When I checked my blog email this morning, I had 34 emails! I was all excited that so many people had commented until I realized 32 were spam emails. Way to put a damper on my excitement, spam people.

Snowbaby is starting to talk more and more lately. She had tubes put in her ears a month or two ago and it has helped a lot. Not to mention she is around me all day long. Which is nice, because damn if I don’t love that baby, but it is also slightly annoying. I try to work during the day with this baby attached to my leg.

Her other favorite past time is to spin my desk chair around. I’ll be sitting typing and she’ll come up from behind me and spin me around. She’s rather clumsy, so she usually knocks herself on her butt.

I should be happy though, because she is not doing that right now. Instead, she is shaking her sippy cup so that juice comes out. She is pouring it on my bookcase and then splashing her hands in it. Hey, at least it is not the toilet, where she kept trying to play yesterday. What is it with these kids and the toilet??

Snowbaby likes to have people play “This piggie went to market..” on her toes. If nobody will do it to her, she’ll do it to herself. Her favorite part is the “WeeWeeWee” part. She randomly comes up to me during the day and says, “Wee Wee Wee” while tickling me.

She likes to be pretend-thrown back and forth to people. We count, “One..Two..” and then she says, “Three.” As soon as she lands in their arms, she will say, “Mama..Three” and come back to me. She would do this all day.

Snowbaby tends to repeat phrases over and over. For instance, she says, “Iunt (I want) bread.” She says this about 900 times a day. 900. I unt bread. I unt bread. I unt bread. She will have just finished a piece of bread and she’ll start saying I unt bread again. I mean she will be standing there, with a half chewed up chunk of bread in her mouth and she’ll start in, “I unt bread. I unt bread. I unt bread.” One time her speech therapist told her that too much carbs were going to give her a fat butt. Snowbaby got quite offended. She said “GO WAY” to the speech therapist, shook her finger at her and then went and stood in the corner. The speech therapist laughed her own butt off. 

She likes to try to scare people by saying “Rarrrr!” She puts her hands up in this dinosaur looking pose and says, “Rarrrr!” We usually play along and hide from her. Except on the 453rd time she does it. Then we get a little tired. She likes to scare people and then tell me about it. “Rarrrrr!” she will scream at my dad. Then she will turn to me and say, “Mama. PawPaw Rarrrr!!”

She’s quite the drama queen. My dad and I have a deal where he comes over a few times a week to help me with things like the trash and watching Snowbaby and whatever else needs to be done. When I’m down here working and she is with my dad, she is perfectly content and happy. But as soon as I come in the room, suddenly PawPaw is scum. She’ll tell him to “Go WAY PAWPAW” and she’ll run to me.

My favorite words that she says are “Tank Top” and “Yummy.” I also think it is cute when she falls down and immediately says, “I fall.” I wish she would say “No” a lot less.

Her favorite song is that Gwen Stefani one with Akon. “Woooooo…Weeeoooo.” Everytime it comes on, she sings all the wooo woowee parts. It is hilarious.

For a long time I was Mama or MomMom. Then I became “Mimi.” This weekend she has started calling me “Mommy.”

Me: No, we can’t do anymore tonight. But tomorrow we will do all of the fireworks. The whole bag!

Bubba: Whole bag?

Snowbaby: No.

Me: Oh, it’s ok honey. You don’t like the pop pop ones?

Snowbaby: No pop pops.

Me: The noise scares you?

Snowbaby: YEAH! It eat you Mama!!!

Snowbaby got her own birthday cake today (dairy free of course) and she was the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

But if anyone tried to touch her cake, in ANY way, she GROWLED at them. GROWLED.

It was the funniest damn thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve got to figure out how to get the video up in the password protected section because you will pee your pants.

Seriously.

She also was quite happy with her selection of “dough” (modeling clay) which she immediately stuck in her mouth. When we told her it was dough, she got a big smile on her face and started smashing it into shapes.

I about died from all the cuteness.

In other news, Bug’s behavior stinks, she is crazy jealous about everyone (Callie never gets in trouble! Why does Snowbaby get her own cake? Why can’t I get any presents today??) and she is refusing to do any schoolwork, ever. Her sense of cause and effect is completely shot. She didn’t do what she was told and got sent to bed? Why? Because Mom is mean and she likes Callie better. She has to clean the house because Mom is mean, not because she threw raw eggs all over it. Why does she have to do schoolwork? Because everyone is trying to make her miserable.

In other news, she started shaving her legs.

Not at all related, but felt I should mention it.

Night Night.

Boy you guys have a lot of questions!

Here are some quick answers:

Does your DFS do anything like lifebooks, so she at least has a little of her history to take with her? 

Foster parents are supposed to start one within 30 days of the kid’s arrival. Callie does not have one.

I know you never told Butterfly about the blog, will you tell Callie?

Probably not. Maybe that I write for a website. I probably will not write a lot about her on here for that reason.

Does Callie have siblings elsewhere?

Yes.

How long has she been in the system? 

About a year and a half.

When you were originally approved to foster your house was certified for 4 kids (if memory serves), now that you have a bigger house, can you take more than 4?  Does the 4 include Bug?

I am licensed for six children. I think that includes Bug.

Would you take more if they were offered?

If the circumstances were right. I’ve talked to DFS about the kind of kids who would fit in here at this point. It would just really depend on a lot of things..the kids, their issues, how the other kids were doing at the time, what the plan for the case was.

How long will callie be with you?

I have no idea.

Is there any hopes of reunification?

Maybe. Not a very strong chance.

With the age difference, will she and bug share a room, or will the rooms
stay seperated as they were when butterfly was there?

Separate. Bug and Callie have their own rooms and the little ones share a room.

How are the little guy and snow baby doing without butterfly there, and have you heard any additional reports in regards to her mental stability or long term
placement/reunification goals?

They are doing just fine. They have really not said anything about her being gone. I figure they assume their life is messed up as it is, so they are not surprised. I talked a little bit about the other part of the question a few posts back. The goal for these kids is still reunification.

Will this make it harder on her parents to get the other two back as well or will that not play into it?

Again, I talked about this a little ways back, but no..not really. The main goal is addressing the reasons the kids were taken into care in the first place and making sure the services that have been started for them are continued. Their behavior problems and delays were not why the came into care. There were other substantial reasons which have to be addressed before they would be allowed to go home.

OK, I have a busy day of running around today and a birthday to celebrate, so I’m off. Feel free to ask any other questions, like why McDreamy is so damn inconsistent? Bad writing? It is hard to love Patrick Dempsey as much when his character is such an ass.

Snowbaby’s surgery for ear tubes went as well as could be expected. It was not fun at all and was difficult for me, probably more than her.

They had these Little Tykes wagons with blankets and pillows and Geo and I walked her around the loop over and over again. She had been given some medicine to calm her down and she kept throwing her hands over her head and saying “WOOOOO!!” It was so funny.

I’m exhausted.

Oh! Can you please do me a favor? Over on my sidebar, I have blogads. I really like working with them as I can control what is put on my blog and make a little money to cover the hosting of the site and to pay Bug for her promotional appearances. (Ha.)

They are doing a survey which readers of this blog can take. (HINT HINT)

I would love it if you clicked over and took the survey. It will help advertisers know what type of people read this blog. I tried to tell them that you were all fabulous, intelligent, looked good in both sweatpants and evening gowns, and were hot, but they wanted more. So I told them that you could whip up a mean apple pie, and you spent all your free time hand knitting bags to store your recycling.

But they still aren’t satisfied.

So please go take the survey. You can give up after you’ve finished the first page, or you can keep pushing on finish the whole thing, in which case I will drive to your house and watch Grey’s Anatomy with you.**

Here’s the link:

Please take my blog reader survey!

Please help Bug feel even more famous. I’m thinking that she might become famous for being famous, and then she can get her own reality show and I might be SET.

Thanks!!

Edited to add: Poor_statue made a very good point. This survey will not ask you any personal identifying information. You don’t even have to give your email address if you do not want to. Thanks to everyone who is filling it out!

**I probably will not come to your house and watch Grey’s Anatomy. But I’d like to. Because YOU ROCK.

For the past almost three months, Bubba went to having no idea what his name was to saying his name was “Bu” and leaving out that “bba” part.

But today, he finally is able to say his name! Yay for Bubba!

And yesterday, Snowbaby finally caught onto nodding yes. It is like a whole new world of communication has opened up. Now everything is not NO. Now she can say, “Yes! I did just throw up on your bed!”

Darn kids. They make me so freaking proud.

Dear Snowbaby,

Perhaps I wasn’t very clear in my last letter.

I adore you. I love the hell out of you.

I did think of a few ways we could improve our relationship though.

For instance, maybe you could not puke on me three times during the night? Oh, and I do a lot better when I have more than 35 minutes of sleep. But I did like playing peek a boo at 4:37 a.m. That was fun. We should do more of that, but let’s schedule it for like 10:30 instead?

Until then, I’ll just sit here and type with you in my arms and hope that your fever breaks and that I don’t fall asleep and bang my head into the desk, rendering me unconscious.

Love always,

Mamamamamamma

Dear Snowbaby,

Oh how I love you. I love you from your the top of your nearly bald head to the bottom your cute little toes.

But please. I’m having a bad day. A bad week, actually. And I know I’m the big one and you are just the little tiny one and my job is to take care of you, but could you please stop throwing up?

Oh, and that fever thing? Quit that nonsense too, would ya?

All my love,

MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA

aka Baggage

Feeling alright. I’m trying to take it easy as much as possible, but wouldn’t it figure that Snowbaby has a snotty nose and a little fever and wants to be held ALL THE TIME.

Speaking of Snowbaby, I got her speech evaluation in the mail. She basically is a year behind in speech. I was expecting this, but it made me a little sad to read that she should be attempting to talk about her experiences. I know there is so much going on in this little girl’s head and she lacks the ability to talk about it. So she screams and cries and her whole body shakes and she clings onto me so tight. All I can do is love her as hard as I can.

Also, does anyone know what happened to all my silverware? I already checked the washer.

Dear Snowbaby,

I understand that your life is confusing now.

But could you kindly refrain from biting me as hard as you can when you were told no? Because it hurt. And now I have a big bite mark on my arm which looks, well, strange. How am I going to get Patrick Dempsey to love me with a big bite mark on my arm?

Think about me, Snowbaby. Just this once.

XOXO,

-Baggage