Joel turns three...who is this kid?

For Joel's third birthday we had a Blue's Clues Birthday party! Joe came and played Blue's clues with us and we had so much fun! This year at school Joel's teacher moved up with him. He had Mrs. Wickman again. This year was a bit more trying for his teacher and I. Who is this kid? He is disrespectful, mean, and doesn't listen. We kept on doing what we were doing. We were consistent with his punishment/consequences and he just wasn't responding the way we thought he should. I felt that maybe if we kept doing what we were doing then he would fall in line. The weekend of Thanksgiving we found a new place to live. A cute little townhome in South Arlington. It was a two bedroom, one and a half bathroom with a two car garage. I felt like this was a good time to get a handle on my hoarding. I started cleaning things out and the ultimate goal was to make the second half of the garage into a kind of a playroom for Joel. We had some riding toys out there and his train table. He loved being outside and seemed much happier at the new house. The next week my husband, Josh, lost his job. We were devastated. Josh looked for a new job and found one...then they changed their mind and he lost that one too. The one thing keeping us together was our faith. We knew that God had a plan and that God was going to take care of us and provide for our every need. And he did.

Joel's behavior got worse. We weren't sure what was going on but assumed it was him feeding off of what was going on at home. We did our best to keep things 'normal' for as long as we could. After a long, hard talk we decided that we couldn't keep our home any longer. We had to move...into my parents' house. This was a hard decision but one that was best for our family at the time. Josh had just started school and wasn't able to work full time. On February 14 we moved out. Josh had started working at a company called Omni Direct communications. We were very grateful for the opportunity for Josh to use the skills he already had to provide for his family. We did our best to get caught up on all of our bills. Moving out was a very difficult and very emotional process for me. Joel stayed at my mom's while I, with the help of my sister, cleaned out my garage, house. We ended up filling up 2 and a half dumpsters that day. All my 'stuff' was gone. We kept the essentials but the rest was gone.

The behaviors we were seeing only seemed to get worse. We all felt like maybe he was having a hard time adjusting to his new surroundings...once again. We patiently waited for him to grow out of it. He never did.