May Update - Prom

May was a really action-packed month for all of us.  It's one of the more intense months for both Mark and I, on the work front.  We tend to work long, hard hours and be pretty exhausted with little time or energy to spare.  

We noticed at the beginning of the month that we were suddenly hearing one of the names from L's circle of friends more often.  We were not prepared for her to start having "special friends" yet at all and had discouraged her from developing non-platonic relationships. These are the years she should be focused on herself--developing her brain, body, and good habits for her future, not her biological impulses.  Chemistry, being our biological imperative and all, will not be denied, and it made its appearance in their little group.  We were relieved and felt much better about the situation when we met her special friend, Nick. If she has to detour into the pointless world of romance, he's someone we feel comfortable with. He's kind, smart, mature, respectful--a very good choice and just what you would want for your daughter's first romantic endeavor.

While we were still trying to adjust to this new situation and work out policies and guidelines that we didn't expect to need in place quite so soon, they dropped another surprise on us.  He was graduating in May (a year early), and he wanted to go to prom. She did not want to go, and initially resisted, but then realized it was his only shot to go and didn't want to deprive him of that. They informed us the Monday before prom that they were going.  I had several levels of private meltdowns. I don't approve of prom for many reasons. It's a pointless, ridiculous waste of money for the students who go, and a slap in the face to the many students who can't afford such a pointless waste of money.  I did not think I would have children who would participate in something so frivolous.

I took small comfort in the fact that she wasn't really into going but wanted to make him happy.  I wrestled with not making this about me.  This is probably my biggest struggle with raising kids.  Morals and ethics are incredibly important to me, and I want them to be important to the girls as well.  However, I have to be very careful not to impose my own personal moral code on my teen/adult children and let them find their own in matters where their health/safety/future is not directly at risk.  The fact that I believe proms are ridiculous and shouldn't occur should have no bearing on whether my children attend, because it's not a big deal to anyone but me.  I also struggle through the rather selfish notion of not wanting them to do things that will reflect badly on me (If I let her go to prom, people will think I approve of such stupid, wasteful activities.), and that is absolutely not an appropriate reason to deny someone an experience.  I did a lot of private emotional struggling during the week that I spent doing the activity I loathe most--shopping, and last-minute prom dress shopping is a particular kind of hell.

We looked everywhere and tried on countless dresses. It was so not fun.  She was becoming discouraged and hateful toward her body, which is absolutely fine but not easy to fit right off the rack.  We finally found a dress she didn't hate that was close to fitting, so after purchasing the dress, we started the last-minute (and thus overpriced) alteration process.  We used the shop at the Janesville mall (K-Alterations), and I have to say they did a really good job and got it done earlier than they said they would.  I will use them again.

In the course of that nightmarish week (come home from work, get dinner in, spend the rest of the night shopping), I discovered a couple of her friends were unable to get appropriate clothing but had tickets and were all planning to go as a group, so we took them along to get clothes--even more shopping, yay.  That week in which I spent hours every night shopping with a group of teens will serve as paying back the entirety of my karmic debt for a lifetime of ugly deeds (and I've done some really bad things in my wild youth).  Really, that has to be a wash.  I'm still suffering a little PTSD from that week. ;)

Luce & N. let us take some pictures here (I was allotted ten minutes), and then they went to have more pics taken by N's mom, who did a fantastic job and generously shared the pics with us.  They had dinner, attended prom, and then returned to N's house where the kids and N's parents hung out and had snacks around the fire pit.  They had a very nice evening, but stayed less than two hours at the prom--all agreeing that that was the least fun part of the evening.  So I mentally calculated the amount of money spent and the hours spent preparing for that two-hour stay at prom, and wanted to weep at the hourly breakdown.  We have some great photos and the kids have great memories. I try to remind myself of that when the numbers start dancing around in my head. 


N's parents are lovely people, too.  His mom sent a pre-prom gift for Luce--a very nice scented shower gel, lotion, shimmer mist spray.  She also made and gave her a photo album with some of the pictures she took from the night.  All of the following shots were taken at Rotary Botanical Gardens by N's mom.

After surviving the prom experience and finishing up my semester, we moved on to our next big, exciting May event--the Froggie adoption.