Adopting the Spectrum

Door Alarm

2012-01-27T20:53:00.004-05:00

We have been having a lot of trouble keeping Hannah from sneaking out of her room when she is supposed to be sleeping and getting into things she is not supposed to or stealing things like money or candy. Last night/this morning she took it up a notch and what we had feared would happen happened. Instead of sneaking off with my Ipod or computer or stealing candy, last night she got into a cabinet locked with a child lock, opened a childproofed lid on a bottle and ate close to a 1/4 of a bottle of Flintstones gummy vitamins as well as several candy bars from my Christmas candy stash. Thankfully poison control was able to reassure us that since the vitamins did not contain iron, the worst she would probably fare was an upset tummy or some diarrhea. While I am glad that she's fine, I do kinda wish that she had at least gotten an stomach ache to impress upon her the seriousness of her actions. For the longest time, our way of dealing with both Hannah's rages and her sneaking things/eloping was a reversed door knob with the lock on the outside of the door so that it opened when we turned the knob on the outside, but she could not get out on her own. When we started the process of becoming licensed foster care parents we were force to abandon that measure of safety we had come to depend on. Because of the potential for abuse it was just not allowed even if we weren't using it on a foster child. We considered then buying a door alarm then, but just didn't follow through. I guess we thought she'd "grow out of it" or something. I mean, seriously, what 5 year old needs to be locked into her room at night? Last night however, Hannah proved that she is just too smart and has too little self control for us to do nothing. We must keep her safe and child safe cabinet locks and manufacture childsafe bottles just don't cut it anymore. We even have medicine safes for the scarier meds, that are also kept inside a childproofed cabinet, but I'm worried she'll figure out how to get those open too. So today I went and ordered a door alarm. We MUST know when she leaves her room. She's just too stealthy without it. It's not like we sleep like rocks, but this kid is SNEAKY! It will be interesting to see how the practical aspects of having a door alarm work with also having a sleeping toddler in the house. It could lead to some sleepless nights for all concerned, but its much better than the alternative of an overdosed kid.

And, as if that wasn't enough drama for the day. As soon as I picked Hannah up from school she began melting down. She was angry about having to complete her job card before she could have a snack. After exiting the van (I can at least be thankful that she waited until we were out of the vehicle) the hour and a half long rage began. I had my first big test as a new mama of 2 attempting to deal with the rage, keep the toddler safe and his needs met, and manage the new behavior plan and holds when she got aggressive all at the same time. When Kyle finally arrived home I was soaked with sweat and exhausted and had 2 cranky children on my hands. I think I must have jinxed myself with my last post bragging about how well the first week was going.

It's funny how whenever we have good stretches of

behavior I start to doubt that there's really a problem. I think maybe I was just over reacting like so many people have suggested in the past. Then the rages hit and I remember WHY we are headed to that severe behavior clinic in a week and a half. We may have lulls in the storm, but the hurricane is still there.

Good Week

2012-01-26T22:54:00.000-05:00

You would have thought with as crazy as our week as been, adding a new member and all, that Hannah would have completely melted down either at home (most likely) or at school. Surprisingly that has not happened! She's had a wonderful week by our standards and amazing if you consider she went from only child to big sister with very little warning. Even her teacher has reported very good days this week. I suspect that this is simply the honeymoon period from our big change, but I'll take it whatever the reason. What I'm nervous about is that Kyle is going to Germany next week and now instead of being a pseudo single mom of one school aged kid for a week I'm going to be a single mom to two kids, one of whom is a toddler for a week! Let's hope I'm up for the strain!

Hannah continues to enjoy her swim lessons. She's getting more and more comfortable in the water. It seems her skills progress may have slowed or stalled a bit here recently, but I still think she's doing very well. At the end of the last session they moved her up a level and this new teacher is having a difficult time actually teaching her class since she has 7 kids and no help. She has to spend the majority of her time just making sure they are safe and that leaves little time for actual one on one instruction with the kids on their strokes. I think I may speak to the front desk about it and strongly suggest they get a helper for the class. If they aren't willing to get assistants for the classes then they need to place smaller limits on the number of students that can be enrolled in each class. 7 K-2 aged kids is just too many students for a high school kid to control in the water.

Big Changes

2012-01-21T21:57:00.009-05:00

Big changes have happened since I last wrote. We've headed back to school. Hannah got ANOTHER office referral at school. We finally got our evaluation date scheduled for the severe behavior clinic. We got Hannah's newest set of diagnoses (ADHD and Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Aspergers is still waiting to be ruled out or in by the severe behavior clinic) We started a new behavior plan with the help of the current psychologist. Our foster care license finally cleared AND we got our first placement! That's A LOT to happen in 2 1/2 weeks!

Now that we've actually begun accepting foster care placements I can't really talk about our lives with those kids and how that relates to Hannah and our lives on this blog anymore since it's totally not private. I'm going to continue to write on here about day to day stuff and Hannah, but I will also start up an anonymous blog where I can chronicle our foster care journey. If you are at all interested in reading that blog please leave me your email address in a comment and I'll email you the address to the new blog since I don't want to post it on this blog and have the two connected and the wrong people find out who we are in the new blog.

Ok, back to Hannah. Hannah's new behavior plan is interesting. It's too soon now to tell if will do any good, but one thing is certain. . . . she DOES NOT like it. It is essentially a psuedo grounding of all privileges where a chore is given as a consequence that has to be completed before the grounding is lifted. Basically she chooses how long the grounding lasts by how quickly she decides to get the chore done. There's also a positive reinforcement piece to it as well where she earns small rewards (special time with mom or dad, tv time, computer time, etc) randomly for being obedient. Along with this new system (which the psych calls the Job Card System), we were also taught a safe hold to use when she becomes aggressive which has been happening more and more lately and had become increasingly difficult to manage because she is getting so big and so strong. I don't like the thought of having to use restraint in any form, but I have to admit the few times I've had to use it everyone has been a lot safer. We'll keep everyone posted as things continue along. I'm sure things will get even more rocky before they get smoother especially considering the big changes that have happened in the house.

Photo Notes: These pictures were from a Daddy-Daughter project that Kyle and Hannah are working on for her room. It's still not finished yet, but hopefully soon it'll be done and up on the wall. I'll be sure to post a picture of the finished product when they get it done.

Cats Land on Their Feet!

2012-01-03T22:10:00.009-05:00

Thankfully cats usually land on their feet. This was especially lucky for poor Thunder (Hannah's kitten) today because Hannah decided to toss him out of a window. He fell 12 feet down to the ground and hit a concrete patio. Not only did she make this interesting decision, but she chose not to tell anyone about it until 6 hours later when it was time to go to bed. Poor Kyle had to go searching for a BLACK cat in pitch dark. Thankfully Thunder was found, interestingly enough right where he was dropped, and does not appear to be hurt although he has been quite needy ever since being brought back into the house. Thankfully for us, Hannah did not fall out the window in her attempts which could have easily happened as I'm sure the cat DID NOT go willingly out the window!

Truly it seems as if there is never a dull moment around here. I can only imagine what it will be like once we have more kids running around that Hannah can con into joining in her antics! Still, I really want to get more kids into the house. Peer models, even if they aren't completely typical, have got to be a good thing for her!

Surgery went well and for once there were no post op complications at all! YAHOO! The rest of the day after surgery was nerve wracking however because Hannah is one of those kids who gets uber hyper instead of lethargic when she's not feeling 100% and the post op instructions were to keep her quiet and no running, jumping, or climbing. UM, YEAH. . . . . We failed ALL of those post op instructions within the first hour home! I'd just like to see that doctor try to keep a wired off of anesthesia 5 yr old still. Trust me, it's not happening with my kid.

Hannah goes back to school on Thursday and for me it can't come soon enough. This break, without the structure of school, has been hard on us all. In fact, Hannah even went as far as to write a "run away" note to Kyle and I. Thankfully she hand delivered it so there was no chance for her to put her plans into action! Apparently she was planning on going to Indiana to live with Mamaw and Papaw! Speaking of notes, notes abound here recently. Hannah writes notes about EVERYTHING. She writes me notes to ask me questions, to pseudo apologize, to announce run away plans, etc. I think I'm going to start taking pictures of each of them so that I'll always have a record of them. The run away note seems to have disappeared and that makes me sad. It was my favorite! :)

Surgery

2011-12-28T21:43:00.008-05:00

Tomorrow we hope that the 3rd time's a charm. Hannah goes in for her 3rd set of ear tubes. This time they will be permanent ones. While I'm relieved to be getting them and be done with the 3 ear infections we've had in the month since the first tube fell out, I'm worried too. She doesn't come out of anesthesia well. She's combative and crazy. It's scary to see. She's also had some sort of post operative complication after both of her previous ear tube surgeries. Neither one has been horribly serious, but bad enough to land us in the ER both times shortly after we had been discharged from the surgery center. Thankfully, Kyle can take the day off and it's near the weekend so if something does come up I won't be handling things alone.

As far as the behavior front goes, Christmas break has been rough. I guess it is to be expected since her routine is off, but this is the absolute worst it's ever been. I'm actually praying for an acceptance to the severe behavior program at this point where only weeks ago I was still wondering if we'd even accept the spot if they said she qualified.

On the foster care front we are STILL waiting on our finger prints to clear and now we just found out that one of the states we previously lived in is asking for yet more paperwork in order to clear our background checks-something about a new child protection law that recently went into effect. On a positive note, a nice lady from freecycle gave me a big bag of infant crib bedding, some baby toys, and a bassinet today.

Photo Notes: These pictures were from Thanksgiving Day. We spent the day together as a family putting up Christmas decorations, eating a wonderful dinner, and remodeling our guest bathroom.

Rough Week

2011-12-09T16:45:00.018-05:00

It's been a rough week around here. It started on Monday when Hannah's cough had reached the point that I felt like I had to take her to the doctor. We went in and found out that she had bronchitis and a double ear infection. The ear that still had the tube wasn't draining like the tubes are supposed to help it do and the doctor said the tube was crusty looking and gross. So, we went home with a script for 2 weeks of amox-clav and orders to keep her quiet. Ha! Fat chance! Hannah is one of those odd kids who, instead of becoming lethargic and restless when they are sick, goes into hyper-drive. She becomes even more active than she normally is and it's next to impossible to keep her still. Even the promise of PBS kids or a movie isn't enough to keep her still for long.

Later in the day we had to go to Omaha to pick up her new orthotics and have them fitted. Luckily, they were able to get them into her current shoes so we didn't have to buy new sneakers. I was worried about this since I had just bought her new shoes only a few weeks before we had the appointment where the doctor ordered the orthotics. I really didn't want to shell out money for new shoes this close to the holidays. Upon arriving home Hannah had a spectacular meltdown when I suggested she wash her hands. In fact, she raged. I was barely able to get her upstairs to her bedroom to chill out and once there it was basically impossible to keep her in her room. She kicked her physical and verbal aggression up several notches from normal and for the first time I was almost frightened of her. It took over an hour to get her calmed back down. To find the silver lining in this incident, I was able to video a good portion of the ordeal to take with us to the psychologist the next day.

Tuesday she was cleared to go back to school, but we had to pick her up early for our first appointment with the new psychologist. Armed with my video from the night before, her previous psych report, teacher emails, IEP, disciplinary referrals, report card, etc we marched into our meeting. After studying our paperwork, speaking with us, and watching the video the psychologist came back into the room and told us that we needed to be referred to the Autism Center's Severe Behavior unit for their outpatient partial hospitalization program. We were floored. I knew things had gotten bad, but I had no idea we were now that far from normal 5 year old behavior. She also said that her initial impression of Hannah is Asperger's Syndrome. So, yeah, we are back to that again. I'd been thinking I needed to rename the blog since the last psych took away that diagnosis, but it looks like it may be coming back. The doctor also said that she WOULD continue to see us (and Hannah) if we wanted, that she wasn't just handing us off because she didn't want to work with us, but that she thought progress with her would be much slower and that Hannah needed more intensive help than she was able to give her. We were sent home with a phone number to call and a packet of forms to fill out.

Wednesday was rough, but manageable. Thursday started off ok, but there were issues right before we left for school when Hannah tried to smuggle books to school by shoving them down her pants. A battle ensued to attempt the removal of the books and the drive to school was not happy. Swim lessons on Thursday were awesome and Hannah made a lot of progress, but then after the lesson in the locker room all heck broke loose. Hannah got angry for some unknown to me reason and started shouting mean and disrespectful things at me. If I tried to touch her she'd hit me or swat my hand away. It was SO LOUD and it echoed all throughout the locker room. Every eye was on me and I was terribly embarrassed. I know I shouldn't care what others think of me and my parenting, but seeing all those eyes on me judging it was hard to fight back the tears that wanted to come as I struggled to contain Hannah, get her dressed and just get the heck out of Dodge.

Friday morning (today) started off rocky from the very beginning and only got worse as the day wore on. Hannah didn't want to get ready for school and was insisting she had already brushed her teeth when she had clearly not done so (sink and toothbrush were both bone dry!). Instead of fight with her over it, I simply told her that I would just go over them to be sure she had done a good job. She wasn't going to have that at all and got extremely aggressive. In the end she did a number to both me and the bathroom, ripping the drawer out of it's cabinet and the door stopper off the wall and head butting me so hard that tears came to my eyes. I eventually got her calmed and ready for school. I thought it was all in the past. She seemed ready to go, but just after lunchtime I received an email from the teacher saying that Hannah had spit in another student's face at lunchtime. She was sent to the principal for another "detention" during recess. She apologized to her friend, but I fear damage may have been done to that friendship because Hannah said that the little girl told her that Hannah wasn't her friend anymore and that she wouldn't talk to her or play with her for the rest of the day. I can't say that I blame the girl, especially since she had done nothing to provoke the spitting. The thing is, Hannah REALLY likes this little girl. She talks about her ALL the time. She's calm and reliable and a good influence, the perfect friend for Hannah. I have NO IDEA why she would have done something like this to her friend and apparently neither does Hannah.

As the week has wore on I find myself wondering more and more if maybe the psychologist was right, maybe this program she speaks about really is the right place for us. Maybe, just maybe, this could be where we can finally get some help. The only drawback, it's an 8 week program and Hannah would have to be pulled from school for that time. I don't know how I feel about that. Obviously she won't fall behind academically, but I worry about the disruption to the school routine and the loss of relationships that she has started to build with her classmates. It's going to take lots of prayer to decide what to do about this.

Photo Notes: Pictures were taken in November at a park near our house. The cat in the last picture acted like a dog and followed us around EVERYWHERE we went. It even came when called. It was SO FRIENDLY. Hannah was convinced it didn't have a home and that we needed to take it home. To tell you the truth, I wouldn't have minded having it, but a cat that friendly had to have owners so we went knocking on doors in the neighborhood near the park to see if anyone knew who the cat belonged to. We eventually found the owner, but they were totally unconcerned that their cat was across the busy road wandering in the park. That made me sad. He was such a sweet cat too.

The Candy Cane Debacle Part 2

2011-11-29T22:04:00.011-05:00

Boy this story just keeps getting more interesting! After the horrible afternoon and night we had yesterday, Hannah had an AWESOME morning. I had high hopes for her day at school. I thought she would be in the right frame of mind to speak with the teacher and the principal about what had happened. I also thought she'd be able to handle the consequences of her action (from mom and dad: no sweets for the rest of the week, from school: no candy cane from the tree when it was her turn and no sweets if there were any offered at school to reinforce the no sweets rule from home). Well. . . . . not so much. Mrs. A reported that Hannah would not focus on their talk at all. Instead she kept blurting out that she had a great morning (which she had). She didn't seem to acknowledge a thing Mrs. A said. When informed she would need to go to the Principal's office she adopted an attitude of uncaring and was completely nonplussed when the visit happened during one of her recesses. She was however irritated about the no sweets rule and put up a bit of a fuss. THEN the doozy hit. She went to the resource room and was offered a treat for a personal best on her weekly math quiz. She gladly took it and ate it and then immediately told the Mrs. D that she would have to tell Mrs. A about it because she wasn't supposed to have sweets. She then walked back to her classroom and told Mrs. A that Mrs. D was going to give her a treat for her math quiz. When Mrs. A informed her that she would have to save it until next week she told Mrs. A that it didn't matter because she already ate it! The little sneak. She KNEW she wasn't allowed and waited until she had already ate it to inform the teacher about it. There were apparently other behavior issues during the day too.

Then when I picked Hannah up she was wound up, but behaving ok. She did her chores, finished her homework, and got ready for swimming without complaint. Then at swimming she actually listened to her teachers and had her best lesson so far! She swam the entire length of the pool on her back without any help and without stopping since she was in the deep and couldn't ever touch. I was so proud of her. Then she showered, had dinner, and got ready for bed peacefully and without incident. It was the easiest night we've had in weeks, maybe months! I think it is so interesting that when Hannah has rough days with us at home she seems to do okay at school and when she has good days with us she has a hard time at school. It's like she only has a limited capacity for behaving and she can either use it one place or the other and then it's gone and anything leftover gets bad behavior. Usually Kyle and I get the bad behavior and though it's rough I'm glad for her to save it for us instead of it impacting her schooling significantly. However, every once in awhile it's nice to get the good stuff and to have others see what we go through daily and have that validation that I'm not a crazy mom and WE aren't the cause of all the bad behavior. Does that make sense? So many times we've been told we are imagining things and that they "just don't see that with Hannah." I feel like a broken record trying to explain that she's better with others usually, but these are her normal behaviors. So, it's nice to be validated every now and then and have Hannah "share the love" so to speak!

Photo Note: Pictures are from Thanksgiving Day. Kyle, Hannah, and I spent the day hanging out together. Hannah helped me decorate the house for Christmas and helped Kyle make cranberry bread.

The Candy Cane Debacle

2011-11-28T21:39:00.016-05:00

Today we had another rough night here at chez Spontak. Hannah and I arrived home to a blinking answering machine. The teacher had left a message for me to call the moment I walked in the door. That's NEVER a good sign. Apparently Hannah had been perservating on some candy canes hung on a tree in the classroom all day and now one of them was missing (the teacher knew the exact number b/c there was supposed to be one for each child in the class). She wanted me to check Hannah's backpack and search her person to see if she had taken the candy cane. She said she hated to blame her, but she just had a gut feeling. I searched and there was no candy cane to be seen. I asked Hannah if she had taken it and at first she said no and when I asked her if she was sure or if she knew what had happened to the missing candy cane she said she had taken it and broken it up and hid it in the trash can. While I was waiting for the secretary at the school to put me through to the classroom Hannah changed her story and said that she actually took the candy cane last Tuesday and it was the one she had brought home with her from school and said was from the resource room teacher as a treat for not complaining during her math quiz. We thought this was an odd reason to get a treat, but let it go. After talking to the teacher I found out that Hannah hadn't even gone to the resource room at all last week so she couldn't have gotten the candy cane from Mrs. D. The candy cane we saw was indeed the missing one. We discussed consequences and decided that Hannah would simply not get a candy cane when the rest of the students got theirs since she had already had one. When I tried to talk to Hannah about what had happened and attempted to inform her about the consequences of her actions all heck broke loose. She became alternately aggressive and avoidant. She refused to discuss the matter or even listen to what I had to say. Any attempts to force the issue were met with painful blows to my body. After about an hour she calmed herself enough that I could talk to her without threat of physical aggression, but she still was unable to add much to the discussion. She seemed completely unable to articulate her feelings or her reasons for her actions despite her advanced verbal skills. When she began sobbing uncontrollably I tried to ask her if she could tell me what she was feeling and she wasn't even able to say she was crying because she was sad or angry. I eventually prompted her with sad to try that out and then asked her what she might be sad about. She was still unable or unwilling to fill in the most obvious reason for her sadness. Instead when pressed to give an answer she listed various made up scenarios with her stuffed animals that were bringing her sadness. It was a frustrating exchange for both of us. The thing is, she can identify emotions in characters in books and movies or on facial expression cards, but seems unable to identify her own emotions or the reasons for them. Though she has verbal skills that would put many 10 year olds to shame she's unable to utter a simple "I'm sad" when asked why she is crying. It's so frustrating for me because I don't know how to help her with these big feelings and how to give appropriate consequences when she seems unable to connect her feelings with her actions. We've got an appointment with a new psychologist the first week of December so hopefully we'll finally get some help. I feel like we've been bouncing from person to person for years with no real help and if we don't get some help helping our little girl soon it will be disastrous for her self esteem. I already see it affecting her. Even tonight she said she was a dummy. If a profoundly gifted little girl can possibly think she's a dummy then you know there is something going on with her self esteem.

Photo notes: The pictures were from our trip to the pumpkin patch to get our Halloween pumpkins and then the torturous experience of carving them for my SPD kiddo!

Ups and Downs

2011-11-27T23:05:00.017-05:00

We've definitely had our ups and downs here lately. Today was a big up! For the first time in a long time we had a tantrum free day. I know that shouldn't really still be considered an accomplishment for a 5yr old, but for us it is. We even managed to make it to church on time AND handle the anticipation of an impromptu visit from friends. Today was nice, very nice. We needed it. We needed it because the preceding week brought us cat food in the dryer, poop and pee in a slipper shoved in the back of the closet, and school without brushed teeth or hair to list a few of our trials. We also survived a 5 day weekend. That in itself is a major accomplishment I feel! In our house we like routine. We NEED routine and 5 days off school in a row is DEFINTELY not routine. Still, we survived and the weekend finished off with the best day possible.

On our 5 day weekend we kept busy even though we didn't have routine. We went shopping to prepare for a bathroom renovation, had a quiet Thanksgiving dinner just the 3 of us, decorated the house for Christmas, started the bathroom demolishing, had a spur of the moment playdate, began and completed the bathroom renovation, shopped for our adopt-a-family's Christmas presents, went to church, cleaned our house, and had friends over. I'd say we kept our days full. The new bathroom looks great, the shopping is done and waiting to be wrapped, and I have a clean house to start the new week off fresh.

Oh, I almost forgot to update everyone on Hannah's "shark teeth" (the adult tooth coming in behind the baby tooth). Her second permanent tooth came in and the baby tooth was not getting any looser. So, after giving it 3 weeks to loosen up, I had to take Hannah into the dentist to have it pulled. I was VERY nervous about how it was going to go because Hannah gets pretty crazy whenever she has to get a vaccination and this would require her getting a shot in her mouth-I'd say that calls for a tad more accuracy than a vaccination! However, I shouldn't have worried. Once again my baby girl surprised me. She was so brave! She sat very still and held my hand while the dentist put several shots of anesthesia into her gums. She only tried to cover her mouth once and that was before he actually started. She didn't even really cry. She just got some tears at the corners of her eyes, but nothing fell and she didn't scream or flail around. She even sat quietly when the dentist had to get out what were essentially pliers to yank the stubborn tooth out because it was not cooperating with his wiggling. Boy, you should have seen the root on that baby tooth. It wasn't EVER going to come out on its own. The entire root was still there. It hadn't dissolved at all and it was super long. No wonder it wasn't getting any more wiggly. Interestingly enough, I think Hannah enjoyed the sensation of her mouth being numb. She took our warnings about not chewing on her lips and being careful not to accidentally bite herself while eating quite seriously. In fact, we were alerted EVERY SINGLE TIME she accidentally bit her lip or tongue! Thankfully she didn't manage to do too much damage. When she put the tooth under her pillow that night Hannah left the tooth fairy a note asking her to bring her a horse instead of money! Fortunately she wasn't too terribly disappointed when another half dollar ended up under her pillow instead of a horse in the backyard!

The other night Hannah made her very first Christmas list. She got the idea all on her own and went off by herself to make it. When she returned to read her list to me we noticed that all but 2 items on the list were alive! I sadly had to inform her that Santa doesn't bring live gifts. So, without further ado I'll leave you with Hannah's Christmas list just in case anyone wishes to fulfill it!

Spelling is hers, my translation or additions in parentheses.

1. Horse

2. Puppy

3. Kittin (kitten)

4. Bolte Wie (Bolt Wii video game)

5. Baby (sister not a doll!)

6. Santu Clawas 2 (Santa Clause 2 DVD)

7. Hamster

Adoption Interview Project: Interview with Kate

2011-11-15T15:51:00.010-05:00

For the Adoption Interview Project I was paired with Kate at Sweet Ridge Sisters . Kate blogs there with her 3 sisters (who also graciously agreed to be interviewed as well even though they are not directly involved in adoption) about life on the farm and in the city. Kate has two daughters, Brigid and Olympia, the oldest of whom she placed for open adoption 10 years ago. She writes often about parenting and being a mother and birthmother. Please hop on over to Sweet Ridge Sisters and give Kate and her sisters a little blog love! So, without further ado, here is my interview with Kate.

1. Tell me about your relationship with Brigid. How has it changed as she has grown older?

Let me begin by telling you that when I first read about open adoption while I was pregnant with Brigid, I was completely turned off by the concept. The biggest reason for this was that I couldn't fathom having a casual relationship with my child. I felt that it had to be all or nothing, or at least nothing until some far off hazy day in the future when she was grown. I am the eldest of 9 siblings, and have lived in far off states for years. I know exactly what it is like to visit and be the glamorous older sister who comes bearing gifts and takes long walks and lots of pictures. That kind of relationship seemed like too much and too little to have with my child. Chris and Michelle, the adoptive parents, have always been very open and totally respectful. In the beginning, I just wanted to see pictures and have the occasional phone call or email, and they were great about that. They also made it clear that I would be welcome to visit them and spend time with Brigid if I changed my mind about seeing her. I did visit them on the weekend that Brigid turned 4- on her birthday, which is also the weekend of Mother's Day. It was amazing, and I am glad I did. It definitely changed the relationship to meet Brigid as a little girl, as opposed to the memory of the infant that I lost. I am so glad I have memories of her as a four year old, and of taking walks and spending time with her family. I visited again a couple years later with Brigid's birth dad, which was also an important visit. Chris and Michelle have visited my family as well. They live on the other side of the country, so the visits are rare, but then it is rare enough that I get home to see my parents and siblings. I would say that my relationship with Brigid has been very much a relationship with her whole family. When I am visiting, much of my time is spent talking to Chris and Michelle, who have become great friends and very much family to me. They have adopted five kids now, so a lot of time is also spent playing with whole bunches of kids. When I call the family, I talk to Michelle or to Chris, but rarely to Brigid. I feel like so much of the relationship that has developed has been with the family as a whole- and that has been totally healthy. I occasionally send Brigid a package or a letter, but we have not had an intense one-on-one relationship. I fundamentally relate to her as a four year old or seven year old or ten year old relative- in fact, it is similar to the relationship I've had with my younger siblings in some ways after all. And that has been more of a good thing than I could have imagined ten years ago.

2. Have you been accepted into Brigid's parents' extended family or does your relationship stay pretty much within those who live in the household? Also, does your extended family have a relationship with Brigid?

I love Brigid's extended family, and have definitely been accepted by them. The first time I met Chris and Michelle I went to stay with Chris's parents overnight. He is from a huge Irish Catholic family that is very similar to mine in many ways, and the family was incredibly gracious and welcoming and fun. After the visit I got a letter from Chris's sister that was full of love and compassion, and meant a great deal to me. A year after Brigid was born Michelle's sister wrote me a letter, and again it appeared at the exact right time and brought me a great deal of healing and peace. During my first visit to see Chris and Michelle there was a huge Mother's Day Party with Michelle's entire extended family in attendance- grandmothers, great grandmothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends. It was great to meet the family, and I cannot express how kind and welcoming and interesting her family is. Chris and Michelle came and stayed for a week when Brigid was born, and we sort of all took care of her for a week. There are pictures of a big family gathering with dozens and dozens of Mother's Day roses for all the mothers. They were great with my siblings, who were little at the time, and they left an amazing impression. After I visited Chris and Michelle, they came to see my family at Christmas the next year. They drove through a blizzard with three little kids to get there, and it was a wonderful visit. Some time after that, Chris's parents visited the farm and me my parents, and got along remarkably well. The grandparents have a great deal in common, from raising big Catholic families (Chris's parents) to farming and raising pigs and chickens and fermenting anything they can get their hands on (Michelle's Dad). Chris and Michelle, their five kids, and Chris's younger sister all attended my wedding a couple years ago. I had invited both sets of grandparents, who were unable to come and very much wished they could have. I spent a lot of time with Brigid at the wedding. The picture at the top of our blog, of all the girls in ballgowns on top of a silo silhouetted against the sky- Brigid is at the foot of that silo, and I am so glad. My grandmothers were both able to meet her, and I know that meant a great great deal to them, as they have been longing to meet her for a long time. There were 250 people at the wedding, so I am pretty sure that they met as much of our extended family as they possibly could- at least until the next great big Slattery wedding.

3. How has Brigid processed the fact that you are now parenting Olympia? How did you explain it to her? Does this fact trouble her? How will you explain it later on to Olympia?

A month after Olympia was born a package came from Brigid's family. Michelle had all of her kids pick out little presents for Olympia. Brigid, who was around 9 at the time, sent three books. Two of them were little Dr. Seuss books, and the third was entitled "Guess How Much I Love You." Brigid wrote a letter, and slipped it into that book. The letter said: Dear Olympia,The top two books you see used to be my favorite books when I was a baby. The third and biggest book expresses my feelings for you even though I've never met you. I hope you look upon these books for the rest of your life as love in disguise from your big sis,Brigid I think that sums up the way that Brigid feels about Olympia. I know that she has pictures of me with Olympia hanging in her room. She definitely is not troubled by the fact that I am parenting Olympia. She is very secure, because she is well loved by secure parents. I believe this will be the case with Olympia as well. I plan on following Michelle's lead in being open and honest and down to earth about the facts of the situation- in fact, I was just talking to Michelle about it at length on the phone last night. Olympia has so many cousins and second cousins and aunts and uncles and Grandparents who live far away, and I think that her relationship with Brigid will naturally follow a similar pattern to the ones she has with the rest of the family. As Michelle pointed out, having a huge and close family living all over the country makes the adoption relationship seem pretty normal to kids.

4. Now that Brigid is older, has she come to you looking for answers as to why you placed her for adoption or have her parents taken care of all of those questions?

She has not come to me looking for answers at all. She hasn't asked a whole lot of questions of Chris and Michelle either- I think because adoption is really normal for her, and because the questions she has have been answered. I am happy to have Chris and Michelle answer her questions, and if she has them for me I'd love to answer them as well. I look forward to having a dialogue some day- and I know that Brigid's birth dad does as well.

5. How difficult has it been for you seeing Brigid's parents parent her differently than you would have chosen? (I'm assuming this happens since everyone parents differently.)

Parenting differences have not been an issue for me at all. I think that Chris and Michelle are amazing parents, and I would love to be as much like them as possible. They have a very similar approach to faith, discipline, family size, and life in general. I've totally taken parenting tips from them.

6. Has your extended family supported you in your decision to place Brigid for adoption or did they try to talk you out of it? If they were completely supportive, do you wish they would have tried to talk you out of it?

My family was supportive of me in my decision to place. My mother in particular felt strongly that adoption was the best option for me, and expressed this opinion. However, I came to the decision very much on my own along with Brigid's birth dad. We did a great deal of research and contemplation and talked about it for many many hours before concluding that it was the best possible thing to do for our child. I am a very strong willed person, and I took total responsibility for becoming pregnant, and for deciding that adoption was the right choice. There is no way anyone could have talked me into adoption- the decision was mine.

7. Do you regret your decision?

I do not. I have sobbed until I couldn't breathe, and struggled with intense guilt, and grieved greatly- but I have never regretted my decision. I knew that I could be a good mother, but there was no way that I could be with her father, or be her father. I wanted my child to be secure and loved by two parents. Adoption was the only way that I could give her that. There have been many times in the past year and a half of raising my daughter Olympia that I have been caught by a moment of joy with my husband and the baby, and every time I have stopped to be grateful that Brigid was raised by two happy, loving, faith filled parents. The experience of adoption has been unbelievably painful at many times, but it has also been full of grace. There has been more grace and love poured out than I could ever have imagined.

Here are Clare, Mary, and Colleen's responses to your questions:

1)Could you have them tell me what they thought when you first told them you were considering adoption and what they thought about open adoption in particular?

2)What do they think of it now? Have their opinions changed?

3)Do they have a relationship with Brigid?4)Do they feel like/treat her like she is their niece just like they do Olympia or does it feel different to them?

Colleen:

1.) I was only 8 when all of this was happening, so I guess I didn't even know that it was an open adoption. I remember knowing that Kate was giving away her baby and she was going to meet the parents. I guess I supposed that all adoptions were that way. It didn't seem strange; it just was what an adoption was to me.

2.) I am very much in favor of open adoption now. Personally, I know that I would never have gotten to meet Brigid had Kate not done an open adoption, and that would have been so sad. My life has been so much more enriched by the whole situation. I now know that it is not the way all adoptions work, but I would prefer it if all adoptions could go as well as Kate's seemed to.

3.)I've met Brigid twice now, and I love her so much! I don't have a personal relationship with her because of the distance she lives away, but I would like to eventually get closer to her. My little sister, Clare, is writing to her, and I might follow suite.

4.)I feel like she is as much my niece as Olympia. It does feel a little bit different just because I do not know her parents extraordinarily well, but I can see the fact that she is a Slattery girl from her very face. I'm so glad that I know her!

Clare:

1. When Kate first got pregnant, I was just a little four year old, so she obviously did not come up to me and say, "Well, Clare, I'm strongly considering adoption." As it was, I didn't even realize that my oldest sister was going to have a baby until she was about 8 months pregnant. I didn't really understand the concept of adoption until the couple who adopted Brigid came to our farm to pick her up.

2. Now that I'm older and I can better understand the situation, I"m just fine with it. Brigid's parents are a great, loving couple. Although sometimes it makes me sad that Brigid lives so far away and I don't get to see her often, I know that the best thing for both Brigid and Kate was for Brigid to be given up for adoption.

3. I have only seen Brigid two times in my life since she was born, and I haven't really kept in contact with her at all until now. Just recently I actually started writing letters to her, because I realized just how little I've connected with her. We are only four years apart, so I'm hoping by our letter writing we will be able to connect much more that we have before.

4. I don't know nearly as much about Brigid as I do my other nieces and as I mentioned before I've hardly ever seen her in person, but I don't think I like any one of my nieces more than her. It's definitely a different kind of relationship, because Brigid lives all the way in California with her adopted family and is the closest in age to me out of all of my nieces, but I love Brigid just as much as them, because whether she's adopted or not, she's still a part of our family. Whenever I tell people my nieces names you can be sure she'll be included in the list, and I have just as many pictures of her on my walls as I do my other nieces. Whether I get to see her every week or not, she'll always be loved just as much as the others in my family. :)

Mary:

Adoption was not an option in my mind. At the time of Kate's pregnancy, I was 14 years old and considered that Kate was all grown up. I was appalled at her choice and kept telling myself that if I were the one expecting, I would never choose adoption. I didn't really have many formed thoughts on adoption at that point, it wasn't something that I knew much about.

2) Well, I spent a year working with teenage girls at a treatment center, a lot of these clients were dealing with adoption issues. I have volunteered at a orphanage in Russia too, so I have seen a wide array of cases on the adoption spectrum. I am highly cynical of adoption being a super positive experience for all parties involved because I have worked with so many kids with attachment disorders. HOWEVER, I consider Kate's situation to be overwhelmingly beautiful and sacred.

3) No I do not

4) Not really, I am super close to my two oldest nieces here in Wisconsin who are actually adopted into my family. I know she must have an aunt somewhere out there who loves her like I love my nieces here. Building a relationship with someone takes time. Someday, I think I will get to know her, but right now I am just happy to know that she has a beautiful family and is healthy, happy and ever so blessed.

If you are intested in reading other pairs of interviews, hop on over to Production, Not Reproduction for the full list of participants. Enjoy!

Dagger to the Heart

2011-11-15T15:13:00.011-05:00

It's been rough here lately around the Spontak house. Hannah's behaviors have increased. Mornings are almost impossible to get out the door to school. Hannah often refuses to go and once I even deposited her by the front door of the school sans shoes and coat and screaming. UGH! That was hard to do. Evenings are just as bad, if not worse, getting ready for bed. One night, after a particularly rough day, when Hannah said her bedtime prayers she asked God to make her a better daughter. It broke my heart to hear her say that. That was the final straw that told me we HAD to get her some more help. If she thought she was a bad kid/a bad daughter then obviously we weren't doing something right and we need help. Then yesterday, after a really bad afternoon meltdown resulting in injuries to myself, I emailed Hannah's teacher to see if anything out of the ordinary might have happened at school that day that could have caused Hannah to be so unstable when she got home. I felt surely there had to be some explanation for this out of control behavior. I also asked a few questions about her perceptions of Hannah's adjustment to school life, her happiness in the classroom, etc. The email I received back made me cry. It's one thing to know that Hannah has problems and to witness them at home, but it's altogether different to hear them described by someone else. What follows is an except from her teacher's email.

"Hannah is very hard to read emotionally. She seems happy at school at times and over things I might never expect…..a new center game, etc. Other times she seems like she is just passing her time with us until something else comes along. She might not seem unhappy but rather no emotions at all. I am not sure she is ever totally relaxed at school. The way she holds her body throughout the day and always observing the situation leads me to believe that she is always "on guard" even in the most relaxing of situations. I believe she is at her most natural out on the playground or walking in the hallway with a peer. At these times she seems more relaxed and very open with her conversations. What she lacks is that carefree attitude of a kdg student if that makes sense to you. She just always seems to be busy checking out what is going on around her and observing others and their reactions to things.

The day I had a talk with Hannah about her physical behavior at home I used my own daughters as an example. She seemed so interested to hear about their behaviors and how they treat me and how I treat them back. It was very interesting to watch her. You could just see the wheels turning in her head however I had no idea what she might be thinking. She seems very interested in the actions/feelings of others but as an observer only."

This just makes me sad for my little girl. I want to be able to help her, but I just don't know how. We've got a call into a new psychologist who can hopefully help shed some light on the situation and who can hook us up with a behavioral specialist, but I'm sure it will be awhile before her appointment-it always takes so long to get into these specialists and we could use help now. Prayers for my little girl would be greatly appreciated.

I Will NEVER Leave Home Again

2011-10-26T22:50:00.009-05:00

It seems that when Mama goes away the house completely falls apart. I spent last weekend and the first part of this week in Indiana to attend my grandmother's funeral. Hannah had school and didn't know my grandmother well so she and Kyle stayed home. I arrived home late Monday night to discover that the dog was wigged out, the cats seriously ticked off, and Hannah had chopped her hair off at school! Seriously? I was gone 2 1/2 days! Poor Kyle must have really had his hands full. Upon reflection we determined that while Kyle and I have gone away together without Hannah and Kyle has gone on trips by himself several times since Hannah was born, I had NEVER gone anywhere overnight without either Kyle or Hannah and left Hannah home alone with Daddy. How on earth this was the first time in five years I don't know, but it was. I guess there was a reason I don't leave and I was reminded of it Monday night!

So, I started this post two weeks ago and I've since left home overnight without Kyle and Hannah again! Apparently I'm a slow learner. This time I went to visit my friend Sarah and her family to help them move into their new house. While the chaos that erupted at home wasn't quite as dramatic and permanent as the last time, there was one incident involving poop that poor Kyle had to call me to vent about! The real effect of my absence was saved for when I got home and Hannah really let me have it! The very next day she split my lip open in an attempt to prevent me from making her go to school and had to be forcibly removed from the van at school screaming and without any shoes on. Interestingly enough she ended up having a great day at school that day though you would have never guessed it based on her performance that morning!

Photo Notes: Here are before and after photos of Hannah's self hair cut! She started off with no bangs and decided to add them herself! The poor teacher gathered up the pile of hair and sent it home to us in an envelope!

Adoption Bloggers Interview Project

2011-10-14T14:52:00.009-05:00

Next month I'm going to be participating in the Adoption Bloggers Interview Project in honor of National Adoption Month. I'm very excited to get acquainted with a new adoption blogger and to be able to highlight their blog on mine. If any other adoption bloggers are interested in participating there is still time to sign up. Just click on the button at the top of my blog and fill out a registration form and you'll be contacted with the name of your partner.

Speaking of National Adoption Month. . . . I was searching the online card catalog at Hannah's school library and I realized they only had 2, count them, 2 adoption related books and neither of them were current or what I would call quality adoption books. Think using the words "real mom" and "gave her away". So, I decided that rather than complain about it I should do something about it. I emailed the school librarian and offered to donate some quality adoption books to the school library. She was very responsive to this idea and so I set about purchasing copies of some of our favorite adoption books and also one I had heard good things about, but never read. The books we bought were How I was Adopted by JoAnna Cole, Tell Me Again About the Night I was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis (this is one of my favorite), A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kaza, and Lucy's Family Tree by Karen Schreck. The last one was the one we'd never read before and I must say that after reading it I'm glad I bought it as it has significant importance to school related personnel in handling adoption. How about you? Do you you have a favorite adoption book you'd like to share? I'm always up for good book recommendations!

Photo Notes: I just found these pictures on a memory card in my purse from MAY! They are of Hannah and her birthfamily when we visited on our way out to Nebraska from Rhode Island. The first one is of Hannah and her birthsister, Kayla, and the second one is of the two of them with their Grandpa Charlie.

Tooth Fairy

2011-10-13T14:04:00.009-05:00

The tooth fairy finally made her first visit to our house last week. During our trip back to Indiana for Kevin's wedding we noticed that Hannah's permanent tooth had begun coming in behind her baby tooth. We were worried there would be a big gap in her mouth for all the wedding pictures, but that baby tooth held on. It finally agreed to come out one night last week and boy was Hannah excited about the impending visit from the tooth fairy. I bet she checked on her tooth a dozen times after she placed it under her pillow. The tooth fairy left her a shiny new half dollar and she was pleased as punch. A few days before it finally fell out we noticed that the tooth next door to it was also already coming through and it didn't seem loose at all. Now it seems to be at least a little bit loose so I'm not going to get too worried about it yet unless that adult tooth starts to get big and we haven't made any progress in getting the baby tooth out. Tiffany, Hannah's birthmom, said that the twins' teeth did the same thing and they never had to have any of them pulled so that is an encouraging sign. This must just be a genetic thing that runs in her family.

We had our homestudy visit this week and it went very well. We were disappointed to learn, however, that it would be after the first of the year before our finger prints were cleared and our homestudy finalized. Hannah was actually mad about it. She shouted at me, "I want kids NOW!" I couldn't help but think, "My thoughts exactly!" It is a bit frustrating to just sit and wait on the government red tape when we know via our social worker that they are really struggling to find homes to place children in in our area right now. We are ready and willing, but can't take a placement until the government takes it sweet time to process our finger prints. UGH!

Hannah continues to do well in school. Her teachers are really good about staying on top of her behaviors and she's getting plenty of academic challenge. Yesterday I actually just got an email from her teacher to let me know that Hannah had tested out of all of the sight word lists to meet the benchmarks for the entire school! This means that for the next 3 years she won't ever need to be assessed on them again because she passed the kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade tests! Way to go Hannah! We weren't really surprised since when the lists came home to practice Hannah didn't have to practice. She said every single word correctly the first time on all 30 lists. Still, it's good to know that she's displaying her knowledge at school as well as at home since that hasn't always been the case with her. In math she continues to get faster and faster at adding and subtracting and has also been working on word problems where she has to decide whether or not she needs to add or subtract to get the answer. She also likes to find the missing sign in equations. Her spelling and writing continues to improve and I'm often blown away by the number of words she just "knows" how to spell without having to sound them out. She can also spell many of the sight words that you can't sound out. Her comprehension skill of retelling a story is also improving. At the beginning of the year she was not only below her actual reading level of 3rd grade in this skill, but she was actually below her grade level on it. Now she's above grade level on retelling, but not quite up to her current reading level yet. We'll keep working on it.

Home Study

2011-10-06T21:08:00.008-05:00

Well, it's home study time again. I remember when we had ours for Hannah's adoption. I totally freaked out thinking the house had to be spotless. I scrubbed baseboards and washed windows. I went nuts cleaning and we are not really clean people. We aren't total pigs, but our house is normally not spotless. This time around though I've got a kindergartner, two cats, and a dog and a MUCH bigger house. I'm not going to be doing any special cleaning this time. I learned my lesson last time! It seems like we've been waiting forever for the state to get their red tape stuff figured out to get someone out here to do our home study visit, but now it's finally scheduled for October 11th. We'll get our finger prints done then too. That means that if everything checks out then we'll just have one final visit before we are officially licensed to take foster care placements! I'm very excited (and a little nervous too). I can't wait to start filling up this big empty house, but at the same time I worry about doing a good job. I've never watched a kid I knew absolutely nothing about, let alone let one live in my home for an undetermined amount of time. We are planning on being open to kids 8 years and under. We've got a crib and a twin bed frame (no mattress yet!) in one of the extra bedrooms and I've started accumulating some smaller sized baby clothes and some boy's clothes wherever I can. I'm not sure what else I can do to prepare since the possibilities of what type of child will be the first to come are so varied. I guess we'll just get that twin mattress and then wait and see what happens. Wish us luck on this new leg of our journey.

Photo Notes: These are just some fun pictures from this summer.

Open Adoption

2011-10-03T10:22:00.007-05:00

I don't often blog about adoption anymore since our experiences with adoption just seem like "life" now. We are living an adoption and it's hard to separate the two sometimes. However, on our trip back to Indiana a few weeks ago we unexpectedly got to meet up with Hannah's birth mom, Tiffany, and Hannah's brother and sister. It had been a long day and night, but it seemed so important to see them that I threw all semblance of routine to the wind and we went swimming at 9:30pm (already 2 1/2 hours past Hannah's bedtime!). The kids had a blast and it was so neat to see them truly behaving like siblings. That blood bond is strong no matter what others may try to say. You can't just forget it. It's as important (if not more so) for Hannah to see Kayla and Chase as it is for her to see Tiffany and it's important for the twins to see Hannah too. Because Tiffany has always been open and honest with them they KNOW Hannah is their sister and they proudly claim her. In fact, Tiffany shared with me a story about an interaction between Kayla and one of their neighbors. Apparently the topic of siblings had come up somehow and Kayla mentioned that she had a sister. The neighbor lady corrected and argued with her as Kayla continued to insist that she DID have a sister and her name was Hannah. Kayla explained to the woman the best she could about how Hannah didn't live with them and about the adoption. The woman just couldn't get it and never did believe her. Finally Kayla gave up and said, "Forget it! It's complicated!" It warmed my heart to have affirmation that my little girl has people who claim her, who want her, who simply take for granted that she's theirs. I know that open adoptions are often tricky to navigate, but there's one thing I KNOW for certain is that my little girl will always have her village of people who love and care for her, be they her birth or adoptive family, she'll have them.

Photo Notes: The first two pictures are of Hannah and her siblings swimming at the hotel pool during our most recent visit. The last picture is just a fun one of Hannah sporting one of Kyle's old Ohio State sweatshirts from when he was a kid.

Flower Girl

2011-09-28T19:35:00.023-05:00

Last week we traveled back home to Indiana to attend my brother-in-law's wedding. Both Kyle and Hannah were in the wedding-Kyle as the best man and Hannah as the flower girl. I was nervous about this trip for several reasons. First, we were driving. It's a long drive, at least 9 hours, and we intended to drive straight through overnight leaving as soon as Hannah got out of school. Second, it was a Catholic ceremony which meant it would be LONG and Hannah would need to participate the entire time. Third, there would be late nights and long days with no predictable schedule. Fourth, we were driving home the very next day after the wedding on little sleep and with impending sugar high crashes.

I should not have worried. Hannah did brilliantly in all aspects of the trip. She rocked the ceremony, the reception, and both the drives out and back. I was SO PROUD of her. Never in a million years would I have expected our trip to go as smoothly as it did. It truly was amazing. AND since it was so amazing I'm going to regale you all with the play by play of the ENTIRE weekend. Feel free to simply skip all the words and just look at the pictures!

Thursday I picked Hannah up from school and while walking home she crashed face first into the sidewalk and got some pretty spectacular looking scrapes-two on her arms, one on her leg, and one on her nose. Just what we needed two days before having to wear a white dress for the wedding. We eventually made it home and then waited for Kyle to get home from work so we could leave. We hit the road at around 5:00pm which was a little later than we expected, but not too horribly bad. The plan was to drive straight through to Indiana and arrive at the hotel around 3:00am. Well, that didn't happen. We hit some horrible fog that slowed us down dramatically and made Kyle super sleepy. We pulled off at a rest stop and took a little nap to perk ourselves up. While Kyle and I slept for an hour and a half Hannah sat quietly and read! I could not believe it. She won't even let us sleep in on the weekends! She really behaved brilliantly on the trip and we rolled into the hotel at 6:00am local time on Friday morning. Oh, and I almost forgot, we also found out on the drive that Hannah was about to lose a tooth and it was bleeding. Another thing involving blood that we did not need paired with a white dress!

Upon arriving we found that the hotel had given away our room because we did not check in at the appropriate time. I was about to panic since we were pretty much dead on our feet, but the lady at the front desk worked her magic and found us a room that we could have for our entire stay and didn't even charge us for the night we missed or for early check in. I think they must have felt sorry for us because we looked terrible. Once up in the room Kyle and I crashed and slept until 11:00 while Hannah happily watched cartoons. That kid had probably 5 or 6 hours sleep total and she didn't even nap! We then headed out for lunch and errands before the rehearsal. While waiting at the church for the rehearsal to start Hannah happily ran around the sanctuary and played in the holy water of the baptismal. Try as I might I COULD NOT keep her out of that darn water. It became the bane of my existence. After rehearsal we headed to the rehearsal dinner where Hannah got a little wild, but managed to hold it together mostly. At this point it was 9pm and she'd been up since who knows when. She crashed so hard on the way back to the hotel that I was able to get her out of the car, carry/drag her up to the room and take off her clothes and drop her in bed all without her waking up. I haven't been able to manhandle her like that while she was asleep since she was a toddler.

Saturday morning we slept in a bit and then got up and went swimming at the pool. Hannah had a blast and made friends with another little girl who was swimming that was also adopted. While the girls played, I enjoyed chatting with her mama about adoption. After swimming we headed out to get lunch and take it to the church. There we ate and got all gussied up for the wedding. Hannah LOVED being in her dress and holding her basket of flowers. At one point there was a minor crises where she began picking some of her scabs and made herself bleed, but the blood was kept off the white dress thank heavens. And of course there was that darn holy water I had to keep her out of only this time not only was she splashing in it, but she was also dropping flower petals into it! During the ceremony I left her in the charge of one of the bridesmaids and took my seat. She handled the ceremony like a pro and even managed to get a little chuckle out of the audience when she flashed everyone the thumbs up sign as she took her place at the front of the church. It was quite cute watching her sashe down the aisle acting like she owned the place. All eyes were on her and she was in heaven. She managed to stay mostly still and quiet the entire ceremony and stand up and sit down with the rest of the girls at all the appropriate times. I was quite proud of her.

At the reception she was the life of the party. She charmed every person that would look her way. She skillfully made her rounds to all the tables collecting the beanie baby dogs the bride and groom had at each seat for guest favors. She managed to charm her way into the possession of six of those dogs! It was pretty amazing to watch her work. There was a chocolate fountain for dipping fruit and other deserts in and Hannah was in heaven. I'm not sure how it was possible, but from the several gallons of melted chocolate she consumed, only two tiny drops of it manage to make their way onto her dress. Once the dancing began Hannah launched herself onto the floor and danced every single song she was there for. She danced alone or with anyone who would dance with her. She had quite the audience. While at the reception I received several compliments on what a wonderful little girl I had and how she behaved just like a mini adult. If they only knew!

Around 9pm I took Hannah back to the hotel and met up with her birthmom and siblings to swim again. The kids had a blast swimming for about an hour and a half and then we headed back up to our room for some snacks and visiting. We ended up visiting until 1:00am! Hannah was BEAT, but I was so thankful for the opportunity to spend some unexpected time with Tiffany and the twins. Now that we are so far away we have to make the most of every opportunity we get.

Sunday morning we were loaded up and on the road by 10:00am and this time we did manage to drive straight through and got home at about 8:00pm. On the drive home Hannah read an entire chapter book to herself in one sitting, colored about a million pictures, and quietly watched a few movies. She dealt with the boredom like a champ. Really the whole trip she handled like a champ. I couldn't have been happier.

ER

2011-09-20T11:35:00.010-05:00

Well, we had possibly the quickest and least traumatic trip to the ER ever in the history of man this morning! Yesterday at recess Hannah fell off of the top of the slide. Apparently it was quite the fall and when I got to school to pick her up the nurse brought her out to me and explained what she knew. Hannah was complaining of pain, but there was no bruising or swelling anywhere on her arm and she had full functional mobility of it. I gave her some tylenol and hoped she'd sleep it off. This morning the first words out of her mouth were that her arm hurt so I decided I'd take her to urgent care before school. When we got to urgent care at 7:30am I found out that it didn't open until 9:00am so I took her around to the ER instead. There was absolutely no one in the waiting room and they called us back to a room before I could even break out our insurance card. The doctor examined her, sent her for x-rays, and then examined the x-rays and released us in under an hour. I left the house at 7:30am and Hannah was at school and I was back at home by 8:30am! AMAZING!!!! I LOVE small towns. Everyone was so nice and professional too. I didn't feel like we were rushed and they listened to what I had to say. The verdict was that Hannah had most likely dislocated her elbow when she fell and because she's so loosey goosey from her Ehler's Danlos it popped itself back in on it's own. There was a small amount of excess fluid on her elbow, but basically it checked out fine with no breaks. They discharged us with the instructions to keep an eye on it. Use Tylenol for any pain. Prevent her from falling on it again soon because it's vulnerable to another dislocation soon after this first one. AND to bring her back in a few days for another x-ray if the pain doesn't go away. I'm so happy that it wasn't broken and that she had no serious injury and I'm glad that I got to check out the ER during a non stressful situation so that if we ever end up there in the middle of the night I'll know the routine!

Photo Notes: These were taken this summer by my friend Kristie when we took them to the Omaha Zoo. Hannah enjoyed cheesing it up for the camera for Kristie!

The Honeymoon is Over

2011-09-16T16:43:00.013-05:00

Well, the honeymoon is over for kindergarten. Hannah called another student stupid today and then grabbed her and held onto her so that she couldn't go tell the teacher. She did take her time-out quietly, but the aftermath here at home has not been so pretty. There have been persons in the past who questioned why Hannah needed an IEP when her intelligence and academic achievement are so far above normal. In fact the school district in RI refused to qualify (or even meet with us for that matter) her for one because they insisted that her social and behavioral challenges would not and did not affect her academic learning. The problem with that is that in many areas Hannah could go YEARS without making ANY progress academically and still not be considered behind or at risk. It was faulty thinking on their part, but anyway. . . . I'm so grateful that the school district here recognized that Hannah's social and behavioral challenges do indeed affect her academic learning and that she needs support to be successful. We were lucky to have gone into the school year with an IEP and had already had meetings to inform those who would be working with Hannah what to expect so that when her challenges did rear their ugly heads no one would be shocked and most importantly, Hannah would not be written off as simply a troublemaker. From talking to her teacher after this latest incident it's looking more and more like we'll be having an ADHD reeval sooner rather than later. I'm sure I'll learn more at conferences on Wednesday, but it sounds like regardless of how much she enjoys the task, her teacher is having to redirect her significantly more often than a typical kindergartner to begin and complete her work. It's just fortunate that at the moment Hannah is able to quickly and easily complete the tasks with little effort otherwise this would be a huge problem. If her work was actually challenging she'd be falling behind or at the very least struggling to keep up already.

New Do!

2011-09-13T21:06:00.016-05:00

Someone in our house got a new hair-do last week and this time it wasn't Hannah! For the first time since January 2009 I got my hair cut. I hadn't even had a trim since we moved from Indiana. I wondered how Hannah would react-if she would hate it or if it would spur jealousy on her part and cause her to cut her own hair again just a week away from school pictures. She did great however. She knew I was getting it cut and when I arrived at school to pick her up she burst out of the door screaming, "Mommy! You look beautiful!" She's pretty stingy with the appearance compliments so I was quite pleased by her appraisal. Today I sent my two pony tails off to locks of love. If you've never heard of them, they are a wonderful organization that uses real human hair to make wigs for children and adults who have no hair for various medical conditions. These aren't like the temporary wigs that a cancer patient might wear until their hair grows back. These are serious long term wigs for people who will never have (or have again) hair. The salon actually ended up giving me a free cut because I was donating to Locks of Love and put before and after pictures on their facebook page. I'll try to post the pictures on here too so you can all see my new hair!

School continues to go well for Hannah. She's had a few minor time outs, but nothing too serious. There's been no physical or verbal aggression, just some defiance and sneakiness so I'm counting that as a success. Her teacher seems awesome. I really think she's got Hannah under her thumb and isn't about to let her get away with anything, but at the same time she knows what battles to fight and what ones to just let go. We did find out that on her way to the resource room each day she's been taking a major detour into the second grade wing to spy on her crush Jayden. They're about to put a stop to that! That kinda makes me laugh though. My girl and her boys. Heaven help us when she gets older! Next week will be a jam packed week. We have Hannah's parent teacher conference on Wednesday, we leave for the drive back to Indiana on Thursday after school, Friday is the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner for Kyle's brother's wedding, and Saturday is the wedding! To cap things off, we drive back to Nebraska Sunday morning! We are going to be exhausted. I hope Hannah can make it through the day on Monday at school.

I'm quite interested to see what the teacher has to say about Hannah's progress so far this year when we have conferences. We'll only have 15 minutes with her so that's not much time, but hopefully she'll have some useful information to share with us.

Testing

2011-08-31T14:00:00.011-05:00

Before Hannah's IEP meeting, the resource room teacher performed some assessments on her to determine her level of academic functioning in reading. The classroom teacher also performed the kindergarten benchmark tests that all students take at the beginning of the year. While we weren't exactly surprised with the results of the assessments, it's something altogether different to see the numbers right there on paper in front of you. Hannah is indeed reading at a beginning of 3rd grade level. She even comprehends at that level as far as answering factual questions. Her weakness lies in making predictions, relating what she reads to her experiences appropriately, and most of all in retelling. It appears that it doesn't matter how difficult the text is (first, second, or third grade level) she has the same problems with retelling the story in her own words. I wasn't surprised at all to hear that. I've noticed that myself when reading with Hannah. I'm not sure if it's truly a problem of comprehension, a lack of interest in the task, or not paying attention to what she's reading. After her IEP meeting I read with her at bedtime that night and I had her do some retelling of two easy readers and two chapters out of different chapter books and I noticed a very clear pattern. In the books where the topic or story was of interest to her she could recall the story perfectly and gave plenty of details to create a complete retelling. In the other two books where she had either little interest or little personal experience with the topic she was unable to tell much at all in her retelling. I wonder if this comprehension problem is simply a matter of age, immaturity, or lack of varied life experiences due to her young age. Time will tell on that I guess.

In both reading and math Hannah exceeded all but one of the end of the year kindergarten benchmarks during the first week of the school year! Once again not surprising, but it was definitely an eye opener for her teachers to see that they truly had a kid that they were going to have to think out of the box to academically challenge. On one benchmark, instead of exceeding the required score she met it exactly. Not bad if I do say so myself for the first week of kindergarten!

Yesterday Hannah brought home a coloring page that had the standard Name____________ Date__________ heading at the top. On the line next to Name she of course wrote Hannah. On the line next to date however she had written Jadin with a backwards J (should be spelled Jayden, but I would say she did a fantastic job of sounding out a word she'd never seen written before). When I questioned her as to why she had put Jayden's name on the Date line she informed me that she wrote Jayden because that's who she likes to go on dates with! I about died. It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing. Jayden is the son of one of our friends from Indiana who recently just moved into town as well (small world huh?) and whom Hannah has a HUGE crush on. Why oh why I wonder is it always the older boys? Jayden is 7 and in second grade (although Hannah is exactly the same height as he is!).

In other, non Hannah related news, we are settling in well here in Nebraska and beginning to make friends and develop a good support system. We've found 2 (actually 3 now that our friends from Indiana have moved to town since they also have a teenage daughter) teenage girls to babysit and both have done a good job with Hannah. One of them actually happens to be the daughter of Hannah's kindergarten teacher! I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but Hannah loves her so I guess we'll ride that wave as long as we can! We've completed our foster care training classes and most of our paperwork. Now we're in the waiting phase until more paperwork is sent to us so that we can be finger printed and get health checks and such. We are slowly getting the spare bedroom set up for foster children and have even bought a really cool crib. Now that drop sided cribs are banned I worried what on earth I was going to do with a stationary sided crib. My arms are too short to reach down to the mattress on those cribs on even the highest settings. Well, I found this crib on craigslist that wasn't part of any of the recalls that has a fold down gate of sorts instead. It's called a safety gate and they are really high end cribs only made by one company called Baby's Dream. Click on the link to see the crib we got. The picture is of the same model, but a different finish. I'm IN LOVE with this crib and now this company. You should really check out their site. Their furniture is so thoughtfully designed. It's hard to believe that no one else has bothered to make baby furniture this safe or well made. Oh, and by the way, no I was not paid at all to gush about the company. We simply stumbled onto them via craigslist.

We've also been busy hosting guests and installing an invisible fence for Sally the Wonder Dog. Sally isn't sure what she thinks about the fence yet (it's only been operational for 4 days so far), but I'm fairly confident it will make her life happier and our lives easier.

Photo Notes: The pictures are of Hannah and my mom celebrating their belated birthdays together when my mom and stepdad visited in the middle of August. Hannah was THRILLED to have an excuse to make and eat cupcakes!

Kindergarten

2011-08-17T20:26:00.015-05:00

Well, it finally happened. My baby girl is officially a kindergartner now. So far things have gone well I think. We had meetings with both the principal and the special ed staff and Hannah's classroom teacher before school started. It was formally considered an eligibility meeting, but we went over all of Hannah's needs and I really felt like we had a good base going for the first day of school. She qualified for services under an IEP and the actual IEP meeting was set for the end of the month. Her teacher seems awesome and has been doing a lot of observation of Hannah to ascertain her needs in the classroom already and it looks like she's already noticed a pattern to when her sensory needs ramp up and wants to set up a mid afternoon sensory break to help Hannah get through the morning. She called to see if I would be ok with that. Would I be ok with that? Seriously! I expected to have to fight tooth and nail to get sensory needs even acknowledged. She's also already noticed a few of the behavioral and social concerns we had going into school. I really do think Hannah's been holding up remarkably well given how hard it must be to be on her best behavior all day long. The reports have been that she's had good days, but she's been left with a hair trigger and barely enough energy to walk home! I'm sure it will get easier for her as things go on, but this week (and maybe several more after it) is going to be tough at home I imagine.

It was VERY hard for me to drop her off Monday morning at the curb and just go, but they don't even let parents into the building at drop off and pick up. In fact, if you drive you don't even get out of the car. They walk up to the car and open the door for the kids and everything. I'm sure this makes transitions easier for the kids, but it sure can be hard for the parents of the kindergartners! Especially on the first day!

Well, it's been 2 weeks since I started this post and Hannah began her 3rd week of school today and we also had her IEP meeting. I was VERY pleased with the plan the team came up with to support and supplement Hannah's education. I think she's in excellent hands. I've also been quite happy with the communication from school so far. Her teacher emails me back every time I send her a question or heads up. She also has class wide newsletters and a class website. Hannah seems happy at school and I'm looking forward to seeing how the year progresses. Tomorrow she starts heading into the resource room to do work beyond the typical kindergarten curriculum. I'm tickled pink that they truly realize that it's essential that Hannah be challenged in order to keep her behaviors in check. I'm not sure the resource room teacher has ever had to do differentiated instruction with a kid that is ahead academically like Hannah, but she seems more than willing and up for the challenge.

Party Time

2011-07-07T21:20:00.013-05:00

Last night we celebrated Hannah's fifth birthday with a few new friends we've made here in Nebraska. If you know Hannah (or have read the blog regularly) you know she is absolutely obsessed with the movie Bolt. Of course this year she wanted to have a Bolt birthday party. Once again I was reminded that Bolt really wasn't as popular as some other Disney movies and I had to turn to the internet for help. Instead of doing my usual shaped cake pan for her birthday cake this year (there isn't a bolt pan unfortunately) I found some cake toppers of the 3 main animal characters from the movie. This sounds like it should be an easier option than piping in the icing, but I am absolutely incapable of simply icing a cake with a knife. Still Hannah wanted a Bolt cake so by golly I was going to do it. The result was absolutely horrific, but Hannah LOVED it. She told me it was her best birthday cake ever. I may or may not post pictures of the cake given how ashamed I am to say I made it, but it sure did make my little girl happy. The party consisted of cake with our next door neighbors, and two of the families we have met with children Hannah's age and then the kids went down to the basement to play games. Hannah had insisted that we play some "Bolt games" so I had to think hard on that one. What I came up with was a super bark contest with Bolt fruit snacks for prizes. Everyone got a prize. We had the quietest bark, the most polite, the deepest, etc. Then we had the kids be dogs and run an obstacle course to rescue a stuffed animal from the movie. While the super bark contest wasn't as big of a hit as I predicted the obstacle course went over well. After the games the kids just played and the adults chatted. It was a nice laid back night. Hannah was thrilled with her party and I was so glad that she had a few little friends to share her special day with. That's one of the hazards of moving. You leave all your friends behind. :(

Photo Notes: I did decide to show the cake. Please don't laugh. The rest of the pictures are from the party. Hannah blowing out her candles. The obstacle course to rescue a Bolt character from the pit (AKA blow up swimming pool filled with stuffed animals). Opening presents.

Five Years Old

2011-07-07T21:07:00.031-05:00

My baby girl turned 5 years old yesterday. I can't believe the time has gone so quickly. It seems like just yesterday Mike was calling us to tell us that Tiffany had gone into labor and was already at the hospital so we had better get there quick! She was so beautiful. A perfect complexion. Deep blue eyes that were wide open instead of the sleepy newborn daze. A headful of strawberry blonde hair. 10 fingers and 10 toes. LONG legs and gigantic feet. She never did fit into those newborn diapers or newborn clothes people showered us with! Unlike most newborns, she didn't sleep all day. She needed constant stimulation. I cursed all those dispensers of advice that told me to sleep when the baby sleeps. My baby didn't sleep! Little did we know that this was a sign of things to come! She seemed to take in everything from the very start even though all my books said she couldn't see more than a few inches. By a week old she was entranced with the ceiling fan and studied her pacifier with the intensity of a PhD thesis. Yet more signs of what lay ahead! She was stubborn, oh so stubborn and her personality has only grown stronger and more interesting as she has grown. We had some friends who used to joke about Hannah being a "super genius baby" because she just seemed to know everything. Speaking before most kids were saying even their first words. Conjugating verbs correctly before her peers were putting 2 words together. Little did we know how right they would be. Sarah and Jason, you guys called it for sure.

She's had many struggles as she grown, but now when I look at my beautiful, precious little girl I'm so proud of the young lady she's become. I don't know what I would ever do without her. I thank God every single night for bringing us together with Tiffany and Mike and making us parents of this absolutely amazing little girl.

I leave you know with a multitude of pictures of my baby girl from each year of her life! Enjoy!

Things I Love about my Little Girl

2011-06-28T20:56:00.030-05:00

The way she sticks her tongue out when she's concentrating.

How she just can't control her body or her joy when Daddy walks in the door.

The little whimper she does just as she falls asleep that lets me know it's safe to leave the room.

Her insatiable desire to read.

Her love of animals.

When she says, "Mommy, how about this idea?"

How she makes up crazy words to sound older and most of those made up words bear a striking resemblance to German!

Her love of music and dance.

Her ability to create creative song lyrics to familiar tunes (she's been doing this since two years old!).

Her super amazing memory for everything. That girl STILL remembers the seating chart at Easter when she was not even 2 years old yet!

Her uncanny knack for directions and recognizing places she may have only been once a very long time ago.

How she notices EVERYTHING.

Her ability to charm just about every adult she meets.

How hard she works to behave.

Her excitement about turning five and the belief that the world changes when you turn five.

Those beautiful blue eyes of hers.

The excitement in her voice upon seeing a firefly.

Her love of thrill rides.

Her amazing ability to dry swallow large pills. (This one scares me as well!)

The way she struts about with her long lanky legs pounding the ground and her hips aswaying!

Her crazy intelligence.

Transistion

2011-06-23T18:17:00.027-05:00

The move has been rough on Hannah. There has been a resurgence in old behaviors and an increase in current ones. Twice she's peed in her closet (why is it always the closet by the way) not because she had to go to the bathroom, but because she was mad at me. The hitting, kicking, biting, scratching, screaming, and shouting nasty words is at an all time high. The bigger she gets, the harder that is to manage. She is just so strong! She seems to be perpetually angry and has zero impulse control when her hair trigger is activated.

Shortly after we moved in I took her to the Omaha Zoo by myself. We used to go to the Rhode Island Zoo by ourselves all the time so I thought nothing of doing it. Well, this zoo is a lot bigger than our old zoo and requires much more walking. At one point Hannah's whining reached critical mass and she just freaked out. When I suggested we call it a day and come back another time that freak out turned into a full fledged meltdown. I ended up having to drag her close to 2 miles (most of it uphill) back to the van while she screamed, hit, kicked, scratched, and bit me. Let me tell you I got plenty of dirty looks that day. Only one kindly person offered me a smile and the encouraging words of, "It looks like someone is having a rough day," the entire way! I'm actually surprised no one called security thinking I was trying to kidnap her, she was putting up such a fuss. Even though it was a crisp spring day, I was drenched in sweat by the time we reached the van. The workout I received wrestling her back to the parking lot rivaled anything I ever did while on the P90X program! Try it if you dare. It's guaranteed to melt the pounds away!

She snuck out of the house during nap time and went visiting around the neighborhood. The scary part was that she even crossed the street and was on her way up to the next street when Kyle found her! Another scary part is that two of our neighbors that she chose to go visit actually saw and spoke with her, but neither of them called us to let her know she was off wandering. Seriously, who thinks it's ok for a 4 1/2 yr old to be off on her own running the streets?!? When I went looking for her I was in a panic after having searched the house and not been able to find her. At first I thought she was hiding in the house since she's prone to doing that. The new house is much bigger than the old one and it took me much longer to search thoroughly and that wasted precious time. Our property is also much larger and very wooded, as is the whole neighborhood so she could have also been hiding nearby outside and I not been able to immediately see her. I was on the verge of calling the police when Kyle came walking up the driveway with her. He found her at the very edge of our property on her way up to the next neighborhood! After that little episode we made the tough decision to put a lock back on her door. We were hoping that we wouldn't have to do that here. She's almost five and should be able to be trusted to stay in the house. We also live in a much quieter area and I thought even if she managed to get outside she'd be ok as long as she stayed on the property. That day she proved she wouldn't just stay on the property!

Back last year when Hannah had her latest psych eval, along with her Disruptive Behavior Disorder-NOS, Pediatric Bipolar and ADHD were listed as rule out disorders to watch because she had many warning signs of both, but the teacher evaluations did not match the home evaluations. Over the last 6 months or so we've seen a marked increase in impulsive behavior. In fact the girl barely has ANY impulse control at all (for good OR bad actions). She's never really been one to learn from her mistakes and the consequences we give for her choices never seem to make any difference in future choices so we are really starting to suspect that an ADHD diagnosis may be tacked on in the not so distant future. Her birth brother also has this diagnosis so it's not too big of a surprise and the more and more I learn about ADHD and it's characteristics, the things I thought disqualified Hannah from the diagnosis don't disqualify her at all. At the moment, all attempts at behavior modification are failing and I think it's beginning to affect her self esteem. I think she's starting to FEEL as if she is a bad girl. That is something I really DO NOT WANT. I know she is a good girl. She just can't seem to help herself sometimes. All this makes me wonder if an ADHD diagnosis comes if we should consider medication. I never thought I'd ever consider it for her for pretty much any reason, but I want her to be happy and right now she's just not. She can't control her actions and I imagine that is pretty frustrating. Have any of you ever considered/used any of the ADHD medications for your children? What factors went into your decision to try/not try them? What were your family's experiences with them?

On the positive side, Hannah's academics of course continue to accelerate. Lately she's been working on the phrasing aspect of her reading fluency and has made huge leaps! She reads with barely a thought about decoding and when she does mess up phrasing she notices and goes back and rereads the section until it sounds right. Addition and subtraction of the numbers less than 10 have pretty much become automatic for her. Counting change is also pretty much automatic. I think we are going to move up to paper money and larger amounts of change (several dollars worth of change) soon. She's cruising through a first grade math textbook with ease at the moment and we haven't really hit anything she hasn't mastered yet. Her vocabulary continues to increase and makes her sound much older than she is. Combine that with the fact that she just had her well child check up and she was in the 99.7th percentile for height and we've had multiple people suggesting that she must be in 2nd or 3rd grade lately! They are always astonished when Hannah informs them she hasn't quite turned 5 yet and she'll start kindergarten in the fall. Her fine motor coordination is also improving and her handwriting has improved drastically. Her coloring is much better too although she still hates to color. She's begun mostly using upper and lower case letters properly when she writes although she'd still rather write in all upper case. She still has several number reversals that we are working on (2, 7, 5, and 9), but the numbers themselves are formed correctly. They are just facing the wrong way! That's totally age appropriate so I'm not concerned in the least. Her spelling is getting much better and she's memorized how to spell many of the unusually spelled common sight words and is beginning to learn some of the more common spelling patterns beyond CvC and vCe. She's really into writing lists and stories at the moment and has begun writing her own chapter book. Now her idea of a chapter consists of only 2 sentences, but hey it's her book!

We've met 3 families in our neighborhood/town that have children around Hannah's age and have had play dates with them all so far. Two of those families have kids that will go to the same school as Hannah so that is a huge plus. AND one little girl (who unfortunately won't go to Hannah's school, but IS starting kindergarten next fall) lives basically next door. Our property extends quite a ways up the street we live on away from our house and all the way up to directly across from her house. We are hoping for lots of play dates with her this summer. One of the other families we mentioned invited us to attend the local festival with them and also invited Hannah to join their sons' team for a jr firefighters' water fight. It was AWESOME! Hannah had a blast. She watched the parade, climbed trees with the boys, and of course participated in the water fight. The actual competition is difficult to explain so I'll have to post pictures of it instead. After the kids' competition we watched the adult firefighters do their competition. Imagine what you see the kids doing in the picture being done with fully dressed firefighters and fire hoses! It was awesome to watch.

Photo Notes: The pictures are from painting Hannah's new room. The room was originally a dark forrest green. It was very pretty and well done, but hardly a little girl's room. Hannah also had been asking for a blue room for a year so we decided to give it a try. Kyle did a great job on it and Hannah even helped with the first coat of paint. The last picture is from the water fight. I'll post more pictures from that in my next post.

We're Alive!

2011-06-22T22:45:00.020-05:00

So I know it's been 2 months since I updated the blog, but we've been busy ok? Surely moving 1500 miles across the country counts as busy! As you probably figured out, we're all moved in here in Nebraska and mostly settled. The transition has gone about as I expected. It's been rough on Hannah, but easier I think on me than our last move to Rhode Island. I'm already making friends more quickly here than I did there. The actual move trip was interesting. Hannah and I flew out to Indiana after all of our things were packed and visited a bit while our stuff was in transit. Poor Kyle and Sally had to make the 1500 mile drive by themselves! Hannah did pretty well on the trip. I was so nervous flying by myself, but really it went ok. We did, however, almost miss one of our flights because my GPS is old and Indianapolis has a new airport and it took me to the WRONG one and I couldn't find the right one. We literally ran through the airport (and rental car parking garage) dragging our luggage Home Alone style and made it to the gate just as they were calling last call to board! It was a nightmare! Still we made it and Hannah actually cooperated during the crisis. God truly does answer prayers. While in Indiana we visited our good friends the Bowes as well as both of my sisters and Hannah's birthfamily. My dad also met us for lunch while we were staying with the Bowe's.

Since arriving in Nebraska we have slowly been getting the house in order. You would think it would be easier organizing a 1200 square foot house into a 4000 square foot house, but somehow that wasn't the case even though we actually have entirely empty rooms! Go figure. Hannah is all registered for kindergarten and we've met with the principal (they actually switched her to a different school than we had originally thought). I think this will be a good fit for her, but only time will tell. We are also all set up with doctors and specialists, except for a behavioral therapist for Hannah. Now Kyle and I haven't even begun to work on getting doctors for ourselves. I've actually got to get on that. I'm going to be needing a rheumatologist and a gastroenterologist soon to get my meds refilled. This is one of the parts I dislike the most about moving-the mad dash for doctors. UGH!

As far as the area, we are loving it here in Nebraska-at least I am and neither Kyle nor Hannah has expressed anything differently! Small town life really seems to suit us. We're visiting the pool, parks, the library, local festivals and carnivals, the local restaurants, etc and just feeling very comfortable and welcomed. In many ways this already feels like home to me in ways that Rhode Island just never could. Our one complaint thus far about the area is the bugs. The mosquitoes are INSANE! They are huge, vicious, and active even in the middle of the day. No amount of DEET or any other form of bug repellent seems to help. We are all covered in bites. I can't even manage to take the wonder dog out to pee without putting myself in danger of being carried off by giant man-eating mosquitoes! The locals tell us that this is by far the worst the bugs have ever been, but that does little to ease the sting of the bites. I'm sure all the rain and flooding (more on that later) we've had this spring/summer has not helped the bug problem, but it still stinks. Hannah's barely been able to play on her swingset at all because it's just too hazardous being outside for any length of time.

Now back to that flooding. . . . The area where we live is currently experiencing record flooding of the Missouri and Platt Rivers. Many, many people on the outskirts of our town and the surrounding areas are losing their homes or have been evacuated as a precaution. The city's water treatment plant is in danger of shutting down and if that happens then Kyle's work will also have to shut down. The worst part about all the flooding is that it is not expected to recede until FALL! That is a LONG time for people to be out of their homes, unable to begin cleaning up and rebuilding and it is a LONG time for the city to have to use an emergency plan to supply the residents with water. Our house, thankfully, is up on a big hill so we are not in any danger of it flooding, but the water is close to us, too close for comfort really, only a mile away. We drive by to see it's progress daily as it creeps along. Kyle unfortunately has been right in the thick of things since his new company put him, a chemical NOT civil engineer, in charge of building the levee to save their plant! Then just this past week he was loaned out to a nearby company to oversee the building of their levee as well! Apparently now he's an expert!

In the middle of all of this we also recently added to our 4 legged family and let Hannah adopt two kittens for her birthday. I know, we are crazy, but hey the girl has been BEGGING and PLEADING for a kitten for over a year now. The town shelter happened to have these two little kittens available and the animal control officer cut us a 2 for 1 deal since we were willing to take them both. I'd say a $10 adoption fee for two kittens is a pretty good deal. Hannah has named the kittens Thunder and Daisy. They are litter mates and super cute. Thunder is a 3 month old black male and Daisy is a 3 month old tiger female. It's been awhile since I've had a kitten in the house and I had forgotten what terrors they can be. Let me just say that those two have completely taken over the house. They rule the roost! Sally the Wonder Dog has done remarkably well with the move and the new additions. She alternates between being excited for someone to play with and completely ambivalent about their presence. I'd say that's about the perfect reaction. I couldn't have hoped for better.

Well, I think that's about everything we've been up to since I last wrote. I'll hopefully write more soon about how Hannah has handled this transition and some of the behaviors we've seen cropping up, but that really deserves an entire post unto itself.

Adoption Through the Eyes of a 4 Year Old

2011-04-21T15:54:00.009-05:00

So adoption is nothing new to Hannah. Because we have an open adoption with Hannah's birthfamily she's always known she's adopted and has been able to give age appropriate explanations for what that means. We've discussed the ins and outs of adoption with her since the day we brought her home from the hospital. Lately, there have been many examples we have come across in books, tv, and movies that portray adoption. Some of them have been positive portrayals and some not. Some of them have been fairly accurate and others, well, let's just say they seriously missed the mark. Anyway, each time I've spoken with Hannah about what was real and what was not about each depiction and she seemed to get it. We compared the fictitious situation to her adoption and founded the similar aspects and the ones that weren't the same. I thought she had a good handle on things. Imagine my surprise when she opened up with some real adoption zingers that flew so far off base from reality that you would think they were coming straight from a 1940's handbook on how to be a happily adjusted adoptive family or how to place a child for adoption! I was horrified!!!!! Here's just one example. Hannah wanted to play house. She was the mother and I was the kid and several of her baby dolls and stuffed animals were to be recruited to be kids too. She turns to me and says,"Sweetie, you're going to be getting a new baby sister. We're going to adopt her because I can't grow a baby in my tummy." So far so good right? Then she follows up with. "I have to go to the store and buy her. I'll be right back." OH MY LORD! Never once have we ever discussed the fact that adoptions cost money at all. Where did she come up with equating it to buying a baby!?!? I immediately worked to put out that fire and explain how we NEVER buy humans. How when humans used to be bought that was called slavery and slavery is wrong. When you adopt a child they become part of your family and they are not slaves. I'm not sure she was buying into the thought that the baby was not available at the store. Then later in the play session she brought out ANOTHER whopper. She said, "Sweetie, the lady next door really wants a baby and since we have two babies now (we had since adopted a baby brother for me!) we are going to give her your sister to be her new baby. She's going to adopt her." I about died! A discussion began immediately about the reasons people place babies and children for adoption and that the reason is NEVER simply because someone else wants to be a parent. Babies are not traded as property simply because someone else likes them. We talked about the reasons that Tiffany and Mike placed Hannah for adoption and that they would have NEVER placed her for adoption simply because Daddy and I wanted her. They placed her because they could not care for her. Tiffany and Mike chose us because they knew we would love her and care for her, not because we wanted a baby. Hannah put up a fight about this explanation and still insisted that it was only right to share the baby with the lady next door since we had 3 kids and they didn't have any. UGH! I never managed to get through to her on that one and she got angry with me and we had to abandon the conversation for another day. That particular conversation brought back memories of a conversation we had just after Abby died. Hannah had informed us that if either Kyle or I died she wouldn't be sad because she would still have another parent left! Adoption has really been on her mind lately all around because she's asked me to tell her the story of her birth and adoption practically every day for the last 2 weeks! Never before has she expressed such interest in it. I suppose this is just another step in her journey to processing what it means to be adopted and how that makes her who she is, a unique combination of her birthfamily and adoptive family. I'm sure in the days, months, and years to come we will continue to revisit these topics again and again. Please pray that I am able to calmly and successfully guide her through the process!

Operation Mommy-Mart

2011-04-20T18:42:00.012-05:00

We've begun yet another behavior modification/reinforcement strategy in our house. A good friend of mine does something she calls Mommy-Mart with her kids. Each child has a cup and they earn pennies (or sometimes more) for all sorts of good behavior. She home schools so they earn for quality effort in their schoolwork. They also earn for chores, good behavior, using their manners, etc. Then they can use their money to "buy" things from the Mommy-Mart once a week. If behavior gets really bad, shopping day is delayed and that's always a HUGE deal. I decided I would give it a shot with Hannah. She had seemed interested in it when she saw Ann-Renee's kids doing it and she is VERY interested in money right now so we are going to try it out. Day one was today and it went fairly well. Hannah earned 17 cents for the day and I also pointed out opportunities where she COULD have earned more money had she made a better choice. Of course she didn't like being reminded about lost opportunities and the cash that had slipped through her fingers, but for once she seemed to make a bit of an effort to change her behaviour a few times throughout the day which is a first! This may be a huge flop, but really I'll be satisfied if it gets me through our move. If we only ride the novelty of the program out for the next few weeks I think it will be worth the try!

Speaking of the money portion of Mommy-Mart, counting money has been Hannah's newest academic achievement. She can now count just about any amount of change up to $1.00. She might be able to go higher, but I haven't tried that yet. I want to be sure she has a solid foundation before I add the paper money to the equation. The coolest thing is that she can actually do it in her head without even seeing the actual money to count it out. She had me quizzing her the entire meal during dinner tonight. I would ask her questions like, " How much money would you have if you had 2 quarters, 1 dime, and 3 nickels?" and she would get the right answer about 90% of the time! Actually, every single time she got the wrong answer was when it involved her having to say the number 15. For some reason whenever she says any of the numbers in the teens she hears 50 instead of 15, 60 instead of 16 etc. So, when she's counting on in a problem like 1 dime, 1 nickel and 4 pennies she will often say, "10, 15, (hears 50) 51, 52, 53, 54. " instead of saying, "10, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19. " Anyway, that's the latest on my smart cookie. She probably counts change better than 90% of the fast food workers here in Rhode Island!

An interesting thing has been happening lately. Hannah has always been mistaken for older than she is because she's tall for her age and she has advanced language skills as well, but lately people have been guessing her at 2-3 years older than she really is! 3 times in the past week I've had someone suggest to me that Hannah was 8 years old and in the 2nd grade (and thus must be on spring break since she was out and about with Mommy) and each and every one of them gave me looks like I was absolutely insane when I informed them that actually she is only 4 yrs old. It's like they seriously think I have no idea how old my own daughter is! Hmmm. . . . If this trend continues it could be a BIG problem if Hannah ever tries to use her "fake" age to her advantage. I totally wouldn't put it past her either if her sneakiness now is any indicator! Pray for me please. The teen years are gonna be tough!

Photo Notes: The first photo is of Hannah showing off her "sleeve" that daddy gave her with temporary tattoos. The last two are of Hannah and her friends playing "super wairies" See this post if you don't know what a wairy is!

Post Script

2011-04-19T21:14:00.006-05:00

I can't believe I neglected to write about the best part of Hannah's phone adventure in my last post. When I walked into her room to find her chatting on the phone she was talking to my step dad. She had called him because she really wanted to talk to my mom, but she couldn't find her phone number in my phone book so she had called Tom to get it! Now my mom's number IS in my phone, however it isn't filed under Mamaw or her first name! Of course it's under mom, but Hannah only knows my mom as Mamaw and her first name and she couldn't find either of those in my phone. My step dad is in there under his first name and since she knows him as Papaw and his first name she thought she'd do a little problem solving and just give him a call to get Mamaw's number! The little stinker!!! Smart, but a stinker none-the-less!

The behaviour around these parts has been pretty rough the last few days. It started the instant we dropped Kyle off at the airport. My punishment for delivering Daddy to the plane was having to drag my almost five year old daughter on her stomach through the main aisle of the grocery store to check out while simultaneously dodging hits, kicks, and bites. This continued out into the parking lot and all the way to the van. Eight things, I only had eight things on my list and we HAD to get those things. We had nothing to eat in the house so I couldn't just abort the trip like I often do when things go bad-just leave the cart in the middle of the aisle and run. We couldn't even manage to buy 8 things. UGH! The night only got worse from there and I ended up putting her to bed at 5:30pm! She had lost every possible privilige for the rest of the night so there was really nothing left for her to do so she went almost willingly. She ended up reading to herself until she fell asleep. I found her with a book open on her chest and the lights still on at 8:00pm. I'm not sure when she actually fell asleep, but she looked peaceful and happy. If only I could bottle that peace for when we need it during the day!

Moving News

2011-04-13T17:47:00.010-05:00

Boy oh boy! I have been really bad about posting. I have LOTS of updating to do. First off, our house is officially for sale. We've had one showing and an open house that brought in 4 couples, but so far no takers. With the real estate market the way it is we are really worried that we won't be able to sell our house for what we have left on the mortgage. Things have tanked that badly here in Rhode Island as far as home prices go. We aren't even attempting to get what we paid for the house. We simply don't want to have to do a short sale! On the flip side, we are benefiting from the depressed market in terms of buying a new house in Nebraska. We found an AWESOME house and are so excited to move in. So far things are going along swimmingly on that part. All we have left to do is get an appraisal (which should be a piece of cake since the sellers are actually losing almost $100,000 on their house because they HAVE to sell and it's been on the market for 2 yrs) and a termite inspection done. All the other inspections have come back fine. Kyle is already in Nebraska so it's just Hannah and I holding down the fort here in Rhode Island and that has been tough on both of us. Hannah really misses her daddy and it totally shows in her behaviour. Lots and lots of meltdown and sneakiness. She's also back to having accidents at night. More laundry is totally not what we need while trying to keep a house show ready every single day. UGH!

Hannah's most recent stunt was sneaking my cell phone into her room and making about 45 calls! She came into my bedroom during her nap time to "give me a hug" or so she said. I took the hug and then sent her back to her room telling her that rest time wasn't over yet. She went back without a fight which was in itself unusual, but I didn't think too much about it because I was really tired. Then, when nap time was over she came back into my room and said, "Mommy, nap time is over, but I'm still really tired. Can I sleep until 5:00?" Then she marched back into her room. I was in a bit of a daze having just woken up, but when I sat up and my head cleared the warning bells started going off. Never has my daughter EVER ASKED to go to sleep. I immediately burst into her room to find her chatting away on my cell phone! She quickly snapped the phone shut and prepared to chuck it across the room, but I nabbed it before she could. A study of my recent calls list showed that she had made 45 different calls and had either left messages or had conversations with many different people! The crazy thing is that she's never been showed how to use a cell phone or how to look people up in the address book. I guess that's one of the down sides of having a 4 yr old that can read and is way smarter than I am. She can figure stuff like this out and totally knew exactly who she was calling each time. These most definitely weren't random calls! UGH! The little stinker.

Orthopedist

2011-03-11T15:12:00.009-05:00

As we prepare to move we've been making the rounds to the various doctor's offices the 3 of us frequent (sadly there are quite a few!) to have final appointments and pick up medical records to hand carry with us to Nebraska. We learned during the last move that transfers of records from one doctor's office to another does not always happen in a timely manner and can really delay getting appointments with specialists. Today it was the Hannah's orthopedist we visited. Hannah was desperately hoping that Dr. Ehrlich would tell her that she didn't have to wear her Dennis Brown bar at night anymore, but such was not the case. Because it is actually working, thank heavens, she has at least 6 more months in it. She also has 6 more months at least in her AFOs and a warning that they will probably be a forever kind of thing. She WAS NOT happy about that, but I think she was even more upset about the bar. She has outgrown the shoes on her bar, but there are not any bigger sizes that can be ordered so we are going to have to slice off the front top part of the shoe and let her toes hang out over the sole a bit in order to get 6 more months out of them! We also learned a little more about how the Ehlers Danlos is affecting Hannah. Apparently besides the extreme laxity in her ligaments and unstable joints, she has a deformity of her sternum that is causing it to collapse inward. Right now it's not causing any issues, but the doctor warned that it is likely to worsen with age and that we will need to monitor it closely to ensure that it doesn't push into any of her internal organs. Her knees and ankles showed improvement from their various interventions, but her hips have actually worsened. So, we are off to physical therapy to learn various exercises to strengthen certain muscles to help keep her hips where they ought to be instead of allowing them to rotate in compensation for the knee and ankle issues. UGH! We really don't need more appointments at the moment with the move coming up and another specialist to track down once we land in Nebraska, but we want to avoid surgery down the road at all costs so we'll do what we have to do. So, that's pretty much it from the orthopedist. He was pleased about her progress, but not happy about the hips so those two things kinda cancelled each other out in his opinion. We'll miss him when we move because he is quite good. I'm hoping that Nebraska has some good medical professionals because we're coming soon and we need a lot of them!

Dogs, Humans, and Wairies

2011-03-07T21:08:00.032-05:00

So, I've been avoiding you. . . . . . There's been so much going on that I've wanted to write about, but I haven't been able to post it to the blog so I've just not written anything. To write, but not mention the elephant in the room just felt like lying.

First off, when I last wrote we were going to check out the Christian school to see if it might be the right fit for Hannah for Kindergarten next year. The visit went great. We decided Hannah would attend there next year and in fact we decided she would start kindergarten right away (last month actually) and finish out the year in the kindergarten class and then move on with the class to first grade in the fall unless something unusual happened. BUT something unusual DID happen and she didn't start kindergarten and she won't be going there next year. More on that later.

Hannah's behavior has been all over the map the last two months, but mostly it's been rough-aggressive and angry. The biggest difference however is that her aggression has been controlled and deliberate instead of wild and raging. The deliberate aggression almost scares me more than the raging because she KNOWS what she's doing and she is choosing to continue acting that way. Lately I've had more objects than I can count chucked at my head and the kicking, hitting, and scratching has been out of this world. Just as things started to ramp up in the behavior department we had a major stressor added to our lives and that of course has not helped the problems in the least. More on that later!

On a positive note, Hannah has been reading like crazy and has found another series she really likes, The Bailey School Kids. She actually read one of the books from beginning to end on her own in one sitting this week! She was that enthralled! Her comprehension is totally there too because she gave me an excellent summary of the book afterwords and when I skimmed through to check on her she was right on! She's pretty much mastered basic addition and subtraction and has started two digit addition without regrouping. We've been working with a hundreds chart and learning about the patterns within the numbers and she's been enjoying that. She's also been on a note writing kick. Every single day I get several little notes. At first they were just "To Mommy. Love, Hannah" but now they are more like, "Dear Mommy. I love you. I had a great time with you. Love, Hannah" They pretty much always say a variation on the same thing, but they are still sweet. She also loves to label all of her drawings and make us lists for things she wants us to buy at the grocery store. Kyle was on his way out the door one day when she called him back and quickly handed him a post-it note that said, "gum bagul." Translation: Gum, bagels.

Now back to that title. Hannah has two little friends whom she loves dearly. They are sisters and are so sweet to her. They handle her bossiness, forgive her when she's mean, and don't hold it against her when she has a major meltdown. They really are perfect for her. We play with them every Thursday after story time at the library and we've had 5 play dates outside of the library so Hannah is quite familiar with them and totally comfortable showing her true self. Anyway, Olivia, the oldest of the girls, is quite creative and sensitive. She loves to put on plays and write stories. Her favorite animal is the wolf, but she also likes fairies so she created an entire new species called "wairies." Wairies are wolf fairies. Not only is she writing a story about them, but they work themselves into most of her pretend play. Today the girls came over to play and I had to break up quite the unusual argument. From upstairs I heard screaming and when I went to investigate I was greeted by 3 girls all talking at the top of their voice. It turned out that there was a game going that included a wairy, a human, and a dog-specifically Bolt. Go figure! Apparently the "rules" of the game were that there was only one of each character and that they were taking turns being each of the characters, or at the very least both Hannah and Emmy wanted to be the dog. Hannah DID NOT want to give up being Bolt and was putting up a fight about it when it was Emmy's turn to be the dog. Hannah kept shouting, "There is only one dog and I want to be the dog!!!!" I tried to reason with her, as I always do in situations like this which are surprisingly common, that since this was all make believe she had two options. She could either change the rules of the game and there could be two dogs or she would have to let Emmy have her turn. Of course she didn't like either of these options and continued to insist that there could ONLY be one dog. UGH! Eventually she screamed at me and stomped upstairs and slammed her door. Sweet little Emmy, who was so insistent that it was her turn to be a dog and who had rightly stood up for herself, was so sad that Hannah wasn't playing anymore that she ran up to her bedroom to say, "Hannah, Hannah! Come back. You can be Bolt. I'll be the human." It just about broke my heart. Such a sweet girl. I had to be the mean mom though and tell her that she had to be the dog though (at least for a little while) because it was her turn and we don't get our way in our house by throwing a tantrum and being rude to our guests. Eventually Hannah decided to rejoin the game and begrudgingly played the part of the human.

So, now that I've kept you hanging until the very end, here is why I haven't posted. We are moving sometime next month and it's a big move again. Kyle got a new job in Nebraska. Originally we thought we'd be moving this month so we opted not to have Hannah start kindergarten and then have to pull her two months later. Because of some mix-ups with medical testing, it's taken longer than expected to complete all the pre-employment paperwork so we'll be here a little longer than we originally thought, but it won't be much longer now. Hannah has been processing the move in spurts and I'm sure it's been contributing to her behavior. It seems like the public schools are much better in Nebraska than they are in Rhode Island which makes me very happy. I've spoken with the principals of a few of the elementary schools that would be in our home search area and I'm encouraged by what I heard. It seems as if they will be willing to work with us to set up something that will meet Hannah's needs. They've also all expressed an interest in meeting before the current school year is up to make sure everything is in place for next fall. Still, it will be starting all over again as far as Hannah's schooling goes which is frustrating since we thought we'd found the perfect place for her. Now we just have to find a house in order to know what school district we will be in so that we can get the ball rolling. Though we don't have many friends here in Rhode Island, the friends we do have we are really going to be sad to move away from. They've made our stay so far from home much nicer. Hopefully we'll be able to make friends quickly once we get there for Hannah's sake.

Photo Notes: The first 4 pictures are from Christmas. I know it's March! Don't judge!! The first picture shows Hannah attempting to use the toothpaste Santa left in her stocking as deodorant! I guess it was an honest mistake as the tube is shaped more like a deodorant stick than a tube of toothpaste. The third picture is her snuggling her coveted pillow pets that she got from BOTH sets of grandparents. The fifth picture is the beach at the end of our street last month. The ocean is definitely something we'll miss about Rhode Island. The sixth and seventh pictures show the goofy side of my girl. She made a pair of glasses for herself out of pipe cleaners and then decided to use her happy meal box as glasses as well! The 8th picture was from our good-bye photo shoot we did before Abby died. The last picture high lights Hannah's unique 4 yr old little girl fashion sense!

Palindromes

2011-01-17T22:11:00.026-05:00

palindrome: a word or phrase spelled the same way forward and backward EX: mom, race car, did

For years we have worked with Hannah to teach her how to engage another person to play (both someone she knows and new people in public, like at a park or play place). One of the biggest skills we have worked on is introducing herself and asking others what their name is in return. Lately we had seen a bit of progress in this area if we remembered to prompt her before going into a social situation. Tonight however, without any prompting, I heard this coming from the bowls of the Mc Donald's play place structure, "My name is Hannah with a 'h' at the end and the beginning. You spell it 'H-A-N-N-A-H.' It's the same forward and backwards. You call that a palindrome." If that's not progress then I don't know what is. Maybe it's not the most socially accepted way for 4 year olds to make an introduction, but it's technically sound. I couldn't have been more proud. I was also pretty tickled at the other little boy's response (as were his parents as indicated by the gut busting laughter erupting from their table across the room!). "Uh, um, well. . . . . MY name is Steven and I can spell my name TOO.' S-T-E-V-E-N' I don' t have any domes in my name though. They are all pointy letters." Oh my goodness! Out of the mouth of babes! Hannah then tried to give another explanation about what palindromes were, listing several other words as examples, but since he couldn't spell it pretty much fell on deaf ears. She eventually got frustrated with him and said, "Let's just go play! You don't get it."

For the last several months Hannah has been obsessed with time. She has desperately wanted a watch, but Kyle told her he would not get her one until she was able to tell time independently. She has worked diligently on learning to read a clock ever since and finally was awarded with the coveted watch this weekend. We are now updated with the time approximately every 5 minutes! I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon, but for the moment the constant time reminder is a bit annoying! She's actually gotten quite good at telling time to the 5 minute interval. The only time she gets a bit stumped is when it's close to the half hour. For some reason then, and only then, does she choose to say the next hour instead of the current hour. If it's almost to the next hour she'll remember to say the current hour, but at the half hour mark when the hour hand is half way in between the two numbers it trips her up. I'd say that's still pretty good for a 4 year old though. I had 2nd graders that couldn't tell time as well as she does!

At the moment Hannah has something going on that puzzles the heck out of me. I've tried and tried to come up with a reason for this new behavior, but I just can't. You see, she's started stealing food. It started with sneaking sweets. That I could understand I guess. There isn't the old saying about getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar for nothing. What kid doesn't want to gorge themselves with sweets. But even after it became a major issue and we removed all sweets from the house and made them only a special privilege when we are out the food sneaking remained. Now she's sneaking snack type food-cheese sticks, granola, gold fish. I just don't get it. She gets 3 meals a day and at least 2 snacks. She's allowed to eat as much as she wants at each sitting. We don't allow her to free graze all day because we want her to be hungry at meal times as that has sometimes been a problem, but we rarely deny her a healthy snack if it's a reasonable distance away from the next mealtime. She knows all she has to do is ask for a snack and she will either get it or be told that dinner is within the half hour. So why the food sneaking? She's never gone without. Never had food with held. I just don't get it. Today it was crazy. It was less than an hour until dinner time and she was watching a movie and I was in the office doing bills. I heard a strange sound and went to investigate. I found her in the fridge with her hand in the cheese drawer. I told her that she needed to ask before she got a snack and that dinner would be very soon and she could have a cheese stick with her dinner, but not right now. She was angry, but not hysterical. I sent her back downstairs, or so I thought she went back downstairs, and I went back to the office. Seconds later I hear sounds in the kitchen again and when I went in to investigate there was Hannah holding a cheese stick in her hand! It's really getting bad. It's become almost a daily occurrence, probably 5 times a week at least. She knows it's against the rules to get the snacks between snack and mealtimes and she'll attempt to hide them and lie about them if she is discovered. I just don't get it. Is this a typical developmental stage for a 4 year old or is this something I need to be worried about? She's a healthy weight, growing normally, seems to have plenty of energy. I can't find a physical reason why she would NEED the extra food. I'm positive I'm feeding her plenty.

We've started a new session of classes at the YMCA and this time Hannah's doing a mommy and me cooking class, swimming, and karate. Yes, we finally managed to get into a karate class and not have it canceled! She's the only girl in the class and the oldest by at least a year I would guess. She actually has pretty good skills as far as beginning karate goes and definitely when compared to the rest of the class, but the one place she is lacking is concentration and attention. She loses interest and focus VERY easily in the class and is soon off doing her own thing. She has by far the worst focus in the entire class. You would think these little boys would be all over the place doing pretend karate chops and such, but they are not. They have rapt attention on the sensei, but not Hannah. She's off in her own little world spinning or doing poses! :) I'm thinking karate may not be in our future next session! The sport she really seems to be excelling in is swimming although attention is a problem in that class too. BUT she LOVES swimming and is a natural at it so it makes things go a little more smoothly. One problem with swimming however is that she thinks that she is better than she is and that she already knows how to do things before the instructor explains them so she doesn't listen to her directions and that gets her in trouble. We're just going to have to keep working on those listening ears and obedience to adults. She also really enjoys her cooking class. I must admit it's quite fun. So far they've only made a salad and a fruit pizza, but she's got to measure, mix, and chop and to her that's the best. She even has an excuse to wear her apron!

Tomorrow we go to visit the small private school we are considering sending Hannah to next year for kindergarten. Unless after this visit my opinion changes drastically, we feel that this is probably our best option for her for next year at least. She'll be spending time visiting and participating in the kindergarten classroom and the first grade classroom so we can determine exactly where she'll fit best. Right now the options we are considering are the kindergarten room with a drastically modified curriculum, the first grade room with a slightly modified curriculum, or beginning in the kindergarten room right now for the remaining months of the school year and then going on to the first grade room next year. The biggest challenge with Hannah is that she is all over the map as far as development goes. As it stands now she has an independent reading level of about 2nd grade, an instructional reading level of 3rd grade, comprehension of about second semester 2nd grade, math at first grade level, and social skills at kindergarten level, spelling at first grade level, and oral language at 2nd grade level, and fine motor at kindergarten. Another problem is that while these are the levels that she is currently at, she doesn't progress at one grade level a year. She learns and masters things much more quickly than the typical child so while she may be at first grade level in math right now, by the end of May she may very well be at 2nd grade level. All this makes it extremely hard to decide where to place her in an academic environment. Do you place her with her agemates because that's where her social skills lie and allow her to go years without learning anything at all? Do you choose a skill and place her with her academic peers in that particular skill and allow her to be bored with the rote repetition of the other skills? Or do we simply pick a room and pray that small class sizes and an accommodating teacher will create a curriculum just for her? UGH! Wish us luck that the visit goes well and that it sheds some light as to where the best place to put Hannah next year is.

Photo Notes: I finally got around to posting pictures from our Thanksgiving trip back to Ohio and Indiana. The first two pictures are from while we were at my parents house. Hannah loved that little kitten fiercely! She hardly ever put it down. The next three pictures are from Kyle's dad's place. She had a blast roasting marshmallows with Pap. The final 5 pictures are from our visit with Hannah's birthfamily. The first one is her birth uncle, then her birthmom Tiffany, and finally the last few are with her brother and sister Chase and Kayla. It's amazing how much they look like each other even though they are only half siblings!

Pleasant

2011-01-05T20:23:00.020-05:00

Today was a pleasant day with Hannah. I NEEDED that after the rough month we've had. We've had lots of acting out, sneaking around and taking things, stealing sweets, soiling carpets, and nasty words the past several weeks. BUT today was a breath of fresh air. We played, went out to eat, she played appropriately (not bossy at all) with some other girls at the play place, and she even took a nap. That today was so normal, but yet so nice highlighted the fact that things have been so tough lately. We are still on the waiting list for a behavioral therapist and I'm hoping we come up soon. I don't think the 123 Magic has been effective at all. She doesn't seem to care about the time outs at all. Sure she hates to take one, but they have no effect on her behavior and they do nothing to stop the cycle of poor choices she's making even in the moment. I feel like it's going to take something else, something really tailored to her to make a difference. I just hope we can find a therapist that's willing to put in the time and effort to really get to know Hannah, us, and our specific situation to help us get this figured out.

To update everyone on our dog Abby, we had to have her put to sleep last week. :( She had begun to suffer and we just couldn't let her hang on like that. She just couldn't breathe at all anymore. It was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do making that decision. We were all going to be there with her to say good-bye, but Hannah was being very naughty and didn't seem to care at all so Kyle had to take her back out to the car and I had to stay with Abby by myself. When we were trying to explain to her that Abby would not be coming home and that she would never see her again she said something that completely floored me. She said, "I don't care if Abby dies. I'll still have another dog and I like Sally better." At first I wanted to believe that this was just her way of coping and that it would all hit her later, that she really wasn't being heartless, but that wasn't the case. Hannah truly hasn't cared about Abby passing away at all. I'm just not sure that she gets death at all. In fact she's actually told us that if either Kyle or I died that she wouldn't be sad at all because she would still have another parent left! Talk about a stake through the heart!

Besides losing Abby we also took another step towards growing our family last week. We turned in our foster care licence application and went to our orientation. We'll start our training classes at the end of the month. The classes run for 9 weeks and if all goes well our home study will also be conducted during that time period so that by the time we finish the classes we should be ready to take children into our home immediately. So, by the middle of April we could possibly have a new (most likely temporary) member of our family living with us! We are so excited and can't wait to get started making a difference for some little ones. Our ultimate goal is to adopt at some point either a child that is waiting or one of our foster placements that becomes unable to be reunited with their birthfamily. Right now we are open to foster placements of any child 6 and under or an adoptive placement of a girl of any age that is a good match for our family. Hannah is just beginning to understand what foster care means and how that is different from adoption. One thing that has come out of our conversations about foster care is her needing frequent assurances that we will always be able to care for her so that she will never have to go live with another family. The fear that I hear in her voice when she asks for this assurance just breaks my heart because if she feels that scared just thinking about it, how much more fear there must be for the kids who are actually entering foster care and being shuffled around?

Another big milestone went down last week, Hannah got her hair cut SHORT. She's wanted short hair for a long time, but I just wasn't willing to part with her beautiful locks. Eventually though I just couldn't take the hair brushing meltdowns that were occuring at least twice every day so I broke down and let her get it cut. I must admit it's a really cute cut and she loves it, but she looks so different to me. I keep wishing she still had her long hair. Lots of people have told me that she looks older with her new cut, but I actually think she looks much younger. I think her cut made her change from looking like a beautiful young woman to a cute little girl. So without further ado, here's the big reveal! What do you think? Do you think she looks older or younger with the short hair?

Photo Notes: The first picture is at our local Children's Museum. The second two pictures highlight Hannah's new fashion sense. She's taken to making her own outfits and seems convinced that she hasn't done her job properly if any of the individual elements are of the same color! The next two pictures are hopscotch during the library holiday party-scene of the most recent manifestation of "the library curse!" Check out the 3 links here if you don't know what I mean!

The Christmas Crazies

2010-12-26T20:11:00.016-05:00

Boy has our house been full of the Christmas Crazies lately. You would think that being a thousand miles away from family and most of our friends that we would have a peaceful, low key holiday season. You would THINK, but that was not the case. Hannah was totally WIRED about Christmas this year and as a result her impulse control was even shakier than usual. She managed to have a blast and so did we, but it came with some truly tense moments. It didn't help that Kyle was out of commission for most of the season having just had his tonsils out. We were basically a one parent household with our normal routine thrown to the wind-not a recipe for success.

All the commercialization surrounding the season and generous family members who love spoiling Hannah with gifts and candy made it hard to get her focused on the reason for the season and the gimmies reared their ugly head. Hard as we tired to reinforce the meaning of Christmas, I feel that Hannah was so fixated on presents that much of what we did went in one ear and out the other :( Those gimmies are a nasty bug to get rid of and they led to some spectacular meltdowns, even causing the "library curse" to strike again. While at the library Christmas party some kids came up to me complaining that Hannah would not let another little boy play with them. When I went to talk to her about it she freaked out and tried to run away from me. When I caught up with her she started hitting and kicking so we had to take an early leave of the party. The children's room was PACKED to the gills because of the party so I had quite an audience as I attempted to wrestle Hannah, her boots which she kept kicking off and sending them flying across the room, her winter coat which she refused to let me put on her, my camera, and the leftover party snacks we had brought out of the library and into the car. It was NOT a pretty sight.

The joy on Hannah's face Christmas morning however made all the craziness worth it. The wonder she expressed at how Santa managed to get into her room while she was sleeping to leave her a new book and a stuffed Bolt dog just inside her bedroom door, the smile she flashed and the absolute speechlessness that overcame her when she saw her dollhouse under the tree, the genuine thank you hugs she gave Kyle and I for the gifts, it was all just glorious. We've spent a good many hours the past two days playing new games and moving little 3 inch dolls around their new home. Hannah even loaded up the roof of their car with all of their furniture and drove it around the dining room when it was time for them to move!

One nice thing about having so much down time the last couple of days has been that I've had the opportunity to have some serious conversations with Hannah. We were able to talk about what it means to be saved and have Jesus in her heart and how exactly to do that and also what it means if someone is not saved and dies before they ask Jesus into their heart. She definitely seems to be processing everything and has had many questions about "the bad place" as she has dubbed it. She's not ready to make a decision for Christ just yet, but the seeds have been planted and it's up for Kyle and I to tend to them and to God to help them grow. She does know she doesn't want to go to "the bad place," but truly deciding to always try to make decisions that please Jesus seems a like too much work to her.

With all the talk about heaven and hell and what happens to people when they die, I'm expecting some tough questions about what happens to animals when they die as well because one of our dogs has recently been given 2 weeks to live by our vet. We've had Abby for pretty much as long as Kyle and I have been married and of course Hannah has never known life without her. Even though Hannah isn't particularly attached to Abby (she's 18 years old and has never been particularly lively since Hannah's been alive!) she doesn't care for change and Abby's been a constant, dependable presence her entire life. I'm expecting Abby's death will rock her world, not because she'll be grieving a loss of a friend like I will be, but because her routine will change. Maybe she'll surprise me and be really sad about Abby being gone, but I don't think so. The other day I tried to broach the subject of prepping her for the event and she replied, "I don't care. I'll still have another dog. I'll have Sally. She's my dog." Whatever happens, it's going to be tough. That I'm sure of.

A Leader---Or Just Bossy

2010-12-18T21:59:00.012-05:00

Lately Hannah's been coming out of her shell a bit socially, at least with kids she knows pretty well. With this new found social interest has come another set of problems for my little girl. As she plays with her friends she MUST be in control of the entire situation. She orders around her playmates with the force of a drill instructor. "You go there! No! No playing with the blocks! We are playing tag. Here's the plan. You go over there and wait for me until I get there. Then I'll tell you what to do next." Sometimes the kids just go along with it. For example, at the library this week she had a whole posse following her around the children's library obeying her every command. It was actually quite impressive to watch, if not a little disturbing. Other times the children come complaining to the adults that Hannah won't let someone else play, or won't let them choose what they want to do, or that she is simply being too bossy. I worry that if she keeps this up then some of the kids she loves to play with will no longer want to play with her. In fact, I've seen that in certain situations already although the kids have always given her another chance on a different day.

I feel like it's such a fine line to walk to decide how best to handle this. I don't want to squelch any leadership potential she has, but at the same time I don't want her to alienate herself from the other kids just when she finally seems able to make friends. The problem is that she has a very limited ability to put herself in someone else's shoes. She can't transfer how she feels when she is excluded or forced to do something she doesn't want to do to how other children might feel when she does the same thing. We talk about it over and over again, but it doesn't seem to be sinking in. What I wish would happen is for another child to stand up to her in a firm yet gentle way and basically put her in her place without completely breaking her spirit.

In case you hadn't guessed it, Hannah is back home and I'm very happy about that. It's been a bit of a bumpy road reintegrating into the routine of home life for her though. We've been seeing a lot of aggression and pushing of boundaries. I'm sure the fact that Christmas is coming isn't helping in that respect! The hardest time we've been having is my nemesis, tooth brushing and washing up. Getting ready to go in the morning and getting ready for bed at night have simply been a nightmare since she's been back. It's where we've experienced most of our aggression and almost all of our meltdowns. So far I'm not seeing much to cheer about with 123 Magic. Kyle still thinks its making a difference, but I'm much harder to convince. He's not been the one who has been being scratched, hit, and kicked!

We did learn a surprising new fact about Hannah though. She can do simple addition problems (sums under 10) in her head now and has many of them memorized. She's also begun doing some subtraction and division in her head as well! She really does amaze me sometimes with the things she just spouts off that I had no idea she knew. Lately she's been very curious about words and their meanings. She asks me about dozens of words a day- some are words I've said or words she's heard on TV, others are words we read in books. Later she likes to try out her new words in novel ways. Sometimes she's successful in using them correctly, but more often I get to have a nice private laugh at some of the sentences she comes up with! :)

Irritated

2010-12-03T16:54:00.011-05:00

So today I got my telephone bill for last month and on it was a charge from the hospital where I stayed two nights in October. The charge was apparently for the fact that I HAD a TV and a telephone in my room. Not for the fact that I used them, but for the fact that they were there. When I called to inquire about the charge I was informed that if I didn't want these services then I needed to opt out of them when I was admitted. Seriously? I was supposed to know this? This is the 3 rd hospital that I've been admitted to over the course of my lifetime (not counting when I was born) and Hannah's been admitted to two different hospitals from that and this is the first time we've ever been charged for TV or local telephone access. How was I supposed to know I needed to opt out? And really, what kind of cold hearted business makes people confined to a bed (or who's children are confined to a hospital bed) pay for TV? That's just mean. What else is a kid supposed to do when they aren't allowed to get up and move around? A parent can only handle reading them so many books. I can only imagine if we had been charged for TV and phone service when Hannah was in the hospital for 2 weeks as in infant. Our cell phones didn't get coverage in her room and even if they did we weren't supposed to have them on because they supposedly affected some medical machinery, but yet we had hundreds of people wanting to know how Hannah was and if they could come visit. Then there was us, brand new parents, sick with worry for our only child, stuck inside the hospital for 2 weeks. In fact, we weren't just stuck inside the hospital, but stuck inside her room because Hannah was in isolation and wasn't allowed out of the room and anyone who entered had to gown up before coming in. It was just too big of a pain to leave the room. So, what did we do? We watched TV. Of course we read books and talked to each other and the nurses and our occasional visitor, but mostly we watched a lot of cable TV. What would our bill have been for that privilege if we had been in Kent County Hospital instead of the hospital we were at? I'll tell you. It would have been $300 just for the privilege of having the TV in our room. If you can't tell, I'm a little fired up by this bill. In the hospital they charge you for every little thing and for some things I can deal with it. For example, I wasn't allowed to take my own doctor prescribed prescription medication which I brought with me and had already paid for. Instead I had to take the same medication given to me by the hospital pharmacy and administered by a nurse and pay for it again and pay for the nurse to give it to me (or tell me I'd already had it and I couldn't have it that day when I HAD NOT already taken it and by golly she wasn't going to stop me from taking it!, but that's another story). That I can deal with. But paying for TV in my room. That is just too much. If they don't want to foot the bill for having TV at their hospital then don't put TVs in the rooms, but don't make people choose whether or not to have it in their rooms or make them pay for it when they didn't even know it was something they had to pay for. GRRR. . . . .

To update everyone on Hannah's stay in Indiana, she's still having a blast and apparently she managed to sweet talk Mamaw and Papaw out of not just one, but two pillow pets. She received both of the ones she's been coveting-the purple unicorn and the dog. Now I don't see what all the fuss about Pillow Pets is. They are cute enough, but not really any cuter than any other stuffed animal. Still, they are all the rage within the preschool and early elementary school set and Hannah is no exception. She's been asking for these pillow pets pathetically ever since they first appeared on the scene this summer. I absolutely refused to pay $20 for a poor quality stuffed animal with a Velcro strap around it's belly, but not Mamaw apparently. Apparently Mamaw already had purchased the unicorn and then later in the visit took Hannah to Walmart and allowed her to buy the dog. So much for my firm stand against Pillow Pets. It must be something to do with grandmas though because I happen to know that in a neatly wrapped box sitting in our basement are those exact same two Pillow Pets from Mindy (Pap's girlfriend of many years and Hannah's pseudo Nana). It looks like we'll have 4 pillow pets in the house soon! I wonder if she'll want the duplicates or if she'll want to trade in the extras for yet two different animals?

Missing My Baby

2010-12-01T11:43:00.016-05:00

Last week we spent traveling to the Midwest for Thanksgiving. We had a wonderful trip, exponentially better than the same trip last year thanks to a certain little electronic device that I broke down and bought (portable DVD player), but now I'm sitting here lonely because we are home without Hannah. You see, Hannah stayed behind with my mom to have fun and visit more family that we didn't have time to fit into our brief visit because Kyle had to get back to work for Monday. Hannah's having the time of her life playing with cousins, staying up late, and making cookies and Christmas decorations, but I'm missing her desperately. The house just seems so empty, quiet and lonely. I know it's a good thing for Hannah to have this opportunity since we live so far away, but I still selfishly want her with me. I've called her every single night so far. She doesn't appear to be homesick at all. I suppose chasing little black kittens around in the fresh air will do that to you.

I know you are all dying to know about our trip so here goes. We left on Saturday morning. We had intended to let Hannah go to her dance class and then leave from there, but an hour long tantrum to start the day caused us to miss dance. Still, once we got into the car things went very well and we made great time. Hannah and I alternated between doing school work and watching movies. We stopped somewhere in PA and got a hotel for the night. Hannah was a wild woman at the hotel jumping on the bed and shouting at the top of her lungs. When it came time to strap her into her braces and go to bed she complained about being lonely (we were in the bed right next to her for pete's sake!) and grunted and grumbled until she fell asleep. It was all we could do to keep quiet while she carried on! We were up relatively early the next morning and then drove the leg into Columbus, OH without incident. In fact, we arrived much earlier than they were expecting us thanks to the fantastic time we had made the day before. Hannah had fun playing with Pap and Mindy and climbing around in the woods with Baba (Kyle's grandma). Baba sure can hike with the best of them considering she's in her 80's! Baba took us out to lunch and spoiled Hannah with lots of Christmas presents. Hannah, however, in her not so tactful 4 year old way, generously pointed out that she already had 2 of the books that Baba gave her and that the 3rd one was the wrong book. She had asked for an Aurora (Sleeping Beauty) chapter book and this was an Ariel (Little Mermaid) chapter book. ~Sigh~ It looks like we have even more lessons on how to be a grateful receiver of gifts on our plate. Then we headed off to the Columbus Zoo to check out the animals and the Christmas lights. Hannah had a blast feeding and brushing the goats and then managed to make Mrs. Claus feel about "this big" (imagine my thumb and index finger very close together) when she offered to pass along a message to Santa about what she wanted for Christmas for her (we had chosen not to wait in the ridiculously long line to see him and had instead peeked around to the end of the line to watch Santa passing out candy canes to the kids as they exited his lap) and Hannah told her that she wanted Santa to know that what she really wanted was one of his candy canes! Poor Mrs. Claus didn't have any candy canes! She was pretty much helpless. It was heartbreaking and humorous all at the same time.

The next day we headed to Indiana and Hannah had her first meltdown of the actual trip. While it was not pleasant, I'd call it a huge victory that we made it to within an hour of our final destination before she had one. At Grandma's Hannah had fun chasing around and carrying a little black kitten for hours at a time. That poor cat really earned it's keep that day! While in Indiana we visited Lafayette to see our friends the Bowe's and Hannah got to play with her friend Evelyn. They were so cute together. We barely saw them they spent so much time holed up in Evelyn's room playing with her dollhouse. Then we spent Thanksgiving Day with my mom's side of the family. Hannah had a blast hanging out with the "big kids" and playing Bingo for prizes. She was even faster than I was at reading the Thanksgiving themed words on her card and finding them before the caller called out the next word. Then on Friday we visited with my dad and my aunts Jo and Terri and my cousin Becky in the morning/afternoon and then headed over to Tiffany's house (Hannah's birthmother) for dinner and to spend the evening. At Jo and Terri's Hannah had a blast chasing their cat and playing Wii. She really loves the fencing on Wii Sports resort and she's actually pretty good at it. Terri spoiled her rotten by giving her a few of her little knick-knacks and her father's old keyboard. I can't wait until Hannah's home so we can give the keyboard a whirl. At Tiffany's house Hannah turned into a wild woman again. I suppose an entire week of over stimulation will do that to a kid, but boy was she wild- not the finest representation of our parenting skills! Hannah had so much fun with Chase and Kayla though. They played on the trampoline, Chase gave horsey rides/bucking bronco rides, they watched a movie, and wrestled like siblings that have never been separated. It was lovely to watch. Hannah even gave both Donna and Charlie (Hannah's birthgrandparents) hugs which she has been hesitant to do in the past. It was a great visit.

Then, on Saturday Kyle and I headed back to RI and Hannah stayed with my mom. Now I'm here typing this childless. I suppose it was fortunate for both me and Hannah that Hannah stayed with mom because today I'm sick. I've vomited 3 times already today and Hannah's hates to see me get sick. It makes her so nervous when I throw up, while at the same time she doesn't seem to be able to take it easy on me when I can't do everything she wants to do. So, I suppose for today at least I'm grateful she's there, but I still miss her.

Photo Notes: The picture with Hannah in the dog crate with BOTH of the dogs was not my doing. I came downstairs one morning and found them all 3 in there together. Hannah had coaxed both of the dogs in there and then got in herself and locked them all in. Even though she was able to lock herself in she was unable to get the crate unlocked from the inside so they were all stuck there until I decided to release them. I couldn't resist snapping a picture before I did so though!

And the Results Are . . . . . .

2010-11-30T14:00:00.009-05:00

Sorry it has taken me so long to post the results of Hannah's evaluations, but I've been in the midst of processing all that we learned-that and we traveled to Indiana for 9 days. Basically what we found out was that Hannah does not have enough clinical diagnostic criteria to receive a diagnosis of Asperger's anymore. She has simply grown out of it. She apparently still has many aspie traits and is "quirky", but not quirky enough to be technically on the spectrum anymore. Maybe I need to change the name of my blog again. Too bad. I really liked the title M came up with. I may just keep it anyway. She also does not have enough diagnostic criteria for ADHD or Bipolar, but she has too many red flags for each of them to rule either of them out at this point. Those two are on a watch and see status at the moment. She'll be reevaluated for them in a few years (or sooner if we have new issues crop up). Her behaviors are, however, abnormal. They are abnormal in intensity, frequency, and duration. They are abnormal enough they warrant a diagnosis, but don't fit any particular diagnosis. Therefore she gets Disruptive Behavior Disorder-NOS (not otherwise specified). You have to love that NOS catch all moniker. It was recommend that we work with a behavioural therapist to get her negative behaviours under control and to help teach her how to manage her strong emotions. The psychologist specifically mentioned that we should try 123 Magic (and The Active Alert Child) as a starting point while we are waiting to get in with a therapist. We've bought the book and implemented phase 1 of their program. Kyle thinks it is helping. I'm still up in the air about it. After all of our failures with other methods I can't help but be critical until proven otherwise. So, none of this that the psychologist told us surprised us too much, until she got to the final portion of Hannah's evaluations-the IQ test. Here's where we were in for the shock of our lives. Now, we knew Hannah was smart. We knew she was academically gifted in reading and had extremely precocious verbal language skills. What we did not anticipate was that Hannah would test as profoundly gifted, into the highest level of giftedness possible, that she would score higher than 99.7% of the population on her test! That threw us for a loop. How do we even process that kind of intelligence? We knew our local public school wasn't going to be right for her, but now we have to wonder if any of the private schools will be able to accommodate her long term even. The only gifted school even close to us is well over an hour away and charges over $25,000 a year for Kindergarten! We obviously don't have that kind of money. According to the psychologist, Hannah's extreme intelligence is currently working against her instead of for her with regards to her behavior. The Disruptive Behavior Disorder-NOS and her IQ have melded together to create the perfect storm. So, we are feeling out our options and having to learn an entirely new path. Anyone who has been down this road before us is encouraged to comment and help me out. Lord knows I could use the help.

Photo Notes: The first two photos are of Hannah trying out Daddy's mountain biking gear in the back seat of the car. It's one of her favorite car trip activities! The last photo is of her being silly while I tried to take a serious picture of her painting. She was concentrating so hard I wanted to capture the moment, but she has a tendency to get wild when the camera comes out so we have very few serious photos!

Long Awaited Day

2010-11-09T20:46:00.012-05:00

Tomorrow is the big day. After going through a series of evaluations with the new psychologist and filling out a BUNCH of forms, we finally get to meet with Hannah's psychologist to hear the results of all of the testing. I'm extremely anxious, but at the same time ready to finally (hopefully) learn what is at the root of all of our struggles and begin to formulate a game plan. We've had a few good stretches since having Hannah evaluated, but for the most part our days have been a struggle. The simplest tasks turn into fights and all attempts at discipline send her into a complete rage. I am so hoping that the psychologist will be able to help us be more effective parents and just generally help Hannah to be happier.

Last week there was one particularly bad day where I had about had it. The day had started with Hannah making the decision to go into the back of her closet, move some things around, disrobe and pee all over the carpet. Keep in mind she is fully potty trained, had the opportunity to choose to go to the bathroom, and that it most likely took her longer to get settled in her place at the back of the closet than it would have to walk to the bathroom. :( I have no idea why she chose to do that. The day progressed with meltdowns, rages, screaming, and frustration. Then at the end of the day I was informing Hannah about the loss of her bedtime privileges after another series of particularly bad choices and she looked at me and said, "Now, now, Let's not make any rash decisions." I about lost it! Somehow I managed to keep a straight face and hold my ground. Kyle on the other hand was listening from another room and he broke down into hysterical laughter. Way to back me up huh?

Our days truly are a roller coaster here. One minute we are down so low I wonder if we can find our way back up and then she pulls a ridiculous one liner like that out and we are flying high without a care in the world. Oh how I love that little girl. I just don't know what I'd do without her.

Where's October

2010-11-04T18:02:00.014-05:00

Seriously, what on earth happened to October? I feel like I went to sleep one day and when I woke up, "BAM!" October had mysteriously vanished and we were well on our way into November. So, just to prove to myself that October did indeed happen, here's a recap of our month.

Hannah played soccer the whole month although we really must use that term loosely. It's more like she whined and complained about soccer the whole month, but refused to actually quit. Soccer is now over and we can all breathe a huge sigh of relief that we will never make that mistake again! (She sure did love her uniform though!)

The first week of the month my dad came to visit and we carted him around the whole week to all of Hannah's appointments and classes. He got to go grocery shopping, to the dentist, to OT, to soccer, to the doctor, to the museum, to a zoo class and to an animal class at the YMCA. The poor guy didn't get to do ANYTHING touristy or restful! The day my dad left, Kyle's brother and his fiance arrived for 4 days with their dog/small horse. Hannah loved Kahlua even though she outweighed her by close to 100 pounds! While our guests were here I managed to come down with an awful cough that decided to hang out for ALL of October (more about that later).

Eventually, all of our guests were gone and we dove head first into homeschool and unburrying the house after two straight weeks of house guests. Homeschooling has been going well and Hannah's flying right along with the curriculum we've chosen as well as all the extra stuff we've picked out to supplement the work and to get her social experiences.

My cough continued to build until finally one Sunday I woke up and just could not get out of bed. On top of my cough I ached all over, had a fever, and my neck was so stiff I could barely move it. The next day I tried to get a doctor's appointment, but my doctor was completely booked so I attempted to go about my business, but just could not do it. I eventually decided that I had to be seen that day and called the doctor to ask whether she thought I needed to go to urgent care or to the ER. Apparently that got her attention and they told me to come in right at closing time and they'd squeeze me in. Shortly after looking at me, the decision was made that I needed to go to the ER because she feared that I either had septicemia or meningitis. I knew I could not effectively control Hannah in the ER while I was being checked over so I called a friend to see if I could drop her off there for a few hours until Kyle would be home from work and she instead insisted on coming to pick both Hannah and I up and drove me to the ER and took Hannah back to her house. Hannah ended up staying with them for two days because I ended up being admitted to the hospital. They too suspected meningitis, but were unable to do a lumbar puncture on me. The resident tried twice and then called in the attending physician who also tried twice with no success. Apparently my vertebrae are too close together to pass a needle between them. Good thing I've never given birth because I would have been seriously ticked to have been in labor expecting an epidural and be told they couldn't do it because they were unable to get the needle in there! Fortunately it was determined that I did not in fact have meningitis, but instead a nasty case of bronchitis and a viral infection that had piggy-backed along on top of it. Since I take immune suppressant drugs for my autoimmune disease, my body was unable to fight off the two simultaneous infections and had become basically overwhelmed. They stopped my medication, pumped me full of fluids and multiple IV antibiotics and then sent me home. Since coming home I've been on bed rest for several days (although I had a hard time following those orders) and now I'm back on light duty. I'm feeling much better, but I'm not 100% yet. The bronchitis is still hanging on and I tire very quickly. Hopefully I'll kick it soon.

In the midst of all of this sickness, soccer, and visitors I also managed to make my first ever Halloween costume. Hannah is obsessed with the movie Bolt and desperately wanted to be Bolt for Halloween. Unfortunately the Disney Store doesn't sell a Bolt costume so I was left with the decision of telling her to pick something else (not something I wanted to do) or make it myself. My mother is a brilliant crafter and my sister and I always had fantastic hand made Halloween costumes (we were those kids who always won the costume contests at all the fall festivals!), but I DID NOT inherit her talent for sewing or ANY of her crafty genes. Much blood, sweat, and tears went into the making of that darn costume, but I got it done. I also learned the hard way that the words on the back of a bottle of fabric glue are LIES! ALL LIES! Just in case you ever decide to pick up a bottle and want to believe their claims that it permanently bonds two pieces of fabric together. But I digress, Hannah loved it! I thought it wasn't too bad for my first try, however on Halloween night she received many comments along the lines of, "Oh, what a cute bunny!" By the end of the night she had grown pretty testy about it and was snipping back at them, "I'm not a rabbit I'm a dog! I'm Bolt" despite my repeated lectures about being polite. ~Sigh~

We also made a big decision in October. We decided that after the first of the year we will officially jump back into the adoption process. We are very excited about it and Hannah is already asking regularly when her new brother or sister is coming. It's hard to get a 4 year old to understand the concept of waiting a year or more to get through all the paperwork and matching process. This time instead of doing a private agency adoption for an infant we plan on going through the foster care system and adopting an older child. Now, when I say older child, we are still planning on the child being younger than Hannah, but not necessarily an infant. Although you never know how God will work. We could find our selves welcoming an infant or a teenager instead of a toddler into our house. You just never can tell. We know God will point us in the right direction though.

Check Your Facts

2010-10-01T19:38:00.012-05:00

Hannah had a serious crisis on Thursday. While at the library she found a book on bearded dragons. This is the same type of lizard that happens to be the class pet at her animal class at the YMCA. During the very first class they met this particular lizard (named Spice) and were told lots of interesting facts about bearded dragons, one of which was that unlike many other lizards, the bearded dragon's tail will not grown back after it falls off. WELL . . . . . upon reading that book from the library a page was found that stated that the bearded dragon's tail would indeed grow back after it had fallen off. Hannah was aghast. But her teacher had said! This conflict just would not do. So Hannah insisted on bringing the book with her to class later on that day to read the teacher the page that talked about the tails. She marched right into the room, interrupted the teacher who was still talking on her cell phone and not quite ready for class, and began leafing through the book to find the important page. She then began to read in a very authoritative tone that the bearded dragon can indeed grow its tail back. The teacher didn't quite know what to say. She appeared to be in shock although I'm not sure if it was from being called out by a 4 year old or the fact that she had just witnessed said 4 year old reading fluently from a book designed for 2nd graders! She did recover quite nicely though and managed to gracefully admit that she might possibly be wrong and that she'd check her facts and report back next week as to whether it was her or the book that had their facts mixed up. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud, but it also gave me a feeling of dread. This was probably the first of many, many instances when my little one will want to correct a teacher and if we don't start working on how to respectfully disagree with an adult now, I can see her ending up in some serious trouble!

New Psychologist

2010-09-28T21:42:00.011-05:00

After the fiasco of the last psychologist we searched long and hard before finding our newest doctor to help us better parent Hannah. We first went to meet her without Hannah and discussed our concerns. I felt like she really listened to us and asked all the right questions. Her next step was to set up an evaluation for Hannah, as well as send us home with a HUGE packet of questionnaires, check lists, and rating scales to fill out about Hannah as well as some for her teacher at preschool. I brought almost 2 hours worth of video containing the behaviors we were concerned about and the doctor promised to watch it. Then she went over the things she felt were the most likely culprits for Hannah's behaviors. Her list was long and scary and she said that everything on it needed to be ruled in or out before we could create a plan of action. On her list to check out were Asperger's, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and Early Onset Bipolar Disorder. Asperger's doesn't scare me. We came to terms with that almost 2 years ago. The problem is that Hannah no longer seems to be exhibiting a lot of the symptoms that were the key diagnostic factors for it. She still has many "aspie traits" but I have a feeling she no longer qualifies for diagnosis. Her problems are different now. She cannot handle having limits set and has grown quite aggressive, manipulative, and very moody. Now that all the testing is done we are just waiting to get the call to come back in to discuss what the doctor has found and what her opinions are. I'm anxious about what we might hear as some of those disorders she listed feel quite scary to me and require life long medication. However, at the same time I'm ready for an answer so that we can get on our way to helping our little girl.

Ehler's Danlos Syndrome

2010-09-19T20:23:00.011-05:00

If you are a regular reader here you know that Hannah is EXTREMELY flexible, like you can take her thumb and bend it sideways to lay it flush with her wrist kind of flexible. She also has really flat feet and her feet collapse outward significantly. An orthopedist had been watching this since she was about 18 months old using the wait and see approach. Last October when Hannah starting complaining of pain in her hips we were back to the doctor again and she was given AFOs for her shoes and pronounced at the extreme edge of normal as far as joint laxity. The doctor called it hypermobility syndrome. Well it was time for her yearly follow-up last week and I believed that Hannah had outgrown her AFOs because she was complaining that they hurt her feet which she hasn't done since getting used to wearing them last year. Besides checking out the AFOs the doctor completely reevaluated her because of some concerning trends he had noticed in her gait. Because she's heavier now her ligaments are under even greater strain and her feet, ankles, and knees are showing the stress and are starting to show the effects of over compensation. It was hoped that her ligaments would tighten some with age and that the AFOs would be a temporary thing. Unfortunately, things did not improve. In fact, they got worse. After the evaluation the doctor informed me that Hannah had a mild form of a genetic disorder called Ehler's Danlos Syndrome. I don't know much about the disorder yet, but from what I understand it is mainly a defect in the production of collagen. Because the collagen is defective ligaments, blood vessels, skin, and anything else made of collagen are suspect to problems. So far, it appears that Hannah really only has issues with her ligaments and skin, but the doctor wants her to probably go see a cardiologist in about 6 months to get a baseline idea of her heart health in case any issues crop up as she gets older. There is no cure for Ehler's Danlos unfortunately, but the symptoms can be treated individually. So, Hannah had her AFO's adjusted, thank heavens she hadn't outgrown them since they cost $600 a pair and are NOT covered by insurance. She is also going to have to wear something called a Dennis Brown bar at night for 6 moths to a year (then she'll be reevaluated to see if it's helping or if she'll need surgery). I am SO NOT looking forward to this bar. It is basically a pair of shoes attached to a metal bar that holds the legs in a fixed position. They used to be used for infants a lot in past generations to correct bowlegs, in toeing, etc, but now they are basically a thing of the past and I can find absolutely NO information on them being used in a child as old as Hannah. Everything I have read about them show them being used on immobile kids. In fact, the idea of kid Hannah's age using them is so far fetched that when I went to order the special shoes that have to be bolted to the bar, the medical equipment guy had to look through several manufacturer catalogs before he found a place that even made Hannah's size (size 12 in case you were wondering!). Hannah hates wearing shoes and we have a hard enough time keeping her in her shoes during the day so I'm dreading trying to get her to wear what look like very uncomfortable shoes at bedtime. To make matters worse, she's a belly and side sleeper and with this bar she will have to sleep on her back. She also wakes at least once a night to go to the bathroom and I'm not sure how she's going to let us know she's awake if she can't get up out of bed and walk to the door to knock on it like she does now. We are definitely going to have a big learning curve here soon once the shoes come in. Wish us luck.

Soccer

2010-09-13T18:34:00.018-05:00

So. . . . . Soccer has been interesting. Hannah insists that she wants to do it, but whines pretty much the entire time during practices and games saying she's thirsty, tired, hungry, etc. I'm not sure if she likes it or not. One thing is for sure, she definitely DOES NOT get the concept of a soccer game. If the ball is near her she will kick it and she will sorta run after the ball along with the rest of the herd, but if another person is near the ball she will not kick it, nor will she try to kick the ball more than once or steal it from another player. Most of her games are spent wandering around the field not paying attention and then running when Kyle tells her she needs to run! I think she may not be quite mature enough for a competitive team sport. It has been interesting to see that for all her aggressive tendencies she shies away from using them on the field to her advantage and actually gets intimidated by the more aggressive players on the opposing team. If only karate hadn't been a bust. That might have been right up her alley, but we won't soon find out since we showed up again for the first class of the session last week only to have the instructor be a no show AGAIN! Then I found out today that the session is cancelled. I think next session (starts in November) we'll try swimming since she has really been enjoying that with Kyle and has made great strides as far as going under and propelling herself around the pool. Who knows how well she'll do in an organized class, but it's worth a shot.

Hannah has once again had a huge leap in her reading abilities and is now breezing through chapters out of chapter books. This past weekend we all camped out in our backyard and Hannah decided to get up at 4:30am. Kyle and I of course were not about to wake up that early and so Hannah picked up the only book in the tent, Stuart Little by E.B. White and began reading. I lay there and listened to her read two whole chapters. There were a few words over those two chapters that she stumbled over, but on the whole she did fantastic. Holy Cow! Stuart Little is at 3rd grade reading level if I remember correctly. I lay wide awake and stunned, unable to go to sleep for fear that I'd miss her amazing performance. Another recent obsession of hers is counting, counting for a LONG TIME. She's been able to count to 100 for a few years now, but now she can do it fast and without thinking at all so she's been constantly counting to 100 and then starting over and then over and over. The thought had never occurred to us to teach her to go past 100, but the other day Kyle asked her, "Hannah, what comes after 100?" She didn't know so he said 101 and then asked her what came next. She immediately got the pattern and now she can count absolutely as far as she wants. She hasn't made it to 1000 yet, but that's only because she usually gets tired of counting or we make her stop before she gets there!

Pretend Cousins

2010-08-24T19:27:00.019-05:00

We've had our fair share of imaginary friends in the house the last few years and even some that were actually real people, but who weren't actually at our house! Currently Hannah's imaginary people are 4 pretend cousins. The thing that cracks me up about these four girls is their names: Julie (nice and normal) Monica and Hanukkah (they are twins!), and English (where did that come from?). Hanukkah and Monica crack me up the most. I think the fact that they have rhyming names and are twins is hilarious and don't even get me started on the one being named Hanukkah! We aren't Jewish. I guess she's just a multicultural girl when it comes to naming her imaginary friends! Her pretend cousins do EVERYTHING with her. They are a constant presence at our house. Julie seems to be the most active, although Monica and Hanukkah are quite the little tricksters too. English comes over less often, but she's still around enough that we can't forget about her! I wonder how long this current group of friends will last?

Hannah starts soccer this week and she is super excited. The first practice was supposed to be tonight, but it's raining so practice has been cancelled. She's still at school so she doesn't know yet. She's going to be crushed, especially after the karate class ordeal. At least I know this is a reputable league and she WILL get to play games and go to practices. I found her some cleats at a consignment sale that look like they have hardly been worn. She already had the appropriate size soccer ball. So, all we had to get her were black soccer shorts for her uniform and shin guards. Oh does she look cute in those cleats and shin guards! She's actually getting quite good at kicking the ball too. This is a skill that's been a long time in coming. For some reason kicking an object (not a person though!) has been difficult for her for some time. Add in kicking a moving object or moving while you are kicking and it was basically impossible. She has yet to kick the ball while it is moving, but she is starting to be able to run up to the ball and kick it without stopping to set up for the kick. I'll be interested to see how quickly (or not) her skills improve as the season progresses. In two weeks karate starts again and we're going to give it one more try. She'll be quite busy on the athletic front which should be good for her. We are currently being reminded of how tough things can get when she's not physically active enough since it's been raining for 5 days straight and she's been unable to use her basement playroom (where all her sensory swings, mini tramp, etc are located) because of a flea problem. UGH! It has not been pretty. I'm hoping for sunny skies soon and praying that the flea treatment that was done on Monday permanently fixes the flea problem.

Lately Hannah has been working on addition and subtraction. She found a game I used to use with my kids back when I taught elementary school and she's been asking to play it about every single day. It's called peanut butter and jelly and basically the goal is to be the first person to build you sandwich by answering math problems to earn your bread, jelly, etc. She has both addition and subtraction with the counters down, but the game mixes the problems up and she has trouble switching from one type of problem to the other. She gets into the pattern of one type of problem and then can't quite switch gears quickly enough. Kyle's been trying to teach her to use her fingers instead of the counters (I think he's just too lazy to get out the counters!) and she's actually doing pretty well with that too, but she's a little less accurate with her fingers since sometimes she accidentally moves a finger when she isn't supposed to.

Hannah's spelling is coming right along too. She's to the point where she can phonetically spell about anything she wants to spell and I can usually figure out what she meant if it's not spelled correctly. She still smashes all her words together with no spaces in between (we're working on that!) so that can sometimes hinder her legibility, but over all she does an excellent job with her writing. She's fast at sounding out how to spell the words too so this is making it easier for her to compose sentences since she doesn't lose her train of thought as much while she's trying to figure out a word. When she dictates stories to me for me to copy down she goes at the speed of light, so fast I can hardly keep up. That just shows me how fast her brain works. A month or two ago I mentioned her writing and promised to transcribe a few of her stories here for you all to enjoy. Today seems like a good day for a Hannah story so here goes. The first story is entitled How Pat the Rat was Born

Pat the Rat was once born because he was born in his mother. Because his father was watching, the baby came out. And the baby finally came out in the hospital. When he was a baby he first started not talking. Then when he was grown up he started squealing like his mother and father. His mother started not feeding him because he started feeding himself and then he was 110 years old. His mother and father took him to the park, and the beach, and the airport to go to Indiana. And then he flew back to Rhode Island so he could get his home. So he could play with his ball in the back yard.

In this next writing we had been learning about what dialogue is and how to write a back and forth conversation. She told me about an imaginary conversation she had with her friend Colin. So, without further ado, Dialogue with Colin

I wish I had a carthorse.

What? You wish you had a carthorse!

I want to be a princess and it would pull me to the castle to dance.

It would pull you to different places.

No, it would pull me to the ball.

I guess you're right.

I wish, oh I wish that would come true because it would take me to the ball.

Yes, it would come true if you would sleep every month then it would come true, but I don't think it will said Colin.

If you are wondering about her choice of the word "carthorse," we had just read a story about an old carthorse from the Dales in England so the word was fresh on her mind. I thought she used it quite well though!

I Can't Take This!

2010-08-16T11:48:00.016-05:00

The title of this post comes not from me (as many of you might expect!), but from Hannah. It's a quote from the middle of the night last night. She had woken up to go to the bathroom and after taking her back to bed and getting her settled she kept scratching and scratching at a bug bite on her back. I could tell she was really trying not to scratch, but it must have been itching something fierce because after several cycles of trying not to scratch and then scratching anyway she dramatically flopped over in her bed, turned to me and said, "I just can't take this anymore!" and then buried her head in her pillow! I had to stifle a laugh. I felt for the poor thing because I too have impossibly low willpower when it comes to not scratching something that itches, but it was so darn funny the way she said it and not at all how I expected a four year old to complain about a bug bite! She must of gotten that phrase off of Kyle or I, but neither of us can determine which of us says it enough for her to have picked it up. As far as we know, neither of us says it all, but she has to have gotten it from somewhere. Surely she just didn't pull that phrase out all on her own.

Hannah accomplished a huge feat this past weekend, one that Mommy still has yet to conquer. She learned to dunk herself under water and now she's an addict! She went from being pretty scared of getting any water on her face to begging Kyle to throw her into the air at the pool so that she could crash back down and go under water in one day! Now she's jumping into the pool on her own, putting her face in the water and pretending to swim, and of course begging to be thrown. That's my little sensory seeker! I'm quite excited about this development because swimming is great proprioceptive input for her and as an added benefit it tires her out too! Another thing I love is that I no longer have to tolerate screams in the tub about me getting water in her eyes. If she can stand getting launched into the air and crashing down into the pool and going completely under then she can handle a few drips of water running into her eyes! This tells me it's definitely time to start swim lessons this winter. Now that she's confidently going under and swimming around the pool independently with her flotation belt on, I think she's totally ready and capable of taking directions from a swim instructor. This also makes me feel so much calmer about us living next to the ocean. I don't have to worry as much now about her panicking if she were to accidentally go under or get hit by a wave in the water. Just her being more comfortable in the water makes me more comfortable taking her there.

Today Hannah had one of her oddest meltdowns ever. Her morning started off great and then when it was time to get ready to go I asked her to put her socks on. For some reason this set her off and she refused to comply. Socks were not an option with her AFOs and shoes were not an option for her school so she had to put her socks on in order to put her shoes on in order to go to school. Eventually she just went nuts. She started screaming and hitting and kicking and pinching. She was using all of her strength and truly intending to hurt. After about 15 minutes of this, she all of a sudden walked over to the toilet (we were in the bathroom) and sat down and closed her eyes. She sat there for about a minute totally silent and then began sobbing hysterically. I went over to hug her and ask her why she was crying and she said, "I just started. I don't know why, but I can't stop." She cried for probably 10 minutes with me holding her and then eventually she was able to get her socks and shoes on, get washed up and then leave for school. She was quite clingy when I dropped her off at school and I worry that she's going to have a rough time, but they haven't called yet so I hope that means so far so good. The odd thing is that usually she rages until she's worn out and everything just fizzles out. This abrupt end to the aggression and the beginning of the crying is very abnormal for her. I'm not sure what to make of it.

Roller Coaster

2010-08-11T10:33:00.008-05:00

It seems like we live on a constant roller coaster. Yesterday Hannah and I had a wonderful Mommy Daughter Day. We went to the museum, had lunch, played, did school, had dinner, bath, bed with no problems. We made it through with no screaming, melting down, hitting, kicking, etc. There was of course some minor preschool disobedience, but hey, no one's perfect. This morning, however, was a totally different story. Hannah was out of control. She threw things, hit me, kicked me, scratched me, tried to bite me, and pinched me. All this because she didn't want to turn off the TV and then later didn't want to wash up and leave for school. It's not like this routine was out of the ordinary. We do it EVERY Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. We've done it for over a year. In fact, except leaving for school, we do the same routine every single morning! Still, it's impossible to predict when she'll be able to smoothly move through the morning routine successfully and when she'll just completely lose control of herself. By the time I actually got her to school she was fine and I'm sure she'll have a wonderful day there. That's the other thing that is frustrating. She almost NEVER displays these aggressive behaviors at school. For them she's a sweet angel all the time. I can almost guarantee though that the minute I walk in to pick her up the behaviors will start building and by the time we make it home they will be in full swing. UGH! How can she act so sweetly and behave so wonderfully one moment and then at the flip of a switch shift into another gear and go nuts on me? I just don't get it.

Something that interests me about Hannah's reading level is that even though she can read at a second grade level and comprehend what the text says as far as being able to report the events of the story and the facts objectively, she is unable to make predictions or inferences about the stories she reads. In this aspect of reading comprehension I would say she is just barely at age level for a 4 year old, maybe even a little behind since my expertise is not early childhood, but elementary school. Even stories that she has read to her and that she doesn't have to expend the mental energy of actually decoding, she is unable to display this higher level comprehension. Picture books she is a little better at picking up unspoken aspects of the story, but that is only because she studies the pictures so intensely. If the pictures weren't there she wouldn't gain as much depth about the story as she does. Every now and then she'll get something that I'm surprised she catches, but on the whole this uneven development she has in reading is quite fascinating to me. A four year difference between decoding and comprehension is a pretty big gap and I am amazed that it could even develop. It's hard for me to imagine being able to read the words, but not really understanding all that they tell. I've heard that this is quite common for children with hyperlexia, but I'm not too concerned yet since really she's right about where she should be comprehension wise. If it ever gets to the point where she can't comprehend at the grade level she's SUPPOSED to be reading (even if she's still reading 4 years ahead!) then I'll be worried. For now though, I'm just intrigued.

No Show

2010-08-09T13:00:00.009-05:00

The karate instructor was a no show on Saturday. Hannah was VERY disappointed and it pretty much threw her off for the rest of the day. In fact, later that day when I was trying to get her washed up she threatened to chop my head off! I've no idea where she came up with that. She must have heard someone at school say something like that because her PBS shows don't use that kind of language and we certainly don't! I'm still waiting for the situation to be resolved as to whether the class is officially canceled and we'll get a refund or if we'll have a make-up class sometime and then class will start next weekend. I'm hoping that the class won't be canceled because it's too late for her to sign up for anything else at the YMCA this session since everything is filled. We'd have to wait until September. I'd like to get her into something NOW if possible.

At the end of June Kyle and I started a fitness plan called P90X. Besides an extreme exercise regime it also consists of a very regimented nutrition plan. Needless to say there's been a BIG change in the food we eat and the type of food in the house. We also discuss our food choices a lot more instead of just eating whatever is around and handy. Hannah of course is not on the nutrition plan and we continue to fix her healthy balanced meals for a preschooler. Even so, she's become very interested in food choices and the things Kyle and I have been eating such as protein bars and shakes. She's also started to pick up on food related vocabulary such as carbs, protein, dairy, etc. It's been pretty funny to hear her argue with her Daddy about what she wants for breakfast or snack by saying, "But I told you I needed two more carbs today!" She's also started learning about the difference between good sugar (whole fruit) and bad sugar (high fructose corn syrup) and likes to look at the nutrition labels on the foods we eat. It would be nice if this led to her naturally choosing healthy foods to eat, but so far she's still got a STRONG sweet tooth and would gladly down a bag of M & M's over just about anything!

Photo Notes: These were taken at our local children's museum. We just LOVE going there!

Karate

2010-08-02T13:55:00.018-05:00

Hannah will be starting karate next weekend at our local YMCA. I don't think it's a very intense program (how can it be with 4 year olds!) so it should be a good introduction to the sport to see if she likes it. This particular session only lasts 5 weeks so if she hates it we haven't wasted too much money and she doesn't have to tough it out too long. I'm hoping that karate will give her a positive outlet for all of this aggressiveness she has, although I am aware that the opposite could be true in that it could increase her aggressive acts. Let's hope that doesn't happen. Sensory-wise, karate should be very good for her. I'm also hoping it will help a bit with impulse control.

Six or seven months ago Hannah went through a stage where she picked at toilet paper, wadded it into tiny little balls and then stuffed it various places, bodily orifices, heating vents, between her toes, cracks in the wall, etc. It's been awhile since we've had any toilet paper stuffing, but it looks like that streak might be ending. Yesterday Hannah wadded up and stuffed a HUGE amount of toilet paper down our bathroom sink drain and then filled the sink with water! Let me just tell you that soaking wet, disintegrating toilet paper is NASTY! I made her dig all the toilet paper out from around the stopper and from as far down the drain as her little fingers could reach. I wasn't about to clean that mess up! She definitely was not happy about having to clean up, but I sure wasn't happy about her little experiment either!

Lately I've been struggling to find appropriate books for Hannah to read. She's capable of reading most easy chapter books, but unfortunately most of the easier chapter books are written at a 1rst or 2nd grader interest level and not a 4 year old's interest level. There's also the problem of the characters being very sassy and rude. When I flip through a book and see the words dumb, stupid, and hate multiple times I know it's not the right book for Hannah. We have a hard enough time enforcing our rules about appropriate language and respect for others (especially adults) without having to confront negative examples in books just yet. We can tackle that later. There are a few animal stories written by Penny Dale that are perfect for her, but unfortunately those series don't seem to be carried in most bookstores or the library. The popular Animal Ark series also made a few "Little" Animal Ark books that are good for Hannah, but again they don't seem to be in libraries and bookstores and there are only a few of them. I did recently find a cute little series in the bookstore called Appleville Elementary that are early chapter books and they seem perfect for Hannah so far. The first book is about a bunch of kids getting ready for the first day of first grade. If anyone has any ideas about chapter books that are fairly easy to read and are the appropriate interest level for a 4 year old (I try to keep the main character no older than about 8 years old) I'd appreciate the help.

Yesterday I took Hannah to get her hair cut. She'd been begging to get it done for weeks. Now that we go to a kids only hair cut place (we had a VERY bad experience at a Super Cuts for her first hair cut and it made her terrified of getting it done) she loves having her hair cut. She'd go have it done weekly if I'd let her! Actually it's not the actual hair cutting that she likes. She really likes that after the cut is done they put glitter gel in her hair and while they are cutting she gets to watch a movie. I know I pay a little more for these silly little extras, but it's worth it when I see how calmly and cooperatively she behaves as opposed to that awful first cut. Last night Hannah discovered that I had cut Kyle's hair the night before. I had forgotten to get rid of the evidence piled up on the deck! She was quite interested in what she saw as this new development (I've cut Kyle's hair on and off ever since we got married, maybe even since before we were married, but Hannah's never knew that I did it) and asked if I could cut her hair. Ummm. . . . . No! I'll use the clippers to buzz Kyle's hair (although I don't even like doing that. It totally stresses me out, but I can't handle pay $20 for a cut every few weeks.), but I'm not about to touch the scissors on a wiggly 4 year old where my mistake could take months or even years to grow back. No Thank You! This curiosity of hers in my cutting of Kyle's hair has me worried given her past indiscretions with scissors and her own hair. In my mind this is a BAD sign and a really big goof up on my part. This just may undermine my standard speech I give every time she takes the scissors to herself about only people trained to cut hair can cut her hair. Pray that she somehow forgets about this and stays away from the scissors!

Photo Notes: All of the pictures except for the last one are from Hannah's birthday party. Those of you who read regularly will remember the little boy from her class, Jesse, whom Hannah said she was going to marry on multiple occasions. Well, Jesse is the boy standing with Hannah in the first picture. Doesn't he just look thrilled to have his picture taken? He's a cutie though and super sweet. We were so glad he could come to her party.

DUH!

2010-07-26T10:53:00.012-05:00

Here's a quick Hannah story for you all. Lately Hannah has been really interested in all things related to the solar system, but especially the planets and the sun. We've been reading a lot of books about the planets and about the earth and the sun and consequently she's learned about the earth rotating on it's axis and revolving around the sun and how those two things make our days and nights and our seasons. The other day we were driving in the van and she was reading a book to herself called "Wake Up Sun." It's a cute little easy reader about some farm animals who, through a series of misperceptions, wake up in the middle of the night thinking it's daytime and that the sun has over slept. They spend the rest of the book trying to wake up the sun. Upon finishing the book (which she's read dozens of times before mind you) Hannah claps it shut rather roughly and says, (insert teenage valley girl voice here) "MOM! That is SOOOOOO silly. The farmer's baby didn't wake up the sun. It wasn't EVEN sleeping! It was just on the other side of the earth." Duh! I guess the author of "Wake Up Sun" didn't get the memo that stated that all elements of her story had to be completely and utterly scientific. Pay no attention to the fact that she wasn't bothered at all by the fact that the animals talked!

Here are some fun summer pictures for your viewing pleasure. Don't her legs look amazingly long in that swimsuit? That's why all her shorts that fit in the waist look like daisy dukes!

Leaps

2010-07-19T21:56:00.024-05:00

Hannah has made some HUGE leaps here recently in both her large motor skills and her academic skills. She's now a pro at riding her big girl bike and her stamina is increasing each time she rides. We took her to ride on the bike trail at our local park and I bet she went at least a half mile and that is WAY further than she's ever gone before. She was so much more confident too. There was no more staring at the ground or having a hard time getting on because she was afraid the bike would fall over. Now she just hops on and goes. She even had her first "fall" going down one of the bigger hills on the path. She didn't hit the ground because Kyle caught her, but the bike definitely tipped over as she got going quickly and she panicked when it was time to turn. Still, she got back on with some coaxing and rode on like a champ. I was so proud of her. Maybe it won't be long before we can all three ride on the bike paths together. That would be awesome. The problem is that just as she's getting comfortable with this new bike, she's outgrowing it! She towers over the handlebars and the seat is basically all the way up as high as it will go and her legs are still pretty bent. I'm not sure how she'd do on a bigger bike that would sit her higher up from the ground. For now I think we'll just stick with the Dora bike. It's working and I don't want to rock the boat.

Academically she's reading more and more chapter books and just this past week she started writing sentences independently! A few nights ago she stood at her easel and pounded out two sentences just because she wanted to write them. As her vocabulary of words that she can spell without sounding them out grows, it has become much easier for her to compose because she doesn't lose her train of thought while she's trying to spell a word. One of her favorite things to do recently is to dictate stories for me to copy down. They can get quite elaborate, but really she does a pretty good job of keeping them cohesive. I've been quite impressed. I'll have to put one of them on here someday for your reading pleasure!

Just so we don't get too complacent, she's also kept us on our toes with a steady stream of undesirable behaviors. Her venue of choice this past week has been the bathroom. She's started fishing around in the toilet bowl and pulling out poop and smearing it on the walls, dipping towels in the toilet, and just generally splashing around in pee water. UGH! At four years old I thought she'd be past that, but apparently not. We're back to having closely monitored bathroom breaks and that definitely puts a cramp in our style. Having to drop everything every time she needs to go to the bathroom really cuts down on the time I have to do things around the house.

It's taken me well over a week to write this post and it seems like a lot has happened since I started writing it. Yesterday I took Hannah to see Toy Story 3. The place where she has OT sponsored a sensory friendly showing at our local theatre and it was one of the most relaxed outings to a movie I've ever had. They kept the lights turned up (it was dark, but not like at a normal movie) and the volume turned down. They had fidgets and a break area available. They allowed you to bring in your own snacks and roaming and vocal stimming (as well as all manner of chatter and questioning) was totally allowed. No one got upset or freaked out about anything. It was so nice. Hannah and I really enjoyed the movie and look forward to them offering more sensory friendly showings.

Hannah had a field trip to the zoo and once again I was not impressed by her teacher. I won't go into all the details since you've all heard me whine about her many times, but this is just one more confirmation that getting Hannah out of there for next year is the right thing to do. In fact, if we wouldn't lose all the money we put in our flexible spending account to pay for preschool that we have left I'd pull her out now, but unfortunately the only way to get that money back is to spend it on preschool or daycare. Oh, and one more thing, I know I promised I wouldn't whine about her teacher, but this really upset me. The other day Hannah came home and told me that "Miss Nicole almost had to write me a note," but that she promised her that she wouldn't tell us what had happened. When I pressed Hannah about why Miss Nicole needed to write us a note, I found out that during nap time Hannah had went to the bathroom, but instead of going to the bathroom she went into another empty classroom (one they use for indoor large motor play on yucky days) and played in there by herself. That room has a door that opens up to the rest of the school and Hannah could have easily have just left the room and gone right on out and left the building. The teacher obviously thought her behavior was serious enough to threaten her with not allowing her to go on the field trip, but yet she did not inform us of this infraction. They lost her for pete's sake, and what she did was really manipulative. She's eloped from home before so the fact that she tried it at school is something I think we deserved to know. When I questioned the teacher about it she said it wasn't a big deal and she didn't want to write us about it and make it bigger than it was. UGH!

After the whole recommendation of a partial hospital program by the psychologist at our last appointment I had intended to give him the boot after speaking with Kyle, but we didn't make our final decision until the night before her next scheduled appointment and the late cancellation penalty costs more than my copay (doesn't seem right to me that it would cost me more NOT to see the doctor than to see him) so I took Hannah in to see him one more time and let them know we were done. While there, instead of giving us suggestions on how to better manage Hannah's behavior at home, or even doing an evaluation on her, he suggested that we should try stimulant medication. Are you kidding me! He hasn't even bothered to do an evaluation on her or diagnose her with anything that medication would be necessary or beneficial for! For that matter, he still hadn't watched the DVD of Hannah's meltdowns that I had given him over a month ago! Needless to say we gave him the boot and I've been doing a lot of research about where to go from here. I got many helpful suggestions in the comments to my last post and I'm very grateful for them. I'll keep you all posted on what direction we decide to go next.

Hannah also had her 4 year well child check up. She checked out just fine and weighed in at 38 lbs and was 42 inches tall. That puts her in the 74th percentile for weight for her age and the 90th for height. She also had to get 3 vaccinations while she was there. We had prepped extensively for this possibility and the doctor confirmed it was so. When she expressed concern he told her that they would give her the shots in her arm and that she could sit on my lap while they did it. However, when the nurses came in to administer the shots they decided to tag team her and give her two at once and all three of them in the leg, not the arm like the doctor told her. They also would not let her sit on my lap like the doctor had told her she could. I tried to tell them that this was not going to go well with them changing the plan on her and that we had it worked out so that we would have cooperation if they would just do it like the doctor had told Hannah, but they refused. Obviously they knew best. I also warned them that it would be much easier for me to control her if she fought if she was on my lap instead of on the table, but still they wouldn't listen. Well, for their stubbornness, Hannah threw a HUGE fit. She thrashed around like a crazy woman. I couldn't hold her down at all. She was moving so much they could only give one shot at a time. AND Hannah kicked one of the nurses in the chest so hard (she was even laying down too!) that I'm surprised it didn't break her ribs. All this because they wouldn't listen to mom who really did know best about this scenario and how it would go. Instead of apologizing afterwards for their stubbornness and saying they were wrong not to listen to me (I know, wishful thinking on my part) , the nurse that got kicked simply eeked out, "She sure is strong for a four year old isn't she?" Yeah no kidding! I tried to warn them.

Photo Notes: Except for the first photo which is of Hannah getting the tank reading for Evan the fish and that last 3 which are of Hannah at the zoo and playing in the sprinkler, all of the photos were taken when our good friends the Bowes visited us from Indiana. We went on a chartered harbor and lighthouse tour. It was a blast.

Beyond Frustrated

2010-07-09T14:28:00.010-05:00

The past month or so I've been beyond frustrated with Hannah's behavior. She's growing more defiant and deliberately antagonistic by the day. She's growing stronger as she gets bigger and her kicking and hitting hurt a lot more now than they used to and she's getting much harder to restrain to keep her from hitting us. At a loss for what to do about her behavior (having tried about every trick in every parenting and medical book out there) we decided to consult a pediatric psychologist for some family therapy hoping he would be able to shed some light on what we were doing wrong and help us out of this downward spiral we seem to be in. Those sessions have pretty much been a complete waste of money. So far he hasn't given us any strategies we haven't already tried and has now swung 180 degrees from his initial recommendation that we use a sticker chart to motivate good behavior to recommending a partial hospital program for Hannah! I about freaked out on the psychologist yesterday when he suggested this. It sounds awfully extreme to me and awfully expensive! When I think of a partial or full hospital program I think about kids that are dangerous. Hannah's not dangerous, she's just extremely challenging. If we don't put a halt to some of her behaviors she could be dangerous once she's older and bigger, but right now she's not dangerous and so I think a partial hospital treatment program is way out of line. Have any of you out there had any experience with programs like these? Am I totally off base here? Needless to say, I'm in the market for a new psychologist because we do desperately need the help. What would be the most helpful would be some sort of therapeutic Super Nanny type person who could come to our house and simply observe what goes on for several days in a row, maybe a full week, and then help us develop a plan to better manage Hannah's behaviors. She doesn't display many of her most challenging behaviours at school so I feel like the same thing would happen at the partial program since it's run very much like a preschool. The herd mentality, or maybe it's just that she's not completely comfortable there, whatever the reason she saves up everything for home. The moment I pick her up she lets it all hang out. I need someone to see her in action like that, not in the structured school/therapy environment. Does a therapist like this even exist? If so, what would they be called? I'd love to know so I could google them and see if I could find someone in our area that could help us out.

Another question for all you veteran parents out there, when is it no longer considered an annoying, but age appropriate stage for a child to get into lotion, chemicals, etc and smear them all over themselves and anything else they can find? This is what Hannah did on Monday. When she was supposed to be upstairs getting her pajamas on she instead went into our bedroom, climbed up to Kyle's dresser (which she can not reach without climbing) and got his Nivea lotion, hydrocortisone cream, and the fish tank chemicals-all things she KNOWS she is not allowed to touch- and then proceeded to smear the lotion and cream all over her body plus the carpet, her bedsheets, a book, and some toys. She then dumped out all the fish tank chemicals on the floor (thank Jesus she did not swallow them!) and then lied to me when I called upstairs and asked what she was doing by saying, "I'm just looking at my books" The next day, after now being banned from our bedroom, she snuck into our bedroom and got my package of birth control and hid it under her bed. The next day she went through my purse (which she KNOWS she's not allowed to do) and took my cell phone out while I was using the bathroom and hid it from me. Then today, right in front of both Kyle and I she decided to smear chapstick all over her face! She ground it into her eyebrows so hard that Kyle had to really scrub to get it all off before taking her to school! Is this something that all kids do at her age? If so, how long does this stage last? I'm getting multiple gray hairs from this new behaviour. I've ordered some medicine and chemical safes to put everything in to keep her from getting at any more medicine or chemicals since putting them up out of her reach obviously doesn't do the trick so hopefully that will stop that part of the problem from a safety standpoint, but what do I do about this taking things and hiding them? What about the other less noxious chemicals such as hand soap and shampoo. When will it be safe to put them back down where they are convenient?

4 Years Old

2010-07-09T14:16:00.012-05:00

It's hard to believe, but my baby girl turned 4 years old on the 6th. The time has simply flew by more quickly than I could have ever imagined. As I say every year, it seems like just yesterday we were talking with Tiffany and praying that maybe just maybe this would be our baby girl and now here we are 4 years later, parents of a high energy, super smart, opinionated, and beautiful girl. When I think back over the past year I am filled with wonder over all she has accomplished. She started preschool and learned how to successfully become part of a classroom. She made friends who not only wanted to see her, but who she wanted to see too! She learned to pedal her tricycle and then moved on to a big girl bike with training wheels. She learned to swing on a swing by herself, starting off from completely still to pumping herself so high the chains on the swing set chink! She climbs, runs, and jumps with reckless abandon. Her vocabulary is ever increasing and she's begun to ponder some of the deeper questions in life such as "Why can't we see the Earth spin?" And the reading, oh the reading. She's gone from level 1 readers to independently reading an entire chapter out of the chapter book The Boxcar Children. She devours every book she can get her hands on and can read just about any book you put in front of her. Of course, there have been some less than stellar developments over the past year such as increased levels of defiance and screaming, learning to use hateful and hurtful words, and increased aggression. Still on a whole this year has been full of accomplishments to celebrate. And celebrate we did. We rocked it out at Chuck -E-Cheese and Hannah actually gave the big mouse a high five and stood right next to him for a picture. For her actual birthday dinner she requested we go out to dinner at On the Border and she was delighted when the servers sang her happy birthday and brought her a brownie and ice cream.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl! Though they've sometimes been hard, you've given me the best four years of my life so far!

Photo Notes: These were taken at Hannah's preschool "Graduation" (though she and several other of the students aren't actually graduating and moving on to kindergarten!)

Parent Teacher Conference

2010-06-21T15:49:00.006-05:00

Today was Hannah's second round of parent teacher conferences at Crayons, but the first one with her new teacher. This was the second time I'd met with her teacher as well as sending her a VERY long and detailed letter about my concerns. Once again I really wasn't pleased about how things went at the conference. The teacher seemed eager to try to tell me the things I wanted to hear about how she was challenging Hannah and about how if there were incidents of hitting and kicking between Hannah and other students she would have been letting us know, but her words just don't match up to what we are actually experiencing. Hannah reports daily physical spats with her best buddy Elisa (those two have a definte love/hate relationship) which her teacher denies. She says they argue, but other than the one time they informed us about, it never gets physical. Hannah reports otherwise and I emailed Elisa's mom and apparently Elisa reports otherwise as well. Something seems amiss here to me. Then there's the issue of what academics Hannah is actually participating in. The teacher reports that Hannah is producing all sorts of products of learning, but yet I can count on my fingers the number of times ANY sort of paper or project has come home in the 3 months Hannah's been in that class and at least two of those times occured when her current teacher was on vacation and a sub was in charge! It just doesn't jive to me. All of this really serves to confirm to me that we're making the right choice to homeschool Hannah next fall. We still haven't decided if we are going to have her continue to attend her current class one day a week or not. I'm still on the fence about that. I would hate for her to lose those relationships she's formed with the kids in her class, but at the same time I don't want to be paying for something that's really not benefitting Hannah as much as something else I could be doing. You know what I mean?

Hannah's birthday party is coming up this weekend and she's very excited about it. This year she will actually have quite a few kids there. I think there are 11 kids already that have RSVP that they are coming. I have to hand it to them, the kids in Hannah's old class are super great about birthday parties. They almost always attend. We've had less luck getting any RSVPs one way or the other with the kids in her new class, but I guess that is to be expected since those parents don't know Hannah and I don't even really know those kids. Many of them I can't even pick out of the room and I sure as certain wouldn't know their parents if I saw them. Since Hannah has such an early drop off and late pick up time I just don't cross paths with a lot of other parents. We'll see if the next few days bring any more RSVPs, but if not Hannah's got a full house already and it should be fun. I've got the goody bags all ready to go (no fish included!) and hopefully they will be a big hit. I'm a bit fanatical about giving children gifts. I ALWAYS give a book. A kid can never have too many good quality children's books in my opinion and most kids don't have nearly enough exposure to good literature as I'd like. So, I do my part and I hand out books. I bet you can't guess what's in the goody bags? It was my goal to make these useful. If I was going to spend money to give out goody bags then I wanted it to be stuff that wasn't just going to end up in the trash or give the kids a sugar high. So, I bought cheap sand buckets at Walmart to use as the "bag", after all we do live on the coast and filled them with books I found at one of our local bargain stores and like new ones from my favorite second hand store. I didn't pay more than $0.99 for any of the things in the goody bags, but I think the pads of note paper, crayons, markers, stencils, and of course books should be so much nicer than the stuff you normally see and I doubt it was much more expensive either (especially not the way I shop!) . Maybe it'll even keep them bus on a car trip this summer!

Evan and Catherine

2010-06-18T15:30:00.022-05:00

This is a bit late in coming, but we have a new addition to our family. A few weeks ago Hannah attended a birthday party for one of her classmates. The theme was a carnival and they had all sorts of carnival type games and carnival type snacks (cotton candy, corn dogs, popcorn, etc). In lieu of the traditional goody bag for the guests (which I never understood anyway) the hostess instead gave out goldfish to her guests! While I appreciate the sentiment and think it was an awfully creative idea, certainly better than the junk that usually comes in those goody bags that goes directly in the trash, a fish is a living thing! You have to take care of it, feed it, have someplace to house it, etc. We had none of the appropriate supplies and had to go out the next day and get fish products to welcome our new family members. Oh, and did I forget to mention that we received not one, but two fish? Anyway, Hannah decided to name her fish Evan and Catherine. We went out the next day after church and got a tank and some food and went to work getting set up to be fish owners. Unfortunately Catherine never made it to the tank. In fact, she didn't even last 24 hours! I expected Hannah to be quite upset about it, but really she took it pretty well. Evan is now happily living in his new tank is actually quite the entertaining fish. I have never seen a goldfish as hyper as he is. Maybe we got a fish with SPD! You should see this fish eat too. When you drop the food in the tank he dives and grabs at it like he hasn't eaten in a week! It actually makes a splash of water at the top of the tank! Do you think this means we aren't feeding him enough? We're giving him the amount of food the container indicates. All in all, this hasn't turned out to be as bad as I thought it would be, but just in case you are thinking about giving out fish at your next birthday party, I'd advise against it unless you want to make enemies out of all the parents!

Last weekend we had our second house guests of the season. Our friends Sarah, Jason, Evelyn, and baby Vivian came to stay for a few days. Let me tell you, Hannah was PUMPED about getting to see her friend Evelyn. She counted down the days on the calendar and tirelessly told every person she came in contact with that they were coming. We had a great time during their visit, but I think Hannah was definitely ready for a break when it was time for them to leave. Having to be "on" 24/7 is hard for anyone, but it was next to impossible for Hannah. She needs plenty of alone time throughout her day and while they were here she didn't get any at all. Even though I was constantly on her about being a good friend, admonishing her for not playing with Evelyn, and pushing her to be social with our guests I think she did pretty well all things considering. Sometimes I just expect too much from her. I have to remember that she's not like other kids even when she appears to be doing ok. It sure was sweet to see those two playing together though. It's been way too long. Those two know each other like the backs of their own hands still, even though they haven't seen each other since November! I think that's pretty amazing. One funny thing was watching Hannah try to engage Evelyn in play. Hannah absolutely had to be the one directing the play at all times. It was like she was a little mini CEO. I kept hoping Evelyn would put her foot down and say "NO! I want to play this," because Hannah desperately needs a reminder that it's not all about her, but unfortunately for me Evelyn was a total sweetheart and went along with whatever Hannah wanted to do.

Here's a random funny Hannah story for you that happened tonight. I was sitting at the table looking at a magazine that had just come in the mail and was trying to get Hannah to go upstairs to get her PJs, but Hannah was stalling. She saw an advertisement for the Sears Portrait Studio that had fallen out of the magazine and she said, "What's this?" I told her it was just an advertisement. She replied, "For babies?" I absentmindedly said yes, thinking that she meant baby pictures. She then piped up, "Then we don't need this because we don' t want to get a baby right?" I about died! Kyle called down from upstairs, "You've got to put that on the blog." She totally thought when I said it was an advertisement and that is was for babies that I meant it was for people to BUY BABIES! If that wasn't what a lot of people feel adoption is I would think this was even more funny than I already do, but since I wanted to be sure she knew that you can't buy a person I explained to her that it was for baby pictures and that babies enter families either by being born to their mommy or being adopted, not by being bought.

Hannah's behavior lately has taken a turn for the worse. Besides defiance that is like none I have ever seen before, she's getting more and more physically and verbally aggressive. She shouts things like, "I hate you! You're not my mommy anymore! and I'm not going to be your kid!" at me routinely and hits, kicks, and spits pretty much daily. The other day the library curse struck again. Our library has removed it's check-out desk and replaced it with all self check out machines. Don't get me started on how much I hate this set up. That's for another post. Anyway, we were trying to check out the books and Hannah wanted to do it. She had a book up on the scanner, but she was trying to swipe the wrong bar code so it wasn't working. I tried to help her turn the book around so that the correct bar code would scan underneath the laser and she totally flipped out and chucked the book nearly 10 feet across the lobby. It was a miracle it didn't hit anyone. I looked like she was trying out for Olympic Discus! It's pretty much impossible to enforce a timeout outside of our home anymore so I did the only thing I could do and I told Hannah we were leaving the library right now and that we would not be able to check out the rest of our books because of the way she was acting. She went ballistic. First she kicked me. Then she hit me. Then she took off running. Leaving the books behind I took off sprinting after her and caught her. She threw herself to the ground and desperately tried to wrench her hand out of mine and would not walk. Instead she continued to scream, kick, and hit. I had no choice but to pick her up and carry her out of the library. She was thrashing around kicking and hitting and pushing on my neck so hard I could barely breathe. Several times she was flailing around so crazy that I dropped her. Eventually we made it to the van . I'm not even sure how that happened and then I had to try to get her into her booster seat. That was not easy, but eventually I got her buckled in and climbed into the driver's seat. Hannah still screaming and kicking away, I started to back out of my parking space when I heard a click. She had unbuckled her seat belt and was attempting to get out of her seat! I was shocked. This was a totally new behavior. I reprimanded her and buckled her back up, but she would not leave the belt latched. I had to hold it in place which unfortunately put me in arms reach of her hitting. She raged in the car for about 15 minutes (which felt like 15 hours!) before she started screaming, "GO! JUST GO! I WANT TO GO HOME!" I tried to explain to her that I couldn't leave the parking lot until I was certain she was going to stay buckled in her seat but that just made her more angry so we had about 10 more minutes of her raging about wanting to go home. Eventually she just started sobbing and wasn't fighting me as much so I took a chance at getting back in my seat. We made it home in one piece, but I was a nervous wreck the entire drive worried that she would unbuckle while I was driving. I don't know what it is about the library, but we seem to have a knack for causing huge scenes there. Before long they're going to ban us from coming!

New Shoes

2010-06-04T11:51:00.011-05:00

Mama dropped the ball BIG TIME.

Last week I figured it was time to go get Hannah some summer shoes. I thought the ones she wore all winter might be getting tight and they really weren't appropriate for the beach and other summer type activities. Due to the Great Flood of March 2010, all of our local department stores as well as my beloved Stride Rite are closed due to the several feet of water that filled our mall. Hannah needed new shoes though and I couldn't wait until August to see which of the stores in the mall would be reopening once the main building reopened. So off we went in search of somewhere to buy shoes. Unfortunately, because of Hannah's AFO's (braces) I can't just pick up a pair of shoes at Target that look like they might be the right size. Well, I guess I could, but I'm not comfortable doing that. Payless and the other discount shoe stores are pretty much the same way. Finding someone there with knowledge of how to properly fit a shoe is rare and I'd never trust them to know how to fit a shoe to a AFO. Fortunately I had seen a little shoe store in a shopping plaza we sometimes frequent that I thought I remembered seeing children's shoes displayed in the window at. That would be our first stop. I prayed we'd be successful. Luck was on our side and the store did sell children's shoes, high quality ones at that, for pretty reasonable prices. I was willing to pay more than the Target price in exchange for the salesman's knowledge of how to fit those shoes to Hannah's AFO. I was so pleased with how he interacted with Hannah and he really knew what he was talking about as far as the braces went and how to fit them. He even commented that he thought her AFO's might be getting small too. This guy was awesome. I was riding high until he actually measured her foot. The shoes Hannah walked into the store with were a size 10 1/2. He measured her foot at a 12! OMG! I had been letting her run around in shoes that were a size and a half too small for who knows how long. I totally felt like the worst mother ever! We manged to find a pair of summer style shoes that worked with her AFO's and fit her foot and when we had settled on the style, he even remembered Hannah's favorite color and went back to check if any shoes in the style we had chosen were in that color! They were and he quickly exchanged the pair Hannah was wearing with the coveted purple Keens and we were done. Except for the little snafu about shoe size, it was the most enjoyable shoe shopping experience I have ever had. I'll definitely be buying all our family's shoes there from now on.

As we were walking out of the store Hannah decided she wanted to check out the big girl bikes on the sidewalk in front of the store next door. I told her we needed to drop off her shoe box and old shoes in the van first. As we were walking back across the parking lot to look at the bikes Hannah spotted a lady, probably in her mid 40s, headed to one of the other shops. Hannah shouted across the parking lot at the woman, "Hey! I got new shoes! Do you want to see my new shoes? They are purple." The lady, who obviously never had children of her own, gave us a disgusted look, ignored Hannah's question, and kept on walking. Hannah was so confused. She wanted to know why the lady had not acknowledged her. That was a tough question for me to field, but I did my best as we continued to walk to the sidewalk. Just as we reached the sidewalk we passed another lady sitting on a bench outside the store waiting for the bus. She looked right at Hannah and smiled and said, "Well, I like your new shoes. Purple is a beautiful color." Hannah just beamed and chattered on about her new shoes with the lady for several minutes. I was so grateful for that woman being kind enough to let Hannah have her moment to share her excitement about her shoes, especially after her confusion about being shot down earlier. I have no idea who she was, but I hope she slept well that night knowing she made one little girl very happy.

Photo Notes: Yet another fabulous white board masterpiece and pictures from Hannah helping Kyle plant a garden in our backyard. Doesn't she look a little like Paul Bunyan swinging his axe or John Henry with his sledge in that second picture!?!?

School Options for the Fall

2010-05-29T21:49:00.023-05:00

Since moving up to the 4 year old room at her preschool, we have been less than thrilled with Hannah's new teacher. It's hard to put a definite finger on what bothers us, but it's definitely not been as positive of an experience as Hannah had in her 3 year old classroom. She doesn't seem to connect with her current teachers at all. In fact, in the mornings I usually drop her off before her teachers arrive so she goes into the 3 year old room until they get there. On those days she separates fairly easily and is welcomed warmly. When we arrive slightly later and the assistant teacher is already at school Hannah has a much harder time with me leaving. She clings to my leg, says she doesn't want to stay at school, and doesn't get noticed much by the teacher. There's not even a mention of anything like, "Do you want to run an errand with me Hannah?" or "Why don't we read this book together," to distract her from my leaving. She's left completely on her own to work it out. In her old room I got the sense that the teachers truly loved Hannah. They were concerned about her best interests. I just don't get that sense in her new room. I'm sure the teachers care about doing a good job and are kind to the children, but I don't get the sense that they really care about Hannah as an individual child. She's just another kid in the class to them is the feeling I get. I spoke with the teacher about our concerns for Hannah and our hopes for how her school experience would continue to go. I even sent her a LONG follow up email with more detailed information about Hannah and some tips about what works best for us at home with Hannah. We pretty much received the standard, "yeah, yeah I know what I'm doing and I don't need to do anything differently for your child." response. She was polite, but was pretty clear that she knew how to deal with kids with SPD and that she did not feel any need to adjust the difficulty of some of her activities to appropriately challenge Hannah because her lesson plans are all open ended enough for her to get the challenge she needs. The problem is that she's not getting the challenge that she needs. She never brings anything tangible home at all. There are no products of her learning. No art projects, writing attempts, cut and paste activities, etc. She still hasn't read anything at all in the classroom that the teacher is aware of and she will not encourage her to do so. Though I know that she does occasionally read to herself and other children during free play time in the afternoons after her teacher has left. It's all just very frustrating. As Hannah's academic abilities continue to progress at lightning speed and as we learn more about the kindergarten curriculum and environment at the public school we have become very worried about what we should do with Hannah when she turns five as far as schooling options. We've actually struggled pretty mightily about what to do for her this coming fall, but I think we've finally made our decision. We've decided to home school Hannah (using a kindergarten curriculum since she's more than ready already) this fall as a trial run to see if this is even a feasible option for kindergarten when she's five. If things go well we'll home school her for kindergarten (her five year old year) as well and then reevaluate where to go from there once she's old enough for first grade. If homeschooling is an epic fail then we really won't have lost anything since she technically doesn't have to be in any kind of school yet and she could already breeze through the academic portions of kindergarten so she won't be behind in that respect. To keep her social skills progressing we plan to enroll her in several classes at the local YMCA and let her join the local youth soccer program. She might even continue to go to her current preschool one day a week so that she can keep up the relationships she has already formed with the kids there, but I'm not sure if we'll go that route or not. Of course we'll continue to do all the fun stuff we like to do like go to the beach, the museum and the zoo, library story time, etc and look for as many play dates as we can get. I really think the social aspects of homeschooling will be Hannah's biggest challenge, but I'm hopeful that we can circumvent them with some good planning and a consistent routine as far as classes, standing play dates, story times, etc. I'm both excited and nervous at the same time about starting up homeschooling. I'm excited about all I can teach Hannah now that she's ripe for learning and happy about the extra time we'll have to do fun stuff, but I'm also worried that I won't be able to replicate the institutional structure that traditional preschool/elementary school provides. I guess we'll see how it goes. Like I said before, this is why we're doing a trial run now.

Today I was hoping to kick off our three day weekend by spending time at the beach or going to the zoo, but Hannah came home from school yesterday with a fever (102.5 degrees) and it didn't break over the night. Today it's been hovering in the 103. 5 degrees range. So much for fun outings. She's pretty congested, but other than that and the fever she has no other real symptoms. It appears to just be a cold. Let's hope it clears up before the weekend is over so that we can do at least a little bit of fun stuff.

Despite feeling crummy, Hannah managed to bless me with two very interesting conversations today. The first occurred while we were getting dressed this morning. She was stalling and wallering around on the floor when all of a sudden she sat up and asked, "Mommy, do you know about silver panels?" Confused, I replied, "Do you mean panels that are the color silver?" She said, "Yes, do you know how they work?" This confused me even more. What in the heck were silver panels? So, I asked her, "Hannah where did you learn about silver panels?" "From Curious George," she replied. It was then that the light bulb immediately clicked on inside my head. I said, "Do you mean solar panels?" She brightened and practically shouted, "Yeah, solar panels!" I remembered that about a month ago we had watched an episode of Curious George where too many air conditioners caused a black out in the city, but the Professor powered a generator at the museum using solar panels. A month ago! Apparently she'd been mulling the episode around in her head and wanted to know how solar panels worked and to find out if we had any! We talked in length about what little knowledge I had about solar panels (thankfully it was more than she knew and enough to satisfy her curiosity!) and I was able to show her the solar powered calculator we had and we experimented with it by placing it in the direct light and then hiding the collection panels from the light and watching it shut off. It was really fun.

The second conversation started as a discussion about germs, spurred I'm sure by the fact that she is sick. She was asking about whether or not germs had mouths and if they were monsters (thanks to a book she has that shows a cartoon picture of a germ) and what they looked like. I explained that germs are too little for us to see with our eyes and that I don't really know what they look like, but that different germs probably each look different just like different people do. I told her that in order to see what a germ looked like you need to use a microscope. At first she didn't know what a microscope was, but after I described one she piped up with, "Oh, like at the museum. I need one of those. I wish I had a really big microscope attached to my eyes so that could see really little things really big." On and on and on she went about wanting a microscope and about how she wanted one attached to her eyes. Maybe I'll have to get her some child sized binoculars. That's not exactly the same, but it's somewhat close and probably a better choice than a microscope. I'm not sure she's quite ready for a microscope, a magnifying glass maybe, but not a microscope. I do appreciate her desire though. I had a microscope as a kid (a much OLDER kid mind you) and I loved it. I had a blast preparing my own slides and examining the premade ones that came with it.

Photo Notes: In the first picture you see Hannah proudly displaying a picture she drew of our family. Pictured are Hannah, Daddy, Grandpa and Mommy, plus a flower. I'm the person on the top left that actually has a separate head and body. Notice the baby growing in my tummy. No, I'm not pregnant. It's just wishful thinking on her part and a reaction I think to a friend who recently had a baby. There's been a lot of references to a baby in my tummy lately!

The rest of the pictures are Hannah playing in the sprinkler in our backyard.

Big Girl Bike

2010-05-21T07:43:00.012-05:00

Hannah got her first big girl bike the other day. She was really pumped about it, but when it came down to actually riding the new bike she was quite nervous. A kind coworker of Kyle's gave us his daughter's outgrown Dora bike complete with training wheels and a horn. The horn is Hannah's favorite part. It's one of those that has a metal funnel and a rubber ball at one end that you squeeze. It sounds like the horns clowns use. She blows that horn A LOT. Last night we finally convinced her to give the bike a try. I think she was nervous about being higher up and the wobbly feeling of the bike going back and forth between the two training wheels made her uncomfortable. But this new bike (new to us anyway) fits her so much better than her tricycle. Even though she's just recently gotten the hang of pedaling and steering her trike, she's much too big for it even at it's most adjusted setting. Her legs are just too long. The new bike solves that problem and should be much easier for her to ride once she gains some confidence. Kyle followed along beside her with his hand on her shoulder for awhile and then was eventually able to let go and move quite a ways away from her. Most of the time she spends looking down at the ground so we know she's still unsure about it, but once she got going she seemed to really enjoy it. She even honked her horn to say hello to our neighbor who was out working in his yard as she rode by. That was so cute! So, here for your viewing enjoyment is a photo essay of the maiden voyage of the big girl bike!

Daddy hold me. I'm scared.

I've got you.

I've still got you.

Dad slowly moves away. The head is still looking straight down.

Look! I'm doing it all by myself! I'm even mostly looking where I'm going!