Giving thanks Day 18

On this day 4 years ago I sent out this text message " I am his and he is mine and we are family."  So today as I sit here looking at the mess in my house, and the piles of laundry I need to do I am very thankful to be his mom!

 Little Man has brought so many blessings into my life! Today I give thanks that I get to be his mom! There will be a longer post later, but for now I wanted to get this up!



4 years from Jennifer Kramer on Vimeo.

Falling behind

I have been bad about keeping up with my "thankfuls" this last week
So here goes:

Day 6 Having an Auntie Lauren that sends cute footie pajamas in care packages just because. Tonight  Little Man curled up warm and cozy in his new PJs!

Day 7 Having great parents who support me and love me. We don't live nearby each other and I often wish there was a transporter that I could just get in and be there immediately. But it does mean the times I get to see them are sweeter.

Day 8: Today I am thankful for the chance to present professional development to my staff with 3 other amazing ladies. I am blessed to work each day with them and have a blast learning new technology and teaching it to our staff with them.

Day 9: Today I am thankful my house. We spent most of today at home, just enjoying time being quiet and warm in our house

Day 10: Today I am thankful for a developing new friendship. I have known this person for a while, but we are establishing a friendship now and I am excited about it

Day 11: Today I am thankful for the Veteran's who have fought for our country. I often forget to remember all the things I have today because of the sacrifices they have made.

30 Days of Thanks Days 3, 4 & 5

Okay I need to get better about doing this every day….I will work on it!

Day 3-   I am thankful for the wonderful people at the church I attend. Not only are they fun to worship and be with, they are genuinely amazing people. They support me and Little Man.They make us feel welcome and at home and the honestly LOVE us like God taught. I love watching Little Man interact, play, giggle and pray with these people.


Day 4- I am thankful for the teachers I work with each and everyday. They lift me up and challenge me to grow as a person and a professional. I was proud to stand with them as we "walked in" to work yesterday. I am proud to share my passion of teaching, technology and kids with them everyday as mold the adolescents at our school.

Day 5-  Today I am thankful for the teachers at my Little Man's school. They are helping me for all those hours I am not there, raise and educate him. They are patient when they need to be and push when they need to as well. I am loving watching him grow and thrive at his school.

30 Days of Thanksful- Days 1 & 2

Day 1:
    I am thankful to Mr D and Adison. Two wonderful men who have taken on a mentor role for my Little Man. I teach with Mr D and he also teaches a Tae kwon do class two nights a week. His son Adison works with the Warriors group (4-8 year olds). They have taken brought Little Man in not just to the Tae Kwon Do class but to experience other new things. Last weekend they took him for his first fishing trip. So on day 1 of this 30 days I am thankful for these two who are willing to do things with my Little Man.  Who are willing to be amazing male role models for him!

Proud of his catch

Fishing with Mr D

Day 2:

  Today I am thankful for care packages. Little Man and I were blessed with an amazing care package from a friend in CA today. It contained a quilt and a cross, made by people in her church. It was sent as a reminder of the comfort, love and support we have as we struggle through tough times and smile through the good times. Thanks Mrs Shirley for loving us from a far and for today making that distance seem a little smaller.

Care package cross and blanket
Safety and sleep 

Stuck with super glue

Stuck with super glue is a phrase commonly heard around my house.  This phrase has helped to calm anxiety, helped to lessen stress, helped to bring in to focus the here and now versus the then. It is a phrase we have spent two years working on and today it makes life much easier. Today we can drop off at school without tears, we can enter a new situation and hold hands, not be in mommy’s arms. Today he knows that mommy comes back to “get me” every time, because we are stuck with super glue. It is often the stretchy kind of super glue that lets him be in one place (school, friends house) and me be in another ( work, running errands) without him being panicked or hyper vigilant to the when or, worse in his mind, if I am coming back to get him. 

Two years ago I called my pediatrician after several weeks (okay honesty, months) of rough nights. Rough nights sometimes meant 2 hours of sleep followed by 4-5 hours of wired wide awake because he was afraid to go back to sleep, or it meant night terrors that led to him trying to physically hurt himself or me. He was two, almost three and had been with me, in my house for almost two years, the night he had a night terror so bad he left bruises across my upper arms and chest. He was fighting so hard in pure terror. It was primal fight or flight response and I knew that the sweet little boy I saw during the light of day needed help to fight the darkness of night. So my pediatrician gave me the information for a lovely lady named Donna Potter at CCFH. The day that Donna called and talked to me, I wanted to cry. Here was someone who believed that my little boy could have significant trauma pre-adoption that we needed to deal with now and she said magical words...” we can help and I think you need to see Rebecca Hubbard for CPP therapy.” I had no idea what CPP therapy was, but I was happy to go try anything that would help, that would allow him and I to sleep. 

A few weeks later we went in for our initial evaluation at CCFH. I talked to someone for a while and then we were introduced to Ms Rebecca.  Little Man did not seem to want much to do but play with the toys there that day, but a relationship with Ms Rebecca was started and healing began. We started once a week visits in 2011 just before Thanksgiving. The first time we were in her office Little Man was falling over everything, not able to control his body. He didn’t have any regulation of emotions or his body, so we set goals and started the work.  Some weeks were harder than others, but it didn’t take long to realize that while he was just a “baby” when he came home the trauma of loss had left a huge mark on his heart. 

I believed we had attached and even actually attached pretty securely, boy was I wrong. Even six months in to the therapy I could see how attachment was changing and how much deeper it could be. He started to talk about things and I realized my reality needed to change. I had adopted an infant, the books prepare you for trauma and hardships (sort of, at least they allude to there being some) when you adopt older. But very few mention how much the body remembers of trauma in a young child. Little Man held feelings of loss, abandonment, fear and the triggers were everywhere. Leaving him at school in the morning, entering a place where it was loud, lots of people and busy, telling him to wait because I was cooking dinner and he didn’t need a snack right that minute. Any of it, all of it could send him spiraling and neither of us knew why. But we were learning with Ms Rebecca and we were both getting better. I was stressing less and listening more to him, to his body language and mostly to his sleep patterns.  Sleep has been his dead give away always. When he trusts, when he is secure then he sleeps, when one or more of those is missing sleep and dark are not our friends. 

I am not sure when the phrase “stuck with super glue” came in to our therapy conversations, but it was pretty early on in the process. Little Man explained pretty early on that “I should have been in Africa earlier.” It became a daily conversation as we drove to school, it was a daily comment when I picked him up, it was a nightly routine to be “stuck” together for a while on the couch watching a show or in the rocking chair reading a book or even sometimes sitting on his bed as he went to sleep. We talked about how super glue sticks things together strong and that sometimes our super glue has to be stretchy so he can be one place and I can be another, but we will always “snap” back together. 

As therapy progressed it became less about me reminding him we had super glue, but more him commenting in moments of need about the super glue, almost as if checking to make sure I remembered that we were “stuck” together. Today we talk about there being super glue on our hands and that we can go to the mall or some place crowded and just hold hands as a reminder that we are together, that I am not going anywhere and that I will keep him safe.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still moments of hard, times that he gets triggered where fear and panic override any logic. But they are less and less, and more importantly we deal with those moments in the moment and they cause less “damage.” We recover faster. Sleep is still my “thermometer” to how calm his brain is each day. Most times it is better. Right now we are in a rough patch, but I know why and while I can’t remove the why, I can help him process it and reassure the what. Right now we remember and discuss super glue everyday and most nights. 

Little Man has control, as much as a not quite 5 year old can, of his emotions and physical movements of his body. There are things he choses not to control and we continue to work on those, But Ms Rebecca and CPP have “stuck” us together forever and he knows it, not just in words, but the body memory knows it. Through games, role plays, daily reinforcement  and weekly time with Ms Rebecca, his body memory is remembering new. 

So we celebrate how far we have come. We celebrate the work he has done. We celebrate that super glue “stretches” so we can go apart and come back together each and every time. 

2 years ago as we started therapy

Recently having fun as we look at our cotton candy tongues

Finished with therapy!

  

Virtual Run- Childhood Cancer Awareness

Today 36 families will hear words they wish to never hear and honestly never imagined they would hear...."We found a tumor/mass and believe your child has cancer"

We look at our kids each day, watch them laugh and play, grow and change, never imagining that the cough, the headache, the pain they complain about is something as serious as cancer. But sadly everyday of the year, there are 36 families who hear that news and even worse there will be 7 families whose child loses their fight against childhood cancer.

My little man and my nephew

A few weeks ago my best friend, of 24 years, and her husband heard probably the second worst set of words they can imagine, "the cancer is back."  I live far away and can only offer words of encouragement over the phone and the computer. Or so I thought. 

It is Childhood Cancer awareness month in September, so I have written a letter to the American Cancer Society to support getting more than the current amount to fund childhood cancer research and worn a gold ribbon and now I am going to sponsor a virtual 5k run/walk or family fun mile to help raise funds for their medical expenses and neuroblastoma research.  Please see the virtual run tab to sign up for the run. The run is from Sept 15th to Oct 31st.  I will start sending out the medals at the beginning of October. Just post the date you did your walk/run and the time it took you and I will ship away! Hope you like the medal I designed!.

Guest Post

         Today I got the opportunity to share and blog over at this website :
http://4sqclobberscancer.com/2013/09/03/dear-american-cancer-society/

I can't promise I won't spend a good deal of time this month talking about kids cancer, but I promise I will share Little Man news with you as well. I have a longer post and a picture to share later this evening but for now I wanted to share that I was "published" on a different blog.

Also I want to encourage people to check back tomorrow as I am going to be hosting my first virtual run. The details and all will come tomorrow. And if you aren't sure what a virtual run is than please check back and learn!

Have a great afternoon...I'll be back later/