Foster Further

 I like to think it's a sign of healing that I'm beginning to get my sense of humor back. It's been two long years but I'm finally, finally, starting to feel more relaxed and fun around my younger kids. One thing that's helping is finally really discussing what I see with my husband. Cuz look! He just discovered there's a problem! Coincidentally, that discovery came after spending more time with a certain someone! What a surprise that enforced proximity has led to new awareness! Maybe two years of being the prime (sole) caregiver led me to make observations not available to those spending less than 5 minutes a day with certain someone. Maybe I was right all along and while dismissing all my complaints sure was convenient, it didn't actually help! Well, now I've gone past humor and into snarky. I apologize.  I truly am grateful my, "I'm leaving home until you decide to parent ALL the children" stunt last summer paid off. Only 3 days gone an...

This week's theme is...jealousy!  It's here! It's there! It's everywhere!  Can you be jealous of a sock?  Can you be jealous of a rock?  Can you be jealous of your brother and your sister and your father and your mother?  Yes! Yes, you can!  You can be jealous here and there and everywhere!  You can...drive your mother bat shit crazy with your incessant, unceasing, unrelenting, whining and crying and whinging and pouting every moment of the live long day. She is never, ever grateful. She is always, always wanting more. On the car ride home from school she starts telling me that other kids at school have little stuffed animal toys clipped to their backpacks but she has nothing clipped to her backpack.  I wait till we get home. I wait till we're alone and I gave her a favorite snack to eat so our chat can feel special and cozy and non-judgmental. I explain things simply: other people will always have things we don't have. We can never buy enough thi...

Two days ago the most potentially dangerous thing that's ever happened at our house occurred. Jane opened the gate to the goat pen and let them out so they had access to where the three little kids were playing unsupervised (I was inside making dinner). Couple facts...the two goats are Nigerian Dwarf and only 18 inches tall at the shoulder. Yet both are so strong and adept at head-butting that they've knocked me to the ground before (with a sneak attack at the back of the knees). A month ago Kate wasn't listening to me while I was walking the goats on leashes and she got too close--one of the goats hit her square in the belly and, literally, sent her flying through the air and knocked the wind out of her. If I hadn't had the goat on the leash her next move would've been to put her head into Kate's body and kneel her front legs while she ground Kate into the dirt with all the force of her rock-hard skull. It's a brutal move that can kill a small animal. Or ...

After our bonding session at the cottage a few weeks ago I gave Grandma our last name and address. Seven months of getting to know her. Building trust. Her convincing us she came unattached, without her son's presence in the girls' lives. It, truly, felt like jumping off a cliff. Knowledge given can not be taken away. But Theo convinced me that it was in the girls' best interest to make Grandma a true member of the family. And obviously she has to be able to come to our house in order to be that. I'm a multi-tasker. I figured out that if she came over Labor Day weekend, when we do our annual scramble to finish up yard and house jobs that'd been neglected all summer, then she could take the girls to the park to get them out of our hair while we worked. And she'd get her very first alone time with them. Win-win. But, ugh, so much trust. I keep failing to anticipate how much emotional work will have to go into every event. I waited to tell the girls till ...

When I look at the whole journey I can see that things are getting better. Our family is settling into the new normal of five kids, including three toddlers. I'm settling into managing the household demands of groceries, meals, laundry, baths, bedtimes, etc. Theo and I have figured out that I need way more support than ever before and how to provide that. The big boys have carved out their zones and we are intentional about preserving their interests and identities. The girls are truly becoming less anxious and more at home here every day. So many behaviors have come and gone. The negative behaviors that remain are less severe. Progress has been slow but it has also been steady. Kate has completely attached. At our family visit two days ago she cried when I walked away to buckle James into his carseat first and didn't want to stay with Grandma, as I'd intended. She calls me mama and acts towards me exactly as my bio children did when they were her age. I feel like she...

When my husband was in college there was a weird guy on the floor who would sit in the common room and stare at people. He wasn't reading a book or doing homework, or even pretending to, he just sat there and watched other people's social lives with a full-on, unblinking stare. It was creepy. But then he was a sociology major so maybe it was all a big experiment. They nicknamed him "The Stairmaster" as in, stare-master. There is something positively annoying about being stared at.  And there is something deeply frustrating about not being able to explain why it's annoying to a young child. It feels ridiculously petty to say, "Stop looking at me!" I am, for at least the fourth time, relaunching a potty training effort for James. At 3.5 he is way past due. He's dry for long periods of time and obviously able to physically control his body...but until now he's lacked the vocabulary and comprehension skills to understand what was required. All ...