Pictures.

I had put up the pictures I have printed of Lizzy's family for safe keeping, kinda. She is not exactly gentle with them and I really need to make copies of them for when she really ruins them. Anyway, she had not seen them in a WHILE and stubbled upon them. She was excited to see them and then, because she has no attention span, she also wanted to brush her teeth about two seconds after mooning over the pictures in her hand. I said ok and got her set up to brush her teeth and took the pictures and put them on top of her dresser so she wouldn't get them wet and then walked away.

After she lost interest in brushing her teeth she came running to me "My pictures! My pictures!" Not happily, concerned. I said, "You wanted to brush your teeth so I put them up." She got a little sad at this point and I put her in my lap and said, "Are you sad because you want to go see papa?" She said yes. I gave her a big hug and then told her, "Papa loves you very much and you love him very much. Papa is going to live at his house and you are not going to live at that house. Papa loves you, but he will live at that house and you will live at a different house."

I underestimate her sometimes I thing. She started crying. Not a selfish cry, just a sad "I know what you just said and I know it's true" cry. It didn't last forever and she perked up.

A couple days later, maybe more like a couple weeks, "Papa" called to talk to her and I let her talk to him. When she is on the phone she is still hard to understand and sometimes doesn't even say real words, but this time instead of talking about going to his house she kept asking when he was going to "Come over" to Lizzy's house, our house. She has never done this before and I feel like her little heart has taken a step towards understanding that she won't be going back to Papa's house.

It is still hard because I feel like I can't tell her she is staying here forever, nor do I have any idea how to get her ready to move anywhere else if that ends up happening. I don't talk about forever, I just talk about today for now. "Today, you live here, in this house. Papa lives at his house."

She doesn't ask about anyone else. No Mom...no legal dad. I know she is very unconcerned with legal dad obviously. It always interests me to see how she reacts towards her mom...when she talks to her on the phone she usually just asks her mom if she can talk to Papa now because she doesn't understand that they aren't together anymore.