It has been almost a month that Princess and Little Guy have been back. It's almost time to turn in paperwork that I really don't have time to fill out. We've done doctor appointments...gotten replacement glasses for Princess...started counseling...have dental appointments for both kids on Monday and a follow-up doctor appointment for Little Guy on Friday. The bus has started picking Princess up for school. (She is out of district, but because this is already her fourth school of the year, the judge put his foot down and ordered the school to transport her rather than letting her be moved again. So she is getting door-to-door service from her school's special ed bus, which is great except that she is the first pick up of the morning and the last drop off of the afternoon. I have to get up at six to have her ready, and she isn't back until 3:30.) Little Guy will start partial-day daycare on Monday, because homeschooling Esther with a three-year-old in the same room demanding attention just wasn't working too well. Thankfully, we found out that he had been attending a daycare shortly before he came to us, and he will be able to go back to the same one. The kids have begun regularly scheduled visits and phone calls with their mom, which are going well. And we are back in our old routines. It has been really nice that the kids are already familiar with "how we do things in this house," and have slid right back into our family habits.
Emotionally, we have been through some adjustments. There was one week that the kids took turns acting up. First was Princess being whiny and pouty and stubborn. The next day Little Guy seemed to be hitting, biting or cussing every time I turned around (he really only knows one bad phrase, but it is a terrible one). And the third day Esther was snitty to Princess, gave me some serious attitude, and topped it all off with a screaming, thrashing meltdown because (horror of horrors!) I made her put on long pajama pants after a twenty-minute search failed to turn up the shorts she had her heart set on. After that things settled down a bit, although Little Guy continued to have episodes where he seemed to be trying to be naughty--he would repeatedly hit me or one of the girls or cuss at us while smiling, and did not respond to time-outs. I got really, really tired both of disciplining these episodes and of trying to predict and avoid them. Then one day recently while in the middle of a time-out he announced that he was ready to go back to his mommy's house. Tim had hypothesized earlier that maybe he somehow felt that he had caused his removal by being naughty and thought that he could get moved again by being naughty...which I know is a common thought process for kids his age...so just in case, I explained to him that going back to his mommy's house depended on his mommy getting everything ready and the judge saying that it was time, and that no matter how good or how naughty he was, he couldn't make himself go back. Since then, we've had several days where he has been his normal, sweet self--he'll still act out when frustrated, but in age-appropriate fashion. We did have a little episode at bedtime tonight, but I'm hopeful that most of it is behind us. Time will tell. Meanwhile, Esther and Princess seem to be more settled with each other than they were this time last year. It helps that, between Princess's school schedule and Esther's gymnastics schedule, there are times each week where I can interact with one of them while the other is not home. They both love to pretend, and it has been...interesting...to overhear the themes they come up with. They've acted out family tragedies ("Pretend I was run over by a car, and when you got to the hospital I was dead and you cried"), dysfunctional families (Little Guy, normally so sweet and nurturing, can be a really mean daddy to a naughty baby), and "boyfriend," which generally involves the two girls commiserating about how annoying and stupid their boyfriends are. Lately they've been spending more time playing "puppy" or "baby," which I feel happier about! Today they spent a long time whipping up fancy pretend meals in a restaurant, and later they made mud pies. Daniel, meanwhile, has discovered that it's possible to hang out with friends outside of school, and has abruptly begun spending more time at friends' houses than at home. It's been like going from a preschool phase (where he really just wanted to be home with us) to an adolescent phase without anything in between. We're glad he has friends and is discovering a social life outside of home, but I was happy that he stayed home today and that we found some fun things to do as a family.
As best I can tell, the kids' mom is doing well. So I'm hopeful they will be able to go back home in early June. I do hope that we can continue our relationship with their family after they go back home. I think that would be a good thing for everyone. We have now gotten to meet their mom a couple of times, and I talk with her on the phone briefly when the kids call her. So I feel like we are building a little bit of a relationship. All these uncertainties are hard...but we do love the kids. No matter what happens, they will always be special to us.
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