It has been a month ...

since my last blog post. M has been home for 1 1/2 years (incredibly hard to believe that it has been that long) ... and we're still struggling a bit. To be perfectly honest, it has been a very hard 18 months. We have our good days, and then we have our not-so-good days. We've had a very rough few weeks. M has started scratching herself again. ... and when I saw scratching, I don't mean taking her fingernails and making tiny little scratches on her body - I mean digging her pinky nail into her face and scraping the skin off of her face. She has a really bad scar from Christmas when she did this, and now she is going to have a scar on her nose from doing the same thing a few days ago. It makes me want to cry.

We decided - at the last minute - to take a mini trip. We really needed to get away, and we thought it would be good to not have any of the distractions of home. Last night out on the balcony of the hotel, M sat down, looked at me, and then took her hand and was going to dig her nails into her face again. :-(

She has really gone back into her shell again. I have the hardest time getting her to smile. I was looking back at some pictures of her, and she is not smiling in any of them. She always looks so withdrawn and unhappy in photos.

It's so hard, because I have two very active boys. (4 & 3) They are always needing something, so it makes it really hard to put all of my focus on M. This afternoon I looked at G and told him that I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Some days are so hard.

I'm exhausted, so I'm going to wrap this up. I'll try and be better about blogging, but I'm not going to promise anything. Most days I'm just trying to keep my head above water! ;-)

Have a wonderful, and safe 4th of July.