I Will NEVER Leave Home Again

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!

New Do!

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.

Pleasant

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!

Karate

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.