Nando's Babies

Nando will not keep shirts on ever. He's having a tough time keeping his baby toys under control here as well.

Lazy Mama

What's better than a Sunday afternoon watching the Braves try and beat the Mets? Watching it with Daniel.

Second best thing is Edgar Rentaria's 16 game hitting streak.

Also high on my list is a repentant Joey, apologizing and falling all over himself in gratitude for me not putting the jail house on my speed dial...yet.

No Pics

No new pictures on the camera this morning, guess Vanessa's slacking up.

The high school provides an after-prom party that goes on until 6 a.m., you have to sign your kid in, there's no monkey business allowed, it's a great idea, and early this morning Miriam, still keyed up, sat here telling me about everything. She'd had a great time but has now crashed face down on her bed for the rest of the day.

Joey, still stuck in his emotional disarray, is uncontrolable. When he came out of jail, it was on my own recognizance and the conditions included, and demanded, him following parental direction. We've "discussed" this for two months now, I've given him 2 million chances and forgivesness but I am very close to having to have to call the deputies to come get him.

This chilly weather, feels off-kilter on our skin, blew in Javy's broken window panes last night. I'd taken his brothers out of his room for the night, unsure about his emotional stability, but we'd talked for quite awhile about his apparent self-loathing. He cried, which is progress, but he's very shut down hard over his harrowing past.

Chuy, (pronouced Chewy) is a birth brother of 4 other ragers. Chuy is intellectually gifted, he looks very different from his sibs, and Chuy is a thinker, not a screamer, thank God. Less willing to trust me, to take anything at face value, I am very, slowly, inch by inch, earning Chuy's respect and attention by the way I work with his siblings regarding their many issues.

Navigating the churning waters in our family every day requires infinite patience, and some maybe inate ability to tread softly at times, to come down very hard when required, and I pray constantly for God's guidance in all matters. It's so difficult, at times, to know exactly what to do.

Fabian's Self-Portrait

I should've just stayed in bed today, but if I'd done so, the kids would've called 911. I tossed and turned last night, got up at 5 since it's tough to sleep well at my age

First soccer game at 9 am and it was dadgum cold for Georgia. Parents showed up in shorts and froze, CW kicked in the only goal, JoJo prevented 3 goals this time as he was a focused goalie finally, but the game ended up being tied. JoJo was not the goalie when their one kick went in, which he's pointed out to me all afternoon.

I ran home to get the next team and Jose's game shirt was in the washing machine. Miriam had tried to help me by getting a load going while I was gone, and we had to put a sweatshirt on him under the wet shirt. Edgar drove Mayra's team to their game since Allen's team played at the same time but at different places. Sabrina kicked a goal in...for the wrong team and then went down for the count with her knee again, I'm thinking we're going to get referred to an orthopedic person on this one, she's back in a knee immobilizer. Allen scored one goal but the other team scored three counting Sabrina's mis-shot.

Mayra's team lost, Miriam's team lost, now I have 13 dirty soccer outfits with no wins to show for their efforts.

Javy got into a huge fight with Jose and has broken three window panes in his room, he put a dresser in front of the door, and has been raging non-stop. I've had three great years with Javy as he overcompensated initially but this past year has stunk for him. There's been hints of a murder witnessed by him and Jose many years ago before they went into foster care but we, and Dr. G, have been unable to get the whole story from either of them. There is a great deal of pent-up anger in both kids, now 11 and 12, both very large boys.

Joey went nutso early this morning when I was trying to get all the soccer players to the correct places. I was LIVID beyond belief as he screamed at me, "Go ahead! Call the police!" He then stormed off to his room crying like the big baby that he is.

Vanessa has been delightful, Fabian has been solicitous, and Edgar helpful beyond belief. He and I both fell asleep on the living room sofa, slumped like sacks of flour after all that, the kids trying to tiptoe around us, now he's gone to pick up Miriam, I've got 12 pounds of beans to drain, mash and fold into burritos with cheese, sour cream, salsa and jalapenos. Early supper since I didn't get any lunch due to the crapola here.

Edgar's now back with Miriam who's aggravated over losing 9-0. Refs weren't calling fouls and some large girl kept pushing Miriam who's not even 5' tall. Eventually Miriam retaliated, hissing, "ya wanna start something?" at the Amazon who backed off at Miriam's attitude. Having 21 brothers can make one overly brave at times.

She's going to prom in a great mood. Not.

Flower Therapy

I'd be hard pressed to determine exactly who benefits the most from our garden. I used to think it was me, but I kick my own butt so often over what I've not gotten accomplished, that I'm afraid I'm over-stressing myself.

Vanessa arranged the roses and the Sweet William, picked lettuce, and photographed everything. She's loving the fact that we can produce food, something I've done for years, but she paid no heed to it, and even more importantly to her, is the experience of planting seeds and then seeing the results.

Last night after supper, French Toast, where we, Vanessa and I, used two black skillets and cooked side-by-side, I went outside to plants more 4 O'Clock flower seeds and nasturtiums, with Vanessa again on my heels. I really enjoy weeding so I did that while she planted the flower seeds. Questioning why we were even bothering with those seeds since they so readily reseed themselves. Well yes, but not necessarily where I need them to do so.

My lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson, is some that I have planted for decades. Sarah ate a bowl at lunch, commenting on the earthy taste from her childhood, Deysi's been dogging Vanessa to pick, and give, her some. Since Sarah's taught me how to make vinaigrette, the leaf lettuce taste is even more delectable with sunflower seeds and grated cheese mixed together. I ate about 6 bowlfuls yesterday, pretty big bowls also, but Georgia is so hot that we only get this lettuce for about a month, I enjoy it while I can.

Yesterday we did not have a single child explosion here. Fabian became frustrated when I pushed him to complete his homeschool work correctly and neatly, he angrily stomped off, but returned apologetic in record time...for him, that is.

Carolina, Jose and their four kids came by and picked up Martin, Sabrina and, surprisingly, even Jack, to go to the elementary school for Spring Fling last night. Jack, pasted to my side like a slab of sheetrock, since birth, never goes anywhere but school without mama. He's even asked if he can go to the movies this weekend with Cristy for CW's 10th birthday. Cristy is his birth mom and this'll be the first time he's gone anywhere with her. She was happy and he's so excited now.

Soccer games all morning, three in a row, then I've got to get the edamame soybeans in the ground before it's too late. Last year we steamed the soybeans in their pods, salted and ate them fresh off the stove with no leftovers. I saw later how expensive they were at the grocery store, so I'm planting even more this year.

Chuy also is enraptured with the process of planting, he was checking the progress yesterday of his swiss chard seedlings, grinning a big smile, happy that they've germinated and grown some already. Chomping on strawberries, checking the blackberry's progress, and yapping excitedly about the blueberries, he listened intently to the concept of edible landscaping. He's so intelligent, such a thinker, I would have loved to crawl up in his brain and watch the wheels turn, he reminds me very much of Daniel as a little boy.

Even Gito joined me last night, ripping out the English Ivy from the hibiscus bed. After 13 years of dumping compost, manure, wood chips and leaves on the garden beds, the soil is so fertile that weeds and nearly anything can spring up, unwanted, within minutes.

Miriam's schedule is nutso today. Cristy is taking her to pick up her prom dress early this morning, re-altered twice to fit her. She has a soccer playoff game near Atlanta, before prom tonight. The school hosts an after prom all-nighter, supervised and monitored, it's over at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning and is one of the rare times I'll allow her to miss church. Choosing not to go with a guy, she's going with a gaggle of girlfriends, out to eat first at a Japanese restaurant. The only thing tougher than her weekend schedule might be that of the opposing soccer team who had their prom last night. I can only hope that they all stayed up all night and Miriam's team can take advantage of their weariness. This will end Miriam's soccer season, win or lose, today is the last game of her junior year.

White?

Sonny had a day off today from his landscaping job so he came over to see if I needed any help, knowing that I always need help. He and Fabian took down several trees in the middle of the hillside garden so as to let in more sunlight.

I asked him if he was learning anything new from his landscape job besides what all I'd taught him over the last eleven years he'd spent helping me in the gardens.

Honest to God, he looked at me with a totally straight face, dead serious, and replied, "yeah, I'm learning what all the white people want done in their yards and gardens."

"Ummm, Sonny, news flash, I'm white."

Still hacking away at the tree, he didn't even think first before replying, "Not really white."

I just let it drop.

Weight/Wait Room

I've waited impatiently for nearly six years for Fabian to realize that this is for real, our life and our family, and that he can trust me to not desert him. His anger has been simmering, over-flowing, and preventing him from bonding to me for too long.

He was sent to The Ranch last year when he became unmanageable here at home, when even his six siblings were frightened by the intensity of his rages. He was failing sixth grade, then for the second time, disruptive in school and hateful at home. A deputy brought him once from school, a friend of mine, he took me aside and said he was concerned about Fabian's inability to give a crap about anything. Well duh, I shared those concerns. It scared me as well.

The Ranch attributed Fabian's issues to an atachment injury which I totally agree with. His failure to attach to me stemmed from the emotional injuries he'd suffered from his birth parents, his foster parents, a disrupted adoption, and other placements. Attachment to anyone was suspect in his mind. He is, and was then, though very attached to his brothers and sisters. That gave me great hope.

At The Ranch, he missed us. He learned a great deal about himself, through therapy, and from the fact that Edgar and I stood by him, as did the rest of the family. He was greeted like a returning hero each weekend that he came home, and he reacted happily with great weekend behavior as the dawning of our love literally crossed his face visibly.

In therapy this morning with Dr. G, who is intuitive enough to know how unthreatening his therapy is with the kids since it occurs here in our family room, not in an office setting, and often with his equally as damaged sister, Vanessa, Fabian explained to Dr. G that the one thing he is positive about now, is that Mama loves him, Mama's gonna see him through everything somehow, and that he knows that she won't quit. He claims that his experience at the Ranch taught him that.

I'll buy that. I talk also with Dr. G as he helps me see what I can't see sometimes, or what the children wish I'd see. For Fabian, seeing dysfunctional birth families there at The Ranch, seeing angry, messed up birth kids, struck something deep within him, as he could recall how we'd handle such and such a problem here at home, how we somehow always seemed to get each issues resolved at some point...sometimes through me waiting out an anger thing, or encouraging a child to scream it out, just get it out, and how other family members always seem to spring into action to back Mama up.

Our family became very attractive to Fabian, and he missed us even more each time we left him there. This was just for a nine month period, kinda like a birthing process if I really want to make a stretch here, how Freudian?

Now that he is home again with us, being home schooled, watching me deal with Edgar's odd fears which seem sudden and frightening to Fabian, somehow is calming him down. Seeing Sergi come back home to Mama has been interesting to all the kids, watching Sergi's delight in family life, listening to him talk about how much he missed us every single minute of the four years he served in the Navy, holding my fat and happy grandbabies is all contributing to Fabian's sense of well-being and security within our family.

We've always been tightly knit together, maybe even more so due to the awful events in birth families that brought us together eventually later as a forever family.

We will still have huge problems with Fabian, I'll wish with all my heart that The Ranch was dealing with him at some point or another. But talking with Dr. G, with Joey's caseworker yesterday, Paige, and all her experience in mental health and residential treatment centers, and, of course, with my friend, Emily B, who's known us for so long, and knows how we operate, combined with her own experiences in the adoption world, I am getting confirmation that I've made the right decsion to have Fabian home now.

Joey's quizzing him on his state map befroe we test him, Vanessa's on-line studying for her GED, they'll help me later with chores, and have a say in dinner plans and weekend soccer game strategies which gives them a stake in our future. Simple, but critical, to their own need to belong.

It is a slow, uphill, heavily fought battle for my children's hearts and souls. To convince them of my dedication to their own well=being. That this isn't about me and my agenda, but about their past, present and future hopes and aspirations. It's good exercise and, on a day like today, with smiles and back pats from my kids, I'm energized and very encouraged for the next round that I know is just around the corner.

My Name Is Earl

The little kids all had hot pink sidewalk chalk, drawing on the driveway, and down the back of my jet black dog, Lizzie. No wonder this dog avoids humans as much as possible, traumatized herself at being an accidental aspect of impromptu pet therapy.

29 year old Cristy swung by here last night to take Sergi and Edgar with her to her college as they were having a band playing and a cook-out. It's the college that Edgar has applied to, and he tends to hold back during transitional periods, as do all my kids, so I appreciate Cristy and Sergi walking him through this. Sure looks better than having Mama hold your hand through college orientation.

It'll be a transitional period here on out, as the school year draws to a close and my three fifth graders move up to middle school. But even moving up a grade, saying good-bye to the teacher that nurtured you this year, causes high anxiety in my children.

Years ago in a Sunday night church service, our pastor had different people come up front to tell about the gifts they felt God had blessed them with, such as discernment, teaching, etc. I sat there like a bump on a log wondering why I wasn't gifted in anything, this was when I was barely 30 years old. I had no idea what was headed my way.

What I've come to learn is that quite possibly I've been given the gift of encouragement, as that seems to be my 24-7 position here in our family, but also, and I don't know if there's a name for it, or if it is just something I've learned...but I've begun to figure that what I see isn't necessarily what's really going on around here.

The meltdowns, such as this week's snack incident with Jonathan and Paloma surely wasn't about what they were supposed to eat at 10 a.m., but was more directly related to their intense fear over losing Miss Regina, their beloved second grade teacher. They already know who their third grade teacher will be, Miss Emily, who is equally as important. That's not the point. In their minds, good-bye equals abandonment, rejection and apprehension over the future.

Jose had a meltdown at bedtime, just as Sergi, Edgar, Vanessa and I'd decided to watch something very important on TV, My Name Is Earl. Wired from our high energy day, soccer practice, and Javy's own earlier meltdown, I did the unthinkable and switched on the TV at 9pm on a school night, something as unexpected as if I'd cracked open a bottle of champagne. But I simply needed to just veg out for a moment, and laugh about something else besides our own trials and tribulations.

Sergi, having been in Japan for three years, had never seen this silly show and was giggling like a two year old.

Jose, having already clashed with Javy, had been moved to another bedroom for the night, where he immediately skirmished with Jonathan, two of his own birth brothers within 20 minutes. Then, shut down mode for 40 minutes plus he disappeared into the darkness. There went my TV time. We found him hiding in a bathtub and he refused to listen to me. BTDT, so I decided to let him cool off but Sergi, in his infinite forgetfulness, thought he could reason with someone who was acting as intelligent as a doorstop. Finally even he gave up.

I totally ran out of patience, told Sergi to just go watch TV by himself, and I sent the older kids to bed, this is a school night, daylight savings time has all of us keyed by the extra sunlight time which we adore. Jose, standing in the hallway, angry at me for not allowing him to sleep in the bathtub, glowered, eyes daring me to walk off...but I did.

I went upstairs to wash my face and brush my teeth, read for awhile, talked to Edgar who'd come to my room to talk, and to see if I needed his help, no son, I got it. Checked on Jose 30 minutes later and found him on one of the fold-up futon cushions at the foot of my stairs, snoring to beat the band. Crisis averted for tonight, but I'd been fairly confident he wouldn't leave the house as it was dark, and we were having Georgia's version of blackberry winter, cold weather after the blackberries were in bloom, it was going to go down to 48 degrees which is frigid to us.

At least, next week when Claudia comes to visit, it won't be sweltering, and we can act like we have delightful weather at all times. The reality is we'll probably have someone's explosion for Claudia and Bart to witness, but maybe, just possibly, everyone might behave?

When I turned out the light by 11 last night, all was quiet, everyone was asleep and only Jose went to bed mad at me. He woke up this morning, still in the hallway, but forgetting that he was angry.

Alexander's First Home Grown Strawberry

Why Alyssa Gets So Dirty At My House

Vanessa caught her pouring sand down her shirt while we were 10 feet away weeding abound the daylilies.

This picture reminds me of something Sergi said last night during the showdown between Edgar and I. Living here is not dissimilar from his time in Iraq.

Timing the Hugs

At one point last night, Edgar hugging me, Sergi with his arms around both of us, Vanessa strolls into the garage to compare out loud, "Mom, how come you don't hug me for that long?"

In absolute astonishment, I had to ask, to bring it up, "Did you tell Edgar how YOU acted the other day?"

My friend Beth, had asked me, that night at the ballfield, how I managed to have enough self-control in the middle of all these violent eruptions?

I'd told her that I hadn't blogged the entire explosion. How I'd had to tackle a very strong, raging Vanessa, to keep her from hurting herself. I'd tackled her down on to her bed, and held her for a very long time. She's so strong that she'd actually gotten up with my entire weight wrapped around her and walked to the bedroom door, with me still attached.

How's that for a long hug? I hugged her throughout her furious tears, and later as she recovered.

Edgar counting the bones in my back last night, complaining that my ribs were poking him, yet he was the one making me too furious to chew any supper for most of the week.

I don't believe I have all that much self-control. I'm certainly not going to hit anyone, no matter how ugly they respond to me. I'm going to slam doors, walk off, not eat because I'm so dern wound up, and I might even cry, although not this week as I'm too pissed off, but I still know the bottom line...they love me...they know it is safe for them to release their confused emotions here...Edgar'd said as much last night, although he fears his childhood is over, he's positive that I love him, that much he does know. He knows that he knows that he knows that i will love and take care of his very difficult 6 brothers and sisters. He knows this is his home and his forever family. He can stay here as long as he wants and he knows it...on some level. Having Sergi comes home is showing him that it never ends for my sons, that I am always here for them.

Skirmishing Again

Last night, after yet another rude outburst by Edgar, the pushpull drill, establishing his own identity routine, in which Fabian, full of anxiety, took me aside to ask, "what's wrong with Edgar?" Sergi'd had enough of this, and followed Edgar upstairs to talk to him.

I'd slammed the front door, and headed out the other way to my porch to cool off, careful to not respond in anger. Fabian followed me like a puppy, nipping at my heels, and I tried to explain how a 19 year old man/boy felt when it was time to take on adult responsibilities. That Edgar was scared, being the oldest in their sib group, wondering what his place in our family would be...even Yolie'd gone through this role and she's was a very enlightened, yet confused 18 year old at the time.

This naturally stirs Fabian up as he wonders how it will affect him. Edgar is his emotional barometer. Yet all this week, it's been Fabian clinging to me, needy and affectionate, while Edgar stomped around the periphery of our family.

The 11 oldest kids wanted to go to church last night and when they'd returned from youth group they were all in great moods, having shook off Edgar's drama.

But, in the meantime, Sergi'd told me Edgar wanted to talk to me while the kids were gone, younger kids were in their rooms settling down, picking up their stuff, and playing since it was raining outside.

Another skirmish between Edgar and I immediately erupted when I angrily stood at his door instead of sitting on his bed , Sergi wondering aloud, "Man, I thought you two were close, what is going on?"

I was missing the snot out of Daniel who NEVER had drama, NEVER. I don't think we ever argued, he never got PMSy or girly emotional, or dramatic. Ever. He'd let me vent about stuff, act like he was listening although he always tuned me out perfectly, and he'd just go on about his day. When I'd pointed that out to Edgar, he'd replied, "well I wish you'd adopted me when I was little like Daniel was when he came." Good point, son.

This one story vividly illustrates the chaos that many of my children grew up in, the drifting, the rootlessness, and the apathetic parenting. Reading newspapers everyday I often shake my head in wonderment that any child survives childhoods dominated by parental unemployment, homelessness and deprivation. Add drugs, alcohol, crime, and irresponsibility and there's a CPS chapter fixing to happen. Case files to be read, therapists to be consulted, and then, ultimately, the kids arrive in an adoptive placement resembling timebombs with faulty fuses that go off unexpectedly and often.

It, this understanding of their pasts, helps clear my own head of the stress I feel when my children are then acting out in response to their early trauma.

I'd walked off, once again, from Edgar's pent-up anger, knowing it wasn't really about me at all. He'd furiously shouted after me, "that's right, mom, just walk away," in a transparent attempt to suck me back in to his room so that he could contnue his one-sided rage with an audience who cared.

But I did walk off only to hear him slam out the door to go running. Good, he needed to do so.

He returned about an hour later, still very angry, and Sergi stood up, "let me try again mom."

I heard them both arguing in the garage for another hour or so. Then, as it was getting late, I reluctantly joined them.

Sergi told Edgar, "go ahead man, here she is, tell her how you feel."

Edgar did. Within yet another hour, we'd cleared the air once again, apologies given and accepted, forgiveness and hugs. I know this'll spark up again, this pushpull number. Sergi reminded me, "mom, we all put you through this, well, almost all of us."

I thanked Sergi for his help, he was really what Edgar needed, somone who understood him, not someone like me, who was tired of this crap.

Interestingly his reply was , "well, mom, I learned all these negotiations from the best...you"

Edgar, hating conflict as much as I do, was greatly relieved and happy this morning. I got a hug and a kiss, but who doesn't see round 2356 coming up?


I

Mid-Morning Update to the WHYS?

When Miss Regina calls me to the school, I drop everything and come immediately. She's quite capable of dealing with the twin tormentors, Jonathan and Paloma, but if she calls me, then I'm positive that one or the other, or worse, both, are out-of-control, too disruptive for her to teach the rest of the class.

They'd got in a fight over their snack, Paloma was right and Jonathan was wrong but that wasn't the point. Paloma melted down, and Joey and I carried/guided her out of school.

I need to be on my way to the feed store as the baby chicks need a sack of starter feed, and I need a roll of concrete reinforcing wire as that is what I build sturdy tomato cages from. However, I cannot leave Paloma hysterically raging here. There's no reasoning with her, I just need to let her scream it out. Apparently, according to her, "we are all idiots." That may be so, this is our choice to live here with her. If that makes us idiots, then so be it.

Their student teacher said her good-byes to them on Friday...strike one, it's near the end of the school year...strike two and the planets are aligned in whatever topsy-turvy way...strike 3. She's out of control.

When I told Regina about Jonathan's night before rage, which is why he's too tired right now to explode, she told me she should've let me know that he'd had a bad day yesterday.

Whether or not she'd let me know, really wouldn't have mattered, nor even had any bearing, on the unpredictable nature of these outbursts. Sometimes we can see them coming, sometimes they blindside us.

It's part of the package. But I can blog through a rage, a spitstorm, ignoring the uproar is the best tactic. On the one hand she's been rewarded by getting to come home yet I don't think it's fair to other human beings to put them through this chaos. She may have gotten to come home, but her reward will include an extended time-out situation.

Joey, himself a former world-class rager is standing next to her, talking calmly through her screams like a horse whisperer who knows the language. The scary thing is that it is working...she's calming down, Joey's totally unruffled, and I might can get to the feed store soon

The Whys?

"SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Paramedics discovered an emaciated 6-week-old girl and a 14-month-old boy living with their mother and grandmother in a litter-filled sport utility vehicle, authorities said.
The boy was released to Child Protective Services. The infant girl remains hospitalized, a police spokesman said Tuesday.
Authorities in the San Antonio area also are investigating an abuse case of a woman who already has lost two kids to CPS custody.
Ruby Diaz, 24, was arrested Sunday after her 6-month-old daughter was taken to the hospital. Police said the infant had suffered fractures to her limbs and head trauma so severe she might go blind.
Diaz was charged with assault causing serious bodily injury to a child. Her bond was set at $35,000. She lost two children to CPS in 2002 and 2003, said agency spokeswoman Mary Walker. Those children are up for adoption."

Again, as I've said before, my kids didn't necessarily come from loving parents who put them up for adoption so that they, the happy parents, could continue researching and editing their doctoral dissertations.

Rather, my kids came from despair, poverty, abusive and neglectful situations. Thus, the rages.

In defining the word rage, I could use fury, outrage, anger and violence.

On a totally lesser scale, I think about the few times that I've been outraged by a personal situation and I may have thrown a fit or two.

Well let me simmer those angry fears over years of abuse, horrific living conditions, distress and terror-filled days and nights. Add rejection, injury, atrocities, and the subsequent wrath that emerges is horrific to witness.

I get it. I don't like it, I don't like seeing it, and living through it, but I believe it is unavoidable.

Sarah didn't even like hearing it the other day when Vanessa detonated. Sarah immediately burst into tears at age 32. These times are not pretty. The underbelly of profound pain is pure torment to witness. It still, often, shocks even me.

I've heard of adoptive parents returning sib groups to the system because their new living room suite was damaged. They'd bought this set of furniture to show the social worker doing their homestudy, that they'd provide a nice home for this particular sib group of seven. This was years ago, the worker from Texas explained it to me over the phone when I also was considering this disrupted group. I ended up with another sibling group as that particular group was split into several foster homes when returned to Texas. I never saw them appear on the photolistings and, most likely, they never made it into another family. That haunts me.

Last night, after I blogged about my delightful 20 minutes with adults on the ballfield, I was sending all the kids to bed, and 8 year old Jonathan refused to go to his room, running outside in utter defiance of logic as it was dark...there aren't any streetlights out here, down dirt roads.

Jose, his older brother, went to get him and drag him in. Jose feels responsible for Jonathan's rages because Jose used to rage like that. We rarely see it anymore but his initial rages four years ago, when he was just 8 years old, were frightening. He was very large, I was unable to restrain him physically, the older boys helped me, but the entire family would end up sweating and bruised after one of Jose's LOC 3 outbursts. Interestingly enough, Jose, very protective, just kept Jonathan from kicking the walls last night, it took an hour or so but Jonathan calmed down enough to fall into an exhausted sleep.

There really was no instigation, no rhyme nor reason, just pure unadulterated anger. No way can Jonathan simply say, "Gee, Mom, something's bothering me...maybe it was my homeless past? Or when my dad came after my mom with a machete? I'm merely upset over it all."

Get real. Instead, any little provocation, like having to come inside at bedtime, following rules, realizing someone does love you, can trigger violence. Sometimes this happens at school and I'm called to come get the offender as there's no way the rest of the happy little class should have to witness this. It is inappropriate in real life.

But, in real life, this is our life. It abates, it blows over, we've even been known to make jokes about it later. Like the time Daniel was so fed up with Joey, many years ago, so tired of seeing destructive stupid rages, that when Joey ran outside in a thunderstorm, Daniel hollered after him, "Hold a metal rake up high over your head, boy."

Joey was in such a blind fury that I believe the lightening would have lost that battle. Mother Nature against a raging adolescent? The adrenaline contained in one of these emotional storms far outweighs even tornadic activity.

I can kiss my furniture good-bye for years. Eventually, especially since I am through with adding any new children to our family, this too will pass. My furniture will be safe, my forearms won't be bruised from trying to restrain a hurricane from hurting anyone else, and we won't slip and slid on the tears spilt on our hardwood floors that will probably have the finish worn off them by the saltiness and the hurled snot and pee.

I never expected anyone to say, "Gee mom thanks for keeping me safe, thanks for feeding and loving me." That'll come later, it always does, but, maybe even more so, since it has been long, hard fought battles. My older kids shake their heads now in wonder, as they remember what we went through as a family. Maturity gives them an amazing understanding of mom's love and devotion. It really does become ultimately rewarding, and those thoughts are what gets me through the long rages now that I'm much older and more worn out from explosions.

Edgar doesn't explode, but he gets an attitude from Hell. Still wearing it like a shield, he's continuing to pointedly ignore me. It requires a huge effort to take no notice of a loud woman who always seems to be in the midst of a cartoonish household event, but apparently he's up for it. What he doesn't realize, and simply can't get, is that I can, and will, outlast him. He's so out-gunned as to be sheepishly unarmed at best, and he doesn't even know it. Silly little boy.

Warm Spring Nights

While we were leaving soccer practice I saw the women's softball team from our church playing a game, so for a precious 20 minutes or so, I got to sit and cut up with Beth and Stephanie. The seven kids with me were engrossed in the game as well, leaning on the fence instead of on me. A warm spring evening, supper cooked, dishes done, time with two hilarious ladies...my idea of a good, but brief, time.

I'd even called home and got Marcela's permission to stay gone for another few minutes as she, Deysi, & baby Alexander were at my house hanging out with Sergi.

Coming home, sitting and cutting up with Deysi and Marcela...even Vanessa hung with us. Some days are really nice around here and I'm so grateful.

Sergi & Joe

A mother's dream wouldn't necessarily include two grown, shiftless sons sprawled out on her sofa in the middle of the day.

Fortunately both these guys had a good reason today to be lazy.

Beans, Beans Are Good For Your Heart...

The more you eat, the more you fart.

By popular request:

Either soak overnight, or bring to a boil in the morning 12 pounds of dried pinto beans. Wait a couple hours and then I always start cooking them around 3 pm for two hours with tons of garlic, packages of taco seasonings (6-8) and then more garlic.

Drain in large colander, run through the food processor along with a cup of water each time until the texture is right. You could mash and refry them properly, but the kids like the garlicky paste that I make. We then load it on either tacos, burritos, enchilladas, nachos, eggs or whatever.

Add jalapenos as needed. Tons at our house,, but Edgar wants the Valentina hot sauce, Vanessa wants Bull, others like the Louisiana hot sauce or habanero sauce so I keep a lot on hand.

Another night I cook 8 pounds of black beans with garlic then a couple pounds of brown rice. Mix it up good for a Cuban dish, but be a hillbilly and add cornbread to the meal cooked in a black skillet.

My New Orleans nod is 4 pounds of red beans, several pounds of brown rice, 10 cans of whole kernel corn all mixed up with garlic and tomato sauce.

Jalapenos with everything, even in the cornbread.

See why I don't post recipes? I am unimaginative, and just slop it all together, and serve everything with grated cheese on top.

I have a bunch of dumb recipes like this.

Feelings...Now I Have That Stupid Song In My Head

I'm sure there's a point, or at least an explanation, for this apparent fishing hole dug by Nando while still wearing his Sunday shirt outside, but no one told me what it was. Vanessa downloads tons of pictures, nearly every day, and I just use what strikes me here.

Vanessa was cooled down from her horrific rag yesterday, some days when I just ignore the racket, that is often precipitated by nothing, she'll keep her mad-on for days. Yesterday when I cut to the chase, she shook it off fairly quickly. It is her unpredictability that makes it difficult for me to discern overall just how to deal with her on a consistent basis. Tactics that may produce a good result one day are useless the next time. Who knows? I'm a blind man with my hands on the wall, feeling my way past landmines and booby traps, sometimes they explode with enough force to knock me on my butt, sometimes I navigate pretty well.

Vanessa'd been left here with Sarah yesterday, while I took Fabian with me in my truck, there was no room for anyone else. Period. No ulterior motive, no slighting of anyone. But to Vanessa, it was a jealousy thing. She wants to be my only child, this from a girl who was adopted along with her other six siblings into a family then composed of 22 other children. In reality, if she were my only child, she'd pick another impossible issue, or condition, for me to try, and fail to meet, to prove my love for her.

Sunday, at church, Edgar didn't want Vanessa sitting near him. He'd told me he'd be awesome all afternoon if I made her move up to another row, near Gito perhaps. I whirled on him, the best that I could indignantly whirl at a church service, and hissed that no 19 year old boy was gonna set behavior conditions for me. This ain't Let's Make A Deal. I wasn't moving anyone, and he'd best be awesome anyway.

Of course, that was the afternoon that he had his little conniption fit over the lawn mower but now, two days later, he knows it is costing him, not me. I'm busy all day, and I do my very best not to get sucked in to the little dramas going on around here, his being the most tiresome at the moment, a weak attempt to sabotage my joy at having Sergi home again...but this joy, unfortunately, plays on Edgar's insecurities.

Taking the bull by the horns,so to speak, last night Edgar asked Sergi to life weights with him. Good move son, it indicates character on your part.

Joey, for some reason, is being as good this week as he was bad last week. No explanation. No cause and effect, no rhyme or reason...he's just Joey.

Fabian, home for a week or so now, is still responding appropriately. I could be wrong, Lord knows my theories have fizzled and farted in my face before, but I'm thinking that Fabian, now full of knowledge and understanding from The Ranch regarding family interactions, is simply choosing to try and work out his family issues within the context of our family. He had a great deal of fear regarding losing Shon & Lorie as houseparents there. Here he seems to be working hard on getting his sea legs back, re-discovering his unique place in our family, where he is most needed; where he is most comfortable.

Fabian's been as vocal as Vanessa in the "I love you" department. Allen also, their younger brother, tells me ten times a day just to elicit my usual response, "I love you too doll baby," or whatever syrupy phrase that's in my mind right then. Always in return I hear, "But I love you more," to which I must reply, "No, you don't. I'm the mom and I know more about love than you do. Wait til you're grown with kids. Then you'll really understand."

They want to hear my declaration of love but, it seems, me reinforcing the fact that I'm the mom, and that Moms deeply love their children, seems to be reassuring them right where they have so many fears. This is rote, a necessary routine, an automatic response that they crave.

Knowing what I know now, that didn't seem at all evident to me decades ago, I wish I'd been more sensitive then to the lack of logic and belief that children came to me with in their hearts. I simply thought that the children understood that this was forever, that they'd look around and see a committed, hard-working mom and that they'd trust me as I did what I did everyday for them. But they didn't and they don't. What was I thinking?

I only had Sarah then for comparison, or for understanding a parent-child relationship. A birth, only child who inherently knew she could trust me, who counted on me, and who didn't doubt my love anymore than she doubted if the sun would rise each day. A big DUH to her, a violent landslide of fear, doubt, and confusion for the next 38 children who entered our family.

Nando, being told that he'd be going to Pre-K next year, wondered aloud, "then where will I live?" Breaking my heart. I realized he obviously didn't get the concept at all. "Sugar bear, you'll live with me, right here, forever and go to school." relief washed over his face.

Edgar, needing love, rejecting love, pulling me close, clinging to me, pushing me away with his aggravating attitude...he doesn't know how he feels, looking at adulthood, never really having been a child but for a few years...how can I expect maturity from him? But how can I not? The world expects some semblance of responsibility, he lost his job due to childish horseplay, an "I told you so" moment last week. On the good side, he came straight home, asked to speak to me in my office behind closed doors, which is the pantry, and told me what happened, knowing I'd be disappointed in his misbehavior. OK, son, let's learn from this, what have I been telling you?

Mad at himself, he'd probably have preferred to have me yell at him so he could justify lashing out, storming off, being even more childish, but, instead, it is coming out in his day to day interactions with me, which are infantile and transparent.

He just blew past me once again, head up his butt, mind somewhere else, continuing his big bad attitude. Oh well.

Blogging helps me step back, and see some behaviors, for what they are, having Dr. G in our house helps as well, but mostly it is from years and years of me, aggrieved and self-righteous at having been treated like this by ungrateful kids, and pouring out those resentments to Emily, who was then their caseworker, that she'd quietly, at least in contrast to me, point out what was really going on. Many years later I am learning how to connect the dots. To see what really might be going on, what the kids really need from me, what are they trying to tell me through their behaviors which really aren't always about me but are directed at me as they learn to trust and rely on me.

I got over my hurt feelings years ago, I've learned to deal with no gratitude or immediate positive feedback. But looking at kids, now grown, now making me proud, now trusting me deeply...gives me the gas to keep going with the other kids.

But, please, this morning...don't even get me started in on negative attention seeking behaviors as they run rampant in my house, Scotty presently being the king of this.

We'll Never Know...

Nor are we, adoptive parents as a group, EVER going to understand the depths of our children's pain. NEVER EVER. Even after 20 years of dealing with this I am still ignorant beyond belief. Shocked at the savage, crippling detonations that fire up on a regular basis. This is when adoptive parents are known to bail, crying out to adoption workers, "I didn't sign up for this." I didn't either, but it's what I live with.

My friend, Emily, an adoptive parent of 5 kids, with more than 25 years experience in child welfare, and the owner/director of an adoption agency, agrees with me. Early this morning we were talking about it, wondering were we just shell-shocked after so many years...maybe just too hopeful years ago? She'd heard Edgar slam out the door, saw Sergi come in the room all sweet and sunshiny, but Sergi's had 15 years to begin to heal.

Emily was instantly reminded of Sergi as a little boy, 7 years old, moving in with me and overhead asking his older sister, "now how long are we going to be here?"

This was an adoptive placement. Not foster care, but Sergi'd been in foster care most of his life plus, sadly, a disrupted adoption. Why should he think my house was any different than a long line of placements where he was often separated from his sisters? I remember being 36 years old then, naive and shocked that he didn't get it. I would have been even more astounded to know that 15 years later, I'd be the one who still didn't get it.

Sergi's sisters, my daughters, have all been over here this past week, loving on Sergi, and I told Yolie I'd go through everything again just to have these four kids so emotionally close and bonded now that they are all in their 20s.

My committment to sibs was, of course, threatened and tested today in a cataclysmic rage from Vanessa where she screamed and exploded all over her room, sending Sarah home in tears, hurting for me for the hate I seem to live through constantly.

Vanessa, struggling with deep, profound feelings of self-hatred, tearing up her bedroom, screaming profanity like a crazed banshee, pulling her own hair in her agony, pissing me off beyond belief, but this is where God's grace rescues me every time. Particularly if I will quit saying pissed off. I just stood there and told her I still loved her, which only initially enraged her all the more. She knocked every breakable off her dresser in response bellowing, "I'm unlovable!"

I made her hug me, and she sniveled in my ear that she was sorry, and hated that she treated me like she did.

Had she been in school, this is when she would have gotten into a fistfight with someone.

I told Vanessa to go apologize to Sarah but she was afraid, irrationally so, that Sarah would reject her. I knew Sarah wouldn't, so I felt safe in pushing this moment of sweetness. Finally Vanessa agreed but, by then, Sarah'd gone home right upset. Vanessa called her up and apologized, then hugged Deysi who'd been here through the fracas. Deysi talked to Vanessa about how good she had it here at home with Mama. Deysi, adopted nearly 20 years ago, was telling Vanessa that she understood how she felt.

Vanessa, by way of apology, made us spinach, cheese, jalapeno and onion quesadillas fried up on my black skillet. Good thing too, now I can skip supper since I don't even like what I'm cooking tonight.

Before the explosion, Fabian and I'd gone to the county dump to hunt me up some fence posts, and then to buy some more sand for the sandbox. We hauled 600 pounds home but it hardly made a dent.

All that and my day without the kids who are in school has once again flown by. Dishwasher has run, several loads of laundry done but Vanessa's violence cost me the time I needed to go to the grocery store. Dadgummit all we have available for tonight is what the kids wanted anyway...tuna and rice yuckiness.

Morose Monday

It's a shame that we have so much fun around here that no one wants to break the rhythm and return to school.

Too bad, too sad.

I was so exhausted from dealing with Edgar's pushpull garbage that I slept in until 6:30 once again. Windows wide open, but I never heard the roosters.

First load of kids ran out of the house at 7, down the long driveway, to the bus stop. They were buttoning shirts, grabbing bookbags, and hightailing it as fast as they could. I was standing dazed, and guzzling coffee, soon came to my senses, and kept on hollering to get everyone moving.

Digital clocks keep us up minute-to minute, and I usually load up the next group at 7:25 but we were running 6 minutes behind schedule. Which reminds me, I get emails from other adoptive families often, and Kerri in West Virginia was asking about our food and schedules. The key word for me might be routines because if I change anything there is heck to pay. Our morning routine requires me in the kitchen which is central, of course, to our house. Most of them eat before they leave, I sign papers, and listen to what they need for me to do. I try and start a load of laundry at the same time and hang up shirts from the dryer, fold towels, sweep the pantry, bag the trash, fix Lily and Paloma's hair, and make Jack's lunch while holding Tabby who is always grouchy since Memaw (Sabrina) is going to school.

Everyone is dogging me, worrying me about what's for supper while they chew their breakfast. Since it is usually some form of beans, I'm already starting them, and everyone leaves with the smell of garlic in their hair, except for the 6 boys who got haircuts before dark last night, out back, while trampoline dodgeball raged on, and Edgar flounced from room to room.

Edgar and Miriam were the last to leave, Edgar with his proverbial panties in a wad. We'd squabbled once again yesterday over mowing the meadow. Sissy-like, he complained that the grass catcher guard was missing and he couldn't mow until he found it and fixed it. Bull, what a stall. I yelled at him, a 19 year old, to go change his diapers, and I mowed it myself. Turns out I needed several hours on the mower to get my own frustration out. Fabian's been delightful, and Edgar's acted like a baby girl with diaper rash lately

I accidently ran over a turtle, it stopped the blades, and CW, Chuy and Jack performed an animal rescue. They took it to the creek where it ambled off unhurt. I drove myself into several patches of high weeds and dirt, and twice had to yell for CW to push me out. You think I'm gonna holler for Edgar and possibly mess up Mr. Too Cool's hair? But, of course, he bristles at being unneeded so I'm derned if I do and derned if I don't. The emotional acrobatics are strenuous.

Sergi, realizing Edgar was being difficult, offered to help, but I told him just go help Cristy get her cucumbers planted. Heck, Sergi's been in a war, been on duty in the Navy for 4 years, didn't even use up his leave while in Japan for three years, he deserves a rest. Edgar, on the other hand, needs to give his insecurities a rest.

Of course, no goodbye kiss this morning as he thinks he's punishing me for not being understanding. Door slams, he's gone in a huff. Does he think Big Joe never put me through this malarky?

Now that I am never alone, with Vanessa, Fabian and Joey all being homeschooled, I'm having trouble getting to Lowes to get more fence posts to trellis my raspberries. My frustration level over the more than 24-7 company is mounting. All are very difficult, emotionally high-maintenance kids who suck me dry constantly. Javy shadowed me all day yesterday, keenly aware of my disappointment in him from the day before, he did some heavy-lifting garden work for me as his way of apology. He is pictured above, the tall one, the keeper of his 3 birth brothers there with him; Jonathan, Chuy and Jose AKA Pepe.

My church gave Sergi a standing ovation which brought him to tears yesterday. I whispered, "I'm so proud of you," to which he thanked me but I turned it back on him, "No, son, thank YOU!" All I ask is that my kids somehow, someway make me proud. Since I know that they will, I can continue to get up each morning and face the challenges.

I haven't made tuna and rice in a month of Sundays because I hate it. All weekend, like there was group PMS going on, different children were asking me to make it for dinner each night. I use several pounds of brown rice, a sack of tuna cans (yuck) and cream of muchroom soup (double yuck) and mix it all up. To compound the yuckiness the kids then pile on sliced dill pickles, crushed up tortilla chips, and tabasco sauce for a muddle of grub that I can barely watch them eat.

We'd mashed up 25 pounds of potatoes this weekend for potato bar and I hope there's some leftovers in a little bowl in the fridge as I'd rather skip dinner than eat the tuna tork that they want me to make.

Robin, my friend in Arkansas, wanted me to share some recipes...don't try this one, it sucks.

I don't post recipes because I'm not a very good cook. I cook for sustenance and comfort, not taste apparently. I wouldn't cook at all if I didn't have kids...it's too much trouble, and time out of the garden where I can usually eat pretty well without having to come inside.

I cook spaghetti, pinto beans, potato bar, black beans and rice, red beans, corn and rice, lasagna, tuna crap, barley chowder...stuff like that. Nothing to brag about, just regular food that somehow comforts the kids, fills them up, and is nutritious. Sergi missed my food while in the Navy and is happily gobbling up anything I put before him.

I'm thinking I have 25 kids at home once again, people in the county are always asking me how many still live with me like I go around counting or something. It's not the numbers I pay attention to, it's the faces, the needs, the issues, the overly, emotionally needy sons and daughters that I deal with 24-7.

And the grown kids are always here, or on the phone to me, so I feel like I am involved with everyone everyday.

Vero Mango & Colloidal Oatmeal

We used to have to go to one of the Mexican grocery stores in town to get this treat that the kids crave, a peppery, salty sucker. Cristy'd bought CW a sack of them yesterday and he's been doling them out, they're even sold in Wal-Mart now.

When I was at another grocery store yesterday, buying 10 gallons of milk and 48 rolls of toilet paper, I was getting drenched by the rain as I loaded the van. I was alone, having left the kids at the soccer photo shoot, and a nice-looking guy walked up and started helping me load the van.

He probably thought to himself lady, you wouldn't need 48 rolls of toilet paper if you weren't drinking 10 gallons of milk.'

I smiled sweetly and thanked him for his help.

Tabby has gotten into poison ivy and I read the ingredients in an oatmeal bath packet. 100% colloidal oatmeal, hmmm, with my coffee grinder I made my own for her.

Such Hate

Javy's fifth grade teachers would now be incredulous to learn that, in sixth grade, which is middle school, a once overly polite, terribly sweet, young'un, has morphed into a hater.

Yesterday, for soccer pictures, he'd gotten into a tiff with Jose and absolutely stone-faced, cold with rage, and hatefulnes, refused to get in the van. "I'm not going," eyes not meeting mine, murderous and angry.

I was angry also. He didn't know, at that point, that the games would be cancelled due to rain. All he knew was shut-down mode. Screw the team, screw the pictures, screw you too, hating everyone and everything.

Not a good time for me to remind him that had he stayed in foster care, it's doubtful he'd still have his other four siblings with him. Not smart for me to point out that his drug-dealing parents didn't give a rip about raising kids. My blood pressure shy-rocketed with the knowledge I was letting other teams down, what with 12 dressed and ready-to-play kids waiting in the van for one person who preferred to act like a loser with a capital L.

This is when self-control comes in handy, such an understatement. Easy to say now, a struggle within me yesterday. I dearly wanted to slap the hate off his face but how much sense does that sentence make? Smacking someone into reality? Get real Big Mama, that would have set off a whale of a fury. I walked away, rigid with my own aggravation.

This year has been emotionally difficult for this guy, fourth year with us....should he trust me or reject me? Kick me away from his heart before he allows himself to believe that I'm what he might dare to think that I am?

He trusted his birth mom, look where that got him? Homeless on the streets of both Jaurez and El Paso, with four young kids looking up to him for food and shelter, birth grandma equally as unresponsive and irresponsible as the bio mom. Looks to him like women can't be trusted. Factor in the stress and hormones of being a young teen and confusion reigns in his heart.

OK, I'll buy that explanation, but can we get ready for soccer now and deal with this later? Not on your life, buddy. The fear sets in when the fear sets in, not on mom's timetable, it washes over a child like a tsunami, wiping out entire villages and families, schedules and plans be derned.

I sound understanding now, 24 hours later, but I was as mad as a hornet yesterday. Finally I maturely slammed out of the house, telling Edgar, "see if you can reason with him," and I got the other kids to the gymnasium for team photos, lamely telling Javy's coach that he was simply unable to attend this morning.

When I came home, after all games were cancelled, it seemed that Javy had run away. Jose later found him cowering in a back closet where he remained most of the day. He is still not speaking to me, good thing my feelings are not easily hurt anymore.

I can control my hurt feelings but my anger does well up in me and I have to walk away. Lashing out physically is all these children know, and I have to show them a better way to deal with problems no matter how pissed off I am. Sorry for the P word, I just need to relay the depths of my anger.

I am, as usual, making it about me. I was the one with a tight schedule, with no room in the time-frame for anyone's meltdown. You're making me late, making me look bad. And I blog about how understanding I am? Doesn't look like it. This child has a decade of anger deep within his psyche, scarring his soul, and I don't want to be late for team photos? How do I balance fury with responsibility?

I walked in his room this morning, fully expecting, and bracing myself, for the control battle, knowing how much the kids liked to push my buttons before church.

"javy, do you have something to say to me this morning?"

He smiled, "Sorry, Mama."

Me pushing as usual, "Sorry for what?"

"Sorry for acting like a retard yesterday."

Never one to let well enough alone, to accept something at its face value without attempting to inject a life lesson in it and I rebutted, "Ok, Tiger, that's an insensitive reply, try again."

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Tiger Woods has apologized for comments he made during a television interview after the U.S. Masters at Augusta National Golf Club on Sunday.

The American world number one, , was criticized for using the term "spaz" to describe his poor putting in the final round.

"Tiger meant nothing derogatory to any person or persons and apologizes for any offence caused,"

I can only imagine how many people I have offended over the years, and for that, I am very sorry. I've gotten better as I've gotten older. I don't offer my opinion about other people's families...ever, even when asked to do so in group therapy at The Ranch.. It's is absolutely none of my business and I feel strongly about that. But it is earning me an uncooperative attitude. It is not my place to challenge their comments, to be rude, to confront them in their inconsistencies. I can not bring myself to participate in what I perceive to be a negative activity.

My eye caught the headline, "Tiger used the S word," and spaz was not the word I initially thought he'd used.

Crime Blogs

I read several adoption blogs each day but also crime blogs.

Not because I want to go and commit any, but more so because I delve into the background of the criminal. My children's birth parents all had their share of conflicts with the law. I assume, mainly, it is because they themselves were not taught right from wrong, generational abuse and neglect usually were factors, dysfunction was the norm.

As I read the backgrounds of criminals I am struck by the fact that they all seemed to have had pretty poor childhood supervision, mostly raised themselves, and had indifferent, at best, parents. Often they had criminally abusive parents, neglect seemed to be rampant.

Most didn't even get up the rung of the ladder to foster care, much less adopted.

When an adopted child commits a crime, they are usually labeled 'adopted child' whereas you just don't see the designation 'birth child' for all other identified suspects. I've told my own kids that I'll come back from the grave if anyone allows my obituary to label which kids are adopted.

I was reading Huff's Crime Blog this morning and followed the link to the crime library where I read about this monster's childhood. I like Court TV and if I had time to read fiction like I used to, then I'd read mysteries. I'd read true crime books if I weren't so immersed in adoption and foster care books.

Sergi was telling me yesterday that he might now go to a local college and major in criminal justice. He made bombs in the Navy, and an unrelated aside would include the fact that ex-military men make great cops. I don't know if I am more of a social worker wannabe or a cop wannabe, both professions fascinate me. I told Sergi I'd read all his textbooks just for fun.

I sometimes take time to hit the links for Huff's Crime Blog and find myself endlessly engrossed in the subject. I like forensic science, I like cold case files solved, and I, of course, like criminals to be caught. My internal value system demands this justice, I'm so often appalled by injustice that I observe.

It crosses my mind, but not enough to make me fret about it, that some of my kids were exposed to criminal elements in their early childhood. Some of my kids have also learned the hard way that there are natural consequences to not following the law of the land.

It saddens me to think about these particular children, had they not been adopted, might all have turned to a life of crime, and then had to pay for their crimes. What a waste of humanity that would have been. What a waste of human potential for all those criminals who committed crimes because they had no family.

I do not think it is that much of a stretch to feel that family is everything, quite possibly the missing link. I am not naive enough to believe that a strong family can stop someone from a life of crime. We all make choices, all have free will. I strongly feel that a supportive, loving family can go a very long way in exerting positive peer pressure, and in helping an individual grow up to make better choices in life.

Gardening In Our Blood

Cristy had been asking me for some chocolate mint plants since she's learning how to make her own extracts. She'd brought CW home yesterday, and commenced to digging them up her own self because I'd always seemed to be involved elsewhere in the garden lately. I feel such a time pressure to get everything planted. Georgia becomes as hot as blazes very early in the summer, the ground bakes hard and the plants seem to sizzle if not planted early enough to have deep, strong roots...oh, I get it, kinda like my kids.

Sergi and Big Joe had taken CW with them to eat at Cristy's house yesterday afternoon, CW brought me home a tub of wonderful guacamole that he'd made under Cristy's supervision, redolent with onions, jalapenos and garlic. I ate the entire thing.

I had earlier that afternoon told Allen and Chuy that if I were a betting woman, I'd put money on the fact that I believe all my kids will grow up to be gardeners. Both had looked at me oddly, like why would anyone want to work so hard, to sweat, and grub around in the dirt?

Cristy, in her teen years, obsessed with eyebrow tweezing, make-up, and nail polish, stepped foot in the gardens only to get something to eat. She was disdainful of me eating a sandwich with dirt-stained hands, unwilling to stop and go inside to eat.

She'd asked Sarah if she could sharecrop on Sarah's three acres, but Grandma and Grandpa, headed off to Myrtle Beach for much of the summer, told us to use several of their garden areas. My only stipulation was please take the chocolate mint to her own house as it spreads every time I turn my back on it. What was once a 2 inch clump, now covers about 100 square feet in an area that I weed-eat. When cut, we all swoon from the scent that wafts through our windows.

Yolie married a gardener, Gina's becoming one in the new house she purchased, Sarah was trying to get her strawberry plants in the ground yesterday between rain showers, and Carolina's setting out pepper plants. How can one grow up with fresh produce on the table and then somehow be happy with store-bought, tasteless imitations? How can one not see me delighted in the garden, endlessly thinking about it, fresh flowers in the house 10 months of the year, and the scents...the fragrance of their childhood, happy now, set free from foster care...embraced into a family that pursues the heady perfumes of blossoms and herbs.

The stress of raising 39 kids is exacerbated, is greatly relieved, by time in the garden, open windows and the attic fan suck in the sweetness of gardenias, tea olives, nicotianas, honeysuckles, banana shrubs, and antique roses heavy with their spiciness, a cologne that is unique. Strong memories are made of this.

Cristy, stuffing mint into a Wal-Mart bag, reaffirmed her love of gardening to Allen who was following me around last night in the back garden. I keep garage sale chairs everywhere outside, and usually a child, grown or not, is sitting in one talking to me, no TV or music to distract us.

Sarah has nearly 33 years of childhood garden reminisces in her mind, I want as much as possible for all my other children as well.

FOUND IT!

My wallet went missing several months ago, I had a couple of suspects, but I've never had the entire wallet go missing before. Dollars bills, yes; loose change, duh, but not my driver's license and debit card. We tore this house to pieces, Edgar more than anyone as he's always worried that some disaster will tear us apart. He was flipping over sofas with one hand in his worry. Sat with me late into the night trying to figure where all I'd been. I couldn't figure it out for the life of me.

Months later, Jack found it in my own room under his big red truck that had broken right after Christmas. I'd meant to ask my first ex-husband to fix it when he was here visiting in January, but I'd forgotten, and only saw him that one afternoon anyway. Jack started dogging me today about that truck and found the dadgum wallet with the three dollars still in it. It must have fallen out of my purse when I'd tossed it in a corner one night.

That's a good feeling to find it and I sure need the three bucks.

Patty asked in the comments section if Vanessa read my blog. She sure does, sometimes I read it out loud to the kids, but most aren't interested. It's bookmarked on the family room computer so whoever wants to can easily access it. Some of my grown kids read it, some of them only look at the pictures I post...like Marcela...and complain that it is too wordy. I've asked Vanessa to guest blog again, to write something she wished adoptive parents knew, she's thinking it through first. Told me she had a whole list of stuff she wished I'd figure out.

I ate my fill of strawberries this afternoon, just sat in my garden and stuffed my mouth, while two guineas watched me. Chuy and Allen came out and helped themselves also. Rainshowers cancelled all three soccer games but didn't stop me from weeding. It'd rained all night, thunder and lightening, but I didn't hear a thing. I'd slept so hard I dented my bed.

Sweet Beth emailed me note full of love and encouragement and I've coasted all day on her uplifting thoughts. I'm still giggling at a school note yesterday from the third grade asking me to send hot dogs for a party. ME? Buy hotdogs? Gotta have a Plan B here. I'd rather buy them gasoline to drink, it'd be healthier.

Q. What's wrong with hot dogs?
Three different studies have come out in the past year, finding that the consumption of hot dogs can be a risk factor for childhood cancer.
Peters et al. studied the relationship between the intake of certain foods and the risk of leukemia in children from birth to age 10 in Los Angeles County between 1980 and 1987. The study found that children eating more than 12 hot dogs per month have nine times the normal risk of developing childhood leukemia. A strong risk for childhood leukemia also existed for those children whose fathers' intake of hot dogs was 12 or more per month.
Researchers Sarusua and Savitz studied childhood cancer cases in Denver and found that children born to mothers who consumed hot dogs one or more times per week during pregnancy has approximately double the risk of developing brain tumors. Children who ate hot dogs one or more times per week were also at higher risk of brain cancer.
Bunin et al, also found that maternal consumption of hot dogs during pregnancy was associated with an excess risk of childhood brain tumors.

And people worry about a vegetarian diet? Sarah and I just decided we'd both re-read Joan Dye Gusow's book, Sarah, like Claudia, did the amazon.com sidebar, Sarah and I were both transfixed by this wonderful book, as we are by any book that espouses our world view.

That Spatula

Sarah did blog about the spatula.

Earth Day

Must have been 10 or 11 years ago, Cristy was a waitress at Waffle House. Being it was Earth Day, she lugged over, to my house, a leaden garbage sack full of eggshells for my compost pile. Other than the time my second ex-husband gave me 50 bales of mulch hay for my birthday, these eggshells were one of my most beneficial gifts. On another birthday, that same guy gave me diamond earrings which as every adoptive parent will know, they've long since been stolen from me by a kid.

But the eggshells rotted down, and beautifully added themselves, to the brown gold produced by my compost pile, feeding my garden, completing the circle of life that obsesses me often.

Rocco, my good rooster, patrols the big back garden, unlike Belinda, Maxine and my other hens that are in the chicken yard with the ill-tempered rooster, Porky...formerly named Sunshine, but unable to live up to that cutsy reputation, renamed after jumping on a kid or two. Rocco eats bugs, poops fertilizer and keeps me company when I'm working, as do my two guinea hens who scream and chatter simultaneously.

Daniel, who remembers an even meaner rooster from a decade or so ago, wondered aloud why we finally have a good rooster now? Sarah and I had an adorable rooster, 25 years ago, named Charlie who ate out of the cat food bowl with the cats. Probably the more memorable event then would have been the fact that Sarah was then an only child. The gardens we had then, resemble the gardens I still have now, raised beds surrounded by once abandoned bricks, still in use now. Some of the same bulbs and plants as well, moved twice until we settled here 13 years ago.

I ate my first strawberry last night, 90% ripe, but why wait too long for the first one? After Miriam's game I still had another hour of daylight, so I worked until dark in my pseudo silky pj bottoms that I snagged on thorns. Good thing I don't have any money invested in hand-me-downs from a bag someone gave us. Rips, tears and snags don't stop me from wearing favorite items. You find something you like, you stick with it.

When I came inside, the kids were tearing up the house, hunting for The Remote Control, for a Friday night of TV watching, not allowed on school nights. They never found it so Vanessa crowned herself channel changer and laid down in front of the TV. Jose found IT this morning, through great detective work, behind and under a chair.

Vanessa had been prowling around, in the evening, taking pictures, but just like me, living around here in pjs, the Bubbas keep stripping down to their boxer shorts, and even I'm not going to put their photos here like that. She was up on my deck, using the zoom, and caught me with my hair clipped up on top of my head to resemble Rocco.



I'm going to force Sarah's hand, and make her blog a post about "licking another woman's spatula," something she was giggling and howling about yesterday when her husband called her from a particular restaurant. It's a funny story but he also bought her a new, world-class, stirring spoon to replace a worn out one, here she is an excellent cook with pitiful utensils.

I got to thinking also, I'm a pretty good gardener, but I use very few tools. I could garden several acres with just my Craftsman spading fork, a hand rake, pruning clippers, and a bucket for the weeds. Big Jose gives me his empty sheetrock mud buckets which we use for weeds, and for hauling manure and wood chips. I am such a simpleton, that a lot of choices, in either clothes, shoes, jewelry, tools or utensils, stumps me. I know what I need, I use what I need, nothing else. Don't go boggle my mind.

After my diamond earrings took a hike, many, many moons ago, I put in two gold hoops in each ear, and haven't changed them since. I'm good to go. Accessories, like matching socks, would bumfuddle my poor overworked brain. I can tend to 39 kids, just don't give me any stress, like fashion or having to coordinate an outfit. No can do.

Sergi's gone off with Joe again, he'd called me last night around 10:30 to tell me he was going to spend the night again at Joe's house. OK, son, you've been through a war in Iraq, you're way grown, been living in Japan, haven't been home in 32 months, and you're calling me to see if it is OK to spend the night at your own brother's house? I love it.

Birth Uncle Brother

I've had to peel the Bubbas off Sergi. He's holding his nephew/brother here. A group of four kids in 1990, from South Texas, morphed into 7 within a decade.

A comment on my blog regarding PCAs, Personal Care Assistants, and did I have any? Nope, I didn't even know what they were until my Minnesota friends told me. I wouldn't want one anyway.

Miriam's team won their first playoff game this evening.

Right and Left Hands

I just got an email saying that Miriam's soccer game tonight is $7.00 to get in. See why I can't take any kids with me? It's hard enough for me to scrape up $7.00. Do you know how many gallons of milk that will buy? Well, hardly even two anymore.

I just hollered out loud, "SEVEN DOLLARS??? Don't they know we is po white trash?"

Fabian reminded me that I was the white trash, thank you very much, he being Mexican and all.

Edgar's still prickly over having another rooster here. He claimed that he'd made me upset all day yesterday by not kissing me good-bye. Oh I get it...knowing Sergi was coming, he'd wanted to ruin MY day? I don't think so, son, I'm not controlled by a 19 year old manboy. Late last night Edgar was sitting with me, but in silence, eating a bowl of ice cream, waiting on me to either say something, or at least remark on his silence. I didn't have anything to say what with the Jackson & Perkins sale on roses (62% off) catalog arriving in the mail. Heck I can save 100% by propagating my own roses, they are all in bloom right now, staggering me with their spicy, heady scents and colors. Who needs anti-depressants? Just grow antique roses.

Edgar kept instigating me, picking at me, since Sergi was gone with Joe. I didn't take the bait, so he started in on Vanessa, who wisely pointed out that since Sergi wasn't a girl, she felt no need to act emotionally threatened. Get a grip Edgar

I stared at her in wonder, has she had too much therapy to pick up on this her ownself? Amazing.

Other moms have told me, and demonstrated through the progress that they've made, the benefits of homeschooling. I'm finally getting the point, decades later.

For both Vanessa and Fabian it is emotionally beneficial. Rather than me expecting such damaged children to function in a public school setting along side of emotionally healthy kids from intact families, they physically need this emotional attachment to me, the mom; this umbilical cord healing process that requires a complex combination of time, attention and devotion to them. They need to see me to believe me. Vanessa's eyes are opened to what all it requires to keep a family functioning as she's becoming my right hand man.

She's very interested in meal planning, grocery shopping, banking, Adopt America Network, therapy, gardening...all that I do, all this normalness, this routineness, this constancy...this life she never had, nor felt she could trust that it would be hers as well. Now finishing up our sixth year together, looking forward to the seventh and decades more, she's beginning to believe that I'll do as I say. A concept that was never hers to grasp up til now.

Edgar proclaimed to Sergi that he was mom's left hand man, that mom needs him. Sure I do kid. This morning, same thing, lingering, walking past me eighty times, like kids in a high school hallway where you aggressively bump shoulders to start a fight or declare domination, then no kiss...punishing me, in his mind. A week from now, when Sergi feels more routine, this too will pass. Edgar will feel like he's crossed yet another threshold, that mom still loves him, that he's still important, and Mom needs him. Told you so, son. Showed you too. And I'll spend eternity this way also.

Thank God for the roses.

Strange Professionals

No matter if it is the rooster, the alarm clock, or my insomniac old age waking me up, my first thought when my feet hit the floor is, what do I need to deal with immediately? What fire to put out, what battle to continue, what trial to endure, what do I need to do, or to say, to get through today?

I'd even slept peacefully this morning, until 6:30, which is highly unusual and, as I awoke, I couldn't hold back the grin spreading across my face, "wow, Sergi's finally home."

Not exactly home, he's at Joe's house, which is good enough for me.

My second thought involved a skirmish last week at The Ranch when words failed me in my attempt to explain to a guy there, that had just met us, that our deep love for each other spread across sibling group lines. I'd used Jesse, Joe and Sergi as examples, how in their teen years we'd referred to them as Jessejoeandsergi, one word that delineated who I was talking about. Three boys from three different sib groups, and parts of Texas, met each other here in our family and bonded tightly for life.

This man had insisted that the sibling bonds were the most important, and I agree. Obviously that's why I've kept sibling groups together. But I've also observed that when children are relieved of the fear of losing their siblings, when they're allowed to grow up together, they are able to form other very strong attachments with other non-birth sibs, and that theory or observation based on experience should not be dismissed, nor should I be treated like I am clueless and ignorant regarding my family's dynamics.

I am here 24-7, we don't have nannies, housekeepers, or any other outside help. I am INVOLVED, engaged and connected to every facet of my children's personal inner and outer growth.

I'm the one going to need therapy if this kind of stuff keeps up. I get so weary of explaining, defending and dissecting our family to strange professionals that could, would, or should help.

Dr. G is coming here this morning and since Vanessa has responded so well to him, I'd like to include Fabian with her. Therapy here, within our own house, is so much less threatening than in an office setting and because Dr. G sees so many of my kids, it is harder for any one of them to snow him. He gets different perspectives which has to help.

Speaking of great snow jobs, dropping the kid's off at school, Jack's little face crumpled and he started crying. He'd been home four days with strep throat, the doctor said he could return yesterday, but I'd kept him home since he was still flushed and feverish. Today he simply desired another day at home, but I felt he needed to get back on the horse and ride off to kindergarten. He finally got out of the van, but was staring at me beseechingly and pitifully, so I made good on a constant threat; that of getting out of the van in my fake silky pj's and walking someone to class.

Jack straightened up fast, grabbed Lily's hand, and scooted in the door when he saw me with my pajamas flapping in the warm morning breeze.

Why do they push me to prove a point I'll never know but, collectively, every single one of them ought to know better by now.

One of The Best Days

Is this how normal people live? In a day full of happiness and joy? Little, if any, hassles other than Jose punching Tony at soccer practice and having to serve a time-out.

It was absolutely joyous to have Sergi back home, no mom should have to go 32 months without seeing her baby boy, I've been calling him my first-born son all day, much to his delight.

Tabby was initially pushing him away from me, telling him repetitiously, "My Mom, My Mom!" Finally she ended up in his lap, rubbing his cheek and sharing me with him.

Tons of family for supper, Vanessa made a killer cornbread from scratch with onions, jalapenos, and bell peppers in a black skillet. Sergi was wolfing down the red beans, corn and rice, talking about how much he missed Mama's cooking.

Joe and Sergi went to soccer practice with me, cutting up, being as silly as when they were both eight years olds.

Sergi quipped he'd really missed Georgia, with its thousand shades of green and sweet smelling air.

A few minutes later he added, "But I sure didn't miss the bugs, there's too many of them.

Joe snickered, "and the Mexicans!"

I nearly spit my gum out.

The two guys along with Edgar, Vanessa and Tameshia fell out laughing with the giggles, and Joe, on a roll, "lemme tell you about these stoopid immigration laws. Man I wish they'd ship my butt back to Juarez. I'll be the first one to go."

I had to be reasonable and point out, "No, son, you're from El Paso."

"Don't matter, they can ship me to Chihuahua or Cancun. I'll go."

This went on and on and on involving work situations and Joe's unstoppable when he gets to rolling along and with Sergi as his very practiced and experienced audience, this'll go on all night.

Some dad on the team came up right then and introduced himself, so I didn't have to hear the rest of where they wanted a free, paid for by La Migra, vacation.

As we were leaving we ran into their youth pastor, Anthony, from their high school years which was wonderful. Sergi needed more hugs and validation from folks who'd known him since way back when. Anthony and his wife had been instrumental in praying Joe through his tumultuous high school years, it's nice now that they can also be proud of their efforts.

Sergi went to spend the night at Joe's house where I have no doubt they are laughing their butts off and being sillier than geese.

Sons

Sergi was my first son, then came Daniel and Joe, but it took Jesse and his brothers to really put us into the testosterone stratosphere.

Cristy claimed she could smell it from the paved road...all these boys, Edgar and Fabian wrestling all over the living room while Sergi remarked on how much our family has changed from the formerly girls rule majority of his childhood.

For 15 years these two, Sergi and Joe, have been bonded tightly, they're really missing Jesse right now.

They've taught me a boatload about being a mom to sons.