Birthday Girl

It’s my birthday today. We don’t have anything planned to celebrate, but I dressed up in a dress and heels for work because I always dress fancy for my birthday. I guess that’s weird, but it’s my little way of celebrating me. It’s kind of a yucky day outside with rain and clouds that are supposed to stick around through the weekend. Tomorrow night Primero, Esperanza and I are supposed to Herman’s football game because he’ll be playing a local team that’s just down the street from us. We won’t go if it’s pouring rain. Plus, it got cold, much colder than it’s been the whole month of September. If it does rain and they still have the game we might try to go over to see their brother, but we won’t stay for the game. We’ll probably see a movie instead, since we’ll be child-free for the night.

Love Bug’s therapist and case worker were over Tuesday night. They changed his goal, since he accomplished the first one, which is to walk on his own for several feet. We now need to work on his fine motor skills, like pointing, and his verbal skills since they seemed to have plateaued at the moment. I’m also trying to break his bottle habit, since he doesn’t really like to use the sippy cup. He is especially adverse to the sippy cup when drinking milk – that must only come in a bottle. He still nurses to sleep but (and I don’t even want to say this for fear I will jinx us) he has slept through the night for 4 nights in a row this week!!! That is huge because up until now the longest stretch is 3 nights. And he’s 15 months old so that is a lot of loss of sleep! I’m hoping he won’t slip back into his two times a night habit because I’m really liking sleeping through the night. I kind of forgot how great it is to fall asleep and not wake up until the alarm goes off….

Chica Marie has had some issues lately. I find she is the toughest kid out of them all. I don’t know if her behaviors are from being back in her previous foster home (she was there for daycare until I moved them about 3 weeks ago) and so that somehow triggered her memories of things from the past or what the deal is, but it’s been tough with her lately. She is very moody, she’s been acting out sexually (something that had been reported at the previous home but never anything that was seen in our home) and she’s been acting rude and unkind to everyone, especially her peers. I don’t know if her therapy is doing her any good, I feel like it’s more frustrating than helpful and I’m sort of at my wits end with her right now. I waffle between wanting her to be in respite for an extended period of time to thinking maybe we need another day just her and I (although she didn’t really seem to understand it the previous time we went out alone). She feeds off of attention and always wants more no matter how much she gets. I think we just need to work through some attachment type therapy together, but I don’t know if the Theraplay we’re doing is helping in that realm. Maybe we just need more time at it…..