long update with pictures

I really should get back in the habit of writing in here. 

Things are going ok around here. Drama with Michael’s family, but ok otherwise. 

Parker is 6 now. He spends most the week here and then goes to Jeff’s for the weekend. He is still unhappy with this visitation arrangement but I don’t know what to do about it. He is mostly happy when he is at his dad’s but he has started getting upset again when Jeff comes to pick him up and repeatedly says he doesn’t want to go. I thought this would get easier, but it hasn’t. Divorce is so hard on kids. It almost makes me wish I could go back and just put up with Jeff’s bullshit to avoid the hurt my child has to go through, but I know he wouldn’t have been happy had I stayed either. All Jeff and I did was fight. 

I am homeschooling Parker. Mesa Public Schools offers a homeschool enrichment program and he goes twice a week to that. It is great. I love it. I’m not a fan of the online schooling curriculum, and as soon as I find some time to sit down and devise my own curriculum I will be dropping theirs. We already modify as it is. I am amazed at how advanced Parker is. He completely tested out of Kindergarten work last year. He is in the 1st grade classroom at homeschool enrichment this year, but that is because they group them by age and the grade level they’re supposed to be in. For the actual homeschool curriculum we’re doing second grade work. I did a reading assessment on him and he reads at a 4-5th grade level. 

I had to take him into a child psychologist earlier this year. Since he was at least 3 I was aware of the fact that he had ADHD. They don’t diagnose that young, but anyone who met him shared the same opinion. I said I wouldn’t treat it unless it started to cause him problems. Unfortunately it did. He could not focus for the life of him. I had to sit next to him the entire time we’d do homeschool work because if I didn’t constantly remind him to focus he would not complete a single task. The psychologist did testing and it indicated what I already knew. The psychologist suggested we try karate because it is supposed to stimulate the pre-frontal cortex which is the part of the brain that controls impulse control. We did try it and didn’t see any change after a few months. It was difficult to continue with due to the visitation schedule. Jeff moved across town to Surprise so he is 50 miles away from me now. He started medication a few months ago and there is such a huge difference in his behavior. Occasionally I’ve forgotten/chosen not to give it to him, and on those days I often wonder how I made it so long without treating the ADHD. It is frustrating for me, but most of all frustrating for him. Before medication his self-esteem started suffering and he was acting depressed (which is what convinced me it was time to do something, a depressed 6 year old is horrible).

 Guinevere is 2 now. I’m amazed at the developmental differences between her and Parker. Parker didn’t speak until well after he turned 3. Gwen is already speaking in full sentences. Her vocabulary is astounding. She is still tiny as can be and at the very bottom of the growth chart. She eats non-stop and I have no idea why she is so small. A couple months ago she had a pallid breathing spell. My friend startled her when she was unrolling a roll of toilet paper (shouted no, but she didn’t realize he was behind her so it scared the crap out of her). She screamed and then went to cry. She was doing that long silent gasp thing that you know will be followed by the loudest scream ever, except it wasn’t. Michael picked her up, all of the color drained from her face and she passed out and convulsed a few times in his arms. I grabbed her from him and after 45 seconds or so she started to come to. She was so sleepy and I struggled to keep her awake. I was moments from calling 911 and I frantically started researching if kids really could hold their breath and pass out. I discovered that she had a pallid breathing spell which occurs after overstimulation of the vagus nerve. She didn’t actually hold her breath and pass out because she was cyanotic. She lost all color which indicates that her body essentially rebooted itself. Some kids have them, although having one can be indicative of anemia or epilepsy. She had an EEG a week or so later and that can back clear. A finger prick revealed that while her iron levels are just barely under the lowest level of normal so we’re working on bringing those up. 

She is the girliest girl I know. She is obsessed with babies. Literally obsessed. We took the kids to Disneyland a couple months ago and the It’s a Small World ride was her favorite. She calls it baby house and talks about it constantly still. She makes us watch youtube videos of the ride over and over again. 
 

Things with Michael are going ok. They could be better, but that’s mostly because of his family and the drama they cause. When I married Michael it was less than a year after his mother had died. A year later we moved into the house with his dad to save money for a bigger house for ourselves. His brother lived here at the time as well. His brother is what amounts to an entitled spoiled rotten brat. He moved out to go to law school a couple months ago down in Tucson and I’m so thankful he isn’t here all the time. This is the brother that married that psychotic girl that he was divorced from barely 6 months later. But not before he got her pregnant of course. His ex-wife has been the best reality tv show that I get to watch in real life. She was arrested for extreme DUI a year ago. Her daughter was barely 5 months old at the time and had just been hospitalized for bronchiolitis and was still incredibly sick. A year later (earlier this year) she was arrested for assault on an officer and trying to strangle her mother with her own pants (in front of her 2 children, and her younger siblings and niece nonetheless). Up until Hope was a year and a half, her mother had most of the custody. The court finally temporarily removed Mollie’s custody this summer after we discovered the domestic violence arrest. They reinstated it a month later, but sadly, Mollie was too stupid to read the court ruling properly and has not realized that her custody has been reinstated. She was ordered to do drug testing, and I think she thought that after she had 8 clean drug tests she could get her daughter back, but they were not requiring her to get clean drug tests first, the court ruling was actually confusing because it didn’t explicitly state that her visitation was reinstated, it just said that the petitioners motion was denied (Chris has filed an emergency order for sole custody based on Mollie’s arrest, the judge he went before the day he filed it granted temporary sole custody to Chris and then set a court date 1 month later to present the evidence). The last line of the court ruling stated that Chris’s motion was denied, but it didn’t even refer to what the motion was so I think that’s why Mollie didn’t think she could see her. It doesn’t matter now anyway though, Chris had to file a restraining order against her because she threatened to kill him and his girlfriend. The restraining order also covers Hope. I guess Mollie has disputed it, but Chris filed for the restraining order in Tucson because that’s where he now li

ves, and their custody case is up here at the courts in phoenix. Due to a pre-existing custody case the Tucson judge said he had to transfer the case to the courts up here and they would rule on her challenge to the order, but as it stands, she is not allowed contact with Hope. She hasn’t seen Hope since May 30th. I used to think that it was awful that Chris was trying to take custody away from Mollie, but Mollie gets progressively crazier day after day and I honestly think Hope is in danger being there. They’re now trying to get the custody order permanently adjusted so that Mollie gets no overnights and has to have supervised visitation.

I guess I went off on a tangent there. But yeah. The thing about all this is is that this is 100% Chris’s fault. He knew she was nuts before he married her and told no one. He continued to sleep with her after we all found out she was nuts and since they’re diehard catholics (he runs a pro-life charity) they use no birth control. He used to work, but then he quit his job during the custody case so he could tell the judge he was available to take full custody of Hope. He then decided to go to law school. Kevin has paid all of the lawyer fees and pretty much pays for everything for Chris. He turned 30 last week by the way. It is sad and ridiculous and I fully believe Kevin is the reason Chris is so damn lazy. He coddles him and throws money at him like its going out of style. It has led Chris to have an incredibly entitled attitude and he was no pleased when we moved in and ruined his cushy ass lifestyle he had going on. He had turned his bedroom into an office and was sleeping in Michael’s old room and when we moved in he could no longer take up 2 bedrooms. 

His girlfriend is so diehard catholic I’m kind of amazed she isn’t a nun. She is the one caring for Hope while Chris spends all day at law school. It makes me sad for Hope because his girlfriend hates kids. Like literally, she has no patience (significantly less than me and I practically have zero patience) and her expectations of children are unrealistic. All she ever does is complain about Hope and in reality Hope is one of the sweetest most easy going children you will ever meet. While I’m glad Chris is out of the house, I’m sad they moved because for the first year and a half of her life she was always around and her and Gwen were best friends. I miss her and it makes me sad that his girlfriend is the one caring for her because in all honesty, Hope deserves better. His girlfriend of course hates me because I’m heathen whore. Chris’s marriage still isn’t annulled (2 years later, way to go Phoenix diocese), and she maintains that she will not marry him if his marriage isn’t annulled. They have Hope call her mama, but if his past marriage doesn’t get annulled she won’t marry him and I guess will walk out of their lives. It infuriates me that he’s putting his child at risk of losing another figure. Why the hell is Hope calling her mama if she isn’t fully committed to the relationship? She gossips with Michael’s Aunt Mary about me (the one who stirred up all kinds of drama last year), and I really don’t like her. I tried to give her a chance but she spends her entire time here judging me because I let my children be children and play and make messes (heaven forbid). 
 

Drama continues because of Michael’s dad. When we first moved in I thought he was one of the nicest most generous people I’ve ever met. I’ve since them come to realize he has some very serious human flaws. He gossips worse than a woman and secretly stirs up drama himself. My current qualm with him is the lies he’s telling us. All the drama in the family came to head this summer and we had  family discussion and discussed how we need to act like a family and do things together. Except they’ve planned 2 vacations since then and Kevin has invited everyone except us. I made Michael confront him on excluding us and he flat out lied. I’ve been avoiding him since he got back from visiting Michael’s other brother who just got back from Afghanistan up in Washington. I can’t hide forever though, and I think we will be moving out pretty soon, whether we’re ready to financially or not. 
 

I’ve been all kinds of busy the past 7 or 8 months, but I’ll have to write a friends only entry about that.  

My friend Sean lives in our condo and there was all kinds of drama related to that. Last month his ex-girlfriend killed herself in the condo. She drank drain cleaner and was found in the bathtub the next morning. She was schizophrenic and I was doing everything I could to help her, but there was only so much I could do. She didn’t want to work or ever be responsible for herself and there’s only so much I can do. She died owing me $5000 in back rent. Sean broke up with her 3 months before she killed herself. I understand why he did, but for a person who is that unstable it wasn’t the best thing to do. She was medicated at the time, but didn’t want to be on her medication. She heard 4 different voices in her head and she liked them. She was upset when I told her she couldn’t live in my house unless she was medicated (unmedicated she set a trash can on fire in a bedroom, she was literally a danger to herself and everyone around her, 2 years ago the state hospitalized her in a mental hospital for 2 weeks and then she was under state care for an entire year because of how dangerous she was to herself). She lost her AHCCCS healthcare because she didn’t apply for renewal. Because of that she wasn’t able to get it back because Arizona cut all funding for new AHCCCS adults without children, even mental health patients. Magellan continued to cover her for doctors visits and psych meds, but it was hell getting the meds every month). Getting ahold of her doctor was also difficult because neither her or Sean would do the work long enough to get ahold of him. She ended up giving me medical authority to discuss her condition with her doctor and I handled that the best I could. Unfortunately I couldn’t force her to do anything. The day she killed herself I actually discussed calling her doctor with Sean because I noticed she had withdrawn a little bit. It wasn’t anything abnormal because she periodically withdrew, but I was concerned that she may be succumbing to depression. Sean told me that she was fine and I didn’t need to, but I had planned on talking to her myself the next week. Unfortunately after we all left the house that evening she drank drain cleaner. I’ve spent the past month going through her things to send to her father. It has been difficult and sad. This is the first person I’ve been close to that has passed away, and in such a horrific manner. I hope she has finally found peace.
 

 

This is a lot longer than I thought it would be. I need to go do some school work with Parker so I’ll leave with some pictures.

  

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