The 90's

This past Friday, I had the immense pleasure of going out by myself for a little bit.  The best part of getting out by myself (no matter what I'm doing) is playing my own music in the car.  Not Sunday School Songs, not The Lion King soundtrack, not even sports talk radio.  Just the station I like, which is mostly pop music.  So on Friday, I get in the car and immediately switch over to my radio station, only to be even more pleasantly surprised that they are doing a 90's music weekend.  Playing all the hits from the decade when I started listening to popular music and deciding for myself what I liked.  It was wonderful.  I drove along in a rainstorm listening to Chumbawumba and Backstreet Boys and Dave Matthews Band.  And every song reminded me of my friends and my experiences from the 90's; its amazing how music becomes linked to memories in such a powerful way.  I wistfully thought of high school and marching band and uncertainty and crushes.  And as the rain continued to beat down on the windshield, I remembered this Kathleen Turner movie that my sister and I liked to watch when we were growing up, called "Peggy Sue Got Married."  Its about a woman who suffers a head injury at her high school reunion and wakes up 20 years in the past, reliving high school.  Even though everyone else is exactly as she remembers them, she still retains the memories of the life she lived after graduation, getting married and having kids and the Vietnam War.  And then I imagined, what if this storm somehow transported me back to the 90's just as I am while everyone else remained the same?  What would it be like to go through high school with an actual idea about what life would be like after?  Would I be as hardworking in school, knowing that I really didn't need those math classes, or would I try harder to understand?  Would I confidently approach a boy that I liked, or would I try to find the teenage boy who would one day become my husband so that we didn't waste any time?  I guess the question boils down to, would I try to better prepare for the life I'm currently living, or would I try to change the future?  Kathleen Turner tried to do things differently, yet still ended up with Nicolas Cage at the end of the movie, because it was her destiny.  I like to think that my life has so few regrets that the only things I would change is managing my money better when I was single, so that there wouldn't be such a struggle now.  Then I thought of all the things I enjoyed about the 90's: meeting Melissa at Tinseltown and going to the movies together with no other obligations inhibiting us from being together; riding in the back of the Micciche's Camry while they played Jay-Z or Third Eye Blind; living in a house that I wasn't responsible for, where I could sleep in on weekends because I had no other obligations.  Riding bikes with my sister in the middle of a summer night; my sophomore lunch table that threw each other birthday parties (and tried very hard to impress the table of senior boys that we sat next to); spending a week with all of my best friends at Band Camp every year.  I even miss my French teacher that I had each year and who seemed to genuinely want me to succeed in the future.  I have all of these wonderful memories of my teenage years, but at the end of the evening, I was glad to return home and find my husband and children exactly as I left them.

What comes next:

Today is a big day for Baby --.  Not only is he now 8 months old, but it has been exactly 90 days since he has had contact with his birth parents.  In Ohio, this means that Children's Services now has grounds to file an abandonment charge, which will sever their parental rights.  Although we the requirements to file for Permanent Custody have been met, we will now wait (probably 3 months) for a court date to make it official.  If his parents request contact between now and the court hearing, they will be able to see him through supervised visits with his case worker.  Once their rights have been terminated, they will have to arrange visits directly with us, something they have never attempted before.  In any case like ours, relatives have the right to claim the baby and raise him from here; in our case, the social worker has contacted the family and they have given their blessing for us to move forward with an adoption.  That means that once the baby is in the permanent custody of the state, we will then be able to file paperwork and schedule a court date for an official adoption.  Based on conversations with other foster-to-adopt families, this process could take up to 9 months, which means that this child we have been raising since he was a week old might be 18 months by the time he can take our last name.  We have also been told that the state assists with the costs of an attorney, meaning that this will be the least expensive child we have in terms of money; but the fact that a relative could at any time step in and we would never see him again, means that he is the most expensive in terms of emotional cost.  When we first got custody, I thought the chances that we would be able to adopt the baby were about 15%.  As his parents failed to meet their case plan and started missing visits, my hopes went up.  Now that we have secured the 90 day requirement, I feel like it is 95% certain that he will be with us forever, but there is still that 5% of doubt that makes me hold back.  I am so glad that we became foster parents, that we have been able to give this amazing little boy the best possible start to his life, and I hope that we will be able to see him grow into a man and bear our name.  Our family has been so accepting of him, especially our biological sons, who have always treated him like a brother.  He has captured our hearts and we want what is best for him, even if it is heart-breaking for us. 

Mother's Day

I had a really great weekend.  I spent time with my family(the family I made, not the one from whence I came).  I spent Friday and Saturday getting things set so that I could just relax on Sunday and enjoy everyone.  My husband did his usual sweet appreciation stuff: breakfast in bed, cards from himself and the boys (signed by James this year!), and then we spent the morning with our new Village, where the husbands all chipped in so the mothers could spend a few hours together but away from our families and just be(the exclamations of excitement when the announcement was made were so sweet).  I absolutely love getting time to just talk to other people, especially since these ladies are all really special and have characteristics that I want to possess, like being an awesome wife and woman of God.  Then I took the afternoon to myself, went to the movies alone, and OH! it was so nice.  I thought about the women who are my "mothers" and the children who made me one myself.

I love that my mom was so good to us kids.  I love that she wanted to raise us to be a certain kind of person, and that we have pretty well managed to reach adulthood and be responsible and happy and loving.  I love that my mother-in-law is a different kind of really good mom.  I love that she had three boys and that they all love her and respect her.  From them, I get ideas about how to be the best mom I can be, like how to maintain boundaries and teach manners and let my kids choose the life they want to live.  And I am so proud when I hear James speaking in sentences, because I know how hard he's worked to get to a point where he can verbalize his thoughts.  I love that I can argue with him now, when he asks, "Why not?" endlessly and I can finally say, "Because I said so, that's why not!"  I loved hearing Winston in the car yesterday carry on an entire conversation by himself.  It went like this:
"Winston, you hungry?  You want to eat, or play basketball?  Which one?  PLAY BASKETBALL!!"
and then today he changed it up a little...
"Time to sleep, or time to go to library?  You sleepy or want library?  Which one?  GO LIBRARY!!"
And then there's the baby, the foster child that was originally supposed to stay with us for maybe two months while his dad got a place to live and a job, and who is now a week away from becoming permanent custody of the state, at which point we will adopt him.  In the last week, this amazing baby has cut his first teeth, crawled, and signed "milk" for the first time!  I look at the accomplishments of my boys, and I know that they got there by their own work and personal development.  But I know that I helped facilitate that development, and I get the front row seat when they try out new skills.  I love love love being their mom.  I love that my husband agreed that I should stay home with our babies.  I love my mom friends who encourage and inspire me.  I love being a mom :)

My mom redeemed herself

It was Christmas 1991.  My family had driven for two days from our home in Dallas to gather with my mom's family in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where she had grown up.  Everyone came from different directions, and being so far removed from our extended family combined with my childhood shyness meant that I spent most of the holiday watching everyone else.  I remember that year I received a doll who drank water from a bottle, then cried real tears when she was squeezed.  I thought it was brilliant, but my cousins quickly dubbed her "Baby Smiles while She Cries" and mocked my new toy.  Just when everyone was finishing the great present opening, my grandparents announced a surprise.  Each of the five families were to remain where they were as my grandpa disappeared, then returned bearing four identical wrapped boxes.  My sister and I sat with our parents and watched as the boxes were distributed to each of my aunts and uncles, then cries of delight filled the room as my cousins discovered that they had just been gifted a Super Nintendo.  I looked at Liz with confusion until my grandma crossed the room to whisper that our mom didn't want us to have a video game console and she had had to return the one purchased for us.  I was outraged at the injustice.  I already knew what a Super Nintendo was; Brian, who lived two houses down from us and chewed off my Barbies' feet, had one, and he let me play Super Mario Brothers with him, although I secretly preferred Duck Hunt.  Liz and I looked at our parents.  My dad shrugged and looked away, but my mom stuck out her chin and gave the first of many lectures about the evils of video games.  They rot your brain.  They make you lazy.  You would fight over it.  Your dad would spend too much time playing it with you.  I couldn't believe it.

So yes, I grew up in a house without video games.  I read books, rode bikes with my neighborhood friends, memorized all the state capitals, learned origami and French, played with the dollhouse we got for Christmas the following year from our grandparents, and watched cartoons.  When I was in high school, another video game seized the nation: Goldeneye.  People would have parties just to play together.  Boys at school would brag about staying up for an entire weekend playing the James Bond game.  I played it a few times with my friends, but I was terrible at it.  I could never get the right combination of buttons and somehow always wound up in that bathroom stall with no idea how to open the door, so I just had to wait for another player to notice and come kill me.  I blamed my mom for never allowing me to learn on that Super Nintendo.

Finally, I met and married Chris, who grew up in a family that didn't have such strong moral objections to video games.  He brought a Playstation into our marriage, and liked to play it when he came home from work.  At first, I would sit and read or sew while he played, and had to insist that he stop playing Grand Theft Auto (ugh).  Then I got curious, and asked him to teach me how it worked.  We didn't have cable those first few years, and occasionally I got tired of watching my Gilmore Girls DVDs.  I wanted to play the fun games like Burnout with Chris.  He showed me how to work the controller, and found it hilarious to watch me careen around the room instead of sitting completely still with only my thumbs moving.  A few years later, we bought a Nintendo Wii.  You'll like this one, he advised.  You're actually supposed to move around to make it work.  And I did like it.  I liked playing Mario Kart, especially when James figured out how to work his own controller and we could race each other.  The thought of banning him from playing video games never crossed my mind.

And then, this past Christmas, two decades after the original Nintendo disappointment, I opened a wrapped box from my parents.  They sat with the same excited smiles my grandparents had worn twenty years before.  I opened a Nintendo DS.  "Is this for me?" I couldn't believe it.  They nodded.  "I thought you would like it," my mom said.  Okay mom, I forgive you for denying me that Super Nintendo all those years ago.  I probably did have a more well-rounded childhood not spent connected to a video game.  And now that I have so many other interests and concerns, I can relegate my DS to its proper place.  Which is why it took me 3 months to open it and begin playing.

Catching Negative Thoughts

Yesterday I had the privilege to attend a seminar for Parents and Educators of children with Special Needs. I thought it would be helpful as we make decisions for James' future education, like if he should go to Kindergarten in the fall or do another year of preschool. The keynote speaker, Jennifer Krummins, was truly phenomenal. I felt like we could have spent a whole week together, with her giving me advice and encouragement, and it still would not have been enough. Among the many useful topics she discussed about raising a special needs child was concerning negative thoughts that parents think which hinder their ability to help their child. It really stayed with me, as it is a huge problem that I have, and since it is my thoughts and not something I often say aloud, I don't hear positive reinforcement to counter-act it. Jennifer advised writing down the negative thoughts that go through my mind, then listing thoughts that contradict them to help change the recording I keep playing in my head. So here goes:
1. This is my fault.
2. Why is this happening to me/us?
3. I don't know what I am doing.
4. I am a bad mom and shouldn't be allowed to make decisions for my child.
5. There is no place for my child in his school, at church, in public.
6. My son will never have friends, other kids will be mean to him, I can't protect him.

Unfortunately, some of these messages have been reinforced by other people, either by judgmental attitudes that I encounter or directly speaking them to me. My husband (best husband ever, remember?) tells me to ignore these people, but he doesn't seem to understand how they are just echoing thoughts I already have, which then gives those thoughts credibility. He tries to help think positively, but its easier to believe the bad ones. Some things that Chris says:
1. I'm a good mom.
2. We make good decisions about what is best for James, and we know best how to help him.
3. Its not possible to separate James and all the wonderful things about him from his delays, why would we want to?
4. Intervention has helped James already, and he will only continue to share more and more of himself with us as he becomes able.
And this weekend, I was told
5. Parenting a child like James is a privilege, not a problem. The challenges that arise from raising a child with special needs is an opportunity to grow, not a thorn with which to contend.

A woman I spoke with during a break told me that as my son's mother, I am doing what is best for him, and I just need to trust my instincts. I promptly burst into tears and had to walk away, because I couldn't even hear her words as encouragement, it felt like a slap to all my self-criticism and self-doubt. Maybe someday I will be able to offer words like that to another mom who needs to hear someone say something nice about her or her child, but right now I am still so raw and shell-shocked that I can't even imagine being that collected.

Yesterday was a really emotional day for me. It made me confront the things I try so hard to pretend don't bother me.

The Best Husband Ever

I met my husband when we were both 17 years old, so young and foolish in hindsight. At the time, I had a mental list of the attributes that I thought would make a perfect husband, and I was also convinced that I would never meet a man to fulfill them. When Chris and I were first dating, he only possessed a few characteristics from my list, enough to get my attention and make me want to spend time with him; now I'm happy to say that he has grown into a wonderful man and amazing husband. I think many women (not all, we need different things from our spouses) would be really lucky to be married to this man, but I can happily say that he is all mine.  Here are ten of the reasons why:

10. He kills the bugs. And does many other really gross things that I simply cannot stomach.
9. He's handsome. This is near the bottom of the list, because looks aren't everything, but it helps to like what you see when you wake up next to the same person every day.
8. He believes in me. I never thought I would need anyone else to help with my self-esteem, but he gives me confidence when I start to doubt myself.
7. He communicates well. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus...but we've learned to tell each other the things that keep us on the same page.
6. He's funny. This is the first thing I noticed about him. Chris makes me laugh every day, and it really helps get through the stressful moments in life.
5. He's a great father. I knew he would be! He loves his kids and does so much to share himself with them, teaching them how to be wonderful people.
4. He's thoughtful. Every single person on earth is capable of being inconsiderate. So it means alot when Chris covers my weaknesses with his strengths, and helps me without being asked.
3. He has the same values that I do. I cannot stress enough how important this is to make a marriage last. We start with the same foundation about how we see the world and our places in it.
2. He is his own person. After the big stuff is the same, its nice to have differences in tastes and interests. It exposes both of us to new ideas, and gives us our own space to be individuals.
1. He challenges me. The most important thing for me, the characteristic I never thought I would find, is someone that I respect who makes me explore different things and question the status quo. I love having long talks about ideas (though with three kids to chase after, those don't happen as often as I'd like).

I consider myself very lucky to have found at such a young age, a man who completes me and complements me so well. There is no one I would rather spend my life with, whether it is during an ice storm when we lose power or a beautiful sunny day at the beach. Our marriage vows are more true today than the day we first spoke them :)

On Turning 30

Big moments in my life always cause weeks of introspection, looking back and then looking ahead and then back again. Is this where I want to be? who I want to be? and now turning 30 is no exception. I have literally been thinking about this day for the last 6 months. The conclusion is that I am happy to be getting older. I'm proud of who I am today, and the direction my life has taken. I'm glad that living means moving forward. And so these are the things I wrote in a notebook while I waited for James to get done with school, with Winston begging me to let him go down the slide and baby sleeping in his carseat.



A snapshot of me at age 20:
I'm looking pretty good in those size 6 jeans. On my days off, I can (and often do) sleep for 14 straight hours. When it rains, I go to Borders and spend the afternoon reading. When I go out with my friends, we go to the movies, go dancing, sit at restaurants for hours, but everything is decided a moment before it happens. I think I've moved out of my parent's house FOR GOOD, but it will actually take a few tries to stick. I think that my future career will be the greatest accomplishment of my life. I have just finished college and I have the world all figured out.

10 years later, I look at that young woman and sigh. She has NO IDEA.

She wants to see the world, and will become a flight attendant to accomplish her goal. She will see the Pacific Ocean. She will spend a week in Europe with her mother and it will meet her expectations and disappoint her at the same time. Because she thinks that someday she will live abroad, or quite frankly, anywhere but here, but everything that she wants will be in that little city in Ohio.
She doesn't know that the boy she is dating will become her husband in just a few years. That they will buy a house in Canton and fill it with children. That creating a family is something that she's actually good at. She can barely lift a 30 pound box, but one day she will carry a 50 pound child in one arm and a 30 pound child in the other when their strength gives out.
She will learn real love and real patience, not through some cosmic gift, but through painful and persistent trial and error. She will be more content and more confident when she turns 30 than she can even imagine being at 20.

I can't help but quote the Brad Paisley song that plays at the end of "Cars", and not just because I've seen it every day for the last four weeks: "Sometimes when you lose your way, its really just as well. That's when you find yourself."