The Weekend

I fluctuated back and forth this weekend about to disrupt or not to disrupt. Yeah, I know, I'm always having this crisis. Well, the fact is that Max is always here and always causing me to question what's best. Even if he did leave, I'd be wondering if it were the right choice. So live with it. Or don't read. You're choice entirely. :)

Anyway, we went off on a spontaneous camping trip. We up and decided to go after a leisurely breakfast and sleeping in on Saturday. Max wanted to go camping. Just so you know.

We're getting ready to go and he goes by and grabs a left over pancake. No big deal. Fine, in fact. But, when I walk into his room to help him pack for camping, he throws it down in the corner and tries to hide it. It's amazing how that little act really pushed my buttons. We seem to have started a down hill slide there.

I finally sent him outside to play until we were ready to go. He called from there to ask if he could to go church with the cousins tomorrow. Yeah, sure, we'll just get up before dawn to hike out and drive back so you can go to church. I mean, really, we were going camping - backpacking even!

I just don't feel warmly toward the kid. I spent most of the hike in mulling over how much less pleasant family life has become sense he moved in. We had a whole confrontation over him not staying on the trail. It lasted a very long time. It was stupid. It seems like all our confrontations are about stupid stuff.

Before we got into the tent last night, we had a little affirmation circle (me trying to turn things around). Each family member stood in the circle of the other family members in turn and got to hear nice things about themselves. It went pretty well. It was hard for everyone, it seemed to come up with stuff for Max and his stuff for us was...well, non-inventive, but it went well overall.

We all got into the tent feeling loving. Anthony mentioned that if anyone (one of the kids he meant) had to go to the bathroom during the night, they should wake him up. Max was loud and moving around, but we just let it naturally come to an end, which seemed to come faster than if we'd made a big deal out of him not being loud. All was well.

This morning, Anthony went to cuddle Max when he woke up - Davan and I already having left the tent for the morning bladder dump - and found Max soaking wet. He'd peed in his sleeping bag. Now, he says that he did it in his sleep. But, let's face it. That's very likely not true. He has only peed once in his sleep sense he arrived and that was at the very beginning and I'm not even totally convinced that was in his sleep. We've camped before - several times - with no peeing during the night. It seemed rather purposeful.

So, with nerves on edge, we went into the day. Max passive aggressively refused to help patrol up the camping areas for trash or belongings that might have been left behind, causing him and Anthony to have a big blow up.

Yeah. All isn't well. If he does stay in our family, we need more therapy. Or something. I don't know. The book I'm currently reading says that if we react aggressively toward him, it means that we're dealing with baggage from our own childhoods. But neither Anthony nor I had abusive or even rough childhoods. That doesn't make sense to me. And our aggression wasn't triggered by Davan's early childhood issues. It seems like it's something else.

Not that we're hitting him or anything like that. I just consider loud-in-your-face yelling and grabbing to get his attention/move him to be agressive. That we do. It's not pleasant for anybody.