That's the current question that we discuss in our free time.
As I mentioned a few posts ago, The Wife and I are planning on packing up and moving in about two years. We're going to take the opportunity to move to Idaho, getting us closer to Seattle (which was our original goal), but still in the general area of the Pacific Northwest. Recently, we have also been watching a lot of HGTV. Everyone is buying new houses and renovating their current houses and it's all just so exciting!!! We have no idea what we want to do when we move though. We plan on renting a house or apartment and living on an extreme budget, while we save for whatever the plan becomes. There are upsides and downsides to both options, building and renovating.
Building Our Own
Upsides - It can be whatever we want it to be
It can be wherever we want it to be (or at least wherever we can find a lot to build on)
Downsides - It's expensive
We wouldn't be able to move into it until it's done (obviously)
Buying and Renovating
Upsides - We can watch the transformation take place
It can still be basically whatever we want, but the shell is there already
We can live in it and renovate a little at a time
Might be a little cheaper than building from the ground up
Downsides - It's still expensive
We could potentially be living in a giant mess for a while
We can only do so much with what already exists in the house
It's a good thing we have a couple of years before we even have to start saving for this venture. I already know that we will change our mind at least twenty times between now and then... but at least we have HGTV to guide us on our way.
15.1.13
"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.
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.
14.1.13
Serenity Now
Oscar was a hard baby. He was not fun. There's no way around it.
He would wake up in the morning and cry.
He would lay on the floor and SCREAM.
He would take a break from eating to SCREAM.
He would SCREAM when you change his diaper.
He would SCREAM when you took his clothes off.
He would SCREAM when you put his clothes on.
He would sit in his swing and SCREAM.
He would wake up in the night and SCREAM.
We were on the verge of having his placement disrupted a few times. The stress of having a baby that just cried at us constantly was not enjoyable in the least. When he started spending a lot of time at his grandparents' house, that made things easier. We stuck it out because we were only dealing with his volume and intensity three or four nights a week. Between having Leonard and Penny, who obviously need to be fed, bathed, etc and preparing for a new baby in the coming months, the stress of Oscar was overbearing. We almost had him removed the week of Christmas, after court, because it was determined that nothing would be done until February. We had a change of heart, since he wasn't around a ton, and decided to stick it out until at least February when the next court date would determine more of his fate. The morning of the day that we got the call that he would be moving to his grandparents' house, we had decided that we would see his placement through and just deal with the screaming for a few months... hoping that he would be a happier baby in a few weeks or months. I would say that we were sad to see him go for about five minutes... then we realized how quiet it was in the house without him and all was well.
When he left, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from our shoulders. Evenings are calm and there are no screams or sounds of crying coming from anywhere in our house.
He would wake up in the morning and cry.
He would lay on the floor and SCREAM.
He would take a break from eating to SCREAM.
He would SCREAM when you change his diaper.
He would SCREAM when you took his clothes off.
He would SCREAM when you put his clothes on.
He would sit in his swing and SCREAM.
He would wake up in the night and SCREAM.
We were on the verge of having his placement disrupted a few times. The stress of having a baby that just cried at us constantly was not enjoyable in the least. When he started spending a lot of time at his grandparents' house, that made things easier. We stuck it out because we were only dealing with his volume and intensity three or four nights a week. Between having Leonard and Penny, who obviously need to be fed, bathed, etc and preparing for a new baby in the coming months, the stress of Oscar was overbearing. We almost had him removed the week of Christmas, after court, because it was determined that nothing would be done until February. We had a change of heart, since he wasn't around a ton, and decided to stick it out until at least February when the next court date would determine more of his fate. The morning of the day that we got the call that he would be moving to his grandparents' house, we had decided that we would see his placement through and just deal with the screaming for a few months... hoping that he would be a happier baby in a few weeks or months. I would say that we were sad to see him go for about five minutes... then we realized how quiet it was in the house without him and all was well.
When he left, it was as if a giant weight had been lifted from our shoulders. Evenings are calm and there are no screams or sounds of crying coming from anywhere in our house.
10.1.13
Gone
Oscar is gone. After a much longer evening with him than we had anticipated, he took his things and left. His grandparents were supposed to be here at 6pm to get him. At 5:30pm, I got a text saying it was going to be 6:30pm before they got here because they were out buying things for Oscar. At 6:30pm, I got a text saying that they'd be here at 7:30pm, because they lost track of time. So... yeah... they somehow didn't notice that an entire hour went by when they were so excited to come get him. But whatever... he's gone now and we have seen our first placement from beginning to end.
When I got the text pushing the time back to 7:30pm, I fed him and put him to bed. We don't know what time they put the kids to bed at their house, but here it's 6:30pm or so. We waited by the front door for a while with all of his things, as you can see in the picture. He definitely looked super confused by his grandparents showing up at this house, but he gave them big smiles. I helped carry his things out to the car, gave him a last hug and said goodbye.
9.1.13
Wishy Washy
A couple of weeks ago, The Wife and I were discussing what we would do when our lease is up at the end of September 2014. The following scenarios were determined to be brilliant ideas (in the span of about 24 hours):
1. Move to a smaller house/apartment and save for our eventual move to Seattle in a few years (where we'd both like to end up)
2. Move to Costa Rica (we'd have to learn Spanish and they have a lot of laws/rules that you have to follow if you aren't from there)
3. Move to Seattle immediately upon the end of our lease (having no jobs and no money saved... good plan)
4. Maybe Costa Rica could work
5. Move to Kentucky (The Wife's company has an office there)
6. Maybe we should just stay here for now and decide later, but not stay as long as #1 would mean
7. Move to Idaho or Washington (The Wife's company has an office that she could work out of and we'd be that much closer to Seattle for weekend trips or whatever)
The moral of the story is that we change our minds a lot. The main idea is that we want to raise our child(ren) in a different part of the country than we live in now. We have a plan in place and are super excited for that lease to run out. Until then, we'll have plenty of time to save and prepare for our eventual move... to somewhere.
1. Move to a smaller house/apartment and save for our eventual move to Seattle in a few years (where we'd both like to end up)
2. Move to Costa Rica (we'd have to learn Spanish and they have a lot of laws/rules that you have to follow if you aren't from there)
3. Move to Seattle immediately upon the end of our lease (having no jobs and no money saved... good plan)
4. Maybe Costa Rica could work
5. Move to Kentucky (The Wife's company has an office there)
6. Maybe we should just stay here for now and decide later, but not stay as long as #1 would mean
7. Move to Idaho or Washington (The Wife's company has an office that she could work out of and we'd be that much closer to Seattle for weekend trips or whatever)
The moral of the story is that we change our minds a lot. The main idea is that we want to raise our child(ren) in a different part of the country than we live in now. We have a plan in place and are super excited for that lease to run out. Until then, we'll have plenty of time to save and prepare for our eventual move... to somewhere.
Monthly Meeting #5
Our monthly meeting with the agency workers was last night. Gloria and Lisa were there... Elaine was nowhere to be found... obviously. Essentially, not a whole lot has changed with the case for Leonard and Penny. The next court date is the first week of February, so maybe we'll know something then. Gloria informed us today that the case plans have been scheduled for the week after next for each of the parents, but we aren't entirely sure what that means for the kids or for us. Our best guess is that it means they will be informed of their case plans, disagree with what they're told, argue the points and set the whole case back about three months. That seems to be the trend so far at least. Things are basically at a standstill for now, but our monthly meetings at least allow us for a little bit of time to trade stories about what we think is going on. We get to inform Lisa of the ridiculous requests that the parents make that Gloria relays to us during the month between meetings and I think she finds it quite entertaining. I don't really remember anything else that we talked about right now, but there could very well be a part two to this post later.
98%
Leonard is basically potty trained. There are still occasional accidents, but other
than a diaper at night, it’s a go. He is
a LONG way from being trusted to not pee all over himself and the bed for 10-12
hours a night. Once the daycare moved
him from the two year old room to the three year old preschool room, things
took quite a turn for the better. He isn’t
getting babied in that room and is just another kid in the fray. There’s no special treatment like he was
getting in the younger room. In addition
to the older kids being a good influence, having him clean his own underwear
when he gets home every day probably didn’t hurt the effort. It’s just a great relief to not have to
change a diaper or even really buy diapers anymore… we can buy a small package
and it last for over two weeks.
Accidents happen and we’ll deal with them as they come, but overall…
this was a very quick success.
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