The Third Job

Welcome to the game show that has become our life.

What is this? It's a snap shot of June 2011. The stickers represent the number of days Rose managed to get dressed, brush her teeth, put on deodorant, eat 3 meals and put on jammies.

And this is October 2011 - stickers mean the same as in June. Yay, Rosie girl! 

Mmm-hmm, for those of you who know Mike, those are Star Wars stickers.

Best of all, now all these behaviors are coming second nature. Now we can shift the rewards to polite and considerate behavior and away from tasks expected of children Rose's age. If only it weren't so hard to quantify unlike concrete tasks like brushing teeth. So we're trying to figure out the perfect reward system. Feel free to post with ideas.

This experiment has taught me positive reinforcement is tiring. The last thing we often feel like doing by the end of the day is measuring accomplishments. Especially when it feels like it's not working.  As the pictures show, though, it was working. It's just slow and painful, so the gains need to be measured and rewarded. Friday we go buy Rose press-on nails--the reward she decided she wanted if she could get this many stickers.

Then the bar needs to be raised so expect us to be a little more stressed again.



And a few more Halloween photos

For better or worse this Halloween was way better than I could have expected. No melt downs. No fighting. Just costumes, trick-or-treating, and candy eating. Rose came hope happy and chilly where she promptly crawled into bed to be cozy beneath her heating blanket.

Here are a few photo memories.

Rose, without the wig

Ben, Rose, Lucy (Spiderman, Water Bender, Vampiress)

Grrr

Trick-or-Treat

We didn't stop here.

A few more Halloween photos

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again

Rose is starting to ask, yes ask, for photos of herself. Mostly she lets her uncles get photos of her, but she's starting to change her mind at home, too. Here is a photo she asked for in her Halloween costume.

Rose the last water bender

I've tried to analyze the implications of this development. I've come up with everything. Maybe her self esteem is improving. Maybe she is starting to believe this is real so photos documenting her life make sense now. She did admit that for the first time in years, she's happy, and it makes sense to not want photos when you're unhappy. Regardless, I'm just going to enjoy this new development and share its benefits with you.
Here are a few more happy photos:

Rose chose the biggest pumpkin



Rose was happy to pose with Mike's smaller pumpkin


A side benefit of having a daughter who is unwilling to take photos is that Mike, who used to be just as camera shy, now willingly takes photos. I'd assume to set a good example?

Stay posted, the after photos are on their way.

Twins

Over breakfast today, Rose said she'd name her kids Mike and Amy. The boy first, girl second, unless she can have it longer.

Have what longer, I asked.

Sex. She said. To have twins, you need to have sex longer.

<mom stifles giggles and calmly says> Actually, it is all based on the egg, Rose.

Oh.

Hello stranger

Rose came with PCA hours. PCA = Personal Care Attendant. The state decided Rose's need levels are high enough to mandate the PCA helping us. In our case, Rose was allocated 21 hours per week.

When Rose first joined our family, we thought we wouldn't need those hours. We'd be super parents. We would handle it all. Whoops. Turns out we do need breaks even if we're even ok parents.

So we went ahead and hired our PCA, who is a 19-year-old college student. We get a few breaks throughout the week to help us better parent Rose in good times and bad. It sounds nice, but like everything, it comes with a few gotchas.

The first gotcha. We have a sort of stranger in our house three evenings a week and one weekend day. After a long day at work, usually starting with a 5 a.m. workout, I need to come home and make small talk with a nice girl who is mostly a stranger. The kicker is, after spending a few hours with Rose, she will try to give us advice on how to parent that I try to smile and nod to without rolling my eyes too noticeably.

The second. Getting organized enough to staff a PCA and meet her needs is actually more work, or it feels that way. Right now, she's asking for more hours next week to buffer the loss of hours since Rose will be out of town over MEA. Adding more stranger time to our lives isn't helping my stress levels. Not to mention, it takes away from a family dynamic, which brings me to the third, and most important nuisance, or gotcha.

The third thing that bothers me about having a PCA is I miss spending time with Rose. I realize it's a blessing to have this much help so I voice these complaints knowing others might love to be in our place. Really, I would, too, if it were a family member. It's not though, and we'll get used to this like everything else in the past 9 months. We'll make it work.

Childhood entertainment.

I wanted to upload the zoo photos and stumbled upon the following collection in Rose's camera. I wanted to do a time elapsed type of slide show, but for free software, this was was as close as I could get.

These are photos from 2, maybe 3 short car rides. None of these are duplicates. These are individual portraits she took. Peace seems to be a common theme, and my favorites are the ones where she's cracking herself up.

Rose visits and LOVES the zoo with Uncle Brian

This is mostly a picture post because Rose remembered to take her camera and because she let Uncle Brian include her in photos! For some reason, I can only download one with her in it right now though.

Thanks so much Uncle Brian, if you read this. Rose talked non-stop about the zoo for nearly 2 hours. I hadn't realized she'd never been to the Minnesota Zoo.

Worry

Today I worry about what the world will be like if Rose can't learn to take responsibility for her actions. What her world will be like, constantly seeing herself as a victim.

Rite of passage with a dash of abnormal

Today we took Rose to get her ears pierced. It was a day of pride for all of us because Rose earned the privilege by completing all of her daily care tasks every day for a month.  We allowed one day per week where she could miss one task. She only missed 3 all month. Our calendar in September was so filled with stickers, it was inspiring.

We were going to wait until next weekend, but it filled with plans. So this morning when she woke up in a good mood, we surprised her with the news. Afterward, everything she did seemed to radiate pride and Christmas Day excitement: getting into the car, putting on clothes, and even opening the doors at the mall. Here are her before shots--beaming with pride.

When we got to Claires, she excitedly talked to the clerk about how she'd gotten her ears pierced before, but they got infected. Before the procedure began the stylist asked, "and you're her mom, right?" Rose and I said "Yes" in unison--smiling at eachother.

Then later, when asked more about the first piercing attempt. Rose explained that it got infected because the back fell off and "her mom" bit the end of an eraser off a pencil and used that as a back. I cringed wanting to clarify that was her birth mom, not me, her adoptive mom, but I let it go since the clerk hadn't reacted.

Yet, as we paid, the clerk said quite sternly to NOT use a pencil eraser as a back if we lose the real one. So she had been listening. Thankfully, Rose had left out the part about the eraser staying on until the real back was found when birth mom tightened the back so tight, Rose's ear swelled up and auntie had to pry it off with a pliers. Or that her 4-year-old cousin pierced her Aunt's ears and was really good at it.

I realize these are sad stories, but of course, I worry how long it's gonna take for one of Rose's stories to wind up with someone calling protective services. I don't really care though and think I will happily let people judge me if it saves Rose the embarrassment of saying she's adopted to strangers. Some day I do believe she'll realize these stories aren't the fond memories she's made them into. Which will be hard enough.

Plus, the day was a huge success, and Rose went to bed with joy filling her face. Here are her after photos. She chose her birth stone--December.