Husband and I are having our wedding ceremony in less than two weeks.
LESS THAN TWO WEEKS, YOU GUYS!
We were legally married earlier this year, but couldn't have the ceremony at that time. Now the big day is just around the corner!
Anyone who has a blended family knows that this is a challenging experience even under the best of circumstances. Now take the "normal difficulties" and "normal emotional conflicts" kids with divorced parents have when one of those parents remarries... And multiply them by A HUNDRED BILLION BAZILLION... And you may have an accurate idea of how bonkers things are getting around here, especially with Middle.
When you add in a phone call from bio mom to all the wedding excitement, you get a dysregulated Little and a nearly apoplectic Middle. This was the first phone call in a month. Middle asked to call her mom, and it just so happened that it was her mom's birthday (we knew this because bio mom sent about 20 texts the day before demanding access to them via telephone because it was HER birthday and "all she wanted" was to talk to HER kids... Middle probably didn't know this unless her hypervigilant observation skills are WAY more advanced than Husband and I realized).
And of course after Middle learned it was her mom's birthday she made a card... But we can't send said card because bio mom has moved yet again and we don't have the address... And making that card was so sweet, but probably reminded her that she got nothing from bio mom for her birthday last month... Which probably reminded her that she hasn't really gotten much at all since we got custody of her and Little...
And so on.
There's a lot of excitement going on. And when there is a lot of excitement, kids with traumatic backgrounds often interpret that excitement as a threat. Which means Middle is absolutely losing her mind.
Saturday night, she hit Little in the testicles. Sunday morning, she briefly trapped my cat and terrorized him while no one was looking, called attention to the fact that she terrorized the cat because no one noticed she had just engaged in domestic animal terrorist tactics, and then triangulated Husband and I against each other for a very brief moment (he was convinced she hadn't done anything to the cat, I was convinced she had), and then when things calmed down she copped up to being mean to the cat... I couldn't tell if she was just trying to rile everything up again or not, but by the time she admitted to what she'd done, I was calm enough to ensure things stayed placid around here, thankfully.
She's also had some bathroom issues, been staring at me with "THE FACE" on almost nonstop, refusing to sleep, and doing weird things with her clothes again (she hid her uniform this morning, she is putting dirty underwear into her clean underwear drawer and clean clothes into the dirty clothes basket, there's a new hole in one of her pairs of pants and one of her blankets, etc).
This morning, the hidden uniform fiasco resulted in some very impressive orchestrated chaos... But I take the blame on that one. I completely overreacted when she said she couldn't find her uniform. But it wasn't even 6 a.m. yet, damn it, and I'm tired.
And don't think for one minute that Oldest is just sailing along smoothly throughout this crazy time. Oh nononono. Her behavior regressed quite a bit this weekend as well, and we had to separate her and Little on many occasions because she was being WAY too handsy with him. She also progressed in age, apparently, because she was TOTALLY acting like a teenager when I asked her to do things or tried to talk to her. That, or she lost her hearing suddenly because she pretty much ignored everything I said to her unless I was talking about food.
SO! I may not be around too much until the wedding confetti settles. I missed "Silly Sunday" yesterday, and don't really have too much time to write. I am working on a lil' piece called "Airing Dirty Laundry" that goes over the importance of sharing our experiences with others, but by "working on," I really mean "I've come up with an idea and I haven't written a frigging thing, but I have every intention on doing so."
I'm also working on a blog that I hope explains why normal consequences and rewards don't work so well with kids who've experienced trauma... There are actually words written down for that one, so that will probably come before the "laundry" post.
Anywho... since publishing with The Mighty my readership has increased exponentially, and people I don't know pop in here now and again, I figured I should offer a brief heads up that I probably won't get much accomplished with writing until after this whole wedding shindig wraps up. I'll try to get some stuff written and posted, but no promises on seeing anything from me until the middle of October.
See you then!
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