Tooth, Yogurt, Big Frog

1. Hello, toofie #3! Clark's third tooth has FINALLY totally broken through the gum. Babies look so different when they start getting lots of teeth. I'm sure he'll look as cute as ever. But he won't look quite so baby-ish. *sigh*

2. Clark had yogurt today for lunch. He gave a huge stink face after the first bite, but he opened up for a second bite anyway. By the third bite he was fine.

3. Elise woke up around 3am last night yelling, "Mommy! Mommy! I want Mommy!" I went into her room and asked her what was wrong. She was sitting up in bed. "Help, Mommy! There a big frog in my bed!" Another dream. Poor Elisey.

Toodle Bug Toodles Around

My Clarky toodle bug is pulling up and scooting around the edges of furniture now. He still isn't fully crawling, but he's ready to try to start walking. Silly boy.

Also, he LOVES looking at himself in the mirror and he's starting kissing his reflection. He does those open-mouthed baby kisses and leaves smudges all over my full length mirror at about knee-height.

Notes for Today

1. Clark ate about 6 Cheerios today. He was feeling left out while Elise had her afternoon snack, so I gave him a few pieces of cereal. He sucked and sucked on each one, not sure what to do with it once it was in his mouth. But he seemed happy each time I fed him the next piece.

2. I think Clark's third tooth has finally started to break through the gum. Barely. This is, like, the slowest growing tooth in history. Poor little guy.

3. Clark has started imitating. If you smack your lips at him, he smacks his lips back. Very silly and cute.

4. Tonight Elise said, "Old MacDonald had a farm and on the farm was Baby Clarky!" So I said, "What does a Baby Clark say?" and she said, "Oink oink!" then giggled like crazy.

Mango; Potty Toots

1. Clark had mango for the first time today. He totally loved it. He took a bite and then smiled real big and started doing a little happy dance with his feet. Adorable. It made him so happy, I just might feed him mango every day for the rest of his life.

2. Elise is making progress with her potty poo poo issue. Through an elaborate system of rewards (which include stickers, cookies, and promises of an ice cream celebration) she is finally comfortable enough to not only sit on the potty when she has to poop, but also fart into the potty. She just isn't quite ready to go all the way. Not sure what her hangup is, and I don't think she knows, either. Tonight she was even trying to coax her buns into doing the deed. "Buns! Listen to Mommy! Go poo poo in the potty!"

Ear Tubes , Finally!

Henry has finally had his ear tube surgery! Yayayayayayayay!!!!!!

The surgery went well, tubes are in, adenoids are out. By the time the anesthesia wore off about 4 hours after the surgery, Henry was feeling a-okay. Riding around the living room on his tricycle and asking to go outside and play. It was like nothing had happened to him that morning.

I swear, though, he's already talking more, talking better, and being more responsive when people talk to him. So exciting. So exciting.

Hair Abuse

Our case manager that helps us maintain our foster care license was over the other day. She usually comes by when the kids are in school, so this was the first time that she met Henry and Georgia. The licensing case manager (LCM) has hair like Georgia's so when she said, "You're doing a good job with her hair," I felt really happy and relieved. It's taken me quite some time to figure out how to maintain and style Georiga's beautiful kinky curly hair and it was nice to get some positive feedback.

LCM then told me about how she has another foster family that she works with that is comprised of white foster parents and biracial foster kids. Someone called in an ABUSE report on the foster family because the kids' hair was looking messy. The foster parents just didn't know how to take care of their hair and instead of offering to help or giving the family some advice, someone called in an abuse report. Yowza!

Maintaining Georgia's hair really does have a lot of steps and there are a lot of things that you need to know in order to get the best result. I still haven't figured out the exact right products and procedures for keeping her hair at its best. As of right now, here is what I do for Georgia's hair every Saturday night and Sunday morning:

1. Saturday night before dinner I take Georgia's old hair style out. Then I put olive oil (from the kitchen) all over her hair and scalp and let it sit on her head through dinner time until her after-dinner bath.

2. I wash her hair with a natural shampoo that doesn't have sulfates and doesn't leave a buildup on the hair. I use Dr. Bronner's soap. I love that stuff.

3. Then I condition Georgia's hair. I let the conditioner sit in her hair while I wash Henry and Elise and then I rinse the conditioner out of her hair as the very last thing before we pull the bath tub plug.

4. I gently pat the excess water out of Georgia's hair (no rough towel drying!), then apply a leave-in conditioner all through her hair.

5. Next, I spray her hair with (a lot) of detangler and gently comb her hair with a wide-toothed comb.

6. I rub coconut oil all through her hair (it's called oil but it's very waxy) and comb her hair again.

7. Then I section Georgia's hair into about 10 little puffs and comb out each section and put cloth ponytail holders down the entire length of each section of hair. This process is called "banding" and it helps straighten her hair slightly for styling the next morning. Georgia sleeps Saturday night with her hair sectioned and banded.

8. Sunday morning after breakfast the process starts over again. Take out the ponytail holders. Leave-in conditioner. Detangler. Combing. Coconut oil. Combing.

9. Then I style. I don't do anything fancy, believe me, but the styling process takes about an hour and a half. And hopefully her hairstyle will last until the following Saturday evening.

And that's what you have to do if you want to NOT abuse your foster daughter around here.

Why Why Why

Elise woke up last night yelling, "Why? Why? Why?"

I went into her room to see what was wrong. "Elise? Are you okay?"

"Henry push me! Into a table! Why? Why Henry push me?!"

I told her she was dreaming and that it didn't really happen. Henry didn't push her. She was just thinking about it. Henry was still in bed.

As she woke up a little bit more, she calmed down. Oh, it was so sad though. Why? Why? Why? So sad.

Georgia Can Hear

Georgia had a hearing test done recently with an audiologist. She has a little bit of hearing trouble with the ear that had the ear tube fall out right after her surgery, but she hears well enough out of that ear and perfectly out of the other ear. The audiologist said that her hearing is definitely good enough that it shouldn't negatively impact her speech and language development.

The hearing tests were kind of cool. First the audiologist put this little device in each of her ears and checked for fluid behind her eardrums. Then she put another device in each ear that made noises and then checked for a response from the nerves in her ears to see if she was hearing the noises. That device made a graph on a computer screen and we could see that Georgia had trouble with certain frequencies in her left ear.

After that, we went to a special room inside of a room that had speakers on opposite walls. The audiologist watched through a window as she played different noises at different volumes from one speaker and then the other. The audiologist was checking to see if Georgia looked at the appropriate speaker when the sound was played. Georgia looked immediately at the right-side speaker every single time she should have. With the left speaker she'd usually look over eventually, but if the noise was quieter or lower in tone then there was more of a delay before her brain registered the noise and she looked at the speaker.

Overall, though, Georgia's hearing is not impaired to the point that there's anything we can do about it. The audiologist said there was a little bit of fluid in her left ear and that the fluid probably comes and goes, making her hearing better some days than others. Hopefully as she gets older she'll outgrow the issues creating fluid in her ears.

Totally Bananas

Clark ate his first not-mashed-up banana today. Just chomped it out of the peel like any normal person. Sort of like any normal person.

I was grocery shopping and Clark reached behind his seat in the cart and grabbed the bunch of bananas I had just put there. Okay, fine. But after a few minutes he had split the peel open on one of the bananas, so I took the whole bunch away from him to avoid a mess.

Clark started scream-crying. Like, seriously for real losing his shit. Tears pouring down his face, strangers staring at me like I must have just punched him in the nose or something, scream-crying. So I hurried to a register and had the cashier weigh the bananas ASAP, and as soon as she rung them up I gave Clark his banana back.

He went into a FEEDING FRENZY. The cashier was watching and laughing and then the cashier next to us noticed and started watching and laughing, too. He was just biting and biting and breathing all fast... I was on stand-by ready to perform the baby Heimlich. I still have no idea how he managed to avoid choking. He was inhaling that banana.

Then when the banana was gone, not another tear. He sighed contentedly and that was that. My boy wanted a BANANA. Pronto!

Now I know to keep the bananas out of arm's reach next time.

Potty Training

Henry asked to not wear a pull-up to bed tonight. We'll see how that goes. Fingers crossed.

Elise is doing well with her potty training, too. Still wont poop on the potty. But during the day at home she only wears undies. We put a diaper on her for bedtime, naps, and usually when we go out in public. She wore her undies every time we went out in public today and she did just fine. I'm thinking that it's time for Elise to start only wearing diapers/pull-ups at sleepy times. Again, fingers crossed.

Even though we're pretty laid back about potty training, it's a stressful time in toddlerhood. A shitty time. Pun intended.

Clarkz Skillz

Clark has started crawling on his elbows now, and he really gets his little legs going. I don't think it will be too much longer before he gets his chubby cubby belly up off the floor. He's started pulling up on things, too.

Clark enjoys percussion. He just loves to take two toys and bang them together. And if he only has one toy, then he hits it on the floor or the table or whatever is close by. Guess I better start saving up for a drum set now.

You Need a What?

Elise: "Mommy? I need a hang glider."

Me: "What?"

Elise: "Mommy. I NEED a hang glider!"

Me: "You need a hang glider, huh?"

(Then the ol' Bugs Bunny switcheroo...)

Elise: "I need a hang glider?"

Me: "That's what you just said. You need a hang glider."

Elise: "Mommy? Why I need a hang glider?"

Me: "I don't know. You tell me. Why do you need a hang glider?"

Elise: "Mommy! I don't need a hang glider! Ha ha ha ha. Mommy!"

Clark's Bad Attitude

Clark has been kind of fussy lately. I think BOTH of his top front teeth are trying to come through. Poor Bubba.

He likes playing this game where I yell back at him whenever he starts to yell. Just, "Aaaaaaah!" I try to start as soon as he starts, and then he tries to fake me out. As far as baby games go, it's pretty fun. That often gets him to stop fussing and start laughing. For a little while, anyway.

Happy Father's Day!

We had a very nice Father's Day. It included a go-cart ride for all of the kiddies. Well, not Clark. All of the big kids. And Husband has a new video game. Go-carts and video games-- my husband is simply the tallest kid in the house.

CSA

Our family has joined a CSA (click here for a link). Do you know about this sort of thing? CSA stands for "community supported agriculture" and basically it's one way to buy fresh fruits and vegetables and herbs from a local farm. You pay a certain amount of money at the beginning of each season in which you want to participate, and then every week (or every other week, depending on what you pay) you get a bag of fresh produce from the farm's crop. It's a little bit of a risk, because if something happens and the farm isn't very productive you simply get less produce for your money. But if the farm does well, then you get more.

This is the extent of my inclination to gamble, by the way. I don't play the lottery or fantasize about hitting it big in Vegas. A few extra tomatoes in my produce bag, though? I'll take that risk.

Tonight I used some of the pretty little purple onions from this week's CSA haul in our fajita dinner. I don't know if it's just a different kind of onion than I'm used to, but the onions seemed so delicate and easy to cut through. They smelled really good, too. Yay for local, organic veggies!

Elise and Clark Notes

* Clark had cherries for the first time today. He had wheat cereal added to his diet, too, starting about a week ago. Clark is at that magical age where he'll eat anything I put on his spoon.

* Clark is still army crawling. No belly-off-the-floor crawling yet.

* Elise is obsessed with eating dried figs lately. She super loves them.

* When we read the kids books we always tell them who the author is. Elise recognizes certain books or styles of books and will tell you who wrote them. In particular, she knows Dr. Seuss, Sandra Boynton, Anna Dewdney (the Llama Llama books) although she calls her Annie Doodie, Laura Numeroff (the If You Give A Mouse a Cookie books) although she calls her Lorla Nooner-off, and Eric Carl who is known as Eric Carlo for some reason.

* Today at breakfast Elise told me, "I having a rough morning, Mommy. The vacuum cleaner scared me." I'm sure she's heard us say something like that before, but sometimes the things she picks up and repeats (and then uses in the proper context) blow my mind.

Potty Talk

Tonight Elise was playing with her toy phone and having a pretend conversation. She picked up the receiver and said (complete with pauses during which time the other person was supposedly responding), "Hello?... What you doing?... Poopin'?... Okay, bye."

Why are little kids obsessed with poop? When my youngest sister was about to start kindergarten, my other sister and I asked Baby Sister, "Are you nervous?" Baby Sister said, "No. I'll be friends with the teacher." That's cool. So we asked her what she would say to the teacher to make her a friend. Baby Sister said, "I'll ask her if she eats poop sandwiches."

Henry's Surgery

Henry's ear tube and adenoid surgery is scheduled! For the end of THIS month! I'm so excited. I can't wait until it is behind us and he can recover and then start to hear well. I really hope his speech improves.

TPR Update

The hearing to decide if the kids' mom will have her parental rights terminated as to Henry has been pushed back by about a month. From mid-July to mid-August. So, as I said before, MAYBE he'll have some permanency (adoption or reunification with his mother) by the end of this year. Maybe.

Another Elisey Saying

Today Elise was calling her milk "cowboy juice." Don't know where that came from. Silly girl.

Farm Fresh

We took the kids to a farmer's market this weekend and got them some fresh blueberries. Blueberries are hands-down Elise's favorite fruit and they might be Henry's, too (although bananas are a mighty close second). I wasn't expecting there to be much of a difference between store-bought blueberries and blueberries from the farmer's market, but there was. The blueberries from the farmer's market really did taste very fresh and there were almost no tart ones at all. What a tasty treat!

Milk

Clark officially talked to me for the first time today! He signed for milk when he actually did want me to nurse him. Yay! Communication! Baby sign language is so cool. I never taught any of the kids more than a few of the most important signs, but man oh man does it make my life easier and my babies less frustrated.

Pictures

Elise got her first "professional" pictures taken at 3 months, so I get the kids' photos done every year at the 3 month mark (i.e. 3 months, year and 3 months, 2 years and 3 months). Elise got her 2 year old pictures done today. She smiled all cute and took some really good pictures... then acted like a lunatic in the waiting room while I was picking out photos. And Clark screamed like an angry pterodactyl the whole time. Ugh. Thanks kids.

The Sweetest Babies

They all have their moments, of course, but my kids are so sweet to each other most of the time. Examples:

1. When Clark cries, Henry often walks over, rubs his head softly and says, "It okay. It okay."

2. Today Georgia was trying to climb into her car seat herself and she was having trouble. I was silently watching and letting her struggle with it (gotta give her a chance to figure it out on her own, you know?) and then Elise pipes up, "Keep trying Georgia! Keep trying!"

Baby Fat

Clark's chubby little thighs are amazing. Delicious. That's the only word I can think of to describe them. They're smooth and soft and warm and... delicious.

If I were a cannibal, I would only eat babies.

Happy 8 Months, Clarkypoo!

Clark turned 8 months old yesterday. My chubby cubby! My sweet little Shorty Talls! Clark is the best baby on the planet. He almost never fusses. He's smiley and happy and cute. I'm short and grumpy and Clark is big and joyful and so outgoing. He's my opposite. I love him. He's perfect.

Allison Update

Henry and Georgia's new baby sister, Allison, has been placed into foster care. She's living in the same foster home as the other baby sister, Eve. I'm glad that they're together.

I heard from someone who heard from someone (we'll see how reliable this information turns out to be) that the kids' mom might get custody of the new baby within the month. If that's true, that means that the judge is ignoring some important evidence that would lead most people to believe that is a bad idea. Also, if the court is willing to let their mom have custody of Allison, I can't imagine why she couldn't have custody of Eve and Georgia, too. (Henry is a slightly different situation and there is more than one argument for why he should not be placed in his mother's care.)

I'm trying not to get overly concerned about what MIGHT happen. Got to just wait and see how this month plays out.

Apricots, Diarrhea

* Clark had his first apricots today. He took a bite, yelled angrily (I'm pretty sure he was trying to say, "What the what, lady? That looks like carrots but it is NOT carrots that you just fed me."), and then ate it all up.

* Around 11:30 last night Elise woke up in a puddle of diarrhea. Super sick Elisey baby. I had to shower her off and she was shaking and cold. It was awful. She was talking crazy talk.

"Where's the yellow?"

"What yellow?"

"Where's the yellow, Mommy? Where's the YELLOW?"

"I don't know. What yellow?"

"Georgia's at school?"

"No, honey. It's nighttime. Georgia's in bed. Sleeping."

"In her room?"

"Yes."

"Her teacher in her room? In her bed?"

"Um. No. Just Georgia. Just Georgia in her bed. It's nighttime. No teachers. No school."

"Butterflies are in bed?"

"Yes, Elise. The butterflies are sleeping."

"Butterflies have wings. And antennas. And the butterflies make cocoons."

"Yes."

"I need peanut butter..."

She was fine this morning. Poor baby. She was so sick last night. Crying and upset. We got her cleaned up, gave her some peanut butter crackers and water, and she went back to sleep. Maybe she just ate something funny. Or maybe it was all that disgusting dirty butt bathtub water that she's always trying to drink finally catching up with her. Who knows. We'll see if any of the other kids catch it.

Confession of a Foster Mom

I totally internet stalk my foster kids' parents. Facebook, MySpace, whatever. Henry and Georgia's mom is online, Bo's mom is online, Dolly and Ethan's parents are online. I get to see how my former foster kids are doing because of course everyone posts about their kids. Also, it's sometimes surprising what people will reveal about themselves.

Carrots, Crawling

Clark started eating carrots two days ago. No big deal. No reaction to the new taste. He ate his first spoonful as if he's been eating carrots his whole life.

Also, Clark is getting better at crawling. He still army crawls with his tummy flat on the ground, but now he's started getting his knees up under his hips and his little bottom way up in the air. It's just a matter of time before he figures out that he should push his chest off of the ground by using his arms.

Elise never army crawled and neither did Georgia, so there's a small part of me that wonders if what Clark's doing is okay. He does have strength in his arms, though, so I don't think he's too weak to support his own weight. I think he's just taking a different route on his way to crawling. The hyper-masculine "ARMY CRAWL" route.