Adopting a Sibling

Okay, I admit it, I'm on a travel theme.   Something about being in a car for 5 days with 5 kids and no hubby makes one think a lot about what works and what doesn't.  In case you are planning any road trips of your own, here are my top tips: 1)  Bring headphones and an iPod/MP3 player for yourself. Sometimes you really need to just drown out the whining and bickering. 2) Don't play "the quiet game."  Everyone hates that game and sees right through it.  If you need them to be quiet a while, just mandate it.  Or see #1 3)  Plan a lot of stops.  A lot. I figure on stopping every 100 miles or 2 hours, whichever comes first.  Looking ahead… [more]

When I was a child, we traveled.  Almost all of travel was in the car (as was Dear Hubby's); nonetheless, I saw many National Parks and traveled through a good many states in my short 18 years at home.  When I was a child, I thought four kids constituted a small family! We travel with our kids, five in all.  We started traveling when our oldest was an infant and we've just never stopped.  Everyone thinks we are crazy.  They think it even more when they find out most of our travel is by car. Dear Hubby and I talked a lot about travel before our first daughter came along.  We agreed that in air travel, something is lost.  When our oldest was just a baby, my dad said, "It's good for… [more]

There are few realities I have had to face.  The first is that I am not nearly as industrious nor as organized as I have led myself to believe.  The second is that five kids is a lot of kids. I thought it might be helpful for other sibling group families or prospective families to know a little of what does work around here, at least right now. These are my Top 1o Sanity Savers:

1. Have a repertoire of "ready recipes," things your family loves to eat that are fast and simple.  Ours includes Fettucini Alfredo or Spaghetti Carbonara, Sauteed orange chicken and rice, and pork-chop rice bake.  Use these when at wit's end.
2. Use your freezer.  When making a casserole, spaghetti

Well, I think it's official.  I think "The Blitz" needs a new name, "Love Bug."  He still is capable of inflicting serious damage in any room without notice, but he is also capable of so much love and joy.  Three is a quirky age. The Blitz is given to tantrums of late, and sometimes these shake my patience to the foundation.  How do you deal with someone who has inexplicably started screaming and thrown themselves on the floor.  Ignoring him was not working; it was definitely making things worse.  That makes perfect sense; he's a smart kid, he knows we can hear and see him, so ignoring him just made him mad as heck.  Now I am squatting down and saying in a… [more]

Our older girls were a set of two; we have a younger set of 3, currently 2, 3 and 5 years old but in reality they are 11 months and 14 months apart.  They have a LOT of stuff.  From the day the kids arrived, their stuff has been an issue.  The three of them share the largest bedroom in the house, but their 3 beds take up more than half the floor space.  We started with a toy sorter; it was disastrous.  In all honesty, I now remember it didn't work for the big girls either and it drove me crazy then too. 2 years into the process, we have finally found a toy system that mostly works and a pretty good laundry system.  The key to both systems is… [more]

We have the most wonderful extended family.  They have been so sweet and welcoming to our children and treat them like all the bio kids in the clan.  I'm so grateful for that. For these three adopted from foster care, though, it really is not the same.  Especially for the older two.  Two years after they were placed with us, we still need to be thinking ahead about events and situations to avoid re-traumatizing the kids.

• How many people will be there in total?
• How much pressure will be on the kids to behave (a funeral or wedding, for instance versus a picnic in a park)?
• How many new or seldom seen people will be there?
• How many hours will we be away from home?
• Which of

The Captain turned five yesterday!  Hence today's Love Thursday post. Two years and two weeks ago The Captain and his siblings walked through our front door.  Two weeks later we celebrated The Captain's third birthday.  Back then, he had half-a-dozen to 9 fits every day, some lasting up to 40 minutes.  He was inconsolable.  He had two fits during his birthday party, which was very low key and small-scale, so as not to upset him.  He got a trike, I remember it well.   It was raining (for about a week) so he rode it all over the house.  I'd have never allowed this in my previous life but I'd do anything to make that child smile. The Captain, at three, had… [more]

This is where I will officially cross the line and some of you will begin to think/realize I am crazy.  Yesterday at dinner, the Blitz (age 2) had a dinner-time breakdown when he thought I was getting stuff onto his plate too slowly.  To my older children I said, "Isn't that sweet?  He looks and sounds exactly like The Captain used to." My children did not think the loud, dramatic wailing was cute.  Not at all. Nor did The Blitz. I am still so mesmerized and amazed by how alike our three little ones are.  It is my first time to raise siblings and I just did not realize before how much of "who we are" is apparently encoded in our DNA.  It's… [more]

It's Leap Day today.  At this moment, my kids are 2, 3, 4, 13 and 15.  It is really weird to think that when Leap Day comes again, one will be a full fledged adult, out of the house, nearly done with her second year of college, one will be about to finish high school and our "Littles" will be 6, 7 and 8 -- no longer so "Little." Because I never need an excuse to party and because the older girls are home-schooled, today we are celebrating Leap Day.  None of them know that, of course.  I doubt they even know the date!  Since I'm too old to broad jump -- aka "leap" -- I'm theming the whole thing around frogs. Their first hint that something is happening will be when… [more]

"Attachment" is the work in adoption circles today just as trauma informed care is the methodology of choice.  But to be honest, when you are in the trenches with a sibling group of adopted kids, you don't have a lot of time to read the latest research and attend trainings.  At least I don't.  So here is a list of small changes we can all make to foster a stronger attachment with all our children (recently adopted or not).  Don't try to do them all, just pick one or two and make a small change:

1. Look for love-ops.  Like a photo op, these are the little moments in the day to make eye contact, stroke a shoulder, or give a quick