Samantha: 114 Months, Week 3
Aedan: 82 Months, Week 1
Owen: 38 Months, Week 3
Sunday, November 29th was the the day our little peanut turned 5 months old, but for some reason I didn't take any special 5 month pictures of her. We have a couple pictures of her from that day, like this one as we changed her diaper.
As I was cleaning up in Samantha's and Aedan's room, I found this container with Aedan's staples that were in his head. I thought it was so funny that he wanted to keep this, and it's even cuter that he has displayed it proudly on his shelf. In fact, as I write this post many weeks later, there was even a time when he put a staple in his special animal Happy Teddy, so that way they could both match each other.
That afternoon there was a Christmas event in Harvey's Lake, so we decided to check it out, just to feel like we were more a part of the community, even though we don't really do the Santa thing with our kids. Santa and Mrs. Claus came in on a fire truck. There were alpacas to pet and feed. They had Grotto Pizza and hot chocolate, as well as goody bags that you got after visiting Santa. However, I talked to someone who was running the event and asked if our kids could still get goody bags even if they didn't believe in Santa and didn't want to visit him. They looked a little confused that kids wouldn't believe in Santa, but we were able to get goody bags for them. Here are some pictures from the event.
Yay for the arrival of the Christmas season! This is my favorite time of the year.
Here are a couple cute pictures of our little peanut, who is not so little anymore, sitting in her high chair, getting ready to eat her baby food for the evening. She's getting so much stronger and better able to support herself in the sitting position like this.
The kids had the day off of school, so I decided to use our time with everyone home to do some shopping for Christmas presents for Daddy and other relatives. Ben stayed home to work, so I took all four kids with me to Target down in Wilkes-Barre. Our little peanut was very grumpy before leaving the house to go to the store, but she fell asleep in the car and slept most of the time we were out, only waking up when we were almost done walking around the store, and she was happy just looking around after that. She just needed a nice, good nap! The kids found good presents for Ben like a new belt, wallet, dress socks, and Samantha picked out a nice sweater and Aedan picked out a nice shirt, plus they got him mint dark chocolate kisses. We got presents for Alaina, Ema, and Papa, and it was a successful shopping trip.
Ben made this comment on Facebook: "Lately Samantha has repeatedly said she wants to be an author when she grows up. She and a few friends have a little writing club where they make comments on the writing each is doing. It is so fun watching her mind explore different types of creativity. She has always enjoyed reading immensely, as she read 5 books over this Thanksgiving weekend. But, to see her also add the love of writing has been fun to watch this year. It's pretty special we get to see her growing up."
On Tuesday night, after helping get all the kids to bed, I borrowed our friends' large van so I could drive 45 minutes out past Tunkhannock to get an elliptical for Ben. I had been looking on Facebook Marketplace for a few weeks for a good deal on a decent one, and I finally found one. This was going to be a large part of his Christmas present from me, along with The Great British Baking Show Cookbook that is coming out just a few days before Christmas, since he has been enjoying watching that show lately. It was a bit of a drive out there, and I was a little nervous driving such a big van, but the pick up was easy, and I think Ben was pleasantly surprised at my find. Especially with Covid and having a baby in our home, finding time to exercise has been challenging. Ben was jogging a lot in the warmer weather, so I wanted to find something to help him continue to exercise in these cold months, and to make it easy on him by having something in our basement that he could do anytime without having to go to a facility of any kind.
Last week all visits were cancelled due to an increase in Covid numbers, but this week visits were back on, as long as they weren't in the CYS office. We moved the visit to Tuesday due to her mom's work schedule, so Ben took her down that morning since I was planning on going grocery shopping. Ben went to drop our little peanut off for her visit at 9:30, like we had planned with her mom, and she didn't answer the door. He waited for almost 15 minutes on her front porch. This was the kind of thing that made me think that it wasn't a sure thing that she was going to get her girls back at the end of December. Especially with the fact that she hadn't seen her daughter in a week and a half, it's hard to understand why she wouldn't be ready and anticipating her arrival. It breaks my heart when I think about circumstances like that.
Since it was just Owen and me, I took my chance to get our grocery shopping done since it's much easier with only one kid. Somehow milk leaked in the car, so I was trying to clean it up when we got back home and I brought it most of the groceries. However, by the time I came back in the house, Owen had already pooped and peed in his pants. I didn't understand why he wasn't telling us he had to go anymore, and I was really frustrated that he was struggling with getting completely potty trained. I was really tired of cleaning up poopy underwear! I needed to think of some solution and something to give him a greater motivation to stop playing and tell me when he had to go.
Here is some work the kids brought home from school that day. Aedan made a pumpkin head guy, practiced his spelling words with the long a sound, practiced adding, and practiced matching pictures with the correct word with the long a sound.
I was having conversations with my sister about discipline and how to get kids to listen to you without yelling. That is definitely something I have been working on over many years. Even lately, I am trying to get their attention, have them look me in the eye, and then calmly give them a warning about their behavior and exactly what will happen if they don't listen. Then, if they don't listen, we try our best to follow through with what we said every time, even if they are mad and crying. In fact, Owen cried himself to sleep the other night because of this very thing. He was being silly and pretending to kick me (he and Aedan have been wrestling a lot lately), and I told him to stop. Then, he actually did kick me in the face, so I just got up and left in the middle of singing him his bedtime songs. It's hard to be calm in the moment, and just like I expressed earlier, I got mad at Owen that day because he still isn't doing well at telling us when he has to go potty, and he wets his underwear a lot. On Monday he pooped in his underwear twice, and then he did it again on Tuesday, and I definitely got too upset and mad at him about it. When you get mad at him, he just cries big tears and says "Okay" on repeat. I feel so bad afterwards, and I am definitely better than I used to be, but it's still a work in progress at controlling my anger and talking calmly to our kids when they do something bad or are not listening.
At 10:00 that night on Tuesday, Samantha was still not asleep. She kept getting up and walking around, going to the bathroom, and crying in her room about not being able to sleep. We didn't know what was going on. She does this a lot when she is anxious about things, and we knew her best friend was going to have to stay home from school until next Monday because her brother was coughing at school, so it was a quarantine thing, just to be cautious. So we were thinking she was not able to sleep because she was thinking about how bad school was going to be without her best friend.
Then, our little peanut was up from about 10:30-12:00, with both Ben and me trying to get her back to sleep. She had a visit with her mom that day for 6 hours, and she only fed her once during that whole time. She also didn't get a nap in because she took her out shopping instead, so she was super hungry that night. She ate a 6 ounce bottle at dinner time, 2 ounces of milk mixed with rice cereal, and another 8 ounce bottle before bedtime, which was about 7:45, and then she woke up several times between 10:30 and 12:00, and we ended up feeding her another 4 ounces because nothing we were doing was working to get her back to sleep. Then, she finally slept after that until about 8:30, which was great, but also meant that she was exhausted. She hasn't been a great sleeper, especially lately, and we were finally getting her back to a normal routine the last few nights until all this went on. We have told her mom the schedule that she is on at our house, but she doesn't seem to care. She just does whatever she wants with her and then wonders why she's fussy. Ben told her when she dropped her off that she was going to be ready for a nap soon, but she didn't put her down for a nap when she was ready for one. Ben also told her mom that our little peanut has been fussy with taking bottles lately, and sometimes you have to convince her that she's interested, and she will start eating. She's just in the distracted phase right now, but her mom just said she didn't seem like she wanted to eat, so she didn't try to feed her. This is the hard part of foster care. We know our little peanut so well. We are in tune with her needs and her schedule, and her parents really are not. They don't know her well and don't know how to comfort her because she's not around them as much as she's around us. As we are getting closer and closer to when our little peanut will return home, we are glad that her mom is doing everything that is required of her by the courts to get her kids back, but we still think that our little peanut isn't really going to be provided with a good and stable life. We knew the court hearing for her dad and grandma, with the potential of our little peanut being moved from our home, was two weeks out, so we will see what happens at that point.
Wednesday, December 2nd we had our first snow of the season. The kids were so excited that they got ready for school as fast as they could so they could play in the snow before going to school. Here are some videos and pictures of our time outside that morning, including some shots of what our yard and neighborhood looks like covered in snow. The first snow is always so magical and exciting. We had a blast outside together!
Ben decided to stay home on Wednesday so that I could have time to work on my last assignment I had to do for my class, but it seemed like I kept having to do stuff with the kids or around the house, so I wasn't able to get as much work done as I was hoping I would. However, I was really excited that after this last assignment, I would be all done with this class. It was going to be a lot of work and was basically like a huge test grade, but I was finally near the end, which I was glad for.
Here is a picture of the elliptical I got for Ben as part of his Christmas present. It fits well on this side of the basement, especially now that we have gotten rid of the pool table.
Here is some work the kids brought home from school. Samantha had a Mid-Chapter Checkpoint for Math where she is practicing multiplying with decimals.
Aedan brought home some math pages about problem solving using adding and subtracting. It's always amazing to me how easy this stuff is for him. He definitely doesn't have any trouble with it, and he often gets frustrated by having to do some problems for homework, simply because he finds it easy and boring.
He also has a paper where he practiced filling the correct word in a sentence, as well as drawing a ninja turtle on the side of his page. He's so cute how he draws pictures on everything.
Samantha had to write sentences for school to learn the context of words, and this picture is what she came up with. Her teacher responded, "You are quite the author!" I love the creativity she used in her sentences. They aren't your basic run of the mill sentences. They are descriptive, some are funny, and they are very expressive of Samantha's personality. Most kids would hate this assignment, but Samantha loves to write, so this didn't bother her at all.
Our little peanut was having some tummy trouble on Wednesday, like she was uncomfortable, and when she finally pooped, it looked and smelled different than usual. I even sent a message to her mom asking if she happened to give her something different to eat or drink at her visit on Tuesday, just to check and be sure. She said she only gave her a bottle, and defended herself, saying she doesn't even have any baby food or cereal at her house. However, she also commented that she was really fussy that day and was really fighting through eating the whole 6 ounces, so who knows what was giving the little girl so much trouble.
On Wednesday afternoon I worked on my assignment during nap time, then once the kids got home we had homework time and dinner. Ben had a Zoom meeting from 5-6, which made the evening a little busy and crazy. The kids had AWANA, and our little peanut continued to be fussy most of the night. Once the kids were all in bed, I worked on my assignment again until bedtime. Then, just as we got in bed, our little peanut started crying again, and Ben and I took turns going to her room 3 different times, with Ben finally feeding her again and putting her in the rock and play rather than her crib. At that point it was already midnight, and I got up with her again at 5:00 for 40 minutes.
Needless to say, I was really tired on Thursday morning. I felt so tired of being tired, and just felt like I needed a break. I still wasn't done with my assignment for class, and I was so tired from the little sleep that I got, that it was hard to focus on it enough.
Our little peanut had her first visit with her dad at his house that Thursday, so the only thing Owen and I had going on that day was dropping her off for her visit, and then coming back home for lunch and nap time for him. I hoped that the visit would go well for him and for her, but after the fussy day and rough night we had with her, I felt glad to have a little bit of a break that afternoon.
Here is a silly video I took of Owen at lunchtime, capturing the silly way he says potato as "guh-pato" and tomato as "guh-mato." I love these precious preschool ways of pronouncing words. It makes me smile and laugh every time.
Here is some work Samantha and Aedan brought home from school on Thursday: for Samantha: a colorful turkey, and for Aedan: math practice with related facts, picking the correct word to complete a sentence, and some colorful paper ninjas. I love discovering his little drawings in his folder.
On Friday our little peanut was still giving me a hard time eating. I was feeling frustrated because I didn't know what to do. I knew she should be hungry, but I didn't have time to just be sitting there trying to get her to eat and having her just keep crying and being fussy. She was crying most of the morning, so it was hard and discouraging.
The snow that we got on Wednesday was slowly starting to go away, so I decided to take a picture of what was left of the snowman the kids made when they played outside. They even put a hat and scarf on it! It also had a carrot nose and blueberries for eyes, but those were eaten off by some animal. They did a good job making this snowman, though!
On Saturday, December 5th, I took this picture of the things Samantha and Aedan have made for me. Aedan made a couple ninjas from Ninjago that you can see in the top row, then there are characters from Dog Man on the bottom that he learned how to draw by following the steps in the back of the books. I think his Dog Man is really well done! Maybe we have a budding artist on our hands! Also, the craft on the right is from Samantha. It's called a God's Eye, and she was so proud of it and excited to explain all about it to us. In fact, she wanted us to buy her some more yarn so she could make more to give out to friends and family. She definitely loves doing crafts, and she is very good at being creative and making things with her hands. I love it when my kids make things for me.
Since I put Owen down for his naps every day during the week, Ben usually takes at least one turn on the weekend. Here they are making silly faces together before nap time on Saturday. I love their silly faces and Owen's cute dimples!
Ben and I have been trying to be more intentional about inviting friends over for dinner and time to just hang out and get to know people better. Well, on Saturday night we had the McFarlands over, and it was so nice to talk to them. They had invited us over for dinner a while ago, and we had been meaning to return the invitation for quite some time. They have three little girls, and I think they were a tad overwhelmed with how loud and crazy our kids can be at times, especially when we have people over and they get all ramped up and excited. The McFarlands are fellow foster parents as well, so it was encouraging to share that common bond. They are definitely a family we would like to get to know more, and we had a really fun night eating dinner and hanging out together. Here is a song performance the kids put on for us of the song "Jingle Bells." It was loud, but it was pretty entertaining. We will definitely have to invite them over again sometime soon!
(Blog about November 29-December 5, 2020)
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