Happy New Year!

What a nice, snowy, quiet day on the mountain. Everything is wrapped in about three inches of soft, fluffy white stuff. The house smells of chocolate. I made two different kinds of brownies to take to our party tonight. The turtle has a fresh clean tank for 2010. The children are napping, so as to be fresh and rested for the long night of festivity. I am getting ready to go stand in a hot shower for a ridiculously long period of time. Happy New Year to all my friends and family...those I see face to face, and those who live in my computer. May God bless you with an adventure or two in the next twelve months.

Why Bother?

I have a lot of thoughts kicking around in my head today. It has been an uneventful holiday season so far. This is a biggie, as this time of year is usually a signal to some of my children to self destruct, crash and burn, and try to take all of us down with them as they spiral into the frozen dirt. Imagine my surprise when so much of the holiday hoopla has passed, and no fireworks...yet. I am well aware that we are not out of the woods yet. I am also fully anticipating at least one child to tank as soon as school vacation is over. But it has been nice while it has lasted, and I am going to keep on basking in the glow as long as I can.

Yesterday I was pondering how well Lala has done over vacation. She has about a week and a half off, and the first third was spent in the bustle of preparing for Christmas, celebrating, and cleaning up. Then camp got into gear on Sunday, and she has (unwillingly) been going to work at the kitchen with her Dad, helping out as she can, and learning some of the jobs her older siblings usually do. She has been "early to bed and early to rise", with lots of structured activity in between. She has whined, and even wept over her lot, as she would prefer to lay on the couch and watch TV until her eyeballs fall out, or even just sleep all day, rather than WORK. Not that anyone else around here does such things, but she always thinks of herself as a special case. Today I watched her bustle about the kitchen, helping her Dad assemble some sandwiches in a hurry, and although she still gets in the way a bit, she is clearly trying to be helpful, and feels like she is doing something that matters. Tomorrow our campers will leave after lunch, and we will slip back into party and relaxation mode. The final third of vacation will wrap up with a typical Sunday at church and quiet winding down to school on Monday. I don't foresee any major bumps in the road.

Yesterday I was hanging out in the camp kitchen with beloved husband and Lala. It was between meals, and we had a few quiet moments to chat. Lala had made herself a bag of microwave popcorn, and was angrily stuffing it into her mouth piece by piece, to show me how peeved she was because she was grounded and couldn't go off with her sisters and a friend. I asked her why she was angry. She couldn't tell me. I asked her why she was grounded. She couldn't tell me. I asked her how long she was grounded for. She couldn't tell me. I felt so bad for her in her chronic state of confusion, that I decided to GO OVER IT ALL AGAIN. Slowly, painfully, excruciatingly, we went over the series of bad choices that had landed her on extreme grounding. Then we went over the string of bad choices she made that had further compounded and extended her grounding. We reviewed the rules, and discussed the warnings that had been issued. We talked over her debts, and why she owed money (restitution for damages), and how she would pay them.

When all was said and done, she admitted that none of it really mattered to her because:

• She was never going to get off grounding because she would never make good choices.
• She was never going to pay off her debts because she would just keep making new ones.
• She thought we were all really mean, and she wished she had gotten a nicer family.

She did concede that her sisters didn't find themselves in a similar predicament, that they actually seemed pretty happy. Her explanation? We like them better, and we are much nicer to them. Though she did concede that they had to obey the same rules, and pay restitution when they destroyed things. Hmmm. Makes perfect sense to me.

At one point, when we were discussing her desire for a nicer family, I just broke into a monologue, in my sweetest, kindest Mom voice. I told her that when she laid down in her bed at night, she should thank God for giving her the most perfect Mom for her. That she was so lucky to get such a stubborn, ornery Mom like me, that WOULD NEVER GIVE UP ON HER, no matter how silly she might be. I also told her HOW LUCKY I am, to have her for my daughter, because she always makes my life so INTERESTING. I thanked her for giving me so many interesting things to do, like emailing her teachers, and scouring school websites for missing assignments. Like watching her every minute, to be sure she wasn't doing anything too..."interesting". And all the while, she was shaking her head back and forth harder and harder, trying not to grin. As I rattled on and on, she kept saying "No! You would LIKE it if I stopped! You would be HAPPY if I stopped." And yet again, I realize that this child never, ever wants me to like anything about her, and never, ever wants to make me happy in any way, shape, or form.

Right on cue, Boo galloped into the kitchen and demanded to know what was so funny, and what were we laughing about? I didn't even have time to come up with an answer, when she went on in an accusatory and suspicious tone. "You and Dad are so weird. You're so HAPPY all the time lately. It's not normal...but I like it!" And with that, she galloped back out the door, leaving her father and me laughing, and Lala huffing indignantly, and declaring, "I think you LIKE it when I'm in trouble!"

Last night I was laying in my bed, listening to the wind rip the roof and the tree branches off, and turned on the TV to keep me company, since beloved was snoring already. There was this horrible show on about hoarders. I say horrible in regard to the subject matter, not about the show itself. There was this horrible woman living in a hell hole of her own making. They actually found two of her missing cats, dead, in the piles of refuse. Her son and daughter had arranged the whole intervention because they couldn't stand to see their aging mother living like this, plus her house was going to be condemned. It had been going on for years and years. The daughter had actually raised her brother, because child services had removed him from the house when he was a child. The mother had never cleaned up the house and gotten him back. The whole time everyone was working, the mother sat out on the porch in a rocking chair and *itched about how this was all someone else's fault, namely the daughter, who seemed to have done a great deal for her ungrateful, mean mother. The clinical psychologist on the case said something to the effect of, "As long as she blames other people for her situation, she will never have the impetus to change."

When I heard that, it dropped like a stone into my brain. Lala wakes up every day and blames everyone else for her situation. She doesn't even care if her accusations and blame casting make sense. She really believes we are a mean family. She believes we like her sisters better, and treat them nicer. She wishes she could have gotten lucky, and gotten a "better" family. She thinks her teachers at school are mean too. She thinks they like the other students better. She thinks her classmates' grades are higher and they get along with one another, because they are "lucky". Why would a girl like her even bother to try? Her family hates her, her teachers hate her...everyone hates her.

Loc me up...and throw away the key!

Some of the fall out from our adults only vacation in early November, is only now becoming evident. As mentioned previously, one of our children had some particularly spectacular misbehavior. None of it was particularly straightforward or overt, being the passive aggressive gal she is, but it was spectacular none the less. What I cannot fathom is the pure meanness of so much of it. Here is one such lingering tale.

One of our daughters has locs, which she has been growing out for a couple of years. In the beginning I tended them, but over time she has taken over most of their care. Though a low maintenance hairdo, they do require some work, and they most especially need to be kept clean and moisturized, especially if you want to avoid smelling like a wet dog. Passive aggressive girl had the most impressive locs of all, but she refused to do one lick of work to keep them, so eventually she opted for a tiny afro that she could care for on her own, and most importantly, did not stink. Though she does not have locs of her own, she does know how to "lock" them, a tedious process of tightening up each loc, about every six weeks or so.

While we were away on vacation girl-with-lovely-locs came out and asked adult-in-charge if she would have time that afternoon to tighten her locs. Adult said, "Why, yes." Then passive aggressive girl said, "Sister, I'll do your locs for you," in her sweetest voice. Loc girl was somewhat surprised at the offer, as PA girl rarely offers to do anything nice for her. She even made sure to clarify to PA girl that she had no means to pay her for doing the chore, but PA girl sweetly stuck to her story that SHE WANTED to do this for Loc girl. At this point all three sisters came to an accord. PA girl would tighten Loc Girl's head in one hour, and adult-sister-in-charge gave the plan her stamp of approval.

Time lapse to one hour later. Loc girl appears with latch hook in hand, but PA girl is lounging on the couch. She says to Loc girl, "I'm feeling soooo lazy...I don't think I'll do your hair after all." And here is where it all breaks down. Loc girl is understandably peeved, but decides to accept this and do her own hair. However, adult sister is disgusted with the turn of events, and decides that PA girl will live up to her promise. Adult sister forces PA girl to make good on her promise, and Loc girl's beautiful locs go on the chopping block. Poor adult sister does not understand that she has just placed the tools for revenge and ultimate meanness into the hands of PA girl, in the form of a latch hook and scissors.

Now there are many ways you can do a crappy job tightening a head of locs. You can be careless, and not tighten some locs, leaving lots of messy loose growth at the scalp. Or you can overtighten a loc, making it thin and vulnerable to breakage. You can "accidentally" tighten two locks together, essentially forming a knot. PA girl did all of these things, and it gets worse. Sometimes as locs grow out, the loose new growth tries to loc to the loc next to it. We call these siamese twins, and we do surgery to separate them. It often just involves gently pulling the two locs apart, winding any loose shorter hairs into the proper loc, and carefully tightening as usual. Sometimes the locs can be stubborn, and no amount of gentle pulling will suffice. Here is where I pull the two locs apart as far as I can, then I take scissors and snip maybe the first two or three hairs of the connection. This is usually enough to cause the whole connection to dissolve, and then we proceed as usual. Since we all lose hairs every day, I figure the snipping of a handful during the tightening process is not much different.

The sad part of the story is that PA girl got scissor happy. Every time she found two locs that were even a tiny bit connected, she pulled out her trusty scissors and hacked to the scalp. Initially this did not show up, but as the weeks went by, Loc girl brought up her concerns with more and more frequency. Her head was a mess. Untightened locs were getting matted at the scalp. Overtightened locs felt weak and thin. But the strangest thing of all, was all this growth of short hair all over her scalp. It was like she was growing an afro amongst her locs. And she was, because PA girl had done more than badly tighten her locs, she had given her a haircut too.

Yesterday I spent several hours repairing Loc girl's locs. I had to carefully separate each loc AND the loose hair around it, grease my fingers up with hair product designed for this job, twist the hair around the shaft of the loc, and then hold it securely while I tightened it to the scalp. Then I had to retwist, resmooth, and clip into place. When I was done, her scalp was clean of fuzzies, and each loc was neat and uniform. I have no doubt that I will have to repeat the process several times, until all the loose growth has fully incorperated itself back into the corresponding loc that it had been chopped out of. I have hope that enough of each original loc remains connected, to allow the whole head to repair itself.

Now the thing that burns me, is that PA girl is delighted with the whole situation. She LOVES that she burned her sister so badly. She LOVES that she stuck it to adult-sister-in-charge. She LOVES that she forced me to spend long hours repairing the damage. For her, it was a win, win, win situation. She won't LOVE that I plan to charge her hourly for the repair job. How much do y'all think my time is worth?

Picnicking in Hurricanes

Over at Watching the Waters, Corey recently wrote an excellent post about finding joy in our current parenting predicament. She concluded that it was indeed possible to find joy amidst the chaos and frustration, though to be honest, some of our children don't always inspire joyous emotions. The thing that has stuck with me for the last day or so though, was her analogy. She compared living with traumatized children to enjoying a picnic while watching the sky for rain clouds. It's an awesome word picture, and she apparently is one of those lucky people that can actually do that. Or maybe she's trained herself to be able to. The thing that has been rattling around in my head is this; how do we train our other children to enjoy the picnic while watching for rain?

I'm thinking of one of my children in particular. This child wholly embraced the idea of adopted siblings, and quickly made friends and opened their heart to their new sisters. Life was like a big family picnic, until the skies opened up, the wind began to howl, and the lightning tore across the blackened sky. Over and over the day started out sunny, and we all tumbled out the door with a blanket, and picnic basket, and Frisbee. Over and over the frightening storms came, leaving everyone running for cover. Eventually this child gave up on picnics. They said, "No thank you, I prefer not to go out today. I believe it may rain, and I am tired of getting wet. I will do something else, while you all go out and try your picnic again."

Now the weather has improved a bit. We actually go on picnics that don't always get rained out. Sure I still have to keep a close eye on the skies, and it does put a damper on my own enjoyment at times. Sometimes I get cranky and a bit resentful, but on most days I can deal with it. One thing that really bothers me though, is that this one child never wants to come on picnics with us. It makes me sad to remember how much they used to enjoy basking in the sun, eating portable food, throwing the Frisbee. To be honest, all of my homegrown children have become a bit "picnic-shy". The others will still come if I ask them to, but I see their eyes scanning the sky, and they seem ready to run for cover, even as they try to enjoy themselves.

I wonder about this often, but it is idle wondering. There is no going backward, unliving years already gone past. Without a doubt, the choices we made have changed the courses of our sons' and daughters' lives. Maybe those lives would have been better, maybe worse. Without a doubt we have made many mistakes, and our children have suffered because of it. But we also work extremely hard, and make huge sacrifices in the hope that all of their lives will be better.

We live in a culture that idolizes its children. I know my adopted children come from an entirely different culture, but I am not speaking for that culture right now. Our culture says that our children should always head out into sunshine, laden with good things to eat, and fun pastimes to fill their hours. They should always be accompanied by smiling, relaxed adults, who are ready to play with them and cater to their every want and need. There should never be clouds in the sky, so no one should ever have to watch for them, least of all the children. I can see the foolishness in this picture. At the same time, I can see the wisdom of trying to avoid picnicking in a hurricane.

Still Rolling...

This is an update on my post from here. Currently we are still rolling in much the same manner. I have to admit that I have sung the opera a few times, and fallen into the trap of caring more about her school work than she does. But as I felt the ulcers begin to form in my stomach, I took a deep breath and stepped back. Plus the enormously helpful teachers, also working on their ulcers, told me to take a deep breath and step back. At the moment this child is failing three classes, and is on the edge with at least two more. They are stepping back as well, and letting her see what happens when she refuses to take help, and refuses to do her work. They hope that a dose of failure may inspire her. Truly, I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so. She hasn't cared one bit about her failures in the past. She also doesn't care one bit that she's been grounded for so long she doesn't remember normal privileges. Not that we don't try, she just works really hard to stay grounded.

It makes me sad to see her do so poorly. It makes me sad to see her teachers running themselves ragged trying to help her. At the same time, I really believe it is so very intentional. It is attachment disorder behavior to the nth degree, and perhaps FASD, but mostly it's a lot of good old fashioned laziness and spite. I find myself scratching my head and wondering...she says she hates it here, she says she can't wait to leave, yet she seems happy about failing and adding another year to her sentence here. So what do we have there? Lack of cause and effect thinking, or very careful cause and effect thinking?

I know she is frightened by her looming adulthood. I know she would rather stay at home all day, and ride bikes, and play in the woods. I know she wants to watch Disney movies, and read Beverly Cleary books, and wear twirly dresses. She says she wants grown up privileges and responsibilities, but we see her reject them every time. So we all ask her, do you want to be a seventh grader forever? I think she's shouting, "Yes!" Quite honestly, I think she would like to be demoted back to about third grade, because seventh grade isn't all that much fun.

What We Do For Fun

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