Parenting 101

I know it's possible to blog without including pictures, people do it all the time, right? I've even done it before, once or twice, but you probably won't remember those 'cause I'm pretty sure no one read them. It just makes me feel all exposed. My poor writing has nothing to hide behind. No cute little kiddos or puppies to distract you from the less than noteworthy event I'm capturing about my pretty normal life.

But I find myself left with no other choice. Well, except for the obvious alternative of not writing, but I prefer to face my fears head on. So, in spite of the fact that my camera broke Friday, and my back-up camera broke Saturday, and just to add insult to injury my Kindle also bit the dust, here I am. Do I have anything profound to say, no not really. Do I just like to hear myself talk, well I didn't think so, but it's looking more likely now isn't it?

So, what do we talk about when we don't have pictures of the recent Talita Cumi birthday party or the fundraiser dinner last Friday?

How 'bout parenting. Have you ever tried it? It's hard! Most of you know, the little Angel and I have had our fair share, plus maybe a few others' fair shares, of issues. She's got quite a history to work through and well, what do I know about parenting?!

A friend told me recently when they had their first little one a year ago, they started to read the books, but then got overwhelmed and decided to just do it by instinct. My instincts aren't so trustworthy. So, I've read Adopted For Life, The New Strong-Willed Child, The Post-Adoption Blues, Loving Your Kids on Purpose, Parenting The Internationally Adopted Child, Bossypants (Tina Fey's book which I found on a parenting website, however turns out to not be about parenting, but totally worth the read), etc. I'm listening to an audio series called the Total Transformation. I'm meeting with a counselor regularly. We have a weekly motivational behavior chart. We moved bedtime up half an hour...

So, what is the outcome of these gazillion ideas and messages (often contradicting each other) bombarding me all at once? That my head explodes, yes. But also that we had a "perfect" week. It was our second almost-tantrumless week in the four and a half months we've been charting. And of course, we're going to the movies!!

Like everyone else you probably want to know what's making the difference. But to really be able to identify the cause we'd only be able to make one change a week to isolate all the variables, and I'm just too impatient for that. So, we'll just be grateful for our great week and try to keep up whatever we're doing right!

Thank you all for your prayers, they're an essential contributing factor that we couldn't do without.