sigelphoenix

Compare and Contrast.

( Employee's Husband Sent Us Revenge Porn )


( 4. Delivery person uses our lunchroom )

I'm still alive and have once again remembered that I have a journal here! And... oh dear, it looks like it's been about a year since I last posted. Um. Very basic updates are called for, I guess.

I did indeed eventually recover my sense of smell after my bout with Covid last summer, which was very nice. Shortly after that, the Squidling started kindergarten, and we had a bit of a chaotic start to the year as his teacher had... not so much actually read his IEP. Oops. Got that resolved, things calmed down mostly, to the point where we (very optimistically) adopted a dog, who we named Astro, from a local rescue... and then everything went all to hell. The Squidling loves dogs, it turns out, but is too impulsive and, frankly, unwilling to adhere to rules, to actually behave well with a dog in the house, and the chaos of having a dog (who was both younger and more high-energy than we'd been lead to believe...) meant that he never got the calm down-time at home that was required to help him function moderately well at school. Due to that and a few other issues, we eventually made the sad decision to return Astro to the rescue.

(Astro is fine: he went into the care of a very experienced foster family who had a foster-fail dog of their own, with whom Astro immediately became best friends, and at last check they were so happy running around the yard together and then sleeping all over the people's furniture together that we're crossing all available appendages that they foster-fail with Astro, too. One sticking point of his time with us was that while he liked people fine, he really wanted a dog friend full-time, and that was never going to happen with us.)

Anyway. Kindergarten didn't go great. Squidling did not like school much, because he is super impulsive and unwilling to follow instructions, and he and his teacher butted heads basically all the time, and... things did not go well, anyway. The good news is, he loved his resource teacher, Ms. A, and likes many of his classmates, and still loves learning and reading and all that, so we're hard at work with his therapist and his resource teacher on plans to develop the good sides of things, and hopefully get him some medication to help him with his impulse control (in addition, of course, to non-medication methods like helping him think ahead and give rewards for good behavior, etc.).

Summer has been pretty good, with a friend and her kiddo visiting from out of town a good part of last month, and then a big week last week where we went to Point Defiance Zoo, then met up with several of Squidling's classmates and their families to watch the Blue Angels from a local park, and then a day of hanging out and going fun places with his grandparents the next day. Tomorrow he starts his second week-long day-camp of the summer, and they are prepared with strategies learned from his first day camp of the summer (as are we), so hopefully things will go well... and at the end of the month we'll get back to school!

Checking in to reassure y'all because of the current news.

1. Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband “Chad” and I have a 4-year-old son, “Lane.” Recently for his birthday, my parents gifted him a set of Winnie-the-Pooh books. It’s been a tradition in my family for the last three generations for kids to read these books. But my husband won’t let my son have them.

He says doesn’t want Lane to read them because he insists that Winnie-the-Pooh is for girls. I’ve never heard anything so stupid! How can I make him understand that Pooh is a character that has been beloved by both boys and girls alike for nearly a century now?

—Much Ado About Pooh

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2. Dear Care and Feeding,

My wife “Carla” and I have a 3-year-old son, “Andy.” Andy became a big brother last month when we had our daughter, “Isabelle.” Andy had been reliably potty-trained for four months before Isabelle was born, but within days of bringing Isabelle home from the hospital, Andy began having accidents. Carla’s solution has been to put him back in pull-ups. I don’t think allowing him to regress like this is a wise idea. She says to let him do it for the time being if it makes him feel better. It seems to me that taking a firm approach (making him go back to using the toilet or face punishment) would be in his best interest. Who is right?

—We’re Not Going Backward

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