Sucking the air outI would like to address a comment made on a blog that I wrote on July 2, 2008 entitled “Place Older Adopted Children With Stay at Home Parent.” In that blog, I stated that older adopted children typically come to their new family with abandonment issues. I realize there are many other issues involved, but I am addressing just abandonment for now. In the summary of the article I stated, “Try to find a way to spend those first... more

For many of us, Mother’s Day is not the day we had dreamed of when we started out our parenting journey. We don’t have children rushing to us with hugs and fists full of flowers. We aren’t greeted with “I love you” or children wanting to make the day perfect for us.

Many of my days started with my son throwing a huge fit, possibly literally throwing things, cursing at me and other equally fun things. At some point in my parenting journey, I stopped making the day about making my kids feel good about having me for a mom, and instead I celebrate making... more

As a kid, I loved board games, but never played the very popular Game of Life. Now, as an adult, I still love games, though I play more of them on the computer than anything else.

Imagine, then, my joy at finding a “newfangled” version of the game of Life for the computer! But, boy, is it ever fast-paced. With my ADD, there are times in the game where I just get mind-boggled with all the activity going on! At various stages of... more

I remember clearly when my mom began the journey into menopause. She was 42 and I was in the midst of my obligatory teen angst. This made for an extremely ugly time of hormonal head-butting. As often happens when one is an ignorant, pig-headed kid with little to no life experience, I swore it would be different when I had children (one of many bone-headed statements I have proven incorrect).

Well, here I am, mere weeks away from my 44th birthday and a full 12 months into perimenopause (yep, 42 was the magic number). You can’t wait until you are old enough... more

A new study on the effects of sleep indicates that women fair worse from bad sleep then men do. According to researchers men’s health was relatively unaffected by sleep quality. However, women who didn’t get a good night sleep suffered physically and mentally. Physically, poor sleep affected women’s blood insulin levels and resulted in higher levels of markers of inflammation and of fibrinogen. Mentally, the study showed that women who didn’t get a good nights rest had more symptoms of depression, hostility, and anger.

What does a woman’s sleep quality have to... more

Get any group of mothers together, and the working mom versus stay-at-home mom debate is likely to rear its ugly head. Being adoptive parents only digs us more firmly into one “side” or the other. On one side, we have adoptive parents saying that they waited so long to be parents that they want one parent at home with the child. On the other side, we have adoptive parents who have either depleted their savings account or are knee deep in debt to pay for the adoption, so they say that both must... more

I recently returned to work outside of the home. (Going Back to Work After Adoption)

I worked outside the home when I had birth kids. What is different, then, about working outside the home now that I have adopted children?

What can I do to make this a successful experience for all of us?

1) Adjust age level expectations for your child. Your child might be chronologically ten, but emotionally 3. Remember to respond to... more

Today, I went back to work. Things are wild on the home front tonight! I honestly had not realized aspects of the impact it would have on some of my kids.

Were they not ready for mom to go out to work? Will they ever be ready? How can an adoptive mom know?

I’ve worked before, but it has been a couple of years. (Even then, my part-time schedule was so varied and odd that I think some kids weren’t even aware that I had an outside job!)

Two years ago, we moved to a new city. My husband returned to school... more

I recently had an interesting discussion with a fellow Mommy about our roles as Mothers. I mentioned that I struggle between being a strict authority figure or a warm fuzzy “you can come to me for anything” type Mama. I don’t want to be a “do as I say not as I do” type Mom but then again I’m seeing so much wrong with kids these days compared to the ideals and values that I grew up with.

My friend felt that you can have it both ways… be best friends and be firm. She feels that she has found a happy medium. I feel that I get walked... more

Have you all seen this article? The report by Salary.com basically adds up the hours and various duties of your average stay- at- home mom and tries to match those duties with an average salary. I imagine it was not an easy task coming up with that ball park figure.

The job descriptions that Salary.com used to determine a moms salary includes 10 jobs that moms do on an average day: housekeeper, day care center teacher, cook,... more