Long week!

Whoo boy! It has been such a long week. Bob finally finished her article with some help. I'll post a copy of it on here. It turned out pretty well I think. I had her read it out load to Kitty and Ponito.

Last night I reread one of the books Bob told me she'd "borrowed" from my bathroom. It was pretty explicit. Tonight at bedtime I sat her down to talk about it. She pretty much said that stuff was "yuck!," and refused to talk about it. She also says she skipped all the "yucky" parts. We talked a little more about puberty and boys, and I think she's honestly still pretty immature. Thank God! Still my baby is growing up! We measured her today and she's grown 3/4" That puts her at almost 5'8" - half an inch taller than me. *sigh*

Yesterday I got to experience something new! My baby, Ponito, had his first major public meltdown. One of the hardest things about adopting special needs kids is exposing the younger kids to their issues. Ponito has discovered some advantages to being the baby, but yesterday was in a cruddy mood and was not interested in one of the not so great parts - sitting in the middle seat. I drive a little Mazda Protege and the 3 older kids rotate who sits in the front seat, but Ponito always has to sit in the middle of the back seat. Bear is incapable of sitting with his knees less than 8 inches apart and his broad shoulders and long legs, combined with either of my not so petite girls (Kitty is 5'3 1/2 inches now - having grown almost an inch since her birthday in April) make things super cramped in the back seat.

Ponito started mouthing off about how he hates his life and he's going to kill himself (yes, he's heard my older kids say this many times - although finally not so often now). In our house, as he knows from recent experience, this means you have to stay within 5 feet of a parent - to keep you safe. Wish I could have gone home at this point, but Hubby was teaching scuba diving, and we had to go shopping or starve! The girls are hopefully going to be starting school so we needed to supplement their wardrobes (they'd outgrown last year's uniforms). Our next stop was Salvation Army.

It started out OK. Ponito was confined to the cart, but it had a small toy plane left in it that I generously said he could keep (I know the people who work there and they are pretty familiar with our financial situation and practically give us clothes and things). We'd been there awhile when he got bored and started playing in the clothes and wandering off. When I redirected him he started hitting the clothes. I figured it wouldn't hurt anything so I ignored it. Then a couple of items fell to the floor. I told him to put them on the hanger and he got mouthy and refused.



Normally Ponito is a big sweetie, unless he's hungry, sick or tired. I looked through all my pictures trying to find one of him where he wasn't looking sweet and happy. This was the closest I could get. We took dozens of these pictures that night. Afterwards we went to the Urgent Care center and found out he had a temp of 104 and Strep. ALL the other pictures that night he's smiling.
I didn't know it at the time, but he'd gotten up VERY early, had snacked a little too much so hadn't eaten lunch, and I found out the next day that he had a slight stomach bug! Still, he was running from me in the store and refusing to do what I told him. I abandoned my cart and sat on a couch in the middle of the store - trying to get him to calm down. He started cussing at me (real cuss words, not No No words). I tried to hold him and get him to calm down. I ended up doing a full restraint on him for almost 10 minutes. SO embarrassing. I finally carried him out to the car and sat with him fighting me and sobbing his heart out at the same time (I sat holding him trying to slow my heart rate back down - almost no air conditioning in the store and none in my car -in Texas!). Ponito is tiny compared to my other kids, but he's still almost 10 - and I'm 38 and out of shape.

After he FINALLY calmed down, we went on with our day o' fun! OK, we finished the shopping. Got home to find out Hubby had the same stomach bug and was miserable. Add that to him not sleeping because of the stress of our financial situation and he's a mess too.

So only Bear is not in the FAIR Club (actually Bob got out tonight) and I still have no idea what to give Kitty and Ponito for FAIR Club assignments. Kitty was disrespectful to Grandma and swore at me. Ponito went to a friend's house without telling anyone, and then pulled his fit in the store.

Any suggestions on writing or reading assignments?

Mary