Christmas Day was a bit strained. Although the boys were thrilled by their new scooters, their happy mood quickly evaporated like a teaspoon of water in the Mojave, and we had the usual sequence of meltdowns, bad mouthing, and so on. It gets tiring after a while.
Dimcho continues to ramp up his meltdowns, making demands he knows will not be met and having a screaming fit, throwing things, hitting people, and so on. He's smaller so it's easier to take, and it's interesting to see his anger issues emerge, when he was so placid and cheerful in the beginning.
It rained this morning, but stopped enough that we could go to the playground and ride scooters. There was some friction when Elisey fell in a small puddle and wanted to go home (the boys have this weird aversion, even phobia, to getting this clothes wet, certainly something drilled into them at the orphanage) but Dimcho wanted to stay. Later, Dimcho was ready to go but Elisey wanted to go. Finally, as we were leaving Dimcho decided he didn't want to go home and had a meltdown. Perhaps you see a common thread running through these events.
We have spent part of the rest of this morning building a furniture fort, which Elisey likes doing, but he tended to just shove furniture together, without thought of access. So today I showed him how to line up chairs in a row so there was a little space inbetween. Dimcho loved hiding there, but Elisey seemed more interested in accreting furniture to the fort.
After that we had a nice time when Elisey drew with Donna and I played blocks with Dimcho. If we had more time during the day like that, we would be less stressed.
I have a little more time to write the blog because our in-home helper is here, playing blocks with the boys.
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