Um, I Love My Job.

This isn't going to be a long post, just a little post to tide you over until I get to some longer upcoming posts.

I have had a pretty great last couple of weeks at my job. I work as a visitation monitor for supervised visits between parents and children. Sometimes, our clients have been separated by family services; other times, domestic violence between the parents had occurred and the parents are no longer together. These kids have experienced some serious abuse or neglect, or they may have witnessed some awful interactions.

If you didn't know, I LOVE kids, so I love my job. This week, the highlights of my work week are as follows:

1.) One of my male clients, six years old, decided to take my blood pressure with the play doctor set his brother had received as a Christmas present. He told me that my blood pressure was fine, but prescribed two Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal pieces for medicine. Yummy!

2.) Two of the girls I monitor, two and five, love to bring me items from the play kitchen. They bring me everything that they can, expecting me to balance it all on my lap. Often, something goes tumbling. This week, they also brought me two babies that I was expected to feed. They keep me busy!

3.) I was able to leave early one night last week. I regularly monitor a particular visitation (a five-year-old boy). When I left, the mom was sitting in our waiting room and I let her know that another monitor was with her son. "She's even better than I am," I told her. "I doubt that," the mother replied. "He really likes you."

4.) Last week marked the close of a case that I had monitored from the start. There had been serious domestic violence between the parents and one of the parents is mentally ill. The little girl (three when visits started, although she turned four during the course of our visits) was absolutely adorable. She was one of my favorite clients. It broke my heart to see her go, but the parents were able to arrange unsupervised visitations. It made perfect sense that this would happen - I would provide a safe environment for the child to interact with one parent and, eventually, she would start visiting outside of our agency. Still, it hurt to see her go. As she hugged me, I couldn't believe I wouldn't see her again. I had looked forward to her visit every single week. She and the parent she lived with waved to me as they drove out of the parking lot. I nearly cried - what a bittersweet moment. But I guess it's the kind of moment that I'll have to get used to in this line of work.