More Catch Up

Dancing Baby Girl is at that wonderful age where she can begin to do real projects with multiple steps.  Above she is working on one of our gingerbread creations.  She stayed engaged all the way through and was able to wait for icing to dry and whatnot.  She was so thrilled with her creation she didn't even want to eat it right away!

We are getting the pre-reading questions, "what does that sign say?" and "how do you spell....?"  In addition she is displaying quite the humor.  She got fascinated by the new T*co B*ll commercial about Black tacos and was cracking joke after joke about it.  We would be out driving and she would start in on saying the commercial but since she didn't know it verbatim she would throw in other things, like black road, black hair, black sky (it was at night).  She is a screech.

We are still getting some worrisome behaviors from her, they seem to be very balanced out by her wonderful caring side, but boy I get nervous when she starts her manipulative, selfish, self-centered, mean stuff.  Our new behavior policy of not tolerating the nasty talk backs and sending her to her room has seemed to help.  I just need to stop feeding into it all and take that emotional step back.  She is often doing these behaviors when I am at my worst, think she knows that?

Things with Lani, DBG's mother seem to be going well, or at least better.  She weathered the Christmas visit from DBG's Dad and did not waver in her determination to hold him to sobriety before he can come back into their lives.  Imiki's heart surgery (catheterizing to fix a hole) went very well and Lani did great with that also.  Lani's dad, Pawpaw, who had heart and kidney trouble before Christmas is back home and seems to be coming to terms with his disability.  And the good news, CPS closed the protective case on DBG and Lani is just feeling on top of the world with getting that last worry off her back.  It was good for her to have that oversight, especially to keep her strong in her decision to kick out druggie dad, but she seems to have internalized a lot of what she needs to do as a Mom and she is doing a good enough job of it.

People seem to have a hard time understanding Lani's and my relationship, they assume that there must be jealousy and repressed resentment.  But there is not.  We have worked past a lot of stuff and now we trust one another to love and raise our precious DBG.  It works well for Lani to have a break every two to three weeks and we love to have DBG visit.  We also have Lani visit, she was with us Christmas morning and stayed for Christmas dinner.  Sometimes she hangs out when she drops DBG off.  The best way I can describe it is, it's like she is my daughter-in-law and I think that is kind of how she might feel about the relationship.  She calls me her second mother.  All in all we have stepped through the minefield of reunification and come out the other side an extended family.

Bad News, Prayers Needed

Lani told me when I took DBG back that her, Lani's father had been taken to the emergency room again with heart issues, apparently an aneurysm. So prayers for DBG's PaPaw. He is the glue right now holding things together. If he cannot support the family financially I don't know what will happen. Lani is of course panicked, but luckily her big sister flew in to help out so the burden is not entirely on her shoulders.

4th birthday reprise

Just got back from the birthday party that Lani threw for Dancing Baby Girl. She did it up right and was so proud of herself. DBG was so thrilled, she kept saying this is my party? this for me? She handled the excitement well, only was mean once and that was to her Mom. i got to meet some of Lani's other family members and they all handled my presence very well. I think that is because Lani is so comfortable with our relationship.

I am proud of Lani, this was a huge step for her, the first birthday party she has thrown and it may have been the first one she has gone to like this. I get the feeling she didn't have a lot of the experiences that one would hope for for a child, like a recognition of your special day, etc.

Anyway, I am tired after a long and pretty emotional weekend for DBG. So I need to get some sleep, work again tomorrow whether I am ready or not.

Its bronchitis, again and DBG news

Well, I have been struggling with a bout of bronchitis, seem to get this every Fall and early Winter. I am bummed, had great hopes that with the weight loss and the exercise regimen that I might be able to get through the season without the bronchitis. It is so exhausting to cough constantly. And I hate my inhalers. Whine, whine...I know.

Other than that let's see what has been happening.

Halloween pics will arrive soon, as Torina says, promptly next Spring:-) Had Lani and Imiki and Dancing Baby Girl come down for Halloween and Lani and Imiki also stayed over (DBG always stays over every other weekend). It was fun to see how excited Lani was to do Halloween with her kids, I think she is getting some experiences that she never had as a child. Lani's sister lives here in the city not too far from me so we met up with her and DBG's little cousin Kiera. Then later that evening after the kids were asleep Lani asked me if it was okay to leave the kids with me and go out dancing with her sister.

It didn't take me a minute to say yes. Lani has had to be all to the kids for a long time without much support. For her birthday recently all the recognition that she got was that DBG sang Happy birthday to her and Imiki clapped. (this brought tears to her eyes, and she said it was the best present she had had in awhile) But she is still a young adult and her responsibilities sit heavily on her young shoulders. I told her to go, have fun, rest assured the kids were safe for the moment and meet her own needs for fun for an evening. She and her sister had a great time and Lani was so thankful to us for not being judgemental, etc. Heck why should I be judgemental, I was just jealous :-) I haven't been dancing in ages.

The next day we got haircuts for both kids, Imiki's first one! and then we met Spidey and his foster mom and did sibling portraits in Christmas pajamas. Lani hadn't seen Spidey in about a year and even though she didn't interact with him, and we hope he didn't see her, she was able to sneak a peek. She has really come to good place with her decision to TPR on him, she knows that she would not have been able to meet his needs and if she had tried she would have lost all three kids.

Then Lani and Imiki went on home and DBG and I finished our weekend together by going to the zoo on Sunday.

On Monday Lain and Imiki came back into town and I went with her for Imiki's heart surgeon appointment. Poor little guy is going to have to have heart surgery and Lani really wanted someone there for support and as an extra set of ears. Came to find out that he has three things wrong with his heart and they are only going to be able to fix one with the catheterizing. They will watch the other two valve issues and we will all pray that he doesn't have to have open heart surgery. Lani was really shocked by the news that things were worse than they thought and she had quite a breakdown on the way back to my house. That's a whole lot to deal with as a very young single parent who is barely holding her family together on the income from a McDonald's job. DBG was not happy about going back with Lani and pitched one of her fits, yealling at the "Judge" who says she has to only visit our house etc. Lani absorbed DBG's anger pretty well and we talked about how DBG was out of her routine and napless. When Lani called that evening she said things were fine from the point of leaving my house, so I was glad she didn't have to put up with DBG in a foul mood on top of the bad news she was still processing about Imiki.

So that is my catch up post.

I was thrilled about the election results and then by Thursday I started with the bronchitis.

Some pics of our DBG and Imiki weekend

This was DBG as Snow White at the Halloween Party at the zoo, Imiki by this time had taken off his costume and his shoes but he still wanted to dance.

Can you guess where we went? Yup the pumpkin farm. Imiki had to try to pick up every pumpkin he saw and DBG could not decide at all which one she wanted, so had to try out about 27.

Dancing Baby Girl and her little brother Imiki came to stay for the weekend while their mother, Lani moved out of her place and back home with her father. Papaw has a four bedroom trailer so they will be able to squeeze in but it is a real hurtful pride thing for Lani to have to move home to her old room that she grew up in. She had to sell and give away some of her hard earned possessions because there would be nowhere to store the couch, the coffee table, the big chair, etc.

Meanwhile back at our house we were having a blast. Friday evening, right after dinner we went for a walk and stopped at our favorites neighbor's house because they have a swing set. They invited us to stay for their son's 4 year old birthday celebration. So we spent all evening with them and had cake and ice cream to boot.

On Saturday I planned with my good friend Diane that we would go to the pumpkin farm. She has a placement of three foster brothers, 9 months, 2 years and 6 years, then also had a 10 year old in respite and her severely MR 20 year old daughter. Thank goodness my son Douglas agreed to come along and help us herd the crowd. It was a delightful day, sunny but not too hot. We did the petting zoo and the barnyard fun things, then we went out to the pumpkin patch on the hay trailer. After that we had ice cream and came home. My two were zonked and had an early bed.

After church on Sunday we had a quick nap then went off to the zoo where they have a Halloween Party for kids 11 and under every weekend evening. The kids had a ball. I wish I could show you the pic of DBG all dressed up in her Snow White costume standing next to the "real" Snow White. DBG was so happy to be Snow White and just thrilled that there were several other Snow whites too. We walked around, went through the pumpkin maze, rode the train and the carousel and then came home.

After dinner we had to take the kids back and so we met Lani half way and she showed us the way to Papaw's house and the new daycare. DBG was somewhat reassured to know that we knew where she was now living and going to school but the move has still upset her quite a bit. She was clingy and whiny during the weekend, playing her little power and control games that we hadn't seen in awhile. She had a meltdown when it was time to go and was screaming that she just wanted to come live with us again, but by the time we met Lani she was all excited to see her and gave her a big hug and was happy again.

There are lots of issues, I just hope Lani can keep it together. She seems to be doing all the right things and trying her best. I am supporting her as much as I can by phone since we live two hours away. (Yeah that makes a lot of driving in a weekend) Lani is so scared that CPS will take her kids again. I am hoping that she can calm down a little and really make this new arrangement work. In the meantime there are lots of issues with getting Dad out of the picture at least until he is clean and sober. She needs to have safeguards in place to keep him away from the kids as he gets aggressive and violent while on drugs. She is also starting a new job at McDonalds in hopes of being able to save some money to get back out on her own sometime in the future.

We had a great weekend with the kids, Lani had a productive weekend moving. And now we will see what comes next.