Why Are People So Entitled?

I often wonder why kids (even mine), young adults, and everyone in between have this unearned sense of entitlement to everything. They "deserve" the best, the newest, the most expensive - and they truly believe it. I see this issue a lot with military wives especially, where there are people buying houses, cars, new electronics, premium things for their kids, etc. None of this is a problem if you can afford it, or saved up to buy it, but then these same wives end up crying online that they can't pay their bills.

The whole idea of entitlement has gotten even worse with children, and I am dreading to see how this next generation will act in the future...

We Need to Keep Score Again!

Are you sick of sports games not keeping score (while all the parents and coaches do)? Do you get report cards like my son, where they refuse to use letter grades and dissect every category, like English and Science, into fifty subcategories? It just becomes a confusing mess right?

And the purpose of this is to shelter our children who need to learn that the world is competitive and everyone can't be great at everything. By not allowing failure, kids never become motivated to seek success, and then the real world hurts all the more.

So let Red Riding Hood's Grandma get eaten by the wolf, have the Huntsman chop the evil beast open, and allow our kids the good with the bad (joy with fear, winning with losing, laughing with crying) - it builds character and will create a better generation of adults!

Not Quite a Holiday Song

This cracks me up, and it's all I've got for a holiday song this time around. She's so happy to dance with her Rio Angry Bird plushies, haha. Happy MLKJ Day!

Pregnant Young Adults

Now teen moms can be a handful, but what about the young moms who are legally adults, but not emotionally ones?

I got a viewer question about hurt feelings and the "obligations" of family to give your baby gifts. I answered it as honestly as I knew how:

The Mommy Club

Are you a mom? Then you're in the Mom's Club. Are you a new mom? Then you need to learn your place in the Mom's Club! Too many new mothers decide that having a baby makes them a grown up, and/or equal to every other mom on the planet. This is not true in the least!

My Kid

My daughter cracks me up and makes me laugh (she comes with many headaches and frustrations as well, so keep that in mind any young women watching and getting the baby itch). She made this video for her Papal, but then started going off on her own rant, and it was hilarious! She's going to punch the fictional fish, and her tongue keeps getting turned into background image and freaking her out, haha!

What I don't get is why Photo Booth on my Mac lit her so well at 10pm, but when I recorded a video at 4pm it was so dark half of my face was gone even though I was using three light sources! I'm going to have to think of a better solution for recording if I can't figure this out.

Foster Care Adoption - Rejection

It has been just shy of a month since we got to speak to the girl we were wanting to get matched with on the phone. I know for a fact that we were the only home she spoke to, and that she was very excited about us, but we've never heard back and are at a point where we assume that we are no longer being considered. Rejection hurts, and not knowing for sure is very difficult to process and makes it even more difficult to move forward with our search for a match.

I suppose it is a painful reality that rejection works both ways. Even though we started out by setting up ground rules for what children we would and wouldn't consider, I never thought I would be picky in the adoption process. However, the now that we're at this stage, it seems like we go over every child with a fine tooth comb to decide if we're right for them, and if they're right for us. I get filled with these horrified thoughts of my kids being hurt or molested by a child that we chose to bring into the home, and that has brought a great sense of gravity to every profile we look at. Where do you decide that you don't want to chance certain things instead of jumping in and hoping for the best?

While we have no expectations of finding a "perfect" child, we do want to find a match with someone that my husband and I are both really confident about. Unfortunately, we've recently rejected a profile that could have been a potential match, because we felt that the special needs were too severe for what we could handle. It makes me feel terrible to look at someone wanting a family so badly and say "no," but I feel like it's more important for us to be realistic about what we can and cannot handle rather than bring a child into our home only to confirm that it won't work and uproot them again. All the same, I do find some comfort in knowing that the child has had no idea that we looked at his information and passed, and I hope he finds the right home for him.

You can't force things or make them fit, it has to be right or you can very easily set yourself up for major problems.

Adoption Update - Hearing Back

I have an adoption update! I am not looking my best today but I wanted to share the feeling I had for getting to another stage in the process.

Adoptoin Vlog Part I

Wow I have gotten really behind on my blogging. Well, we have been working on adopting from foster care for almost a year now, and we've finally gone through all the hoops to get approved, and now we're on the inquiry search. So here is the first of a two part video (it was too long for YouTube so I suddenly had to splice it), it deals with training and getting approved.