Biting

I am ready to literally strangle Dessa.

Last Friday, I received a call from her teacher saying that she had been biting, or pretending to bite, a child at school. She had also done this the previous Friday. Now, this is something that we have been working on for quite some time. It has come up in therapy repeatedly.

I emailed dad and Dessa's therapist, Lezli, asking for advice. Dessa was supposed to attend a sleepover for Guilee's birthday that night, followed by Guilee's actual party on Saturday, and I was planning on hosting a party for Dessa at the Mayan the following Friday, Dessa's birthday. My gut reaction was to cancel all her plans, Guilee's party and her own. But then I started feeling guilty about that.

I received advice from both dad and Lezli, and after thinking about it, I decided to not let her attend the sleepover that night, but if she behaved the rest of the day and the next morning, I would allow her to attend the actual birthday party on Saturday. Lezli and I discussed this and we both thought this would be a big deal for her and it would stop the bad behavior.

So, she threw a fit when I told her about the sleepover. But it wasn't anything near what I was expecting. And then she was fine. I let her go to the party on Saturday and spend a few hours after the party with Guilee.

Dessa had a session on Monday with Lezli. I was off work that day (having taken Annee to the doctor and finding out she possibly had mono) so I attended with her. We started out discussing the biting incident on Friday. Dessa was so nonchalant about it. She made it seem like it was no big deal to lose the sleepover and that it hadn't even fazed her to loose out on it.

Lezli and I were both worried about this. After much discussion, we agreed that I should cancel Dessa's party that was planned for Friday at the Mayan. We were discussing this, and it still didn't seem to bother Dessa at all. So, to make it more real, I got out my cell phone and started texting everyone that the partywas cancelled.

That was when she started crying. She did her usual fit of begging, saying she really wanted to have the party, etc. It was a mild fit, but not unexpected. She was calm well before the end of the session. Lezli had mentioned that I MIGHT think about rescheduling the party for some time in the future if Dessa behaved well. We also decided that for Friday night, we would stay home and clean the house, so that we didn't replace the party with something fun.

I knew there was a problem when Dessa didn't seem at all upset when I was telling Annee about cancelling the party. Annee was more upset than Dessa was! Then, this morning, when Tyler was asking about going to the Mayan still, (it was his choice of restaurant when I gave the kids each a chance to choose where we will eat out when I got our tax return), I said that I would be taking him and Annee, but not Dessa.

Then the fit started again. She was raging about how I never said she couldn't go out for a "family dinner" and it wasn't fair. And she was right, to a point. I had never told her I wouldn't be taking her to the Mayan for dinner, I just decided that was part of cancelling her party, that she wouldn't get to join us for dinner there either.

So I left her at mom's this morning upset about that, but still saying her party would be rescheduled in the future.

So, today, around 1ish, I received a call from the vice principal at Dessa's school. She said she had bitten a boy during lunch and then blatantly defied the hall monitors when they tried to re-direct her.

I don't know what else to do. Starting today, she will not be allowed to watch t.v., use the computer or any other electronic game, color, or do anything she thinks is fun. She will do her homework and sit on the couch and read at mom's after school, and spend lots of time in her room at home.

Other than this, I don't know what else I can possibly do!! I really thought cancelling her party would stop this. I just don't get why she keeps doing this. It makes no sense to me at all. NONE.

Workplace Woes

I have ready many articles that talk about annoying things that co-workers can do. For the most part, I have had few issues with my co-workers over the years.

Until now. I have to say, the articles are right; one of the worst things you can do in an office is to make smelly food!

I have a co-worker that is in a cubicle right behind me. Yousef is great. He is friendly, nice, and works hard. But, lately, his food has been SO smelly! It has literally made me nauseous every day this week!

I know his wife packs his lunch, and he talks about how good his lunches have been lately. But when the putrid smell of some sort of sesame chicken is wafting through the office, it is not nice. As I am generally the only one in the office at the time, I don't know that anyone else has noticed. Most everyone here leaves the building for lunch. Yousef and I are the few that eat here almost daily.

I don't want to say anything to Yousef, but it is getting really hard to work around lunch time at all. I am really thinking I may start bringing food I don't have to heat up and going to an empty space on a different floor to have my lunch. I try to make my food smell up the place, but it never gets through the horrible smells of his lunches.

I really hope I have never been the cause of this problem. I send out a general apology to anyone in case I have. It is awful to have to work through!

"Joyfully" Endure to the End

One of my favorite mantras is "endure to the end". I chant it to myself constantly. It is the motto I live by.

I am adding something to that motto: Joyfully Endure to the End.

I read this in an talk by President Uchtdorf to the Priesthood session of the last General Conference. He was speaking to the "retiring" generation who might think they have done enough and can rest for a time. However, I found it very powerful.

I have spent the last few years "enduring" to the end. I have struggled through things, gotten through a lot of tough times, and just basically survived. I am done with that. I want to start JOYFULLY enduring to the end.

I want to be able to enjoy my time with my kids. I want to enjoy my life, not to think of it as something I have to do, but something I want to do. I want to stop thinking about how bad things are and look at how good they are.

I have been getting daily little emails called Daily Gems from the church website. Today's is from that talk by President Uchtdorf (which led me to read the whole thing,) and says:

"The Lord doesn't expect us to work harder than we are able. He doesn't (nor should we) compare our efforts to those of others. Our Heavenly Father asks only that we do the best we can—that we work according to our full capacity, however great or small that may be." Dieter F. Uchtdorf, "Two Principles for Any Economy," Ensign, Nov. 2009, 56

I have not been working to my full capacity. I keep fooling myself saying I am. And maybe for the time, it was my full capacity. But I know the truth. I know I have so much more to offer. I don't have to lie in bed all weekend. I (not to mention my kids) don't deserve that. I deserve to be happy, and obviously what I am doing is not making me happy.

So, my new mantra is "Joyfully Endure to the End". I will strive to look at each day as a gift, instead of a drudgery. After all, "men are that they might have joy." Well, this woman is going to start having some joy!

Bizarre Dreams

I had the most bizarre dream last night. We were moving our offices at work, but there were a lot of people from my past there moving offices also. People like Krista and Shannon who lived behind me while growing up. And there were a few people from the Academy there also. It was like I had been in this office since I was like 10, and we were packing everything up and moving it.

It was strange, because like my current office space, I had very little to pack. I fit everything of mine into 2 boxes, and that includes like the phone, the desk organizer, and other office items currently on my desk. The other people had boxes and boxes of stuff.

I don't know where it came from, but it was completely weird. My kids were there, Jess showed up to help, mom and dad were there. Weird.