A Week, Briefly, (10/8/18)

The focus of this week has been Ladybug's baptism.  We know she is truly not ready to make and keep the covenant of baptism; she is mostly keeping a social/cultural form.  However, we have pondered, prayed, and counseled with our bishop about this, and all accountable adults involved feel that allowing her to go ahead and be baptized at this time will open the door to further progress for Ladybug.

So today, Saturday, is the big day.  She'll be baptized with two of her friends from her primary class, and we will have a big family lunch back at our house afterward.

My mom and dad saved the family lunch.

Here's how:

This week Sir Walter Scott got a flu shot.  As a nurse he gets one every year, and they usually don't bother him, but this one threw him for a loop.  He felt terrible all week, but as he'd already taken a day off last week because of Rose Red's non-emergency, he didn't feel he could take another one so quickly (they get points for every time they call in, and too many points too fast = disciplinary action).  He just trudged along working all week (at the hospital and at home) and feeling like the walking dead.

This week our finished basement flooded due to heavy, heavy rain.

Not everyone was unhappy about the rain.

Rose Red's bedroom was affected, and we had to move out all of her furniture, tear up her carpet, tear out her baseboards, use the shop vac, and set up fans.  In addition, we had to set up another place for her to sleep.  I thought the hide-a-bed in the basement living room would do nicely, but she refused and set up her bed in the middle of our basement kitchen.  She blocked off all access to this room that is a pivotal part of the functioning of our household and was unkind to every person who tried to gain access to it in order to do chores, prepare meals, and/or do schoolwork.

We think it is dry, but Sir Walter Scott won't have time to do a real investigation until late this afternoon or early next week.

This week our land line died a nasty death.  It will be 7-10 business days before we can get it up and running again.

We're not sure we're going to even do that.

But every time I make up my mind to just cancel the service altogether, I get kind of sick at the thought of not having phone access for when cell phones are missing (happens a lot) or for when cell service is iffy (as it often is at our house).

The jury is still out.

This week I took Beowulf to one of the developmental/behavioral clinics in the city for the first of 3 appointments.  The only time they schedule the kind of assessment we need is at 8:00 am, so our whole morning was wonky because I left the minute the teens got home from seminary.  Even though we were prepared to the best of our ability, the kids didn't like having Mom gone for the morning; the teens got home as fast as they could, but it still wasn't early enough for Beowulf and me to be on time for our appointment (I drove with dire threats of rescheduling echoing in my ear--this is a no-nonsense clinic).  While Beowulf and I were treated quite well once we were checked in, Ladybug was very difficult while we were gone, and the rest of the kids kind of melted into messes once we got home.  But we weren't really home, because we had lunch and left for dance.

My kids were very, very, very uncooperative.

This week the other clinic called to set up an evaluation for Brother . . . for the third week of December!  I took the appointment, but I feel heartsick about the wait.  And I can only pray it will be the right kind of assessment, because my meeting with Beowulf's psychiatrist confirmed that Brother needs the help offered at that clinic more than Beowulf does.

This week there was the Young Women in Excellence event on Wednesday night.  That meant leaving the house at bedtime for most of the kids, sitting politely through a program geared to teens and adults, and then going home an hour past bedtime to start the bedtime process.

This week Ladybug could not stand the excitement of waiting for her baptism.  She is a child of trauma, so excitement = fear.  She lied, stole, broke things, whined, fussed, tantrumed, and generally made herself so disagreeable that I finally said, "You don't have to be baptized this weekend.  It's fine if you choose to wait.  I'm not going to stop you if you want to go ahead, but your behavior shows me you don't want to do this.  You have a choice.  I'm perfectly happy to wait until you feel better about this.  All you have to do is tell me."

She froze--utterly retreated into panic mode.

I couldn't think of anything to say to get her out of it, so I walked away.

Threat gone, she came out of her shell and bounced happily through the rest of the day as if nothing had happened.

Then there was ordinary life to be lived and school to be worked through, and when my mom called to ask if there was anything she could do to help with the lunch I exploded saying, "I-don't-know-what-to-ask-for-because-I've-not-planned-anything-at-all-because-I'm-too-busy-trying-to-survive-what's-going-on-here-at-home-and-I-can't-think-about-a-stupid-party!"

My parents graciously stopped asking questions, went to Costco, and purchased enough food for an army.

I hit the dollar store for paper goods, and now we're set.

Ordinary homeschool news includes:

All three teens passed their Monday morning Spanish quiz, and they all finished their second language arts unit and started the third.

Pixie went up one more point on her practice ACT.  If she can go up one more and stay there for the real exam on October 27th, I won't have her take the exam again in December.

Brother finished his second language arts book.  He did fine on the final review, so he's begun #3.

Beowulf finished his first language arts book, and he took the final review.  The result is that he has not mastered any of the skills, so we're starting it over again.

Mister Man took the second math review exam and did great.  The more I use Shiller products the more I find to both like and dislike about them.  A primary like is how easy they are to use (now that I'm not doing more record-keeping than the IRS); a primary dislike is that the tests are often unfair. (i.e. One concept taught is identifying rows and columns in a table.  After two lessons involving pointing to rows and columns when cued to do so, the test question is "Draw a table that has 3 rows and 5 columns."  Not fair--drawing a table is completely different from pointing at one.)

I finished our first pillowcase dress (actually made out of part of an old sheet because these girls are too big for clothes made of pillowcases) for our dance group for "It's a Hardknock Life."

Only 4 to go.

 Little Princess is making progress in learning how to manage her time and get her schoolwork completed.

The day we weighed air in Academy was really fun!

There are only 3 co-op sessions left.  I think we might make it.

Baby Ballet--stretching

Yoga

I brought a bin of old yarn--cotton, wool, synthetic--and a bunch of tools for working with yarn to my sensory class.  One little boy spent 25 straight minutes just taking skeins apart and building a mountain with him.  His mother came to class and apologized.  I laughed and told her that was what the yarn was here for!!!  This picture is of Brother learning to handle a needle.

We had some time to kill on this rainy, rainy co-op day because the Foods Jr. teacher was out of town.  My crew built a reading train in the cafeteria.

And in Cupboard Crafts we painted.

We've added listening to The Book of Mormon to Symposium.  President Nelson challenged all women and girls age 8 and up to read it through before the end of the year.  Based on the reading chart I found online within hours of his challenge, that seems to come to 20 chapters a week.  I have Ladybug, Little Princess, and Nature Angel join the Symposium crew for the first part of each Symposium, and we all listen together.  Yes, I realize that listening is only part of the challenge, and that means we're not marking our scriptures at each reference to the Savior, but I'm counting what successes as we are able to achieve. 

(And I'm marking my own scriptures in private each morning.)

Lola and Baymax got tired of their first set of "school pages."  I took this set out of their binders and printed a new set of tracing pages.  They are very, very happy.

Final note:
Adoption is not for the faint of heart.  It has been a traumatic week in so, so, so, so many ways.

Post edit:
The baptism was lovely.  The family get together was lovely.  I feel we made the right choice in letting Ladybug take this step, and I pray she will one day look back at it as a step toward healing.