Foster Further

We were on vacation at the beach for a week. All the kids love this spot and the three littles played nonstop in the water and sand. Jane was swimming without her floatie by the second day. She went to the beach twice each day--morning and evening--and had to be lured out of the water during the heat of the day with promises of food and cartoons. The big boys love that she's fearless and were helping her jump waves and even tossing her about in the water. It was the most fun I've seen them have with her. By the sixth day she was exhausted. Sleeping 12-14 hours each night. She even told me she wanted to go home. Honestly, I could relate...that much fun IS exhausting. We get home and everyone takes a day or two to recover. Pretty much just laundry and laying around. By day 3 post-vacation everyone else is back to normal. Not Jane. Today is Day 4 and she's still all out of sorts. Yesterday she was non-stop naughty in that passive-aggressive, under-the-radar way she has. She ha...

Tonight we had family dinner. All five kids, both adults, eating and talking. And it was good. Easy. Natural. Simple. Delicious. Enjoyable. I've waited a year and a half to say that. I distinctly remember the first time we tried to have a family dinner. I don't remember any details about what or when other than the complete disaster unfolding around me. The girls bounced around like frenetic monkeys putting on the loudest show they could. They could not figure out why we were all gathered in one space so they compensated by attention-seeking. James was afraid of the chaos and hid under the table. The big boys grabbed their plates and went to eat in front of their screens. I lost my temper. Theo abandoned ship. I remember sitting there at the empty table that was a disaster zone of spilled drinks and splattered food and putting my head in my hands and crying. What had I done? For a long time that night has been a symbol to me of the havoc I wreaked on our home by bringing in mor...

We got back from our trip to holiday trip late on Friday night. Everyone exhausted--nothing but unloading the car and minimal feeding of children happened over the weekend. Monday I woke up feeling awful. Thought I was in for full-on flu. Aches, nausea, sore throat, cough. I did not move from bed except to feed myself. Meanwhile, Theo took the day off from work and worked like a Tasmanian devil. Fixed a leaky faucet, fed the kids, cleaned the kitchen, worked on figuring out a possibly broken dishwasher, and did mounds and mounds of laundry, and then took the older boys to the bank to open new accounts, and, finally, ended his day with a church council meeting which sucks the soul out of him every time. So, the man worked and worked yesterday. Our road trip generated a carload full of items to be washed--we had clothes for cold and warm weather, swimsuits and beach towels, bedding for five kids... so much laundry . I realized at some point yesterday that he was just pulling things f...

We have returned home from an 8 day road trip to visit family over the Christmas break. We left about noon on the 26th and spent that night in a hotel. The 27th was spent visiting the girls' aunt, uncle and cousins who moved out of state last summer. They live in the mountains and it was a new experience for we flatlanders to visit this beautiful area. I climbed straight up the small hill that is their front yard five times in two hours to take three kids on five potty trips from where they were playing with the neighbor's toys. Theo, the big boys, and the cousins all hiked to the top of the little mountain behind their home. It was the steepest hill any of them had ever climbed and to get back they simply sat on their butts in the dried leaves and slid back home. (Only later thinking about snakes.) This aunt has been invaluable to me and I truly enjoy her. It was a great visit and makes me committed to keeping in touch with their family. I drove away with lots of thoughts ...

At church last Sunday as all the pageant moms were shepherding their kids through the process of trying on costumes and rehearsing the songs, I commiserated with another mom that when my husband hears the command to prepare your heart during Advent he goes quiet and still and deep in liturgies and songs and prayers. (He's a lovely father during Advent. He uses his homemade box to reveal an activity each night. It's wonderful. I am glad he does this.) When I hear that command I begin making five page lists documenting every gift, recipe, craft project, cleaning project, packing-the-family-for-a-road-trip-to-Florida task that must be done. And then start cramming as many tasks as possible into every outing so that we are getting haircuts, mailing Christmas cards, going to the chiropractor, returning library books, shopping for groceries, picking up that weird gift that can only be found at that one store on the other side of town---- every single time we leave the house . Oh ...

I hung up the phone, put my face in my hands, leaned against the kitchen countertop and wept. Waves of emotion rolled over me and flooded my hands, then one tissue after another. I could not stop crying. Relief, joy, surprise, but mainly just relief to be finally getting some good news about something, anything. Gus stood there awkwardly patting my shoulder, totally unsure what to do. Jane came into the kitchen, her internal antenna finely-tuned for drama, bringing her downstairs from where she'd been playing in her bedroom. I tried to pull it together for her sake but could not. Gus tried to explain for me, "Mom is happy. She's crying because Seth got into...a...school. A really good school." A damn good school. His "reach" school already calling to scoop him up in an early admission offer. He hasn't even applied anywhere else. Heck, he hadn't even finished his application for this school! He hadn't submitted his final essay or sent any re...

Yesterday a good friend messaged me to ask questions about foster care. She and her husband are considering it, as I already knew, and she wanted to get my opinion on it. She said, in part, "... Knowing everything that you know now, would you do foster care again? I know that’s a hard question because it’s impossible not to recognize that’s where your daughters came from."  I have no problem whatsoever in airing my opinion and was about to jump in with my list of top things the foster care agency doesn't tell you...but my eyes could not leave that second sentence.  Because...? Why? I felt so conflicted absorbing her thoughts.  Should I be offended that someone was politely opening the door for me to own up to the fact that I have regrets? Should I just come out and say, no, really, that's okay, I don't really think of them as my daughters yet anyway, no offense taken! Am I supposed to get to the point in my life where I feel more comfortable hiding or ne...

Despite a rough week there have been some really nice moments lately. Seth got a 1530 on his SAT. He got a perfect score on the  math portion! I'm super excited for him. He's filling out college applications and I think just knowing his score is that high makes him feel more confident and motivated. He took the CLT (Classical Learning Test) and got a 98. The college he really wants to get into requires a 100 in order to qualify for their best scholarship to their Honors College. He's going to retake it and he's pretty sure he'll do better. He hadn't studied for the CLT, that was his first time taking it, and he was out till midnight the night before at a marching band performance. It's hard to think about him going off to college but it's also really exciting. After the typical teenage stage he's now coming out of that phase and becoming a nice person again. I think he's going to have an amazing future. College is where Theo and I met, we fo...

I feel the need to record the hell that will be my life for the next seven days. I keep endlessly rolling through the calendar in my mind anyway so maybe it'll help me sleep if I just put it all here. Fri - both boys are marching together at a football game for the one and only time in their lives. It's the 8th grade Invitational where all 8th grade band students march with the big high school band. Seth plays clarinet. Gus plays tuba (he's so tiny and it's so heavy, he has to wear modified football shoulder pads to hold it up!) I watched the practice last night and kept alternating between laughing and crying. We're hired a babysitter for the little kids so Theo and I can both go and focus on the boys. I'm excited! Sat - Seth takes the Classical Learning Test because he's interested in colleges that look at that in addition to his SAT scores Sat - birthday party for child of Theo's co-workers. They each make more than he does. Our gift is gonna ...