Story Ideas From My Exciting Stay-At-Home Mom Morning

My day so far:

1:30 a.m. Awakened by Seth crying.  Waited a couple of minutes and he was back out.  Checked Twitter, email and Facebook.  Went back to sleep.

5:45 a.m. Awakened by Seth crying.  Fed him a bottle.  Checked Twitter, email and Facebook.  

6:15 a.m. Walked down to an open house I worked on Saturday near my house to drop off stuff that should have been dropped off last night.  Called my mom on the way and chatted about the kids, Texas weather, cicadas and whatnot.

7:00 a.m.  Seth woke up, checked on him and then going down the hallway in the morning sunlight, I could now see the giant maggot parade stretching from our front door to the back door where we take out the trash.  Have no idea how long the festivities had been going on.  Seth stubbed his toe.

7:02 a.m. Swept up participants in the maggot parade, and cleaned trail of blood off the floor from Seths stubbed toe.

7:15 a.m. Put a bandaid on toe and disinfected parade route.

7:20 a.m. Stood up during disinfecting process and whacked my head on the corner of the cabinet door I had left open when I got toe bandaid out.

7:21 a.m.  Immediately crouched back down, rubbing head and beginning to cry (this was th capper to a stressful weekend....)

7:30 a.m. Regained consciousness and composure enough to fold laundry and put in a load of towels.

8:00 a.m.  Stopped crying,  Made hot cocoa for my and my son, got dressed to run errands, made to-do-list for errands.  Took Tylenol for throbbing head from cabinet doors

8:35 a.m.  Drove to bank.  Checked Twitter, email and Facebook. (John is off work so I had the luxury of going by myself and having a quiet moment by alone)

8:45 a.m. On the way to the bank I heard a call-in contest to win Tom Petty concert tickets.  Dialed the wrong number.  Couldn't remember the right one.  Blew my chances.

8:50 a.m.  Tom Petty's "Free Falling" comes on to rub in the fact that I didn't get tickets,  put the top down on the car and sang along. Loudly. Because I know every word.

9:00 a.m.  Bank.  Fairly uneventful.

9:20 a.m. Michaels.  Had fun picking out butterfly stuff for a girl's birthday D was going to today.

10:05 a.m.  Stopped picking out butterfly stuff, finally, and hit the grocery store for milk and bread.

10:20 a.m.  Stopped by the house to pick up D and Seth for the party.  D was too busy watching Curious George to be distracted by a birthday party.  I put the hammer down, because parties are important.

10:30 a.m. Went to the party with butterfly gifts.  Had lots of fun--scavenger hunt, swings, sifting through sand  for treasures, painting, opening homemade geodes with treasures inside, popping balloons with treasures inside....you get the picture.

11:30 a.m.  Ate Mexican Food and donuts at the party.

Noon  Left the party to drop D off at Ninja Camp.  That's right....Ninja Camp.  We are cool like that.

12:05 p.m. Seth fell asleep in the car on the way home from dropping off at Ninja Camp.  Perfect.

12:15 p.m. Reheat my cocoa from this morning,  Lay down for a little bit because of throbbing cabinet door knot on my head.  

12:30 p.m. Really need sleep, but wrote this entry instead. Checked Twitter, email and Facebook.

And the day is not even half over yet.  There has to be a least a few story ideas in they're somewhere....Tha Maggot Parade....hmmm...D would love it.

Why I Have to be a Good Mom.

Trying to get a picture with the
new "light hat".  D insisted on
pushing the camera button
and picking the filter. Took a few
tries, but we had fun and what else 
matters??  Nothing else matters.

I’ve written many times about the scrutiny applied to adoptive parents, and I’ve expressed how, even though I know it’s necessary, it is hard to take sometimes.  It’s so invasive, and every area of your life is investigated to make sure you are good enough.  John and I used to joke that we don’t look good on paper.  Divorces.  Abuse in our families.  John was arrested twice, both of which were dismissed within 24 hours, but one of those was for domestic violence.  An argument with a girlfriend led to a revengeful call to the police, which led to an arrest.  And a subsequent breakup…. And the list goes on.  It doesn’t look good when you’re trying to prove you’d be amazing parents!  But, interestingly enough, these are the things that have pushed us both to have the desire to be amazing parents.  I won’t speak for John, except to say that his growing up with an incredibly abusive father and then living with a single mom on welfare in Oklahoma certainly has had its lasting repercussions.  I will mainly speak to my experience, and how it has pushed me to try to be the best mom.

I experienced the divorce of my parents and the breakup of our family when I was eleven.  A couple of years later, my mother remarried a man who turned out to be a psychopath.  Most people associate that word with a dangerous killer, but it’s really a personality type and is much more common than just in headline criminals.  My stepfather is/was one.  He still is, but he’s not my stepfather anymore.  I won’t go into all the details—that’s a story for another time.  Suffice it to say, he had an impact on me—on all of us.  He was destructive and manipulative.  He could be charming and he could be scary.  I know now that he was a coward, but in the moment, you don’t always know that, and you don’t know if this will be the time he will snap and do something much more drastic than you thought he was capable of.  I felt very out of control, and I think there are lasting effects from that still with me today.  He could be so cruel, and then the next morning would be joking around.  And, when you are young, that is just so confusing.  I have continued to have dreams over the years of being attacked and never being able to defend myself.  I freeze.  I can’t scream.  I can’t fight back.  It’s awful.  I was never attacked physically by him, but I think that feeling of being out of control has stayed with me.  We had confrontations—screaming, yelling, struggling over things, I did get shoved to the ground once but that wasn’t as bad as having gasoline thrown on me.  And he was a smoker, so I knew there was a lighter in his pocket.

Anyway, I will stop there.  My point in sharing this is that I have never wanted my children to feel the fear or neglect or insecurities that I felt.  Every day I work so hard to make sure that My son knows how much I love him.  I hug him and tell him how sweet and handsome and smart and strong he is.  I look him in the eyes and tell him these things all day every day.  I try to not seem frustrated to be parenting him, because I want him to know that I love being his mom.  I never want him to feel that he is a burden.  When he is grown, I know he won’t remember a lot of his childhood, but I want him to remember how much I loved him and how much I loved being with him.  That is my goal.  It is what I work for every day.  It means more to me than most will know, without knowing the whole story.  If I can do this one thing, then I will have been a good mom.

( I originally wrote this on my adoption blog, but since a significant part of my memoir deals with my ex-step-father, I decided to include this here.  He affected me in ways I've only begun to understand these last few years of writing the stories of my life.  I have taken a lot of his power away by writing about him, but his influence can't be ignored.  For more on our crazy adoption journey, check out weareadopted.blogspot.com)