The x-men has been a unifying force for my boys and just the spark Arin's imagination needed. X-men have made their way into a book that Evan made for Arin. A few clips are included above, but for the entire work you will have to, well, visit our house, and have us locate it somewhere in Arin's backpack under all of his action figures.
Notice Evans announcement on one page of "Naw we ar giting mared" He drew the all important wedding of Cyclops and Jean Gray. The kids are very interested in the whole marriage thing. There is even a maze for Arin to do on the last page of the book. I laminated it for posterity.
As Arin was reading to me during "school", recently, the last word he read was "kitten", which reminded me of Kitty Pryde. I told him, "You know I should go online and put those names on a writing sheet for you." ( If any of you don't know you can go to www.handwritingworksheets.com and make up your own handwriting worksheet) So I asked him which names he would like to learn to write. I printed out names like Colossus, Jean Gray and Kitty Pryde, then I warned him I wouldn't print more until he had those done, thinking he would write a name or two a day for a couple weeks or so. He got four worksheets ( with five repetitions of each name) done within a couple hours. He was so proud of himself when he handed those sheets to Daddy that evening. He was just jumping around as Daddy pulled in, waiting for the perfect moment to present his work. I never thought the x-men would be so motivating to him. Today we did addition with his action fig
ures. He did great! 
Which leads me to think about how superheroes affect us grownups. I tend to think maybe there is an urge in all adults to make use of our fight-or-flight mode more often than we get the opportunity in modern society. Some say our early ancestors left this imprint on our minds, and for them, danger was lurking around every corner. Maybe our bodies are flowing with latent adrenaline that will never find it's purpose outside of cave dwelling. Maybe that is why in the absence of real problems so many people waste a good portion of their time on manufactured ones. Maybe that is why, now that there are few mysteries about how people live elsewhere in the world thanks to modern media, we feel so overwhelmed by people whose cultures and problems are so different from ours. We yearn to test our courage rescuing people in need only to find we are blocked by the surprising shield of a cathode ray tube. Some of us that have all this time to care and can't reach so many people we wish we could help feel uncomfortably helpless. That is when superheroes come in and rescue us from that position. For an hour-and-a-half in the dark I can submerge myself in a world where a person or a crew of persons has the wisdom to say all the brilliant things in appropriate situations. This person has access to the right people and gadgets to take control of chaos and change things for good on a grand scale. In modern movies we even get to explore the complex workings of the minds of heroes, and speak blasphemies against their perfection, while still being stirred by their awesome deeds.
After that hour-and-a-half of excitement my need to use my survival adrenaline has been sated. As I find my way to the line at the bathroom and then the exit I may realize that none of these people I am surrounded by are Iron Man, or Bat Man, or Storm. Maybe, just as we will never save the earth the way superheroes do there are not problems as dire as would need such heroes. There must not be evil leaders or children being hurt or anything worse than my own stress about my debt to income ratio. If there are no super humans, there must be nothing of superhuman proportions that needs to be done in the world. Because anything that evil would be completely impossible to comprehend, let alone live with. Thank goodness everything in the movies has no basis in reality.
PS. Please catch my sarcasm, and therefore the uncomfortable, yet motivating position it leaves you in.
We are getting ready to celebrate Arin's 8th birthday. At the back of my head, though I have the awareness that right now over in Ghana a child or children who will one day live in my house, and be my kid may be having a birthday now, or any day now. It is an amazing place to be. I kind of compare it to imagining the potential the baby in my tummy will bring with it when it emerges, except that my new adopted children have already been born. There is worry, anticipation, but also confidence. Arin has been through a good bit of adjustment with us. He has been basically our first born adopted child, and we all survived up until this point. I am proud of the loving sensitive, eager-to-please-others, kid he is now, and I am glad we can include more kids into our family the same way he came
