Disregard the Previous Message

Did I say I felt caught up? After being gone 2 weekends and working 2 weekends, I've fallen behind again. Managed to get the living room/kitchen cleaned and my taxes organized. That's it. And I'm working again this weekend. But then it's spring break and I've taken some time off here and there.

Oh, and besides being a poor housekeeper, I'm a lousy mom and make one of my daughters cry every night.

Back when I first wanted to adopt and I asked my friends with kids if parenting was hard and they told me 'yes,' I didn't believe them. I didn't consider that it gets harder the longer you do it. Most life skills don't work that way. But as kids get older, they seem to get harder. They reach a point where, as a parent, you can't do anything right. Helping another child with homework is seen as cruel favoritism. Everything you say or do is the wrong thing. And if you would have done the exact opposite, that would have been the wrong thing too.

Being older probably doesn't help either. I'm tired. By bedtime, I'm the one who's tired. After an arguement, I'm the one who says, "I don't care any more." And parents just can't give up. They have to hold the line. That's when the husband is supposed to step in and let me get my second wind. A husband also comes in even more handy during the middle/high school years. Lately we have so many activities going on. 4 events for 5 kids last night, so we had to not attend 2 of them. If there were 2 chauffeurs in the family, we could be 2 places at once - a very handy parental skill.

MH

I am so proud of my kids

2009 has been a good year for us so far. I think I've mentioned before that the house is staying neater, I'm catching up on piles and projects. I feel like I have a handle on things. At the moment, all 4 have neat rooms. And I am so proud of the things they are doing, what they are accomplishing, who they are becoming.

E is trying to read 3 hrs. a day. This is up from barely reading at all. She is getting good grades. She got a perfect score on her latest spelling test. Of the words she studied tonight, she only missed 1. She practiced her history flash cards and only missed a couple. I don't know what made the difference. She bought herself an iTouch after carefully looking at options. 5th grade is her year to be in the top class.

M has good grades and is making good choices in middle school. She's still pretty much wants to talk to me and tell me things. She makes very good financial choices and even bought some clothes with her own money when we shopped over the weekend. It's so terrific to watch her enjoy middle school.

L has a great solo in Encore show choir. I've seen her perform twice and she keeps getting better. She is so good in Jazz Etc. too. They got a #1 State ranking. She is now trying out for The Music Man musical. She keeps super busy with so many activities. She is deciding on next year's classes. The H.S. offers so much - I'd like to take some of her classes.

S has a hard time as the youngest. She is in a phase that I've seen the other's graduate out of and I think S will pass through it too. The I want to buy things stage. S has to spend money. She always has to buy things and her interest in them doesn't last long. She always wants more, yet she is so frustrated that she has so many things she doesn't know where to begin in cleaning her room. Last week E helped her sort through everything and figure out what she wanted to keep upstairs. S often feels that people don't understand her. She often searches for the right word and can't think of it. She feels different from her classmates. Yet she has boundless energy and enthusiasm. She's blunt, often rude, but she tells the truth about her feelings of others. She doesn't always tell the truth though. Nothing is ever her fault! She has just learned and accomplished so much in 3 years. She seems a bit stalled out at the moment. I'm sure she is going to have academic trouble as classes get harder and involve more reading, just like E did.

And me, I've been proud of me lately too. I still feeling I can learn and change and improve. I've passed through a bit of conflict at work recently and I can see I have some changes to make, some things I'm not good at. I look back and realize I could have been better. Hopefully, I keep maturing and grow wiser and kinder.

M.H.

New Look

Thanks Donna. I saw you added a colored background to your blog and I went to the same site. Worked very smoothly and even I could do it. Hardly took any time. Very cool looking. Now I should be posting and adding photos rather than playing. L is at Encore and all others are upstairs very quiet. We went to Walmart this a.m. and they came home and did their chores and ran off to play new DS or read new book or use iTouch - as we hooked up Airport Wed. I love the quiet and how neat the house remains, but all these electronics isolate everyone.

MH

Adoption Blog?

Is this an adoption blog? Well, yes, because I have 4 adopted kids. And no, because it's more about being a single, working parent raising 4 kids who happen to be adopted. I've noticed as the years go by, when I first adopted, my life was about adoption, but now that actively adopting is over and the kids are older, my life is about parenting. Parenting 4 pretty normal kids. Yeah, adoption related things are still there, but they're just a small part of life. On the whole, there are plenty of other hassles and sibling and teen drama to deal with.

So yeah, this an adoption blog and this is a single parent adoption blog and an older child adoption blog and a multiple child adoption blog. But it's pretty much about our normal, boring life. No heavy issues. No ongoing issues. Just basically that adoption is pretty normal and ordinary.

MH

Little Red Hen

I haven't entered any profile or personal information for security reasons, but I will confess that my profile is a Little Red Hen. Yes, somehow I have fallen into the same category with many other parents. The Little Red Hen does all the work and no one else will help her, yet everyone else expects to benefit from her work. "Who will help me make the bread?" No one. "Who will help me eat the bread?" Everyone.

My kids are getting better are doing their chores and keeping the house neat, but they seem to have no concept of helping out or doing things that benefit the family rather than themselves. They naturally expect me to do everything and I usually enable them to be layabouts. I should expect more and demand more and not put up with their attitude. But parental love makes one want to do things for others and forgives lapses.

Often I have gritted my teeth and said, "It's a good thing I love these kids or I'd throw them out on the street." Even more often I find myself thinking, "I don't mind doing this because I want to do things for them." Yet, a lot of resentment builds up and is not good. I already have this fantasy that the week before Mother's Day, I'm going on strike. I'm not lifting a finger. I'm not doing a darn thing. They can fend for themselves and come to appreciate me.

Fairy Tale Night

My organization put on a Fairy Tale event. All 4 kids dressed up. L as Little Red Riding Hood. She wore her great grandmother's apron. M as Peter Pan in a rented costume. E as Wendy in a borrowed costume that I had to take up 8" and S as Tinkerbell. And boy, was she channeling petulant fairy that night. The evening was a great success. It was very complicated, but ran smoothly, with 300+ people attending. A sketch artist did charactatures of many of the volunteers. M & S got one and they are really great souvenirs to have.

Snow Evening

No early out today, because Monday is already an early out. But they cancelled after school care and all evening activities. So it was great to stay home. S and I read lots of books. Haven't done that for months. I baked cookies and burned half of them, because I was reading with S. Helped E with homework. Spent at least 1/2 hr. on the phone with the most wonderful Verizon employee on the planet, who helped me and M get her cell phone straightened out. He changed everything and put some more money on her card to make up for problems and changed our calling plan. So will see how quickly she runs through the money.
And I got a nice workout shoveling snow. I am seriously working on diet/exercise.

Only S was distraught by the cancellations because she loves gymnastics and she felt life was so unfair. Still we had a lovely chat in the car about what she remembers from China - eating in a restaurant and sitting in a high chair. Yes, I think she was so impressed by that high chair, she was happy to be adopted. She talks about it all the time. Which only goes to show how limited her orphanage world was.

I am still trying to post photos from my last blog entry. This is quite a challenge. I am having trouble uploading them from home, emailing them to work. I finally copied photos to a disc, but I can't get my other computer to run the disc. Computer incompetent! Alas, that I was born in 1955!

MH