An Update on Life

Miz N
Started 2nd grade
Says she has the "sweetest teacher" ever
And that she loves school
And after school care club
But
We've already had to have one phone conference
And one email note about her behavior choices with her teacher
And two one-on-one meetings about her behaviors at club.
Sigh.

Good news is she is on grade level for everything
And is reading constantly
(Never saw that this summer)
And loves to write.

Testing the water big time with me
Mostly with lying
Which
As she is finding out
Is my number one pet peeve with kids
Especially when I know they are lying
I call them out on it
And they keep on lying.
Sigh.

She loves to play outdoors
And I've finally just let her go out
And sweat to death when we get home from school
And ride in circles around the cul-de-sac.
It does her good
And makes her happy
(As it does me).

Prayers for Miz N:
--That she begins to settle into the routines and expectations of school and is consistently respectful.
--That she will start filtering out exaggeration and fill-in-the-blank stories and start seeing the power in truth-telling.

Dora
Giggles
Whiner
Parrot
Little Sir Echo,
Whatever you want to call her,
Is three officially.
We celebrated by jumping as a family at BounceU
And then having Little Ceasers - her favorite.
She got a bunch of kitchen cooking utensils
And play food.
I am still on the look out for a little play kitchen for her.

Not potty-trained.
Talking non-stop.
Seriously.
Non-stop.
Still sleeping in the closet most days.

Mimicking everything and everybody.
When Little Man isn't sharing with her want she wants
Or doing what she wants
She starts to use my parenting techniques I use on her
On him.
Counting down.
(1, 2, 8, 7, 3...)
Whispering.
(Please give me....)
Yelling.
(No, _____!)
It's grand to see my amazing parent skills show up on a 3 year old
(Sarcasm, friends. Sarcasm.)

Her new thing is she says
"Shake your body" all of the time.
I have no idea where it came from
But it is a bit disturbing.
(And funny.  Yes.)

Prayers for Little Sir Echo:
--She will continue to develop her words and use them to communicate her needs.
--Her little stubborn ways will begin to soften around the edges.  She and I locked horns way too much.

Little Man
Well, Dracula,
Is still up to his biting ways
As well as crazy-hair pulling
And off the chart screaming

He is teething.
Joy of all joys.
Which
For him means
Little appetite
Lots of drooling
And a mess of a back end.

He is talking certain words more and more
Hi
Whoa
Wow
And...
My name.
Yes, my name.
(I kind of love that.)

Granted,
It's probably because his three year old sister
Seriously says my name
Over 1000 times an hour.
May-ann
May-ann
May-ann
(It's like finger nails on a chalk board)
(It seems to be her version of the "um" or "hmm")

Prayers for Little Man:
--That his molar will come in quickly and his diaper rash will heal quickly.
--That his vocabulary and sign language skills will continue to develop in order to help with overall communication.

Me
Maryann
May-ann
Momma
Miss Ramseyer
I am doing okay.
It's a day by day
Minute by minute
Tantrum by tantrum kind of thing.

School is in full force.
Good kids.
Love middle school.
Love teaching language arts.
We all have a new integrated class
That is throwing us all right over the edge
But I work with an amazing team
And we've come up with some mixing of students
That I think will work better for us and the kids
In order to accomplish the goals of the class.

Loving storytelling at church on Saturday nights
But still trying to figure out how to keep the two Littles awake
And in good moods
When,
By the time we get out,
It is an hour past dinner and time for bed.
Got the cleaning people coming Tuesday.
So excited I can hardly wait.

Got the water bill and the electricity bill for this month.
Holy crap.
That's all I can say.
Holy crap.

My mom is coming out in October
For three weeks
And I cannot wait!

Prayers for me:
Needing to learn effective coping strategies as a parent and a person when dealing with temper tantrums.  Needing to learn to give myself grace.  Needing to rely on His strength, instead of beating myself up for it and pulling away.

I Killed Froggy

Little Man has one stuffed animal.
It is
It was
A cute little frog.
I don't have a before picture.
But here is the after picture.
After I killed it.

Basically, Froggy now looks like what those things look like you pull out of the Build-a-Bear bins. Except the head.  The brains somehow stayed in tack.

Little Man just wears a diaper at night.
He is a big sweaty mess in the mornings
And I got sick of peeling his pjs off of him in the mornings
So we just go with the diaper.

He slept well last night
Like he usually does.
Quiet and peaceful
From the moment I put him down
Until the moment I walked in his bedroom
To wake him up.

But then
I step on something.
It's his diaper.
I find his diaper outside of the crib
Dry.
Very dry.
Suspiciously dry.
And him naked as a jay bird inside the crib.
A soaking wet
Pee-soaked bed.

From the look of the dry diaper
It would appear he stripped before even falling asleep
Some 11 hours earlier.
And I didn't notice when I checked in on him a few times
By peeking around the darkened door.
And thus
His crib was soaked.
Soaked.
(Praise the heavens it was only soaked...
If you get my drift.)

Little Man is a mover in the night
And it was apparent by all the soaking wet pee spots all over
His poor blanket and Froggy appeared to have been connected to his leg
All night
And
Everywhere he went
They were connected
And they were literally dripping.
Yes.
Dripping.

Needless to say
He got a morning bath
And all of his crib things went straight into the washer.
And we rushed out of the house for the day.

Eight hours later I pulled in the driveway
Got the diaper bag
Got the Littles' water cups
And we headed out for an appointment.
I decided to rush back in
And quickly moved all the things from the washer to the dryer
In hopes it would be all set for bedtime.

Four hours later
As I am getting Little Man ready for bed
I realize I still haven't remade his bed
And I go into the dryer
And I find stuffing
Froggy guts
Everywhere.
All over the towels
All over the blanket
All over the mattress pad
All over the fitted sheet.
And Froggy.
Poor Froggy.
Stuffless
With the exception of his head.

Then I looked into the washer
And found more stuffing.
More Froggy guts.
Not pretty folks.
Not pretty.
I killed Little Man's Froggy.

Froggy's Guts.

Needless to say
Little Man is wearing pajamas again tonight
And I am going to need to go buy some stuffing
Some thread
A needle
And hope for the best.

If It's Good Enough for Harry Potter

Harry Potter slept
In a cupboard under the stairs.
My almost three year old sleeps
In the walk-in closet on the floor.

Let me explain
Less someone reports me to CPS.

Boo talks
And talks
And talks
When you put her down to sleep.
It doesn't matter if she's taken a nap
Or not.
She just goes on and on.
About this.
About that.
About nothing in particular.
She's cute,
But
It's seriously annoying.
Especially for the 8 year old
Who is trying to go to sleep
And has to get up for school the next day.

About two weeks ago
I started bringing her out to sleep
And talk
On the living room chair.
Then the living room couch.
Then the living room floor.
(Trying to find her a place out of my eye-line.
Her staring brown eyes
Following my every move
Creep me out.)
But
Then I couldn't get anything done.
No dishes.
No school work.
Couldn't turn on the TV.

Last Sunday night
I was desperate.
I needed a place to stash her-
To talk herself to sleep-
But all the rooms were full
And I needed to get some work done
Before the first day of school.
So
I pulled in a pillow
And a blanket
Into the door of the walk-in closet
Just off the bathroom
And I said
"Go sleep in the closet."
And she went.
And I told her goodnight.
And we said our "I love yous."
Again
And
After probably an hour of talking to herself
She was asleep
And Miz N was sleep within 10 minutes.

She now has fallen asleep there
Every night since then.

I do start her in her bed
And always 30 minutes before Miz N
But usually within 10 minutes of Miz N joining her
I am moving her to her closet.

All I do is walk in her bedroom now
Point to the bathroom
(Where the closet is)
And she grabs to closest sleeping items
And goes and lays herself down.


So,
My almost three-year old
Sleeps in the walk-in closest
On the floor.
Um.
Yeah.
We just do what we have to do to survive around here.

Note to concerned readers:
Before I go to bed
(Not earlier because I've learned that she doesn't go into a deep sleep that fast)
I gently
(Okay - that's a lie.
It's impossible to gently pick up a kid
And transfer them to bed
When they are on the floor)
I awkwardly scoop her up
And plop her into her real,
With a mattress,
Bed
And she sleeps there the rest of the night. 

If it worked for "The Boy Who Lived" for 11 years..."

Then I guess Miss Boo will be okay, right?

This New Normal is Taking Awhile to Get Used To

This
Type-A
Scheduled
Plan-orientated
Hyper-organized
Ultra-focused
Isn't feeling like herself.

It could have something to do with:

• The first day of teaching 6th grade language arts tomorrow and she has no plans ready for beyond what she is doing with them tomorrow despite going in a week early to set up and then for four hours today.
• The first day of school tomorrow for an 8 year old who just lost her two front teeth today and who has been having some major attitude and talking back issues.
• An almost 3 year old who thinks whining is back and style and she can get away with it and who has learned, somewhere, (see above), to say "NO" and refuse to do what she is told and then who literally screams on the top of her lungs for her entire three minutes of time out and yet turns it off immediately at the sound of the three minutes being up.
• A 15 month old who thinks biting is the answer for everything and who has learned to say "ouch" and now says it about a thousand times when you change his diaper, get him dressed, or wipe his face (body) after eating.
• A never ending cycle of towels in the washer or dryer.
• A never ending pile of dishes in the sink.
• A never ending load in the dishwasher to be loaded or unloaded.
• A never clean kitchen floor that is just begging for more ants to arrive.
• The stress of not receiving a full paycheck for another 17 days...but, hey, who's counting.
• The start of a new daycare for the two Littles on Tuesday at a small home-based program and wondering if it is the right move or not.
• The knowledge that the move means a certain almost three year old isn't in any kind of preschool and needs it and she honestly don't see how to make it work out.
• Her bedroom still having all of the clothes she took and washed in Michigan sitting in a basket for her to take out and hang up but instead that she just keeps pulling from and adding to.
• Suddenly losing the ability to multi-task effectively.  Her brain is going eight thousand directions and doesn't seem to be processing at it's normal speed.
• Failing to keep her inbox clean, read and responded to...or her text messages, too.  Makes her feel out of control and irresponsible.
• Not being able to sleep in.  She loves sleep. She needs sleep.

This
Overtired
Stretched-thin
Impatient
Foster Mama
Isn't feeling like herself
Because
Well,
This is all new.
And it's not a "new normal,"
Yet.
And
As a person who looks at the past to learn how to deal with the present
Has no frame of reference to work from
And it makes her jittery
And she doesn't like jittery.

Yet
This
Frazzled
Scattered
Jumbled
Foster Mama
Is in love
With three amazing kiddos
Who
Melt her heart with their hugs.
Melt her heart with their giggles.
Melt her heart with their antics.

This
Learning-to-give-herself-grace
Learning-to-trust-the-Lord-with-all-of-her-heart
Learning-to-cast-her-cares-on-Him
Foster Mama

And holding her arms around Jesus' neck
As He guides her down this new road
That may,
Or may not,
Become her new normal,
But is what He has called her to
Here and now.