Counting the three grandchildren that I adopted, bringing my total number of children up to 39, we’ve had 16 new births in twelve years time. That’s a lot of babies to hold, our own population explosion with three more due in the next couple of months. 19 babies in all from a family largely built from the adoption of older children.

That one choice just made me be a grandmother faster and at a younger age than normal. An abuelita (grandma) by age 40 and it had nothing to do with the fact that I birthed my oldest child when I was barely 19.

My oldest granddaughter, now 12, is in a grade with three of my children; two uncles and an aunt in her class. Her mother is pregnant... more

Blogging in two arenas, with a 52 year old memory that has been diluted by my 39 children, I’m paranoid about repeating myself and sounding as senile as I sometimes feel. My 33 year old daughter remarked, “Well you get new readers all the time,” which will now become my mantra and my excuse for repeating myself. Often mothers find what they need at the time, and then later I encourage other mothers.

I believe I mentioned my 100 month theory on another post. Today marks that 100th month we’d been looking forward to celebrating. 100 months... more

Life in an adoptive family has at least one guaranteed constant. Holiday Hell. Such an rude and impolite, yet accurately descriptive term for what transpires like clockwork in its predictability.

Naïve Mamas, like I shouldn’t still be, try and provide sweet, wholesome holiday experiences for our children to participate in and remember their childhoods by, only to have it blow up in our faces time and time again.

When one adopts children from the foster care system, one invites all their past negative experiences into one’s family as a side result.... more

My 23 year old daughter and I spent the afternoon talking. Now pregnant and expecting her first child, a step-mother already to a four year old, and married for only a year, she’s starting to think about her past and how it will affect her parenting.

Knowing her birth mother has some serious mental health issues, and not having a clue as to her father’s identity, she was feeling kind of blue, maybe wary would be a better word, as she’s recently been asked so many medical history questions that she does not know the answers to at all.

She... more

I just took 22 of my children to the dollar theater to see The Astronaut Farmer. We loved it, even my 4 and 5 years old kids paid attention, and we ran into a friend of ours who has around a dozen children as well. Wonderfully inexpensive entertainment for large families.

For $22 we saw an inspiring movie that some might mutter, “That’s impossible!” It’s not impossible for a farmer, with an aeronautical degree, to build and launch a rocket from his barn.

I’m raising... more

“A budget crisis in Rhode Island has forced the state to contemplate difficult cuts, including services meant to ease the transition of foster kids who have "aged out" of the system.

If the cuts are made, former foster kids between the ages of 18-21 would no longer receive the aid that helps them pay for things like school, rent and health insurance."

What?

Some of the most tenuous members of society, are... more

My 15 year old son, who is in an Outdoor Therapeutic Program, is getting a three day pass to come home for the Easter weekend. He’s not been home for months as he was led away in handcuffs over his family violence charges. The police had been called; he was on probation anyway, I’ve been very vocal and insistent that we need help, that he needs consequences, and that we’ve been in danger from his rages.

That translated to him as, “Mama doesn’t love me. She kicked me out.”

Not, “my behaviors kicked me out, but Mama did.”

So... more

My three year old grandson, Ray, comes over to my house everyday, except on the weekends when he putters around his own seven acres with his Poppa. My two youngest kids are 4 and 5, so Ray has built-in playmates. He doesn’t remember life before they joined our family.

Since we are a very large family, Ray has a carload of cousins, but the majority of his aunts and uncles live at home with me, his grandmother.

I look around my house and I see all my traumatized children, I see and deal with their issues each day, calm the aggressions,... more

If you drove up to the front of my house, you might be fairly impressed by the size of it, the way it seems to rise out of a hill on one side; the height and breadth of it are singularly impressive. One son of mine claims though that we each only have enough square feet to breathe, the square feet of oxygen over our heads. He exaggerates because our house is huge.

So it looks good from the outside, sometimes it looks OK on the inside, but the giveaway to the fact that I parent traumatized children, comes from the faint odor or urine that seems... more

A thoughtful reader, John, commented yesterday on the neediness level of his sons, touching base with his constantly as they seek enormous emotional reassurance.

I have a 20 year old son who has lived with me for seven years, he was the oldest of 7 children, and all the responsibilities had fallen on him before adoption. He’s been very easy to raise, glad to share his responsibilities, indeed he shed himself of them to some degree. Still very emotionally involved, he attends... more