Blooming Radish

My RADish has bloomed.

Isn't it so pretty?

Alas, the story isn't.  The therapist picked Sissy up from school on Friday and brought her to the house when their session was over.  The look on the therapist's face was good grief, your kid drove me bonkers!  So I said, "tough time?"  And her story began.

Apparently, Sissy brought money to spend. The therapist thinking I was the one who sent her with the money was trying to be obliging.  Sissy was very distracted, disoriented, difficult to keep on task, wanted to spend every last cent and pretty much drove the therapist nutty for the hour and 15 minute session in which she had planned to do a TALKING session with Sissy.  NOT a shopping trip.

Still not cluing in to the whole story, I said to the therapist, "was this YOUR money?"  At which point, Sissy began biting her fingers which means  oh crap.  busted.

The therapist said, "no.  she brought her own money.  I assumed..."

And I turned to Sissy and said, "EXCUSE ME?"

Which was followed by her dashing into the house hollering, "I'm SORRY!  I SAID I'M SORRY!  GEEZ!  I DIDN'T KNOW!!!!"

And I said after her, "To your room.  I'll talk to you later."  And then the therapist and I got our stories straightened out, she apologized and I said, "no worries.  Consider yourself duped by my blooming RADish.  It's not the first time and it won't be the last."

I returned to Sissy who was still pleading innocence at the top of her lungs.  We had an abbreviated discussion about what I had said the night before which was, "do not bring your money."  Abbreviated because she told me other things she snuck out of the house and afraid I'd be unfair in my anger declared a personal five minute time-out.

I returned in five minutes and tried to begin again.  She told me more.  I declared another five minute personal time-out.

I went back a third time and began with, "before I begin with your consequences, is there ANYTHING else you need to tell me that might make me frustrated?"  And she proceeded to tell me that she's been up at night, walking about the house, just doing whatever and that's when she snuck the things into her backpack, that she'd been doing this "all the time" and when I asked why she told the psychiatrist the day before that she'd been sleeping just fine, no problems she said,

"I didn't want him to know."  And I declared one more personal five minute time out which was actually a full twenty minutes while I called a local RAD mom and said to ask for backup because my RADish had just bloomed.  Then I called the therapist and at her advice made alternative plans for Sissy so she would not be attending her Aunt's wedding the next day - a natural consequence.

I returned to Sissy's room, spelled it out for her, wrote a contract, signed it and taped it to her door.  Of course, that makes it sound like it was an easy thing to do.  It wasn't. It took a full  hour of her wailing and declarations of innocence and accusations of my being unjust and unfair, etc. etc.  A wonderful, blissful time was had by all.

And the wedding was beautiful.  It was the first time I had been without her for an outing since her discharge so I felt gaily free for four hours.  I tried to get someone at the reception to agree to providing childcare for the evening so I could have the rest of the night off but oddly, no one wanted to harvest my blooming RADish for me. Go figure?

WG, the flower girl

I made the dress

 The groom, his son (the ring bearer) and WG

 Bride and Father

the kids' Aunt and Papa

Saying the vows

It was so wonderful.  And I'm so proud of Aunt A and Uncle E!  And the kids are excited to have a new cousin. WG and her cousin B have decided that M will be their second-best cousin (WG and B are already first-best cousins).  AB wanted to know if he could call him UNCLE officially now and Sissy couldn't figure out how it was that Aunt A was now a mom but she'd never had a baby.