Good times

This is Jude's first day of handwriting

This was this week.

Owen's early handwriting

Owen's handwriting last week.

We battled with attentiveness all morning in school. The boys lost their trip to a play land, as consequence. Oddly, they resorted to these blocks, and played, by THEMSELVES, for almost THREE hours, with almost no dissension in the ranks? Go figure.

Jude saw a picture of a friend's FB page, of her son's hairdo for Crazy Hair Day. I thought he was going to have an aneurysm, he was so agitated. He WANTED that hairdo with all his being. Below is my best effort. Not quite up to par with the original, but he was happy. :)

And we lost a tooth! I mentioned some time ago that both his incisors were loose, but he wasn't sweating it, until Owen lost his first tooth, last week. That upped the ante, and he has been rigorously wiggling it ever since. Today, he let Owen push on it, and BAM! It was hanging by a thread, and he pulled it out. I'll let you know how the Tooth Fairy thing turns out.

Jude made an original card....he spelled "dad" all by himself!

Shaking things up a little, with the whiteboard....

An original piece of art. After drawing this, Jude stepped back and looked at it, and said, "I got a big family!" :) I can not explain why the pics of the dogs have disembodied eyes....

This is the youngest "Moba-lee".... Sporting Batman attire. :) 

Just call him Tex.

Play-doh penguin

Play-doh lion 

And now, the boys' passion....Halloween! they have been working with Jim in the evening, putting up Halloween directions. Here they are building the frame for a werewolf.

And this is the finished werewolf, hiding in the bushes. It totally creeps me out, but the boys LOVE it.

The spider web across our front porch.....

Other funnies- Jim was telling me that there was a chance of snow tomorrow. Jude exclaimed, "snow!?!?" And Jim said, "it might." Jude replied, " if no snow, you pay me money." So His English comprehension is such that he can confidently place a bet. :)

Lost and found

 We lost our way a little, last week. We had been slowing getting sucked into a battle of wills, for the last little bit, with me slowly losing my perspective. But last week my control-freak self ran head- long into Jude's control-freak self, and the result wasn't pretty.

Thankfully, I had a friend with a willing ear to talk to, so I could hear how crazy I sounded. And I broke out the tattered coy of The Connected Child that had been dormant on the book shelf.

It's better now. We are exploring some options.

And I think these pictures show it. 

Our fierce competitor. We played hooky on Tuesday, because He and I needed to step off of the hamster wheel we were on.

Focus.

Look how little he looks out there.

I couldn't show him how to bowl, obviously. Just explain the rules, and then he had to figure out what worked for him.

Look at that ball. Not bad, eh?

Sorry, this is out of focus, but I included it so you could see how excited he gets at all sporting endeavors.

Again with the excitement.

We tried to fly kites today, as the wind had picked up a bit.

And just like that, I was found. Prayers were answered.

Progress, maybe?

We had our second post-placement visit with our social worker last week. In an effort to keep it real, I thought I'd make sure see saw us how we really are. Jude hadn't eaten anything but pistachios all day, so was starving and ate lunch through most of the visit; the house was adrift in dog hair, as Abby suddenly decided to blow her coat this week; and I hadn't had a shower in two days. Who's got time?!  But our social worker took it all in stride, it seems.
I actually like these visits with our social worker. She asks questions whose purpose is to gage how things are going, and they inevitably make me evaluate criteria I hadn't really been thinking about.  Case in point: Jude is a friendly, gregarious guy, whose never met a stranger, as long no one is rudely gaping at his legs. Then he ignores them. But once they get over it, and look at HIM, he immediately glosses over the awkwardness and is more than willing to make friends. That being said, Jude is also a pretty cool customer. He plays the odds and he's a charmer. When he's angry, up to this point, he just turns his nose up and says, "hunh!" in this snotty way. But no explosions, no tantrums, no tears. He has cried a few times, since we met him: the first night we got him, the third night we had him, when Owen and I left Jim and Jude in China, and the first night I went back to work. He keeps the deep stuff to himself. So, our social worker pointed out that she thinks the next big milestone, the place we should hope we get to, will be Jude losing his cool. Read pitch-a-fit, cry-like-a-baby, or any other expression you care to think of to describe a loss of control. I think it's fair to say that I am afraid of that moment. It will obviously be an important momentum, from a bonding perspective, and the potential to screw it up is huge.
Along the vein of change, I am sometimes called "Mommy" now.....not sure where that came from, but I prefer it to Maw. :) 

And lastly, I had to ask myself if I was living in an alternate universe today. I was sweeping the back stoop, and Owen asked, "Mom, can I clean the toilets?"  ???????????!!!!!!! Have no idea what field that thought came flying out of! Well, sure, I said, to which Jude piped up and said, "Me, too!" If this was an hallucination, don't wake me up.