Speaking of babies...

Last night, D and I were talking about how hard it would be to go on vacation with a baby, slowing you down, fussing and just being bad travelers in general. He decided he doesn't want a baby for that reason. This led to a discussion about how hard babies are to take care of in any situation, and how one should really want a baby before they are born. I asked him if he knew how to NOT have a baby. He just seemed confused. Thus the need for a Lesson:
#1 - by not having sex. "oh, yeah."
#2 - using a condom if you do have sex. "what's a condom?"
WHAAAT?!?!? It honestly hadn't really occurred to me that he wouldn't know what a condom was. At 12, I probably didn't. However, that was before AIDS was on the mainstream radar. I also went to a parochial school and was not very, um, worldly. But a boy currently in public junior high who doesn't know what that is? Crazy. I think the lesson for me is that, of course, it is very important for me to keep the lines of communication open regarding sexual issues. Also, that despite lots of scary media coverage about kids and sex, things really aren't that different than it was when I was a kid. He's still quite innocent and thinks about girls, but doesn't have much opportunity to shed that innocence. Thankfully!

Our Trip West

Recently, I heard someone say that once you have kids, you don't go on vacation anymore. You take trips. More work and a lot less fun and/or relaxing. D is a surprisingly good travel companion as far as driving is concerned. Good thing, because for our trip last week, we drove to visit my sister who was staying in Oklahoma City, about a 16 hour drive.
We stopped in St. Louis the first night, and the plan was to explore the city the next day. We went to the very fun City Museum in the morning. After lunch, D refused to go to see the Arch. I think he was afraid that he would be forced to go to the top. I did want to do that, but I wouldn't have forced him. I don't know if I quite buy his "fear of heights". I don't really have any phobias, though, so I guess I'm not very sympathetic or good at understanding. So, we checked out the graffiti down the street and headed to our next hotel. He was a little obsessed with going swimming every day. Grandma let us use her atlas, so there was some map reading going on. He has very shaky understandings of geography and the differences between cities and states and how everything is organized. We had a pretty good time overall, and had a nice visit with the family. D LOVES being a big cousin. It makes him feel very important and he loves being adored by the baby. He played pretty much the whole time with his toddler cuz, and had a blast.
He has been taking a new medication, and it seems to be working great for the aggressive part of his ADHD. Don't really know about how it'll be with the concentrating and schoolwork stuff, though. Time will tell. But there were shockingly few tantrums or ODD behavior, even when he couldn't buy something he wanted (a big time trigger, usually).
Tomorrow, we go get his new schedule for school. I am nervous. He will be starting a new school this year. Our district combined two Jr. Highs, and his is the one that got closed. Now he will have to take a bus. I have hope that things will go well, but I won't be holding my breath. He is very unhappy about the change, and I'm hoping once things get going he will get over it. I wish we could have just a little bit more summer, but it will be good to have a schedule again. Neither of us is especially good with wide open days.

Updating

So... Facebook. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Of course, the bad - I spend completely too much time doing absolutely nothing on Facebook. Wasting time like there is plenty of it when, in fact, there never seems to be enough. The good is that I can maintain some ties with acquaintances without putting in any actual effort. Just a Farmville gift now and then and a look at their photo albums is a-ok with someone who is not especially social most of the time.
The ugly. The fact that anybody who knows your name can "find" you, whether or not you were hiding. (I suppose if you were hiding, you wouldn't be on facebook, but, you know...) And maybe worse than that is that you can find those who you are probably better off not looking for. Last night I googled, or rather binged, D's birth father's name. Something I've done from time to time, just out of curiosity. Never got a hit that made sense, just athletes, people across the country, lists of random names, etc. Now that facebook is so ubiquitous, it makes sense that he'd eventually turn up. Clicked the name, and the instant the profile pic came up I could see it was him. He looks exactly like D. Weird sick feeling in my stomach.
When you do a straight adoption, it is easy to have this abstract idea of the "other" parents since you never had to have any interaction with them. It is no problem to tolerantly understand that they had issues, and even though they got a good start at destroying at least one life besides their own, they are not bad people. Because really, they aren't even people to you. They are societal problems, the roots of your child's attachment issues, the reason you will never enjoy a tantrum-free Mother's Day. But never flesh and blood. Just a big question mark.
Until you see them. You can see where your darling baby got their eyebrows or nose or chin. And then I checked out the friends list, and really wish I hadn't. This man is my age, mid 30s, and yet, almost all of his friends were girls. Not women, girls. Most between like 16 and 21 years old from all over the Metro area. Not even out of school. Ill. It is impossible not to imagine how many other children he has bouncing around the system. Or what he does for fun. Or how he can sit there so casually for all the world to see and not know where his sons are or whether they are alive or dead or living with some white lady.
What do I do with this now? Is there a compartment to hold the disgust for this "man" and not see him in his progeny? Would I ever let my kid meet him if he wanted to? Should I dig deeper or let it go completely? No longer abstract. The ugly. Looking right out of the screen.