Merrill and Roberta Simon and Family

Merrill and I have entered a new dimension in this process of adopting children, it is about Birth Parents. I have come to feel that no matter what you know about a certain subject, there is always so much more to learn. We have actually dealt with birth parents before now. We have had open adoptions, legal risk placements where the birth parents were still involved, and for that matter, birth parents that were involved with a few of the children that we only fostered.  All in all, the dealings have been okay. Until now. One of our adult sons has had some ongoing legal and mental problems. To be honest, it has just gotten to the point where we did not even have a clue how to help him any longer. This is a harsh reality to even have to look at as parents. One of his former foster parents has really never been supportive of the adoption of he and his siblings. She withheld all of their pictures taken during the five years she had the children. It was hard as we tried to help them pie

You know, birthday's have never really bothered me until this year. I am not talking about my birthday, I am really talking about some of the children's birthdays. Over the years Merrill and I have grown nearly weary of people that seem to just not understand that our main goal with our children has always been to first give them a family that loves them and wants them and then to give them the childhood that they deserve. Well, part of that mission includes birthdays. While we do not feel that each and every year there needs to be this outlandish party that involves everyone they know, we do feel that the birthday needs to be about them and them alone. This is one of the reasons that by the middle of May we are all so sick of cake and party stuff that we are all just going.....oh wow :o( another birthday. We have nearly non stop birthdays from mid March until mid May. Okay, so this brings me to the real reason of the blog post. Joseph had his birthday March 15. He was 10 y