‘You never do anything around here but clean’ was shouted at me last night when I declined to cover the guinea pig cage at bedtime.

‘Come to mama’ with a shake and shimmy when I asked if I could have a hug and a kiss on my way out the door.

‘I’m just enjoying being a kid’ when explaining to my co-workers why she would not be staying at the office and working with me all day during her winter break.

P brought Blitzen a tiny little tea set that she thought might be a fun addition to the fairy land sitting on our living room window sill.  Now Blitzen, master of all social graces, can be really suspicious of gifts.  She usually thinks, upon recieving them, that they are wrong or crappy in some way and eyes them warily until you explain how marvelous they are.  The events as they played out this morning, as told to me by Andrew (you never blog anymore, sweetpea, so I’m stealing your material!).

So P gives Blitzen the tiny tea set.  Blitzen asks, oh so politely I am sure, what is this?  P explains it is a little tiny tea set.  Who is it for?  Blitzen inquires (demands).  It is for someone small.  Me? Blitzen asks.  No, someone smaller, is the reply.  A baby? Blitzen asks.  No, someone really tiny, that flies.

Apparently Blitzen’s eyes lit up, she got very excited and said with great joy, IT’S FOR AN EAGLE?!?

Ummmmm — ok.

The bird of prey tea party was just getting underway when I left for work!

Blitzen has trouble speaking respectfully when she is sad, angry or frustrated.  She will often lose her temper, start yelling or name calling.  There are two levels to this – 1) extreme emotion that she cannot process and it all just comes flying out  2) it is clear that she just doesn’t always understand how people can interact without injecting conflict.  And I honestly believe, that sometimes when she is raising her voice to me and Andrew, she doesn’t hear it, doesn’t understand that this is NOT how people behave at the dinner table when you run out of parmesan cheese and she is always so surprised when we call her on it.

We’ve definitely been following a ‘one step at a time’ model as we work through some Blitzen’s more challenging behaviors, focusing on the most urgent issues first.  But now that her aggression is a little more under control, we’ve been focusing on speaking respectfully to other people even when she is upset.  And so she has adopted the rewind.

For example, we will be walking down the street and she will rudely demand that I get out of her way.  I will look at her with love and kindness but also the expression on my face that says ‘I know I did not hear you say that, try again’.  And she will make a funny brrrr-weeep noise, shake and shimmy her whole body and then say sweetly, ‘Carrie, could you move, please?’

It is really funny and she has started to do it even without the look.  She is catching herself and rewinding to use friendlier, kinder words.  It is amazing to see how many strategies that Blitzen has been developing to manage and modify her own behavior.

In the past, Dancer has spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to maintain the peace, working to keep Blitzen from melting down, letting Blitzen be the best at everything, picking up after her, etc, etc.  This is a really stressful thing to watch and I am certain, if you happen to be 11 year old Dancer, it is an extraordinarily difficult way to live.

But last night, something kind of miraculous happened.  Dancer went into Blitzen’s closet and chose 3 things to do – 1) a beading / make your necklace activity 2) a kaleidoscope kit that Blitzen received as a gift but has shown zero interest in putting together and 3) some scrapbooking stuff.  The girls negotiated and came to an agreement, first they would work on the crafts and then they would play what Blitzen wanted to play — dolls.  I am sure some of you are like – so what, that is what kids do.  Well, not my kid.  Not only did she allow Dancer to direct the play without stomping off and pouting, her frustration level stayed fairly low when Dancer had to take the lead on kaleidoscope construction.  And here is the thing that thrilled me, Dancer DIRECTED the play instead of trying to do the job of Andrew and me.  Instead of parenting and constantly ATTEMPTING to comfort her little sister, she played and had fun.  As an added bonus, they did most of these activities together but without Andrew and I joining in / moderating the play.

And then it was time for goodbye.  Guess what?  Everyone just hugged and said goodbye, see you later.  No tears, no threats, no drama.  YAY!

At dinner, we had a lot of things to discuss.  What is happening at school and an incident with the babysitter that afternoon.  Blitzen doesn’t really like to dive deeply into her feelings and behaviors and will do just about anything to avoid it.  But when we have these conversations at dinner, she just tries to change the subject.  Last night, the conversation went a little bit like this:

Andrew  — How was school today?  I haven’t looked at your point sheet yet.  (School employs a point system and Blitzen loves to get all 72 points – sometimes she does but this week, not so much).

Blitzen — Not good.  I got a 60.

Carrie — I saw your sheet and noticed that you left class again.  That has been happening a lot.  What’s going on?

Blitzen — The kids, you know, the boys, they just be getting on my nerves and my teacher.  But wait, wait, can I ask you something?

Carrie — Yes, you can but this conversation about school isn’t finished.

Blitzen — I know but it is about guppies.

Andrew — We can talk about guppies for a minute but we’re coming back to what happened at school today.

Blitzen – The guppy in my science class is pregnant.  And when her babies are born, she won’t know they are her babies and she will try to eat them.  We saw it on a video.

Carrie — Wow.  Are you going to separate the baby guppies from their mom?

Blitzen — Yes, you know what you have to do? You have to put the babies in another tank.

Andrew — Are you ready to talk about what happened at school now?

Blitzen – No, no, wait, I just gotta tell you something.  One time, at my other foster house, I had 100 guppies and the mom guppy tried to eat all the babies and the baby guppies were really mad at the mom so I had to separate them.  The baby guppies had to live in other tanks – I had like 100 tanks too.

Carrie — That is a lot of tanks.  Now let’s talk about why you ran out of class today.

And on from there.

Now I am willing to wager a significant amount of money that Blitzen never had guppies before.  But mostly I think it is fascinating how, even when she is avoiding talking about difficult things, she ends up revealing so much.  What an interesting tale – you separated the baby guppies from the mom guppy because the babies were mad and they all ended up in separate tanks.  Hmmmm, this story sounds very familiar and it has nothing to do with guppies.

Carrie — You seem kind of crabby or frustrated, do you want me to stay in here and pat your back?

Blitzen — Why won’t you turn on the light?  I want to sleep with the light on.

Carrie — The nightlight is on and your closet light.  Why do you want the light on, are you feeling scared or nervous?

Blitzen — You just don’t want me to have the light on.

Carrie — I think, and this is just my opinion, that it is harder for you to relax and calm down and fall asleep when the big light is on.

Blitzen — Well, I don’t care for your opinion.

Carrie — Ok, that is a valid feeling.  Do you want me to stay or not?

Blitzen — Since you don’t even sleep with me anymore, why would you stay now?

Carrie — Honey, I’ve never slept in here with you.

Blitzen — Yes, you have and with the light on.

Carrie — I really don’t remember doing this, Blitzen.  I stay with you until you fall and asleep and then I go to my own bed.

Blitzen — You have, don’t tell me you didn’t.  I saw the picture, Andrew showed me.  Why are you always lying on me?

Carrie — Oh my gosh, I know what you are talking about.  The second night you lived here, it was so late and I was trying to get you to fall asleep and I fell asleep.  Is that what you mean?

Blitzen — Yes, you never sleep with me anymore.

Note to self and to spouse — do not show child photos any more unless you plan to act exactly as you did in the photo FOREVER!!!

Andrew and I had a beloved pet, a beagle named Stan, for 16 years.  His pictures are all over the house, we still reminisce about him.  And even though he died a few years ago, we still miss him.  Blitzen picked up on this right away and claims to have had 10 dogs (keep in mind that she is 9 and we live in NYC, not on a farm) and they all died and she misses them all.  Sometimes they were yorkies, sometimes not.  We do wonder if there was a dog somewhere along the line because occassionally she’ll talk about puppy wee-wee pads and the like — facts and details that make the existence of a dog seem probable.  But, of course, she has no idea what any of these pooches were named.

As we push Blitzen to express herself more fully and really experience some of her more difficult feelings and emotions, we’ve gently been trying to poke, just a little bit, at some of those ‘remember when’ moments especially when something about the currrent environment is bothering her.  We recently purchased some overpriced, hand bottled, made with cane syrup and all natural dye, soda. It is still terrible for you but hey, it was probably made by some hipsters in their garage or something, so how bad could it be.  But I digress.  It comes in a big glass bottle.  Upon seeing this concoction in the fridge, Blitzen said to me, with indignation, “why do you have beer in here?!?”.  Now this is not the first time that I have heard her speak about ‘beer’ which is actually what she calls all alcohol.  And it is quite clear that she does not like the idea that we would consume it.  Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.  But for the first time I was brave enough to try to really engage her about this.

Carrie  – That is soda, B, but would it bother you if I drank beer?

Blitzen – Yes, you shouldn’t drink it.

Carrie – Why not?

Blitzen – One time, my mommy drank beer and it went down the wrong pipe and she got really sick.

Carrie – Really, what happened?

Blitzen – Can we listen to Beyonce?

Ok, I can take a hint.  The conversation ended there.  But this is a perfect example of what I mean about the squiggley memory.  Is this what happened?  I so doubt it.  Is this what someone told her happened? Could be.  Or is it her interpretation of a very hazy memory?  Most likely.  But something happened and probably more than once because the reaction has been strong and repeated.  In fact, she brought it up again, with Andrew the next day.  Not a clear memory or coherent conversation, just a short rant about how we shouldn’t drink beer.

It is hard to know what to do, in these moments, aside from just listen.   And encourage her to remember and talk about it openly.  And hope that no matter what happens, we can continue to be part of Blitzen’s life, adding to the ‘remember when’ moments.

That is right – a full sentence, respectfully delivered, correct grammar!  Oh the joys of the little things.

Blitzen was very excited about this playdate.  During our walk to ice skating lessons that morning, we had a long discussion about what games to play when we had finished making the Valentines.  I suggested one of our board games but Blitzen wanted use her imagination and play out an elaborate domestic scenario with her dolls.  I told her that we would need to see what Natasha wanted to play.  Not everyone likes to play dolls for hours.  I should have known that Natasha would be a real trooper – she has a great imagination too – and was content with her first imaginary assignment. She got to play the rivoting roll of the ”lady that owns the building where I (Blitzen) work”.  Luckily, we quickly mixed it up and moved on to playing ‘take the babies to the doctor’s office’ where N’s portrayal of a sympathetic nurse was really Oscar worthy.

But back to the Valentines.  It was very important to Blitzen that Andrew was out of the house so that we could make him a Valentine’s card.  We made lots of cards and then Blitzen made flower bouquets from tissue paper and we put them in a gift bag for Andrew as a surprise.  Of course, the moment he arrived home, she announced on her mini-microphone that there was a surprise by his bed.  Inside the bag – a Valentine’s day card, a flower bouquet, and coupons for free hugs.  We spent the evening last night standing in a circle, handing one another coupons and redeeming hugs like crazy.  It was a fun way to celebrate a completely bogus holiday 2 days early!