Life

It is my own fault, but I am tired out. Tired of cooking, setting and serving, and cleaning up while they all disappear. Tired of doing laundry that ends up on the floor, or that will sit in baskets until I find the time to fold them(at which point they end up back on the floor) I am tired of the demands. and the one who needs the most care demands it. most of the others demand what they want also. my own fault. but this too shall pass. and it is going to pass in a hurry. I am one. they are ten. I am mother, not servant. You do not order me, it is I who should order you. I dont generally order. I ask nicely. its how I am. but mostly no one hears. so starting today things change. there will be please and thank you. there will be clearing of the table. there will be helping out around the house. I tried a chore box where they pick chores but they only wanted to do certain ones not other ones and then they wanted to do it over and over again. well you know, the bathroom sink doesnt need to be cleaned 15 times in one day while the laundry waits for a week. I even implemented a cash system based on stickers. each chore is worth a sticker. the stickers later translate to cash. but only when you want something. I dont give cash because we have theives in the house. I dont mind the stickers and cash part. but the how we decide what needs doing part needs some work. there was a chore chart that changed daily but that has since disappeared. I dont know quite HOW I will do it but I WILL DO IT. it has to be easier to train them all to help out than it is to do it all myself. someone suggested letting them do their own laundry. well I dont trust my boys to use my fancy expensive washing machine. they cant even take good care of their OWN stuff. they can however keep their clothes put away and or in the laundry room. they can take the clean clothes and fold them. Natasha knows how to do laundry and Chrysta. they need to step in and do more of it. Chrysta and Cody have traditionally done the dishes at night but there needs to be more help with that too. I need to find a system that works. and make it stick. I am tired of taking care of things other people are fully capable of doing. Most of them CANT take care of Sophie, so they need to do some of the other things so that I am not so wiped out taking care of her.

Sophie is another thing on my mind. she is not walking. no where near. I really thought she would be walking by now. it is hard to have to take her to the bathroom all the time. most kids take themselves at this age. and even as toddlers learning they do MOST of the work, you just tell them when. With Sophie she announces she has to go(but is working on learning to ask someone to take her not just say I HAVE TO GO)then she needs to physically be taken to the bathroom, lifted, pants down, set on toilet, clean her, lift her, pants up, wash hands, put her back down to play and move on. this gets to be a lot when you are the only one doing it. occasionally Eric or Chrysta or Cody will take her but mostly its me. she goes in the morning, after lunch, after nap, before dinner, after dinner,(sometimes after dinner IS just before bed) before bed. we have no date for her first surgery. and no clue as to when or if there will be further surgeries. I suppose once we get to the new house we can use her chair more and that will help a little. but she needs so much help and I get tired doing it all. she cant bring herself to table for lunch or dinner. she cant get out of bed. she cant dress or undress. she cant toilet herself. she cant shower herself.or put on/take off AFOs and/or shoes. getting anything done with her is impossible because she cant sit in cart, and I cant get anything I need if she is in stroller or wheelchair. putting her in, taking her out, getting out some sort of wheels for her and putting her back in and putting wheels away takes longer than the drive to get there. we do walk sometimes but its been rainy and cold. she is very cute. very sweet. and she doesnt want to be a burden but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed at the amount of needs she has. I would actually prefer diapers so I could eliminate the bathroom demands and change her on my schedule but she is fully trained. Oh I know she has come SO FAR. she has learned to roll over, sit up, kneel, stand, crawl, do stairs, feed self, play independently. I think those things are awesome. but sometimes it gets to be a lot when you think of all the things she doesnt do. and there is no help. I am looking forward to her going to kindergarten so someone else can take care of her needs for awhile each day. but thats months away so I better buck up and get used to it.

A house

we have been looking for the perfect house for months. We started in about January. we have seen 3-6 houses just about every week since then. We saw many too small houses, too big houses, too little land houses, not quite right houses. We saw this one house early on and went back to it about 4 times. every time becoming more and more enamored with it. It sits on 55 acres with a loooooong driveway. fenced in back yard for the dogs. deck. big kitchen. enough bedrooms. enough space inside and out. little covered porch on the front. The last time we were there there was one lone Robin singing on a tree for me. that clinched it in my mind. but we kept looking. we found another house that would totally work but the only problem is that it wouldnt work for long. As Sophie changes and grows and as she goes through surgeries and times when she is unable to walk it just wouldnt work then. and we went back again to this house on 55 acres. we even brought in a contractor to see about doing some stuff. In the end, after looking at probably a hundred houses in the duluth area we decided on one of the first ones we saw. the one with the loooooong driveway. We kept looking for another house that offered us that convenient location, that privacy, that much house space, that much yard space and we just couldnt find it. so we are movin to Hermantown. Close to friends who are already looking forward to having us so much closer, and we are looking forward to being close to them. only 5 miles from my family. close to shopping. close to the city and all that it offers in the way of culture, dining, activities, and attractions. and yet it sits on 55 acres so you are surrounded by trees and nature and privacy. We are planning to close in July. here is a link to a listing that has some photos of the house. http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5425-Morris-Thomas-Rd-Hermantown-MN-55810/61593751_zpid/

Day 14: A website you like to visit.

I go to many websites but some of my favorites are Reecesrainbow.org and www.147millionorphans.com

Both regard orphans. One helps to find adoptive families to adopt kids with speical needs. one helps those left behind by selling products to support those children left as orphans. My favorite tshirt says 147million orphans.....feed 1.

I have a heart for orphans. We adopted 7 of them. Many people say to me we just cant afford the high costs of adoption. it isnt that we couldnt raise one, we just cant pay the fees involved to get one home. and yet they drive a fancy car and buy a new boat or big gas grill, etc. We chose to forgo those things. we used our credit cards, savings, donations, and many people do fundraisers(we didnt). we drive older cars, our only boat is a canoe. we dont own a gas grill. we dont drink lattes. I want to shake people and say you can afford two fancy cars and a boat but you cant afford to save the life of a child? really? perhaps those arent the kinds of people who should be adopting, but I so tire of hearing well we just dont have that kind of money laying around. NO ONE DOES! do you think we had the money laying around to go adopt FOUR at one time? no. absolutely not. but if you are willing to go into hoc for a boat, why not a child? get a loan. get a grant. get your church to help you(alexis you have an awesome church go get that baby!)fundraise. use your credit card. stop buying lattes and save the money. it doesnt all come due at once, it comes due in bits and pieces. first the home study. then dossier costs. dossier mailing costs. then comes the bulk of it in facilitator and travel costs. then a wee bit more at the embassy and you are done! there are so many deserving kids who NEED a home. a place to know love and family. A place to grow with guidance. If you see a child on reecesrainbow.org that moves you to adopt, www.147millionorphans.com also has a fundraising kit. you can sell their tshirts, they sell them to you at cost allowing you to save the difference for your adoption. there are 147 MILLION kids without homes and families and people who love them. Isnt every child deserving of love? maybe you or someone you know can make a difference in the lives of some of these children. Maybe you will buy from 147millionorphans.com maybe you will donate to a child or a family on reecesrainbow.org maybe you will adopt one or more kids and make them your own. maybe you will tell everyone you know about these two websites and ask them to help too. Every child deserves a famiy. a home. love. can you deny them?

how

how do I teach kids to be organised? they have no clue and they just dont CARE. so I said I am not going to do their laundry anymore. I wash dry and fold. its their job to put away. to me this translates put the proper things int he proper place. for them it translates to stick it all SOMEWHERE...ANYWHERE. so then when they want....say..underwear...they arent in the right spot and so they toss everything around and dig until they find underwear. then walk all over everything until mom says clean your room then they toss it all in the wash. I spent the morning cleaning and doing laundry and you wouldnt have a clue I even bothered. they just have no clue. I asked them to clean out under the beds. they cleaned as far as you can see standing up. I asked them to clean under the table they just allocated it to different piles under the table! I am fed up with being the only one who cleans up. Eric tries to be useful but lets be fair he works every day of the week(yes weekends and holidays too)and often has little more than 3 waking hours at home in a day. The kids just show up at the table and wait to be served. they eat and then they leave. leaving me to do it all. this is not going to continue. when we move the movers will move everything. dirty diapers trash empty soda cans. they dont choose WHAT to move, only how to move it. its our job to clean out and clean up. and I want to get at it NOW! but no one seems to get how to help. AAARRGHHH!!!

why?

Why does a boy who willingly and purposefully destroys most everything he puts his hands on sobs his heart out because his balloon flew away!

Day 13: A photo that makes you laugh

I try to do something new for Eric's birthday every year. sometimes its a balloon. sometimes we all pretend we forgot and then surprise we find a cake hidden in the garage. one year it was groucho glasses. It was cheap fun. and full of funny memories. See for yourself.

Day12 Something you dont leave the house without

KIDS! even a trip to the grocery store has seven or eight or ten kids saying I wanna go! I wanna go! sometimes I take this one or that one. or two or three. or none. Depends on the day. Depends on where I am headed and what my intended purpose is when I get there. I took the boys shoe shopping last weekend and the next time I suggest such a thing I hope someone will suggest that a root canal would be more fun. the girls shopping are all about gimme gimme gimme. i want i want i want. and ohhh how bout this? can we have this? whyyyyyy? the boys were all about Im hungry. are we done yet? can we go now? I want to go home. we arent ever going to get home! we are stuck in here forever! I dont like lunch, sulk I dont like those shoes, sulk. so as one can imagine I prefer to go alone. but usually when I leave the house its on a mission that involves kids. eye doctor. dentist. specialist appt. philly appt. regular doctor. school event. school. so the one thing I take with me most often is kids. 1 or 2 or 6 or 10 just depends on the day and the activity.

GRRR! AGAIN!!

we had our hearts set on a piece of land and were making plans and oops we forgot to tell you there is a pending offer and that driveway is actually an easement. so we moved on from that and had 2 other plans. one worked out to be TOO MUCH MONEY to fix it up. on to plan C. making plans. thinkin we will go look at the land one more time. Call agent and find out that oops that land is sold. they didnt mark it pending so all this time we have been planning and thinking it was already sold. we are really mad and frustrated and disappointed and wondering if we should even bother moving up there. we have been looking at properties for a good 3-4 months. and no one will survey their land. so you never know exactly where the lines are and how much property is included. its very frustrating.

Maybe we just shouldnt move there. maybe this is the universe saying there is something somewhere else for us. I dont know. we could stay here. but that would suck. we could go to Ukraine for the summer. no. just kidding on that one. We are disappointed that we wont see summer in Ukraine this year. we really did enjoy Ukraine. but I dont see a trip to Ukraine in the cards.

Eric is on call today so I didnt really get a chance to talk to him but I know he is feeling the need to move on from his job. it is just a question of WHERE. do we keep trying in Duluth when its clearly not working? should we give up and look elsewhere? where? Im all for california! or texas! but I dont know that Eric would be too keen on that. and of course there is always the jerk who will want to make things difficult but I really think at this point the kids are old enough to have their say in court. at 14 one child hates going to dads. at 16 one child doesnt care either way. and he sure doesnt go out of his way to see them but a couple times a year so why couldnt he do that with us living further away? but he would be a dick just because he could. thats how he works. father of the year and all that.

so where will we live? where will we move? when will we move? who knows.

I am sad

It gets tiresome taking care of people who dont trust you. and also those that you cant trust. two of my kids have substantial needs. they need help in a lot of their activities of daily life. They need help with their equipment, bathroom, getting to the table, eating, dressing or undressing, getting in or out of bed, brushing teeth, washing hands, well a lot. the only thing they do independently consistantly is play. and even then they WANT me to do it for them. I have to draw the line somewhere though. so if you want that doll dressed then you have to find a way to do it yourself. anyways, these two are very sweet and loving but it is clear that they dont trust. constant reproach for how you are doing things, constant fear that you will hurt them or drop them(I have never under any circumstances dropped them). they can be demanding and needy. and what do you get in return? complaints, fears, worries. while its sad that they should feel that way it gets a bit wearing on me who does the bulk of their cares. a warm meal that doesnt include getting up 16 times or a nights sleep thats uninterrupted, or a shower that doesnt include crying over nothing, or faking laughter so that it appears you think its funny while its really just an excuse to pull yourself away from my touch.

then you have the ones who cant be trusted. I "planted" a nickel. it wasnt 15 minutes before it was gone. INSIDE a container IN MY BATHROOM. someone knows that I have money there, it isnt a secret anyways. mostly pennies. but I knew someone had been digging in it because every time I put a quarter in it disappears. One child has a history of stealing. So does another. one admitted it but the other returned it. so who did it? I am sad that I cant trust my kids. that they would steal me blind. I am sad that my kids dont trust me when I am their biggest defender and advocate.