Susan Metters

GUEST BLOGGER: One Year Down, A Lifetime to Go

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 08:05

It has been 11 months since we’ve heard anything from one of our dear guest bloggers Snafu Suz, but we are fortunate that she has yet another candid and engaging blog to share with us. Over a year ago Snafu Suz and her husband adopted two children from foster care; recently the adoption was finalized.

Snafu Suz is a blogger at Seattle PI. In addition to being an adoptive Mom she is also a cancer survivor.

 

It's been a year and two months since the kids moved in and about six weeks since the adoption was finalized. What a year it has been!

When I first started this blog and decided on a name [Adoption Adventures], I had no idea how fitting it would be. Adoption is certainly an adventure, and a difficult one at that. Being a parent to foster kids has been the greatest challenge of my life. And this is coming from someone who battled cancer just three and a half years ago. Parenthood makes cancer look like a breeze. I wish I were kidding.

This first year held so many things to blog about but I just didn't have the energy to do it. By the end of the day I was so emotionally exhausted that the last thing I wanted to do was write about it and relive the day. I wanted to just do something relaxing and mindless instead, like watch TV, goof around on Facebook, or sleeping. Not only that my son was in half-day Kindergarten which only left me two and a half hours a day to myself. (I swear, half-day Kindergarten was the bane of my existence.) It only left me enough time for errands, getting a few things done around the house …or sleeping. Plenty to blog about, little time and no energy to do it.

Like the day my son decided to go explore the woods adjacent to our property without telling me, causing my first parental panic. Or the time our daughter got a bloody nose in the wee hours of the morning and didn't come wake us up until she and the bathroom were so covered in blood that she looked like that scene out of the movie "Carrie". And then there's the time my son decided to pee on the driveway where we could all see him from the window – while our social worker was there for her monthly visit. And let's not forget the time my daughter decided to play with fire in her bedroom – and yes she did this while the social worker was there for her monthly visit. All this while Bill and I are brand new parents, trying to figure out what the hell we were doing.

Wingin’ The Mom Thing

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Wed, 01/21/2009 - 09:15

We recently posted a blog by Snafu Suz that was actually written over three months ago. This new blog is another candid and poignant account of beginning motherhood with older children adopted from foster care.

Things are much better than they were when I wrote my last entry. I'm surviving, I swear. And it's not all horrible. The meltdowns have greatly reduced and we continue to feel more and more like a family. All things considered things are pretty good. It's just such a huge life change. I can't really stress that enough. Huge, I tell you! HUGE! Taking this particular path to parenthood is not for sissies, I'll tell you that much.

In a way I feel like I'm the one who's been hit the hardest by all this change. Maybe I'm underestimating the stress everyone else is feeling, I don't know. All I know is that I feel overwhelmed most of the time. I feel like I've been inundated with a million new tasks and there's an increased busyness to my life. There's more laundry, the house is a cluttered mess, and I actually have to cook now (and lord knows cooking is not my strong suit). There's homework and sports and afterschool activities and doctors appointments and the PTSA. But it's not just that. There's something more. Something bigger. There's a huge amount of pressure hanging over my head.

I'm the mom now.