of my parent's rules and advice.  But don't tell them I told you that. :)



Well aside from looking like a lobster and feeling the pain of sunburned skin and sore muscles, I am feeling pretty good about myself today.  Thank you to everyone who came out to the race!  

Check out the pictures from the event: