Got this photo tonight from someone in Texas. It came via Sprint so I am guessing it is from a cell phone? No message, nothing. Just a subject header with my son’s name on it. BTW, it took awhile, but we figured out the cast says Arlington (upside down) which is where he is currently working as a zone leader. Whose hat? Your guess is as good as mine.

No one can say that Taylor ever does things halfway. From breaking his leg in a soccer game to now breaking his wrist as a missionary, he tends to do things 100%. He was playing basketball on his preparation day and is now sporting a royal blue cast after falling hard on his wrist a few weeks ago. He broke the scaphoid bone and here is an excerpt from his letter home yesterday:

Elder H. here in Arlington… with a full solid cast (it’s a royal blue!) on my left arm and missionary signatures adorning it. Yep. Scaphoid fracture. I had a bone scan on Monday, and in the words of Dr. Milne, “Well, Elder H., leave it to you to have the freak accident fracture that doesn’t show up on x-rays. Have fun in a cast in the middle of the Texas summer!” Oy… So yeah. Been a fun week.

I saw this great pic above and am guessing that hitting his wrist this way is how he broke it.

Actually, it only cost about $5K compliments of her orthodontist, but I love this photo of Alysssa. I took it recently at her sister’s birthday dinner and it clearly conveys who she is. She just came home from Girls’ camp a few weeks ago and a leader sent me an email telling me how much she loves Alyssa and her cheerful attitude. She is such a great example not only to her siblings, but her peers as well.

“Don’t touch! It’s mine!” How many times a day do I hear that? Far too often. Usually it’s from V., our foster daughter, which is normal for a 3 year old. She thinks everything belongs to her.

The older kids also, however, seem to have an extra strong claim on ownership. Just in case there was any doubt, Micheline decided to let us all know that this water bottle belongs to her.

Here’s the lastest pics of Micheline’s hair after it was locked about 5 months. She’s been locked for 6 1/2 months now if you count from when I took out the original ones and made them smaller, and we are loving it! The only thing we hate is when people think they need to run their hands through her hair. Locked hair….women with pregnant bellies…for some reason people think they are public property, but Micheline has gotten pretty good at telling people, “Please don’t touch my hair.” I can hardly wait until it is long enough to pull up into some hairdos, but right now we are just enjoying the freedom of being “wash and wear.”

Friends of ours have finally received their referral after 39 long months of waiting. Click here to see their new daughter’s darling face. Such kissable looking cheeks!

In our state high schoolers have to pass the AIMS test to graduate. They start taking it as freshmen and have 4 years to pass it. Some whine about how it is not a fair test in showing what students really know, but so far none of my first four children have had any trouble passing it.

The average score on the reading portion is around 600. Alyssa just scored 900 on it, one of only 3 students in the whole school who scored that high. Needless to say, she scored in the “exceeds expectations” range. Way to go Alyssa!

As many of you already know, Ben has bipolar disorder on top of his ADHD. We can medicate him for the bipolar, but any medication we have tried for ADHD has made him very irritable, angry and manic, so we have learned to do our best and live with the ADHD as a child who can’t focus is better than a child who puts fists through bedroom doors.

I’ve been asked recently by a few of you how the neurological reorganization has been going. We have seen some progress, but not the miraculous changes that others have seen or what we hoped to see. For those who have asked me about NR work, I still believe in it, but also believe it has its limits. For us it hasn’t been the “be all end all” that others have claimed it to be. Maybe we haven’t been dedicated enough to do the entire program each day but for those who have done it, you know how exhausting it can be. One mom on an NR group that I am in, put my feelings into words one day when she said, “I hate NR. I hate it more than my kids hate it. It consumes my life, it makes me fight with my kids, and it is just downright exhausting!” It is indeed exhausting because it is hard work and most kids resist doing the tummy crawling, creeping on hands and knees, etc, that is required day in and day out in order to see progress. For a mom with a resistant child, it is emotionally exhausting to say, “No, you can’t: watch TV, play outside, play videogames, ride your bike, etc., until your exercises are done”, knowing full well your child is going to “lose it” that he has to do those dreaded exercises yet again. Surprisingly, however, Ben has actually been more compliant with his program than Micheline has been. He is the one with more issues, and yet he is the one who will do the work required; he will do it complaining every step of the way, but he usually gets the job done.

Micheline, on the other hand seems to always manage to find a way to slip out of the room to the bathroom, or escape outside while I am watching Ben do his patterns. Other times she pretends to not know what is required of her. The two of them do not do well both creeping or crawling at the same time, nor is it good to have them both doing patterns at the same time, so we usually have one crawling while the other does patterns. I’m not quite sure how Micheline manages to get out of doing exercises, but it seems I turn my back for a mere second and she has disappeared, or she does her best to whine and outlast me until I have to go make dinner or some other task that gets her out of my line of sight.

Well, her behavior has deteriorated over the past few months. Impulses that used to be more readily controlled are not. Shrieking loudly for no reason at all, bumping into people again, and intentionally trying to hurt another child or the dog have all surfaced again recently. She will deny what she has done immediately, and “I’m not lying” are three of the most common words out of her mouth lately, even as it is evident when she is indeed telling an untruth.

As much as I would like to have faith in NR, I don’t believe in putting all my eggs in one basket. I hate medicating children and wish there were another way, but her behaviors have really gotten out of hand lately and even with using the best counseling techniques, she is more and more impulsive to the point where it is causing problems with social interaction at school.

I have recommitted to doing this program because I saw huge benefits when she first started. Retained birth reflexes were going away, she was more aware of where her body was in space, etc. However, I also know that we need some help right now, not in two years when the NR may or may not have done everything that practitioners claim it can do. I do believe that some of the regressions we have recently seen are a result of starting back with the program, and that I need to have the faith to continue. In the meantime, however, Micheline needs to function at school, which she has not been able to do when she can’t pay attention in the classroom.

Micheline used to be on Tenex, but it made her so exhausted and didn’t seem to be working as well as it used to. So, this month we tried Strattera, hoping to avoid any of the stimulant meds, but she seemed even worse on it. So, back to the dr. we went today, where I consented to try a stimulant medication.

Already having another child on antipyschotics, I just didn’t want to go the stimulant route with Micheline. I feel like I have done everything in my power to avoid it, however, from diet changes to NR, to audiovisual enhancement training, herbal remedies and counseling. Each has helped a bit, but the puzzle that is my daughter requires more than one piece to be complete, and I do feel that there are times that the medication component is necessary even though it may be hated and dreaded.

So, tonight I go to bed, wondering and worrying how she will be tmw after being given a stimulant. Will it help to control her impulses? Will it make her feel like she can finally focus on the task in front of her or will it merely give her stomach aches, and perhaps make her irritable as stimulants did to her brother?

I will say I’m very grateful for a pediatrician who doesn’t push meds. We have taken quite awhile to get to this step and tried so many other options along the way, that I feel that we are proceeding cautiously rather than rushing into this choice.

She also told me today that should the generic methylphenidate not work for us, that there are other options. I don’t even want to think about it. Anyone who has had children who build up “med fatigue” where meds seem to quit working, hates to hear the words “medication change.” When it comes to Ben, those two words rank right up there with similar two word phrases such as “firing squad” and “death wish”. Forrest Gump had it all wrong. It’s not life that is like a box of chocolates, but rather med changes that are like a box of chocolates because you truly don’t know what you will get when you start playing around with brain chemicals. Sometimes you find the perfect match and the med is a life saver. Other times, it is horrible, and you pray non-stop for 8+ hours as you wait for it to wear off.

I know there are some who might not agree with our decision, but with both kids, I never resorted to meds until I felt that we had exhausted all other options. Meanwhile, it’s back to the grind with more neuro work with Micheline. I have faith it can help. As Nina, one of the practitioners has said, we can do two years of he** or we can not do it and do many more. My vote is for two years.

Ok all, I’ll let ya know up front this is a whining post, so if you aren’t in the mood, don’t read much further. I have been feeling resentful the past few days. “Of who?” you might ask. Well, I have less than wonderful feelings toward our foster daughter’s mother.

Having adopted internationally for our last 3 children, we never had birthmothers in the picture. We probably couldn’t begin to find our children’s birthmothers even if they desperately wanted to meet them. I probably want to meet them more than some of my children do, but at least at this point in time, it just isn’t an option.

So, having to practice “shared parenting” is a totally new idea for me. It’s an idea that I stand by wholeheartedly in theory. After all, V. was taken from her home without anyone asking her if she was game to the idea. Of course she wasn’t, no matter how bad home life was (and trust me on this one, it was pretty bad!) She misses her parents and grieves for them at times which is totally understandable. I have done my best in trying to educate her mother on how important it is for V. to feel those connections with her bio family while she is in my home and have asked repeatedly for pictures. We finally got two last week which I posted in her room where she can see them. Meanwhile, I have sent her mother 32 pictures of her over the past two months in order to let her mom feel more a part of her life even though she can only see her daughter a couple of hours each week during a supervised visit.

Am I resentful of the photos issue? Nah, even though it irritates me that her mother claims she has hundreds of photos but could only come up with two, and her father isn’t in either photo. What I am resentful of is the fact that her mother doesn’t know how to parent and so she just tries to literally buy V’s love. If V. wants a balloon, Mom buys it. If she wanted a bottle full of kool-aid, she got it…hence, the bottle rot that cost almost $2,000 to fix her molars. V. came home from visitation near Easter time with so much loot she could hardly carry it all in the house. From stuffed animals to kites to candy, she had it all.

V. is happy here. For the most part, she doesn’t even come home sad from visitations anymore. It’s almost like she is thinking “Yeah, I miss my parents but I got to see them today and I’m happy living in this house.”

Since last week, however, the honeymoon seems to be over. I’m not sure what has triggered it, but she is trying behaviors with me that I have only seen her do with her biological mother; behaviors she never would have done two weeks ago. “No!” has become her favorite word and if she really wants to prove irritating, she says, “What??” to everything you tell her. She knows full well what she is doing because she does it with a smirk. A child who has been fully potty trained for two months is now going in her pants again and her preschool teachers tell me she is sassy mouthed and has “attitude.”

Part of this is actually a good sign. Without her feeling safe to act out and be sassy, she might never heal from some of her issues. She is also trying to regain some semblance of control in her life, which to her probably feels quite out of control. No one asked her if she preferred two hour visits on Wednesday afternoons where total strangers would pick her up in a van when the visit is over to remove her from her mother and bring her back here. I totally understand her need for control. I get it. I really do. However, having Mom on the same page when it comes to parenting would be quite beneficial.

Last week V. got out of the cart at the grocery store and literally ran as fast as her little legs would go over to grab a balloon that I did not intend to buy for her. I had to peel her fingers off of the string which caused her to scream all the way out of the store. Yes, I could have bought it, but did not want to reinforce inappropriate behaviors.

Having watched her interact with her mother, I know Mom would have bought the balloon the second V. let out a peep. As a matter of fact, V. has come back from visitation on 3 different occasions with balloons in hand. So, I am the “mean mother” and she is the mom who always comes bearing gifts. I’ve heard her Mother say, “but I didn’t want her to cry!” even when what she was crying for was totally inappropriate. We have one standard with her bio mom and another she is expected to live by the rest of the week. Heck, if I were her, I’d probably be pooping my pants by now as well just out of frustration!

I appreciate those of you who have written me and asked me if everything is OK. Yeah, we’re stumbling along. I’ve just been too busy living life to write about it.

One of the main reasons is that we have a new foster daughter. She arrived at the end of February and even though we are loving her to death, anytime a child comes into the home, it does sort of make every child shift a bit. “Where do I sit at the table now, or where do I sit to watch a movie now that she has taken my favorite chair?” Those are the conscious thoughts the children express. The unconscious ones are:
“If I act much younger than my age will I get the same amount of attention she is getting? After all, she acts sort of babyish, so maybe I should too.”
“If I love her, will she just leave again like the other ones have? Do I risk falling in love with her only to have it hurt when she leaves?” I confess to feeling the latter myself, so I easily understand how the kids feel.

I will write more about our newest placement in the next few days. Right now I am exhausted and just want to go to bed. She cries out at night sometimes and is not content unless I go in and pat her back to help her go back to sleep. 3-4 times/night of this on some nights is making me rather weary, but it is the least I can do for a sweetheart who didn’t ask to be removed from her parents’ home.

She is a doll, is loads of fun, and has been a healing balm for some of my children’s hearts. Some who are uneasy with lots of physical affection love hugging and holding her.

It’s funny because when I wrote this, one of my worries was about having a child who was language delayed. Well, V. is quite language delayed as well. She understands most of what is said, but does not speak clearly herself and has a small expressive vocabulary. And yet, she is clearly meant to be here. She fits as if she has always been here and I realize had we accepted the other referral, we would never have received V. as an emergency placement. When we were being considered for some fost/adopt children, they took us off the list as a placement home for emergency placements.

It’s just one more small testimony to me of God’s awareness of what is best for our lives. He told me “not this one” about a child and it nearly tore my heart out, but had we accepted her, V. would not be in our home today.

We don’t know how long she will stay. It will depend on whether or not Mom and Dad follow their case plan, but for now the plan looks like at least 6 months. Will it kill us emotionally if she goes back home? Yes, but as foster parents we need to be supportive of birth family in whatever way we can as long as they are trying. In the meantime, we are enjoying playing with her, loving on her and just overall being blessed by her presence in our home.