Head Troubles!

I survived town day with a whopping migraine. Unfortunately for us, the speech schedule was screwed and we had to leave the house by 7:15 AM, then  race home at 10 to pick up the other two girls and run back to town for music and writing classes, etc... The piano teacher was called into jury duty (called at 10PM last night!!!)... same messy case my husband is a witness on, so no piano lessons today. Vanessa's getting into the swing of college. She's great-grand-parent sitting with Dakota this week and only has a few blocks to travel to school.

Things went from bad to worse and finally came to a head last night with Missy. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, and no matter how I handled things, she grew more and more resistant, insolent and defiant. We actually started the day over towards the middle .... like really started over. I put her to bed for a nap then woke her with a cheery "Good Morning", and she went through her whole morning routine, including breakfast. It was novelty enough for the first half hour to bring out a smile or two, but she soon reverted to her angry, disobedient self and 10 PM found her and I on the very tippy top of our mountain after having raged and screamed bloody murder all the way up! Steve found us up there and we had a serious talk and a prayer. I finally found her vulnerable spot. She's afraid of the dark. She would have NEVER admitted it in a hundred years, except that we were on the mountain in the dark and an owl was hooting and then when Steve arrived she didn't know what was coming towards us. Even then she did not react as a child would.... she only cowered a bit and stood her ground and did  not really seek me for protection. The night was actually beautiful with almost a full moon and the air felt warm. If I had to be up there in the night, it was the night to be up there! She came down much subdued and followed through on the tasked I had asked of her, but not without trying to manipulate Steve and I all along the way,  thus my headache, but today has been better - much better. She started her little mind games a couple of times but we managed to remind her of the seriousness of such business. She and I had an hour to wait for Buster at Speech, so we sat in the front seat of the car and I made every attempt to connect with her. It's hard. She's sabotaged the relationship to the point of almost having to start over from scratch. She did get cuddly right at the end of the hour.  It's anybody's guess as to why things went downhill the last few days. I've stood my ground, but Steve figures she thinks she was winning until the mountain trek in the dark.

In the car we talked about adoption and her new name. She likes her new name and doesn't want to be called by the old one. She hardly remembers her bio mom. I mean, she knows who she is, but ask her to tell about her memories and she can only come up with going to the park - and in that, she means the time Steve and I took her to the park to say goodbye to her bio mom. Ask her if she misses her? "No". Ask her if she likes her? "no". and the conversation invariably quickly turns to memories of living with "Grandma", her last foster parent.

We stopped at Goodwill and I picked up a few educational games for the twins. Buster became painfully hyper-focused before we even had a chance to play them and I had to put them away already. He had been doing pretty well with that for the last few weeks, but he's certainly unbalanced at the moment and is forced to go out and ride his bike all teary-eyed. Missy found a perfect pair of pale blue Mary Janes at the Goodwill .... she's quite content to wear them without getting deranged in the head. Thank goodness, we have enough troubles!