The Middle

As The Boss squeezed between me and Ana on the couch I told him to please be still if he was going to sit in the middle.

He replied in hushed tones, "Okay....but, mom, that's a bad word!"

Me: "What? What is?"

Him: Whispering, "Middle."

Me: "Why do you say that?"

Him: Still whispering but with a goofy I'm-about-to-be-naughty grin, "You know because of...." he said, pointing to his middle finger.

Oh my gosh. He's such a hoot.

Headcounts No Longer Needed

Quiet days here with so few kids in the house. Sorta-adult daughter is often gone so it's just the middle girls and The Boss hanging around most the time, although Lucky is gone to her mom's almost every weekend. Seems weird to be planning the holidays knowing only two kids will be at home. But on the up side, we are nearly done with Christmas shopping with a lot less strain on the budget than we normally experience.

Squeaker hasn't had a major blow-up for several weeks which is great. Most of the eye-rolls and snorting I'll just chalk up to "normal" fourteen-year-old girl attitude. Still some big concerns with both girls over their dishonesty combined with extremely poor judgement. Lots of supervision is required at all times which they appreciate less and less as they get older. Lucky will be thirteen next month and Squeaker fifeern in February. Still, they cannot stay home alone even for a few minutes, cannot be dropped off anywhere, and absolutely under no circumstances can they ever be left alone with the Boss even if we are in the next room. This makes it a bit challenging for us to make an escape for a kidless evening. It is fairly easy to find a babysitter for a kindergartener but much less so for middle and high schoolers especially with all the extra cautions and caveats. (except when oldest niece is available for teen-watching....she's the bomb!)

We're looking forward to lots of free and low cost holiday activities in our small town. Such a kick to find so much to do since we are pretty content with simplicity and low tech entertainment.

Party Like the Angels

The Boss and Lucky have been attending AWANA Club at the church where their favorite VBS of the summer was held.

Lucky basically uses it as a time to chase her friends around the parking lot but it has been a cool experience for The Boss as he is very goal driven and loves cranking through the book to win badges and awards. Pretty darn cute. He is in the "Sparks" group and has thus far memorized John 3:16, 1 John 4:14, Psalm 147:5, 1 Corinthians 15:3, and 1 Corinthians 15:4.

I'm amazed at his ability to memorize a verse each week along with the concepts that go along with it, at least on a kindergartener's level (i.e. sin is the bad things we say, do, and think; perish means to be separated from God forever, etc.) He is at this very moment hounding me to iron-on the new hang glider badge he earned last week onto his vest for tonight.

Best of all, he has been given more advanced language to talk about the things of God and I had the happy privilege of praying with him a few weeks ago as he trusted Jesus as his Savior.

Party on all of Heaven!

Where Am I? Oh, Here I Am...**

It's semi-official with some precincts still pending...we have had one of the wackiest summers on record and that's saying something for us. The wackiness promises to continue for some time. We'll cope and adjust as always, of course, but who knew situations and people would go so crazily askew from what they were just six short months ago? Naturally, we're catching the blame.

I think our blogging hiatus is over as there is so much going on it's hard not to spill it out somewhere. This blog is public again so feel free to refer former readers back if they would be interested.

We've been taking advantage of all the free activities a small town has to offer: harvest kick-off, community theatre, free museum days, vacation bible school, movies and activities at various churches around town. Yesterday we went to the annual open house at our main fire station. The Boss sprayed a firehose, we got grit in our eyes and snowcone when the Mercy Air helicopter took off and we watched hunky firefighters crunch open a car. Everywhere you go in a smallish town you bump into people you know and yesterday was no exception, as the open house was kind of the "thing to do" for the day.

Afterwards we attended a free piano concert at the library next door and then walked around downtown until we found a new mexican restaurant to try. With only Lucky, Squeaker, and the Boss around most of the time now, our outings have been mostly pleasant. Squeaker always has some drama or attitude to take care of but for the most part it's all good. Ana even took us out to her driving route to work so we could catch some air over the huge rollercoaster dip in the road out beyond the dairy farms. No kidding, like fifteen dairies on her way to work. We count green tractors and sing the "Big Green Tractor" song. Rural hicks all the way by now.

Many more updates from the summer but I'll spread them out so you can catch up a bit at a time if you so desire. Meantime, your continued prayers are much appreciated for the older crew of teens as many life choices face them which, unfortunately, they often seem ill-equipped to make.

**Peter Lorre in "Arsenic and Old Lace", 1944.

Our Little World

Squeaker had a rough start to the weekend on Friday night. Lucky had a little end of the year party with a few friends then we took the middles and The Boss to get a pizza to take to the park. Squeaker got into a minor spat with The Boss and then would not let it go, back-talking and noncompliant all evening and into Saturday morning. I took her for a walk on Saturday to talk about how she is choosing to heap consequences upon herself by letting small incidents turn into full-blown temper tantrums. She is in the third week of minimal privileges which started out by her being annoyed that I called her in to do chores and ended with name-calling, door slamming, destruction of property, and violent throwing of heavy objects. The walk and talk seemed to help with conduct and demeanor improving for the rest of the day.

Her stepdad and birth sister stopped by in the afternoon and I allowed her to be outside and play for a while. Her sister will come back today to go to church with us and spend the day. She and her dad are moving out of state in the beginning of July so I expect high emotions when we say our good-byes tonight.

The bigger kids have been making themselves scarce and hardly talking to us when they are here so it's been a relatively quiet weekend apart from The Boss lamenting that he has nobody to play with any more.

Summer

It's not really feeling like summer around here. It's been unusually cold which we have been enjoying especially since only five plants from my garden succombed to the heat before things cooled down. That's not all that impressive though since I hardly planted anything this year. We are daring the weather with another planting hoping the late starters will have a chance to establish before our usual hot desert summer realizes that it overslept.

High school, middle school, and elementary school graduations under our collective belt, we'll spend a busy few months helping the kids prepare for the next phase of their lives.

Squeaker starts summer school tomorrow. She has been handling the last few weeks of minimum privileges beautifully. What're a few snorts and eyerolls among friends? I'm very happy with how she has been able to pull it together and comply with the restrictions she so clearly earned. Fewer choices and freedoms actually do make it easier for her to maintain control of both her anger and her giddiness so I'm hoping when we let out the tether a bit next week she will continue to be pleasant and cooperative.

The older teens are all on job hunts (or should be). Not only do they need their own spending money but they need to get out of the house doing something productive so I'm happy to drive them wherever they need to go in the quest for employment.

The task remains to find somewhere for Lucky to get out and have something to do. Our "new" town does not have the resources that we were used to before our move so it can be a challenge to find suitably enjoyable and appropriately supervised activities.

I pulled The Boss' second wiggly tooth so today we are off to the store to buy the Stargate action figure he has been saving for. Yes, I know I am raising him to be a sci-fi geek like his mommy, what's your point?

No lazy days of summer around here. Everybody get out and get busy!

First Lost Tooth

The Boss lost his first baby tooth today just in time to show Grandma and Grandpa....not the tooth which will be much to Grandma's relief, just the empty socket. The Tooth Fairy comes tonight. The Boss was not thrilled with the idea of the Tooth Fairy rooting around under his pillow while he was sleeping (she wasn't too thrilled either) so we decided to tape it to the door with a big sign so she'll be sure to find it. The Boss worded the sign himself. It reads, "Right There!" with a big arrow down.

Incidentally, we tell him that the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus are pretend just for fun characters, but he insists they are real and keeps trying to convince me. I think the characters from Lord of the Rings are real so who am I to say?

I've been pestering him to work that tooth out because his big snaggly adult tooth already decided to appear right behind it. Same for his other bottom tooth but it's pretty close too. Perfect timing since he has almost enough money for the toys he's been saving up for.

Day Two is a Bust

If Squeaker had managed (or bothered) to treat members of the household with even a speck of respect she would already be back to full privileges. As it is, she keeps resetting the clock by her snarky attitude and mean comments.

She started off reasonably well yesterday with only one small correction about her tone but by late afternoon she was off to the races again. She started in on the Boss again, repeatedly calling him a stupid baby until Ana asked Lucky to take him outside. That made her mad enough that she just would not shut up or stop rattling abusive names and chanting trashy rap songs.

I left Shorty cooking dinner and took her upstairs. I tried to talk to her but that was a complete waste of time resulting only in F-words and "I hate yous" (from her, not me). She also told me that she is going to become anorexic just to show me that she can, angry that I consider her threats to be attention seeking. She told me not to set a place at the table because she's never going to eat with us. Thirty minutes later she was at the table eating and dishing up seconds.

When I left her up in her room to cool down and be away from the others, she shouted names out the window at the Boss and a neighbor boy.

That window now has a lock on it so she cannot open it.

Another opportunity to take a fresh shot at it starts at 4 o'clock when she gets off the bus.

That Happened

In what turned out to be a crummy end to an otherwise nice holiday weekend, Squeaker flipped out right before bedtime and launched into an hour's worth of backtalk and nonsense babble.

Unfortunately she is again demonstrating the fact that she is not ready for privileges that a normal fourteen year old normally enjoys. Last night a neighbor girl spent the night. When Squeaker has friends over, for whatever reason, it increases her rudeness and meanness to the other kids in the house especially towards Lucky and The Boss.

Tonight, while complaining that she's "not allowed to do anything", she also stomped, slammed, called me names, threw stuff at The Boss, mimicked him and called him "stupid" and "crybaby", and talked and sang loudly to herself when I finally parked her on a bench downstairs.

It is true that such immature, out of the blue, off the wall reactions do mean that she's not allowed to do much without supervision.

I wonder what it would be like to parent a "normal" teenager. I really have no idea.

It Doesn't Hurt To Ask

I guess that was Squeaker's philosophy when she asked if tomorrow, instead of taking the bus, could I just take her to school when I go in for her transitional meeting. At 11:30.

Let me think hard about that. Um, NO. No, not really.

Stony look. Stomping. Door slam (twice). "Leave me alone!. Get away from me!"
I'm not sure that she was expecting anything different on that one.

Meanwhile, The Boss is earning quarters like crazy by picking up someone else's toys whenever they are left out at bedtime. He counts his money every day to see if he has enough to buy the toys he has his eye on. He's got better money management skills than most.

Pardon Our Dust

For those of you who actually noticed we were gone briefly, please excuse our absence. By request, I had to do a bit of deleting of posts and pictures mentioning particular individuals. Onward we plow although minus identifying pictures from now on.

On my back and forth considerations of what to do about next year, I guess I'm back again. Squeaker is overly anxious about going to high school next year and heartbreakingly pained about her lack of friends at her current school. Exacerbated by the fact that she has been repeatedly told that she is going to get beat up in high school and that nobody will like her if she doesn't change how she acts. Ever so not helpful.

Her special ed teacher called me about an upcoming transitional meeting and when I asked how things were going there he said, "She said her birth sister died and she just hasn't told you yet." Um, no. Not even close to reality in fact she does not have any contact with birth family that I do not know about. He also said that she had a rough day when I got back from my trip because I had let her sister stay home from school and not her. Again, no. In fact, she was the only one I saw that morning before school.

Makes me continue to think she is not quite ready for mainstream classes and her extreme anxiety and social difficulties make me wonder again if she should be in public school at all. The only thing that makes me want to send her there instead of homeschooling her is my own self-preservation instincts. A twinkie response on my part that I do not want to put myself through the emotional challenge of being with her all day without break. However, on my "back" reflections and research I am now considering the fact that she has to work extraordinarily hard to keep herself in check at school which may be part of the reason that she falls apart sometimes at home where she is much more comfortable.

And while I'm back again...the public schools here seem fine. The curriculum is pretty good. The teachers seem okay (except during political season...don't get me started). But the kids....oy! They seem pretty mean in every school we've encountered so far. I'm not sure I want to send the Boss into that environment either.

I'm giving myself a week to decide because I have to enroll the Boss and decide whether or not I will require Squeaker to take summer school classes.

Ixnay on the Esttay

This week the kid's start the state standards testing in school. Squeaker has been obsessing for weeks about it to the point of being extremely irritating. The teachers are really building it up and putting the pressure on and she has been freaking out about it which for her takes the form of tears, temper, non-stop talking, and a full blown rage last night as we tried to get her and Lucky settled into their new room.

Possibly brought on by the stress, she has been increasingly mouthy and mean to the Boss, a favorite target. Although her treatment of him had improved somewhat she's on the downward skids again. He's afraid to walk past her or go into a room with her unless someone comes with him. She says unkind things to him and calls him names when she thinks no one can hear. And lately even in front of us as she herself pointed out last night.

In the horrifying early days of her diagnosis and botch job by the psychiatrist prescribing totally wrong meds, she was especially mean to him and would punch him, block his path, and steal his toys when I wasn't looking. He was two and she was eleven. Is it any wonder he is permanantly glued to my hip? I had to keep him constantly with me so he would be safe from her and other emotionally traumatized kids. Now he freaks out if he is not with me all the time. That plus his minor developmental delays gives her lots of ammo for hatefulness towards him.

Very frustrating as much of my time is still spent making sure that the two of them are never alone together even though he is now five and has quite a little mouth of his own.

No Wonder I Don't Get Out Much

This evening we took Squeaker, Lucky, and The Boss to see the movie Hotel for Dogs. The girls had been wanting to see it so they were happy. I've been avoiding it as long as possible. We were aiming for Inkheart but got there a bit late so we decided to grit our teeth, mask our pain, and give 'em sweet potatoes (for you Zig Ziglar fans out there).

Now I feel a rant coming on.

SPOILER ALERT! If you are planning to see this movie I'm about to blow it for you. Stop reading now.

Not that you won't be able to decipher on your own the non-existent plot twists and painfully predictable characters in the first few minutes of the movie enabling you to jump to the inevitable warm, fuzzy conclusion and reclaim a good hour or so of your life by cutting out after the opening credits.

Okay, that was unkind. My kids liked it. Yours probably will to.

HOWEVER....

If I had known that it was about poor waifs in foster care I would not have bothered. True to form in the world of entertainment, the foster parents were depicted as stereo-typically mean, disgusting, self-serving jerks who take the money, mistreat the kids, and lock up the good stuff and feed the kids vile slop.
I've only ever seen two shows where foster parents were portrayed in a positive light. One was the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie Ellen Foster and the other was an episode of Touched by an Angel. Of course, on TBAA everyone thought the foster parents were baddies and it took an angel to show that they were actually caring and loving. Wait a sec, another pops to mind--Angels in the Outfield. The foster mom was a nice lady even though she made the kids sleep in sleeping bags instead of giving them sheets and blankets.

To be fair, in Hotel for Dogs the foster parents were not the only moronic adults. The cops and animal control officers were unsympathetic, snide, bumbling idiots who were dumber than all the kids and dogs combined. Pretty typical fare for child-focused movies.

As Ana commented, "This whole movie is a cliche."

It had some cute moments but they don't serve my rant so I guess you'll have to discover them for yourself. The girls got teary at one point and The Boss laughed out loud at the dog antics although he was bored any time people were on screen. By the time he had accidentally dumped two trays of popcorn and all his candy on the floor he just wanted to go to the lobby and play video games.

At least we went to the discount theater.

Fickle

Last night The Boss was settled into bed and I was working on the computer. All was peaceful until he caught sight of a crane fly smacking the blinds. Crane flies (more commonly known as mosquito eaters or colloquially as mosquito hawks or sometimes as daddy-long legs--but that makes me think of the spider--or at our house, for reasons obscure, as "freddies") are oddly leggy but harmless and, though related to mosquitos, do not buzz annoyingly. I don't know if they actually eat mosquitos but I tell the kids they do so they won't bother me about it when they see one.

However, the Boss is inordinately freaked by winged and crawly insects so naturally he became increasingly agitated and kept telling me to "Get it out!". Finally, I snatched the freddy by the wing and flicked it out the door. Deed done. Be quiet and go to bed.

Um, no. That led to ten minutes of him sulking and crying and repeating, "You're mean, mommy. You killed it." and "I want it IN!". For cryin' out loud. Really?

He even opened the door to let it back in and it wouldn't come. So to get some peace and quiet, I got up again and let it back into the room where it flew too close to the bed resulting in cries of, "Get it, mom!" Nope. Deal with it.

This morning it was in my shower and I had to grab it by the wing again and toss it out. The Boss had forgotten all about it.

The Bribe

The Boss has a great many fears and phobias and pecularities that makes it difficult sometimes to get him to do normal things that a five year old should do on his own.

He will not go into a room by himself, let alone sleep by himself. He chooses his clothes for the day based on which one has the kind of tag he likes to touch. For a long time he wouldn't wear long sleeves or shorts. He becomes almost hysterical when he has to get his hair cut because he gets itchy. He was terribly difficult to potty train because he was afraid of the toilet and would pull his shirt up over his nose at the smell of his own pee. He doesn't just object, he screams and cries piteously for hours. Undiagnosed as of yet apart from some developmental delays, getting him assessed is something I think we will need to do in order to insure his success in school. It is quite possible we will just find out he's just a quirky little dude.

We've helped him progress in some of these areas by taking it slow and offering tempting bribes along the way. It cost me three really cool toys and a ton of candies just to get him potty trained. He had just turned four years old and it was our third attempt.

Our current challenge is getting him to go to the bathroom on his own without crying and begging me to go with him because he is too scared. I couldn't even be in the kitchen when he used the downstairs bathroom just down a short hall or in the master bedroom when he used the bathroom there. It's been three days and so far so good. I bought a huge bag of individual m&m packages and he can choose a package every time he uses the bathroom without asking me to go with him as long as he shares it with Seamonkey. He's drinking a lot of water to earn more candy and has been chowing down on quite a lot of it. It's okay by me to sugar him up good for the week if that means not being begged or ordered to go to the bathroom with him all day long.

Is he not so stankin' cute, though?

Doings and Goings On

President's Day WEEK is going as vacations do.

The littles quarrel and tattle constantly but still play together all day without pause. Yesterday one of them closed the stopper on the sink and left the water running, flooding the upstairs bathroom. It ran down the vents to drown the downstairs bathroom as well. I put towels down to soak up the mess. The older kids freaked out when they went to wash hands for lunch thinking the flood might have come from a more unsavory source.

Shorty had a doctor appointment this morning which meant a lot of time in the car as we still go to the next county. Tomorrow I will drive him down to a friend's house about an hour away and then head a half hour's drive to pick up one of the kids from a friend's house before making the hour long trip back home. We don't really live in the boonies but it seems like it sometimes. Squeaker has already started rolling her eyes and snorting so we're all kept informed on how put out she is to have to be in the car again.

Lucky brought home an mp3 player belonging to her godfather's seven year old daughter. She asked me to charge it so I did, then promptly confiscated it. I had to explain to her that we don't allow young girls in our home to listen to music filled with profanity and nasty references to cheap, dirty sex. She borrowed that from a seven year old? Good grief.

Squeaker got into several little spats with one of the littles yesterday then yelled at me about how he was acting when I got on her about it. Does she really want her behavior compared with that of a three-year-old?

Today she went a little too far with snarky, rude comments about my messy room after I had spent all day yesterday and part of today on the rest of the house. Actually, way too far. So I made her a detailed list and she is taking over all my household/yard/pet chores so I can have the luxury of tidying my room to her satisfaction. She managed to get through cooking and cleaning up dinner, doing dishes, sweeping, and folding a load of laundry before admitting she was ready to pass out. That was only part of the evening chores. Tomorrow should be fun since she'll be privileged to get up early and put in a full day of it.

I've been having Lucky work a little each day on her science fair project which is due next Monday. It's been going okay but tomorrow she starts working on the report part of it. Writing is a challenge for her but she seems to have a good grasp of the experiment and the result so I'm hoping it will go easily for her.

Stickers finally gets back into her college art classes tomorrow after a long break. That will be good since I think maybe we've given her some sort of creative block. I've commissioned her to paint a new piece to go above our fireplace since she keeps mercilessly criticizing the one that is there now. Yes, she painted that one too.

Crybaby

Definitely need to get some sleep. I'm tired and cranky. My back hurts and I've had an earache for a week. Every time one of the kids asks for something I get irritated especially when I'm already in the middle of doing something for somebody else. And while I'm wallowing in annoyance and self-pity it's really bugging me when somebody says "mom" and before I even get a chance to answer they start in on "mom, mom, mom, mom, MOM!" (substitute "granny" at least one third of the time). Also, that whole call my name or start telling me a story when somebody else is already telling me a story that I can barely hear anyway? Getting old, too. And right now The Boss is in bed making moaning noises because I said he couldn't watch a movie because he was acting like a turd pie and then saying no when I tell him to stop. And while I'm on it, why does everyone have to be so loud and/or shrill all of the time? They all have an entire week of for President's Day. Why do they call it President's Day if they're going to give them a week off? What am I going to do with all of them for a week? Hope they like the park and the library. Hope it doesn't rain.

As you see nobody is acting horribly at all but still my last nerve is ground down to a nubby stump. It's not them, it's me. (I'm not dumping them, don't worry.) Plus, I miss Ana and I'm ready for her to come home now. Stickers has asked me twice if it's harder not having Ana here. Except for a few logistical challenges, it hasn't been all that hard but it has been a lot more boring.

Forget sleep. I think I need a little vacation. Thankfully, I hear The Boss' honking snores so at least he's down for the night.

That Explains A Lot

Last night The Boss and I were sitting together on my bed watching a movie. Well, I sat. He bounced and jerked, flailed his arms, kicked his feet, and repeatedly thwacked his head against the pillow. No, he wasn't having a tantrum. That's just how he sits.

My repeated requests for him to be still and stop moving were met with "okay" but little movement reduction. Finally exasperated after getting elbowed again I said, "Can you PLEASE knock it off? Why do you do that?"

He laughingly replied, "Because I'm a kid."

Oh. Of course.

Max Gross Load

Okay, so maybe not today, maybe tomorrow...

I've completely reached the limit of my patience with The Boss' whining and screaming. His leg is better, no pain, but he will not walk on it. The other kid's aren't even home from school yet. Hopefully Squeaker can maintain today without too much snark because already I feel like jamming socks in my ears and hiding under the sofa until Ana comes home.

He is darn cute though.

Tomorrow Will Be Better

Not a great end to the day for me.

The middle girls have been running around and shrieking since this afternoon and I have not been very patient with it. They didn't do the few things that I asked them to do before bedtime and their giggly shrillness is irritating every last nerve.

I was unintentionally snappish with Shorty on my way to shush them and put them back on task. Squeaker slammed the door twice when I told her not to go into the bathroom with Lucky and then told me she didn't slam anything, saying snottily, "You just hate everybody because your little kid got hurt." Yeah, whatever. She said I was mad at her all weekend and so I did tell her that I actually was pretty annoyed that she slammed doors and talked rudely to me repeatedly when I asked her to do things she should already know. This morning she slammed the door because I called her out on a lie. She lies and then she's the one who gets to slam the door? Unfair, I say.

The Boss is a horrible patient and I am a short-tempered nurse. He asks...or whines rather...for things all day long. When I'm lifting, carrying, holding him he immediately begins whining for me to do something or get something else for him. Did I mention how heavy he is with that cast on? I finally told him to knock it off and give me a break. He's going to have to be way more patient so I can schlep him where he needs to go then run around and get all the stuff he needs.

I'm feeling very aggravated with myself tonight and I'm sure the kids feel the same. I'm going to try very hard to do better tomorrow.