Transistion

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.

Operation Mommy-Mart

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!

Dogs, Humans, and Wairies

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

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!

Leaps

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

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?

I'm Fine With That

So Hannah totally sucked the wind right out of my sails the other day. As many of you know, she's a spirited child and we've struggled to come up with the right method to manage her discipline. "Normal" methods didn't seem to work and we were really at a loss until we discovered the Nurtured Heart method last winter. Hannah totally "gets" the system and understands that her behavior earns her her privileges and if she doesn't follow through with good behavior then she doesn't have the credits needed to purchase her privileges. Well, the other night I had reminded Hannah multiple times that she needed to hang up her coat because she had dropped it on the floor upon returning home from school and just left it laying there all afternoon for the dog to curl up on! When it was almost bedtime and I informed her that if the coat was still on the ground when we did her credit review she would not receive full points for taking care of her coat and shoes she calmly informed me, "I'm fine with that. Mommy, I'm fine with not getting all my money." I was stunned. What was I supposed to say to that? If this crops up again, and I'm sure it will, then what am I to say? What leverage do I have if she's ok with the loss of privileges for not doing her chores or displaying appropriate behavior? I relayed this story to her OT yesterday and she said, "Wow, that's the kind of snarky comment you expect out of a teenager." She's totally right. Any suggestions? I'm really at a loss here because if the Nurtured Heart credit system ceases to work then I really don't know where to turn to.

Speaking of Nurtured Heart, Hannah did the sweetest thing yesterday and I just have to tell you about it. When she woke up from her nap she knocked on her door like always to be let out and when I opened the door she was there waiting for me with her fist tightly clenched. Before I could even say "Good Morning!" (I know it's not morning, but that's just what we say when someone wakes up around here. It works for us!) she immediately launched into a flurry of words. "I have money in my hand and it's 10 cents and I want to go to the museum and it costs 10 cents so lets go to the museum." I was once again stunned. Before knocking to get out of her room she decided what she wanted to do, checked her list of privileges to see how expensive it was, checked her piggy bank to see if she had enough money to do it, counted out the correct amount and then informed me of her choice. This girl can totally plan! Unfortunately, she had taken her nap MUCH, MUCH later than usual and by the time she finally woke up it was nearing 5pm. The museum is in Providence and takes about 15 minutes to get there. It closes at 5pm. No museum for Hannah. :( The poor thing was devastated. Huge crocodile tears welled up in her eyes and began to roll down her cheeks. She pushed her head into my stomach and sobbed. I felt so bad for her. I really wanted to be able to take her to the museum, but we just couldn't. We worked out a plan though. She will save that 10 cents. She won't spend it on anything else and on Thursday (tomorrow) we will go to the museum for our Mommy-Daughter Day. She's pretty stoked about it and I'm so proud of her that she was able to recover relatively quickly from this disappointment. That's my big girl.

Today at lunch time I'm meeting with Hannah's new preschool teacher just to touch base and try to learn how things are run in her new classroom. This new teacher isn't very good about communicating what happens in the room on a daily basis so I guess I'm going to have to step up my end and do some detective work. Adding to the problem is that I drop Hannah off at school before the "preschool" portion of the day actually starts and pick her up after the academic day has technically ended so I don't even see her teacher. In fact, I've NEVER seen her teacher. This will be my first time ever laying eyes on her. Hannah adjusts much better to the transition of going to school if she is one of the first ones to arrive and can slowly adjust to the social situation one child at a time rather than being dropped off into a group of kids that are already engaged in something. We've learned that the hard way, hence the before care drop off even though it's not needed for our schedule since I don't work out of the home. She also has a difficult time with the transition from school back to home so I have to time her pick up so that she is one of the last students leaving and there is not much going on so that she doesn't think she's missing out on anything and feels a sense of closure. She can't be the last one there though or she begins to panic. Pick up can be tricky, but I've mostly got it timed well these days and we can extract her from the building without too much pain. Fridays are another story though because they get to watch movies on Friday afternoons and there is never enough time (even if she was the last one to leave) to watch the entire movie in the time period allotted so that means she has to leave mid movie and that is not easy for her. She's a finisher. She HAS to finish the things she's started before she can move on to something else and every Friday it's a given that she's not going to be able to finish that movie. We deal with it, but it's not a pretty sight. So, wish me luck that this meeting will go well. I will be interested to see if they have noticed any of Hannah's academic strengths in the new classroom. I know they were giving her extra stuff to do in her old classroom since she was so far ahead of her peers, but I don't know if that's happening in the new room or not. I'm sure she's academically ahead of the curriculum and hopefully that was shared by her previous teacher, but who knows. I haven't been able to speak to the teacher and of course I get nothing from Hannah. According to her they play on the playground-period. I'm lucky if I get that out of her. For a girl that loves to talk, she's very closed mouth about what goes on at school. That's why teacher communication is so important for me. I like to be able to talk with her about her day and if I know a little bit about what they did I can prompt her into telling me a bit. If I have nothing to go on I'm pretty much dead in the water.

The Great Escape

So my little escape artist is at it again. Since we have a fully fenced (4ft in some places and 6 ft in others, wood not chain link) back yard and I have a window over the sink in my kitchen through which I can view the majority of the yard I often let Hannah play outside in the yard while I fix dinner. I leave the back door and kitchen window wide open so I can hear her call or scream and I make sure I can see her every 2 minutes or so. I have a difficult time opening the large heavy gate that hangs on it's hinges and drags the ground to get out of the yard so I knew it would be next to impossible for Hannah to open. In my mind there was no way for her to get out of the yard other than coming through the house and I'd be able to see that. She was safe in the yard. Earlier in the week after a particularly rough day I sent Hannah out to play while I fixed dinner. As usual I checked on her out the kitchen window every 2 minutes to be sure I could see her. Unbeknownst to me, while I wasn't watching Hannah was hatching a plan to get out of the yard. She managed to move a large heavy duty trash can (the big grey kind people keep in their garage) off our deck and across the yard over to the fence and place it up against the fence just on the other side of our rolling trash barrels. Then she used two of her sand buckets to build a flight of stairs to use to climb up to the top of the fence and then over onto the top of our other trash can. She then slid down the side of that can using the pull handle to help her. Next she got her tricycle and pulled it out to the sidewalk and was getting ready to take off down the street when I made my next check and realized I couldn't see her in the yard. I ran into the backyard and was able to see her out by the street. Instead of having remorse for what she had done, she was actually proud of herself for figuring out how to get out of the yard! I didn't think it was possible for her to get out of the yard, but this just goes to show that where there's a will there's a way and with a seriously smart, stubborn preschooler who's mad at mom there is definitely a will! She was dead set on getting the heck out of dodge! Besides being amazed at her ingenuity, I can't believe how quickly she carried out her plan. She had to have thought out all the steps in her plan before she carried it out because she only had 2 minutes to get everything in place and get out before I noticed. That's quick and takes some preplanning! What on earth am I supposed to do now? Now I have both a dog and a 3 year old that can scale the fence and escape! That means they are currently both on house arrest which is a bit of a pain. Here's to hoping that eventually I can trust them both again to turn them loose back in the yard!

Yesterday Hannah about gave me another heart attack, but this time it was because of two things she said to me. First off she told me that, and this is an exact quote, "Jesse really loves me. When he grows up and when I grow up he will be my husband and I will be his wife and we will be married." Oh my gosh! She's starting a little young don't you think? Jesse, by the way, is a little boy in her new class. Then, she followed that doosey up later in the evening after commenting that her PJs might be getting too small that she thought she was growing a baby in her tummy!