circus, circus, get your ticket to the circus here!

Here are some things I NEVER thought I would say...A peek inside our own personal circus!
Please don't lick the window.
No, no, no we NEVER flush our underwear down the toilet
Yes, you make a very good horse. 
No we can not leave Adam at walmart
Please don't sit on the cat
Shoes are not for tasting.
See that's what happens when you fight over a rubber band. 
Because babies don't bounce when they fall, that's why. 
No! Lee doesn't like having stickers on her face.
I like butterfly kisses and kid kisses but you may not give me puppy kisses anymore!
No, guys we can not take the cat on our walk. 
Adam duck starts with D its D D D DUCK  say DUCK,  OK stop saying duck... I think we need to leave...

OMG PTC FCRB blaaaaa

       CPS has a thing for acronyms.  I got an email yesterday that even though it had only 6 sentences took me a good 20 minutes to read.  Every sentence had at least one acronym in it.  And, as I am a first time participant in the foster care circus, I had to look them all up.   For extra fun one of the acronyms was not in my " foster parents go to guide" book so I had to google it.   I think that for only six sentences my case manager would just write them out.  Instead I now have the mental image of my case manager as a high school girl crouched over her cell phone in a texting frenzy all while lol-ing at my expense.

Good Things

    The kids are doing so well lately.  Adam is done with his crisis therapy and the baby is rolling over, and over, and over lol.  I think she might be teething because she was up every two hours last night and that is VERY unlike her.  She is serious about her sleep.  This morning her gums looked a little puffy.  Today they go on a visit with their mother.  The visits are good for Adam but kind of stressful for the baby.  Not like they used to be when she would cry in her sleep after or make me hold her ALL day.  But when she gets home she will want me to "wear" her.   When my son was born I didn't have a sling or a wrap or any of this baby wearing junk.  He was a typical happy baby.  He knew he was loved from the start and didn't really need that constant reassurance that I would be there.  Lee does.  She loves her sling, and if any of you are considering foster or adoption of a baby I suggest you get one!  So handy.  I can pack her around all day long and still have the use of both my arms.  She is such a snuggle bug!  Lord knows I love this baby!  I must pray 100 times a day that I get to keep her.   That I get to keep both of them really.  They bring so much color and joy into my life I can not imagine it without them. 
    In our training class they told us to try to not get too attached.  Yeah, cause that is possible.  I am so beyond attached.  I worry I will be a disaster if they leave.  Typically the state makes a permanency decision after only 6 months.  However since mom is doing her steps to get them back just not quickly enough, and since what she did to the baby was so horrible, we have been put on a year plan.  This scares the crap out of me.  How can I raise these kids for a year and then possibly lose them?   And what about the kids?  Adam adores his mom and she adores him.  She is all about Adam.  So I think if he went home to her after a year he would be happy and safe with her.  But the baby is another thing.  The baby does not like her bio mom.  She likes me.  I am the only Mama she knows and I think it would destroy her to leave me.  Plus, I don't trust her bio mom as far as I can throw her.  I think that if she had a chance to get just Adam back she would wave her parental rights to the baby.  Only time will tell.  In the meantime I am going to love these babies like they are my own because while they are with me they are. 
  

Visit with Dad gone wrong

    The time came for bio dad to get some visitation.  Adam was SOOOO excited!  But as we are standing on the curb loading him into the mini van that transports him to visits the case aid gets a call.  Dad isn't coming.  To say that Adam was upset is the understatement of the year.  He went totally insane.  After 2 hours of screaming, crying, and destructive behaviour he finally fell asleep on his bedroom floor.  I called the lawyer, our new case manager, and my lisencing agent.  When he woke up he started the screaming again.  He does not want me, he does not want Jimi.  Any attempt to comfort him is met with kicks, bites, and punches.   When he spit in my face I set him down and walked away.  The case manager called in a crisis intervention.  Adam was unmanageable.  Everything was a fight. He would have major meltdowns that would last 40 minutes to an hour then get 5 minutes of peace just to have another meltdown.  Jimi and I very seriously considered giving up.  But he is only 2 and between the both of us we manage to make it through the worst two weeks of our lives as a family.  But we still asked ourselves " what were we thinking" almost everyday. 

FRUSTRATION

OK so "Adam" is sick... He wakes up in the middle of the night and screams for about 2 hours.  He is holding onto his ears and he has a bad cough.  I want to take him to the doctor but I can't because when the case aid dropped him off she didnt bring his papers.  The doctor will not see him without those papers.  I keep calling and emailing his case manager.  but she does not respond.  I even get my licensing agent involved.  She is a rock star about getting stuff done!  She gets no responce.  Finally in desperation I call the CPS hotline.  The man I speak too is nice enough to give me the information I need and fax the papers to the doctors office.  When we get to the doctores she checks his ears and recoils.  Then she checks again.  I am informend that this is the worst ear infection she has ever seen and that it will most likely rupture his ear drum.  She is in shock, I am in shock and poor Adam is in pain.  We leave with a new perscription and a flicker of hope.   Fast forward 10 days, antibiotics still are not helping, still in pain, still coughing.  New perscription and a breathing machine. Now for extra fun we add in vomiting.  About this time the baby start to cough.  It takes her down HARD!  We go to urgent care, then the hospital, then we are sent home only to get a phone call telling me to take her to the childrens hospital right away.  On the way there the baby vomits so much I pull to the side of the freeway.  Now I have to debate... call 911 and wait for the ambulance to track us down or strap her back into the car seat and continue to drive to the hospital.  So, in a panic, I strap her back into the carseat and keep going.  I decided to not call 911 because I was about 3 miles from the hospital and I could get her there before the ambulance could even get to us.  She is taken into the er and a parade of doctors comes through our room. The same staff was on that night as was on the day she first went to the hospital with her mother back in January.  They had recognized her name on the board and they all wanted to see the baby who lived.  ( One tearful nurse told me they didn't think she would make it through the night when she came in with her mother.)  The baby stays 3 days in the hospital for RSV.  Meanwhile Adam is still sick.  Another course of antibiotics and nothing.  Finally he gets some kid of injection and that clears it up.  Once the ear is cleared the doctor tells me there is scar tissue on his ear drums from past ear infections that have gone untreated.   Meanwhile I still know nothing about this little boy who has come to live with me.  I don't even know his middle name.  He can't talk and he wont eat ANYTHING that might even be almost healthy.  If it isn't junk he will not eat it.  I tried the whole, this is what we are eating and if you don't like it dont eat it, bit.  He didn't eat for a whole day!  So frustraiting.

Visits and a BIG surprise!

The baby came back from her first visit in bad shape.  She was curled back into the fetal position and she cried even in her sleep.  My heart broke for her all over again.  The next day her lawyer came out and told us some big news.  She has an older sibling also in foster care.  He is 2 years old.  I asked the lawyer why we didn't know about him before.  She didn't know.  Then she asked if we wanted him too, lol.  I told her I would have to talk to Jimi about it but in my heart I already knew I wanted him and that he should be with his sister.  I talked to Jimi, and then we talked to Micah.  Remember, Micah only wanted a sister who couldn't walk yet, so we didn't know if this would be ok with him or not.  Little kids have big emotions and we wanted to make sure he was ok.  Our fears were unfounded.  He was more than excited!  I called the lawyer who called the case manager.  The case manager then called me and told me that he would be coming the next day!  I asked if we could have till Friday to prepare and she said " No, I will drop him off tomorrow at noon!"  ( We did not like our first case manager)  So, we went into scramble mode.  Made a late night trip to walmart and bought as much stuff for him as we could givin that we knew nothing about him.  The next day he arrived after the visit with his mom.  The case manager didn't even come with him it was just a case aid and she literally set him down on our door step and said "  This is *Adam* , he didn't come with any stuff."  Then she turned around and walked away!!!!!  We were in shock! "Adam" started to cry and Jimi scooped him up for a hug.  He was also small for his age so the clothing I bought for him the day before didn't fit.  He had only the clothes he was wearing and an extra shirt in a backpack and one toy car.  I noticed he walked funny with his shoes on and since his were pretty beat up we went shoe shopping and I found out his shoes were two sizes too small.  - This, to me, was pretty alarming because he had been in foster care for nearly a month before coming to me so I would have thought that his previous foster mom would have at least bought him some shoes that fit-   Lesson learned: not all foster parents are created equal, and not all are good people.
Two days after Adam arrived I walked around the corner to see him staring very intently at the baby.  When he saw me watching him he said "sat *Lee*?" (Is that Lee) I said "yes thats *Lee*"  Then he asked "sat my Lee?"  and I said yes that is your Lee.  He burst into tears and started to pet her and just touch her all over as if he was trying to make sure she was really there.  All while saying "Lee lee Mylee"   -That kind of stuff makes all the bad stuff worth while. -
*names changed for confidentiality*

Introductions

     By the time I get the baby home Jimi, Micah and my mom are all waiting and excited.  Micah must have been watching from the window because he ran out to greet us.  One look and he was hooked too.  Jimi, Micah, my mom, and I pass the baby around for a while then we eat dinner and my mom goes home.  I am not 100% sure but I think she was also hooked.  After she leaves I give the baby a bath and I cry when I see her undressed.  The protective urge fills me and I have a new hatred for her mother.  I give her a bath, lotion her up, put her in some new pajamas and give her more food.  I watch her sleep and I still cant believe how small she is.  At 8 weeks old she weighs less than our son did at birth and she is still in a size new born diaper and clothes.  I wake her up every four hours to eat.  She never cries yet she looks so sad.  Her eyes are sunken in and I can see every one of her ribs.  The next day we take her to the doctor for a weight check and bring her back to our house.  The next week she goes to her first visit with her bio mom. 

Placement

We got her!  OMG I need to go get her now!  I am a planner.  I have had the diaper bag packed and in the room that will be for the baby for the last two weeks now, the car seat has been in the car for a week, and the house is spotless.  Sometimes the state drops them off to your door and sometimes you go pick them up.  This baby was not in awesome shape and there were a bunch of discharge instructions from the hospital so I am going to get her.  I hug Jimi and Micah,while repressing the urge to scream like a teenage girl, and then get into the car.  I drive as close to the speed limit as is possible in my excitement.  Thank God for cruise control because without it I am sure I would have broken the sound barrier on the way to the hospital to pick her up.  On my way there the case manager tells me that she is in the PICU ( pediatric intensive care unit) and a little bit about what happened to her.  My heart is broken for this baby.  She also tells me that bio mom is there and we can do our ice breaker right away.  But, by the time I got to the hospital mom had snuck out the door.  No ice breaker for me.  I walk to the room where the baby is.  I peek into the crib... She is so tiny,  so beautiful, that's it I'm hooked.  I hold her while the doctor and the case manager flood me with information.  I feed her a bottle and put her into the car seat and we are headed home.  

Home Study

     For any of you who have not gone through this process, let me tell you that the home study is nerve wracking!  Someone comes out to our house with a clip board and ask us every detail of our lives.  They talk to our son and ask him how he feels about our family.  They walk around and look in our cupboards.  They look at our bank accounts and the last 28 YEARS of our residential history!  This was especially difficult for me as I was only 27 years old when we did this.  I had to get a notary to sign off that I could not provide 28 years of residential history because I have only been around for 27 years.   It seemed ridiculous to me that they needed to know where I lived for my whole life.  Then you have to wait while they decide if you are a "good enough" family.  That is awful.  Fortunately for us we didn't have to wait too long and once we got the approval notice and our license the phone started ringing.
     We talked to our son about everything during this process.  We wanted him to feel included and comfortable.   He was all for it, but he only wanted a baby sister.   And she could be any age that couldn't walk yet because he wanted to teach her that.  We said OK and specified on our license that we would take girls aged 0-1.  The first call we got was for a 6 month old girl.  But she was from somewhere in Buckeye and they found another foster family for her that was closer.  ( Its all about location) The 2nd call was for an 8 week old baby girl...
   
   

Decision Time

       Making the decision to be foster parents was kind of hard.  There was so much to think about!  Can we love someone elses baby like our own?  Can our family members love someone else's baby like its our own?  Will they accept her?  What if everyone loves her and then she goes home to her bio family?  What then?  What will this do to our son?  Do we have the space, do we have the money?  Can we do this?
        We think we can, but our family is a little nervous.  I think most people think that if I can't have my own baby maybe I should just be done, you know, be happy with the one child I already have.  I am happy with my son.  He is my world!  He brings more joy to my life than ever anticipated.  The love I have for him is so powerful sometimes it hurts!  And there are other kids out there who need that type of love and we have it to give.  So, maybe this can work...
      We signed up for the classes that you have to take to become foster parents.  The classes take 10 weeks meeting once a week for three hours a night.  Then there is home work too.  All through the class we feel supported and prepared.  We are ready.  Sign us up!

The Beginning

So, the doctor said I can't have more babies.  LAME.  I want another baby.  Jimi wants another baby.  Even Micah wants a baby.  How do we get a baby?  OHHHH we can foster to adopt!  What a great plan this will be!   It will be easy , it will be fun!

WOW we were so naive.