Possessions

Munchkins 2, 3, and 4 have a problem with possessions. They obsess about them. They hoard them. They fight about them. They steal them. They've never really had anything so now that they have clothing, a house with furniture, toys, beds, etc they have gone round the been about THINGS. They have decided that absolutely everything they see or touch is THEIRS whether it is or not. M3 steals things (both from stores and from other people in the house) and then hides them in her little stashes all over her room. None of them can stand for another person to even look at something they have claimed as theirs. They've even become possessive about the chairs at the kitchen table! If M1 (who is only 2 years old today!) climbs onto the chair they sat at during the most recent meal that child will go crazy shouting, "Get off my chair! Mom, M1 wants my chair! He can't have MY CHAIR! IT'S MY CHAIR! MINE!" I've even been told I could not sit on a chair! Today the big thing was library books. They checked out books from the library on their last visit and now that they are home if either M1 or Lion so much as walks toward one of those books the girls will flip out. Even after repeated explanations about how the books belong TO THE LIBRARY and we will ALL share the books at our house they can't handle it. If it continues to be as big a problem as it was today then they won't be allowed to check out any more books from the library. I can't handle the added drama. We have more children's books than our local public library anyway so it's not like they NEED to go to the library to get books!

It was M1s birthday today and M2, 3, and 4 had a BIG problem with that. They could not stand that today was not all about them. They even tried to claim his gifts even though they are baby toys! Thank heavens we had planned (before we knew about the girls) to keep M1s birthday low key because they absolutely COULD NOT have handled a party. At least now we know better than to plan a party for any of them. That would be meltdown city.

M1s case continues to go nowhere. We are getting more and more frustrated with his visitation workers and the agency that employs them by the hour. They are consistently late, do not call to let us know when there is a canceled visit, end visits early at their own discretion, and in general do not insure M1s well being as they are supposed to be doing. Technically they are supposed to be providing parenting training during the visits instead of just watching what happens, but they do not step in when unsafe/unhealthy food is given or no food at all is given. They allow inappropriate situations to occur frequently. It irritates the heck out of me! Still no word on when court will happen next. We are now past the 15 out of 22 month mark for M1 being in out of home care for M1's birthdad so technically termination could happen for both parents simply based on that regardless of what else the state has against them.

Today I had to send M3 to her room for awhile and she was not allowed to be playing with anything so I need to remove any possible play thing from the room. I knew the girls had been hoard things in the room, but I truly had no idea how bad it was. When I started cleaning out the room I found tags from their new clothes that I had thrown in the bathroom trash stashed between the mattress and box springs, dirty tissues inside pillow cases, toys belonging to the other kiddos hidden under the bed and under pillows, clothing stashed in the window sills, random stuff in empty doors and hidden in the corners of the closet. One thing I found were some clothes the girls had brought with them when they came that I had never seen before. The clothes smelled so badly that I almost vomited. I put them in the washing machine on the sanitize cycle and the smell still did not go away. If those clothes smelled that badly I can only imagine how bad their trailer must have smelled! I'm going to try to wash them one more time and if I still can't get rid of the smell I guess I'll just have to throw them away. It was interesting that the girls were hoarding those particular clothes though. I wonder if they remind them of their house and they wanted to keep them close? I can't keep something that smells that badly in my house though. It was unbelievably foul. I can't even begin to describe the stench.