Friday, June 23, 2006

Goodbyes

One of my coworkers is leaving soon. He is moving to Holland to work for a sister company after working here for two years. Even though his last day is still 6 days away, we had a send-off lunch for him today. Now he has plenty of stuff to remember us by.

I'm going to miss my friend (even though he blames all of T's issues on the fact that he has red hair). I hope he likes his new job and new country. Our office won't be the same without him.

Goodbye P! Please keep in touch.

Saturday, June 17, 2006

Another Day

Gosh, it's been a while! Let's see.....where were we?

I'm pleased to say that T's therapist has been pretty regular. Yeah, she's frequently late but at least she calls and eventually shows up. I don't know how much good she's doing but between her and our slightly better attitude with T he seems to be doing a bit better. And I mean a bit. He still lies and steals food but he appears to be trying (sometimes). So, he's still here. J is still here and most surprisingly, I'm still here.

I haven't made anything lately but I want to. I want to start on a Christmas project and I want to try my hand at some baby booties. In order to do either of those I need to make a trip to the fabric store and I'm kinda low on funds at the moment.

We've been painting and doing minor cosmetic things to our rental house in hopes to sell it. Hopefully sell it very quickly and make a healthy profit on it so that we can pay off a couple of credit cards.

I had planned on going to a scrapbook retreat in early September but it doesn't look like that's going to happen for a couple of reasons (money being one of them). It would have been really cool though.

I think I'll see what's on cable.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Picture Parade

I finally downloaded the pictures from the camera to the computer. It's not difficult or even that time consuming but it's something that I always put off so I'm glad I finally did it. So here we go...

Well?? What do you think? I got the pattern free from Sewing Stars (see bloglines). I made them for a friend who has three boys. I wanted them to all be the same color (less arguing) but each different enough that they would remember who each one belongs to. I like the polka dotted one the best. Oh, here's what they look like from behind.

I don't know why this picture is a little blurry. I had to take this picture in my bedroom because that was the sunniest room in the house at the moment.

So, these little guys are in the mail headed to C, M & K. I hope they like them!

In other project news...about two days before school ended I actually thought, "um, are we supposed to give the teacher a gift???" I had made her a gift at Christmas but I figured it was better to be safe than sorry so I went through my very, very small fabric stash and put together this tote.

I love the blue toile! I actually used this same material to make a purse for my mom (which I've never seen her use even though she requested it and promised she would use it). The inside is lined with a light blue material with little navy polka dots. I tried to get a good shot of it but it was night time and the camera flash just wasn't getting it. I pinned a crochet flower to the front. I can't crochet but I had my mom make several of these flowers for me in different colors. I think they look particularly cute on tote bags. Let's see if I can find a better shot of the flower...

Hhmm.....blogger keeps saying I've uploaded it but it's not appearing. Maybe I've reached my picture limit for one post. Okay, if anyone is dying for a close up, let me know and I'll post it later!

Monday, June 05, 2006

Gonna Do It

I can only really think of one thing I really need to finish - the others went in the trash a while ago. Back in September or so, I started embroidering (is that a word? spell check doesn't seem to think so) a short table runner. Well, I finished the embroidery but never hemmed it. Not very exciting, I know.

Weeeeeeell, there's this other embroidery piece I have. I didn't start it, my grandmother did but I've never finished it because....well, I don't know. I guess I was afraid I wouldn't do it justice but maybe it's time.

I've taken some pictures of recent projects but haven't uploaded them onto my computer yet. Guess that's something else I need to work on!

Friday, June 02, 2006

Holding Pattern

No major changes have occurred recently. That's about as plainly as I can put it.

As previously mentioned, our cw picked T up the night of the 26th and took him to another foster family. They gave him soda and took him to Chuck E. Cheese so he was happy. J and I slept in and ate lots of ice cream and did a fair amount of shopping so we were happy.

Okay, so we fought too - mostly the first day but then we settled down and decided to enjoy our time without T.

Our cw brought T back on the 29th. The first thing he did after he got home was to tell a lie. As I was unpacking his back and sorting his dirty clothes he said, "um, they don't eat until 10:00." It was 8:30 when he said this. I knew he was lying so I said, "well, that's too bad because you're about to take a bath and go to bed." J heard what he said and came in to say, "You know, we have their phone number. We can just call them." Then he realized he'd blown it and admitted that he was lying.

That was four days ago and this morning he tried it again. He told me that he didn't have breakfast yesterday. See, yesterday was the first day we've taken him to daycare in the morning. J and I didn't give him breakfast before he went because we know the daycare serves breakfast. T apparently doesn't know that we know that and saw it as yet another opportunity to get more food. So I said, "you had breakfast at daycare." He just said, "oh."

So I left for work and J took him to daycare. He ran right to the table and demanded a bowl. J reminded him that he needed to put his things away first so he ran to the room to put them away and ran back to the table. Literally ran.

I swear, this food obsession is going to be the death of me. Okay, so I know that it stems from being in foster care but it's so frustrating to always have to police every situation. I hate having to trust that the daycare workers are watching him. It's just a matter of time before he pinpoints the sucker tells them some sob story (like he did at school) and convinces them that we're starving him and get them to give him more food.

Who knows what really happened over the weekend. He was noticeably bigger (in the face and stomach) so they must have fed him a lot - well, that or he stole a lot of food.

Since the cw is so adamant about not moving him, I'm holding on to this....once his parental rights are terminated then it will be time to adopt him. If we refuse, they will have no other choice but to solicit families and choose an adoptive home for him.

So, if we continue therapy and our feelings about him don't change - that is, we don't feel we're the right home for him / cannot parent his particular issues any longer, there will come a time when a line is drawn in the sand.