Do you ever think you may have adopted to many?

I saw this thread awhile back and just popped in to see how things were going. Back when you first posted I thought...wow I could be in her shoes. We had just been informed of a situation that may come our way. Well...as you can see by my signature it happened! I can fully understand being overwhelmed. Sometimes I think if I ever see another load of laundry I just may run away!! Two of our adopted children are high needs. They have FASD and 2 of the foster kids are RAD. The four of them keep us on our toes. The other two older ones, my biological children, are heading into their teenage years and boy that's fun...(this is suppose to be highly sarcastic :evilgrin: ) The other two are only 11m and 2yrs so we will see what time will bring us. 3 days after our foster children were placed with us my husband had to travel for his job. He has been gone now for three weeks. He did come home for 2 days but as far as the normal everyday stuff it falls on me. I am still doing home childcare because I am only going to quit if these "new" three stay as a foster/adopt placement. Right now they are reunification. So during the week we add 6 more little ones under 5 during the 7am-5pm shift. We were not planning on fostering but these children are the cousins to our adopted children. We had to say yes. I wouldn't ever said no but there are days I just may go crazy :arrow: I don't think that I have to go into it because I am certain you understand the everyday chaos of raising an instantly large family. I just wanted you to know that you are not the only one. We can be strong and lean on the friendly folks here for support. These children NEED us more then anyone else ever will. A few crazy moments now will lead up to a bunch of "remember when" stories when we are older. I keep telling myself that I am going to miss this someday. Please give us an update on how your doing....

Hi y'all! I can't believe how long it's been since I posted on here! Don't you hate when people do that? You're having a dialogue with them and all of a sudden they disappear? LOL I've been so busy! Actually, more busy with my oldest daughter (25 now) and her baby, then I've been with my young children! I'm doing okay. But, first wanted to comment on the last two posts. OMG! SAHmom! You have got to come back and post how you manage it all! What a blessing!!! You and they are blessed to have one another! I'm with you, we only intended to adopt 3 and once you see how bad the need is... well, I know you understand. How are things going for you? o2b30again, How are you! Yeah! Oh to be 30 again!!! I'm 46 now so I'm definitely thinking along those lines! I'd keep the age just give me back some of my energy! Laundry! Girl, I know you didn't bring that up! LOL OMG!! Don't skip a day! I skip one day without washing a load or two and I'm in trouble for real! And, I got a bunch of pee-cats! That's what I like to call them. At least 3 boys pee in the bed practically everynight! I try so hard to wake up during the night to get them to go to the bathroom but somedays I'm just to tired! Yeah, that laundry is something else! Well, I don't envy you about those boys heading into the teen years! I dread that! My 25 yr old was the pits! She was so hard for a while there I'm surprised I survived to want to raise anymore! That's rough! We'll have to stay in touch! I'll have to check here more often. Sometimes, I do feel so overwhelmed. Oh, and thanks for being so understanding. It's been a while since I saw my post heading and had the thought right now that someone could have misinterrupted what I meant and blasted me for saying it that way. Hope to talk to you soon, Kelley

I have this picture in my head of my youngest child really pouring out his heart to the vacuum cleaner! LoL. Hilarious! :clap:

I know this is an older thread but this cracked me up and I think I am going to "borrow" your bickering tree idea :arrow: Also, I have several vacuum cleaners so then they would all have one to complain to :banana: and wouldn't have to bicker about who was first in line to complain to the vacuum cleaner :clap:

LOL!! Wow.. that was a longgg time ago! I was 46 then.. going on 49 now. I'm glad you replied to this post .. gave me a chance to revisit where I was at that age.. so much has changed since then. And, heah.. I need to revisit that tree idea!

This thread was from a long time ago and I didn't realized that I never replied as I usually try to. Since my reply, we have adopted a sibling group of two which was finalized on December 3rd, 2010. They had joined our family on October of 2009. We are updating our home study in the hopes of adopting a sibling group. Not sure when our adoption journey will end. Four of our children are over the age of 18 and we have ten ages 6 through 16 in our home. I have an awesome support group with hubby and our childrens' Mental Health therapist & case manager {who are more like family!}. Also, it's LOTS of organization and realizing that I am not super woman. If the house isn't clean, so be it. I don't stress over it like I use to. :arrow: How are things going for you?

I don't stress over a house that isn't perfect either....I have 5 big (sometimes muddy) dogs and 5 (sometimes 6 kids) so my house does not look like the houses you would see in a magazine. Do people REALLY have houses that look like that?? You might have some advice for other large families about where you keep everyone's clothes. That has been a problem for me that I can't seem to get ahold of. I think that bureaus take up too much space in relation to how much they can hold but I can't seem to think 'outside the box' on this. :laundry: :laundry: :laundry:

I agree about the dressers! I love the bunk beds that have space under it for under the bed pull outs from Walmart. I also use the things that hang from the ceiling for under clothes and belts, etc., hair bows or stuffed animals. It looks like this [url=http://www.itoystorage.com/kids-toy-storage/hanging-toy-storage/hangingstorallorganizer.cfm]Hanging Store-All Organizer - Blue - Kids Toy Storage at iToy Storage[/url] but I can't remember where I bought ours. I also have those big tubs in the garage to hold out of season clothes and I mark them according. I have sock bags for everyone, but they don't always work as the zippers seem to break. I have three laundry hampers in my laundry room. One is for colors such as pink/orange/red/yellow, one is for whites and one for darks. When they are full, I start a load of laundry. I purchased those big washer & dryers from Sears...such a time saver! I have a laundry basket that I fold and put the kids clothes when done. One for each room for the girls and one for the boys. They are responsible for getting their clothes put up. I use to do it all and realized that I wasn't teaching them anything by doing it for them. I have a daily chore chart and an after meals that is kept in the kitchen. The kids know to look at it and see what they need to do. :)

Thanks for the advice. I've have the separate laundry hampers, also....whites, lights, reds and darks...lol! My issue is that my washer and dryer are in my kitchen. I've always loved have them in the kitchen but it's a pain to have all of those hampers in the kitchen, too. I have one golden retriever that eats underwear and socks and other of my goldens likes to steal dirty laundry, bring it to her bed and then guard it from the other dogs :grr: so I have to surround the hampers with a baby gate :rolleyes: I have been toying with the idea of getting smaller separate baskets for each child, as you mentioned, and putting their clean laundry in them, as I wash and fold them :laundry: , and then they can put them all away when they get home from school. Right now, I put all of the folded laundry in separate piles on my kitchen table which causes a problem if I also have to get a meal while doing laundry. I do love having a large family, though :clap: ....not as large as yours, though :p !!!

i meant.. revisit the tree idea.. that wasn't my idea!! But a good idea! Just reread what I wrote ; )

One thing I was doing that seemed to work for a while.. only because the laundry room is right next to the garage...I put lockers in the garage right at the door. Each of my 5 boys had their own locker. I'd wash clothes and stack them up on the ironing board.. they'd each put their own clothes up. I tried to do this to keep from having clothes all over their room. That didn't last long.... then it was clothes all over the room..and clothes all over the garage too.. crazy!

LOL! Aw, but I *only* have ten living at home now! ;) I did get lazy this week and every time a load was done in the dryer, I asked each of the kids to get their laundry out. By the time I got there, I just had a few towels to fold. Worked out great! :eyebrows:

SAHmom: I PM'd you to request what you just posted thanks.

When we finished the basement, i made the laundry room HUGE, think 8x12, we have two washers and two dryers and ALL the clothes for anyone under 18 is kept in that room. Each night the kids go down get thier pj's and outfit for the next day, go take a bath, put dirty clothes in hamper and put on pjs put tomorrows clothes in thier room for the next day. One of the daily chores is to take the hamper down each day to the laundry room (obviously this tends to be a big kid chore since the littler ones are not strong enough to haul 8 peoples clothing down a flight of stairs). I second the sock person. we buy hanes only with the color coded toe writing. The socks get washed and put into a laundry basket and they match up thier own pairs each day. There is no shortage of clothing (they each could go a month+ without wearing something twice (it is actually pretty ridiculous) but I think I would die if I had to look at the laundry. We use wooden lockers/long cubbie things like they have at preschool to keep school stuff organized in the mud room, each kid hjas two lockers, one for winter clothes(hat, snowpants, gloves, coat, boots) or sports stuff in the summer (swimsuit, life jacket, football pads, soccer cleats, uniforms, etc.) and one for thier daily jacket and backpack, lunchbox. My sore spot is the shoes, 3 girls, 3 boys and us two.......why do we have soo many shoes????? and what do we do ith them, currentlyt hey are in a few of the largest plastic totes I could find, but we are going have to do something different since the kids upend the boxes every day looking for matches.

mommy2fiveplus, your laundry room sounds awesome! I keep some of our kids' shoes by the front door in a large basket {girls} and a large tub {boys}. The rest are in their rooms. It was so much easier when the kids were little {small shoes}. ;)