Red Kid, Blue Kid - a journey into foster care

What it's like saying no

2012-06-19T14:47:00.002-05:00

This is the longest I have been away from the blog - over three months this time! I have had many wonderful ideas to blog about, but never seem to make the time. I am always too busy, too tired, too unmotivated, too covered in children.

But sometimes something gets to you that you just have to tell someone, and sometimes you feel so strongly that you just have to tell everyone.

And right now I can't think of anything else anyway.

My mind is overwhelmed by how miserable it was one hour ago when I had to say no. To my kids.

Not the kids living in our home now, but two small children who entered our lives last August and were gone within the month. Our shortest placement of the five we have had so far. And ever-so exhausting. They were our first sibling pair, our first toddler, our first possible developmental delay, our first experience with what a pain WIC is for a child older than an infant. And like all of our babies, even though they were with us for just a month, we loved them.

And today I told them no.

Their case worker called. "You may not remember me - I placed some children with you last year...I guess you know why I am calling..." They are returning to care. The relative they were placed with last year has given notice that she can no longer care for them. There are no other relatives they have found. And now they are looking for someone to adopt them.

My first thought, by nature is "Yes, they can come back!" After all, they're our kids. Even if they were only here for a month, they were ours for a time, and in some sense will always be a little bit ours. But that thought lasted for the very briefest moment before I remember the other four children in our home, and the chaos that already is our life.

Big Daddy and Diva have been with us for nine months now. They are scheduled to return home by October if everything goes as planned - but when does everything go as planned, especially in foster care? The biggest change in their current journey is the baby brother due to arrive next month, who will most likely put a little wrinkle in bio-mom's class attendance to complete her services. She should be able to make up the classes she will miss, but I don't know how they schedule and reschedule those, so I have no idea how that will effect their reunification time line. CASA said the judge could possibly give her a six month extension to complete her services since she has been doing everything she is supposed to do, completing her service plan as required. If that were to happen, that would mean that we would have six kids in our house (Big Daddy almost 2, Diva 3.5, Pinball close to 3, Tank 1.5 and our bio-boys Jacob 10 and Gabriel 8) for at least 11 months. Some people can handle a houseful of 6 children, including two three year olds and two toddlers. I even know some of those people. To the best of my knowledge, I am not one of those people.

And then my greatest fear - that something might go wrong with Big Daddy and Diva's reunification and they, along with their baby brother, wind up needing an adoptive home. At that point we would have seven children in our home. Seven! (never mind the fact that we would first have to become certified as a group home, not just a foster home, in order to have more than six children in our care) My head spins at the thought. But at that point, how would you then look your seven children in the eyes and say "You can stay, you can stay, you can stay, you can stay... you and you and maybe you have to go."

So today, I told two of my kids no. And what was it like? No eloquent way to say it.

It really, really sucked.

You know what would be awesome?

2012-02-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

"If we adopted Big Daddy and Diva!" That was Jake's (10 years old) conversation opener tonight.

"Wouldn't it? I mean, it would be so cool to watch them grow up. And Gabe, Diva really likes you, and Big Daddy really likes me, and they both even call Mom Auntie Becca!"

Gabe's (age7) response "Yeah, but look at everything mom is going through!" Haha! I guess it's nice he's noticed that I have been putting some work into this mother-of-four thing! But they have no idea how these kinds of interactions have impacted me too.

Diva and Big Daddy have been with us for just short of five months - a week longer than Gizmo, who previously had been our longest placement. In these five months, our bio boys have become more attached to the littles than any other kids we have had, and the littles have certainly become more attached to all of us than any others. In just this past week I have heard all three bigger kids refer to each other as "my brother" and "my baby sister" - never a reference to "foster brother" or "foster sister", as they had always said before. And Diva, who had called me "Mom" a couple of times early on to either get my attention or just play with the idea of calling me mom because the Bigs did, has several times called me "Mommy" this week, not when talking to me but when talking to others when she didn't know I was listening. "Mommy did my hair", "Mommy got that for me." It has a different feel, a different flavor when she is not doing it for my attention. And my little Big Daddy - even he seems to be hugging us more, leaning his head softly on our shoulders, just wanting to be held by any of the other 5 of us, just to be with us.

We aren't even half way into this journey, if their case follows the track layed out by DFPS (Department of Family and Protective Services):

twelve months for their bio-parents to work their services (which I hear they are trying to do), then either reunification or termination of parental rights (TPR);
if rights are terminated, they have one chance to appeal, which buys them another six months to work their services;
if rights are then terminated, they have a realtive who says they will take them, but not until TPR.
DFPS will need to verify and approve the relatives which could take a couple more months

So all told, in an ideal DFPS world, their case would be complete and permanency established in a maximum of 20 or so months - and we are just five months in so far. How attached will we all be by then? How will that transition go for our little ones, Big Daddy having spent over half his life with us, Diva over a third of hers? For our bigs, who want to keep them despite how much they seem to constantly make their big brothers absolutely crazy? This is the attachment that people fear, the one that makes so many say "I could never do what you do!" But also the attachment that makes me so glad that we ARE doing what we are doing. You hear the foster care horror stories of foster kids being neglected and abused by those put in place to save them from that fate, and it is good not be a horror story. It is good to hear the kids' CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) mention how she has been able to reassure the kids' parents that they are safe in a good, loving home. We are blessed to be able to teach all four of our kids how to love each other completely, to look out for each other as brothers and sister despite coming from different places, different birth families, different races, different realities. And to hopefully be able to offer their parents peace of mind that their children are safe and loved so that they can focus on healing their family and coming back stronger, I pray. The heartache that likely awaits us seven to thirteen months down the road will be brutal. I pray all of our kids will be able to one day see it as worth the pain to have had this chance to love each other. They will be completely different people because of the impact each had on the other - I see that as an amazing gift for them that many don't get a chance at. Hopefully they will too.

An unexpected hug

2012-01-22T23:51:00.002-06:00

Walking through the grocery store produce section yesterday, Diva and Big Daddy noisily making their presence know in the front of our "car cart," an older woman walked up to me and asked "Are these your babies?" Before I could even finish my answer of "Yes, for now!" she was leaning in for a big hug. Though caught a bit off guard, I returned the sweet hug, and as the woman pulled back she held my shoulders at a distance and explained. "I grew up in the deep South, and you never would have seen... this..." she said, close to tears, as she swept an arm past me and my dark babies. "It makes me happy when I see families like yours." "It makes me happy when we are well-received," I replied. I thank God for the parents who raised her, 70-odd years ago in Memphis, Tennessee, and taught her to love beyond color in a place where that was so very rare. And I thank God for everyone out there who embraces our colorful family, and the others out there like us. I wish it weren't a big deal, but it is. And I thank you.

little sister / baby brother

2012-01-20T11:56:00.000-06:00

Twice this week my heart has melted as I heard our seven year old talking to friends and say either "What? I did it for my little sister!" and "My baby brother did such and such.." He didn't say "my foster sister" or "my foster brother," which is a change. When we first started fostering and people would ask our boys "Is this your baby sister/brother?" they would hesitate and stammer and have to think before they got out "Well, no, he's my foster brother." But it's different this time. That line seems to have blurred a little more, the connection become a little closer. This thrills me for them, to see them becoming such loving big brothers to these children they have known for just 4 short months, but it scares me for them too. There is a plan in place for our little Diva and Big Daddy, and their parents are working their services in order to earn the right to parent their children again. If they are not able to do that, there is a relative waiting in the wings to take them in once parental rights are terminated, but that is at least another 8-14 months away. In that time my four kids will only become more inextricably attached to each other as time goes on, and that goodbye is going to be ever more painful for them to bear, and for me to watch them go through. And yet I wouldn't trade a minute of it. Diva and Big Daddy feel safe and loved. Jake and Gabe are developing into such amazing, caring young men. Gabriel gets a chance to be a big brother, which completes him, but would probably never happen if he were waiting for me to decide to have another biological child. Jacob is learning to nurture in ways that don't come naturally to him, but that he is perfecting so well. And Bill and I get to sit back and be blessed by it all. By the knowledge that we are making a difference for these two littles placed in our care just for now, for these two bigs we have been entrusted to nurture and grow into men of integrity, faith and character, by watching each other give everything we have to this parenting thing the best we can for the children that need us, and loving each other even more as we are amazed by the others' capacity to love. When our babies leave it will be excruciating and painful and we will probably ask ourselves why we do this to ourselves. And then we'll probably do the laundry, change the crib sheets, and sign up for another round. Because as much as it may hurt us, it blesses us even more.

What if you stopped asking what if?

2012-01-20T10:40:00.001-06:00

I will write my own real post soon, but for now I want to post someone else's story that I read on a support group on Face Book. If you keep waiting for the "right time" to do something, like foster care, you might just be missing out on amazing things God has in mind for you. What if you stopped asking what if and just jumped in? You can stop any time you want and have no regrets that you at least gave it a try. You only get to start the journey for the first time once.

Reposted from the Foster Parents group on FaceBook....

When my wife and I decided to become foster parents it seemed we played a continuing game of "what if”. The first “what if” game we played was about the type of children we would take. What if we get a call for a sibling group or what if they call us about a placement for a child with a mental or physical condition? No subject was off limits.
Two weeks after we got our license we got the call for our first placement. Would we be interested in taking a 5 month old black baby boy? That call changed our lives. They brought Jon to us the next day and we became instant parents. We had nothing for a baby. The workers who brought us Job were in and out of our house in ten minutes. Talk about life changing.
In the four and half years since we have gotten Jon we have had twenty-five to thirty kid...s in our home. Many were respect for just a week or two. Others were longer up to about eight months. We have had some good times and not so good times. After one child went home we found a not so nice word scratched into the screen of the T.V. monitor in the extra bedroom (thankfully it was not deep and it buffed out.) We had one child run away and vandalize a couple of buses, then break in to a building we used for the church. He did several hundred dollars of damage. On the other side of the coin we have kids who will still give us a call from time to time and look us up when they are in the area.
Today we are looking at the end of our road in foster care. We have adopted Jon and we have two more that will be going to adoption soon. Because of the medical condition of our baby we don’t feel we would be able to give the attention to another child that they might need.
We still play the “what if” game but it has changed. What if we did not take foster care classes? What if we said no to the call that brought us Jon? What if we never decided to do foster care because our lives were too busy? Foster care has enriched our lives. We have three beautiful children because we decided to go beyond the “what if” game. As foster parents we have opened ourselves up to many feeling and emotions and in the end we have found love.

A Foster Care Christmas

2011-12-28T23:38:00.002-06:00

Last year, our sweet little Gizmo left us just 2 days before Christmas. He was going to live with relatives, his blood kin, who loved and wanted him, and have since adopted him. A wonderful Christmas gift for him, and them! For our part, we bought him just a handful of small gifts. We didn't want to overload his new family with lots of stuff to store that they did not choose, and besides that, we generally have just three gifts for each of our children under the tree- one from Santa, one from us, and one from their sibling. Just this year I have heard of other people who do that and relate it to the gifts of the magi - Jesus got just three gifts, so we do too. I love that! We were just trying to save money, keep the focus of Christmas on Christ's birth, and limit the gluttony of gifts that Christmas can become. We had been asked by our case manager from our private agency if we would like to receive gifts through their wish list program, but we declined - we figured we were financially comfortable to provide the small amount of gifts we had in mind, so that money should go elsewhere. Gizmo had a great early Christmas, receiving an ornament with a picture of all five of us in front of the Christmas tree, a recordable book where the four of us read the story to him, and a couple of small toys. Plenty for a sweet little 6 month old whose belongings would all have to fit into the trunk of his case worker's car just a few days later.

Fast forward to this year, and it was a whole different scene. Diva and Big Daddy have now been with us for 3 1/2 months, and we don't expect they will be heading anywhere anytime soon. Their parents are working their services and have showed up for every single weekly visit from the first one that was scheduled, but there are no relatives on the horizon waiting to take them in during their 12 month case, so here they stay. I have had several friends ask me, very concerned, and sometimes tearful, if the littles would be taken care of for Christmas, and did I think they would enjoy their Christmas while apart from their parents. I assured them they would be, and we would do everything we could to help them enjoy the season, but I had no idea how many others would be helping us along the way.

I decided this year to go ahead and accept the gifts offered by our agency, so I filled out our little wish list form and assumed that those gifts, along with those from us, would be the end of it. And then came the wish list through CASA - their advocate said only Diva qualified because Big Daddy was too young (under 3) but to include wishes for him because they might include a sibling, so I did. And THEN the kids returned home from their second to last parent visit before Christmas with gifts from their parents AND a trash bag full of gifts collected through an angel tree type of collection by DFPS (CPS)! A few days later came a letter in the mail from the Dallas Metroplex Foster Parent Association containing two $10 gift cards to Toys R Us, provided through the funds collected when you choose to donate your jury duty pay (I had no idea that some of that money went to kids in care!).The mountain of gifts grew on our bedroom floor as we discussed if we should keep some and donate the rest (side note - we did not do this - the gifts, after all, are not ours to donate - they belong to the kids), and one day our 7 year old came into our room, saw all the toys, and his jaw dropped. "WE'RE not going to have that many gifts, are we?" he said, knowing our standard of three gifts each. "No," I replied, "You won't. BUT, you will get to have Christmas here, in your own home, with your family." I paused, he nodded thoughtfully, not a sign of jealousy on his face. "And think of this," I continued, "when they go back home they will be going to a home with a LOT less money than we have. They likely will never have a Christmas like THIS again." Gabe thought, nodded, and said, "We should make this the best Christmas EVER for them!" And I fell in love with my boy all over again. Jacob, our ten year old, had almost an identical reaction when this conversation was repeated with him. And on Christmas morning, we revelled in watching Diva and Big Daddy tear into the many gifts donated by generous hearts around Dallas, those picked out lovingly by ourselves and their foster brothers, as well envelopes of Christmas money, wrapped gifts, and gift cards given by our extended family who included them just as they would any of our biological children (this, by the way, served as a far greater gift to Bill and I than to the kids, and even has me tearing up now. There is no greater gift a family member can give to a foster parent than to offer their love to ALL of the children in the family, whether biological, fostered or adopted. Seriously - best gifts of the year)

Christmas has ended (though not a decoration has moved) and I can honestly say all of our kids, and Bill and I, had a wonderful Christmas - the best ever, as Gabe told us multiple times. We each got gifts we loved, everybody got to put some coins in a Salvation Army bucket, we adopted and delivered gifts to three local families, gave out two "Need It, Keep It" envelopes, spent time with loved ones (including an extra long visit for the littles with their parents), fed the homeless of downtown Dallas Christmas morning with Bigheart Ministries, had our second annual Christmas Eve bonfire/marshmallow roast (in honor of our Scottish ancestors!), deep fried a turkey in the backyard with friends on Christmas Day, and even got to sit in the front row of the choir loft of our over packed church on Christmas Eve for Diva's first time sitting with us in Big Church. I didn't get half of my Christmas decorations up this year, and the house is a constant chaotic mess - but the four kids who live here, even if some are only here for a little while, have filled this home with a love and joy I wish everyone could celebrate this season. A foster care Christmas isn't always such a pretty picture. We are so blessed that ours has been.

We're still here!

2011-12-04T21:24:00.000-06:00

At Bill's company Christmas party last night I discovered that some people actually do come look at this blog. Apparently it has been almost two months since I last updated, and people have actually noticed - I guess it is time for an update!

It's not that I haven't thought about updating. In fact, when Bill and I were at the Tapestry Foster/Adoption Conference in Irving last month I took notes on my phone of all of the things I was thinking of blogging about that day: expectations of a new foster parent, how your extended family reacts to foster care; and what it is reasonable to expect of them; foster kids and your extended family at holiday time; your community's reactions to your other-race child; quote "We are not equipped and then called, we are called and then equipped." I've had a ton of other ideas too, but for some reason I seem to always be tired these days... Which brings us back to an update on Diva and Big Daddy...
For those just joining our not-so-regularly-scheduled-programming, Diva and Big Daddy are our fifth foster placement in a little over a year and a half of fostering and have been with us almost 3 months now, since mid-September. Diva just turned three and is full of silly personality. Big Daddy is a 17 month old dimpled tank who keeps us on our toes. In the beginning they had a rough time adjusting to being in their fifth home in 7 months (between neighbors, bio-parents, and one other foster home) and were so clingy I thought we might never get to go out again as long as they lived in our home! I am happy to say that they have both adjusted amazingly wel and blossomed in so many ways. Diva is no longer wearing her shoes to bed every night, goes to the bathroom completely on her own, actually said she LIKED a police officer the other day (this is a biggy for her), and did not cry or pout for a moment when we left the kids with a sitter last night. She also no longer calls birds monkeys, which makes me very happy. Big Daddy still only sits still when he is truly sick and is leaving his mark - literally - on our house in the form of scratched cabinets, claw marks on the wall by his crib, bite marks on the crib rail, and a couple of destroyed blinds (have I mentioned this little guy is a rather active sensory-seeker?). BUT he also has gone from only saying "Oh, Man!" when he came to us almost three months ago to now saying more words than I can count, and many things that we can understand fairly easily. He has also learned "soft touches" with the dogs so that I don't feel I have to keep them locked up for their own protection, will put something away in another room if asked, didn't cry when we left him last night AND, most amazing of all, walked straight into his Sunday School class today without a tear and just started playing. That wasn't even happening at Mother's Day Out this past Wednesday! The kids seem very happy and settled, and both are way too cute when they say "I Love You" with their own unique versions of the hand sign for it - Diva with her ring finger still sticking straight out but working so hard at curling it down, and Big Daddy pointing the index finger at you while yelling "Ah dud doo!"

In other news, we have also now officially survived our first road trip as a family of six. For Thanksgiving we drove 14 hours each way to visit Bill's family, though we did it the smart way and drove through the night so the kids might actually sleep through most of it! I must admit, I was dreading the trip. While I was happy to be going to see family, I did not look forward to three days spent in two very NOT baby-proofed homes with a good but curious (translation must-touch-everything) three year old and a 17 month old who not only never stops moving and getting into EVERYTHING but also goes into his I-must-destroy-SOMETHING mode on a fairly regular basis. We had just had a wonderful, but not very relaxing, visit with my family (7 folks, including a baby, staying in every room of our house for several days. I absoilutely LOVED having everybody here, seriously! But with our four kiddos - I can't say it was a relaxed visit) and I was perhaps a bit so focused on dreading the trip that I forgot to plan everything I needed for it. Until we were about eight hours into the drive and I was listening to another foster parent on a podcast talking about their incredibly active 17 month old who wound up in the emergency room on their vacation. Emergency room. Where they want insurance cards. And some kind of proof that this little black baby actually belongs with this white mama. Luckily I keep the kids' Medicaid cards in my wallet all the time since I KNOW that I will otherwise forget them or lose them when I need them most. Their placement papers, however - you know, the ones that say they're supposed to be with me and I can approve medical treatment - those were back home in their paperwork binder nicely stored on a high bookshelf so I could always find them when I need them. Unless I was about 900 miles away. Ugh. Luckily we made it through the trip fairly uneventfully and had a wonderful time collecting pine nuts, watching a Christmad parade and playing in the snow, watching the kids get loved on by everyone, and I never had to prove guardianship. This time. But I am thinking I need to add one more item to my already overstuffed wallet, an idea I heard from another foster parent maybe a year ago that seemed a little unnecessary to me at the time. This foster father had taken his placement papers, photo-copied the main page at a reduced business-card size, laminated it, and slipped it in his wallet so he would always have it available. Genius! Since our babies will probably be with us for another 9 to 15 months (the duration of their case plus possible appeal)I guess I better get that done before the next trip, which I think I might actually not dread quite as much!

Just a quick update on Diva and Big Daddy

2011-10-09T15:58:00.000-05:00

Just an update on our little Diva and Big Daddy! They have been with us 2 days shy of a month now and both are doing really well and settling in nicely. I can tell Diva is feeling comfortable because she feels safe enough to throw a good tantrum (really, this does mean she's feeling safe here!) and I can feel Big Daddy's trust when he lets me hang him upside down or toss him up in the air - he wouldn't have let me do that just a week ago. They have had three visits with their mom and dad, which I hear have gone well (they are picked up and dropped off by a case aide, so I don't actually go to the visits). Diva misses her folks and tells us she wants to see them frequently, but all in all handles being away from them well. Today was her best day though - she had a birthday party! We had several wonderful friends come celebrate with her (their second time in 2 months bringing gifts for the kids coming through our doors), and she had a wonderful time with the 11 kiddos who came to celebrate with her. I don't think it could have possibly gone better!

Though the kids have been here a month, and their CASA tells me they have in fact had a case worker assigned, I haven't heard from her. So last night I emailed her (I at least was given that information by the case aide who drives the kids to their visits) so I could ask how their case is looking now that they have had court, and if there is a chance that they will be moving to a kinship placement soon. I am thinking about signing the kids up for a couple days of Mother's Day Out a week so they can have fun learning with other kids, and I can get some appointments taken care of, but I don't want to sign them up only to find out they will be gone two weeks later. The case worker did respond quickly, telling me there are no other potential placements right now, so sign them up. Looks like these little ones will be hanging around for a while! Guess I better learn how to do another kind of hairstyle on Miss Diva!

Some people won't foster African American kids because of their hair. Seriously. And now I understand why.

2011-09-25T21:33:00.001-05:00

My second attempt - EVER - at parts and twists.
I have to say,
I am rather proud of myself!

I myself could never say no to a child because I did not want to care for their hair. But after two weeks with Big Daddy and Diva, I can understand where some might. The learning curve and the time involved in hair care can be overwhelming. Really! If you have never cared for AA hair, there is a lot to learn, and you have to learn it quickly before you dry out and break off the hair their mothers have probably worked hard to grow out. If I were a single foster mom trying to learn to care for and style little Diva's hair with Big Daddy underfoot for the several hours each "hair day" would take, I'm sure I would be quite overwhelmed. And that's before dealing with medical and dental appointments, separation anxiety, canceled parental visits, temper tantrums, and still making sure to give our older biological kids the time they need!
My first steps in our hair adventures were to send out an email blast to our neighborhood moms' club asking if anyone knew where I could take my sweet girl so someone could do something for her hair - and teach me where to go from there! Being in a largely white area, though, there wasn't much help to be had. A couple of people knew of a salon here or there that had an AA woman working there, and a couple of people had friends who had adopted AA children that might have tips. But I quickly learned that all of those little girls I see with sweet braids and cornrows and twists probably had their hair done by their mamas - most salons just don't style little preschoolers. I was going to have to learn to do it myself.

My best lead was the suggestion that I contact the Three Sisters Beauty Supply in a nearby suburb. The store had just moved the week before and was not completely set up, but the owner, Nikki, was kind enough to spend some time with me and Diva to suggest a few products and how I could use them. I went home, feeling only slightly more confident, but ready to give her hair a try. I snipped out all of her rubber bands but did not un-twist her twists - luckily you can wash the hair with twists in place, and Nikki actually recommended that. After washing and conditioning I started undoing her twists to detangle and retwist. As her hair got bigger, panic settled in and I realized I better stop before everything got completely out of control! I had only taken out 4 of her 20 twists, and quickly tamed them back into 2 braids on the front of her head. The rest of her hair would have to wait for the next day. She needed a break (we were 1 1/2 hours into the process) and I needed a beer. The next day I spent another hour undoing just one twist at a time, detangling and twisting them back up. It looked alright, but I was still terrified by the thought of ever releasing all that hair or trying a different style!

My next stop was the web. Nikki had suggested three web sites to me - Chocolate Hair, Vanilla Care (The first I tried, and so far my favorite), Happy Girl Hair, and Beads Braids and Beyond. The first two are written by White women who have adopted AA girls, and show an amazing array of hairstyles they have tried, along with the products and techniques they have used. Chocolate Hair, Vanilla Care speaks to me just a little more, perhaps, because her baby girl is just a little older than mine and looks like she has very similar hair, so I focused a lot of attention delving through everything I could on her site, from basics of hair care to a variety of styles to try.

Even with all of these great tips, though, it was hard to imagine myself trying many of them without actually SEEING them in action. So my next stop, of course, was You Tube. I don't know how many hours of You Tube I have watched in the past two weeks since little Diva joined our world. Still terrified, but feeling I was putting it off too long, I finally decided to use all my gathered knowledge and release the hair. We started with a bath and washing, conditioning, and detangling her hair. This took maybe 45 minutes. I banded her hair loosely into 6 sections to keep it separated and hopefully easier to work with. Then we moved to the hair chair where we set up my many hair supplies, a snack and popped Rio in the DVD player. Diva is not much of a TV watcher, but it at least provided a little distraction! One movie, one book, two snacks, and 2 hours later, Diva's hair was parted, rubber banded, twisted and good to go! It is not the best set of twists ever, but for a first attempt I'd have to say it's not too bad. But the best thing about it, i think, is just that I faced my fear of releasing all that hair at once and showed myself I could successfully gather it back in with very little hair breakage and no tears from Diva (except when we rinsed her hair - that may take some time).

I don't know that I am ready to try any style but the double rope twist she has been sporting since she came, but for now she looks perfectly precious with that, so I'm not going to stress about it. For now I just want to focus on getting faster with the whole process and better with my parts, and I'll take a moment to be proud of all I have learned so far!

Welcome Big Daddy and Diva!

2011-09-18T21:53:00.000-05:00

What a week! Last Monday around what would have been dinner time (if we had remembered to feed our children amid the activity of getting new kiddos - don't worry, they ate eventually!) we welcomed two new little angels to our home- 14 month old Big Daddy (we do like our big boys!) and the Diva, almost 3. This was definitely our toughest placement day yet, simply because for the first time we were welcoming a child old enough to realize they were being taken away from their home, and sad enough to cry for a very long time about it. Bed time was likewise quite a challenge, but happened eventually, and has gotten better as the week has worn on. We are down to a minor tantrum at bed time, but sleep not long after. And save the one wakeup call that seems to happen each night around 4 am, we are all sleeping through the night - I count that a success!

These little ones have had quite an unstable year, moving from neighbor to neighbor, to Mom, to a foster home that lasted a mere four days before they came to us. Because of this we are dealing with some serious separation anxiety, mainly from Big Daddy, who will cry if you so much as turn and look like you might walk away. A shopping trip last Thursday night resulted in Bill comforting two crying little ones for two hours until I returned home - a rough night indeed! But we can already see the kids becoming so much more comfortable here, and just plain looking happier, so we are headed in the right direction. And yesterday my sweet girl told "You is my friend now." Life is good.

When a new child comes to us there is always the question of how long they will stay with us. Our four placements to date have ranged from a month and four days to 4 1/2 months. Unless there is a surprise (which there often is) it looks like these little ones are likely to stay with us a while, based on what the case worker who has been working with their family over the last year had to say. And I really hope they do. Despite the fact that Big Daddy may just turn all my hair grey by month's end with his level of activity, desire to get into EVERYTHING, mischievous nature, and need to be held almost constantly, and the nightmare that was washing and styling my Diva's kinky hair this weekend (that will take a whole other post to get into!), these babies really need - and deserve - a little loving stability in their lives. And if God sees fit to allow us to provide that, we call ourselves blessed to do so.

Sometimes it's the ones you never even meet that haunt you

2011-09-09T13:13:00.001-05:00

We have been back on the openings list for 3 days now with just one call. It is hard to be excited and ready to welcome a child into your home, all the while wishing no child were in a situation that required that call at all. Especially if the call is like the one we got Wednesday.

The phone rang at 2:45 in the afternoon, a little before I would be leaving to pick up our bio boys (our biological kids) from school. There were three children that needed placement, but only two would be coming to us - the oldest, a 7 year old, would be placed in another home. I did not ask why - I wanted to get all the basic possible details first, and knew that we did not have a bed for a seven year old girl anyway. There was a fourth sibling too, but she was not being placed in a home - she was in the hospital as a result of her injuries, and it was not certain that she would survive. So we were looking at two brothers, just 1 and 5 years old, who had possibly witnessed and experienced extreme abuse and would now be separated from their home, their mother, and their sister. These were children who would need a great deal of support. And it terrified me. Up to this point we have cared for children who have not experienced physical abuse, were very young, and in most cases had never lived in the home where their abuse or neglect had originated. Now I was presented with children that were old enough to have endured chronic abuse and the effects that can result. I told the intake worker I would call my husband before I said yes, I hung up the phone, and I prayed. I prayed that whatever God's will was for these children we would do our part in that plan, and if it was for them to come live with us that He might give our entire family the strength to face this new challenge. I got Bill on the phone, gave him the details I knew, and asked what he thought. "Well, we got into this to help kids, right?" Right. So I called our placement agency back, and we said yes.

I went to pick the boys up from school and told them Dad won the bet - we got a call for a kindergartner like he had guessed; and our seven year old won too, because he had guessed we would get a one year old. We swung by the office to see if there was room in the kindergarten for one more, and we talked about how we would help their new little brother get accustomed to his new school, how they would help pick him up each day, how we would each play our part. I told them these boys were coming from a tough life and had been hurt by the people around them, and that we would also be helping them visit their sister who would live in another foster home. I did not mention the little one in the hospital. There was no need yet to introduce that topic to my boys, with their hearts so big that I knew this would be crushing knowledge. We just talked about how we could help these boys know what it was like to feel safe and loved in their home, and how to be in a relationship without violence. But mainly our seven year old just wanted to make plans for playing his new buddy.

It took about another half hour to get the call that CPS had placed all three children with another agency. Bill texted back "Wow. Emotional roller coaster." Our boys were disappointed. I hate to admit that I was a little relieved. I have shown myself that I can handled high needs infants and high energy toddlers, but I am still a bit nervous about diving into the world of abuse and emotional trauma. But through the next day, the thoughts of those little ones haunted me. I wondered if I had just said yes and not waited to call Bill would they have come to us, and if they did could we have helped them? I prayed that the home they went to is filled with he love and the patience they will need in the long life's journey that has started out so difficult for them. And their struggle weighed even heavier on my heart when a friend told me she had seen their story on the news and I made the mistake of seeking the story out on line. The on-line story gave more details than the televised report. Details I wish I didn't know.

So now I sit here waiting again, wishing for a call that could distract me from the story of the children I couldn't help, but also wishing I would never have to hear my Intake ring tone again.

Preparing for a hurricane

2011-09-07T13:51:00.001-05:00

Yesterday morning we got back on our placement agency's "openings list" to again open our home to our usual profile: one or two kids, birth to age 6 (to keep them younger than our biological children), any race, emergency placements just entering the system (as opposed to foster/adopt placements that are more likely to be on an adoption track and may have already been placed in a foster home). I received an email back from the intake supervisor who places children within our agency that said "You are back on the list. Be ready!" I emailed her back that we certainly were ready - we know that a call can come within hours, so we don't get back on this list unless we know we are ready to take a child in THAT DAY - and realized that my preparations that morning for opening our home were a little like preparations for a hurricane. I cleaned the house, made sure every thing was in place and properly child-proofed, and I knew where all my emergency placement supplies were (a minimal supply of formula, bottles, sippy cups, toddler snacks, a set of clothes in each size child that might come into our home, infant carrier, convertible car seat...) and I went grocery shopping as soon as our biological sons headed off for school. The goal of my grocery shopping was again much like shopping in preparation to ride out a storm - buy enough food so that if I couldn't leave the house for five days (until dear hubby is home during the day to hang with the kids) we would have plenty to eat, and what I bought wouldn't spoil in that time. Everything was stocked, cleaned, put away, organized, we got back on the list - and then I was left standing there, waiting for the storm to come. I could see it on the horizon, the forecasted storm, and all I could do was wait for it to hit and see if we would be pleasantly surprised by a mere category one or fighting for survival in the midst of a category five. We also might think a mild storm has descended until the levee breaks and we find ourselves struggling neck deep in turbulent waters, calling out to our support system to throw us every life preserver available. For now we are in that crazy limbo, waiting for the phone to ring so we can brace ourselves for whatever DFPS might blow our way!

Why we're waiting

2011-09-01T13:44:00.001-05:00

Well, this blog post is a bit late - I guess I have been busy recovering! Pinball and Tank left us two weeks ago tomorrow. They were our shortest placement yet, with us just one month and four days. We certainly loved them while they were here, but I won't deny I looked forward to sleeping in the morning after they left, and just SITTING DOWN a little bit the following day! They were great kids - much better than we could hope for and really kind of expected from a neglect case where they were found home alone at the ages of just 23 months and 8 months old. They acted like they had been well loved, even if their desperately poor and single mother did make the choice to leave them at home while she went down the street. I don't know if she went to see a friend or pick up a gallon of milk without an infant and very active toddler in tow, and really it is not for me to judge anyway. They are with family now, and will get to see their mom more often - and in this case, I think that is a good thing.

The kids left Friday, and the four of us that remained enjoyed a quiet, relatively lazy weekend - something that had become foreign to us in the previous month! The boys would be starting school on Monday and our plan was to get back on the openings list after we got them settled in to their new school that first week. The following weekend would be the perfect chance for a weekend getaway to the coast - something we had intended to do all summer but it just never happened, and something that would be much easier without any tiny people along for the ride. We made our trip to the coast - and it was wonderful! We got home Sunday and talked about getting back on the openings list the following day - maybe I could have a baby waiting at the house by the time the boys made it home from school. Our 9 year old said a quick yes, but our seven year old surprised me - "Not just yet, Mom. Let's have a few more days with just us." Having an active toddler effected the boys more than they had thought it would. They were excited to have a kid around that they could play with versus a newborn they could just hold and feed, but they did not realize she would want to play with them, and climb on them, and copy them, ALL the TIME. So our little man is ready for a break. Just a little one, but he needs some time to recover too.

So now there is a new plan. One last lazy weekend together, just the four of us, to do things that aren't so easy to do when you have a baby that needs to nap, a toddler that gets into everything, and you need two weeks notice to get permission to leave town with them. Labor Day weekend seems the perfect time for that last hurrah. Then Tuesday, the fun begins again! It's time for us to start taking bets around the dinner table as to what our family will look like just one week from now. What do you think? Now that we have been tested with a sibling pair, will we ever get a single child again? Or with the limited number of foster families open to taking drug-exposed newborns for temporary placements, will we fall back into that niche? Or will this be the time they try the next test - a little bit of both! Now THAT would be a new adventure!

We're still here!

2011-08-06T13:54:00.001-05:00

Wow - it has been two months since I last updated here! For the first month, it was just because I had nothing to tell. We were off the active list of homes with openings for foster children while I was in Alaska for a week to meet my precious new nephew, then our trip to California a few weeks later, and the time that fell in between. We figured we should stay off the list in the time between trips, since you are required to give at least 2 weeks' notice to take a foster child on a trip, and for a trip out of state you also need permission from the court. There just wasn't enough time, and really, I'm glad we didn't have another child or two to bring along on a plane ride, city tour, long coastal drive, and a day at Legoland! Especially the 2 month old and three day old we were offered just two weeks before our trip!!!

Since then life has gotten much more interesting, and allowed a lot less time for blogging! The day after we got back from California I spent the day doing laundry and trying to recover a little, then the very next day we were back on the list. We were done waiting and ready to get back in the game! We waited a long time for the call this time - a whole 8 1/2 hours! That night at 10 PM, we added an 8 month old boy and his almost 2 year old sister to our home. Little Tank is a chill little chunk of love, and his big sister is well described by the nickname Bill gave her - Pinball: one who is always in motion, makes lots of noise, and randomly locks/unlocks things that she bounces into! It has been an adjustment having not only four children, but a toddler who keeps us constantly on our toes! The oldest foster baby we have had so far was Gizmo, who turned 6 months old the week he left us, so this is definitely a change. We learned quickly that while our boys were able to switch to big boy beds when they were 13 and 15 months old, our new little angel would require containment - she is bright, and curious, and can undo just about every lock and door knob we have to offer! That called for an emergency crib purchase - along with a little more advanced baby proofing.

We have really lucked out - these are great little kids. Tank is very mellow (unless he's hungry! there's a reason he has achieved Tank status!) and Pinball is so amazingly sweet with him. They do not act like kids who have been mistreated - just kids who's mom has hit a rough patch and needs some help while she gets back on her feet. They have adjusted well, and I think we have too. I was so proud of myself the day before yesterday when I managed to unload AND load the dishwasher before Bill made it home from work, AND I even cooked REAL food - not just toddler-friendly emergency food fare!

Now for the usual question - how long will you keep them? And our usual answer - we have no clue! We provide emergency foster care, which is generally kids being removed for the first time and needing a place to stay immediately. Once they are placed with us, there is a 14 day deadline for court to convene to determine what the parent(s) will need to do before the child can be reunified, and set a time frame in which they should complete these requirements. Our kids' court date got delayed, so it will actually happen on day 21, which is this coming Monday. That will also be the first day they see their mom since they were removed. They had a visit scheduled for this past Thursday, but Mom had to reschedule for the best possible reason - she got a new job! So she had to work then, but has Monday off and will get to see her sweet babies the day before her big girl turns 2! I was glad she didn't have to miss this birthday - my heart was breaking for her when I thought she would. There is already a home study underway on a relative to see if it will be a safe placement for our two wee ones, so they may not be here much longer if DFPS and their lawyer agree this relative can provide a safe home. Overall, this case really is going exactly how it should for everyone involved, and it feels good to be a part of the system working the way it was designed to.

Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Go. Stop. Gone.

2011-06-15T21:48:00.000-05:00

We spent about a month being told that Lil' R could leave at any time. The day before his placement hearing, his case worker told me that if his lawyer/guardian ad litum gave approval for placement with his relatives, Lil' R could leave as soon as the next day, before the boys got home from school, before Bill got home from work. As it turned out, his lawyer got stuck out of town with a broken airplane, and he still wanted to check out the kinship placement a little more fully anyway. So we spent another couple of weeks waiting to hear if Lil' R would be staying a while longer or leaving within hours. I had all of his non-essentials packed, and did laundry constantly so that I wouldn't be sending a stack of dirty clothes along with him - "Nice to meet you, Grandma! I come bearing stinky laundry!". Once the lawyer was satisfied that Lil' R was going to a safe home where his relatives were excited to welcome him home and love him, we finally received a placement date when he would be leaving us. I packed everything up but his cutest couple of outfits so he could arrive at his new home as cute as humanly possible - and then his case worker got sick and had to postpone the placement! The best part of this surprise for us was that my big boys were at their last day of school, expecting to come home to find their sweet foster brother gone, and had no idea of the delay. What a fun surprise to show up to pick them up with him in hand! At the same time, though, I felt for his grandparents - I knew they were excitedly awaiting his arrival, and now they had to wait one more day to meet one of the cutest babies on the planet! (seriously, we have really gotten some insanely cute babies this last year!) So we enjoyed one last night with our little guy, then repacked everything, found his next cutest outfits (though we were soon on to his marginally cute outfits, as he spitup, pooped, and peed his way through 4 outfits that morning!) and around 2:30 in the afternoon the next day, packed him,an amount of belongings that surprised his case worker, and a month's worth of formula to get his family started, into the case worker's car and watched them drive away. We were lucky to have Bill's uncle visiting that day - it was a good distraction for all of us. Then the next day the perfect distraction for me! I flew off to Alaska to be with my sister, brother in law, and their new, sweet baby. So I delayed the hard part for a week, and now comes the tough week of thinking "I have to wake the baby up to take the big boys to camp - oh wait, he's gone," "I need to pack the diaper bag - no, it's stored away already," "Oh, crud, I forgot the baby!" when I see no car seat in the back seat, or wonder why the dishwasher seems so roomy when not filled with a thousand bottle parts. If we had our way, we would back "on the list" already, and minimize the time available to grieve, but with summer travels still looming and no guarantee that we would have time to get approval to take a child or two with us, we have to wait again. So we go on about our summer now, moving strangely through baby-less days, still adjusting to the freedom, not altogether welcome. And we celebrate - Baby D recently celebrated her first birthday AND adoption, Gizmo will be one in a mere two weeks, and Lil' R is blessing the lives of two lucky grandparents excitedly welcoming him into their home (and I bet you he's sitting independently now too, and loving it!). We are just over one year into this foster journey, and I'd have to say it as treated us pretty well. People tell us how we have blessed the lives of others, but nothing compares to how the experience has blessed all of us!

A roller coaster week in the world of foster care

2011-05-24T12:06:00.000-05:00

Foster care can be exciting, terrifying, powerful, heartbreaking, exhausting, thrilling, and all for the same reason - you just never know what to expect.

This week we sit in limbo, still waiting to find out if Lil' R might leave any day now or if his lawyer might decide not to approve placement with his grandparents, and he stays a while longer. While we wait for whatever our foster care adventure holds for us, our other friends in foster care are living out all the other dramas that can come from this crazy system - the joys, the heartaches, the frustrations, the mixed emotions.

Monday started with the joy. Friends of ours from our old church were finally able to finalize the adoption of their two sweet little girls who came to them about 8 months ago through matched adoption. They did not foster these girls - their daughters lived in another foster home and then were matched with their forever home, and were then required to live with their new parents for at least 6 months before the adoption could be finalized. We are so happy for the beginning of this new family! This is also one of the stories that challenges us, because we know that at some point we might have to make a decision, and knowing how this family came to be may play a part in that decision. We are not fostering to adopt, but we have said if God thinks it's funny to send us a child who has no one else who can safely care for them, and needs a safe place to call home, we might just have to say yes! But at the same time, we'll have to make the choice between keeping a child we have loved, or allowing them to be matched for adoption with a couple who has been anxiously waiting for a child. We could be a part of the creation of a family, the completion of a dream - and letting go of "our" child.

On Tuesday, more foster care/adoption excitement. Another foster care friend (this one I met through a Face Book foster care page) met with her adoption caseworker and finished her paperwork two adopt two of her three foster angels. Now the hard part is waiting for the official court date! At the same time, they will continue the roller coaster of foster care with their third child as they wait to see what his future holds.

Also yesterday, another Face Book foster friend who is hoping to build her family through foster care adoption told me that the biological parents of the little baby she has had for about 4 months have come back out of the blue after three months of being out of the picture. What a sudden shock, when you think you are getting closer to adoption, then something completely out of your control sends you reeling and wondering. Maybe the parents' return won't change a thing, but it leaves you wondering, worrying, praying. This is one of the times when I am glad we are not trying to adopt. We at least go into each placement assuming the child will only be with us for a time, and then move on - I think it might be a little easier on my heart that way when they leave. A little.

Then our long time friend who was my friend long before she was my foster mommy friend (and my baby sister's best friend before that!). My heart is breaking most for her right now. She and her family have fostered for over a year now, opening their home and their hearts to over 25 children. They fostered first as an emergency foster home, like us, then after a year transitioned to a fost-adopt home - a home that is hoping to adopt. She has had two little angels in her home for 8 months. At times it looked like parental rights might be terminated and the children would stay, then the tides would turn and reunification again became the likely destination. Back and forth and up and down the roller coaster went, until this last week the judge decided to grant unsupervised visits, and this week the children will go home to their biological parents. A tremendous heartbreak for my friend, but I admire her so much for being able to celebrate between her tears. In her words "The judge has ordered unsupervised visits - these parents are going to get the chance to parent these wonderful babies!!! It is not necessarily the outcome we would have selfishly hoped for but it is why we BECAME foster parents in the first place...to help restore families. I will be sad to see them leave but happy that a family is remaining in tact!" I cry each time I read these words. I cry for the heartache I know my friend is going through, and I cry for the pride I feel in knowing what an amazing person she has become (I have known her since she was a 14 year old little punk). The goal of foster care is not adoption, though we greatly need more loving families out there who can take on the challenge of adopting through foster care. The goal of foster care is to keep children safe in loving homes while their families can hopefully be healed, strengthened, and rebuilt. The ideal foster care story is that a child comes into care, their home of origin is strengthened, and the child goes home to live successfully and happily as a part of their birth family. We the foster families are charged with having the strength to love the children, and as best as we can their families, and to help them get back the family life that God first intended for them. That is the gift to us - knowing we could be a part of the rebuilding of a family. A bittersweet gift, but we must always remember the gift. We are blessed to be able to do what we do.

A smile that could turn someone's life around

2011-05-17T11:47:00.000-05:00

That's what I was hoping Lil' R had yesterday. He saw his mom for the first time since he came to live with us eight weeks ago today. She wrote a nice note back to me (I send a little notebook in the diaper bag when I send kids to visits, so their parents and I can write back and forth) and she apologized for not having made visits, saying transportation is difficult for her. I don't know how much of the missed visits have actually been because of transportation troubles, and how much have been from other complications in her life, but I figure there have to be some big problems for you to miss every weekly visit with your child for two full months out of the brief 3 1/2 he has been in this world. Lil' R has changed so much since the last time she saw him - he is painfully physically cute, and full of the happiest, most social personality of any 3 month old I know! I pray that the beauty of this precious child could effect his mother's heart in such a dramatic way that it could change her life. She has a lot of struggles to overcome. People take for granted what these biological parents have to overcome sometimes. We say "Why can't they just quit the drugs/get off the streets/make something of themselves for their child's sake?" But most of us saying this have never dealt intimately with addiction, poverty, homelessness, sexual abuse, domestic violence, and the many other evils that are their daily reality. I would like to believe that his smile could change her world. But I know the cards are stacked against her. All I can do is keep her child safe for her, and pray for them both.

In the mean time, we wait to see how much longer our sweet little man will be with us. CPS has approved placement with his grandparents, who his CASA volunteers (Court Appointed Special Advocates) say are incredibly excited to have him. His lawyer, however, is very conservative with his approval for placement and has a few more things he wanted to check out first before giving his final approval. I am so appreciative of his thorough, cautious approach! Lil' R's next court date will be this coming Friday, and his lawyer should tell the judge at that time whether he is approving the placement now or not. If he and the judge both approve, Lil' R could be gone by Friday afternoon, or we could have him through the weekend - we will not know until Friday. The hard part of that is everyone getting a chance to say goodbye. If he leaves mid day Friday, both boys will still be in school, and Bill at work. So I better have Lil' R packed and ready to go Thursday night just in case, because I may be running around picking kids up from school and husbands up from work to say goodbye!

The Dance

2011-04-30T22:14:00.000-05:00

I was looking through some foster parent support posts on the forum on adoption.com and saw a signature I REALLY liked. The poster signed off with lyrics from a Garth Brooks song: "I could have missed the pain, but I'd have had to miss the dance." That's the answer I need to give when people ask "But isn't it hard to let them go?" Yes, if you do it right, it is going to hurt like crazy when a child leaves you, but the love you get to share with them while they are yours is irreplaceable. If you knew you could only have someone you love (your spouse, your child, your closest friend) in your life for a few months, a year, or even just a day, would you turn them away because it would otherwise be too painful to let them go when they left? Would you allow yourself to miss out on the amazing time and memories you could have together? Or would it be worth it to hold on to them and love them the best you could while you had the chance? You never know how your life may be blessed by allowing yourself to bless a child. May is National Foster Care Month. Maybe it's time to jump in and dance a while.

If you are in Texas, find an upcoming information meeting at www.dfps.state.tx.us/adoption_and_foster_care/get_started/information_meetings/

I learned a little something about myself today

2011-04-26T13:42:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I should never make a presentation about foster care again, or I need to do it many, many more times so that I can learn to control my emotions a little better! If I come speak to your group, I can guarantee you that I can easily fill an hour with our foster agency's power point presentation and a little Q & A (never even getting to my own list of frequently asked questions!), but you will have to expect me to get choked up and teary eyed at least 5 times (or was it more?) and if you dare to thank me for fostering and get up to hug me - I will cry. At the same time, I do think I got out some pretty good information about the basics of foster care, how to get started, why "I'll get too attached" is a reason why you SHOULD foster rather than a reason why you should not, some good reasons why the biological parents need your compassion and support far more than your judgment and condemnation, and why it is a crazy system but completely worth the adventure. I do wish I had gotten to more of my frequently asked questions, though - I think I'll have to make another post for all of the information I never quite got to! But for now, Lil' R is actually snoozing peacefully, and it is looking like the perfect time to grab a little lunch!

Wow - has it really been a month already?

2011-04-17T21:37:00.000-05:00

Wow - I have completely neglected updating the blog for a month. Yikes! But in my defense, I have been seriously busy enjoying a precious, sweet little angel of a boy! Lil' R has now been with us 2 days shy of a month, and we have loved every minute with him. He is a sweet, happy little thing, painfully cute (his lawyer actually quoted me saying that, in court to the judge!) and growing by the day. And best of all - he slept 13 1/2 hours straight last night!!! We were doing checks to make sure he was still breathing! What surprised me most was that he woke up happy and ready to play, not screaming to eat! He really is a sweet, sweet boy. The only heartbreak is he may actually not be with us much longer, but for a good reason - he has people who love him and want him. Whenever a child comes into care, CPS is immediately looking for relatives that want to care for the child and keep them in their family. I was glad to hear from Lil' R's lawyer and his CASA that several people showed up at his 14 day hearing (every child has their first court hearing to discuss placement within 14 days of removal) concerned about Lil' R. He does have a relative who wants to care for him, and the judge ordered a home study be performed on this relative. This is much like the home study we had done to become verified as foster parents - an evaluation is made of the relative, their home environment, and anyone living in the home, to determine if it will be a safe environment for the child. It takes maybe 2 or 3 weeks for the home study to be performed and the thirty or so page report completed. Lil's R's was ordered 2 weeks ago, so we have maybe another week before we hear the results. If the relative is approved, we are glad that he will get to be with family who loves him. If they are not - we are more than happy to keep loving on him as long as he needs us!

Now I want to make a quick plug for my favorite foster parenting podcast, The Foster Parenting Podcast - www.fosterpodcast.com (you can also find it where I get it - on iTunes). Each episode not only updates you on how the host families (there are two, from California and Michigan) are doing with their foster and adoptive children, but they also educate you on different aspects of the world of foster care and adoption through foster care. One thing I especially liked in this week's episode is that you can hear a foster care success story, which we hear far to few of, where the children stayed in foster care while the mom did what she needed to improve her situation, then they went home and are doing well, and staying in contact with the foster parents. Take a listen. As jaded and disheartened as we can get with all the stories of how foster care can go wrong, it is good to hear a story about how it can go right.

Oh, oh, oh! On a related note - Baby D (our first foster baby who stayed with us last April to August) turned one last week and her adoption should be finalized this month or next! I got to talk to her on the phone last week - she is such a happy little chatter box! It is so wonderful to have one of those happy ending stories to be our first adventure in foster care!

Midnight caller

2011-03-24T01:42:00.000-05:00

I almost missed two calls from intake/placement last Friday because my phone's ring tone was not obnoxious enough for me to hear. So I changed it, to a truly obnoxious "alarm" tone. That, I have now learned, is a ring tone you certainly don't miss when it goes off next to your bed at 12:30 am! God took care of us and made Bill and I exceptionally tired Monday night - we were in bed by 9 pm, and later found we had been blessed by the three and a half hours of sleep that allowed us before the phone rang. A one month old baby who had been in a kinship placement that wasn't working out. Could we take him? And at that, I was AWAKE. An hour and a half later I heard baby screams outside my door - Lil' R was announcing his arrival. He had had a long night, and was hungry, but once fed he was just a mellow, sweet little angel. After an hour of paperwork, he laid happily on the floor, gazing up and chatting at me and the ceiling - just a content little angel. He apparently had a rough start too - 3 weeks in the hospital, and some detoxing to do - but you wouldn't guess it now. He seems happy, healthy, and CUTE! Let the fun begin!

So far, we are off to a running start - first medical appointment scheduled (all kids coming into care require a medical checkup with in 14 days, and a dental checkup within 21 if they are 6 months or older), 2 month check up required by Texas Health Steps (part of Medicaid) scheduled with one of the only two clinics in town that actually take STAR Health (Texas Medicaid for foster kids), WIC (Women Infant and Children) appointment scheduled to get his formula covered, referral made to ECI (Early Childhood Intervention - our agency does this for all kids under age 3), and there are two consignment sales this weekend where I should be able to buy his wardrobe for the next few months, at least, and hopefully find him something cute for Easter! It was a frustrating month trying to get back on the "active openings" list, with of our paperwork fun, but I think the little guy is worth it.Our big boys are in love already - they were excited to wake up to the words "There's a baby in the house!" and have taken to him like he's been theirs forever. Watching our boys love on these little ones is still one of the absolute greatest blessings of this foster care journey. As heartbreaking as it is to let our littles go at the end of our time together, there are tremendous gifts we receive in the process if we are just willing to risk our hearts for the sake of these angels who need our care. I hear our new little one now - apparently 2 am is a far better time to chat than sleep! And it's so hard to say now to those cute little gummy grins (he's a master!). I'm going to go enjoy myself some blessings now.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

2011-03-20T22:47:00.000-05:00

In this post - first, what has been taking us so long to get another placement. Or if you want to skip ahead, you can see the kinds of placements we have been offered recently, and why we said no, maybe, or said yes but still didn't get them.

What are we waiting for?
We recommend that anyone fostering do so through a private foster agency. They act as an advocate for the family, provide training, connect you with resources, check in on you to make sure you and your foster child are doing well - they do a lot that you just wouldn't get fostering directly through the county. And we have loved our agency. BUT, they have kind of dropped the ball on us this time. A month ago, we thought we were back on the active openings list - the list held by the intake supervisor at the agency's main office that tells them what homes have openings and what kind of children they are open for (for us, birth to 5 years old, either gender, any race, basic level of care). It wasn't until two weeks later that we found out that some of the paperwork we sent in for our "moving packet" (the papers we had to file when we moved to another house) had never made it to the office. Still, I thought that shouldn't effect us because our previous case manager told us we had 6 months to get all of that paperwork in - she failed to mention that during those six months we could keep a child already placed in our home, but until every last paper was filed we could not receive a new placement. So we sat for two weeks waiting for a call we were never going to get. I immediately sent in all of the remaining paperwork, our new case manager double checked with the staffer at our agency who files all the paperwork that it did in fact all make it in, and we were told we were NOW back n the list. And we waited. And waited. The first two times we were on the list we got calls within hours. So was that the norm, or was this? It seemed strange to be waiting so long, so I called the intake supervisor - she said, yes, we were on the list. We waited some more. I emailed the intake supervisor - are you SURE we are really on the list this time? Yes, you are on the list. Then this past Thursday - two weeks after we had been told we were back on the list - a phone call from the area director in our agency stating that there were just three questions on our moving packet that our previous case manager had left off in DECEMBER, and once they were filled in we would be active again. My jaw dropped. I could not believe we STILL weren't on the list after a full month of thinking we were. I took a breath, and I answered the vital three life-altering questions: 1) where is the fire extinguisher located on our second story, 2) what kind of beds do we have in the foster children's room, and 3) why did we move. Really? These are the questions that have kept children out of our home for a month. Sigh. Deep breath. Fester, fester, fester. No! No festering. Let's just get this game going again. Minutes after the phone call, we got an email from the Family Development Director stating that we were officially back on the active openings list. Somehow the email seemed a little anticlimactic- I had just a wee bit of trouble believing it. And the fact that we got no calls the rest of the day made me leary once again. Then Friday came, and we could finally tell that we were indeed back on the list. It only took a month.

Saying no, saying maybe, saying yes with reservation
At one point during this month, we did actually get to offers of placements (which we wouldn't have been able to keep I guess, since we hadn't answered those three important questions) when I contacted the intake supervisor directly. The first, I actually said no to. It was for two girls, aged 5 and 7. First, there was the issue of age - we are trying to keep all placements younger than our biological children to preserve birth order and the issues that come with it, and we just don't have room in the foster kids' room for two twin beds. One bed and a crib, that's it. Secondly there is also the concern that if there was sexual abuse in their history, we would be bringing two sexualized girls into our home with our two boys - perhaps not the best fit. So I exercised the right that not everyone realizes foster parents have - the choice to say no. The second call was for 2 and 3 year old brothers. We said yes, and then I was reminded that our yes doesn't mean CPS will also say yes. I got very excited - I left my boys at Tae Kwon Do (where I was when the call came) so I could run home ti install the proper car seats, put a bed rail on the bed, and transition the bedroom at least a little bit from a baby nursery to a toddler/preschooler's room. I rushed back for my boys with thoughts racing through my mind of what foods I had in the house two little boys could eat, and where I had stored clothes in their possible sizes. The boys were thrilled we were getting another placement, especially that this time, for the first time, we would actually get two! So we were all very disappointed when we got the call on the way home that the boys were placed with another agency that got their request in first. So we all let our excitement settle, brushed our teeth and headed to bed to wait for a new day and a new call. Two weeks later, once we got through all the paperwork silliness, we got two more calls. The first we said a tentative maybe to - there was a chance this little one had chronic breathing issues, and we have two dogs and carpet. CPS chose to go with a home that had neither, and while I was sad not to get this two year old girl, I was glad that CPS took all factors into consideration to get her to her best possible placement. The next call came while we were shopping in Central Market - another set of 2 and 3 year old brothers. It would probably be a short placement - there was a relative already lined up, but they would need a home study before they could be placed with them long-term. We jumped with a quick yes, and made sure we had food in the carts for them. We hurried through the store so we could get home and ready for the boys, but only made it to the parking lot before getting the phone call that a home study had already been done on the relative (these boys were not new to the system)and the boys would be heading there tonight. It was a relative they had been with before, who was protective of them - they would be safe. Sad for us, but a far less traumatic transition for them - it turned out the way it should. So here we are, back on the list, waiting for a call. This is the first time we have been on the list over a weekend - I don't know how many placements are usually made on a weekend, but these past two days we have received no calls. We finished up our Spring Break as a family of four, talking about the possibilities of spending next weekend as a family of five or six. So much can change with one phone call - though I am learning I need to be a little more patient waiting to get excited until after that SECOND phone call that says the kids are really heading our way. Maybe I will get to practice that tomorrow. My phone is on, with the intake supervisor's ring tone set to church bells so I'll be sure to pick up the call.

Hoping for a call. Hoping no one calls.

2011-02-16T14:28:00.000-06:00

It's a strange thing in foster care to be wishing for THAT call. Because you are not just wishing for a child to love. You are wishing for someone's family to fall apart. You are wishing for a child to experience trauma. For a parent's life to be so out of control they can't keep their baby safe. We asked our case manager to put us back on the list of homes with openings this weekend, and then the waiting began. I don't know if more kids are placed on weekdays or weekends, especially little ones. I know for school-aged kids a call is more likely during the week when a teacher, nurse, or counselor at school might report suspected abuse. So we didn't really hold our breath over the weekend, we just went on as usual, and made bets on who would soon be moving into our home - a kindergartner, another newborn, a toddler with a preschool big brother, 4 year old twins...
Then Monday came, Valentine's Day. I expected the phone to ring at 7:45 am, as I was loading up my boys to go to school (don't important calls always come when you are rushing out the door?). I thought how neat it would be to get a Valentine's baby - and then how horrible that would be. For that child and that family, Valentine's Day would forever be remembered as the day it all fell apart. So in a way I was kind of glad we didn't get a call.
On Tuesday I called our agency's Intake/placement hot line to make sure we were on the list, but had to just leave a message. We were all getting antsy to get a new placement. Before my oldest even said hello after school he asked "Did we get a call yet?" and my youngest's eyes lit up hoping I would say yes, there was a little one (or two!) waiting in the car for the best big foster brothers ever. But no calls yet. We're on to Wednesday now, and Bill wanted me to call intake again - like I said, we are ALL getting antsy to get another little one! So I called this morning and found out they had just updated the list this morning, and yes we were on it. It never dawned on me before that just because I said put me on the list, it didn't mean someone dropped everything so they could put us on the list right then at that very moment. They probably get a few requests together and add them as a batch., I don't know. But at least I do know we are really on the list again! The first time we got on the list last year, we got a call within an hour and a half. The second time, it took all of 3 hours. We're approaching 4 1/4 hours so far this time around. And while I am anxious to hear the bell tower chime I assigned on my phone to calls from intake, I'm kind of glad it hasn't rung yet.

So many crazy thoughts

2010-12-27T01:01:00.000-06:00

I think the craziest thought I have had recently was while driving home from serving a Christmas banquet to the homeless on Christmas morning, I had this sudden thought that I wanted to get "back on the list"- meaning our agency's list of homes with openings for foster children. I pictured myself leaving the county hospital with another sweet baby, ready to dive back into feedings every three hours, lots of messy diapers, and figuring out which formula will work THIS time. And then I thought about how I have managed to sleep long hours for the past three nights while my big boys either slept in or got up, fed themselves, and quietly watched a little TV while I - gasp - actually took a shower at a leisurely pace without a baby sitting right beyond the fog of the shower in his bouncy chair, hollering for me to hurry it up. I decided maybe I could wait a little while to get back on the list after all.

I think a one month break should do us some good. We still need to get the old house cleaned up and painted so we can sell it, which will be much easier without a littlest one about (even easier once the big boys head back to school), and we are even going to take a little family staycation overnighter at a hotel to have a little time away with just the four of us. Plus I still need to get the new house up to CPS standards, get reinspected by the health department and the fire marshal, and finish a long list of address changes. We are kind of lucky, I think, that our case manager at Covenant Kids is leaving the agency to head back to school for her Master's degree, and the agency is going to need to hire a new case manager. Maybe this will buy us a little time while they find us a new case manager and we won't have to feel bad saying no to agency calls. I do plan to tell them we are taking the month off, but I doubt that will stop the calls - it didn't stop the 4 calls we got the last week that we had Baby D - including one I received in the mountains of Colorado!

But I did just order a new infant carrier on Overstock.com last night, and the sheets in the crib have been washed and changed. So we'll be ready soon. Just need little more sleep first...

A family for Christmas

2010-12-23T11:18:00.000-06:00

That's the gift Gizmo got this year, just about half an hour ago, 2 days before Christmas - a family for Christmas. He is now in his case manager's car with a load of boxes and bags of everything he owns heading toward relatives who will hopefully give him the loving forever home we dream of for him. And I can now officially say it doesn't get easier to let our little ones go - at least not by number two for sure. It was a little easier last time having met the family Baby D was going to and knowing they would keep in touch. But I think the thing that helped the most was that we were driving a thousand miles back home from an exhausting week long vacation and dropping her off on the way home - plenty of distraction from the grief we could have otherwise bathed ourselves in! This time we had so many starts and stops of not knowing if he would be leaving in a week or in a day, and even last night we still did not know for sure if he would be leaving some time today, or in a week or so after New Year's. We finally got the call this morning around 8:30 that he would be leaving just an hour and a half or 2 hours later. I had managed to get everything packed and ready to go last night, including a letter in English and Spanish telling them all about Gizmo, and how to reach us if they had any questions or were willing to give us updates, so this morning there was nothing much left to do but bathe him, dress him up in his cutest Little Man outfit, and sit and wait for the doorbell to ring. Then when it did ring, Gabe ran to lock the door so he couldn't leave! But he did leave, and this time we don't have a seven hour drive ahead of us for distraction. So now it is time to distract ourselves with things we couldn't do as easily with the baby around. Time to go to the movies without finding a sitter, to dinner without packing a diaper bag, go shopping without planning around cranky times and diaper changes, and tonight, sleep for at least 8 hours straight, if our bodies can remember how. In fact, there's no school or tomorrow - I think we let the big boys know where the food is and hibernate until tomorrow night at least!

Merry Christmas, Gizmo! We love you, Little Man!