So so so blessed!

Sorry this has taken me a little bit longer to update everybody on my major praise that I mentioned on Facebook late Monday night. I was so exhausted for some reason by the end of that day that I literally crashed that night - still fully clothed, flopped down on top of all the covers, and with over half the lights on throughout the apartment I felt a little sheepish waking up the next morning and realizing what I’d done!

Yesterday was better but still distractable with putting together ***drumroll, please*** my praises of both a regular toddler bed and a convertable bed that transitions from a crib to a toddler daybed to a full-size bed frame!!!!!!!!! Granted, they aren’t the twin-size bunkbeds I had been eyeing at Walmart for almost $200, but God blessed me with these as gifts from a complete stranger who had heard of my hopes and dreams of wanting to foster adopt. I still need to get a crib mattress for the second bed (the lady was only able to give me one of those) along with some bedding sheets and bed wetting pads and one more pillow but God has helped in covering the more major expense of the beds themselves! I was just a little hyper with the happiness from receiving them that night before I crashed!

Other unexpected blessings have included a large bag of miscellaneous toddler to early-gradeschool-age toys, a large bag of childrens clothing that ranged from size 18 months all the way up to size 12, and a small toddler-sized ride-on toy. The bedroom is looking a lot more like it belongs to two little girls and the living room is looking pretty chaotic! My next chore is getting that one back under control

As far as the PRIDE training sessions, last Saturday we had a double seesion day (6 very long hours) and covered the topics of strengthening family relationships, both those with the biological family for possible reunification and with the foster family in learning it’s OK to make new attachments as well without the child feeling guilty in doing so. We also discussed discipline; learning the differences between discipline and punishment and methods of discipline that may of been different from ways that we were brought up with but that are recommended for working with children who have suffered trauma from abuse and neglect since physical punishment cannot be used under any circumstances with these children. Last night was session seven, continueing family relationships, which leaves us with only one more regular session before our final session which is going to be done up very differently from the rest with a whole panel of speakers who will be sharing with us and allowing a good bit of time for questions and answers. Session eight is going to be tomorrow night (Feb. 19th) and the final session will be Monday of next week (Feb. 23rd). After that will be a second attempt at having Orientation (Feb. 28th) since the first attempt got snowed out on us; it still feels wierd having Orientation last