teenager struggles

Things have been getting very heated at my house. I don't like the things my son has been doing or not doing but I just don't have it in me to kick him out or withhold food.

I can understand a lot about how my husband feels but at the same time some of his expectations and how he has handled my oldest son isn't the same way I believe he handled his own kids.

My children don't deserve any less than his did.

I know it's going to take a lot of comprises about what we are willing or not willing to do. My husband read some stuff about how to make a grown child move and that's by making things hard on them. Make them miserable. Make them set up to fail.

Tonight, while I was at work. My husband did talk to Alex quite a bit about how everyone is busy doing something and he is doing nothing.

The deal at the moment is that Alex is going to be cooking all our dinners thru our lessions to teach him how to cook. I do agree with this.

Alex's Dad has basically refused to talk to him due to my son not trying to hide that he smokes pot. That and the fact that almost everything Alex has ever been bought (electronics) has disappeared and Dad (bio) thinks it's due to drugs.

Truth be told.. We don't know if that's true or not. His stories are fishy. What we do know is that we are done buying him expensive electronics due to the disappearing act that they do.

It has come out that Alex is mad at Dad because he promised him a tattoo and Dad said he couldn't afford it but spent over 200 on himself.

It has also come out that Alex is mad that I only gave him a 20 dollar gift card. My husband said that they had a talk about how much the house payment is and all the rest of the bills.

I am hoping things calm down a bit. I just can't handle the stress/

Confession time

I might be posting a series of posts about my son and life happenings around here and if you have any advice or feel we as me or my husband are being harsh please tell me but tell me what you would do instead.

My 18 year old doesn't have a job or go to school.

I asked him to help me with dinner and I admit I said it wrong by telling him he would have to cook. I then said that all I expected was help and so far he is flat refusing.

As we speak he is now giving in to helping. If my son had kept on refusing to help what do you think we as parents of a grown child should do?

Zumba live!!

I did zumba at 530 am to help promote a zumbathon for a good cause. They are raising money for tetnus for women in 3rd world countries. It just happened to be live to promote the zumbathon.
My husband watched it and said the camera was on me due to where I was standing. I won't be making an habit of zumba that early in the morning but it was kind of exciting.

Open Adoption, Open heart. Book tour.

I was ask to participate in a book tour of Open Adoption, Open Heart. I found the book to be a good read and it was hard to put it down. I am not going to give my personal opionion about the book in general when it comes to it being an adoption story.

Here is the author's guest post.

We feel like it is our job to load up our kids’ tool box- to do our best to make sure they have the tools they will need for the future. My wife and I went through a lot of crazy things, legal and emotional, while we were going through our adoptions. A lot of things we did for our own benefit and a lot of things were done for the benefit of the birth parents. Everything we did was for the benefit of our children. If we didn’t think it would benefit them, we wouldn’t have done it.
My children are still pretty young. Open Adoption, Open Heart is the story of our first adoption (the story of our second adoption will be out in a few months). It tells about our journey while developing the relationships of an open adoption, starting with our infertility struggles up through one year after our adoption took place. It was important for me to wait a year to write the book because the birth and placement of the child into our home is just a piece of the story- a piece in the middle, not the end.
Open adoption is a broad term that means there is still contact between the biological parents and the adoptive family. In some cases, like with ours, there is a lot of contact. We talk to our son’s birth mom a few times a week and share photos constantly. With our daughter’s birth mom, she has asked for a little more space than that, so we talk to her once every few weeks, and send pictures when she requests them. Contact with our daughter’s birth dad is about the same.
Right now is the time we’re paving the roads. One of our kids is 2 ½ and the other is just 17 months behind. They’re still too young to really comprehend what’s going on. When their birth parents come to visit, I can see that they know of the intense love shown to them- more than just our friends show them, but I don’t think they grasp the difference between that love and the love of, say,their aunts and uncles. We’re working on that, though. We have pictures of their birth parents on their bedroom walls. We take time to explain it to them. They don’t understand yet, but someday it will make sense.
We’re paving those roads, flattening out the bumps the best we can. Someday the time will come when we hand the keys over to the kids. Someday it will be for them to decide what that relationship will be. If they want less contact than what we’ve established, we will be ready to accept that. If they want more contact that what we’ve established, we’ll be ready for that too. The pathway between their biological family and their adopted family will be paved the best we can for when that time comes.
We love their biological families dearly. We love them for whom they are and they love us. Our children will no doubt see that love and our hope is that they’ll respond in kind. Their history is not one of abandonment, but is of love. They’ll have access firsthand to seeing that’s true. Hooray for birth parents. Hooray for open adoption.

adoption reunions

If your an reader on my private blog you might have also read about my visit I had with Izzy with her boyfriend and my two sons.

What I been putting off blogging about is that my first instict is to see Izzy on my own. I know that might sound bad.

Anyways, Alex, my now grown child asked me why was I the only one who got to see Izzy? Well, truth be told that not true. She came to his graduation party and I believe we have celebrated my birthday and Alex's birthday so they have seen her. He actually forgot she was there but then remembered the joke that went bad.

I didn't invite Izzy to any formal birthday plans this year because we kept things really low key for a few reasons. She did have lunch with us on his birthday but it wasn't really made a big deal it was his birthday.

I told Alex that it's not my responsibility to be the middle man in their relationship. It's up to him to try to have an relationship with her. Even though I know that things are not easy. I stand by what I say when it's not up to me to keep them connected using me.

I told him that I try very hard to keep communication opened even if most of our concersations are because I start them. I quickly told him about how the last visit when she was in town last wasn't very good at all. I think I might have said something to the matter of her being a brat. I said all this because I still have to work on my relationship with her. I can't do it for them.

When Izzy and I got together I mentioned to her how he got a little upset with me about not being invited with. She said, he never talks to me. Also, said that he could have come with. I said, yea, I know but shopping didn't seem like the thing to have him tag along with.

I know this adoption reunion thing probably isn't easy on him. I can only imagine how it feels when Izzy does something on facebook and tags her brother that she was raised with "brother" but she doesn't do the samething for him or my other son. If I feel the sting.. I imagine Alex does too. Stephen really isn't on FB much to feel much of anything.

Even though, I told my son it was up to him to make arrangements to see Izzy and gave him her number I still arranged the lunch and game thing for both of my kids. Alex grumbled at my choice of what we were doing but he never offered suggestions for anything else.

Holidays and reunion

In reunion are there any birthchildren and birthparents who celebrate holidays together? Or are they invited but never can come?

My daughter moved away last year but comes "home" several times a year it seems. She is here in town and while we talked about Thanksgiving plans and traditions there wasn't an invite on either of our parts. I haven't met any of her family so of course it's no way expected that she would invite us.

On the other hand, she has met quite a bit of my family. My sister, my sons', my husband, my Dad, my brother, my ex husband and his wife, my best friend, my second Mom (teacher I have blogged about) My best friend,

She has yet to meet my oldest sister, my step brother, my stepmother, my mother, non of my aunts and uncles that are still alive, non of my cousins. (for the record our family just isn't close so it's unlikely she will ever meet any aunts and uncles or cousins)

I didn't invite her for dinner but we didn't invite anyone for Thanksgiving. It was just the four people that live here. Notice, I didn't say family? Isn't that such a loaded word? If we say family while talking to an adoptee.. does that mean we are exlcludind them?

Anyways, I didn't invite her but it's not cause I wouldn't like to spend an holiday with her. I know she has her family and her boyfriend's family and I just wouldn't want to put her on the spot to have to decline the invite.

I do send birthday gifts and Christmas gifts to her. I really haven't included her boyfriend in gift giving except for I did make him a coffee cup back during the summer and gave them both one filled with candy.

I am just wondering how others deal with holidays and reunion. We have opened our hearts as much as possible to Izzy. She has celebrated my son's 17th birthday and his 18th if you count on outing as his birthday celebration. It really wasn't set up as a birthday thing. More on that later. She has been here in our home for our son's graduation.

Shopping with my girl

My daughter came into town and I asked if we could get together. It's one of those things that I don't have the comfidence in knowing that she would always fit us in. When she answered via text that she would have time I almost felt like it was like duh I have time for you.

We had plans to shop and to get a little fast food that was in the same area. My 17 year old soon got a little upset with me and aksed how come you only get to see Izzy? More on that later.

Anyways, I let go of my expecations and tried to accept whatever it was she was willing to give me. I didn't reqest no boyfrind but shopping thing kind of exlcuded him without excluding him.

She showed up on her own and we went to Old Navy first. I had been planning on actually buying clothes but the prices were too good to pass up.

It just felt so natural talking as we shopped and comparing what we liked and didn't like. It was mostly summer clothes so some of it we joked about how her Dad wouldn't let her wear it. She is the one who brought him up. I find it cute she is 21 and he would still tell her if she was exposing too much skin. I notice that when she talks about her Dad that my jealosy radar doesn't kick in.

We both were very cheap in our chosing of clothes so we walked about with some really good bargains.

We went over to Koh;'s and did the same thing except for I only found one thing that I wanted and she bought abour the same amount of clothes from them. I don't know how anyone really buys clothes from both these stores at full price.

After shopping we walked to taco bell and ate lunch there. Our time felt good there too. It was fast food so I didn't set out expecting a whole lot more time with her at this point. We ate and talked about our diet and how we both are addicted to myfitnesspal. I told her what I beleive is my reason for my results and how I try not to refuse myself anything just eat smaller portions. I explained how I have yet to gain any weight back. I don't sweat it if I don't see a loss.

I think she is beautiful!! I hope she takes some of my diet stragies and uses themself herself. I know what I am doing might not work for everyone but I think the mind set is a lot of it.

We didn't talk about my kids too much. The last time I just felt like I was being judged. I don't think she was trying to come off that way but we have so little time together that I just don't want to talk about my children's faults with her.

We were together shortly over 2 hours!! That was huge!! No speed dating!! I didn't walk away sad and feeling unloved.

We did get asked if we were sisters! She piped up that I am her birthmom. I was glad she said that because I don't know how she would feel if I said she was my daughter wihtout futher explanation.