Have had ¾ Pint since Sunday,. Got up yesterday and ran her to Dr, she was spiking a fever. Virus Dr. says, but gives her antibiotics in case, cause its ¾ Pint..and well, you can't take any chance with medically fragile kids. She is still running fever. Her Mom doesn't work today, so she will go back home later. She hates it, but I told her Honey, your mother is a nurse and your dad is a policeman. There is nothing we can do about them working holidays. Still, its hard on a six year old.

Night before last, there were WAY too many people in the bed. First 3/4 Pint came in with a raging fever,  then 1/2 Pint with a nightmare, then Pint. At that point, with Dave, all three girls and a chihuahua and two cats, I gave up and went to the couch.

This morning ¾ Pint ended up in bed with us about 3 ish. Then ½ Pint joined in at 4. At 5:30 I gave up and got up.  PInt made it all through the night in her own bed, no nightmares, no sickness. Whoo Hooo!


Stopped and got propane yesterday, it is up to $2.69 a gallon. Minimum order is 150 gallons, there went $400.00 but we were down to 5 %, so what are you gonna do? Ouch! Then stopped and paid for a cord of wood, to help stretch the propane out till April. That wasn't too bad, $125 a cord of mixed hardwoods, and he delivered for only $10 more. Also, its a full cord !!

Pint and I had a really good time. She went out with me to stack the firewood. (not willingly exactly, but she did come out to help...) 3/4 Pint did too for about two minutes LOL. Pint hung in there though. She whined and pissed around at first, “They're heavy, I cant do this, I need a break...” but after a bit, we did take a break and we talked for about ¾ hour about all sorts of stuff, sitting on the stairs out by the door...

About being ADHD and how its' not a crutch for what she cannot do....and


How the perks of being eight years old will ONLY be given AFTER the responsibilities are assumed by the eight year old....and

How she is teetering on the brink of lots and lots of life...and things she will enjoy, like working with Neighbor in the stables, horse lessons, sleepovers at friends houses, four wheelers, go karts, etc..

But (isn't there always a but?) that as long as she throws fits and continues to not control her actions, none of it will happen. How ADHD makes it hard for her to realize all this, because I told her that the hyper part also stands for hyperimpulsivity...and that means that she doesn't think things through to their logical conclusions....

She said but I cant' help it.

I said you can. She said YOU don't have ADHD. How would you know....

Ha ha. I said, but in fact I DO HAVE ADHD. She was totally blown out of the water on that one. She said you DO?

I was like, yeah. Only back in the dark ages, they didn't know about it, and didn't have medication for it. So I had to LEARN to control my impulsiveness, control my actions, and take control of my overactive brain. And I have been trying to help you learn to do all of that..but you don't listen to what I say, and you fight what I am trying to teach you. And how frustrating it is for me to see her go through it and know that there are real ways of helping..if only she would listen and learn. I told her that when she learned to control herself, that she might be able to be OFF any medications at all, and that it is totally possible to lead a regular life with ADHD. She talked about her Dad and how he has it, so it's not his fault he is in prison.


That was hard. I had to explain that while Daddy is a really wonderful person, funny, loving, kind etc., (and all of that is true), that he did NOT learn to control his ADHD. That he did not learn to control his behaviors. That he did not learn to look to the future, and that, for the most part, is what ended him up in prison. That while we don't necessarily LIKE the rules that we have to follow, we still have to FOLLOW them. That Daddy had not done that.

That in order to achieve all she wants to achieve in life, that she MUST learn to control her brain, and her behaviors.

 

I told her about using prayer to help herself to settle down and fall asleep. I told her it is so not normal to have to have your grandmother in with you for two hours every single night to fall asleep.

Then we got up off the stairs to finish the job. She said...Do I have to do this. I said well, I don't see any wood stacking fairies out here..do you? She laughed and was like, Nope.

So we did. Then we learned about working stupid, and working smart. I told her that we had been working stupid, and it was hard, and boring, and took forever. Was she ready to learn to work smart? She allowed as how she was, so I sent her over to get the wheelbarrow. I told her there are usually two ways to do something. Stupid, or smart. We had tried stupid,and got about an 1/8 of the wood stacked. Now we were going to try working smart. A cord of wood is a LOT of wood when it is dumped in the driveway. It takes a lot of effort to turn that pile of wood into a neat stack, 8 foot long, four foot high and four foot deep.


I showed her how to load the wheelbarrow. How to put the heaviest ones in front. Explained about center of gravity. We loaded it up. She asked if she could push it. I said, I don't know, CAN you? Turns out, she COULD. And boy was she proud of that. That was a full wheelbarrow too. And she is a little shrimp of an eight year old girl, 4' 6 inches and all of about 60 pounds. It's not like she had a lot to put behind the pushing. But, she did it, and over big slag too. Then she asked if she could dump it. Again, I said, I don't' know, CAN you? And again, she proved, (with a little advice on hand placement and how to shift your grip while lifting the wheelbarrow) she DID IT!!!

After telling her how impressed I was, (and I truly was impressed), I asked if she wanted to do the loading and dumping, and I would do the stacking. So off she trucked with the wheelbarrow back to the wood pile. As we worked, we laughed and talked. She noticed how much more we were getting done. I showed her that also working smart meant taking the logs from the FRONT of the stack which were easier to get, and then it meant you didn't have to climb over them or trip over them while getting the wood which was NOT easy to reach.


After about 12 loads, and 2/3 of the wood in the pile, she asked if we could be done for the night as it was starting to get dark and her hands were sore. I said as how I thought that was a really good idea, cause my back was killing me. We had two 8 foot sections stacked, 2 feet deep and 3 feet high. We had started on the third section.

We came inside and decided we would finish the job tomorrow. Then I gave her $3 for helping me. She was jazzed as all heck over that one.

We came in, did dinner, did showers, and then I put the little's to bed, and let her stay up till 9 as a reward. I told her that if she learned to put herself to sleep without drama, without me constantly going in there, without me standing on the ladder for hours every night, that I would move her bedtime up to 9 pm, and let her stay out here with Pappy and me until 9, and then she could just go in and go to bed like regular people do.

And, SHE DID !! What a blessing that was.

Nice way to finish the year off.