Faking It

Courtney just wrote a post on bloggers being real (http://www.storingupteasures.com/) and how it's easy to post a false "togetherness" that isn't reality. I try really hard to not present that we have it all together, because that is so, so, so not the case. I loathe the idea that people think we adopted because we were doing so well with our first four biological children that we were sure we should parent more. Our adopting has nothing to do with our parenting skills and everything to do with the fact that there are 143 million orphans that need families. When it's all said and I'm feeling very discouraged, I always come back to the reality that we are a better family than no family at all!

I'm thankful we don't have any HUGE problems, but we certainly have our share of "issues." I would love to blog on and on about my frustrations with a couple of my children that are in therapy (or need to be) but I don't feel that I can in fairness to them. Years from now, they will read these posts and I don't want extra therapy bills due to my blog! It's sometimes a tough call to post honestly and yet respect those in our lives that are are "victims" of blog-land.

What I can do is rat on myself. So, there are days, like today, that I took a shower, but never put on any make-up or brushed my hair. There are days that my kids sleep in their clothes. There are many times that my girls need hair attention for a full week before I get to it. I don't do kiddie-crafts, nor am I any good at teaching my girls to cook or sew. I really admire people who work home-ec into their homeschool, but I have a tough enough time getting my crew through the basics! I also really admire the organic Moms who feed their children perfectly and I'm trying to move in a more healthy direction, but I'm a long-shot from organic. When Elijah was born, I looked into the cute clothes diapers that the "cool" moms use, but I settled for my on-going habit of filling land-fills with mounds of Huggies. I am always impressed with the Moms that feed their family well on $350 a month, but I still spent over $1000; I really have never figured out how they do it. I'm known to say on an almost daily basis, "I'm on overload" and occasionally I do yell.

I could go on and on, but I'll conclude with a picture that says a thousand words - my school room on any given day, rest assured the rest of the house falls along the same lines.

On a humorous note, my husband read the kind words that my friend Steffany wrote about me when she gave me the bloggy award. It was something along the lines of balancing structure and still being fun. He chuckled and I jumped all over him, I mean nicely inquired to the reason he laughed; his reason was that he didn't think it's always well balanced. Great, one more thing to work on!

(For those of you bloggers who are contemplating writing a "real" post, such as this one, know the secret to controling my stress lies in chocolate hidden in my closet.)