Swimmingly

J's lessons have been going swimmingly well. Two days down and she's doing really great. We're working on her fears and worries that she won't be a good big sister. She didn't have a role model so we're trying to re-create that for her.

Sheri has a great post on alarms and a GPS tracking device over at her blog.

Pooped

The first swim of the season occurred yesterday at the lake. J that is....not me silly. 55 degree water and I don't get along well. It was beautiful 85 degree weather and she was loving it. Today she was a fish from 11 - 3. Geesh. More power to her.

J starts swimming lessons tomorrow. She had beginner lessons a couple of years ago but they were private lessons. Tomorrow she starts in the middle of the road group lessons M-Th. The following week she'll move up a level and start "Trout" lessons. If she does well I'll sign her up for the 4th level.

It's been a crazy week and it's looking like this week is going to be more of the same. I'm tired already.

Fear

The TAT exercise from tapping.com has been working wonders with J's fears. Today I signed her up for 2 weeks of group swimming lessons at our local aquatic center. She was a little scared that all the other kids will be better than her. I did TAT on her and her fears were alleviated. TAT was (I think) designed to help recover from traumatic events. I've tweaked it to work on J's fears of the future. So far.....so good.....

Sunday we're going to do cranial sacral work on J with AT afterwards. This should be interesting.

J is working on ironing these days (after school). She's done it before but now she is really trying hard. She is really learning to do a good job and I'm very proud of her. Yesterday she ironed all her play clothes and her good clothes and thoroughly enjoyed it. Know it won't last so I'm enjoying it now.....

Hands On....

Yesterday Kristy, Chris and J gave me Reiki for my hand. I'm happy to report that it's much improved today. It's not 100 % but still incredibly better. Still resting it today, as much as possible, but at least I'm not cringing with every little movement.


This morning when J was giving me Reiki it made my hand really hot and I could really feel the energy. Very cool!!!!!

Ouch!

Thursday night, sometime after 2AM, I broke or sprained my left hand. I thought I'd been stung by a scorpion but by last night it was much worse. When I went in to check on J before I went to bed last night, she accidentally kicked my hand as I was trying to pull the covers back up. I thought I was going to cry. This morning it was swollen, aching and throbbing. I just went to a cheap emergency care place and they gave me the news and wanted me to go to the hospital to have x-rays. No insurance so she told me to ice, ace bandage, sling, and ibu profen it.

The scary part is I apparently did it it in my sleep. I have burned a furnace grate into my feet before and didn't know it till the next morning. Weird crap happens to me in my sleep.

Now I am typing with my right hand and it's driving me crazy. Before I was an 80 WPM typist. Now I am lucky to peck out one word every two minutes. AAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAA! I tried commenting last night but it frustrated me so much I quit. So I'm reading.....know I'm out here in cyber land keeping up with a gag on my fingers and pretend there is a comment from me. You know it would be a nice one with exclamations. :-)

:)De & Llyn,
I can't send you an invitation without an email address. Once I get your email I'll add you.....

FYI

In case you haven't checked your email there is news on the other blog....

Somebody's Got Some Mad Going On

No names but boy has somebody been in a foul mood. Of course y'all know that I had to pay for being away a couple of weeks ago. Big mad session in therapy today. She got out lots of anger. On the inside she feels like a piece of trash (her words) and that I'm going to throw her away some day. Today she was able to get out all those angry feelings about the SW's that treated her like trash (again her words) and her birth mom that treated her like trash. It was a powerful session. Then she got out some more anger because she's really mad at herself for acting like a RAD kid. Whole lot of screaming that she didn't want to be a RAD kid anymore and that she wanted to be a normal little kid.

I was so proud.

The AT did some GI (the one on softening pain in the 2nd section) and she added the analogy that it was like her heart had black cords wrapped around it to protect it from the pain and hurt that she had felt. Then she added that some day when J is ready the black cords will fall away or she will pull them off and not need them to protect her heart anymore. She really related to the black cords so I had the idea to get a heart pillow and a skein of black yarn. Every morning she's going to check inside and see how many cords are around her heart then take her pillow and wrap it with the black yarn so it reflects what her real heart looks like.
Then she picked out another heart pillow that will reflect the way she want her heart to look. It was soft, pink and pretty large.

When we first got home she started wrapping her heart up in black cords. She wrapped it so much and so thick with yarn that you couldn't tell that it was even red much less heart-shaped. She worked on it for almost an hour. Then she announced that was the way her heart used to look. 15 minutes later she had unraveled it and wrapped it 3 times with yarn and told me that this is what her heart looked like now. This could be interesting.....

For those of you on the the other blog... 15 more hours. AAAAHHHHHHAAAAA

Cindy....I need you to email me.....pretty please. schmuv!

Scavengers

Thanks to the awesome Christine and her totally fabulous idea on scavenger hunts we've had several this morning. Some instructions were crawling forward and others were backwards. Crawling is so good for our kids.

Yesterday we had a mocking train. She had to mimic my every move through the whole house. Upstairs and downstairs. I incorporated some crawling into that as well as a lot of silliness.

Remember the poll over there on the right side?????? If you haven't voted please make your mark. Dr. Leslie is waiting for me to get back with her about the numbers to see if we have enough numbers to do a webinar. Thanks a bunch!

Playing Catch Up

It's been a long few days. Lots of traditional Easter stuff going on. Connie had a huge Easter egg dying party for us and we had a blast! She had set up 5 tables of craft stuff and probably 25 dying pots. We dyed and decorated about 5 dozen eggs. Great fun was had by all!

Phoebe and Winnie are staying with their grandparents for the week so school will probably be shortened some so that they can make the most of their time here. I just love it when those girls come to visit. We always have a blast!

I am "trying" to set up yet ANOTHER email group for the other blog since the one I have fails every time I send it out. Another 85 addresses to enter. Again......

Hoping you all had a wonderful Easter!

Special K

New post on Special K blog. Gmail isn't letting me send emails updates saying that it is spam. Grrrrr....

Help Me Out Here.....Please

My friend, Mike Groomer, of Advocates for Children of Trauma fame, is trying to put together a webinar of Parenting in the Trenches with Katharine Leslie for all of us out in cyberland that are unable to attend trainings in person. He's thinking that the session would be in the range of $60-70 (possibly less) and you would be able to take the training via the internet. Dr. Leslie is the parent of 4 special needs children so she comes at the radical topic from our viewpoint. I have thoroughly enjoyed her book, Coming to Grips with Attachment, so I would love the opportunity to take this webinar. Plus doing it in the comfort of my own home makes it even more appealing!

So this is a big pie in the sky but I'm trying to take a poll to see if this would be a possibility. The poll will be open until April 16th which is the day I find out about Special K. If you are interested in taking this training please take the poll on the right side of my blog. You can also leave a comment or email me privately so that we can see if this is doable. This is not a commitment. We're not getting married. Just poll that you are highly interested. Come on folks.....really!

I am sure she wouldn't consider doing it unless our numbers are high enough. Some of her classes are around $35 so if our number of potential students were high enough this might lower the price. If we had 52 people or more I'm thinking that the training could possibly be less. This is what I have dreamed up anyway.

She usually provides CPE credits and foster parent training credits so I would think this would be available too.

Anything new that I can add to my arsenal of radical interventions makes my motor run. ;-)

Setback

Puddin has little bumps on her skin. I had one removed last summer and 3 more popped up. They resemble something between a wart and skin tag. G & I have noticed over the past 3/4 months that one in particular has been getting larger. Several people have told me that they are caused by a virus. Yesterday morning Puddin was in J's room while she was "reading" and I was getting ready to run some errands. I heard a little yelp from Puddin. "What happened????" came out spontaneously. Puddin came tearing through the house to my bedroom. 15 minutes later J finally admitted that she had sat on Puddin's tail. I wasn't too sure of that but I put her pet restriction and let it go.

After J was in bed last night I found that the big spot was crusty. Closer inspection showed that it had been tampered with. This morning I confronted her with this information. She was emphatic that she hadn't committed any offenses. I smelled a rat. Another infraction (probably brought on by her lie) required that she stand on the front porch for 5 minutes. (This usually diverts a meltdown because she doesn't want anyone to see the crazy train ;D) As soon as I opened the door she apologized for lying and that she had been picking Puddin's bump.

I am disappointed today. I realize she has come so far but it's still hard to re-visit those behaviors that I thought had dissipated. She's on animal (any animal) restriction indefinitely. On a side note, she is sick again. Sore throat, fever, etc. So there's the good news of the day.

The best news is that I had a long conversation with the other joy in my life, Cindy. ~~~~~~~waving at Cindy~~~~~~~~~~MMMMuuuuwah and schmuv!

Reporting

Reporting in to let you know I'm still alive. It was a powerful, moving, inspirational and enlightening weekend. Many gifts were received and I'm still getting more as I process all that occurred. Grateful for my friends.

On the way to the island I received a phone call from Ashley (sitter) who reported that J had a tummy ache. J appeared on the phone and I asked her how she was doing and she burst into tears sobbing, "I miss you so much mommy." Yay me. It was good for my heart. This is the first year that she has really and truly missed me when I have gone on this trip. G stepped up and took her on an excursion every day to help her through it. She was so happy to see me when I got home last night. Almost as happy as I was to see her. We were both laughing through our tears. She had lost a tooth Saturday but thankfully the toothfairy waited on me to pick it up so she awoke to fairy dust in her hair and a buck for her loss.

She had found all but one of her hidden candy/love notes and she found it this morning. I asked her which note she liked the most and she told me it was the one that said, "I miss you so much! Love, Mom".

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I spied a new object on the chest in the bedroom. Picture above. She had never mentioned a peep. Sweet little stinker had left a nice little suprise for me.

Knee deep in laundry and catch up.

Visit to adoption attorney will be posted on the other blog.

Fast & Furious

Packing as fast as I can and tying up loose ends. Leaving you with a wonderfully fabulous link on tapping which explains it so much better than I. Go here. Change your life and the lives of your kids. They also have a wonderful newsletter that you can sign up for and a pdf of all the tapping points.

Candies wrapped in neon green love notes are left hidden all over the house. hee hee.... Carmels filled with mom's pink love waiting on J. Wishing I could be a fly on the wall when she finds them. ;-)

No television, no phones, waves lapping at the shore, bonfire on the beach, great friends, lots of love.....coming up soon. Have a great weekend!