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.

Remind me again why I had children

Diva and Sproing returned unscathed from their field trip. I told you about the plan, right? The adventure is called "Sleeping with the Sharks" and the kids camped out in the tunnels that run under the large shark tank. If it weren't for all those kids there, I think I'd like that. Can you imagine lying in bed looking up at a tank full of sharks and assorted other sea life? Cool. Anyway, neither of my young'uns was thrown to the sharks, so I qualify that as a success. 

However, all is not rosy in kidlet land. 

Do you remember just a couple of days ago when I did all those good mommy things to get the kidlets ready for their field trip? For ready reference, I include the pertinent facts from my previous post:

In addition to washing Sproing's clothes on a special extra trip to the laundromat, I got all kinds of goodies for their trip. I filled up a bag for each of them with a disposable 35mm camera, a book of games and puzzles to do on the 5 hour bus trip, snacks for the bus trip, a white t-shirt for the art project they are supposed to do during this educational experience, mechanical pencils (that don't need sharpening) to use on their puzzle books, and money (cold hard cash!!) for tonight's dinner and the gift shops. 

Sproing at least was very excited about the bag of goodies. I don't specifically remember Diva's response. I thought it was a pretty nifty collection. For whatever reason Diva felt the need for more. Maybe she wanted something more high tech than a book of puzzles. Maybe she thinks other people will like her better if she has better stuff to show off. With her there's no telling. 

She stole my digital camera. 

If she had asked to borrow it I would have said "no." So she didn't ask. I discovered it Friday evening on a bookshelf in my room, nowhere near its usual location. I thought that was odd. I didn't have reason to use the camera while they were gone, so I didn't miss it. When I saw it on the shelf I suspected it had been borrowed. So I searched the memory. It was completely empty. No images saved on the memory card or the internal memory. I had emptied the memory card a couple of days ago when I downloaded that beautiful picture of Gregory. :)

My suspicions were confirmed by Sproing. He volunteered that Diva had taken my camera. And he pointed out that she had deleted all the images she photographed. Ok, I'm impressed/pleased that she was at least smart enough to do that. How sad is it that I realize her cognitive improvements by how well she hides her crimes? 

This evening I confronted her about the camera. I asked if she had taken it on the trip. "No." I asked her again, giving her the evil eye. (It didn't work. Used to work on Light and usually on Twitch. They had healthy consciences.) She was a bit hesitant in her negative answer and didn't look me in the eye. Um-hm. So I asked her a third time, and said "Say 'yes.'" She gave me that sorrowful pouty look and whined "y-y-yes." Did I not provide a camera for you? Did I buy all sorts of things for you to take on the trip, and for that matter pay good money to let you go? She reluctantly confirms. I walked out of the room. I figure that was a better choice than what I really wanted to do, which involved smacking her pout from her face to her toes. 

This isn't finished. There will be consequences. Our challenge, however, is to come up with meaningful and enforceable consequences. Any ideas? Superman and I are once again flummoxed. Any suggestions are welcome and will be considered. 

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In other news, my wireless internet connection is screwy. I was boogieing along this afternoon, emailing interesting missives back and forth to various buddies, when suddenly I noticed I wasn't connected to the in'erwebz. "Honey? I need your help..." Just one of the many reasons I call him Superman. We tried various things. I restarted the 'puter. He reset the router. Then the modem. Then the entire desktop system. (it's a dinosaur) Nuthin'. So I shut down and took a nap in hopes that all my problems would be solved when I woke up. Also I was sleepy. Alas, when I awoke 2 hours later I still had no internet. 

This is really bad timing. There is some really interesting juicy stuff going on with friends, none of which I'm going to tell you so don't even ask. That's beside the point. I was emailing hot and heavy here, and suddenly... nada. ARGH! My beloved Superman spent a couple of hours on the phone with tech support figuring out that the problem is not in the wireless router, but must be in the internal wireless card in my laptop. That's the way I understand it, anyhow. I frown and nod. Right now I'm wired to the router. Stuck here beside the big box in the living room, not in my comfy nest where I belong. I am thankful for the connection, though. 

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As I mentioned a few days ago, Diva and Sproing played their final soccer game of the regular season on Wednesday. Today was the first day of playoffs. Superman took them way out to the next town down the pike where playoffs are held. During playoffs they charge admission for everyone except players and coaches, so Superman had to pay $3 for the privilege of watching his kids play soccer. Tournament play in this league is single elimination. The kids' team lost their game this afternoon (Yippee!! ) so the season is now officially over. *sigh of relief* (don't hate)

There might have been something else I was going to say. I decided not to tell you about the gawd-awful mess that C and S left in my kitchen for TWO DAYS before finally cleaning it up late last night. Yesterday was wet and drippy and cool. Today's temperatures have been blessedly autumnal. My friend R from California has been sending me incredibly sappy "Christian" messages ever since I got back online. Another one just popped up in my inbox. Besides that and a few other even less meaningful trivialities, I have nothing else to say except goodnight. 

Goodnight