A month and a half with no post.  Things are good right now.  Really good.  S is doing really well at school.  We had a conference with her teacher this morning and it seems that she is right on track.  They did testing the second week of school and she got everything correct that they had already gone over.  She is having the most problem with recognizing sounds.  Like she sees and ‘M’ and knows what it is, but she can’t tell you that the word ‘mom’ makes an ‘M’ sound.  The teacher wasn’t concerned though.

There was one incident at school a couple of weeks ago that involved one of the extended care workers.  S had had a particularly rough morning and she was having a meltdown when it was time to go to school.  She was still crying when we got there.  I carried her in all the while trying to calm her down.  She was hugging my leg and didn’t want to stay there (normally she is fine going to school).  The worker who is there in the morning looked at me and said, “you can’t leave her here like this considering her history”.  We have only told three people at the school that we are adopting her.  Her teacher, the guidance counselor and the extended day director.  The only reason we told them was because her name change wasn’t legal when school started, but we wanted them to go ahead and call her by her new last name.  Anyway, this woman, who we hadn’t told about the adoption, says that in front of all the other kids in the cafeteria.  They weren’t really paying attention, but still, it was way out of line.  So she’s adopted, so what?  At that moment, she was a 5 year old having a tantrum.  I ended up picking her up and carrying her out to the car while she was biting and scratching me and we sat there for twenty minutes until she calmed down.  I was 45 minutes late to work that morning.  Yesterday DH spoke with the director about what happened and he brought up that she was violating FERPA by saying that.  That definitely got her attention and she said it was unacceptable and that she would speak with the worker about what happened and assured us it would never happen again.  We aren’t ashamed that she is adopted, but it is her private information that the school shouldn’t be sharing with others.  It should be her decision whether she shares that with other people.

We have seen major improvements with her behavior in the past few weeks.  We have started giving her melatonin at night and it has been a miracle for her routine.  Now she actually gets sleep and is in bed asleep by 8:00 most nights.  Well, on the floor because she likes to sleep there, don’t ask me why. 

We found a new therapist for S because the old one just didn’t seem to be working for us, plus she wasn’t covered by our insurance.  The new one is and we really like her.  It’s more like family therapy instead of just therapy for S.

Our life has really been turned upside down in the last three months.  We have decided to take ourselves off of the waiting list with our agency for an infant.  We just can’t afford it now that we have adopted S.  We want to be able to enjoy her and not have to worry about saving every single dime plus fundraising.  In that same vein, we donated our last frozen embryo.  That was a tough decision.  We got a bill in the mail for $300 to store it for another year.  We knew we weren’t going to use it, but it was a hard decision letting it go.  I was torn about what to do with it.  I asked DH if he would consider donating it to someone we knew (no one in particular) who needed it.  He said that he wouldn’t be able to handle that.  I see his point, but it’s hard for me to imagine that someone out there might be carrying and raising my genetic material.  Not that genetics matter for shit anyway, but it is what it is.

So it seems that we have an only child.  Not what I envisioned for my life, but really, what I envisioned for my life went out the window years ago.  I was kind of sad about that for a while, but I think I’m actually happy about it now.  When all was said and done, I felt relief.  We’ve been on this never-ending ride for years now and it was so nice to be able to step off and just sit in the moment and enjoy it.  

As an update to my last post, the anxiety ramped up and I think it's starting to go back down, with the help of some meds that I'm so glad I have.

Work has been insane the past few weeks, but we are coming off a busy period so I think things are going to settle down.

Life with S is great.  She has good days and bad days, but overall pretty good.  She has her second play therapy appointment tomorrow and I think we are going to ask the therapist about a few things she does behavior-wise that we would like to work on.  We also got a kitten.  Did I mention that?  I was coming back to work after lunch and there was a little kitten trying to get in the building.  I just walked by at first and on the elevator decided I was going to get a box and go back down to rescue the poor thing.  I work on the 17th floor so I was worried it would be gone before I go there, but she was still there!

I wasn't originally going to keep her, but you know how that goes.  So now we have a dog, and cat and a kitten.  S loves her and we constantly have to tell her, "gentle!" because she just wants to carry her around and squeeze her all day.  She has been missing the dog that she had at her birth mother's house and I think this has helped somewhat with that.

That's pretty much it around here.  We've gotten into a routine.  I'm tired, but it's a good tired.

I've been struggling lately.  My anxiety is back full-force.  Dealing with S, going back to work and dealing with dad-drama is taking its toll on me.  I saw my therapist this past Tuesday and will be making another appointment with her.  I'm just counting down the hours until I get off work today and the weekend starts!

So I really need to update.  I have been posting on my other blog and you can head on over there for details: www.newsonnix.blogspot.com.

I wanted to post some other stuff here, just for posterity and so I can look back to see what kind of progress we have made (or haven't).

Disclaimer beforehand: Life with S is awesome.  We love her to bits and are having a blast.  What I'm going to be talking about are the hard parts.  Because not everything is unicorns and butterflies.  We knew that going in.

A little backstory on S: I am best friends with her mother's stepsister.  That is how we got involved.  S had been in foster care and they were terminating the birth mother's parental rights which is when we entered the picture.  Birth mom signed over rights to us.

Because of a crazy judge, when we got full custody, the judge did not cease the weekly visitation that BM (Birth mom) gets.  She had one visit and S regressed majorly.  She still misses her mom, as any five year old would.  She doesn't really understand why she can't see her anymore.  We have told her that we are her new family so it confused the hell out of her that she was still getting to see BM.  We have been working with our attorney though and as of yesterday we got visitation to stop.  We are on the fence about having one last visit for the two of them for closure reasons.

Anyway, on to how she is adjusting.  She is a happy little girl most of the time.  But she has her moments.  Mainly when we ask her to do something like put her shoes up and she ignores us.  When we make her listen to us and do it she melts down.  I'm talking screaming, kicking, scratching, the whole nine yards.  We have been doing a lot of bear hugs with her until she calms down.  Often when she is relaxing after a meltdown I will rock her in our rocking chair.  The other night I was lying with her in bed (one of us stays with her until she falls asleep).  I told her she couldn't play with her toys because it was time to go to sleep.  She gets up out of bed, looks me straight in the eye and touches her dollhouse as if to say, "what are you going to do?".  I pick her up and put her back in bed at which point she melts down.  Then she starts screaming that she wants to rock.  She did that just so she could get in trouble and have a tantrum so she could get in the rocking chair.  We had a talk after that.  If she wants to rock all she has to do is ask us.

As far as attachment goes, she called us mommy and daddy right off the bat.  She is a little too giving with her affection.  I don't know if I would go so far as to say she has reactive attachment disorder, but she is definitely disordered.  She will go to anyone, which is not a good thing.  We have her first therapy appointment this Friday and we are going to discuss with the therapist things we need to do to help her realize that we are her parents and no one else is.  (At one point she told us that we were her new family, but that next year she would have another new family.  She has been moved around so much that she doesn't understand that adults stick around).

She has regressed a bit in the toilet training area.  She is fine during the day and will tell us that she needs to go to the bathroom.  At night however, she still has to wear pull-ups.  When we first got her, she would wake up dry about half the time.  Now she wets her pull up every night.  Sometimes she will go in her pull up while still awake, immediately after we put it on.  I don't know what that's about.  We asked her and she said she likes to go in her pull up.  : /  Speaking of the bathroom, when we first got her, she would say she needed to go to the bathroom to get out of doing something.  Example, we are eating dinner and she wants to leave the table.  We tell her she needs to wait until we are all finished.  Then she says she has to go to the bathroom, but instead of doing that she goes to her room to play with her toys.  After we figured out what she was doing, when she said she had to go, one of us would take her to the bathroom, put her on the toilet and then bring her back to whatever we were doing.  She hasn't done that in a few weeks now.

The other night she had the worst meltdown so far.  She is taking ballet classes.  I told her she needed to get ready to go.  She dragged her feet.  I said she had 15 minutes to get dressed and get her shoes on or she wouldn't be going.  She got dressed, but didn't put her ballet shoes on.  I gave her a two minute warning.  She acted dumb, like she had no idea how to put them on (putting them on backwards, putting the elastic behind her heel, etc).  Finally she was out of time so I told her we weren't going.  30 seconds later she had her shoes on, but it was too late.  I said we still weren't going.  That's when she lost it.  45 minutes of constant screaming.  It devolved into her being upset about ballet class and then went to her crying about missing her mom.  She has got so much going on in her little brain and she doesn't know how to deal with it, hence the meltdowns.  I think she has a lot of anger too (justifiably).  I'm going to ask the therapist about how to help her deal with her anger in a healthy way.

We are changing her last name to ours when the adoption is finalized.  At first she was adamant that she was not going to change her name.  Then about a week or two ago she asked me when her name was going to change.  I told her and said her full name out loud.  She got super excited and spent about five minutes yelling, "I'm S---- K---- N----!".  Some days she still isn't happy about changing her name, but more often than not she is accepting of it.

Like I said before, it's not all gloom and doom at our house.  There are just some difficult times.  But then again, she's five.

The adoption finalization is set for August 9th.  She starts school on August 20th.

I still can't post too many details, but we are having a blast.  Right now we get Little Bit (her name until I can actually share) on the weekends.  Of course there have been some stumbling blocks, but I think overall she is doing very well.  I'm sure that it is confusing to come to our house on the weekend and then to go back to her foster family during the week.

Her birth mother sent over a lot of clothes and her toys last week.  Most of the clothes don't fit her anymore or they were just in really bad shape, but I was able to keep a few things.  DH picked her up on Friday and when she saw her toys at our place she asked him why we had them.  He explained to her that her mom couldn't take care of her anymore, but that she wanted us to take care of her from now on.  He said that she cried and told him she needed to go home so she could take care of her mom.  :(  He explained that parents take care of children, not the other way around.

She definitely has some attachment disorder.  She started calling us mommy and daddy on the second day we had her.  She didn't even know at that point that we were adopting her.  I think she would call anyone who paid her attention mommy and daddy.

She has been testing us to see how far she can go.  She has a meltdown pretty much every day.  DH has bruises all over his legs from when he was holding her in his lap while she kicked and screamed for half an hour.  I've been doing lots of reading and know we have a long road ahead of us, but I think it will be good.  We already have a good time with her.  We took her ice skating on Saturday and she loved it.

Our court hearing is on June 12th and hopefully then she will be with us full-time and I can share more details.

I've been keeping a secret and it has been killing me not being able to share. We are adopting a four year old little girl. I can't give too many details right now because it isn't finalized yet. She is currently in foster care, but the birth mother has relinquished her rights to us. She will be spending weekends with us and on June 12th we have a court hearing at which time we will be granted full custody. I wish I could share some pictures because she is freaking adorable. We spent time with her last weekend and we all had a blast. She is the girliest of girls and is obsessed with princesses and barbies (lord help me). Her birthday in early June so we get to throw a birthday party! As soon as we are able to share details I will be back with pictures and all the fun stuff. Until then we will be running around like crazy trying to get our house ready for a four year old!

Have you checked out our giveaway for a Kindle Fire?  Go look and help us out!

So what's been going on here lately?  Our homestudy is in the process of being finished if it isn't already.  Now we just wait.  And wait. And wait.

Last weekend was my brother's wedding.  We all flew out to Texas to be there.  It just so happened that we flew out on my birthday.  We got there and realized that our hotel reservation was for the next weekend and they were all booked up.  ALL the hotels in this tiny town were booked.  There were four weddings going on that weekend.  My mom offered to let us stay with them in their room.  Only problem is they were already sharing a room with two of my brothers, my sil and nephew.  With us that would make 8 people in 1 room.  We didn't really have a choice though.  There was so much luggage in that room we could barely even move around.

We all went out to eat dinner and my brother bought me a beer (after we had been sharing is flask of whiskey, it had been a stressful day) and then surprised me with ice cream and got the band at the restaurant to sing me happy birthday.  Later on the four of us (me and my brothers) decided to go visit my dad.  He was staying in a different hotel that we had to drive to.  We talked about the hotel debacle and had a laugh about it.  Then my stepmother told me that they had an extra bed if I needed to get away from everyone.  Stupid me assumed that she was talking about me and DH.  Against my better judgement I texted him and said that we could stay there if we wanted (there is a history with my dad and honestly I don't trust him all that much).  He arrived with my SIL after they had been to Wal-Mart.  He showed up with a birthday/sorry I screwed up the hotel room gift.  It was an iPad 2 which I have wanted for a while.  When he mentioned it was an iPad 2, my stepmom went off about how awful it was that he didn't get me an iPad 3 and that she would be so pissed if my dad did that to her.  I didn't even know how to respond so I just said nothing and kind of shut down.

A while later I asked them if we could stay there with them.  My stepmother looked at me and said, "well maybe I don't feel like sharing a room.  Especially considering what happened in LA".  A few years ago I shared a hotel room with them when we were in LA.  She accused me of stealing some of her stuff.  I didn't and wouldn't give in, so I guess she just still thinks that I'm a thief.  That was the tipping point to a bad day, my birthday of all days.  I got up and told DH that we had to go.  Didn't even say goodbye.  My SIL came with us.  I started crying in the car.  I know that my stepmother is a bitch, but my dad just sat there and didn't say a word the whole time.  That's what hurts the most.  

I have been avoiding both of them since that incident.  Didn't say a word to them at the rehearsal dinner and the wedding.  I'm not making any effort to keep in touch with them.  I'm sure they don't think that they've done anything wrong.  After all, I'm a "thief".

Their loss.