Introducing Emily and Tracie...

Our family adopted Little E and Baby T this morning...let me introduce you to our 4-year-old daughter, Emily, and our 3-year-old daughter, Tracie. :-)

Pregnancy Induced High Blood Pressure and Gestational Diabetes

I went into the hospital Friday evening because I had been having Braxton-Hicks contractions for 2-3 hours and wanted to make sure nothing was happening. I had called the nurse and she said that if drinking fluids and laying down wasn't helping, that I probably should go in and get put on the monitors and see what was happening. I put out a call to my Mom and to Andy to see if someone could meet me up at the hospital with the kids. Couldn't get ahold of anyone, but thankfully Deidra was a huge help and she got them all in their shoes and in the car and sat with them while I got all hooked up to the monitors. I was SO proud of her. She really stepped up to the plate and was such a big help. Andy got stuck in a huge traffic jam on the way to the hospital, but was able to inform me that my Mom was on the way.

The nurses informed me that they didn't think I would be going anywhere as my blood pressure was really elevated and my urine was full of sugar. I told them I had just done my gluclose test in the office but that I hadn't gotten my results back yet and that was the first urine check that I had done since I found out that I was pregnant. Sure enough, she put a call out to the doctor and he wanted me admitted. They did an ultrasound that night to check on the baby...they measured her and she's right where she should be. They said she's about 3 lbs and 7 oz and that she even has hair. I was so surprised that they could tell that she's got hair already. I didn't know that you could tell that from an ultrasound.

I met with the doctor the next morning (not my own, but another doctor in the practice) and he said it was hard to tell what was going to happen, but that we needed to get a 24-hour urine specimen and that they may need to send me to Dallas to be monitored up until I had the baby. He ordered some tests and said we'd go from there. I instantly started worrying about the girls upcoming adoption and Andy told me to quit worrying and that we'd get it all figured out even if he had to do court with them himself.

Deidra spent Saturday night at the hospital with me. It was SO nice to have her up there and she was trying so hard to look out for me. The nurses all got a kick out of her. I can't begin to tell you how proud I am of her and she sat up on the bed with me and told me that she loved me and that she loved Melina too. I knew she was worried,but I kept trying to reassure her. So, I think it did us both some good to spend some time together up there.

Every day it seemed I'd be told, well maybe we can get you home in the morning after we see what your 24-hour urine says, but there was a reason to keep me just one more night. I started insulin in the hospital and my sugar levels were still really high. My blood pressure is still up as well. My regular doctor came back from Haiti and came in to see me on Sunday and told me he really wanted to see if they could get my sugar levels down to a certain level before they sent me home. However, he understood that I had a lot of family responsibility at home as well. I went ahead and found a sitter for the little ones until we found out what was going to happen and asked her if she could keep them from Sunday night to Wednesday until Andy got home from work. Thankfully, she had no problem with that and she was a huge help. She even brought the kids up during the day on Monday to say hi after they played in the park.

Monday, I was hoping to be able to go home that morning, but the nurses told me that he wouldn't let me go home with a sugar level over 170. He wound up ok'ing another dose of insulin as the cafeteria messed up and sent me a breakfast tray that wasn't on the diabetic plan and then it came down somewhat. He told me he'd start the paperwork to get me out of there after dinner if I compromised with him and came into the office 1-2 times a week until the baby was ready to be born. So, I got to leave on Monday night around 6:30. I came home on blood pressure meds and the insulin. To say I'm a bit overwhelmed with everything else going on is a bit of an understatement, but I'll get it all figured out after a couple of days. Just going to have to be a bit more of a rigorous schedule with eating at scheduled times and checking my sugars first thing in the morning and 2 hours after I eat meals.

So proud of my children...

I am so proud of my kiddos. Deidra got 2 awards from Awana tonight for finishing her start zone and being gamer of the month. Baby T earned her Puggle. Little E earned her book for reciting her verse. And Little E and Josiah earned a tropy for the month with the rest of their fellow Cubbies.

Thankfully it's Friday...

I'm tired, that's for sure. So glad that it's Friday. I'm missing my hubby. He's having to work a lot, even at home, lately. While I'm glad that he has the ability to do that, I wish we had more time to talk and connect with one another lately. The kids have had a lot of energy lately and some attitudes going on. Can't wait until the weather gets a bit warmer and there's not so much mud outside so that I can start letting them play in the backyard some more. They have energy to burn!

Going to try to get a list of things together (Andy and I started it) for what we need to finish getting for Melina and some stuff for the house. I need to price everything and make a list from lowest to greatest and start buying things as we can. The kids want to paint their rooms as well, so we're going to have to start doing that one room at a time. Lots of plans and ideas flowing around. The girls want their room in Dora, Josiah wants his room in Spiderman, and Deidra keeps going back and forth. Her latest is a zebra theme with pink thrown in. I told her she'd be better off finding some bedding that she really likes and planning her color scheme for her room on that. I'm going to get Melina set up in the sitting area of our room and I'm going to decorate her little wall in butterflies. I think she's going to be in our room for the first year and then once she turns a year old, we're going to transition Little E in with Deidra, and then Melina will go in with Baby T. I think that should work out well.

My brother, Jimmie, helps with a mowing and lawn business during the summer with his old football coach, so I'm going to see if they can give me a price on putting sod in our backyard. And then, we're going to put a kennel back there for Lucy. The dog pretty much has free reign over our backyard, but Baby T will not play outside if the dog is back there, so I usually have to bring the dog in while they go play outside and I don't really think that's fair to the dog. So, I think a kennel back there will help. I can just put her in there then while the kids play.

Lots to figure out and accomplish and I think next month I'm going to try and do a garage sale with my brother here at our house and get rid of their stuff and ours that we no longer use/need and is just laying around taking up space.

Insightful...

We had behavioral therapy yesterday and we were talking about a lot of things. It was very insightful. To me at least... I realize how much fostering has brought stress into our lives. It's been a blessing too...or we wouldn't have some of the children that we do. It's just the pressures and the stresses that it's brought into my life that I didn't even truly realize until we got to talking about everything. I am so worried about being reported for something that I am stressing over everything...the house being clean, the kids being perfect when others are around, getting them all caught up, and trying to do the best by everyone. They told me that I have to start letting the therapists do their job and quit feeling like I have to do all this extra stuff on top of it... I think I am trying to be the perfect MOm and I just cannot be. I just feel like I have to measure up to everyone. We were talking about how we deal with blow-ups from Deidra one way and we just brush it off and when they happen with the others, we deal with it completely different. I told her that I want to let them be kids, but Josiah doesn't always know his own strength and he can hurt people and since I still have to do incident reports on the girls, I guess I put more emphasis on that because I don't want anything to happen that would hurt anything. They understand that is a real fear that I have and that I worry about getting reported for things or false allegations. I think I will start feeling better about everything once the girls are finally ours and we can just be a real family without having to feel like we have to please everyone else all of the time. I have come to the real conclusion that I think we're done fostering after the girls adoption is finalized. I may do respite from time to time for some of our other foster family friends, but I think we'll be closing our home once the adoption is final. I'm ready to start getting our life back and being able to do family things without having to worry about getting judge approval and all the red tape that is involved in some of this stuff. The behavioral therapists feel that we are doing a great job and that we're wonderful parents and that we just need to trust in ourselves. I think when we first started all of this, we felt that we did trust our parenting, but after being in the system so long, I've started to doubt things...one person says we have to be more consistent and discipline for every little behavior, one person says we're too strict, all these comments coming from here and there and it makes you start to wonder after awhile if you are going about things the right way. One thing that really struck me last night was that they told me I'm putting too much pressure on myself and that I needed to take care of myself better so that me and the baby were taken care of. I get to worrying so much about the months ahead and behaviors and so forth, that I need to quit doing that and leave that to the teachers and the therapists to do their jobs. I don't buy totally that I need to quit doing some of the stuff that I am doing with them, as I do want to get them caught up so we can get away from doing SO much therapy and get them into doing more little kid stuff that they want to do, but I will try to not to push myself so hard to do every little thing that I think that I need to do.

OT Therapy Re-Evals

Little E and Baby T had their re-evals for occupational therapy a couple of weeks ago. Every 6 months they are re-evaluated so we can see how much progress they've made or new goals that need to be on their plans. I asked the therapist about them this week and she updated me on their progress. 6 months ago, they were about a year and a half behind. This time...

Baby T--41 months of age.
Developmentally she's scoring as low as 22 months old and as high as 36 months old. She's scoring at 22 months of age with her fine motor skills and 36 months old with self-help skills. OT says if we can just get her to potty train, she'd be where she needs to be with self-help skills.

Little E--4 years and 7 months of age.
She's scoring in the bottom 1% of her age group for visual perception skills. That blew me away! She's scoring at a 36 months of age for visual motor/perception. And at 42 months for fine motor skills. She's on target for her self-help skills.

The OT did tell me that she appreciated that we always asked questions and that I did carry over with them as they are coming alot farther with the stuff that I do with them too. She said that she had 3 families that were really good about that stuff and that we were one of them. That made me feel good. I told her I get frustrated sometimes when I hear their progress reports as I don't understand sometimes why we do x, y, and z and they still are struggling so far behind. Granted, when I received their case files and I was able to see the initial evaluation notes, I was able to see the bigger picture and I know deep down that they really have come a LONG way, but sometimes I get frustrated that we still have SO far to go. I am proud of them though and we will just keep working really hard.

I wish I could get her to potty train..

I so wish I could get Baby T to potty train. We sit her up on the potty and ask her to try to go and she doesn't. Yet, she'll get down and 2 minutes later she's all wet or she stays dry forever. We put her down for nap or for bedtime and 5 minutes later she's all poopy. Today, she started screaming for me no sooner had I gotten downstairs. I went upstairs and she had poop all over her hands, up her back, it was oozing out of her diaper...it was everywhere in her clothes. I wound up having to put her in the tub. I will never understand how a little girl poops SO much when there are days that she barely eats anything. It takes her forever to eat. Yesterday it took her 2 1/2 hours almost to eat a sandwich. UGH! I know she's probably developmentally not ready if we're having this much of a struggle with potty training so I only try her for a couple of days a month, but it would be SO much easier if she'd just learn to go on the potty.

Really trying my patience today...

My gosh, I am trying to hang in there today. I really am....trying to find the humor in things to get me through. It's hard when I have all of them going.

Andy's car is in the shop...since yesterday morning. He was going to get his rear brakes done. They called yesterday and said he needed front ones too. He said he'd come pick his car up in the morning. We went up to get it this morning to find it still up on the lift...they're still waiting for parts. I tell him if he needs me to bring him into work, I will. He's grumpy because he's got stuff that needs to be done right then and so he says he'll go home and make all his phone calls that he has for stuff pending. Around 10, he tells me that he's got to go into work...nevermind anything about the fact that I had Little E to get to school and therapy for Baby T. We get out the door and I bring him to work, I cancel Baby T's appt, and I barely manage to get Little E to school on time. The car shop calls saying that his car is ready. UGH! Guess we'll be bringing him up to get it in the morning.

I get a call from Little E's teacher saying that she won't quit making loud sounds, she won't go to time out without her teacher having to physically putting her in there and then she is refusing to stay in time out, and she's ripping stuff off the walls. She had no idea where her defiance was coming from...she just had a visit on Sunday and has been a handful since then...I explain to teacher...she says that makes sense as this happened at the last visit as well. She isn't going to let her go to library today and she'll have to wait in the office. I say that's fine.

Baby T has been screaming and whining all day and refused to eat her lunch, whined and screamed all during nap time that she didn't want to be in her room, she wanted Mommy, she didn't like Mommy, all sorts of stuff. Nothing I do today seems to make her happy. Of course, she fell asleep in front of her door 5 minutes before we had to go get the girls from school and when I woke her up she was even more full of cheerfulness (note sarcasm). She cried and screamed all the way to get Deidra.

Josiah dumped his lunch all over his head, so after he got cleaned up and had to clean up his mess he got put in his room. Stupid me assumed that he fell asleep...nope, he had gotten into Deidra's room, stuck a DS game in backwards that I cannot get out, snuck into our room, tore the blanket off of Andy's harpsichord, and dumped his teddy bear that he just got for Valentine's Day into our toilet. He got a spanking and put back in his room and after another screaming fit about having to stay in his room, he finally fell asleep.

I get Deidra from school and all I heard was scream, whine, cry for an hour from her. She later apologized and settled down.

Get the kids their dinner and Baby T refuses to eat yet again...I told her she wasn't getting down until her dinner was gone...she's been sitting there for an hour and a half. UGH

I call Andy to find out when he wants us to come get him from work and he says that he should be done around 6:30. I was really hoping to have the kids in bed by 7 and Deidra at 7:30. He asked what was going on and I told him how the kids have been behaving and that we really need to put a lock on Deidra's door...he thinks it's stupid...well fine, I guess we'll just continue to let her stuff get wrecked all because Josiah cannot or will not stay out of her room. I am SO tired of him getting into the bathrooms and her room or our room when he knows darn well that he's not supposed to be anywhere but his room up there.

I am trying to hang in there and practice patience. I really really am.

Behavior therapy...

I think the kids finally showed their true colors at behavior therapy last night...it's taken 6 weeks to get it out of them. I was horribly embarrassed and Andy thought it was a good thing that they finally got to see what the kids were like. Me...I thought it was funny that Andy is always quick to say that the kids don't act certain ways when he's home and I do realize that kids do function differently around Mom than they do with Dad...but I thought it was funny that both of us were there and yet they were all cutting it up. I've been telling him for months now that they wait until I'm distracted with trying to talk to someone and they start acting out to get the attention back on them. They've never done it that way for him quite like they do for me, but they did last night and I guess I'm wrong for gloating about it, but I thought it was funny.

The girls...

I weighed the girls today for their caseworker for their adoption papers. Little E is 38 inches tall, and weighs 41.5 lbs. Baby T is 33 inches tall, and weighs 39 lbs.

The kids started Awana...

and they absolutely love it!

Deidra made me so proud of her. She's got 2 more sections to learn before she can earn her book. She told me on Sunday...today has really been a good day...I paid attention in church, I tried to be a good example to my friends, and I'm learning my verses at Awana. She even gave some of her own money in the basket at church. Makes a Mommy proud!

Salvation

Lord, I pray for the salvation of my children, Deidra, Josiah, Emma, Tracie, and even Melina...as the prophet Isaiah wrote, "Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it." ~ Isaiah 45:8

I pray that they always will have a love and desire to know You, serve You, and to love You.

Patience

Abba, I ask for patience and for your help in choosing my battles with my children. I ask that you will give them obedient hearts and help them with compliance. I also ask that you will give Andy and I wisdom in disciplining them. Amen.

So proud of Baby T!

We have been trying and trying for a few months to get her to go on the potty. She finally went in there today after lunch and went pee pee on the potty! YEAH! I am SO proud of her!

Melina

Baby Melina is one active little girl. She loves to dance and thump around in there. She's much more active than Deidra ever was, but I love feeling her move around in there. The girls love to feel my belly and Josiah gives her kisses. Deidra was snuggling with me on the couch one day and she reached over and poked my stomach, the baby kicked her back, but her kicks arent' strong enough for anyone but me to feel right now. I just thought it was cute that she'd poke her and the baby would kick her back each time. Deidra so cannot wait until she's here. We're all so excited for her to come! I can't wait to hold her!

It's working! It's working!

Last week, when we went to behavioral therapy, I brought my logs of each day like the one I just posted. I wanted to document the behaviors, the consequences, and the reward strips. I wanted them to see the frequency as well. The therapists gave us some homework to do this week, they wanted to see whether it was them seeking attention or just being defiant or if it was both. They told us to set the standards for the behavior we expected from them before appts or whatever and then when the kids starting acting out, they told us to ignore the bad behaviors unless it was something that had to be dealt with right then and there. They wanted us to start praising the kids that were doing what we asked of them and to ignore the bad behaviors and see what happened. Little E has picked it up right away and will correct the behavior right away to get her praises. Baby T, threw a fit in the car on Wednesday and literally threw a fit for 45 minutes. Every couple of minutes I would say "thank you, Little E, for sitting so quietly and nicely in the car and not yelling at Mommy." I was trying to give Baby T verbal cues as to waht I wanted from her without giving her direct attention. Once she quieted down for a minute, I gave her the praise that she was seeking. It was kind of funny because in regards to my thank you for settling down adn sitting quietly, I got "no, thank you!" She hates it when I can't praise her, but she's still continuing to throw her fits, but I notice that they're not lasting near as long as the days go by that we've started doing this. Today, it's only been a matter of a couple of minutes and she's done. She wants her praises more. Josiah does really well with it some days and other days it irritates him and he acts out more and more. He's been spending a lot of time in his room today as he just can't get it together and I refuse to listen to him scream and carry on and start throwing things and whatnot as he hurts my ears, so I've been putting him in his room. It's been hard, but I definitely see improvement and I will keep carrying on. It's hard to deal with all the temper tantrums somedays, but I just have to prepare myself mentally before they start. But their behaviors are improving and that makes this Mommy happy.

A typical day at the Hoffman House...

This is why we're in behavioral therapy...lol

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Kids were up at 7:10 am. I told them when I got them from their rooms that Daddy had to go back into work the night before and that he didn’t get home until really early that morning and that they needed to be quiet so that Daddy could get some rest.

7:20 am Little E gets time out for making loud noises after being told to be quiet as Daddy didn’t get home until 4 am.

7:40 am Little E gets time out again for making loud noises.

8 am Baby T gets a reward strip for eating breakfast nicely and quietly

8:10 am Little E gets time out again for making loud noises

8:30 am Josiah gets time out for not listening. He wouldn’t leave the couch pillows alone after given 2 warnings. He wouldn’t sit in time out without kicking the cupboards and throwing a fit and so I sent him to his room to calm down and finish his time out.

8:45 am Baby T gets time out for being too loud.

9 am Josiah gets time out for jumping on the furniture and kicking the back of the chair

9:05 am Little E gets reward strip for playing nicely and quietly

9:20 am Baby T gets time out as she wouldn’t’ leave the tv buttons alone

9:30 am Josiah gets a time out for throwing toys at Baby T. He threw a temper tantrum and so he was sent to his room to calm down and finish his time out.

10:15 am Josiah given a time out for fit at snack time

10:30 am Baby T given a reward strip for eating snack nicely

10:50 am Josiah given a reward strip for taking shower without throwing a fit and for listening well.

11 am Little E gets time out for not staying out of the bathroom and for trying to get the toys wet

11:15 am Josiah gets talking to about safety and that he is not to open the door without a parent present and giving him permission

11:25 am Baby T gets time out for touching Mom’s computer buttons.

11:35 am Baby T gets another time out for touching Mom’s computer buttons.

11:37 am Josiah gets time out for lying. He said that Tracie was touching my computer again even though she was still sitting in time out.

11:50 am Baby T gets time out for not listening and causing distractions at story time despite reminders to be quiet and quit playing with toys. She threw a total fit and was sent to her room.

12 pm Little E and Josiah get reward strip for good listening during story time. They got to watch a half an hour of Batman.

12:30 pm Little E and Josiah earned 2 gummi bears for quietly watching Batman while I made lunch.

1 pm had to keep reminding Little E to eat and use manners during lunch

1 pm Josiah and Baby T earned reward strip for eating well during lunch

2 pm Josiah gets time out for refusing to pick up toys

2:10 pm Baby T gets time out for refusing to pick up toys.

Nap/Quiet time from 2:30-4 in their rooms

4 pm Grandma comes over, lots of not listening, climbing all over Grandma, crying over books that she brought, me having to keep telling them to use inside voices.

5 pm Little E and Josiah get time out. Grandma had car trouble and was trying to call someone to find out what was going on or to possibly come look at her car and they kept running all over, being loud, ignoring reminders to be quiet as Grandma was on the phone.

6 pm All the kids ate dinner very well. Given cherry crisp for dessert and lots of praise for doing a good job. They got to play with Grandma a bit more and then we got in bath, jammies, and bed.

Why can't they learn?

Why can't they learn not appropriate behaviors and appropriate ones? I am SO tired of putting these kids in time out and taking privileges away over the same things day after day after day. I am SO tired of the temper tantrums and hearing "You don't like me." when I have to get after them. Josiah is really getting an explosive temper. He doesn't take NO for an answer. I gave them a cup of cereal this morning for part of their breakfast. After 45 minutes, I told Josiah that he had 5 minutes left to finish up his cereal. He continued to dink around and when the timer went off and he knew I was going to take his food away, he started screaming and kicking and flung his food all off his tray and onto the kitchen floor. I told him he was now going to clean up his mess that he made which totally put him into a rage. He was kicking, screaming, and flailing all over the place and flinging the food all over the place even more. I told him he could choose to stop his fit and pick up his cereal or he could keep making an even bigger mess because of his fit and it would become harder to clean up. He chose to keep throwing a fit. 25 minutes later he finally calmed down enough and the cereal was finally picked up. We talked about why that happened and how he needs to start making good choices and learn to control his temper. No sooner is he out of time out, he goes into the playroom and snatches something from Baby T. I told him to give it back and he flings at her, slams into the window, and tries to kick me all while he's screaming and crying because he can't have the toy. I put him back in time out until he can calm down. He continues to scream and cry and I tell him that the timer isn't being set until he calms down. He finally calms down and does his time out. Now he's screeching and crying because I won't let him play with the cords on the vacuum cleaner. I'm keeping a behavior log so I can give it to the behavioral therapists that work with our family as I want them to see the consistency of everything...all the time outs and the repeat behaviors. I just don't know how to fix it all anymore. I don't understand why they just can't learn...things would all go so much more smoothly if they could learn. They are all good kids when they want to be. I try to give them as much attention and do fun stuff with them and I praise them up and down when they do good. I hate it that I have to stay on them like this and that a 5-minute chore turns into something taking me 3 times as long because I have to stay on top of them and get them out of things. They no they're not supposed to be upstairs without permission, that they don't go into Deidra's room, that they are to stay out of our room, that they aren't to touch the computer without having to permission to use it and without having one of us next to them, they know they're supposed to stay out of the pantry and the refrigerator and that they're not to touch the tv, DVD player, and the DVDs. Yet, every 5 minutes they're doing something or they're having issues playing. Why can't they learn? I hate having to keep saying the same thing over and over, I try to keep them occupied playing, learning, doing games together, therapy, getting to do fun things, and they earn their rewards strips and gummy bears for good behavior. I thought all that would be enough of an incentive...in the meantime I keep plugging along, we keep doing therapy, we keep talking to counselors and therapists, and we try to come up with new strategies to try. I just don't understand...I love them with all of my heart, they are all given plenty of love and affection and praise. Yet, it's the same things we deal with over and over and over.... Abba, give me your patience and your love and compassion and fill me with your Spirit today. Help me deal with all these tempers and help them to have more obedient hearts. I know they're going to get it eventually...I'll keep plugging along. I just get frustrated sometimes.

Homestudy

Abba, I pray that our homestudy will be turned into CPS very soon. It's been waiting to be signed off on since last Thursday. Please let CPS get it soon, so that we can do the girls adoption on February 2. I am just ready for them to be ours and the visits with the family so much is really starting to stress me out. Please let our homestudy be turned into CPS today or very soon.

Prayer

Abba, please help us to keep a running list of prayer requests and to be better about praying and coming together in prayer as a family.