1/2 laps

Aaron swam all the way across the pool by himself today!  His form was horrible and it took him 5 minutes, but he kept at it and I couldn’t be prouder.

 

Sometimes the pain bubbles up.

I’m growing to appreciate Aaron and Allie’s counselor.  She’s a bit too analytical in my opinion.  For example, she theorized Aaron likes to put his parents on speaker phone because he’s afraid to ‘be’ in a place alone with them, i.e. the phone conversation.  Really, he just likes to press buttons.

But on other areas, she’s spot on, and the kids enjoy their time with her.  I also like that her approach is not focused on helping them, but helping Husband and me help them.  When you’re dealing with little ones like this, that makes so much more sense than individual counseling.

We’ve focused most of our sessions on Aaron and his feelings/communicating, but I think we’ll need to spend some more time with Allie.  There has got to be more emotion in her than she lets out, and, I believe, more resentment towards Husband and I than her smile lets on.  She loyally idolizes her parents.  She also burst into tears a few days ago when Junior told her she lived here.  Even after 5 months, it still pains her intensely at times.

We’ll keep building this relationship as we prepare for the impending biggest pain of their lives.

Our car broke down in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere. And that’s all I’m going to say because I don’t want to think about it anymore.

Nothing like your car catching on fire to ruin a vacation.

But we muddled through, and really, looking back, everyone in the family, kids included, made great choices even under stress, and we handled the crisis as best we could have.  And although 3 of our 6 vacation days were spent dealing with stupid car issues, the other 3 were much fun!

And I think we managed to avoid sounding too incompetent to the kids’ parents and to the caseworker.  Even though the car problem we encountered was pretty random and not something that results from, say, avoiding repairs or whatnot, it still makes me feel stupid to have had it happen.

The extended family we visited was so wonderful and especially welcoming to Aaron and Allie.  The night before we had to leave, Aaron was seriously trying to talk our host into letting him live at her house.  And on the road home, he told me it was a sad car ride because we were leaving them.  But once we got back to our house, he told me he was glad he came back.  What a sweetheart.  His emotions are so real and honest, no manipulation involved at all.

So, we are home.  We did get a new ride – we had to buy it while there, but we like it, it fits us all, and it should suit us for a while.

Back to the regularly scheduled daily whirlwind.