*Whew* It’s been too long since I’ve written. No good!

Allow me now to skip forward. We’ve adopted my siblings, and we’ve been crammed three in a room. My parents decide that we want to get a bigger place.

We decide on getting a rather large house built off-site and carted in 4 enormous chunks to our new property. Can I tell you something about city permits? They SUCK. We sold our old house and it was at least a year before we were able to move into our new one.

Living situation in the time between? All nine kids stuck into a small sun-room at the back of a small house.  Try that sometime.

During this time I grew in several areas; I was 12/13ish and I got my first boyfriend, all of my assets were really becoming apparent *cough* and everyone was hitting the bad part of puberty. Fun in a box, right there.

If you care to join me going back in time (when I was probably about 4 or 5 years old), there’s funny story I’d like to share about one night when I woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible craving for chocolate.

The candy had all recently been moved up to a higher cupboard and had a childproof lock installed due to some previous raids. I have no idea who could have possibly made them. *cough*

Anyways. I woke up and I really wanted chocolate. I wanted it bad.

There was a problem. I didn’t want to go out to the kitchen alone for two reasons: I was scared of wandering around the house that late, and because I didn’t want to get in trouble all by myself if I got caught. The answer to my problems? Take my sister Cheri with me.

After some badgering, poking and prodding (combined with the bribery of giving her some) she finally woke up and consented to joining me on my quest. Stage one: completed.

So we sneaked out into the kitchen as quiet as we could. Pulling up a chair and breaking into the cupboard to get the chocolate out was relatively easy. Mmmm… Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. My favorite. I made sure to put everything back exactly where it had been to avoid suspicion later. Stage two: completed.

Next? We sat down on the little footstool in the bathroom (after shutting the door of course) and started munching down. About 7 or 8 mini PB cups in… the door handle started to move.

We froze. Then we shoved all the empty wrappers and candy behind us, and under the chair.

The door opened. Hi mom!

Now I have to say, looking back, that must have been a really comical sight for her. Here’s me and my sister, with chocolate literally smeared all over our faces and hands, surrounded by candy and candy wrappers looking up at her with those deer-in-the-headlight eyes.

What are you guys doing?

Nothing.

Were you guys eating candy?

No…

Try not to lie when the evidence is smeared all over your face. It doesn’t go well. Needless to say, Cheri and I got in trouble. But not half as much trouble as I know that I would have been if it had only been me. For some reason my mom is easier on us when it’s a group event.

Moral of the story? Never get in trouble alone: bring a sidekick to do the job with you. That way at least you won’t be going down all by yourself. Being grounded is a lot more fun when you’ve got your sister with you!

We learned to do a lot of cool things sharing a room, though. We had the triple bunk beds and I slept on the bottom. Problem was, Elizabeth slept on the top and Odeliah (4 years younger than us) slept in the middle.

Well Liz and I wanted to talk! First of all, my parents bedroom was only down the hallway and we were constantly getting in trouble. Second of all, Odeliah often wanted to go to sleep earlier and we didn’t want her to hear our “big girl” conversations anyways.

So this was our problem. The solution? Cardboard tubes!

Using the cardboard tubes inside of paper towel and toilet paper rolls, we fashioned a long communications device between Elizabeth’s and my bed. This was probably the coolest, most ingenious thing we ever did.

All in all, it was probably about 10 ft long with a ear and mouth piece on either end. Obviously, it was custom fit to our bed and fit right up in the back against the wall where you couldn’t see it unless you were actually laying in the bed. I will post instructions with images later about how to create this great invention of ours.

The dynamics of the tube allowed very soft whispering to be heard at either end. Unless you were listening in through the ear piece, you really couldn’t hear us at all.

Keep an eye out for the detailed instructions on making this masterpiece!

While I have always shared a room since my sister Cheri was born, the room sharing went up a whole notch when we adopted everyone.

Most people don’t realize that triple bunk beds exist. But they do.

My parents knew how to train us in sharing a room. There were a few simple rules (ones that I think should be incorporated into every family regardless of living situations) that we were all obligated to follow:

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Rule #1: Don’t enter without permission.

This is one of the fundamental elements in peace within a household. Especially with so many people in the house it’s very hard to have your personal space. Your room is the only place you can go where no one can follow you (other than your roommates).

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Rule #2: Don’t use other people’s things without permission.

Again, this is the respect given to personal space and belongings. You don’t want everyone using your stuff (even if you forget that you left it out) so don’t abuse other people’s things either.

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Rule #3: Respect space within the room.

When you finally do retreat to your room, the last thing you want is a roommate in your face who won’t leave you alone or who is constantly using your things. Don’t bug your roommates.

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These rules all in a combination help orchestrate peace within the household so that things are less tense. When you share smaller spaces with more people, it’s really easy to be up in each other’s business and get on each other’s nerves.

Since you’re probably going to do that anyways, it’s good to keep it to a minimum by respecting space and privacy.

I’d first like to state that I don’t regret adopting my sisters, and I love each and every one of them very much. But there have been a couple of important issues that I have struggled with over the years that I would like to address now.

Adopting other kids into your family is a lot more difficult than I think most people realize.

Issue #1: Adopted children take away the attention of the parent from the non-adopted children.

The thing with adopted children (especially when they’re older at the age of being taken in) is that they usually need a a lot of care and attention. This is totally understandable and OK. The problem arises when the other children become neglected. In my case, this was me.

I would be stretching the truth to say I was totally neglected, but I did lose a lot of the attention that I had previously been receiving from my parents. This change was hard. It’s a dangerous place to put your kids, because they will somewhat go under the radar due to the presence of the new siblings. This gives them two options: be good or bad.

I’ve mainly chosen to be good, but I know a lot of the things I did at that time was done just to see if my parents would notice. Did they still care? Hopefully parents will realize the reality of this problem and address it in their own situations.

Issue #2: Getting over the “rightful child” syndrome.

This is almost an after-effect of the first issue. When you adopt siblings into your family, you often get a taste of the “rightful child” syndrome. This is where (depending on the parents behavior) either the adopted kids or the biological kids get favored in one way or another. Almost like they deserve everything more than the other children.

Usually parents aren’t trying to do this. It’s often in an attempt to avoid issue #1 or in an attempt to make the new kids feel like family.

This feeling can get to your head quickly (in either direction) and it’s dangerous. It’s doesn’t create a healthy family dynamic for the new family.

At any rate, there are of course many other issues that come with adoption but those are two of the ones I struggled with the most when we first adopted. I’ve dealt with those issues on my own since and neither one continues to be an issue anymore.