We're in a mostly okay steady state. Donna and I are calmer and Elisey is calmer, although he still acts out, frequently and at times and in ways we can mostly predict, although he's hard to redirect. He also recovers faster from acting out, though we'd also like to reduce the frequency of acting out.
Dimcho acts out, too, and has his Tiny Tyrant rages, but he also seems to have more fun. When Elisey and I come home from a long walk, which is one of the best times with Elisey, we often find Dimcho and Donna having a tea party and singing nonsense songs, a moment of happy family.
The last couple of days they have played "moving" to a new house. Elisey empties out his toy box and stuffs all his and Dimcho's clothes into them, and then they talk about how they will take an airplane to their new house, and how it will have a working TV, in their bedroom, and working CD players and so on. Sometimes Donna and I are invited, sometimes not. We humor them; it seems a softer version of "running away to your best friend's house" that many kids do. I also suspect it is a way of dealing with the upheaval in their life, and their fear that they may have to move on to yet another home. In the end all their clothes get put back into their dressers and Elisey goes to sleep saying how much he loves Mama and Tatko. (Dimcho by this point has already fallen asleep in our bed after reading a couple of books.)
School will be a big change. Tomorrow we will go to the school to enroll them and talk to the principal and, we hope, their teachers. We will also start pushing to get behavioral evaluations as soon as possible in order to access services for them. Our plan is to start them actually at school on Tuesday, and only part-time, but we have to see what we can coordinate with the school.
