I got nothing to say but other people do

Well that is not true I have a lot of things but nothing I can really articulate this morning. I am not sure why but I am just not in the mood to write today so instead I am going to send you other places because there are other people who are way more in the mood to write than I am and some who just need a little love.

Adoption Magazine is a new Canadian Adoption Blog that is looking to fill in some of the huge gaps in connecting Canadians to great adoption resources. They are reposting some things from here, pop over and see them.

The Lark's Nest is doing a great monthly panel with some fabulous foster Mamas.

Because we are not alone on this journey go and give these Mamas some love, it has been a long week in their homes - GB's Mom, Sarah, Mama Drama, The Other Mama

Before the fabulous Megan left for Hawaii ( which was a flying nightmare and took way to long) she wrote this great post about being gay and christian, go read it, then come back and read some other things.

Are you a member at ATTACh.org, if not and you want to try it out ( great resources and ideas in their newsletters and other stuff you can only access as a member) it is half price for the rest of their fiscal year which means from now till July you can be a member for 27.00

There is a great article on Early Attachment: Leaving it's Mark Across the Lifespan on a great new resource that I found through a friend. Friends are good like that

Claudia's book Out if Many, One Family is now available on the Kindle

If you have not seen it yet head over to Christine's blog and read then letter that Brenda wrote for other grandparents, then share it with the appropraite family members

If you live in or near the Toronto area the Attachment Association of Canada is having a conference in May and Daniel Hughes is the main presenter. I am trying to line up childcare so P and I can both go, so far it is not working but I will keep trying.
I have to go be productive now... I know, I know it sucks.

looking for you

Well I would love to looking for all of you but specifically I am looking for the reader who left this comment on my blog the other day

Anonymous said...

I am new to all this reading-of-blogs-of-moms-with-challenging-children...but I would be interested in a gathering in TO...

I have a question for you so if you are comfortable with it can you fire me an email stellarparenting(at)hotmail(dot)com (change words in ()to symbols). If you are uncomfortable with that I totally understand and as plans are made I will post them here.

there are just not enough hours

There are just not enough hours in my day, I think that is the mantra of mothers everywhere, where can I find a little more time to get a few more tings done. Part of the reason that there is so much to do is that I am leaving my family alone for 5 glorious days so that I can go and be with other mothers who get it. Mothers who walk a journey like mine each and every day and to tell you that I am excited is an understatement. I am not really nervous or anxious about meeting all my imaginary friends, instead I am far more stressed about making sure that there are enough clean socks and underwear to get through the week.

Some of today was eaten up by having to replace the licence plates that were stolen off P's car last night and after way to long at the police station filing the report I had to drive to the next small town to get the plates because the office here was closed. The joys of small town life.

I made a quick stop at home to put the plates on the car and when I came in to find a screwdriver the phone rang,  it was the school. Calvin was in the office after a small altercation with another kid on the yard and was insistent that he come home ( a first for him). To make a long story short it turns out that Fudge decided that it would be a good plan to be a pain in the ass to get a little attention so he was telling everyone at school that Calvin was faking it and there as nothing wrong with him. Calvin was pissed and took it out on other kids. In the end I managed to get him to calm down by talking to him on the phone and convinced him to make it through the last hour of school because he was looking forward to having friends over after school ( another first for him)  and they could not come if he came home early. He pulled it together and had a fun afternoon with his friends.

I tore a strip off Fudge in a calm therapeutic parenting sort of way and then did  not let him play with the boys who were visiting as a consequence. He did apologise to Calvin but I am still pretty angry at him because his goal was to make his brother angry so that he would react and get in trouble. Fudge admits that was his goal and I think that is pretty nasty thing to do your brother. They are close and often get along well but Fudge is having a really hard time with the space that has been left by Calvin's attaching to us and being less angry with the world and now by the attention that he is getting due to being sick. I mean spending time at the hospital being poked at and having tests done is hardly any kids idea of a good time but Fudge seems to think that it is some great thing that he is missing out on.

Now I must go to bed because tomorrow will be here soon enough and then I will only have 1 more sleep till ORLANDO

Snow Day

 outside

 downstairs

upstairs

move along

You can move along as there is nothing to see here, well except some pictures of the reasons that I am not blogging. We keep Christmas pretty simple and I am feeling overwhelmed, I could not imagine how I would feel if we made a big deal of it!

Cookies for teachers and staff at the school

The beginnings of mushroom gravy and kutia fora tradtional Ukrainian Christmas Eve meal with friends at church

Christmas hampers that need to be delivered today.

Pausing in the busyness to work on attachment with Calvin, he has been asking to paint them for days. I made time last night and then I painted his. Fudge thinks we are insane, I love that Calvin wanted to do this with me and for me. I will even leaving the nail polish all over my smallest toe.

Dishes, need I say more.

Decorations that the boys made for friends, family and teachers, many still need ribbons.

Wrapping gifts is my least favourite activity. I use a lot of bags and only wrap big things

Laundry, sad that the laundry and the dishes do not take a vacation when there is a lot going on.

He is doing ok.

I tweeted yesterday about being at Children’s Hospital with Calvin and waiting for an adult to come into the room and tell me what to do. I continue to be caught off guard by the fact that I am the adult. Me, just me. I have to argue with the residents and the doctors, I have to advocate for my kid and I have to convince the snotty night nurse that indeed he is not withholding poop on purpose.

Calvin and I have had a very long 36 hours. We came to Children’s yesterday knowing that they might admit us and low and behold they did. We did not get a lot of information as we began our afternoon but as time wore on things became a little clearer and to make a long story short we are here to try to deal with some of Calvin’s poop issues as everything tried at home was not getting us anywhere.

My little man has an NG tube and an IV and he is behaving like the bravest little boy I have ever met. We are pumping him full of Miralax and I mean full to actually empty his bowel out once and for all. It is working but it is taking a lot longer than anyone thought and we are here for our second sleepless night. Last night was awful because Calvin’s roommate whined and cried all night long and none of us slept. Then we had a really long day full of poking and prodding and arguing with residents and absent surgeons about plans and options.

Calvin has held it all together and not actually had a meltdown yet. He has had a few rude moments but I can only imagine how crappy he must feel and how hard this all must be him.

Fudge is home with P and N ( our temporary teenager, another story for another day) and he to is handling it all pretty well.

I just spoke to the nurse who is concerned that they are hitting Calvin to hard with the meds and has had them reduced. Which might mean less poop but might not given how much is already in his system. This is going to be a really long night.

That all being said though things are going as well as they could given what is going on and hopefully by the end of all of this we will be able to move one from all the poop issues because that would be so, so nice.

PS excuse the lack of coherence I am exhausted.

PPS the hospital has blogs blocked on the free wifi so I can not comment but I am reading in my reader while I am here .

no news

I have things to blog about, I have thing to talk about but I am so sick. I am so sick that I ordered pizza for dinner. That rarely happens around here. I did not even have the energy to make mac and cheese. The kids ate pizza and I had an English muffin with peanut butter on it.

I am going to bed, perhaps I will actually find the stamina to blog tomorrow, that is not a promise or anything though.

Just in case you needed to know

Did you know that when you call the furnace guy to come look at your furnace because it is blowing black smoke and then the very nice furnace guy arrives and tells you that it is not going to be good it usually means that things are going turn out badly. Then he tells you that they have to red tag it and turn it off as it is unsafe and then they make you sign that you know that it is off and that you will not turn it back on until it is fixed. I am not sure what would happen if I didi but I can only imagine that it would be a really bad thing. Did you know that when that happens they don't charge you for the service call.

PS I also had the student loan people call and yell at me today, they want money too...

just writing.

It's 1:30 on a Friday, a Friday in which both of my kids are home from school. One is in his room writing letters of apology for repeatedly losing his temper and one is outside hanging laundry on the line. Would you like to take any guesses as to who is doing what.

We has a really great first part of the week, things were going smoothly, to smoothly and then yesterday all hell broke lose. Fudge wet through his pull up and swore up and down that he had nothing to drink and Calvin lost it at school over little things. He overreacted, they handled it poorly because no one  there talks to one another and so now he is in trouble here and there. He is supposed to be writing letters of apology to a variety of people and rather than get it done he is playing all sorts of control games. It is going to be a long day.

In brighter news I found some great flooring on sale today that to replace the kitchen floor that was damaged when a pipe in our wall broke. Yes a connection actually broke in the wall and we now need to replace the kitchen floor. The good news is that my parents are coming to visit for 2 weeks and my Dad can help me put it in which means that we can spend more money on the floor and less money on labor. I am crossing my fingers that we get enough money from the insurance to not have to spend any of our highly coveted pennies.

We are going to cub camp this weekend. Fudge will have fun, Calvin will not as he is in trouble for his behaviour and will spend the weekend on arms reach and since I do the cooking he will miss out on a lot. I  must say that I am not at all surprised at his behaviour at school, he is testing the staff out and so far he is getting away with murder so to speak. The great student support worker who was there last year is gone and the one who is there this year had little training and less skill. It might be a long year. There will be a lot of missed school over the next 2 weeks though and that will help immensely I think.

So that's it, just moving along as though all of this is completely normal, well it is around here, what kind of week would it be if my children did not repeatedly attempt to control everyone and everything around them.

I have been waiting for the laundry fairy to come, she never showed. I guess I must get the laundry out of the office so my parents can sleep in it starting on Tuesday.

It's all sort of dull.

I have been waiting to have something interesting to tell you. There is nothing. There are all the little things like Fudge finally admitting that he lied everyday for a week about why his bed was wet, there is Calvin doing well and handling things in new ways and with new maturity, there are funny moments and pictures but I have not really been in to blogging about them, there are adoption issues I want to talk about but I am just not up to sitting down and writing them.
I am still feeling a bit overwhelmed by the garden and the produce that I need to process before it goes bad and all the other stuff that needs to get done each day. Taking this lunch hour duty at the school means that there just do not seem to be enough hours in the the day right now. There are some things going on in our lives that are not my story to tell and those are keeping me preoccupied as well.
I am hoping that later this week I will get to finishing up some of those posts in the drafts folder and perhaps even find some time to talk about all the great stuff that I have been reading lately.

and we're off

And another summer is done! Thank the Lord they are on the bus. School comes with challenges and moments of frustration but I was so done with summer. They were done too, they were missing their friends and the routines at school and I am thrilled that they were excited to go back.

P and I are off this morning to meet with our worker to complete the last piece of our homestudy... the matching inventory. The whole process bugs me because when you have a biological child you can not choose what special needs they may or may not have and although I appreciate why it needs to be done the whole thing is a bit weird.

I would like ...

Update :
It's now 6 pm and I have made it through some of the list, I am keeping track here by crossing them off... it is a good distraction from actually getting the work done. I forgot to include that we needed tot ell the kids about the upcoming social worker visit, we thought it might be hard for Fudge but he is handling it well and asking lots of questions.

Original Post
I would like to be blogging but I need to be tidying and organizing and getting crap done because I have a list as long as my arm of things to do and they include fun things like making my bedroom look presentable. I guess that means I will need to vacuum. To be brutally honest I can not tell you the last time I vacuumed my bedroom, really I have no idea, clearly it has been to long. I came home for 48 hours from the cottage to make the house look presentable for our home visit on Monday, I am so passed making it look good but no dirty clothes on the floor is a good place to start. We are going back to the cottage on Saturday morning for the weekend and before then I need to:

- vacuum the house
- take garbage and recycling out ( tons of it)
- hang curtains to cover my messy closet space
- paint the patched drywall in the bathroom to cover the hole Calvin made that Fudge made bigger
- buy groceries
- do laundry, multiple loads
- fold and put away the clean laundry that is all over the office/guest room
- assemble DVD storage thing
- post pictures of of our cottage time
- clean the bathrooms
- feed the monsters at least a few times everyday
- move and shift some furniture around
- find missing paperwork and fill it all out
- tidy up the piles of paper that seem to accumulate everywhere.
- put hay in the dog pen
- email our worker about the paperwork
- wash the muddy dog foot prints off the floor
- tidy the yard and mow the lawn
- pick and process veggies from the garden and can some peaches ( peaches are bought but not even close to ripe so I am saved and can process them on Sunday night or Monday)
- hang the broken towel rack back up, you know the one that has been broken for 2 years.
- paint the patched drywall in the hallway.
- catch up on all the blog reading and  commenting that I missed out while I was at the cottage.
 But first I have to stop typing this list and get back to work because there is a lot to do!.

changes make them stressed.

Just thought I would pop in a say hi in the midst of all the craziness that is having company. My god-daughter (13) is here visiting for a few day from the west coast and as wonderful as it is to see her it is stressful for both of the boys to have company int he house and the changes in their routine are hard on them as well. We have had a lot of fun and enjoyed the time together and although there has been some behaviour it has not been nearly as bad as it could of been.

She and I are heading to the mall shortly and leaving the boys at home with there Dad, sounds like a good plan to me. Then we will have a quiet evening at home and head to the cottage again tomorrow. More changes in routine, more stress for my kids because it is a sibling visit and although it is so important that they maintain those relationships it is hard for them.

All that being said I best go get dressed so I can stress out my sons by leaving them with their Dad and enjoy some time at the mall.

ironic would be one word.

So I have been tidying the extra room as we are having company starting tomorrow. In the tidying I was rearranging some boxes of my stuff from when I lived a care-free life as a single woman ( tee hee) and in one of those boxes I found my angel cards. They are cards that have words on them and the idea that is each morning you pull one out and then remember the word throughout the day. It was something I used to do all the time, it was a prayer or meditation of sorts for me. I thought I would take one today, you know just to see what it said. I reached into the little blue box and pulled one out, it said Surrender. I laughed put it back in the box and put the lid on, damn universe, gee thanks, surrender.

I put the box of cards into the larger box of things I want to keep and kept on cleaning. As I moved stuff around I noticed one of the angel cards on the floor. I bent down and picked it up, it said Love.

Point taken, score one for the universe.

Surrender and Love... I'll do my best.

House Keeping

Excuse my dust, I need to change things up a bit around here. I loved the last blog template that I had, frankly it made me happy but I could not do anything to it, all positions and such were locked. I needed to make one column bigger and I could not so it had to go. I also really liked the header that I had up before so I have put it back and blogger very nicely started providing a 3 column format that I could play with a bit, so nice of them to FINALLY get that done. So I will be playing around here a bit today as I nurse this cold and try to make it all look pretty again.

stream of consciousness

 I bought myself a little peace and quiet this afternoon with a dollar's worth of water balloons, it was a dollar well spent. As I type this the boys are jumping on the trampoline with water balloons.and laughing their heads off.  I am trying to stick pretty close to home today because we pushed Fudge pretty hard at therapy this morning and I know there will be fall out. It is hard to talk openly to your kid ( in kid terms) about why he could not live with his birth family. It is hard to  know that the neglect he suffered will always be with him and as I fight to have him attach solidly to me (us) and to invest in our relationship, I struggle with all that he has lost and how very hard it must be for him to trust that I am not going to leave him.

Calvin has moved through his - oh there has been a change in routine I must make trouble - and is back to being the pleasant young man I have come to love. Some of his behaviour at the cottage last week just about put me over the edge but I pulled it back together and managed to be reasonably calm. Then I ended up getting pretty frustrated with him on Sunday afternoon and it was almost as if I pushed the reset button, he pushed back a little and then stopped with the sneaky, annoying behaviours. Gotta love the rest button, to bad I don't know where it is.

Our meeting with the social worker from the big city went well last week. It is much different working with the city agency than our little country one where everyone flies by the seat of their pants all the time. We have another meeting next week and a home visit planned for August. I have a lot of stuff to do around the house in the next few weeks but it really good motivation to get it all decluttered and tidied up. I also have more paper work to fill out, questionnaires about the boys and a police record check to get done. It will all happen though.

Oh I hear the monkeys coming in, I guess all the balloons are popped and they are wet. Time for some laundry and a snack!

Healing is a not a straight line.

Healing is not a straight line. Healing does not always mean moving forwards, sometimes you have to move backward before you can go forward again. My children are healing and I know that things take time,  but oh my patience has been tried this week and I have not dealt with all situations as a therapeutic parent should, there has been much yelling on my part. I regret that but I am not beating myself up over it either because it happens and there is learning that comes from hearing your Mom apologise to you for her choices.

We have had a long week of taking more steps backward than forward. I am hoping that I can find the energy to write a thoughtful post about it tomorrow morning but let`s just say someone has stopped eating, is hiding food, is lying, being sneaky and generally going out of his way to make me angry. Guesses as to who that might b? Someone else is acting as sweet as pie when others around and then turning and ignoring me when we are alone and being defiant and generally acting like a poop. Any guesses as to who that might be? Let me give you a hint it is not P.

That all being said we did have fun at the cottage this week, we enjoyed the lake and the company and aside from some behaviour issues ( that we have brought home with us) both of the boys seem to of had a great time.

I am too tired to say much more than that, the AC is on in my bedroom and that is where I am headed, there is no AC anywhere else in our house  and we are still at the tail end of a heat wave, I think it is officially over but it is still hot.

trying

trying to upload pictures before the boys got up but it did not work
trying to catch up on blog reading because there were over 200 posts in my reader from the last week
trying to weed the garden which really needs to happen
trying to stay sane and patient with a boy who has had a few to many good days in a row
trying to make sure the dog stops eating her fur
trying to not be to grouchy because I seem to acquired a cold and I feel like  my head is going to explode
trying to write a blog post about expectations and behaviour of kids like mine when we are in public places for multiple days
trying to adjust the new routines that summer brings.
I need to stop trying and go get them breakfast because they are finally both awake, this is the first time ever ( I think) that they have both fallen asleep in the car on the way home from a party and slept in this late the following morning.
Here is one picture though from the boy who is now 10! He was even appropriately embarrassed by the extra attention at the restaurant went to for dinner.

I had the best intentions

I have been meaning to blog answers to those questions, really I have but this week is quickly getting away from and Fudge is working really hard on testing my love, my patience and my commitment to not yelling at him but oh is he pushing hard. Yesterday was plain awful, there is no other way to describe it, they loved the trampoline but the rest of it was bad. Today has been marginally better but he is going out of his way to make others miserable by doing little things to make them mad. Today's saving grace was the mid-day margarita's I made with friends while they listened to me vent a bit and we reveled in the fact that we were drinking margaritas at 2pm.

Tomorrow is a new day and I committed to get that post finished first thing... you will know how good my morning went by when it actually gets posted.

Trust me when I say that the stellar parenting moments have been frequent in the past few days, oh the stories they will tell when they are adults.

I never thought

I never thought when I became a Mom I would be sitting at the computer waiting for my child to finish sitting on the toilet because he can not not be trusted to take himself but needs to be reminded to go and while I am waitng I am thinking about, the money he stole this morning, the freezie he bought with it, the stolen money he shared with his brother who spent it on popcorn, the staff members who assisted them today by thinking they just did not bring enough money to school and gave them stuff anyway, the secretary who thought it was so cute that Calvin had money from other countries, the crap they ate that they so did not need, the extra chores to pay back the money, the afternoon tantrums that may result from the chores, the behaviour that I may see for the next week because of the shame from getting busted and the cold (gluten free) beer that will be waiting for me in a couple hours when I can  pause in the behaviour modification program I call therapeutic parenting and take 5 minutes for me because after Calvins therapy today I need it but not as much as Lisa or Corey, I have sun and kid who is healing, slowly but surely, go give them some love if ya have a minute.