Salinda and Gabby are home

After weeks, nearly months of discussing it, I picked up Salinda and Gabby today and brought them home. Gabby has grown so much. I can't believe I missed 6 weeks of her life. RIght now Bart is feeding Gabby as I type right across from me. He's so gentle and nurturing. It's fun to watch him.

It felt sort of like I was kidnapping them. Salinda was so settled there and it makes me angry that the county stepped in to question our decision. I just held her and fed her and she is so much bigger and has so much more attitude now than she did six weeks ago. She can hold up her head and definitely expresses herself more.

I am really happy to have Salinda home. She has grown up a lot since October. But it is clear she doesn't want to be here. And that is hard for me. And I'm going to have to really be careful not to step in and try to parent her much when she hasn't been parented and is a parent herself. She will just be one more adult child who is living here. Hopefully she will choose to be helpful and cooperative or at least not disruptive until she can make a good decision about what she wants to do.

So we begin this journey -- not sure how long it will last or how it will go, but we will take it one day at a time. It is going to require a lot more patience than I've ever had -- not to live with her and Gabby, but to keep my mouth shut when my opinion is not requested.

And for me that's pretty hard.