Diving In

As I mentioned last week, I recently adopted two wonderful children. Parenting them takes all of my available time and energy, leaving me little or no mental powers left for fiction writing. So I have decided to start writing memoir instead.

The hardest part of this new memoir writing attempt is figuring out what aspects of my children's lives I want to share publicly. Blogging about my kids causes the same problems, but also seems like the easiest place to start.

So here is what I've decided. I am not going to post my children's names on this blog. For now I'll just call them my son and my daughter, but I might come up with fun new nicknames for them in the future. I am also going to avoid posting clear pictures of their faces, but I may occasionally post profile and back pictures.

Instead of posting all the complicated back story, that will eventually make it's way into my memoir , I'm going to simply post about the little every day things that make this new life worth living.

So lets dive in. Here is a picture of my daughter doing just that. I took it yesterday during her swimming lesson.

I am so proud of this little lady for so many reasons. Her new found swimming ability is only one of them. When she moved in with us 15 months ago, she had never been in a swimming pool. Now she's not only jumping off diving boards, she can also swim both the crawl stroke and the back stroke with perfect form.

A member of my kids bio family drowned when they were little. His death is actually what first brought them into foster care six and a half years ago. That will never happen to either of my kids. These feisty kids can swim. They can survive.