Sum it up Saturday

Benjy said he thinks I should still do regular posts, not just the photo of the day.  So maybe we'll sum up the week on Saturdays.  Let's see, this week I did Safiya's hair twice into three little puffletts.  It's actually pretty cute and when her hair is down it's pretty puffy.  After two nights of not sleeping (probably 6 hours total) Tuesday brought a pretty significant meltdown.  Nothing except no sleep was the cause.  But Carson's incident, coupled with the vet bill, a teething baby, and finally my salon canceling my hair appointment that I have been looking forward to for weeks made things appear worse than they probably were.  And the poor receptionist at the salon is the one who took the brunt of it.  But she got me in the next day, I slept 6 straight hours, and my hair is a few inches shorter.  Much easier.  Wednesday I spent an hour and a half shopping for jeans.  90 minutes.  Unbelievable.  Why can't they just keep the same title with the same style for more than one season.  Seriously.  It's like some messed up conspiracy to make people crazy.    I don't remember Thursday and Friday, Friday was a rough day.  Have I mentioned I am going back to work on February 1st?  The girl who took my place quit.  Which is good cuz she was horrible.  And how can I be upset.  I've been home for 5 months with the baby.  That's more than most people get.  And she's doing well.  Back to Friday.  A friend of Makenna's is adopted from China.  And her mom will be watching Safiya three days a week while I work.  It's the best case scenario.  She understands adoption.  She knows the attachment rules.  But it's hard.  And Friday I took her over to visit so that she could start to get to know her.  We're doing a little bit at a time.  It was hard.  Hard to watch another person hold her hands to walk, and play with her.  I imagine Benjy will be taking her for awhile when I go back to work.  The second lesson of the week was the ongoing teaching of crying and comfort.  Learning to cruise comes with many falls.  Some pretty big ones.  The first one caused one of the biggest cries we've seen. And it came with pushing me away and not letting me comfort her.  My initial response was to distract or give her a binkie, like I did with Makenna.  But I realized what was going on and fought with her through it.  Hugging her and kissing her owie and trying to let her let me in.  She finally did.  She finally put her head on my shoulder and calmed down.  But it took awhile.  And every owie requires the same treatment.  I'm hoping eventually there will be less resistance and more willingness to let us comfort her.  And now we're to today.  Benjy was able to clean the fireplace with tools he bought for $18.  We've been putting off having the fireplace cleaned because it is so expensive.  But until today smoke poured into the house every time we started a fire.  And now that's all fixed.  So here is the picture of the clean fireplace, which I am now enjoying at a balmy 78 degrees.  A little much, maybe.



xoxo