What's Up

For the last few days, every time I shut my eyes, even to blink - all I could see was my Monkey's little body falling, head first, into the ground.

Now that is easing off a little bit.

Whatever I can give thanks to for that can have it.

It still makes breathe a little funny to think about how badly hurt she could be. She should be, frankly, if she hadn't landed on this kind of stuff.

When I reached her, she was sitting up!
Crying and with the wind knocked out of her but she was sitting up!
I was so freaked out, eight foot dive into the ground and she was sitting up.
She should have had a concussion and critical neck and back injuries! At least that is what I was expecting.

The pediatrician at the Emergency Room said that there was just no comparison between kids who fall on the rubber stuff and on almost any other surface.

Well, I am a believer and would gladly become the official spokesperson for the compressed rubber playground matting industry.

****

Our 16 year old son wrote the test for his learner's license and passed it yesterday!
So proud of him!
Not even for the passing part, simply for the being calm and mature and not having even the most minor of meltdowns in approaching it.
He is a perfectionist and has a lot of anxiety about this kind of thing and he handled it all so well.
Cabana Boy (my husband) can barely wait to take him out and let him drive in the newest vehicular addition to the family.
Meet Smartie:My husband is deliriously happy with his new Smart car.
And I think it is the cutest thing on wheels.
It seats only two people but is very roomy, my husband is 6"2 and great for commuting and running errands in the city and incredibly cheap to run.
This is a diesel version which won't be available in North America anymore because the American market does not seem to want anything but gasoline fueled vehicles. Diesel is very inexpensive. To fill the car cost $5 and it will give (so far nearly 200km) to the tankful.

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My lovely oldest daughter is still struggling in the throes of being 13 and the pounding surf of waves of hormones rocking through her.
It is tough on everyone, her mood swings and unhappiness but toughest of all on her. She tries hard not to be plain nasty and miserable and likes to spend huge quantities of time, alone in her basement bedroom.

It has been tough enough, that my oldest son talked to me about it. Concerned that this was not a "normal" thing.
I smiled, I couldn't help it!
He had been H*ll on wheels for nearly 5 years. I reassured him that it was pretty normal and what he had gone through (and put me through) was very similar.
He took a deep breath, sighed and looked into my eyes.
"I am so sorry."

Who knew I would ever hear such a thing from him?
Oh how he seemed to despise me during those early teen years.
Wow.

****

Buddy seems to be on a fairly even keel these days.
He really is the most marshmallowy of people. Soft and sweet natured (I will miss that a great deal if it disappears during his adolescence), it tears at my heart to think of him ever have been neglected or harmed. There are moments when I am filled with such rage about it.
Not often, because those experiences are really not about me. But damn!
If you knew him, you would be blown away by his resiliance and his fluffy headed ducklingness.

The amazing and wonderful news is that he has made friends.
Real friends.
It took him a long time to figure out where he fit in with the other boys in our homeschool circle but it was certainly worth the wait. I think he is just more ready now, to believe that this world he has been living in for over a year is the real world. That it is safe to make connections with other people.

Last night was incredibly special.
He and his younger sister talked for the first time ever about their memories of their birth Mom and the different people they have lived with before they got here.

Let me emphasize that.
THE FIRST TIME they have ever talked about anything like this.

They play together very well and a lot, giggle, run around and be silly or sometimes argue but they have not every spoken about their shared experiences with each other, on their own.

I have been encouraging it for the last year. Not pushing, just letting them know that they could. Telling them that their stories will be very different, even though they have both been through the same situations and usually together.

They were sitting at the table doing crafts after supper and I could hear them telling each other things, sharing their feelings.

I look at these words I am typing and know that there is no way that they convey the miracle of it all.

But it is.

****

Monkey is having a lot of trouble going to sleep at night right now.
She will be rigid with unexpressed rage and all sorts of other emotion.
Trapped with it, because she has so few skills and so little practice in letting it out.
What an inspiring kid. And frustrating too.
Make no bones about that.
In the past month she has been able to drive me crazier, faster than anyone else in the house, as she pendulums back and forth between what she knew before she got here and trying to do what she things she is supposed to now.

I would say that watching the movie Uncle Buck was the trigger for this round of upheaval. That was nearly three weeks ago and the ending scene, with a mother and a daughter, previously estranged, embracing and the mother saying everything is going to be different now...well that set her off.

Which is good.
Better being expressed than not.

But it has all been exacerbated by the finally seeing Obie again last week.
We haven't seen him, nearly all summer. Not our choice. But he is a fourteen year old kid with a substance abuse issue and we leave it up to him to contact us now.

That is tough enough. Monkey worries about him and is sad that we can't save him and fix him and she does seem to really understand why that can't happen. She is also angry that he uses drugs and alcohol but feels that she can't express it to him, because than he might disappear from her life.

God.
She is only 8.

Birth Mom using Obie as a go between to try and see Monkey and Buddy, isn't a good thing either.

Cabana Boy and I are trying very hard to not respond through Obie, to not use him, but it is hard.

Right this minute, I don't think we have to plan much for her actually contacting us through the post adoption registry at social services - but never say never.

But on Sunday night, she had Obie call us to find out how she didn't know how to find the post adoption services.

Allow me some bitterness here.
She could figure out the system well enough to put Obie into permanent full time care when he was 10 but not this?

I don't think she is ready yet to actually pull this off by following the rules and we have decided and took Monkey and Buddy's opinions into consideration too, so they are a part of that decision, that if she isn't following the rules than we don't have anything to do with her.

Whew?
A lot huh?

And I haven't even left for my two nights away yet.

That will be interesting.