Off to the Doctor's Already!

Poor little M1 hasn't even been here half a week and we've already headed for the doctor's office. He's so congested he sounds like Darth Vader when he breathes!  The verdict was sinusitis and tonsillitis. At least he's REALLY good about taking his medicine. From the way he smacks his lips you would think I'm giving him candy!  Surely it can't taste that good!  I'm hoping that he recovers quickly.  He's got a jam packed schedule with almost 30 hours worth of visits a week. That will be rough if he's feeling yucky.  I wish I could just keep him home and let him chill, but as I'm already finding out being the foster mama means that although I have all the responsibilities of a mama I get none of the rights so I have absolutely no say as to whether he goes or stays home from a visit and HHS says he goes. :(

It was crazy to me how difficult it is to take a child who is not technically your own to the doctor.  The office still wants you to fill out all the forms, but you don't know even half of the information they want!  Then when we actually got to see the doctor and they were asking about health history and even exactly when his symptoms started I felt like a complete idiot because I didn't know! He had his symptoms when he arrived. They had just gotten worse since then. I have a feeling there are going to be many more of these incidences when I either feel helpless or like an idiot when it comes to caring for a child that I have no true authority over his life.

M1 is learning more and more about our routines and house rules and seems to be figuring them out pretty quickly although there are definitely some, like no carrying your sippy cup around with you, that he DOES NOT like :)  I'm starting to see how difficult it will be to enforce limits on this little guy and expect him to understand when there are at least 4 different sets of adults in his life that spend a significant amount of time with him and who all have very different expectations about behavior and the consistency to which they enforce those expectations.  This goes for healthy eating and sleeping habits as well.  It's hard to expect him to comply with my rules when he spends almost as much (maybe more, I should figure it up) of his waking hours in other people's care (who don't share my parenting ideas) than in mine.

Lion continues to do well with M1. She enjoys playing with him and has been fairly helpful in caring for him. We've seen some extra clinginess and jealousy rear up, but really on the whole it hasn't been bad at all.  I would say the thing she struggles with the most is accepting that he doesn't have the kind of language skills she expects from a human. She talks to him and he doesn't respond or he wants to tell her something and it comes out just in grunts and screams. That's VERY frustrating to her. In fact she's had this issue ever since she was close to M1's age!  She communicated so well so early that she had a difficult time relating to the kids her age who were just grunting and pointing. She would look at them with disdain almost!  It really has been an eye opener for Scarecrow and I to see M1's development and remember back to Lion at that same age.  It's helping us to see how very ahead she was and how totally clueless we were about typical development!