Update

I want to thank everyone for the wonderfully kind and supportive comments on my last post.  It has sort of felt like I and my household have been involved in an Olympic emotional weightlifting event of late.  Just when we encounter on issue and handle it successfully, we are only just taking a breath of relief and then they are putting on the next plate.

 

But we have decided to allow the young lady to live with us.  In discussions with the mother earlier this week we came to the conclusion that we could do this a lot more informally than outright guardianship, which provided us with a tremendous amount of relief.  We’ll be in very active communication with the mom, but they young lady (you can see I still haven’t given her a nickname yet) will reside in our household as long as she can work to be a part of our rules and rhythms.  If the situation deteriorates, then the mother will be in charge of making new arrangements.

 

So far it’s actually been working.  The young lady has been making tremendous effort and you can tell she wants to make this work.  So now it becomes a test of endurance--can she sustain what she’s built and move forward with it.  When we tell people we know what we are doing, you can see that guarded “are you insane” lingering behind their eyes at the thought of doing anything like this while their lips say much kinder things.  As always, we remain cautiously optimistic.

 

On other fronts:  In the ongoing travails of potty training the heavens opened and a miracle happened.  Before the bath yesterday the little-man-who-refuses-any-attempts-currently-to-get-him-to-go-in-the-potty walked naked over to the toilet, totally unprompted or assisted, and lifted up the lid and attempted to pee in the pot!  The mom turned around and saw him doing this and could only stand there stunned glee as most of his awkward attempt flowed down the front of the porcelain.  We’ve been hit and miss (of course the pun was intended) since then on getting him back to that moment, but the mom was never so pleased to wipe up urine off the floor in her life.