Sunday

Things have been good here this week. Rebecca is doing incredibly well with the potty-training. She rarely has accidents at home, and even when we're out and about, she will tell us she needs to go to the bathroom. The car is the most unreliable place. She's quite proud of her pretty panties! We're so proud of our big girl! This Wednesday's movie was Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, about which, Rebecca told me, "I not like it. I not like that movie. I wanna go home!" Apparently, that was indeed what she'd told Nanny Rebecca midway through the movie - that she didn't like the movie and wanted to go home. So that's exactly what they did! We've been having really hot weather this week...and this weekend...and into next week...and we've probably still got three more months of hot weather. Rebecca has enjoyed being able to swim almost every day.

Two and a half weeks into my internship and things are going well. I'm building up a caseload, as well as doing intakes and crisis interventions. I'll be starting a testing case tomorrow. It is, indeed, a far cry from the way I've spent my clinical time for the last two years. At Casa Colina, all my patients were insured, most had double coverage, plus some long-term care insurance that was footing their bill. The community mental health model is quite different! All of our clients are severely or persistently mentally ill and indigent. We're essentially slaves to the Medi-Cal system. It is great experience, and there are few other environments in which I'd have so much exposure to really gritty psychiatric diagnoses.

I'm particularly excited about a new opportunity that I get to be a part of. All the kinks haven't been worked out yet, but it looks as though I'll be spending one day a week working in the Perinatal program. These are all moms who have either been court ordered to attend the program or who are voluntarily participating as a part of their reunification plan to get their kids back after having them taken away by CFS. These women get a LOT of services for the five months that they are in the program - transportation to and from the program, childcare for their children while they're doing the program, hands-on parenting classes, group therapy, individual therapy, medical care, drug/alcohol treatment, and intensive case management. When I was meeting with the director, she asked me if I knew much about street drugs. I can honestly say that was the first time I'd ever been asked that question on an interview, and it was especially odd that my lack of awareness of drug lingo was actually a drawback! I'm sure that I'll be getting quite an education from these women! I will only be working with the mothers - even though the kids are there in childcare, I won't be doing anything with them. That's a good thing, because not only is child psych not my forte, just seeing some of the fetal alcohol syndrome and drug exposed babies during my brief tour was quite enough for me, thank you! Assuming things work out the way they look to at this point, I'll be doing intakes and testing on Mondays, crisis intervention and individual therapy on Tuesday and Wednesday, at the Perinatal program to do group and individual therapy on Thursday, and then Friday is our intern training day.

Yesterday, we met up with Vincent, Madeline, Paul, and Ashley and Rachel for lunch at Cheesecake Factory. Rebecca talks about Ashley and Rachel as though she sees them all the time, and she was delighted to spend some time with her older girlfriends. They're so sweet with her too! They ended up at another table next to ours to eat their dessert. Ramy had followed them to be sure Rebecca didn't fall out of her chair or whatever. Rebecca told him to "go sit down." I think having adult supervision was cramping her style. Afterwards, we shopped a bit at Santa Anita Mall and then went to Ikea. This morning we went to 7:30 a.m. mass and had Bravo Burger breakfast quesadillas afterward. So a pretty relaxing and fun weekend.