Birthday Fun

Morgan's birthday party went pretty well.  All of the girls slept in the family room right outside our bedroom.  Haylee and Hannah were more than excited about the sleepover.  However, they struggled in their own ways leading up to the party.  As we were eating ice cream, I noticed Hannah didn't look right.  I felt her head and she was warm.  She had a low temp.  She cried and cried because we told her she had to sleep in our room on a mattress instead of with the girls.  It is interesting how God takes care of things.  We let her stay in with the girls, but sitting by herself, for the first movie.  My husband stayed up for the second movie and Hannah and I went to bed.  She didn't like that either.  My husband handled telling her that she had to go to bed because she was sick.  She was very sad.  I explained to her that she wasn't in trouble and she didn't do anything wrong.  Of course, she was still sad.  I tried to make it a big deal that she got to sleep in our room, but she didn't care. When my husband came to bed an hour or so later, she woke up and started crying and sniffing again.  I suspect it was partly attention.  I got up and got her some medicine for congestion and amazingly, the sniffles stopped immediately, not about twenty minutes later when the medicine started working. 

After the guests left the next morning, a friend of mine kept Haylee and Hannah for the day and Morgan and I went to my mother's to go shopping.  Haylee and Hannah had a blast playing with our friend's daughter and Morgan and I had a wonderful time.

My mother, Morgan and I shopped and shopped and shopped.  We didn't purchase much, but we had a great time!  I am so glad I listened to my friends and spent time alone with Morgan and my mother.  As my mother said, "We were even able to eat at a grown up restaurant."  It was refreshing for all three of us!!  I truly enjoyed the day!!  We love desserts!  Look at what we had...

Morgan and I had a great trip!!  I was so happy and refreshed on our ride home!  Morgan and I talked about the other children some.  We got back home shortly after lunch.  The arguing among the girls started within five minutes of getting home.  Oh well, the low stress environment was nice for twenty-four hours at least. 

I discovered that Hannah slept without a pillow case.  Bless her heart!  Hers was being washed, but we have plenty.  She said she didn't want to ask for one.  This breaks my heart!!

Morgan's Birthday

Morgan will be eleven this Friday.  My, how time flies!!!  She is having a spend the night party again this year.  Last year Haylee and Hannah had to sleep in our room and Morgan and her friends stayed in the girls room.  However, this year I am going to have all of the girls sleep in the family room, which is right outside my room, so I can hear them.  I am going to let Hannah and Haylee stay with them.  Unless something happens between now and then for them to lose the privilege.  I think they will be okay and get to participate.  Sometimes when they are anticipating something like this, they struggle.  I pray they do okay.  We haven't had many girls spend the night since the girls have been in our family.  The dynamics are different and it makes having girls spend the night more complicated.  

Saturday morning after the guests leave, Morgan and I are going to visit my mother and go shopping.  Morgan asked to do this for her birthday.  I struggled with it for awhile because of not including the girls, but Morgan should be able to do this without the girls.  They can ask for the same thing for their birthday.  I have struggled with this type thing ever since the girls came.  I feel like Morgan should be allowed to do things without the twins sometimes.  I guess I am still trying to convince myself this is okay.  We will be home by lunch on Sunday.  It will be a short and sweet trip, I hope! 

Book

I am currently reading, The Great Behavior Breakdown by Bryan Post.  It is a good book.  He references Bruce Perry quite a bit in his book.  Bruce Perry is going to be in our state speaking in April.  I am very excited to be able to go to the conference.  This book by Bryan Post is really helping me renew my parenting skills for traumatized children.  It reminded me of some things I knew, but have quit using. 

One thing, is the positive and negative cycle.  Sometimes I do well changing the negative behavior to positive and diffusing the situation and sometimes I don't.  I have really focused on trying to speak to my children in positive ways instead of negative.  This really gets hard as the day progresses.  My girls seem to struggle more the more positive I try to be.  They appear to get more insecure when we are happy.  I have read that this can make them feel insecure. 

Bryan Post says that love and fear are the two emotions the children function from.  We have had two incidences today where Hannah assumed things were said that were not said at all by anyone.  Having read the night before about how she is functioning out of fear, I gently corrected her assumptions and tried to promote security.  She just assumed these things because in her mind she thought people were being unfair to her.  The good thing is the second incident was with me and she was able to partially verbalize what she was thinking.  If I can keep her from entering the fight or flight mode, she is getting better a talking.  If I can't keep her from entering, we are can't make progress until we can help her regulate again.  I am working on getting to her eye level and watching my tone of voice.  I was very good at this when they first came to live with us, but over time I have forgotten to do this when correcting them. 

I have not read very far in the book, but am looking forward to reading a little bit tonight.  I don't have time to read often, but I am trying to read some when I get in the bed at night.  However, I usually don't make it long before I am sound asleep. 

I will let you know more as I read further in the book.  Have any of you read this book?

Swim Team

We had an out of town swim meet today.  I am so proud of all of my children!!  However, Haylee and Hannah have improved so much!!  It is truly amazing.  Two girls that could barely keep their heads above water 21 months ago are competing in swim meets and doing really well! 

Haylee is either really "on" or really "not one."  Today was a really "on" day and she looked great.  She was focused and determined.  They both really improved their times.  Their confidence was so amazing today.  I talked to all of the kids on the way to the meet about how a lot of younger kids that have never competed will be there.  Be alert and help them if needed.  All five kids were very helpful.  I was helping get the newer kids to their blocks to swim.  I was encouraging a little girl to finish her race.  I looked over a few lanes and our Coach had asked Haylee to jump in and help a little guy swimming finish his freestyle race.  It was precious!!  What a confidence builder for the Coach to ask Haylee to help a little guy not much smaller than her in the pool!!!  It was such a God moment!  I wish I had a picture.  He finished the race with Haylee encouraging him and swimming next to him.  God is so good!! 

All five kids swam best times and had fun. 

On the hard days, it is so helpful to reflect on how far the girls have come.  God is so good to us!!

Snow Tubing

We gave the kids a trip for Christmas. We went to North Georgia and went snow tubing. We had a wonderful trip. They also had an outdoor ice skating rink which was a lot of fun. They did well skating considering it was their first time.   We decided to invest in making memories this year instead of a bunch of stuff they would forget about in a month or so.  I will let the pictures tell about our trip.  I have posted quite a few, but it is only a few considering we took over 300.

Glasses

How can one child break her glasses so many times?  The girls played outside today in the warmer weather.  One sweet child comes in and realizes her glasses are broken and she only has one lens.  How does this go unnoticed while playing outside?

I don't even want to count how many times her glasses have been replaced or repaired this year.

Merry Christmas!!!

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!!!

(By the way, we are dressed like this because we were going to a funeral.)