week of 3-19-2012

What did we do last week?
Well, Bunny picked out colors for her new room.

Sissy got some new spring clothes, but did not want to

model them.

Duckie was on spring break so he took a few naps.

College life is really rough.

We spent a lot of time outside playing.

Bubbas wanted to go to Cabela's for his birthday.

So we took a trip there.

He was so excited to find out TBone from 

Bone Collector was going to be there.

He loves that show. He even signed Bubbas hat.

It was so cute Bubbas even recited some of

 TBones lines from the show to him.

 

 

 

 

week of 3-12-2012

These are last weeks pictures,
I had a lot of trouble uploading this week.

The kids found some roller blades around here,

so that seems to be the new thing everyone enjoys doing.

We celebrated Bubbas birthday this week.

Instead of 7 candles he wanted to use 2 threes and a one.

Yay for his adding.

Our contractor came. He ripped the walls out, they all

 need new insulation and some were full of mold.

This is where my kitchen is going.

They ripped all the old cabinets out.

 

 

 

week of 3-5-2012

I started doing some preschool with Buster this week.

He is loving it. Check out his tongue, he's concentrating

so hard.

Buster and Bubbas enjoying some bubbles and sunshine.

Sissy enjoying bouncing at a carnival we went to.

Orlando

Over a year ago I started reading blogs. I was searching for answers and wanted to know what Reactive Attachment Disorder really was. I felt alone and overwhelmed and I needed to know there were other people out there with kids who acted like my daughter and I wanted to know how they handled it. I needed to understand and I needed to know more. There were some I read everyday because I couldn't get enough. There were people out there dealing with the same kinds of behaviors I was. I was so happy to find that I was not "nuts" and that other people had the same feelings and thoughts and were living the same private hell I was.

All these bloggers started talking about this amazing trip coming up and how excited they were for it. It was the ETAAM (Early Attachment and Trauma Meeting) and it was in Orlando. I remember the exact weekend they went last year it was a very rough weekend around here and It didn't help that my reader was empty because they were all somewhere together, not blogging.

Even though I read all the blogs I still felt very alone. I decided that weekend that next year I would be in Orlando no matter what it took. I wondered if the connection they all talked about was really for real. Could you really connect with strangers? People who you knew nothing about?

This past weekend I met these women and the answer is "Yes" you can connect with strangers and it doesn't matter if they know nothing about you because we all have one thing in common. We all parent or have parented kids from trauma. Our kids' trauma consumes our lives. I have 8 children and there are days that one child from trauma consumes my life more than the other 7 put together.

Rad is extremely isolating for me. I have a few people who truly "get it" here and that's it. I feel watched and judged all the time. I hate going places and being around people because our parenting of one of our children has to be so different. If you only have neurotical children you would never understand that my daughter's brain doesn't work the same way as your child's or some simple everyday things are very hard for her to handle.

ORLANDO WAS AMAZING! There were so many hugs and crying it was unreal. We could all connect on a level that most people will never understand. The best part was I never had to explain anything because everyone already knew. I didn't feel like an outcast or have to explain my parenting to anyone. I have found friends that are now part of my family.

I had a moment when we were all standing at the fountain getting ready to take the above picture and I was totally overwhelmed looking at the other 89 of these women. It took all I had in me not to bust into tears. All I could think was all these women deal with the same things I deal with every day and most of them deal with a lot more.

Someone said "Orlando is not a place it's a thing" and they were so right. It wouldn't have mattered where we were, all that mattered is that we were together. Orlando is something I will never miss out on again. I will be there. And more than anything, I will never ever feel alone again.

My housemates.



Re-entry

I'm back from Orlando and it was AMAZING. There is no other way to say it. When I have time and have processed it all I will blog about it, but for now I wanted to share about my re-entry experience.

When I was planning for this trip I had a lot of anxiety about leaving all the kids with Shawn. He is very capable of handling them, but I was really worried about how Tator would react to me being gone and how the other kids would act as well. I had never left them like this before so I didn't know how everyone was going to do with it. Expecally the baby.

So we decided the best thing would be for Tator to go into respite. She was staying with her normal respite provider who she knows very well and likes to go to her house and play with her other kids. We had some raging and a lot of attitude the weekend before my trip so I didn't tell her she was going to respite until the night before I left. She was excited and I had made her a calendar telling her when respite provider would be picking her up and when I would be home so she knew when everything was happening.

I did not get back until late Monday night so she was already in bed. When I got her up the next morning before school it was clear she was excited to see me. She jumped out of bed and ran to me giving me a hug. After she came down and got dressed she went and unloaded the dishwasher like she does every morning. Then I could tell I was getting the silence treatment and there was a tenseness about the room. I knew that that evening was going to be rough. She ate breakfast and went on to school, never looking at me or saying a word.

When she came home you could tell she was still very much upset and it was just a matter of time before she was going to blow. So I put into practice something we had talked about over and over in Orlando and I prescribed the fit. I told her I understood that she was feeling a lot of big feelings about me being gone and she could go ahead and let them out. We would all go ahead and take a seat and watch her. And when she was done we were even going to give her a score. Well of course she told me how dumb that was and she was not going to throw a fit. But she had already crawled under the table and I knew it was going to come and I really didn't want the little kids watching her do it. So I told her I thought she should go to her room and take a few minutes to settle down. She started to kick the chairs and told me she wasn't going. Now me and Buster have started play this little game at bedtime. He refuses to go to bed so I tell him I'm going to race him and as I'm running up the stairs I say "I won, I won I shot the BB gun, you lost you lost you ate the applesauce." So he always follows me yelling no I want to shoot the BB gun. It works and its easy.

So I thought I'd try this out on her. So as she's laying under the table about to blow and refusing to go to her room. I yelled, "I'm going to shot the BB gun" and started running up the stairs praying she'd follow me. And she did. She layed down on her bed for awhile while I came down and did stuff downstairs.

When I went back to get her later she was in a better mood and came down and did her homework. I asked her if it was something that happened at school or home that made her upset. And she said she wasn't upset, which is her normal response. Then she said she didn't want me to go to Orlando, I said well you got to go to ___'s house and that was fun. Then she said I wanted to be home with my family.

From there the walls came down a little. I took her into the living room and she crawled into my lap and I explained the other kids had other places they went to while I was gone so it wasn't so hard on daddy and that we chose to send her to ___'s house so she would be busy and having fun and wouldn't think about me being gone.

She sat with me for a long time and I could tell she was very happy I was back. (Which made me feel very good) I told her I didn't have any other plans to leave like that again until next year so I hadn't made any plans for her to go to ___'s house again for at least awhile. We talked about how I had never left like that before and that I deserved to have a little break and go away with friends.

I would love to think that Orlando changed things for someone other than me, but that would probably be asking to much. I guess we'll just wait and see.

Week of 2-27-2012

Duckie and Buc with the other guys from the band.
They won this amp last weekend when they played in a
Battle of the Bands. Taking 3rd place.

Duckie and his dog.

Duckie pretending he knew how to french braid.

Buster wrestling a bear.

Shawn did a lot of work last weekend at the new house.
He cut some of the trees and brush down around the back of the pond
so the kids could get over there and fish.

The water is way down because a company that is drilling a well up
behind us bought some of our water. I wasn't quick enough to get pictures of that.

I went to my first frezzer meal workshop this week.
I came home with 10 meals. It was a blast.