Weekend update, questions answered, and other miscellany

Twitch was home this weekend. It's the first time he's been home since he left for school. His term is half over now. The school is on the quarter system, not semesters like my school or Light's school. He is in the middle of his summer quarter now. He likes it and seems to be doing well. He's bored and lonely, though. I think he enjoyed coming home, but I know he also enjoyed going back to his apartment. This weekend reminded him why he was so anxious to get out of here. Yep, the kidlets were in fine form.

I cracked a tooth last week. It happened Thursday, but I didn't really figure out what happened until late Friday. The front (anterior) surface fell away. It's the part between that tooth and the one in front of it. I think it broke along a filling gap or something. I'm not sure. It doesn't hurt, thankfully! My tongue won't leave it alone, though, and the broken edge is sharp. The piece that chipped off was stuck in the gap, but I fished most of it out Friday afternoon. There's still a small sliver of tooth stuck in there. I have an appointment to see my dentist at 10:00. She'll figure it all out. I hope she can do what needs to be done today. I don't want to go back in there for this stupid thing again. I have an appointment for a cleaning next month anyway.

Karen asked recently, in the comments to a post I'm too lazy to look up, just exactly how we came to have Sproing and Diva living with us. I'll try to answer that question briefly, but as I've mentioned many times, brevity is not my strength. Superman and I have been interested in adoption since before Light and Twitch were born. When they were about 5 and 3 years old, we decided to go ahead and look into adoption. We wanted more kids (silly us), but pregnancy and I don't get along well. Knowing there are many children who need homes, we contacted the state department of social services (DSS) to begin the process. We got all our paperwork and home studies finished and were cleared to adopt. But the case workers at DSS were bumfoozlers and didn't want to work with us. I don't know exactly why, but I have my suspicions. We wanted to adopt transracially. Having been foster parents years before, we are aware how difficult it can be to place racial minority children. We wanted to provide a permanent home for a couple of those children.

But DSS wouldn't cooperate, so we went looking elsewhere. We joined an adoption support group, made some friends, networked a bit. There were a lot of people who knew we were looking for a child to adopt. We finally got a call from an attorney in Greenville who got wind of a baby who needed placement, having just been born down in Charleston, SC. Paperwork happened, and two days later we drove to Charleston to pick up our tiny new born baby boy. Sproing was only 4 days old when we got him from the hospital and brought him home. His adoption hearing was 6 months later, when he officially and legally became our son.

Having gotten some good advice from a director of an adoption agency some time ago, we knew we wanted to adopt at least one more minority child. It's (allegedly) emotionally healthier for a minority child in a different-race family to have someone else in the family who is also a minority. It makes sense. If Sproing were the only African American child in this Caucasian family, he'd be the only "different" one. With Diva here, they share the genetic heritage. That's the theory, anyway. So we put the word out that we wanted to adopt another child. A week after Sproing's first birthday, our attorney (the same guy) called with news of a one-year-old baby girl who needed a home. Things prevailed, and on February 4th, 1999, we brought Diva home to live with us. Her adoption was finalized on January (something-teenth), 2000.

And we all lived happily ever after. In theory. In practice, it's been much tougher. Having 4 children isn't the difficult part. Having two of those children suffer from emotional disturbances is the tough part. Of course no one could know when they were babies that they'd have so many problems. Superman and I were naive enough to think that if we provided a good home, loving and nurturing, etc., that they'd be just fine. I've learned a lot since then. Sometimes love isn't enough. Sometimes nature is WAY more powerful than nurture. And that's where we are today.

Does that answer the questions? If you have any more questions, just shoot them my way. I'll try to answer whatever I can as honestly as I can.

It's time for me to go see the dentist. Wish me luck.

UPDATE 1:15 pm:I'm back from the dentist, sporting a fancy new (temporary) crown. I feel so queen-ish.