Jane's 4th Birthday Party Pre-Event Anxiety

Here are all the things I'm worried about tomorrow:

• Forgetting some food or serving item (100% chance that'll happen despite my lists, oh well).

• The half-brother, age 13, who was uninvited after the girls cried and told me stories of him hurting them, coming anyway. If his grandpa (all the kids' maternal grandfather) brings him, despite our request not to...what do we do? Tonight I coached the girls that they can say, "NO!" loudly if he tries to pick them up or touch them and then say, "I'm going to get my mom!" (Sadly, Jane said, "sometimes he hurted me...but he still loves me!" Leading to a message from me about not letting people, even those who loves us, hurt us. Oy.

• Grandma dragging out the good-bye and making an already emotional day even more difficult. Like the fear about forgetting a party item I'm 100% sure this will happen. There's no prevention; just degrees of coping afterwards.

• It being cold and wet and a miserable day at the park. I already know it'll likely be too cold for the splashpad for sure; I'm just hoping for being able to do the playground.

• This is the first party where I've tried to combine "our" people and "their" people. I invited some of our new neighbors I've just met to a party with people who can't hold down jobs or stay sober or even keep custody of their children all the time. Good God, what was I thinking? All of the nice neighbors from the nice suburb will be meeting people who don't even have a family tree. I've learned not to ask about relationships when meeting these people because they're all baby-mama, third husband, step-half-sister combos that leave my mouth hanging open as I try to unravel it. 

• Birth mom or dad showing up. That's always a fear when we're out in public and especially this kind of event where word could've gotten back about where we're meeting.

I will never, ever do this again. By the time Kate's birthday rolls around next March they will be adopted and we will do our usual birthdays at our house and invite just the two grandmas. After hours and hours of talking and observing and listening to how the girls talk about family members, they are the only two we've decided to bring with us, so to speak.

That is as Open as this adoption is going to get. I can't do this much anxiety before every family event.