Huckleberry Finn

There's been a growing number of neighborhood kids appearing in our yard. I was watching Buttercup and Isaiah play while mowing the grass with a manual mower. ALL the kids came running up and wanted to try it.



Everyone got a chance, I only had to do the section around the tree roots! Turns out classic literature has some life 'hacks' in it after all.

GO SPORTS!

Through the foster program, we got to go to a Saints game for foster night!



We drove there through the rain, thinking it would clear up, Buttercup wore her adventure boots and my raincoat just in case. There was face painting (pink with glitter), a balloon sword, and a little party in the outfield with food and crafts, and ice cream.

In preparation for the game, we watched The Sandlot and started playing catch. I got some velcro mitts and Buttercup is pretty good when she's looking at the ball- we will keep practicing.



The game ended up getting rained out- but we got tickets for another day. while roman exchanged tickets, Buttercup and I had great fun splashing in all the puddles. It was a great night, and we didn't even get to watch baseball- Maybe we can watch baseball next time!

Stickers are Gold

A few days into Buttercups placement, we started using a weekly sticker chart. It's seriously been worth its weight in gold. I didn't think I'd ever use one in my house to give stickers for behaviors/things that are normal to do like eating breakfast, completing tasks on your own, or making good choices, but these are odd circumstances and Buttercup already knows exactly how it works from her time in Shelter.

I had a lot of fun setting up our chart and outlining the goals we were aiming for. Currently, we are looking for nice words and listening ears. through this, and other behavior modification techniques, the phrases "I hate ____" and "____is ugly" have been replaced with "I don't want that right now" and " I don't like that today". Note: "I hate chocolate" and " I hate cheese" have been spoken in our home. I KNOW that's not true since those are some of my main tools of bribery!

This system has acted as a way to gain Buttercups trust, she is active in the decision if she gets a sticker or not by trying to remember if she walked to school, or roman carried her etc. On Saturdays, we go to the dollar store and she can pick whatever prizes she wants based on the number of stickers. Its ALWAYS exciting!



Buttercup is really good at making decisions. I went to the dollar store thinking that it was going to end horribly with both of us leaving angry. She has gotten to pick three things the last few weeks, so we carry a basket and when she picks out four things, I say "uh oh, we have four things, which one are you going to put back" she looks and thinks,  you can see the wheels turning and then politely puts one thing back (almost where we found it!). Some decisions are quick, others take a lot of time but its fun to watch her figure it out.



This week we changed some of the goals on the sticker chart- which she found exciting since stickers were SOOO easy to earn before. we will see how this continues.

Jake Ender: Fairy God Uncle

Buttercup has some interesting this she likes to say when we see bunnies outside. It all started on a walk to the park, where we saw a bunny, she froze, and I said: "go get it!"

She went on to say that she was going to "get that bunny!" and "eat his ears" and "drink his blood". We were caught off guard so we were giving her quite a laugh. she kept going to the point where we both thought - wow shes got some anger issues with bunnies- where did she learn that? as I'm looking for images to post.... probably from loony tunes!

She now says similar things about ducks- and the common saying is that she wants to drink their blood- but why? Its all boiled down to "if you catch the bunny (or duck) we can certainly cook it up"

Heres hoping she is as unsuccessful as Elmer Fudd.


We had dinner at Jakes coffee shop earlier this week- Jake made a grilled cheese with a secret ingredient- Bunny Ears!!! dreams really do come true. She said the ears tasted like Jerky.

Pink freak out

Before we met Buttercup, I spent some time cleaning the house and collecting age appropriate things for her room. In the process, I walked into the room, saw the green alligator quilt, and thought to myself "she's going to walk in here and say 'this is a boys room!'" and not want to stay.



Off to target, I went debating with myself the whole time: do I have to have pink things? but it doesn't matter, girls don't have to have pink it's 2018, I don't like pink, do I really have to get pink things? Shes already a tiny person with opinions and likes/dislikes. How can I  make it girlier without pink?



Oh yeah! Purple exists!

I ended up getting a few purple things.

She didn't end up saying it was a boys room, but the purple things match her blanket from home- ill count it as a win. Also, now our house is covered in sequins (yuck), and her favorite color is, you guessed it :

Spicy with Chocolate

I picked up Buttercup from her shelter home- it was much like the scene in Annie when they are in the office at the orphanage and the kids are peaking through the door. Everybody knew Buttercup was leaving, and a few hollered out the window at me from the 2nd floor "Are you gonna be Buttercups family?" it was all quite exciting.



She came with on bag of things, leggings, a few long sleeves, and a blanket. I had been at the store earlier when one of the workers from the shelter called to see when I was coming. I was asking him what she likes, and what kind of clothes she may need, and all of his reactions were on the spectrum of surprise that I was even at the store picking up things for her. It was really nice to have someone to give us a few tips and strategies for comforting Buttercup during this time of transition.

we had a whirlwind of a day, first we went home and put all of our things away, all of the things I got here were met with "I hate that" or "That's Ugly" which, if you have a kid with zero control, the only option is to have a strong opinion, about 20 minutes later it turned into "That's my favorite"

Next, we picked Roman up and went to Mahtomedi for a wienie roast with my cousins and their kids (including a fellow 4 yr old) walking down to the fire Buttercup got very quiet, put her hood on and didn't want to talk to anyone. Cora ran down, determined to be her BFF, and they ended up sitting in the tent and acclimating to all these new people- as well as being in the woods.



As she came out of her shell she learned how fun it is to crack peanuts, cook hot dogs, and eat smores. Also, she decided that root beer tastes like "Spicy with chocolate"- if you think about it, shes pretty right about that!



We went on an adventure in the woods- balancing on logs, finding puffballs, and carrying sticks back to the fire. Everybody had a blast, and everybody was ready for bed! What a great first day!