Planning Yule Gifts

I started shopping the other night.  Fingers tapping across the keyboard; totally my way to shop.  I have to finish the littles tonight and then Fiona is up next.  Two calls ago she asked me if I would buy her a laptop.  I always have a tough time with the logic and intelligent part of my brain vs the parental love connection in these instances. 

I am not sure I can write this sensibly.  If you have not lived this dynamic it may seem pretty cut and dried, and truly it is not.  I know that my daughter has serious behavioral issues that likely mean that she would trash a lap top in a rage in short order.  I know that without adequate supervision she probably can not even navigate a laptop successfully and get it to do what she wants it to do. I have bought her untold numbers of personal stereos, boom boxes, ipods and mp3 players over the year. I don't think any of them have lasted more than a couple of months.

If it was one of my kids who live here at home, it would be a no brainer.  I would say they were not ready for the thing they were asking for and that would be that.  But Fi is different.  She is not with me day in and day out.  The way she feels loved is through looking at her possessions.  Through being able to say to a peer or a staff member: "My family gave me this." she feels loved and feels important.  She looks to tangible possessions as proof of love and of  the constancy of our presence in her life.  And I get that.  If I had the kind of life that my daughter has had, I think I would feel exactly the same way.  There is also a level of parental guilt that I feel over Fiona.  Part of me will always feel that I did not do enough, try hard enough or whatever with her.  All the professional evals detailing the scope of my daughter's challenges are not enough to diminish that kernel of inadequacy that I always feel about her.

So the next thing I knew, the kids were in bed and I was cruising the internet looking for refurbished laptops.  Which i found pretty reasonably.  It would still be an expensive gift, but I could juggle things and make it happen.  I did, in a moment of clarity, email Amazing Jane and tell her what I had found and ask her opinion and this week she called me.

She said that the situation is more complex and laid it out for me. The social worker is a good one and has not dropped the ball. Fiona has a chance to have a laptop. The problem is that the school has safety rules that preclude any student tapping into their internet network. Students are also prohibited from using social network sites because of a myriad of issues that make sense to me at one level and none at another. But it is what it is. So in reality, if Fiona wanted to download music or print a picture, she could not do it on her laptop. She would have to put it on a flash drive, go to staff and they would have to do this on the school server.  Jane said the school has been reluctant to have this conversation with Fi because it will be hard. She will be angry and have behavioral issues and this time of year is notoriously difficult for her anyway.  They are sort of being ostriches and putting their heads in the sand and hoping that she will forget about it.

And she might.  This week when she called, she had her clothing sizes and wants clothes for Yule.  Clothes I can do. And we share a love of fashion and a strong addiction passion for shoes and boots so this will be a lot of fun.  I hope that when she looks at them she can feel how much I love her.

Saturday re-cap

A dear friend and former coming of age mentor for Rob captured this picture of him at the coffee house last evening.  I am so glad as my teeny little digital camera doesn't do well in low light situations and you can tell from the strings of white lights behind him that the light was less than ideal for a lower level camera.

Today was a busy day and predictably filled with spats from littles who were up way later than usual last evening.  That they slept till nearly 7 a.m. didn't negate being out till after 10 p.m. LOL  But I am willing to deal with whiny kid fall out because not only did both KC and Rob perform, but I have a really strong belief that families are whenever possible all there to cheer each other on.  I want my kids to always have each others backs, and if they are not there to share the joys, how will they have the strength and courage to share the lows?

We did our shopping, our banking, made a trip to the laundramat to wash Rob's comforter and visited the library. Then we came home and I cleaned the kitchen and made an apple pie.  We had a last minute invite for a play date for the littles but I begged off.  I know I can handle them whiny, but I don't necessarily think others should have to! LOL

It was Observation Day at dance class.  Once every 6 weeks or so the parents get to see what the kids have been working on.  KC has freaked about this over the past 2 years. Today, didn't faze him in the least.  He is so happy dancing. I love to see it.   Miss Lissa on the other hand, has become "KC Number 2" as the dance teacher put it. Actually not as bad as KC though by a long shot.  She cried for the first part of the Observation time but was able to cuddle with me for a bit and then go back for tap.

Tomorrow is church, and then Rob is volunteering at an ecology center with a friend until choir and youth group.  I love that the kids are busy in such positive ways. 

My heart sings!

I can barely carry a tune but tonight was a delightful musical melange!  Our teen youth group hosted a coffee house and there was the most amazing talent shared. From 6 year olds to senior citizens, there were all kinds of music shared.  (and also a recitation of the poem "The Highwayman" which I remember making my mother read over and over to me when I was about 9 or 10 years old!)

I loved all the music, but I was mighty partial to two of the acts.  KC and Rob both performed.  The fact that KC performed willingly was enough of a gift, the fact that he was happy both before and after doing it, priceless.  He played "The Bells of Michelmas" on his recorder and aquitted himself very well.

But Rob.  Rob played a piece that he has written at his piano lessons with some assistance from his teacher.  It is powerful and so beautiful.  I have heard it once before on our keyboard here at home.  I have got to get my son a piano.  He has talent and the difference in sound and tone on the piano tonight vs our keyboard--well there is no contest.  I can tell that all his teen passion and feelings go into his music and I am so grateful that he has this outlet to express himself in a way that is creative and positive.

At the intermission the teen choir director came up and shared with K and I how much the folks who work with the teen choir love him.  She said he is the kind of student that music teachers dream of having. They are amazed that he has only studied piano about a year.  He has an ability to accompany with percussion instruments and they have utilized him with a large drum (which he did tonight) and apparently also with shaker type instruments.  Frankly I can't play music so much of what Rebecca was saying about his talent, I only dimly understand.  That's okay!  I can and am so proud of him and that's all I need to understand.  And all Rob has to know too.

The night was further brightened by sharing the evening with our dear friends and the kids godparents, G and W.  Special night. Special people. Special music.

Sleigh Bells Ring . .

I started Yule shopping last night after the kids were in bed. Well most of the kids were in bed; Rob was still up watching the Bruins game. LOL  I am so glad that most of my shopping can be done via the internet these days.  It is so hard with our schedules and the ages of the kids to find time to sneak out to stores.  So by my bedtime, Chet and Rob were done and Lissa  and KC begun.  I have to do KC and Lissa fully this weekend and I probably will hit stores for Fiona because I have all her clothing sizes and for that I can bring the kids with me. 

I imagine that some super sale will happen the day after Thanksgiving and I would save big time had I waited. But we hope to take the tribe into the big city for a visit to an art museum that day and I have no intention of standing in lines at the crack of dawn on that day.  There is no monetary value for having time together as a family!

Candy Art!

Because I know everyone wonders what to do with the wrappers from all that Halloween candy. . . Because simply throwing them in the trash is so ordinary. . . I present an alternative.  This is art made primarily from candy wrappers by KC.  It is "Candy Land" in its most literal sense. He envisioned a factory that made the tootsie rolls and used bits of other wrappers to make the cars, the sun etc.

And this is  mine  (because I am so mature, right?  LOL)  Tootsie roll skyscrapers, a skittles garden, a farmer with fruit on his head a la Carmen Miranda and my especial fave--the starburst tree!  Silly but fun!

The Eyes Have It

Rob's eyes, that is.  He has glaucoma, and was diagnosed very early in life.  His pressure test was today and I am always a little crazy inside waiting to hear the results.  Glaucoma is not curable, it is something you "manage." And management can have varying rates of success.  Part of the success depends on early identification of the disease. We have that.  Part of it depends on consistantly taking the meds.  We have that covered too.

But there are variables we can't control that will impact his ocular pressure.  Growth spurts, for instance can have an impact.  There are other things too I suspect that doctors will find out in years to come.  All I know is that I want my beautiful son with soulful brown eyes to be able to see the world. 

Today, the pressure was slightly higher in one eye, though still within the parameters for normal.  However for the first time ever, he could not see a light in one of the vision tests that they do.  It is not anything dramatic as yet, but it is that little jab from the disease letting it know we need to stay vigilient and it is not giving up.

It is also a reminder to me how frustrating it is that we have so little medical info for our children.  I know through conversation with Rob's extended family, that it is likely that his father has glaucoma.  I don't know when it was diagnosed. I don't know how well it responded to treatment, or if any issues related to it have occured. I tried to get that information and was not able to.   I wish I had those facts for my son.  It might help the doctors.  It might make Rob feel better about things.  I have read on numerous adoption blogs how much it bothers many adult adoptees to write down that they have no medical history when they see a doctor.  And I get that.  But if you are the worry wort adoptive mom it isn't a whole lot of chuckles either.

Voices and Faces

It really had nothing to do with November being the highly touted "Adoption Month."  My kids have scrapbooks that I started from the day I met them. I have always tried to include as much information about their first family as I know.  Rob is the luckiest in that regard, I have pretty comprehensive stories pictures and contact with extended family.  KC has only one picture of his first mother Y. It was taken at the hospital and sadly, she is not even holding him in the picture.  Maybe she did not want to. Maybe it would have hurt too much to.

She is wearing a sports team shirt for a team that both KC and I root for each baseball season.  And I wrote what I knew below the picture. That she said she loved to write poetry, that she wanted to finish school. . . .

KC had asked to look at his first scrapbook--the kids have upwards of 3 or 4 now each depending on their ages.  We opened it and looked a Y's picture and talked about his story.  He looked up at me wistfully and said "I wish I knew what her voice sounds like."

I do too.