Every day of this Christmas break I have planned to: a. write a holiday letter; b. have LuLu do just a little bit of school work; and c. catch up on a work project I put off until this week. Well, the week is technically over and the only one of these things that has gotten done is a couple hours of geometry that Kay did with LuLu yesterday.

Mostly, I’m concerned that our holiday letter won’t get written. Last year I actually got the picture taken, letter written and cards all mailed before Christmas. This year…zippo. I had planned on us taking a picture... more

I started to write this blog a few days ago to tell you how fortunate we are to have a circle of friends who are nearly like family to us. We’ve been going to church with these people for over 10 years, and they are dear enough to us that we see them usually twice a week, and share all kinds of life events. (One even went with me to help admit LuLu to the psych hospital this fall, since Super Dad was out of town.) I’m not sure how we would survive being several hundreds of miles away from all family members if we didn’t have friends who were close enough to take... more

As we wade through the ocean of diagnoses LuLu has received, one thing keeps haunting me…how much of a role did her first 20-months in the institution have in “causing” all this.

Early on, I understood the potential psychological ramifications of her orphanage neglect and abuse in causing her PTSD and RAD. But as new diagnoses, such as PDD-NOS and Tourettes came in (and now pyroluria and PCOS), I began wondering how many problems she would be exhibiting if she had been born to us, or placed with us a birth.

As I dug deeper into the leaky gut syndrome... more

Do your older adopted children ever make you feel like you are screwed if you do or screwed if you don’t? Because that is exactly how I felt last night. My butt was chewed off because we refused to “loan” a large amount of money, and for the tone I used a week prior to that, when I also declined a request for a sum of money. About 18 months ago, I was chewed up and spit out for all the help I had given because it apparently wasn’t given correctly.

You know, we still have eight children at home who we are supporting. Super Dad informed them that he had been working 60 hours a week in order to get some bills paid off. Alas, that wasn’t good cause, and somehow it was turned around into... more

Kelly, on the Foster Adoption Blog just wrote about her holiday traditions, and got me to thinking…do we have holiday traditions? Sometimes I hear about all those families who have such meaningful rituals and I feel a bit jealous. But then, I realized we do indeed have traditions uniquely our own. Here are ours.

A Game for the Family. We’re a game-playing family, with the exception of LuLu, who finds it both hard to follow the game and overwhelming in a sensory way.... more

I’m still mulling this over, having received feedback on my blog on privacy, and read the feedback on Nancy’s blog that indicates many people believe talking about adult children and their issues violates their privacy. I’m not sure what I think.

I do believe that children have a right to privacy and that right continues to grow and expand as the child matures. But I have a hard time pinpointing where the parent’s experience and story ends and where the adult child’s story... more

As our older two kids were headed out the door from our Thanksgiving Cranium bash last Thursday, the eldest asked, “So when’s the party?”

I was confused.

He explained that he didn’t want to miss this year’s Christmas party, because they are always so much fun. Apparently, we have inadvertently started a Christmas party tradition at our house. And my addled brain hadn’t grasped its importance, nor had I planned on hosting a party this year.

The other older child chimed in and both exclaimed that this was something they “wanted” for Christmas. Kay... more

My friend Nancy over on the Reactive Attachment Disorder blog has my wheels turning. Recently her two older adopted children have publicly questioned (on her blog) her decisions to talk the challenges of parenting them. Nancy’s probably the most straight-forward person you’ll ever meet. We tease Super Dad that he’s incredibly blunt, but Nancy could give him a run for his money.

One of the things that Nancy and I see eye-to-eye on is that Nancy is a truth teller. (This is not to imply that others do not tell the truth.) What I mean is that Nancy believes telling the truth, for truth’s sake, is important. Guess... more

Today was such an awesome day. I loved it when a day exceeds my expectations! Having put the majority of the elbow grease for our meals into yesterday, all that was required of me to finish brunch this morning was to sprinkle some brown sugar and blueberries on the French toast and pop it into the oven. Then I just had to convince Super Dad to fry the eggs and I popped open the mimosa ingredients and – voila! I was truly THANKFUL!

Earlier in the morning, Super Dad jumped out of bed to head off to his run. I had planned to tag along, but it was pouring down rain. Again, since here in the South we are dreadfully short on rain, even though the shower threatened to ruin Super Dad’s... more

As promised, here are our very non-traditional Thanksgiving plans: Super Dad will awake early to run a 10K whose proceeds benefit a local food pantry, cleverly named “Gobble Jog”. After that we will dine on the non-traditional Thanksgiving brunch of French toast casserole, eggs, sausage and mimosas (yummy). The older children will arrive between their huge meals elsewhere for an afternoon of the one Thanksgiving tradition we plan to observe – playing Cranium. Supper around here will likely be homemade soup, as Kay, sans wisdom teeth, will be most comfortable... more