I used to get excited when my friends’ parents would take us for ICE CREAM…

So my teenage daughter calls me from a friends house a couple days ago and tells me she has “something to talk to us about.”

You know that’s never a good thing. The first thought, of course, that immediately pops into my head is that she wrecked her car. Since she’s been driving on a school license for a week, of course that’s not an unreasonable thought to have.

Thank God I was wrong.

But what she was really wanting to talk to us about is probably going to cost us even more money.

One of her friends has invited her and a couple others to go on a CRUISE.

You know, when I was a kid, my friends’ parents would take us for ice cream. Maybe to a movie, or if we were lucky, we’d go to the local amusement park or on a camping trip.

But a CRUISE?

Holy hell.

Of course, the friends’ parents aren’t footing the bill for the kids to go along. We have to pay for it– or I should say, MY DAUGHTER will be finding a way to pay for it IF we decide to let her go.

To the tune of about $1,000. That includes a plane ticket, passport fees, cruise ticket, and spending money.

So, I guess the question that’s on my mind is– when did teenager’s lives become so– EXTRAVAGANT? It seems like kids these days just don’t do anything halfway. It’s an over the top, blinged out, razzle-dazzled, diamond-studded LIFE and they’ve become accustomed to it. And it seems that we, as parents, are just struggling to keep up with it.

I look around at other parents, and it doesn’t seem that anyone else even blinks an eye at it. They just write the checks, whip out the credit cards, and pay the bill. It’s like it doesn’t phase them a bit. I feel like the only one that wants to stop and rethink this whole overdone way of life.

And if we *shudder* DON’T let her go? Well, the world just might end, and I can envision the multitude of Facebook status updates right now that will occur during Christmas Break:

OH. EM. GEEEEEE. This is like the WORST CHRISTMAS BREAK EVER. My parents are so freaking LAME.

I am SO stinkin’ BORED. Why can’t my I have FUN parents like everyone else has?

So, we’re considering letting her go, BUT I am not paying the bill. Boy will she ever learn the value of a dollar over the next few months.

Actually, she’s going to learn the value of a THOUSAND of them.

I’m Out

There are so many things to look forward to when you have daughters. So many milestones, so many memories. I remember holding both of my daughters when they were newborns and looking into their eyes, wondering what their future would hold. Visions of hair ribbons and pigtails swirled in my head. Prom dresses, wedding dresses, and mother-daughter chats are all things I looked forward to as I’ve watched my daughters grow up.

But then there are the milestones you don’t think about. Those times in your daughter’s life you wish you could just skip over.

I knew this time would be coming. My daughter is almost 15, so it’s been on the horizon for a couple years. I’ve been trying to ignore it, and pretending I haven’t seen it coming. I’ve been keeping a smile on my face, trying to avoid the sadness I knew was coming.

In short, I’m out.

Instead of being the first person my daughter rushes to when she has something good to tell, I have quickly fallen down the totem pole. I’m no longer the most important person in my teenagers life. I’m not the top dog, the queen bee. The new world order seems to be as follows:

FRIENDS
BOYS
FACEBOOK
TEXTING
EATING
HANGING OUT IN HER ROOM
TALKING TO THE DOG
TALKING TO ME

I’m OUT, people. Out of the loop. I have to hear what’s going on in my teenager’s life from my 9-year old, who usually finds out because she snoops, or eavesdrops on Facebook conversations.

All of a sudden my 9-year old has turned into a font on knowledge in our house, knowing everything there is to know in the world of high school happenings. She snoops, she investigates, she asks innocent questions, and then she reports back to me.

Because I’m just the mom, and I would never understand what it’s like to be a teenager. So therefore, I am worthless when it comes to talking to me about teenage problems and high school issues.

They might as well just take me to the nursing home now and sit me in front of the Lawrence Welk show.

Jitters

I have tried and failed at so many things in my life. I get very fired up to try something, and after a few days or weeks… I simply fizzle out.

Diets fall into this category, of course. I have tried many different diets and weight loss plans in my life, only to fail after a few weeks because I get tired of following a plan. Or I get off track, and just never get back on again.

But there is one thing these last several months that I am very proud to say I have stayed committed to. One healthy lifestyle change I have made and stuck with.

As of today, I have gone 124 days without caffeine.

I have gone without coffee, Pepsi, Mountain Dew… I have not had iced tea, no diet or regular pop/soda… I’ve eliminated it from my diet.

I now only drink 7-Up, Sierra Mist, Sprite, or water.

What’s crazy is that I never in a million years thought I could do it. BUT I DID. I haven’t been tempted, I haven’t cheated. I haven’t once taken even a tiny sip. I’ve been to parties or get-togethers where caffeinated beverages are my only choice, and I’ve opted for water.

Sometimes it makes me wonder. If I am capable of this, I might be capable of so much more.

Endings, Beginnings, and What’s To Come

*tap* *tap* *tap*

Is this thing on?

Anyone still here reading?

What’s up with me? What’s new in my life?

Endings
Summer vacation is officially over. The kids started school on August 17th, and my son started his first day of college yesterday. I have a daughter in high school now, and I don’t know what to make of that. She hasn’t changed as a person, but things are different now. I didn’t realize it until she came home from her first day of school to tell me that she has 11th graders in some of her classes. I remembered my freshmen year being the same way, but as a mother, it makes me nervous. Nervous about boys–OLDER BOYS. Yikes.

When in the hell did I get to be such a nervous ninny? Sheesh

Beginnings
I’m working on some things in my personal life right now. Some new beginnings. Just like we go through a phase of “cleaning house” as the seasons change, I go through a phase with my personal life. Mind, body and spirit… I need to make some changes. I won’t go into a lot of details right now, other than to say– NEW BEGINNINGS, and things will be changing.

What’s To Come
My nine-year old daughter has been bugging me incessantly lately about shaving her legs. Seriously, when did this become a topic of conversation for nine-year olds? Because apparently many of her friends have already been doing it since last school year. I have been trying to put this off as long as I possibly can, because I do not think a nine-year old (“I’m gonna be TEN in a few weeks MOM!” needs to be SHAVING HER EVER-LOVIN’ LEGS, PEOPLE!!! She is the last of my children. My baby, my wee one. I want to keep this one little and innocent and naive as long as I possibly can, because I know with every fiber of my being this child will be the one to test my boundaries more than any child every could. So I keep tightening the reins, and she keeps pulling on them.

This post brought to you by the letters H, E, L, and P.

Loss

I had decided a while back that I was not going to let my blog turn into some kind of therapy session, where I lay everything out there for the world to read about and then you all sympathize and commiserate with me and tell me that you’re sorry for how I’m feeling. I promised myself I wasn’t going to do that.

But I feel like I need to get these thoughts and feelings and emotions out, and just putting them out there is maybe a way to relieve some of the pressure I’ve been feeling lately.

Here’s the deal. I don’t want this blog to turn into an adoption blog. I don’t want it to turn into a birthmother reunites with long-lost biological son story. My life is more than that. I have a husband, and I have children of my own that I love and cherish with every fiber of my being.

But the son I gave away 18 years ago is consuming every thought and feeling I have right now, and I can’t shake it. I think about him nearly every waking second of every day. We are forming this amazing wonderful friendship, and it’s great. He is getting along wonderfully with my children, my husband, and my parents. I couldn’t have asked for this to have turned out any better. We’ve officially been introduced into each other’s lives, and that’s an amazing step in the process.

But Saturday morning I stood in the shower and cried. I cried so hard I was doubled over, yet trying to keep quiet so my husband and kids couldn’t hear me.

The tears seem to come easily for me lately. Because right alongside this whole process of getting to know my son, I have to go through the grieving process of having lost him at the same time.

It sucks.

I was looking through his Facebook pictures the other night, and I don’t even know why. I had seen them a hundred times by now, and for some reason I had clicked on his profile pictures. I must not have ever looked at those before, because when I clicked through to the second page, I saw a picture that nearly knocked me to the floor.

It was a simple picture. A picture of him as a little boy, maybe 3 years old. But the effect that picture had on me was surreal. It was like I had been struck by lightning. Every one of my extremities was tingling, and I felt sick to my stomach. I was sweating, and I stared at that picture until I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I couldn’t figure out why that picture would have such an effect on me, until I figured out that it wasn’t that it was just his face I was looking at. It was MINE. He looked so much like me, it was like I was looking at my own picture. His eyes, were like MY eyes. The same nose, the same smile, the same hair color. It was all the same.

The thing is, I could deal with seeing the baby pictures. Newborns are newborns and I didn’t feel any strong tug or pull when I looked at those. Seeing him now—yes, I can see the resemblance and I am OK with it, and I can deal with it. I can look at him now and hug him and talk to him and get to know him.

But the little boy in the picture and other 18 years I didn’t get to be a part of? They are gone and I gave them away, and I am now grieving over their loss more than I ever thought I would. I cry when I think of the toddler years and the growing up years I gave up, and I now constantly wonder if I did the right thing, and I am so incredibly jealous that someone else got to raise that wonderful boy. I don’t want to feel this way, and I feel guilty for having these feelings. I mentioned before that I never got to see him when he was born, so I knew he and I never formed that mother/child bond at birth. But I am here to tell you that doesn’t matter. There is such a gravitational pull between him and me from the moment I first laid eyes on him, I cannot even explain it. I may not be his mom, but there is no question in my mind that I gave birth to him. I am his mother. We are blood and he was mine, even if it was only for a moment. That pull and that bond is there. While I may not have felt it all these years, it pulls so strongly now. It hurts with a pain so fierce it is sometimes hard to breathe.

This sounds terrible, but things would be easier if he hadn’t come looking for me. Things would be easier if he had turned out to be an asshole. Things would be easier if he looked more like his father, and less like me. Things would be easier if every single thing he said didn’t remind me of myself. Things would be easier if his mannerisms didn’t remind me of people in my family.

Things would be easier if we hadn’t already gotten to be so close. Because even though we can sit and laugh while carrying on a conversation, he has no idea the ache and the loss I feel whenever I see him.