alcohol and the teenager....brought to you by Smirnoff Vodka

it was a quite sunday. we dropped off the twins at the in-laws and worked on some stuff around the house. ellyn hung out w/ some friends and we picked her up and we all went over to my in-laws for dinner. ellyn was going to go see charlie and chocolate factory and sleep over a friend's house so we dropped her off there.

we took the babies out for a drive at about 10:30pm and went to bed early at about 11pm. long story short we cannot hear the phone ring upstairs and at about 1am my ex-husband came over because he had been trying to call and no one answered so he thought maybe something was wrong. my daughter had been trying to get ahold of us since about 11 and finally had to call her dad.

she did not go to the movies. instead she hung out w/ friends and they got their hands on some smirnoff. they decided doing shots sounded like a good idea. ellyn soonly started on a crying jag and that is when she tried calling me. a little bit after this she started puking. she ended up calling her dad to come and pick her up.

i have always told her that i knew that she would experiment w/ drinking and that if things get out of control and she feels scared, etc. she should call us. i am ver yglad and relieved that she did call us. but that doesn't mean that we approve of her drinking. we took her cell phone for a week and grounded her for two weeks. she claims that this is way too harsh.

this is when parenting is a job. what to do? of course i drank in high school but i think my parents should have been more stable and enforced rules more. both of them were too screwed up to do those things. i ended up ok but i went ellyn to both have freedom and have limits and boundaries. she already told me that she will just not tell us next time because she got punished when she told us this time. but i cannot be guided by her threats. we have to be there for her but also punish. we are parents not friends.

now for a quick complete change of subjects.

i am watching a documentary about Z channel. z channel was the first pay cable station but it was only in LA. the programmer jerry harvey was a movie's freak movie's freak.

yesterday we drove out to grand haven and got out to the beach at about 4pm and swam a bit and played with the babies in the sand and the water. the sky was blue, the water was warm and clear and sand warm and soft. it was the first time we have been out there since the babies were born. we are still able to get out and do things in a very limited way with the babies. if we had one baby it would be hard but having two makes things painful and difficult.