This morning was a rough morning.

I had two kids having melt downs.

It is dress down day at school and Raven came upstairs wearing leggings type shorts and I that is against the dress code rules. So she went downstairs changed and came back up with long leggings pants, so I had to send her back down to change again. She was complaining about how jeans make her hot, so I told her that if she didn't have any other shorts (which I know she does) then she could wear her school uniform shorts. Needless to say she was not happy with that answer.

The other melt down was Nadia. She was upset because she left her lunch box at school yesterday and so I told her to just put her lunch in her backpack until she got to school and found her lunch box. She did not like that answer and it set the tone for the rest of the morning and afternoon. She was up half the night having nightmares so I think that played a big part in her crankiness.

I also know that they have a lot of change happening in the past couple of months and now school is over tomorrow so that means more change and Nadia and Carson does not do well with change. They like strict structure. They feed off of it. They have to have things mapped out for them, which is fine, it is just going to take a week or so to get back into a great routine.

 

Heather Forbes:

The more complicated you make a child's life whose internal system is already in chaos, the more you're setting the child up for failure. Simplicity and predictability are the keys to success.

 

We have finally gotten the green light to get Raven and Carson into more specialized therapy and it is such a big relief.

Things happen for a reason and because of all of the change that has already been taking place, I know that starting therapy would play a big part in their behavior so I am thankful that it took as long as it did to get approved because they won't be in school during the transition period.

 

Oh Lord help me. I was hoping to have a few more years of parenting under my belt before we hit the teenage years, but that just was not in the cards for us, so we are really trying to find ways of dealing with the teenage hatred of her parents so to speak. Quynsie is not responding well to authority the last few weeks. She has had her phone taken, she has had things blocked on her phone and I think it is making it worse. The more we punish her the worse the behavior. She is truly testing our boundaries right now to see how far she can push us. Today we gave her permission twice to text a friend letting them know she couldn't do something and she took it and ran with it. I caught her texting more than I had given permission for and warned her about it. Then tonight her dad gave her permission again and she was caught again doing the same thing she was warned about earlier in the afternoon. The stupid thing is that she knows that we check her phone often and that she will be caught.

She says her life is coming to an end because she doesn't have her phone. Apparently we have underestimated how much the phone means to her. Wait no we didn't, we know exactly how much it means and that is why we use the phone as punishment. It is her currency in life right now. 

The look on Nadia's face says it all. She has been to her best friends house a few times, but because we were in the process of moving, her friend has not been able to come to our house until today. She is just so beside herself. This little friend is even great with Carson and would let him join in on their fun even when Nadia didn't want him to. Olivia has been her best friend for 2 years now and I don't see that changing anytime soon either. In fact, I hope it never changes because they are so cute together and they have a lot in common like pigs. They both love and collect pigs.

Sitting in the living room listening to the pure joy and true laughter just melts my heart. For so long it has been fake laughs, but we are starting to see more and more of the real thing and to me that means we are making progress in the right direction.

 

Tonight while cooking dinner, Carson was not happy with waiting for it to cook. He asked why we couldn't have Papa Johns again. I said because we can't afford to eat out all of the time. In fact we didn't even buy the pizza the last two times, our relator did. So Carson said, well then why can't Justin buy it for us again. Apparently if you buy us food a couple of times then Carson thinks that is where food comes from. Silly boy.