"Visits Are Changing Again"

Of course they are.

I talked to Gloria earlier and she informed me of the new plan... which will probably change again next week anyway.  Leonard and Penny's parents had to change visits a few weeks ago from Friday mornings to Tuesday afternoons.  We didn't object, as the transportation is no longer up to us.  As long as the visits do not create a problem with their meals and/or naps at daycare, it doesn't matter to us when they occur.

The new change is going to have two separate visit days, one for mom and one for dad.  Upside is that this will cut down on the amount of crap they are fed in a two hour span.  Downside is that they will have more disruption to what had been a pretty steady schedule for the last several months.  Due to the plague that struck our house last weekend, visits were cancelled for Friday of that week.  The ensuing make up time screwed up the kids' sense of stability and it really showed in Penny over the last several days.  It all culminated Sunday afternoon in a meltdown over not listening to directions and not apologizing to her brother, after he requested that she apologize for hurting him.  She held it together pretty well, as far as crumbling four year olds go, but it still happened.... ending over five weeks of calmness and lack of meltdowns.  

In addition to regular visits, they are all going to start "family therapy".  We can only assume that this will actually be "parenting skills therapy".  I'm not trying to judge anyone for how they parent, but these two do not parent.  Their idea of a visit, after not having their kids for almost six months, is to load them full of as much food as possible in an hour... each one trying to ruin the other's plan for spending time with the kids.  Leonard is generally the one who suffers from this, as he used to spend Friday afternoons sick (and occasionally throwing up) from all of the food.  The play therapist will be spending every other visit with the kids and their parents.  She's been fairly useless to this point, so I can't say that I expect a lot more out of it.  She believes that she helps the kids "process" things.  We believe that Penny likes to play with her because Penny has never met someone that she didn't like and Leonard is terrified of her.  Maybe not terrified, but he doesn't like her much.  His normal reaction to her is to cry and say he doesn't want to go with her.  The next several weeks should be awesome... and by awesome, I obviously mean the exact opposite.


Side note to my conversation with Gloria:

Her:  It's been confirmed that mom is pregnant

Me:  Really?

Her:  Yeah.  DCF called me.

Me:  Yeah.  I'll bet they did.

Her:  So that'll be fun.