Parenting

Being a mother to four toddlers is hard. Especially when one of the toddlers is a foster child and is dealing with insecurities.

This week I have done a lot of praying, asking for guidance in helping Marc to control his behavior because he has been out of control lately. First I was asking about how to stop the biting because that was getting more and more frequent and Rebekah was starting to bite again too and they were leaving horrible bite marks on everyone. As I was praying about it the other night the inspiration about stopping biting came! It was that Marc is VERY motivated by food, especially sweets. And when he bites someone, I was to offer everyone who was using their teeth the right way some candy. When he asked for some too I was to say -with empathy, “Oh, no, Marc, you didn't use your teeth for food. Brigham used his teeth for food so he gets some. Bekah used her teeth for food...” and so on. I only had to do that three times before the biting stopped. Then, later he almost bit Brigham, but he stopped himself, looked at me and said, “teeth for food”. I applauded him for not biting and gave everyone candy including him so they could use their teeth for food. What a blessing that inspiration was! It's been so nice not to have to deal with biting 4-5 times a day! And all the bite marks are beginning to heal!

Well, with that behavior under control I began to pray about the other problem behaviors. Last night I was thinking about it after the children were in bed and I got the impression to read an early childhood newsletter that was sitting on the counter. So, I did and the first article I read was about a mother who had been dealing with a toddler who had a lot of behavioral issues with her son. She started to spend 10-20 minutes a day just sitting on the floor and letting him choose the activity and just playing- letting the child direct the play. That and a few other things changed the mother's perspective of her child, and the child's behavior began to improve immensely. I thought, I need to do that with all of my children, but especially with Marc. So, we're going to try it this week and see how it goes.

Oh, the things people say

When I took all four children grocery shopping the other day I got quite the reaction out of several people. One guy had his daughter with him who looked about 6 or 7 years old. He saw me pushing a cart with four toddlers he just stopped and stared. I smiled at him and with an astonished look on his face he said, "And I thought I had my hands full!" then he continued to stare, so his daughter counted the kids and said, "four, Dad, there's four." He said, "I know, I can count. Wow!"
Another couple watched me as I was bagging our groceries. Three of the children were trying to "help" but it was making things go slowly. Anyway, the wife asked how old the children were, and I told her. The husband said, "How do you do it?" I said, "A lot of patience and a lot of energy."
One lady that I had seen in a store last week and also this morning said to me that every since she saw me last week she just kept thinking how does she (referring to me) get anything done? I told her that's all I do is take care of them.

Another lady saw me and said with a little disgust, "Please tell me they're not all the same age."

An older cashier at wal-mart just assumed the older three were triplets and was telling me all about another set of triplets that comes into the store.

As I was leaving the WIC office one day I heard people talking behind me saying something like, "she sure has her hands full, but she's got a lot of patience too." That was nice to hear after wrestling with four toddlers through a WIC appointment I was about ready to pull my hair out inside, but luckily was staying calm on the outside. It was nice hear someone notice that I was doing a good job.

Crazy Friday - plus a little

I have taken on two of my previous child care clients - ones I had before we got our children. Mr. M, as we shall call him here, turned 2 in April. And Miss K, as she will be referred to on the blog, turned 2 in December. It has been nice for the children to have a few extra play mates. They both come part time, but I had both of them here on Friday, plus my three, so I had 5 children 2 years and under. The night before, Hyrum was teething and fussy, therefore I didn't get much sleep and Timothy was gone that day from 6:45am to 3:30pm.

I've had them all here at least two times before and things were a little busy, but manageable. Here is what happened on Friday - I'm lucky we all survived:

Mr. M is in a hair-pulling phase and pulls Rebekah's and Miss K's hair almost every time I turn my head. He also pulls Hyrum's hair if I leave Hyrum to play on the floor. So, I was constantly pulling him away from the group so that he wasn't hurting the children and so that, hopefully, he would learn that he shouldn't pull hair. But, the constant pulling was beginning to drive me crazy.

After making Hyrum a bottle, I went into the living room to sit down to feed him. Three of the children were in the kitchen because they had followed me in there, but they didn't follow me back out like they usually do. So as I was feeding, I kept calling to the children to come play in the living room. At first they weren't responding, but finally Brigham piped up and said, "I'm cleaning first." I told him to come in and play in the living room, but he was insistent that he clean the mess. So, I thought I'd better go see what the mess was. I walk into the kitchen and lo and behold an entire $15 can of formula had been dumped all over the floor. And Brigham was trying to clean it up with a dry wash cloth. I was not too happy about this - it was my last can of formula and it had been nearly full. (I was planning on going shopping that night and getting more.) So, not only did I have a mess, but I also didn't have formula to feed my baby and there was no way I was taking 4 toddlers and a baby to the store to get some. Luckily I found enough to make two bottles in the diaper bag.

Brigham and Mr. M have been in a throwing toy phase also, and they egg each other on. I've been trying to teach them to throw only (soft) balls. Well, Friday as they were throwing things a toy got stuck in the pot of our little palm tree. I think Brigham must have been trying to get the toy when he knocked over the tree and it broke. I was not happy about this. See the small fire hat in the pot ?
Did I mention that all four toddlers are potty training? As you can probably guess, we've been spending a lot a time in the bathroom.

So, after dealing with all of this I finally got lunch on the table, the children ate and I got two of them down for naps while the other two were finishing eating. While I was putting Rebekah down, Brigham and Miss K got into the pasta salad and it ended up all over the floor. What a lovely mess, huh? I hadn't eaten lunch yet because I was too busy feeding Hyrum and keeping up with getting seconds, etc for the four toddlers. So, now my lunch was all over the floor.
Well, luckily they took decent naps that day or I would have been the one pulling hair out.

At 2:15 I have to load all the little ones into the van to go pick up a school-age child from school. Luckily that trip was uneventful. Until we were getting out of the van. Rebekah and Miss K were the last ones out. Miss K was moving slowly trying get down from the big van by herself. Rebekah was behind her and must have been tried of waiting so she pushed Miss K and Miss K fell out of the van scraping her arms and banging her head on the foot step on the way down. I sent her home with a goose-egg on the forehead.

Just after we got in the house I had to change Hyrum's diaper. I was in the middle of changing him when all of a sudden I heard Miss K screaming like her hair was being pulled. I run in to find that Mr. M had dragged Miss K by the hair from the kitchen all the way into the living room and was still pulling when I got in there. He had a fist full of hair. Now, at this point, with all that I had dealt with that day and not having got much sleep the night before, I lost my temper. I yelled at Mr. M for pulling Miss K's hair for the twelfth time that day, and right after she had just been injured falling out of the van. (I felt bad for yelling, but I also felt he deserved it a little, too.) Mr. M got buckled into a booster seat and left in the middle of the kitchen. I put Miss K in Rebekah's crib so that no one could hurt her again while I finished changing Hyrum's diaper. I also gave her an ice pack for her forehead. She was glad to get a break from the others.

At the end of the day I got the children into bed and went grocery shopping, but when I got to the store, I just sat in the parking lot outside for about twenty minutes just enjoying a little peace and quiet after my crazy day.

Now, Saturday was much better than Friday (no daycare-yea!), but we did have an incident that is going to cost our family more money than we'd like to spend. I was trying to load the children into the van and while I was getting the others, Brigham climbed into the front seat and was playing around. When I was ready to get him buckled I said, "Okay Brigham, let's get in your seat, it's time to go home." I then reached into the front to grab him, he dove away from me and his head went right into the windshield of the van. The windshield spider-webbed where his head hit. Amazingly enough, he didn't cry, didn't get a bruise or bump or anything on his head (luckily). But, our windshield is busted. I tried to get a picture of it. Yes, that is from Brigham's head. I just laughed and laughed over this one because he wasn't hurt and it was funny, but we're going to have to try to come up with several hundred dollars to fix this.

The little joys of parenting

I put mousse in Rebekah's hair to make the curls look like curls instead of fuzz. I also put two ponytails in. She looked so cute! I love having a little girl so that I can do her hair.

Finally, a picture of just Mommy and Brigham.

Dressed up after church

(ingnore my bad faces, it's hard to tell exactly when the camera is going to take the picture.)

Brigham and Rebekah love their Daddy so much they try to climb the gate to our bedroom while he's working on homework so that they can be with him. Do you see Brigham's foot? He's getting close! Rebekah has found the bathroom drawer and is getting into Mommy's hair dryer.

Brigham saw Sister getting into the drawer and thought he'd try it out too.

Then they teamed up.

First bath in their new home. Luckily it went well. If there's one thing this Mommy isn't experienced in when it comes to taking care of children, it's bath time. (I never bathed my child care children.) They loved the bath, though!

Last night was their first night in our home. That didn't go as well as everything has been going, especially for Brigham. Rebekah fell asleep fairly quickly around 8:30. SHe slept until about 2:00 and then was up for a while (Seems she was a little scared.) We finally got her back to sleep around 3:30am and she slept until 7:00. So, that wasn't too bad for a first night in a strange place. These children have been sleeping in their foster parents' bed at night, and our caseworker told us they couldn't sleep with us. So, they are going to have a hard time transitioning into a new home with new parents and having to sleep alone. Brigham was rocked to sleep by about 8:45 but, when we laid him in bed he woke up. He was scared and wouldn't sleep. At 9:40 I just climbed into his twin bed with him and he fell asleep pretty quick. But, he woke up again at midnight. I finally got him back to sleep at 1:45 and he slept until about 3:30. So, as you can see, I played tag team most of the night. Since the children were up at different times. Timothy helped get Rebekah to sleep after I had tried for 45 minutes, so I got a little rest. I was also able to sleep a bit between 4:00 and 6:00. Although it wasn't very deep as Brigham was tossing and turning the whole time. Needless to say, Timothy and I are very tired. But, we'll get used to it. We just hope we can get the children to sleep better before the baby joins our family!We found out that Baby Hyrum will be joining us sooner than we thought. He's going to start visits with us next week and on February 10th is his adoption committee. We will be the only family at the committee, so unless the committee has a major problem with us, he'll be ours. He will probably move in permanently between the 10th - 12th. His caseworker and attorney want him settled in our home before the trial on February 25th. This is the trial where they will hopefully be terminating the birth parents' parental rights for all three children.