Via Ukraine

1. The husband stole the monitor for the computer, so I haven’t been able to blog much lately.
2. I leave early Monday to go to my sister’s college graduation in Colorado.
3. I’m super proud of her and can’t wait to see her.
4. I’ll be seeing my mother for the first time in three years. Not looking forward to that at all.
5. Can’t decide if I want sangria or mango margaritas for my bbq on Sunday. Life is hard.

Today is meant to be a celebration of all the women who gave birth to precious babies and then (making what I can only imagine was the hardest decision of their lives) placed those children with another family to be raised. I think all birth mothers are amazing and made the ultimate sacrifice not for themselves, but for their children. You should be celebrated.

But then, there are the other birth moms. The ones who didn’t make a plan for adoption. The ones who had their children forcibly removed. What of them? Do they get celebrated today?

My sons’ birth mother did not pour over information from prospective families. She did not meet with counselors. She did not get to weigh the pros and the cons of open versus closed adoption. Her plan had been to raise these boys. Should she be celebrated?

Thankfully my sons are still to young to know about Birth Mothers’ Day and, right or wrong, I’m not going to tell them. If they find out about when they are older we can talk about it.

I don’t know how I feel about their birth mother. On the one hand, she did not take care of them. She left them alone for weeks at a time, putting a six year old Oldest in charge. She didn’t feed them, she didn’t wash them, she didn’t make them go to school. And neglect was the least of the awful things my sons had to endure. At the same time, however, if she had been capable, I wouldn’t have these children in my life.

Should I hate her because of the way she treated these boys? Or should I be thankful she kept them alive long enough for me to become their mother?

I don’t feel drawn one way or the other about her. She doesn’t make me angry, but she doesn’t make me thankful either. I don’t know the right way to navigate how I should feel about her.
I guess this is one of those problems I need to not worry about now. I need to live in the moment and enjoy my children. There will be plenty of time later to for me and the boys to figure out our feelings about her.

I had to ask a student to stop doing her scratch-off lottery tickets in class. Twice.

That I just had to tell a grown woman, who holds a job at an institute of higher learning, that you cannot put your metal pan covered in foil in the microwave?
She’s teaching other people things?

I had some time to kill before Oldest’s soccer practice was over so I went to an educational toy store that I’d never been in. Aside from the fact I can’t believe that people will pay $30 for a simple puzzle, they basically have a kid’s birthday registry. The birthday kid gets a box and walks around putting toys in it that he wants other people to buy him.
Am I the only one who thinks this is extremely tacky? I feel this is really teaching kids that stuff is more important than family and friends. I mean, I have a lot more background stuff to deal with when it comes to my kids understanding that people are more important than gifts, but still. I can’t even imagine what happens when the gifts are opened and they didn’t get everything the expected.

For lunch today I ate:
A hard boiled egg
A handful of baby carrots
Some edamame hummus (which I had to scrape out of the tub)
A weight watchers snack cake
All of these items had questionable sell by/use by dates.
This whole scenario is even more embarrassing because I ate this stuff at work in front of other people.

Youngest is on a baseball team in our Very Nice Town. Two years ago he didn’t even know the sport existed, so it’s not like he’s any good. As a matter of fact, four days ago he had never picked up a bat in his life.

This is all background information so you understand why I got him a batting helmet and bat from a resale shop for a total of $6. Oh, and because he’s 8 and will very quickly grow out of those things.

On this baseball team there are mostly kids from Youngest’s public school with a few Catholic school kids thrown in. One of the Catholic school kids has a Very Douchey Dad.

Today, Douchey Dad picked up Youngest’s bat, looked at it, and said “Yeah, I’ll buy you a new one.”

Now granted, Youngest could have misheard (maybe Douche said “bring” and I wasn’t there to hear) but still, what the absolute f gives you the right to make my kid feel bad about his baseball equipment?

If we didn’t have enough money to buy fancy equipment you just made my kid feel like shit because we can’t afford it. If we do have money but chose not to waste it on baseball equipment that will probably only be used for one season you just made my kid feel like shit because obviously I don’t love him enough.

To Youngest’s credit he told the guy he didn’t need one, which made me very proud.

If this guy brings him a bat, however, I am going to give him an earful about how we don’t want to teach Youngest that life is about stuff. That we don’t want him to think that the reason his life was bad in Ukraine was because he didn’t have things. I want him to know that not having a family that could take care of him was the problem. And that even if I don’t spend $300 on baseball equipment for a 1st grader he still has a mother who loves him and a safe place to live and enough food to eat and he gets to see his brothers every day.

Then I’m going to take that bat and bust the asshole’s Mercedes SUV taillights.

In The Very Nice Town I live in there has been somewhat of a scandal at the middle school. Apparently, one of the 8^th grade English teachers allowed The Perks of Being a Wallflower to be read in her classroom. It was not assigned as reading material, but was on the shelf as an option for students to read and hold a book club on over the course of several weeks.  One of The Very Nice Town’s Very Religious Girls (there seems to be a lot of these) chose the book and was horrified by the sexual content in it. She was permitted to change books for the assignment, but was so horrified that she went home and told her parents, who then read the book and were so disgusted that they immediately went to the teacher and the principal and asked that the book be banned. The teacher and the principal stood by their decision to allow the book as an option for students so the family took their case to the school board. The board voted on it last night and it was decided the book cannot be read in our Very Nice School District.

I have not read The Perks of Being a Wallflower. From what I know about it I probably wouldn’t offer it as an option for an assignment (mostly because I wouldn’t want to deal with parents like this), but I also wouldn’t discourage a kid from reading it. As a parent would I want my 14 year old reading a book that had sexually graphic paragraphs? Not really.  I also don’t want my kid wiping his boogers on the table cloth, but he still does. I guess what I am saying is that kids are going to find out about sex eventually and banning a book only makes them think it is dirty and wrong and you can’t discuss it with adults you trust. The boogers still end up on the table cloth, they’re just placed there in secret.

I thinking banning books is wrong.  I think making kids believe that something they find interesting (because even your Very Religious Daughters are interested in sex) is dangerous will not end well.  

What is even more frustrating about this whole thing is that the parents who got the book banned sent out a mass email thanking people for supporting them in “God’s work as Christians”. This just rubs me the wrong way. Aren’t public schools supposed to be secular?

I guess what this boils down to is that if you don’t want your kid to read that book it’s fine. I really don’t care. But don’t take that option away from my kid. Just because you are worried that your child is too impressionable (or too stupid to know that things in fiction shouldn’t be repeated in real life as soon as you read them) doesn’t mean  I wouldn’t want to actually have a conversation with my child about this sort of topic.

My fifth grader brought home a permission slip to be able to watch the Nicolas Cage movie National Treasure the other day. So if people have complained about that I don’t think there will be many thought provoking books read for much longer.