End of school year update

 My little boys are starting to grow up. In April, we had a "Come to Jesus" again with the school about Hamslice, where the teachers were frustrated with him again due to his lack of willingness to do any schoolwork. I was completely caught by surprise because *I* thought things were going well, using the adage "no news is good news."

I made a contract with Hamslice, where if he was able to do good work and not have any notes home from his teachers for the rest of the year, he could move his bedtime to 8pm from 7:30. If he didn't keep the contract terms, he owed me $100 payable in sticks @$.03 per stick. (That's over 3000 sticks, for the math challenged who are reading this)

And like a miracle, he fulfilled his contract. Furthermore, he decided that he liked the way he was treated by the teachers and administration when he actually tried a  little. It has been a turnaround that has lasted for 6 weeks now. I am so hopeful.

Meanwhile Little Ham has been making his way as a chorister, and is the creative department for the family. He just completed his King Tut costume for Living Museum day, and it was fabulous. Little Ham has been making huge strides integrating with the family. Yesterday, Hambone and I spent some time comparing this year to last year, and the growth has been really impressive. He is one of the family more often than he is trying to not be part of the family. We're at about 80/20 now, vs last year at 10/90.

The boys are also experimenting with driving go-carts and our golf cart. It's great vestibular stimulation and it provides a feeling of adulthood for the boys. They are so proud of their driving abilities, although Little Ham still corners a little fast in the golf cart, throwing himself out of the vehicle entirely. Hamslice is the self proclaimed expert of driving, and he is now a little critical of everyone's driving.

We also had the pleasure of nursing a baby bunny for a few days -- the boys saw a hawk drop the baby bunny out of its claws, so they took it home. The bunny was so young its eyes were not yet open. We fed it Kitten Milk Replacement and watched as its eyes opened and it became strong enough to hop. The boys liked learning that it takes three swallows for a bunny to drink one drop of milk, and they were sad but hopeful when it was time to say goodbye to it.

A Budding Rock Star

One of the very first things Little Ham told me about himself when he arrived here is this: "I am not going to college because I want to be a rock star when I am an adult."

And so I took that statement just as seriously as any parent would, primarily filing it away for later. But we've been watching Little Ham and have noticed that he knows how to (ahem) project his voice and really control tone.

Fast forward to January of this year, there was a poster for the Maryland State Boys Choir in the school lobby. I asked Little Ham if he wanted to participate, and received an emphatic "YES".

The audition was nerve wracking for him because he knows absolutely nothing about music, but they admired his lower voice (a full octave lower than the other kids, due to his.... ongoing vocal exercises at home...) and willingness to learn.

He had his first rehearsal on Saturday and said it was a "10 out of 10" positive experience. He even did his music theory homework yesterday without complaint.

He really does want to be a singer. It's amazing to watch. 

A Little Potty Humor

My little men have been having trouble lately with remembering to flush the toilet after using it. It's more than just a little annoyance because there are some toilets that only they use, and if neither flushes... well you get the picture.

In the spirit of creative problem solving, Hambone suggested that each boy make a sign to hang on the wall behind these kid toilets to remind them to flush.

The boys set to work immediately. Through the walls we heard Hamslice start mocking Little Ham about how he spelled "flush."

We walked in to find these two signs, one of them creatively spelled "Foosh" (where the Os became the eyes of the character in the drawing). That one was Little Ham's, and he hastily scrawled an "L" into Foosh to correct the spelling.

I then looked at Hamslice's spelling masterpiece, which simply said, "Flosh."

So. Many. Questions

Since Little Ham has started to uncoil, he has been asking the pressing questions that nobody has been there to answer so far in his life. And there are a lot of things he wants to know. Thousands of questions, ranging in magnitude from word definitions to "why does pee smell like popcorn" to "Why does Ellen DeGeneres dress like a man?"

We have deeply enjoyed watching him learn and piece together his world into a more meaningful structure than the incongruous, fractured world of a lonely child. He is able to piece a few things together now on his own and his fear is less because life is starting to make sense.

We're rooting for him, and have lots of answers for his many questions.

Hang in there Little Ham!

There Goes Santa Claus *snif*

I suspect this is the last year of believing in Santa for the boys. They were so excited at the beginning of the holiday season about Santa and being really good and all of that great Santa stuff, however it seems to be wearing off.

Probably some of it is my fault -- Little Ham put out a list for Santa of over $2000 worth of stuff, so "Santa" wrote back and said something along the lines of "I'll bring you joy but not all this crap."

And I see that Santa is real when the boys want something, but when "Santa can see you [doing that naughty thing]" then Santa doesn't exist.

The Elf on the Shelf is getting it square in the teeth. I heard the boys yesterday, discussing how they are pretty sure that Dad moves the Elf every morning before work. "It's either Dad or Mom moving it, for sure."

When people look at your 3 year olds and say, "They grow up so fast," I never really understood that because the little teeny kid phase seems to last forever when you're in it. Now that it's fading, it seems like it was only a heartbeat.

Where does it all go.

Turkey Trot - a story of success and other things.

Thanksgiving morning this year brought Mom to the kitchen and Dad (and the boys) plus Neighbor T to the Baltimore City Turkey Trot 5K run.

There was a great deal of complaining from all three guys, but they dutifully headed out so I could cook Thanksgiving dinner. The race went smoothly (ish) depending on which of our sons you ask, but none the worse for wear.

As my weary racers approached the car to go home, Hamslice tripped over a chunk of concrete and went careering into a ditch. A major cement burn to the face, a black eye and two black knees later, Hamslice arrived home, still sniffling and needing a lot of TLC.

In all of the excitement about Hamslice, nobody really paid attention to the race standings (really with our un-athletic family, who would?) but we should have.

Little Ham had the fastest time in the entire Male 9 and under category for the race. Amazing!! He ran his first 5K with a final time of 29:20

We sent a note to Little Ham's running coach to let her know. We are so proud of him. AND he is proud of himself, which is also really, really good.

A Roadside Chat

This week on Monday, Little Ham refused to get out of the car to go to school. Like... refused. We were in the drop-off zone and he wouldn't budge. It was a new one for me, so I dug deep for a way to handle it. I said this foolishness: "If you won't go to school, then there must be a big problem so we are going to sit here in the driveway and talk about your feelings all day 'till we get to the bottom of it."

And so we sat. We watched all the other parents drop off their kids and saw the buses zoom by until we were all alone. And we sat some more. 45 minutes ticked by.

Finally Little Ham started talking. And talking. and talking. He emptied his poor heart to me, and I felt for the first time that we were connecting as parent and child. He said he is feeling overwhelmed by the new school, and that he is worried every minute of the day that Hamslice is stealing his Pokemon cards, and  and and...

So we devised a plan where we would get him a safe for his room with a combination that only he knows. I also promised to talk to the school administration RIGHT AWAY to make sure they are helping him. We also talked about locks for bedroom doors and other things we can do to solve some of these problems.

That very day Hambone went and bought safes for both kids. I marched right into the school as well and relayed this most urgent request.

The immediate action made an impression on Little Ham. And now he talks to me about lots of other things instead of just asking for hugs and kisses all the time. We are ... connecting.

Normal people advice

Hamslice asked a few weeks ago to see his old therapist -- said he had a things he wanted to talk with her about, so yesterday was his appointment. At the end, the therapist had us both sit together and talk about how things are going in our family.

Hamslice had ideas that he wanted to spend more time with Mom and less with Little Ham, and maybe some time with Dad too.

The therapist then started asking me "what hobbies and activities do you do together with your children" and for the life of me I couldn't think of a thing. The session then turned a little judgy and uncomfortable for me. Hamslice had several ideas of things we could do together, and I was thrilled to hear his thoughts.

Of course the first thing I did was come home and yell at Hambone "Why don't we do anything with our kids!" and his response was "like what."  And of course that didn't help. It just meant that he wouldn't have been helpful in the session either.

I've been rolling this over and over in my head, and I think it's like last year when the school administration told me to "stop helicopter parenting" and I was so overjoyed that they felt that *I* was the problem (and not Hamslice). Maybe this little judgement session was a sign that our family is finally ready to start having hobbies and living like a normal group of people.

If you think about it, we have not been able to do *any* family activities as of yet due to the behavior issues we have had before us. Anywhere we went was met with fury and tantrums from one or both boys. And Hamslice's refusal to enjoy any activity prior to Little Ham's arrival, well that has been lifelong.

So, now, are we free to try things? Actual activities? fun?

Sounds too good to be true, but I'm game.

*not* an Olympian

This semester I have both kids enrolled in a program called "Kids with Goals," which provides fitness training and overall life lessons. They both LOVE the program, and I am thankful for the very capable gym teacher who brought this program to life.

At any rate, on Tuesdays they do exercise in the gym. On Thursdays, the students AND THEIR PARENTS run on the NCR trail near the school. We are required to run for 40 minutes, which I would like to point out is a pretty big stretch for ol' Mom.

Little Ham is probably the fastest 9 year old runner I have ever seen, so he goes off with the older kids and runs his heart out. Hamslice and I bring up the rear, because often Hamslice runs with one arm hanging limp, or with one of his feet turned completely sideways..."just because." 

I was doing my incredibly slow near-jog, when Hamslice looked at me with a completely serious face and said, "Mom, did you ever win the Olympics?"

"No, honey, I did not win any of the Olympics"

"But you were in them, right?"

I loved his precious serious face and serious questions. I am going to really miss this age when it's over.

Little Ham finds love

So Little Ham pulled me aside yesterday because he had something he really wanted to get off of his chest. He said, "There's this girl in class who I really like, and today she said she likes me too."

I smiled at being let into the inner circle.

He went on to say "It feels really weird."

It's a big step, Little Ham. Relax and go slow. Don't forget to breathe.

Moving through the hump.

Little Ham continues to struggle with the mind blowing concept that he is not leaving here. He is so ingrained in the routine of "6 months here, 6 months there, 6 months somewhere else" that he has packed his emotional bags two or three times in the last couple of weeks. He describes the feeling as being 'Way high up on the mountain where no one can reach me.' And from down here on the ground, it looks like he disappears into his head and there's nothing left behind for us. His eyes grow black and hollow. There is no meaningful conversation. Arms are crossed.

So, being the jackasses we are, we continue to talk to him while he's on the mountain. We ignore it entirely, and tell jokes to each other and sing songs and have a nice family right in front of him. This makes him storm off in a huff. 10 minutes later he returns, a little further down the mountain.

We go up and down the mountain about once a week, more so this week because he had a pretty bad head cold.  I am not sure if this will be better or worse after the adoption is finalized. This can't be fun for him.

In other news, Hamslice is back to his old tricks of making enemies of all the teachers at school. He is back to refusing to write ANYTHING AT ALL. He will give all answers orally, but if he is given a pencil and a blank piece of paper, well you can expect a tantrum but not any writing.

So we had our 23,645,230th parent teacher conference last week with the big support group that includes therapists and a note taker.

The school had put him on a behavior mod program without telling me, and I was pretty mad. The behavior mod had 6 aspects of behavior to achieve (which is too many) and they measured twice each day. If he passed all six aspects to their satisfaction, he would earn a reward. It had been running for 2 weeks, which means 20 evaluations. I asked how many of the evaluations he passed and they said ONE. So 19 times out of 20 he was told he was not good, and he had to see all that negativity written out in check boxes on a piece of paper.

They didn't like it when I said it that way. And I got them to admit that really all we need from Hamslice this year is for him to start writing, which would be a behavior mod program with only ONE check mark in it.

*Sigh*

Come on Hamslice.

Committment Issues, a la Little Ham

The adoption looms large in our household, and has bifurcated the family. Hamslice is ready to send Little Ham away, Hambone and I are "all in" and ready to sign the papers tomorrow if we could get them. Little Ham's response is a little different.

We had a good conversation about it yesterday right before bed. (We are able to have real conversations now without dissolving into screaming) He asked if he would be able to sleep in bed with Hambone and I after the adoption is final. I said, "no, probably not, but you don't have to worry about the adoption anymore, we have already decided we want you to stay."

He said, "Well what if I don't decide to stay."

I said, "You can say whatever you feel to the social worker and she will make a decision accordingly."

He said, "I wonder if she could show me some pictures of other families. I don't want to meet them and do Skype calls and all that, but I would like to see what my options are."

I said, "We could probably do that. BUT, if you get to look at other families, then we should probably look at some other kids, just to see what OUR options are."

Little Ham immediately closed the discussion, because he does NOT want us looking at other kids. He needs to have these really "on the line" discussions, and when he hears that we're open to his ideas, then he starts to hear how it sounds to say it out loud and he changes his mind. But I think talking through it is better than me closing down the discussion right away.

The social worker comes next Thursday. Stay tuned.

Hamslice Movie Creator

This past week, Hamslice and Little Ham were at Club Scientific. Hamslice did a creative camp, which I was pretty sure he'd hate, but it turns out he kind of liked it.

It was a stop-motion (used to be called claymation) class and he made this movie, which is pretty neat (as his Mother, I think it's Oscar worthy!) 

NOTE: There is a false ending where it says "I Hope You Enjoyed It." This runs for about a minute and then there's more.

Two steps forward...

We were successful in postponing the forensic interview -- Little Ham is not in the mood to talk to anyone besides "normal people" which means he blew off his interview with our social worker, refused to talk to his therapist, and so on. He seems to have decided he is cured all by himself.

Of course, he isn't.

We are beginning to spot mis-wired neural pathways from his troubled past such as:

• Trust -- he has no idea how this works
• How to disagree in a constructive way -- right now it devolves immediately to screaming
• How to be friends with family -- it's a constant struggle for power, as if that is all there is to being in a family.

 It will be a long time before he realizes that there's no "winning" at family, you just get to be together. The constant struggle for victory is very draining on the rest of us. Some of it is age -- we see this from Hamslice, however Little Ham has an extra dose of it.

I have learned though, that the key is "small doses of Mom." If I decide to spend a super fun all day interactive day with these boys, they resent it almost as soon as I begin. Their day is spent finding fault with everything I do, and blaming me for all things in the universe.

Days work better with Mom at the computer, checking in with the boys from time to time, and the boys do their thing. It's an adjustment, but I am also realizing it's the key to a little freedom for me as well. 

3 month check in Part 2

We have made a lot of progress since our last post.

Today, Little Ham got new glasses (the prescription he had from Colorado was WAAY out of wack). All of the reading avoidance and issues with him rubbing his eyes and having red eyes seems to be cleared up in one easy step.

We also had a therapy appointment, where the therapist said she sees clear attachment with Little Ham and our family, and she sees no signs of RAD anymore. While he is still traumatized, which will take a long time to heal, he definitely considers us his family and wants to be with us.

 We have also learned that the medication Little Ham came here with is not prescribed at a useful dose level, so we have the option of stopping medication if we choose to do so -- it isn't doing anything now, and we would have to really mega dose to have an effect. We have some thinking to do.

The tantrums and running away and door slamming and breaking stuff seems to have subsided for the time being. The therapist thinks this may have been is 'ultimate test' to see if he can make us get rid of him. Because we didn't crack, he is relaxing into the family. (maybe.)

Meanwhile Hamslice has learned so many social skills that he is actually surviving and (dare I say thriving?) at camp Puh'Tok and he wants to invite people for his birthday party. I am still breathless at the news.

The two boys have also become relentless Pokeman players, and they know all the cards and levels and attacks and... whatever else Pokeman do. It's really interesting to see them working together on the game.

3 month update - The Face of Fury

We have learned of new abuse in Little Ham's past, so now we are working with Gilpin County to make sure the documentation is all there. We have had calls with the sheriffs office and will talk with Little Ham's lawyer next week. This poor dude, what *hasn't* happened to him.

As far as the family goes, we have developed a kind of gallows humor that takes us through Little Ham's many tantrums. My suspicion is that he has been treated as "uncontrollable" and has managed to escalate his tantrums to whatever level is needed to get what he wants.

Sound familiar?

So he is not sure what to do with a family that does not respond to tantrums of any scale. Lately, he has gone to such lengths as 'running away' where he stands in the yard and waits for us to chase him. And we don't. So then it's this eerie scene where we are all sitting inside, and then this face appears in the window. The face of fury. And he bangs on the doors/windows to get us to chase him. Which we don't.

Eventually he comes in when the tantrum is over and sits next to us like nothing has happened. Except he is very sleepy. These tantrums exhaust him, so he generally takes a cat nap within a few minutes of calming down.

While the tantrum is happening, Hamslice, Hambone and I sit still and talk about our day, with only a few references to the fury happening in or outside the house. Basically we just wait until it's over and then we can go back to our day together. After bedtime though, sometimes Hambone and I do imitate the scenes a little, because it is hilarious and we need to blow off steam.

The tantrums are beginning to subside, due to lack of effectiveness. On the flip side, when Little Ham does something well, he gets good rewards. He is realizing that one way of behaving works much better than the others. But I think he is also really attached to the tantrums, and needs them every so often.

So we aren't sure this will ever really end, but we are enjoying the times in between.

Flipping the switch

This weekend, Little Ham flipped the switch and started calling us "Mom and Dad". Or... if he wants candy, "Mommy and Daddy".

2 months to the day since his arrival.

Attitude in the Classroom, anyone?

Hamslice's last day of school is today, and while he is regarded as one of the smartest kids in the class, his current report card shows Ds and Fs.

Why is that, you ask?

Darling Hamslice has decided to take charge of his own education, which means he's learning all the concepts quickly. However, during test taking, he gets a bit of an attitude. His thinking is this, "If I have demonstrated that I understand the concepts on page one of the test, I should not have to keep repeating myself on the other pages."

Therefore, he TEARS OUT the pages that he feels are repetitive and throws them in the trash. So while his peers turn in a 7 page test, he turns in only 3 pages. Of course, all 3 pages demonstrate a different skill, and all skills are represented, yet he fails the test.

It's really hard to be mad at him about this, because it feels like genius to me. Of COURSE you wouldn't waste your time repeating yourself. I get it hon. If I had it to do over again I'd be right there with you.

2 months and all is well

Tomorrow marks our 2 month anniversary of being a foursome. We have definitely had our ups and downs, but are figuring out some of the causes of behaviors. For Little Ham, the issue is that he has shame about his many family losses, choosing to blame himself for all of it. He talks about being a bad baby, and being a bad kid often when he is really upset. This means any discipline that we impose reinforces his 'bad kid' idea, and makes things way more intense.

We've found that if we warn that 'a consequence' will happen if a behavior continues, the behavior stops immediately. His goal is to be not only a good kid, but a 'perfect kid'. This in and of itself may cause problems along the way, but at least we know what he wants more than anything else. If we show the good kid path, he is likely to follow.

Hang in there Little Ham, we're catching on...

And the Truth Comes Out... A memoir from Hamslice

Today Hamslice and I had the newly-rare experience of riding together in the car... just the two of us. And since we have been busy with Little Ham, I wanted to check in, so I asked Hamslice if he noticed anything different about me and Hambone now that we're not all up in his grill all the time.


He said, "I noticed you're a lot nicer now that I'm not spending 100% of my time trying to get revenge on you." And I busted out laughing. It was a huge belly laugh of acknowledgement and relief.

Earlier conversation had included a litany of things Hamslice dislikes about Little Ham, but after this revelation, we both agreed that we have a lot to be thankful about. Little Ham nudged our family dynamic in this very positive new direction and it has improved parental relations quite a bit with Hamslice.

Hamslice then detailed his revenge plotting, his timing and schemes against me all these years. "I know just how to push your buttons, Mom," he said.

Ahh Hamslice.