Shut Up!

Shut Up!

I don't even know what we were doing at that time when Sissy said that to me with venom in her little voice.  Talking perhaps and not paying as much attention to her as she would like?  The minute she said it she recoiled in fear as I pulled her blocks from her.  I picked her up in my arms and let her know that we don't talk this way here and asked her if someone said that to her a lot.  It was my assumption that it was an older sibling, but she said it was "daddy" and muttered something about hitting.  We have a lot of difficulty understanding them with their lisp on new words that we haven't heard before so off went the TV and we all seemed very quiet.

I asked Sissy gently if she was hit.  She nodded sheepishly and frightened.  I asked who. She barely answered "daddy".  I use it in quotes as we don't really know who this is.  I asked where. She said on her back and it hurts.  She was talking so quietly like she knew this was something that was told not to share.  And she cried, and I held her.

We have struggled with Sissy so much over the past three weeks.  Such a defiant and defensive little girl.  Her little walls just crumbled.  It was like she let us in.

Squirrel and I promised her that she is safe here.  That we will never hurt her.  We will never hit her.  She sat with us a bit and then wanted to play.

They say that you may have a child for some time before you really know what has happened in their lives.  I guess we will find out more as we go.

Another item we learned today, and we suspected, is that our dynamic duo's seven year old sister wants to see them more, but has no interest in seeing their mother (who by the way we have only seen once in the past three weeks).  This weekend looks fairly open so we will have to get together.  She is living in town so it should be easy.  We also really like her foster mom and I think we could become good friends in this journey.  She is a veteran foster parent and just seems like an anchor in the storm.  When we did have our one family visit with biomom she paid so much attention to our wee Bug and barely any to Big Sister.

Bug may have given a neighbor of ours a new nickname.  He is a super sweet guy and has given the kids books and baseball equipment (Sissy is becoming quite the slugger).  Well, he was outside and all the sudden Bug starts chirping "Boobies" and we look out and he is outside and shirtless as usual.  We have either embarrassed the fellow enough that he will now find a shirt to come outside, or his nickname is "Boobies".

Now as the duo is asleep we are finally going to watch some adult TV... I think the last time we did so was at least a week ago.