Day five and I'm alive

OH What a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day, I've got a marvelous feeling, everything's going my way la la la

Dressed and ready, SkaDamo sketch done and here I am blogging my PiBoIdMo idea for the day. My words are on target and the sun is shining. The plants on the windowsill look perky and vibrant and the teens are still slumbering after two wake up calls.

Today I want to explore the family relationships. I have a series of short stories already around the theme of blended families. The new face of family in the developed world has shifted from the long held paradigm of two parents of different genders both related to the children who are born into a legally sanctioned binding contractual arrangement. Not that it is an actual contract but that is a discussion for another day. Now families are made up of all sorts of mixtures.As a foster mum I found when helping kids draw up their family tree for I am Me books, there was such a variety of family dynamics it was sometimes a wonder if the kids were still living with anyone they were actually related to. In fact in one family tree the child was living with double step parents about five relationships distance from their birth parents. The child had simply been shifted along with the luggage of whoever had the most care feelings for the child at the time until they were finally living with complete strangers and then of course ended up in the out of home care system once the tenuous link of care had dissolved in yet another step.

Family is a difficult maze to traverse at the best of times and for kids in blended and cut and paste families it is even harder, new rules, new personalities, new agendas and new expectations. I intend writing a series of stories based on steps, same sex parents,relative carers, half time families, grandparent carers and foster carers.

I think kids need to know they are not alone in this.

Today's sketch is of my dear puppet chef. A gift to me from the teams at beach mission one year. He hangs in my kitchen surveying the world from the pantry door and has all the miniature kitchen implements he needs hanging on the handle below him.

Time to head out into the beautiful day.