It's been the fastest yet longest month of our life together for obvious reasons. This week, two more reminders of how completely our lives have changed.
Tonight, we're going to our first support group for families who have adopted older kids. Well, our first support group, ever. I'm super excited. First, there will be other adopted kids for Rosie to play with. Second, we've been told these groups are great places to meet families who can provide respite.
Respite is an interesting word. It means a break, obviously. In training they made it seem like you'd get respite every month, and it would be provided by the county. Yet, that hasn't been the case. In addition, Rosie internalizes respite to mean she's too hard to handle so it has to be called babysitting. So it'll be nice to have a play date that will also double as a respite.
We've had lots of friends who have offered to help babysit Rose, and my sister did a very nice job so we could get Valentines dinner. Yet, finding a family with a kid her age would be so wonderful for her self esteem.
The second thing that happened this week was our first call from school for a sick Rosie. She's been less than happy with school so we were both skeptical but since the nurse said her temp was 99.1 decided to go get her. Since Mike was the morning caretaker, I left work early. I felt oddly grown up as I logged off.
Once I got Rosie in the car, though, I knew we'd been conned as the first words out of her mouth were, "if I start to feel better in 10 or so minutes, do I have to go back to school?" I told her no since it was nearly the end of the day. Then I gave the typical speech about how once we get home, she has to get in her jammies, get on the couch, no DS, and watch a movie. "OK" she said. (Sure enough, once rested on the coach her temp was a cool 97.5.)
I popped in Anne of Green Gables, which she had never seen but LOVED! Then I asked her if she thought she'd be up for lasagna or if she'd need chicken broth. She said she thought she could handle lasagna since it's just noodles, cheese and meat. Mmmmhm, I thought. Then her social worker came and Rosie suddenly felt so much better she was showing off her dress shoes and running around the house with a lot of energy.
Oh child, I wanted to say, I was the master at faking sick. I thought I was, but now I wonder how obvious my deception was. I do know the main rule of faking sick is to stick with your sickness for more than 10 minutes. The second rule, is start the day off sick. This morning, she was also extremely happy until it was time to put a jacket on, at which point she started feeling the same mystery illness that brought her home early yesterday.
I kept these thoughts to myself. I'd rather deal with fake sick kid for the last 10 minutes of the morning than all morning and the night before. Plus, I do think she legitimately feels sick, which I told her on the car ride in. I figured a car ride instead of the bus would make her feel a little better. I also told her that sometimes we just have to go to work and school if we're not contagious.
Oh, and I also told her if she gets through the next three days of school (she has Friday off) I'd give her a big bouquet of roses, just for her, just for her room....am I proud of bribery...not really. But this way it might not be such a battle tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment