We are Still Alive

Ok, so I know it's been almost 3 months since I've posted, but I've got a good excuse.  We've been busy!  Since my last post we went from a family of 4 to a family of 7.  Boy has our life changed!  Hannah has done remarkably well with the change.  She now has a roommate for the first time in her life and has gone from only to oldest to middle child very quickly and with little fuss.  The biggest problem she has had is that the new girls lie A LOT and also tell "stories" that Hannah instantly recognizes as baloney and she just can't handle it.  She insists they are wrong/lying and then a huge argument ensues and she can't let it go and escalates and then things get physical.  Not ideal, but then we expected much worse. 

Since I last wrote Hannah finished Kindergarten, learned to ride her bike without training wheels, and ditched the back on her booster.  It's been a big few months for her.  Instead of try to fill you in with words I think I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

Big Girl Bike

Riding a bike has been a struggle for Hannah from the very beginning. As a toddler she couldn't figure out how to keep her feet on the pedals of a push bike and then it took her almost 2 years longer than her peers to learn how to pedal a trike (long after she was far too big for one) and keep her feet on the pedals and steer at the same time. Once we moved onto regular bikes with training wheels she was already pretty much too big for most of the bikes that are sold with training wheels. We got the biggest one we could, but her confidence was shakey at best. Last summer everything came to a head and bike riding became torture rather than fun. She was too big for her bike, too heavy for the training wheels, and too scared to ride with even the tiniest bit of wiggle. So, we bit the bullet and took her to an actual bike shop. They fitted her for a correctly sized bike (way bigger than the one she had) and installed heavy duty training wheels on it. Hannah is now flying around the neighborhood on her bike. She's throwing fits when I ask her to get off or tell her I can't take her out to ride right this second. I never thought I'd see the day when my little girl actually WANTED to ride a bike, but it's happened and I couldn't be more proud of her!

In other news, more big changes are up for the Spontak house. We've got 3 new foster care placements coming to stay with us sometime this week or the beginning of next. Two of the girls are very close to Hannah's age so this should be interesting. She's not really had to share any treasured possessions (other than mom and dad!) with the Hurricane since he's too little to play with most of her stuff, but all that's about to change. They'll even be sharing clothes since the older two wear the exact same size as she does. I'll keep everyone posted on how the acclimation process goes for the entire household. It's hard for me to believe that in the time span of 2 months I will have gone from a mama of 1 to a mama of 5! Crazy! At least that's as full as our house can get for awhile since our van can't haul any more than that! However, I'll let you in on a little secret that even Kyle doesn't know yet, I've already looked into what 8 passenger vehicles are out there! Insane I know, but the 3 that are coming have a 4th sibling that we don't have room to transport and that just breaks my heart. BUT, for now, a family of 7 is as big as we can get.

Photo Notes: Notice the color coordination of the bike and helmet. I don't think that was on purpose, we've had the helmet for a long time, but I can't be entirely certain! Notice how far way she is from anyone that could possibly save her if she started to fall in that last bike picture! That's a BIG deal for her! The last two pictures I just couldn't resist adding on. They're from a daddy/daughter wresting session one weekend.

March

I have a feeling March is going to be a rough month. Kyle has already traveled out of state once and he is schedule to go out of state (and out of country) at least 3 more times this month. Hannah gets all out of sorts when he is gone and even the toddler, who I will hereby refer to as the Hurricane on this blog, seems to be affected by his absence. When he's gone I don't sleep well and that affects my patience to boot. It's a vicious cycle! We also have a 6 day weekend coming up this week. Hannah's school's "spring break" is actually 2 days off at the end of one week, the weekend, and then 2 days off at the beginning of the next week. The change in routine and the lack of structure on breaks really throws Hannah off as well. Add to that the fact that Kyle will also be gone for half of that break and we're prepping for disaster!

On a positive note, the door alarm is working. We do not believe Hannah has managed to leave her room even one time without our knowledge and that goes a LONG way to easing my fears about the medication stealing. There's still always the daytime that she could go for it, but at least I'll be awake and alert to her absence. I try not to let her out of my sight for very long at a time.

We had her latest IEP meeting and got things set up for next year. They even added some specific and measurable academic goals to ensure that she's not being allowed to simply slide by not learning since she already meets grade level standards. They identified that her reading level was at the beginning of 3rd grade level and her reading goal is to be at the beginning of 4th grade level by the end of first grade. I think that's actually a very ambitious goal since 3rd grade is where reading gets tough. You stop learning to read and start reading to learn. Comprehension and vocabulary knowledge as well as life experiences become a bigger part of reading than decoding and those are the things she sometimes struggles with. Her math goal is to be at the end of 2nd grade level by the end of the year. I actually think that is a skimpy goal since she's mastered much of 2nd grade material already. She's only doing first grade curriculum because there are a few holes in her knowledge on a select set of concepts. Her overall knowledge and computation ability is already into the 2nd grade level now. She continues to have her various social skill and behavior goals and now has OT goals as well since that was finally added to her IEP after the full evaluation the team did a few months ago. In general, I'm quite pleased with her IEP and I think it should set her up for success next year. The biggest factor will be her teacher. The wrong teacher could be her demise. This year the principal hand picked her teacher and it was a perfect fit. I HOPE they do the same thing next year.

Hannah's ability to spell and write complicated sentences has really blossomed the past month. I'm quite impressed by her progress. They do a lot of writing in her classroom and she does quite a bit in the resource room as well. Writing was one of her biggest weaknesses going into the school year and now I would say she's above grade level on it too!

Hannah continues to grow into her role as big sister. Jealously still abounds, but she did express to me the other day that she hopes the Hurricane gets to stay forever. She likes to play with him (in small doses) and he wakes her up every morning which she pretends to hate, but really loves! Working the behavior plan is tough with the Hurricane around, but somehow I'm making it work.

We Got In

Well, we got into the Severe Behavior Program. Now we sit on the waiting list. The wait could be months and months or it could be a few weeks. We don't really know. I'm just thankful we got in. I was so worried that, as scary as it's been here lately, it wouldn't be bad enough to qualify us for the program, but that it was too bad to be helped by the regular psychologist. They've prescribed a 3 day a week treatment to start with for 1 1/2 hours a day. This means that we won't have to pull her out of school, at least not completely depending on the time slot we can get into. The doctor assured me that they have ways of recreating the behaviors we see at home in the clinic, but every once in awhile they have a kid that plays "nice" and won't repeat what they normally do. He said in that case they wouldn't be like the mechanic who, when you take your car to them when it's making that funny noise and it doesn't make the noise for them, tells you there is nothing they can do if it doesn't make the noise when they drive it. He said that if she won't display her behaviors in the clinic then they will put cameras up in our home and tape the behaviors. He said in no uncertain circumstances would they discharge us from the program until her behaviors are actually better. That just made me feel so good. I feel like so many professionals have either not believed what we have said, have given up on us, or just passed the buck and said "here, this person can help you better". I'm really hoping this is it.

In other news, the door alarm has arrived and is installed. For now, it is working. We are pretty sure we have known every time she has opened her door and so far she has not tried to sneak out and do something scary. The job card system doesn't seem to be working, but since we have no better solution until we get into the behavior program we'll keep at it.

Ok, so it's been a few days since I started this post and we just got back from a workshop hosted at Hannah's school by a business that runs a behavior day program for kids with problem behaviors. We wanted to go just to hear the information, but it also counted as continuing education that we have to do to keep our foster care license. The high school child development class and their teachers provided free childcare while the workshop was going on. The ironic part was that as the workshop was going on and they were listing off all sorts of problem behaviors Kyle and I would turn and look at each other and say "check!" Hannah had them all! Then, when I went to pick up the kiddos from the childcare room, both the high school students and their teachers were raving about how wonderful both of the kiddos' behavior was! Really? It'd been a tough day for both of them. Too bad that behavior couldn't last. Hannah made it home, but then fell completely apart. She'd had a rough day before at school too. It can be so frustrating that it's the comfortable situations that allow the acting out instead of the uncomfortable ones. Sigh. . . .

Never Dull

Life it seems is never dull around here. You know how you read something and you think, "Wow! That's crazy/funny," but it's only funny because it's not happening to you and you know it'd never happen to you because things like that always happen to someone else? Well, that's my life. I'M the one who those things happen to! Kyle's been gone on a business trip to Germany for the past week and the kiddos (mostly Hannah) decided to really give it to me while I was doing my single mommy gig. Before even a day had elapsed Hannah had cut her hair again! I believe this is the 7th, maybe 8th time she's done this. This time she decided to cut the bangs she had created the last time she got ahold of the scissors completely off. She has maybe an 1/8 on an inch right at the front of her forehead left. Then she got into the baby wipes and scattered them about the toddler's room for the dog to shred. Seriously, shouldn't that phase have passed when she was like 2? Next she decided to douse the cat in baby shampoo. Let me just say that the cat was both angry and humiliated. I still haven't managed to get it all rinsed out of him yet and I'm covered in scratches from the attempts. It's quite difficult to hold a cat by the scruff while also wielding the sprayer and trying to scrub the shampoo out. Finally, a few nights ago she figured out how to pick her door lock (the door alarm still isn't in yet so we HAD to switch the door knob around while I was here alone) by prying a nail out of the wall and using that to pop the lock! She did it several times one night before I finally figured out what she was doing and where the nails were coming from. Now all pictures and nails are removed from her room. It's starting to look pretty bare in there! Oh, and just to be sure I preserve everything, a few days before Kyle left Hannah was supposed to be doing a job card chore. I had to supervise the toddler so she was left alone for periods of 5 minutes at a time. After one of those 5 minute intervals I went to check on her and it was like all heck had broke loose in the basement! Paint was smeared on the walls in several places. The paint bottles themselves were coated in paint and then doused with glitter. The dollhouse roof had been repainted. The floor was covered in glitter. There was paint on the carpet. AND she had left a trap for me of a pool of paint on the bathroom floor for me to step in and track all over the place. This was actually the 2nd trap she had set for me. The first one she made a trail of Q-tips leading to behind her chair to try to fake me into thinking she was hiding behind there instead of in my bathroom getting into my body spray. I'd say I made a fatal parenting error by allowing her to read Roald Dahl's book Matilda!

In other news, the school system finally did thier full evaluation of Hannah for her IEP eligibility. The information the psychologist gave was no surprise. We already knew she is freaking brilliant. He mentioned that she has some executive function deficits, but that at the moment they really aren't much of an issue due to her age, but will most likely become more of an issue as she gets older. That was the first I had heard of executive function problems. We actually thought we had managed to dodge that bullet. I guess not. The big kicker was the OT's report. They assessed her fine motor skills, her sensory system, and her vision. I had no idea that OT's dabbled in the vision arena, but apparently they do. Her fine motor skills were perfect. No surprise there. She showed significant sensory issues. Also not surprising. What was surprising though was that the OT felt that she had some visual processing problems. She said that her two eyes do not work together correctly and that that could be the cause of some of her hyperactiveness. She also said it could cause reading problems down the road when the type gets smaller and the white space on the page lessens. She recommended she have an evaluation by a behavioral optometrist for possible vision therapy. UGH! That's all we need, more therapy. I read up on vision therapy since I'd never really heard much about it and I can't say that I'm convinced. A lot of what I've read seems a bit like voodoo science and there seems to be no real evidence to back it up. We are definitely going to have to do some thinking about that before we jump into something else. Anyone else know anything about vision therapy or had your child do it?

Finally, Wednesday we have Hannah's evaluation at the severe behavior clinic. Apparently, even if she does qualify for the program, we will be put on a waiting list for services. It could be quite awhile before treatment could begin. Sigh. . . .

Hannah seems to be settling into sisterhood well enough. She's had her moments of jealousy and still gets quite clingy, but I see her enjoying our new little one as well. Whenever something annoys her, such as crying, I try to put it into the perspective of how she used to do it when she was a baby. That seems to help a bit. She's been very curious about how she was when she was the baby's age. We've watched some old home movies of her at that age and then compared the two of them. Boy was that a shock. She wasn't nearly as physically competent, but boy was she a lot more verbal!

Photo Notes: All of these pictures are from December. We've got swim lessons, Christmas, and working in the shop with Pap.

Door Alarm

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

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.

Cats Land on Their Feet!

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

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

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.