Today was an incredibly stressful, yet positively wonderful day. Absolutely everything that I had planned for today did not go right at all. I had a lot to get done, and very little time to do it in, as once the kids arrived home from school we had to hurry up and get in the car and drive quite a distance, for an extremely important engagement. Only both the kids didn’t go to school today, as my little guy got sick again and had to stay home. We were quite worried this morning as to if he would be able to make it to this most special occasion, and what on Earth we were going to do if he was in fact, too sick to go.
Him being sick and staying home was only the first of many things to go horribly wrong today. Each task that I attempted today was frustrating, more time consuming than it should have been, and an all out hassle, quite frankly, yet I was determined to get everything done, and done on time, so that we would be out of the house when we needed to be. Of course that didn’t happen either and we ended up getting on the road a half an hour behind schedule, despite our best efforts, but at least the little guy had perked up and was able to join us on our long trek to our special celebration.
So what could this special event be, you ask? What could be so important that no matter what obstacle we ran into, we simply plowed through it like nobody’s business? Well today my friends, we were celebrating my adopted stepson’s birthday, and nothing was going to keep us from getting him to the celebration that we had planned. Having a birthday that is so close to Christmas is hard for him, it is like a double whammy, getting hit with all of his adoption emotions at once, and in the past has lead to some terribly destructive behaviors during this time of the year, leaving everyone in no mood to celebrate anything. The fact that his birthday is so close to the holidays is another reason I was so upset to learn that he had been assigned a Family Tree project at school, I felt so terrible for him thinking to myself, “how much does he have to face at this time of the year? Can’t life cut him some slack here?”
Yet he has managed, for the most part, to keep it together this year. He is enjoying himself and the holiday season, and he thoroughly enjoyed his birthday celebration this evening, in fact we all did we really had a blast. He allowed himself to be spoiled rotten, and he relished in every single moment of it, in fact he still is, as he is having a friend spend the night so that they could continue their celebration once we arrived back home again.
I cannot believe how big he is, how much he has grown, and how proud that I am of him. We have had many set backs, fights, heartaches, trials, and challenges, yet somehow we have all managed to stay a family, to grow closer to one another, and even learn to accept each other as we are, even the less desirable parts of each other! I couldn’t be more proud of him and the man that he is growing into, and the troubles of today are only a drop in the bucket when it comes to what lengths I will go to, to ensure that he sees, knows, and most importantly feels how loved, cherished, wanted, and special he truly is.
