Life Goes On

My best friend, Chris, was here for a long weekend. We, as we always do, had a great visit. In spite of everything that is going on. We played a lot of Canasta, went on a lot of walks, ate more junk than we maybe should have, also ate lots of salads, talked and laughed a lot. She left early this morning and I miss her.

I won't miss her for too long, though, as our next scheduled visit is two weeks from today. This is because she's in Colorado, at her parents' house right now, for house sitting purposes. We planned two trips close together to take advantage of the shorter and cheaper flights that being in Colorado provide, rather than all the way in Pittsburgh.

The upcoming trip provides a deadline of sorts for getting Max settled. When I leave on the trip, it'll be just over three weeks after our meeting, where it was guessed that two weeks would be enough to find a transitional foster home for Max. By transitional foster home, I mean where he'll transition from our house to a new adoptive house. At least, that is the plan. However, if they don't find a good place for him by then, they may have to find a temporary place, as was the original plan before we said he could/should stay here for those couple of weeks while they find a new place.

Anyway, we do want there to be a definite end in sight. Things aren't pretty. It's not that were pretty before, either, but now that we've decided, we are rather ready to be done. We've had some more rough times.

Max spent the night Saturday night with Stephanie and family again, which provided a break for all. He is in camp, complete with after camp care, this week, so that he doesn't come home until Anthony does. This is not an overly cheap option, though, camp with after care, so while we'll do it this week and next, if necessary, it's not how we'd be raising our own child.

Even with all of this, we're having rough times. Max and Anthony had a go at it at bed time last night with Max saying he didn't want to be in bed, even though he got in bed a half an hour later than he should have. Max kept getting up and there were issues. Before all of that, Max had told me he was going to go out the window at bed time when I was getting him to get his stuff ready for camp for today. He didn't go out the window, but he does have a pattern of threatening for a while and then actually doing the thing, so it's a concern.

This morning, he was passive aggressively not helping with morning chores. He put away two clean dishes while I cleaned an entire bathroom and while Davan tended to the guest bed, sorted laundry and started a new load. Then he announced that he didn't want breakfast, he just wanted to go to camp. So I took him.

Luckily for him, he actually had a decent lunch packed for today. Monday, when he came home with a good portion of his lunch left and tails of eating other kids' chips and not being hungry, I suggested he pack his own lunch, as he'd know what he wanted to eat. He did not have a big lunch yesterday...Today, though, was bigger and a better lunch. I'm sure he'll be hungry by dinner with no breakfast, but he'll get through okay.

Chris made a few interesting observations while she was here. One was that we seemed to have two "families." One is the family of Anthony, Davan and myself. The other is more of a group of people than a family and it's what we are when Max is around. Anthony and I battling Max for control of the family while Davan is shunted off to the side. I do see this and we've tried hard to avoid it, but, obviously, aren't able to.

Two weeks. And then we'll have to start dealing with after effects, but we'll be able to start recuperating.