Letting Go

The Cuddle Bear, my last child if it's me you're talking to,* started pre-school this week. Here was the First Day's conversation:

TCB: "Mom? Are you going to take me to pre-school? And leave me there? And go away?"
Me: "Oh.....well.....yes. But you already know that Mommy always comes back."
TCB: "No! Are you going to LEAVE me there. And go AWAY."

Ah. I had misunderstood. The Cuddle Bear wasn't worried. She wasn't going to miss me. She had no concern regarding how to navigate a Mommy-less afternoon. She wanted to make sure I was going to LEAVE her there. And go AWAY.

Sigh.

There it is. The face of separation anxiety.







*If you talk to Josh, however, the answer you get might be different. Not that HE feels the need for a larger family. No. He is of the deranged opinion that once all the babies are at school all day I will want to accrue more. He is sadly mistaken.

Three Rings and a Chihuahua

Whoo. Three weeks and nary a deep breath. And this time I mean that literally, as allergens have reared their ugly heads. Since I still don't technically have time for this, here are some highlights:

• Moving with a RADling. Princess has made five other moves that I know about. The likelihood that they were good experiences is slim. You can imagine what this translated into. Needless to say, the last month has been loud and injury-producing.
• On that note, Princess has begun to take her rages public. First she had several in front of an extended family member. The next was a 40-minute kickingscreamingbitingscratchingfrothingatthemouth ordeal in the middle of Buddy's soccer field. Yep. Pleasant. And not at all embarrassing.
• I do believe Buddy is starting puberty. He's only nine, but Josh had a full beard and had stopped growing by the time he was 13, so it's not totally unpredictable. However, my sweet, loving, thoughtful, mature baby has become a morose, argumentative, paranoid "tween."
• Plus, while Princess has not actually begun puberty, I am absolutely certain she is cycling with me. I came by this information very scientifically. Here is the process I used: (month one) "wow. Princess is sure having a sucky week. I have PMS." (month two) "Wow. Princess is sure having a sucky week. I have PMS." (month three) "Wow..." Well. You get the idea.
• I have never bought a full-priced licensed-character Halloween costume. It goes against my moral code. Every year the children get hand-made costumes that are stunning and stress me out for a month. Or I get them at the consignment shop. But as I looked at the Spider Man costumes, I began to rationalize (wellllll, I think she's my last baby. She'd use it every day. That mask looks hilarious. Next year she'll be a serious, professional kindergartner). Then I forked out the cash. Worth every penny. I am not kidding, just watching her put the mask on had me rolling on the floor. She wore it to pick the kids up at school, and they all actually jumped back and screamed.
• The Cuddle Bear will no longer answer to her given name. 
• The Cuddle Bear's goodnight song now goes: "Go to sleep, Spiderman, Go to sleeeeeeep, Spiderman.."
• Peanut is livid that she has been in school for two and a half weeks and still does not read as well as Buddy or Princess. She firmly believes this is due to something lacking in her teacher.

 Josh and I are completely stressed out, two words can turn into a full-blown fight in nothing flat, two of my children are completely whacked out, one is bitter, and one is a superhero who causes evil instead of fights it.

But the house is amazing. I never dreamed I'd own something like this. A little bright spot for me in America's recession. Our original rental has a great family in it, and our former house has a family chomping at the bit to move in. I barely even hoped we'd have both places filled by October, and here we are.

My cup overfloweth.

Found Objects

When you get down to the nitty-gritty packing up of a house you've been in for nine years, you can find some really interesting things.

Like this precious series of family portraits by Peanut at age two:

Or this precious note written by Princess:

What do you mean you can't read it? Sure, I'll help you out. It says:

To Mom Frum (Princess)
I hate you so you meen Mom
This is becaas you bing mean

I think it's especially endearing that she chose two different spellings of "mean." Just for me.

The Smells and Sounds of RAD on the Move

Tomorrow is Moving Day, and I am reasonably sure I will not last until the end of it. My father is coming Saturday with the explicit assignment of Stroking My Hair While I Cry.

The regression is so thick here you can smell it. Literally. Did you know RAD has an odor? I didn't, either, until a couple other RAD moms mentioned it here or there, and I realized, that pe.e-like smell that gets stronger on the bad days and doesn't go away even if I shower her? It's RAD.

Speaking of pe.e. All the progress from the last six months? It's gone. Gone. Just. Gone. I'm trying to handle it as matter-of-factly as possible, but, ARGH!!!

And, I'm not sure, because I didn't actually see her do it, but I'm pretty sure Princess poured her brain in a blender, whirred it around, put it in a storage container, and tucked it in the back of the freezer for another time because

It's gone. Gone. Just. Gone.

The manipulation. I had a very matter-of-fact conversation at the new house about bike riding, specifically about how children who don't use the toilet are usually kept very close to their mothers, so, while I do get her need to not use the toilet right now, there will be no bike-riding-down-the-road until said need has passed. The conversation was not well received. So, as soon as my visiting mother was in the room, guess what Princess asked with no outward indication of having heard previous conversation? Yep. Because, unfortunately, the Mommy has been guilty of not wanting to appear hard, controlling, callous, mean, and weird in front of other adults, and Princess picked up on that weakness looooooong before I did. And of course, keeping her close to me means I'm mean, stupid, ugly, and don't take care of her. According to Princess, anyway.

The rages. Oh, my aching muscles, the rages. I got a bite two weeks ago that is only now not visible. Peanut has a black eye with a good sized cut underneath. I have to repeat, "don't get triggered, don't get triggered," over and over in my head while saying out loud things like, "this is hard. I'm right here," and, "I'm really sorry, Honey, but you'll have to find a way to breathe/get comfortable/itch/pe.e without hitting/pinching/biting/kicking me."

I know she'll get it back, but I'm not truly convinced that knowledge is making this any easier or less heart-breaking. Right now all I can think of is how very, very much I'd like someone else to clean my new whirlpool tub for me so I can sink into it down to my eyes and not come out, ever. Or until the water's cold.

But I can't.

Because Princess is asking for the sixth time for the location of  the paint I told her I packed and moved to the new house. She's trying really hard to make a different answer come out of my mouth, and I don't think she's going to give up any time soon.

I Have No Fear of Drowning, it's the Breathing That's Taking All This Work

-Jars of Clay

We're buying a house today.

There's a hole in Princess's newish medication regime. It starts to wear off at about 1:30 and I can't give her the next one until 4:00, which allows an awful lot of time for Anxiety to rear her ugly head and tear up the house and her host's mother. Dr. D is only in the office Monday and Tuesday. I missed his call Tuesday.

Sunday was one of the worst in the recent past. Princess began raging at 2:00 and didn't stop until 7:00. I wasn't even able to give her the 4:00 dose, because, even if she had been willing to take it, there's no way I would have made it to the kitchen and back with everybody (and me) still safe. She's getting very hard to restrain. She's very strong, very sweaty, and very very anxious. I was hit (open and closed hand), kicked, bit once, and pinched repeatedly. Five days later my arms are still covered in bruises. My face was red and swollen. And for the entire five hours, she threatened to call the police to tell them I hurt her.

I mention these details, because when I e-mailed Dr. S in fear and desperation she said that either Dr. D needs to change her medication or she needs to be admitted.

Admitted?

And, she told me that it is imperative I tell Dr. D exactly what she does, because I tone down her rages when I tell people about them.

I do?

I must, because my husband is doing my doctor's refinancing. He happened to be meeting with her that evening, and the subject of possible inpatient surfaced. And they both said the same thing about be. They feel I downplay her behavior because I want to be seen as a good mom.

Which is true. But. It's not the whole truth.

The truth is fear. The only time I trusted someone with this information did not work out well. Our caseworker (and I am not defaming her: she was wonderful, and I understand this incident had more to do with someone above her) frequently told us she was "here to be a sounding board for venting." So, when Princess began screaming from the time she stepped off the bus until the time she got back on, from November to January, we asked for some help.

Wanna guess what kind of help we got?

We got an investigation. Not that it was called an investigation. Princess was required to see an outside therapist, and it was presented to me as "round-table discussion, to see if there's anything Dr. S has overlooked. Maybe she'll have some new ideas for you!" Right. The only "new idea" in her report was: "I cannot substantiate abuse in this family."

It delayed our adoption six months.

Additionally, I don't know anyone in real life who lives with this. I'm lucky enough to know a handful of people whose children were almost as challenging in other ways, and some parents of blended families, and to have a therapist for my children who has seen a lot of it. But no one who lives RAD and PTSD. Which means I hear a lot of this:

"Oh. Well. I'm just so surprised. She never acts that way when I'm with her."

And,

"It's just so strange she only does that at home. Why does she only do it at home?"

I test the waters with people, and when I hear one of those (which is almost always), I don't share everything. How can I? I don't feel safe.

This does NOT mean I do not have a supportive network of friends and family. Do not misunderstand. I think these people are EXTRA wonderful, in fact, because they don't understand. They quite likely do think I am legitimately insane, and they love me anyway. Some of you are reading. I love you. I am very very lucky.

So: a recap: I was basically physically abused by a seven-year-old Sunday.

And now she is on her fifth perfect day.

This is the part that completely stumps me. I understand the raging. I understand anxiety getting so overwhelming that it has to explode out of every pore. I understand having to take out all her anger and fear on me. I understand the move is overwhelming and likely laden with triggers from her pre-three life.

I don't understand how she can follow it up with five days with not one tantrum. With sharing feelings, feelings for pete's sake about the move. And with this:

She had an ice cream cone last night, and she likes to eat them outside. She was riding a bike while eating an ice cream cone, and Buddy mentioned she should be careful because her ice cream was probably going to fall off. She kept riding. It fell off. She made the sort of sounds a three-year-old would make upon losing an ice cream cone. And the fact that Buddy warned her? Well. Let's just say she does not like to be wrong. I thought, well, here we go. She came in and demanded more ice cream. I apologetically said no and empathized with her disappointment. She went into her demanding/why? pattern. I thought well, here we go.

She recovered.

I waited. I waited for the shoe to drop about something else. It didn't. I grabbed some Skittles, handed them to her, said, "good job handling that disappointment," and walked out.

The weekend's coming. She's never made it more than five days in a row. And the longer she goes, the rougher the rages. They are painful to anticipate.

Patinaed Dreams

I rarely remember dreams. I think it's because my brain is overactive and doesn't need any extra exercise. My brain is lean and muscle-tight. And exhausted. So it usually goes right to sleep like a good girl.

Last week I had a startling-clear, remember-every-detail, continue-to-bother-you-for-a-week, why-exactly-did-I-dream-in-copper-green-patina, WHAT-THE-HECK-DID-THAT-MEAN? kind of dream.

But, of course, I know what it means.

I was in the car with my dad; he was driving (my dad always drives in my dreams. What frightening things would Freud say about that?). We turned a corner onto a private road leading up to a house (do you see where this is going?). Only, the road was not even as wide as the car and held up on impossibly tall stilts over a bottomless black hole. Dad turned another corner, and the car tipped off the road. We went down. Down. Down.

And I leaned back in my seat and smiled and open-mouth smile of pure joy. I was so. Happy.

So, am I highly disturbed that I dreamed about being ecstatic that my life was ending? Yep. But not exactly surprised. Princess has been taking the move HARD. Well, that's not exactly accurate. Princess is not dealing with the move cognitively. She is dealing with the move by beating the sh*t out of me and her room and any belonging of someone else. She is dealing with the move by screaming that I don't take care of her because taking care of someone means you give them what they want and that she's going to call the police to tell them I'm hurting her and that I'm not treating her the way I want to be treated. For five hours at a stretch. She is dealing with the move by pulling a smack-down on any sibling who says or does something she doesn't like. Such as breathe too loud.

And then, after a week-plus straight, had a perfectly lucid day, complete with a perfectly lucid expression of her insides: "Mom? I'm happy and sad about moving. I'm sad because I'll miss S and L and I like this house, but I'm happy because I'll have my own room and I don't know what else, but after I get used to it I might even like the new house more."

What was THAT??? I would understand if she was always a "regular kid." I would understand if she was always a combative beast who hates my guts and everything holding them inside me. But I don't get how she can claw, bite, hit, pinch, kick, destroy, and spew hate for days on end, then WHAM!!! pull out the normal kid that in there somewhere under a pile of fallen boxes. What is it???

We'll own the house Friday. We'll move in next weekend. And then school will start. In the meantime, I'll just go ahead and fall down my crevice with a giant ridiculous smile on my face.

Please Stay Tuned

No. I have not died. I have not quit writing. I have not even run away.

I am packing. And dealing with a RADling dealing with me packing.

For a sneak peak into Moving With A RADlet, I refer you to Christine and her musical talent.