Only one day left. This week the girls had no day care so I had to burn a week of vacation to take care of them. We really need to get a few more folks certified as care givers, but the challenge is, who wants to take two rowdy little todders for an 8 hour shift? Our neighbors have taken them for our race a few weeks ago, but that was when both of them were home. With that in mind we would need 10 more caregivers in order to cover a week without taking time off of work. Looks like I will be taking time off as these odd days come up. Looks like we have some time before our next "break"though.
Monday was a good day and Squirrel worked a half day so we could go visit a friend. It was fantastic. The girls got to ride on the pontoon, swim in shallow water, and then we went on jet skis! These two are fearless. We also watched snakes that were on the rocks at the edge of the water. Nice thing for us was that with 4 other adults around we were able to just sit back and watch. We are always so engaged with the girls that it is exhausting. More and more we work on getting them to play without the need for us to be always present, but it is short lived.
Tuesday through Thursday were a blur. A toddler filled blur. We tried to go to the Children's Museum, but it is closed for most of the month (they could have notified their members), and didn't have a good alternative so we did lunch (tacos) with one of my co-workers. Sissy was not on good behavior, not that she was completely awful, but it was not nearly as good as she usually is. We played outside, we played with playdough, we chased bugs, we took naps, I longed for day care.
We had a case worker visit this week. It was fine as usual. Mostly just a restart of visits (potentially) and a start of regular sibling visits. Apparently the biomom has emerged from her month of not returning calls and is ready to maybe start things back up. I'm not holding my breath. Sibling visits are now twice a month.
The next court date is set... Part of me wants there to be no progress to reunification so that termination can begin and the other part of me wants some progress to happen. It is a hard position as we love these two, but on a week as exhausting as this one, we want some of our freedom back.
We made a conscious effort to get some of our freedom back this weekend. I pulled out a 1000 piece puzzle and declared it mine. I feel like a kid licking a cupcake so a sibling won't eat it. For the most part the girls respected it. We did try to take a few toys upstairs to their room, but now we have castles in the hallway as they didn't behave in their room.
Today we had our first sibling visit with the 7 year old and her biodad's family. The other two siblings were to be there as well, however nobody informed their foster parents of the visit. The 7's family seems alright. We got more backstory, got to see more pictures. The aunt says that she has never seen our girls in anything but a diaper before. Such a sad existence these girls have had. We also found out that our girls most likely had their lice for over a year!
After our family visit we had some hotdogs and then went swimming! The girls did great. Bug didn't want to be in the water as much as be around it, but Sissy was in it and loved it. She didn't panic at all this time. Usually we have a few times which we have to put her out of the water because in a panic she injures one of us, but today she was great. After our swim it was nap time (reluctantly at first) of which Sissy slept for an hour and Bug 15 minutes so she and I went shopping. JoAnn's has all their Halloween stuff out so Bug spent much of the time imitating Squirrel's spider scream and then giggling that spiders aren't scary.
We had our favorite for dinner (tater tot casserole) and then the meltdowns began again. My neighbors must all think I am a terrible parent leading my bawling toddler down the street after a mid walk fit. Well, she isn't really bawling, she just wants attention so we have to ignore it and the more we do the less we get. We flip back and forth between attention for good and then withdraw for the bad. It is like a test of wills between us and a toddler that will scream louder and louder as well as become physically more and more in your space. It is only her behaving as she knew, but we have such a small window to correct it. We do have Bug corrected so that generally she knows that good behavior gets the attention. Today she behaved so well that she got to stay up later and we looked at pictures together.
Only one more day of vacation to survive... wish me luck.
Also, if you are counting, the girls haven't seen their bioparents in 6 weeks.
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