Upset, Angry

On Wednesday, Henry and Miss R went to Grammy and Poppy's house after school. They did some yardwork, as evidenced by Henry's very dirty face when he came home. We played on the couch before bedtime. The kids enjoyed jumping up and down on the big pillows.

I was feeling exhausted as I've pushed my body too hard to get a lot of things done the past couple weeks. I'm in the process of standardizing charts for the book with my co-author Bruce...there are 103 of them. That doesn't include the bizillion tables not put in the book but will be put on a website as additional evidence of our claims. The editors' assistant just announced yesterday that we needed the charts standardized by tomorrow to stay on track with the publication date. We thought we had a couple more weeks. Plus I have a paper that has to get done this weekend. Ugh. I was so exhausted that I decided to go to bed at 9PM b/c I wasn't going to be productive with a headache caused by sleep deprivation.

This morning, Jeff walked into the kids' bedroom and said "Good morning!" to Miss R. She said "No!" but smiled. "No!" is a consistent theme in our house.

I was mad at Henry this morning. When I got him out of the car, he ran for it, about fifty feet from the vehicle. Luckily, it was on a sidewalk, but still. I had to grab Miss R and run after him. She was mad about being taken from the vehicle so quickly (she usually likes to take a couple minutes). Henry fell and scrapped his knee in the process. I doubt that he'll learn from the experience that listening to mom is best.

KATE: "Do we run away from Mommy?"
HENRY: "OK."
KATE: "NO!"
HENRY: "No."
KATE: "Let's go over this again. Do we run away from Mommy?"
HENRY: "OK."
KATE: "NO!"
HENRY: "No."
KATE: "Do we run away from Mommy?"
HENRY: "OK...No."

I just received an upsetting call from Miss R's caseworker. Apparently, an aunt who lives in another state (and has never met Miss R) has passed her Arizona background check. She still has to pass her state's background check. But once that happens, she will be considered as a permanent placement. I'm upset. I'm angry. We know from the caseworker that this is a person who KNEW what the bio parents were doing. She took a sibling (now about 14) from the family several years ago, but she left the two other siblings who as a result have problems now. Not small ones either. She KNEW and did NOTHING. Supposedly, CPS doesn't like to place kids in homes where there is NO attachment (not possible since this aunt lives in another state far away...supposedly). Will CPS really follow those guidelines OR decide that blood kin is best b/c they don't have a "record" even if they have poor judgment (as evidenced by letting stuff happen, not reporting it to authorities)? In the meantime, we'll just have to hope that CPS comes to the conclusion that kin who let kids suffer are probably not the best choice as a child's parental figure (duh-ha, duh-ha, and 1+1=2) and that attachment matters. Miss R is attached is US. She is. She loves us, and we love her. A point not in our favor is that our skin colors are different. No matter what the public rhetoric is about tolerance and acceptance, from what I gather from the message boards, social workers don't like mixing and matching.