low on compassion and high on frustration

Usually I try to wait to write a blog post until my frustration has decreased and I am in a calm state. I am not there yet and this post might end up being a mistake later. We will see.

I have been at home all day with little girl after she threw up twice in the middle of the night. No fun being sick and no fun cleaning up puke in the carpet, on the blankets, in buckets, in the bed and on the clothes. Yuck. The up side is that there was no visit with birth mom today. And no subsequent regression of behavior. Yay! I don't think we will have any visits for the next 3 weeks and that leads me to hope for no more visits indefinitely and hopefully a continual recovery from neglect and emotional abuse for little girl. There will be no visit this week due to sickness and none next week because we are taking little girl on our family vacation to Phoenix. Then there will be no visit the week after that because of mom's next court hearing.

I am frustrated by a misbehaving child who hasn't really acted sick all day. Unless her sickness is causing her to misbehave and have lots of peeing issues. They could be related but I am out of compassion. I have done countless loads of laundry today and it wasn't to wash the full hampers in our house. That laundry will have to wait while the pee and puke laundry is taken care of.

Bryan is hopefully having fun with the boys while I continue to be at home. We had about 2 hours of off and on screaming from 4-6pm with 2 peeing accidents on the carpet. Little girl has been really good about not peeing on the carpet or furniture, surprisingly, so that has made that a little harder to deal with today. I really do know that potty training can be much worse because it was with my two boys. She has been relatively easy to train but today was no fun. I had enough and a pull-up is now being used. I do not plan on regretting that later.

It is really hard to express the frustration and stress level that is induced in our house because of having our first foster child in our house. People see her at school, church or out and about and they think she is a little odd but still cute and wonderful. She is not cute and wonderful very often. That is the exception. She has induced a lot of problems in our family life and it is hard, very hard to not take any of it out on her. Sometimes I am able to blame the birth mom for little girl's problems but that is not easy. I know I need more compassion for little girl and in my best moments, God comes through with more compassion than I could ever muster up. Right now I am out of compassion and need a break. I am looking forward to escaping to the grocery store once Bryan is home. Who knew that grocery shopping could feel like a reward!

bottles and attachment

So my judgment is still pending about my latest idea with our little foster girl. I bought baby bottles. I have read in multiple places and been encouraged by multiple people to try bottle feeding with little girl. We know she has been neglected and was not well cared for as a baby. She acts like a baby often and wants us treat her like one more often than we would like. The experts are telling us that is encouraging because she is trying to form attachment to us. I am not convinced but they do know more than I do about this. So I have tried a bottle twice with different feelings about it. I think it is good for her and will keep trying but not sure for how long. One bottle a day is good for her to be held and good for eye contact and good for her to get the nutrition of milk in her body. She does not drink very much and could use some more hydrating so the bottle feeding is helping with that too. She is not the biggest fan of milk so I wonder if that is because she wasn't given that much of it...who knows.

We continue to work on attachment with her, which really just means being very intentional about loving her and meeting her needs. On top of that there are lots of discipline issues remaining. Multiple daily tantrums/outbursts/emotional breakdowns or whatever you want to call them still remain a part of our life. On top of that we are still dealing with the negative behaviors that have developed in our boys after she arrived.

The last 3 weeks have been rougher than the previous month because birth mom entered the picture again. This made little girl have more fear and more bad behavior because of that fear. She doesn't know what is going on. Who will she live with and what is in the future? We reassure her with our best ideas and explanations but we know she can't understand all of what we are saying to her. Her mom is trying again and states that she is off cocaine and only using marijuana. She is seeming more normal and talking and interactive but we will see how long that lasts. She is still living with her boyfriend who uses and sells cocaine and there is physical abuse between them. Very bad environment for little girl. I can almost say with certainty that she will not be returning to her mom. Mom has only 3 more weeks to prove herself and move out or get into treatment or the process to remove parental rights will be started. The parental rights will most likely be terminated in April or May and little girl will be available for adoption.