Foster Further

Today was Kate's 2nd birthday party. We'd planned it long ago to be a chance for family who hadn't seen the girls in awhile to see them and also to meet us. During the trial some family members were there and tempers were running high. I began to regret getting them all together just two days later and considered cancelling the whole thing. On the drive there we strategized and had back-up plans including calling the police. Never in my life have I had to think this way. We left Gus and James at home just so they wouldn't have to witness anything...and Theo and I wouldn't have to think about getting them out of there quickly if it came to that. Only Seth came to take pictures. In the end everything was fine. The angry members did not come--proving yet again that they live for their own drama and self-absorption and cannot consider what the children may want or need.  We had maternal grandma (Laura) and her ex-boyfriend (Ken) there. Ken has been one of the mo...

Those were the first words the judge said when she began her statements. That this was the most shocking and sickening case she had seen in her 12 years on the bench. Then she terminated both parents' rights to all of their children, even those not living with them. Eight kids in four homes just lost a parent. And good riddance. Theo summarized it all, after I came home and cried in his arms longer than I ever remember doing in our entire married life, that those people were not parents. We believed in reunification when we began foster care because we believed there was a family structure that'd been broken but could be put back together. We never dreamed we'd be a part of the lives of people so broken they'd never even been parents to begin with. In one morning everything I believed has been turned upside down. I went from making photo albums, sharing emails, and planning all-family birthday parties to wanting to completely wipe out an entire family from these...

This week there are two big events that I've been dreading for weeks. And I am ridiculously stressed--a level of grumpiness and depression that is so bad I barely recognize myself. I can't remember ever having such a strong reaction to any major life event before. I am just plain exhausted. And that's just due to the anticipation. Nothing has actually happened. Tomorrow, Thursday, is the trial to determine if parental rights will be terminated for both bio mom and dad. CPS has filed to have dad's rights to all his children terminated, not just the two girls we have. (He has six kids by three women; not married to any of them. The kids are about ages 10 to 2. Our two are the youngest.) The rationale for removing mom's rights is that while she wasn't a direct actor she also did not protect them from harm that she was either directly aware of or had cause to believe could happen. She has an older son, 12, by another man, whom she lost rights to many years ago, ...

Kate turns two this week! After sixteen years of boys I'm going a little over the top with the pink and fluff but I just can't hold back. And with pictures like these, even minute of planning and prep was worth it! She loves to play dress up and have tea parties with her stuffed animals. She's so adorable! Jane and James are 3 and a half so I decided we needed to celebrate their half birthdays, too. Any excuse for a cupcake!

The whole family has been fighting the flu. Last night was rough with me up most of the night with James. This morning I was groggy and grumpy. The girls are ridiculously cheerful upon waking. Always. Without fail. Not only chatty. Actually bouncy. It's disturbing, really. So this morning I'm without sleep and flu-ish, again, and I tell the girls that mama doesn't feel well so they need to be very quiet. They stare are me, wide-eyed and go very still. Instantly deeply frightened. This has been their reaction every time over the past few weeks when I've told them I don't feel well and need to lay down, or can't read a book, etc. I finally figured it out. They think I'm hungover. Or high. Or whatever you call it when someone is coming off a high. Do you say hungover for that, too? They probably think I'm about to blow up and lash out at them. They don't know what the plain old flu looks like. Translating their lived experience to my lived...

Finally, for the very first time in the 3+ months since she arrived, Jane initiated real, meaningful, lengthy cuddle sessions. I'm still feeling crudy from the flu so I spent a lot of today on the couch watching the Great British Baking Show on Netflix. Several times Jane came over and crawled up on my lap. Sometimes she talked about yesterday's visit and other times she was quiet. I followed her lead and was quiet or responsive based on her. Why today? I guess if I reflect back there have been little signs that she's bonding with us. (And maybe I was distracted because Kate all of a sudden began bonding fast and furious--doing all emotional stages from about 9 months through 24 months simultaneously, and adamantly demanding that I solve all the needs in all those stages--which has been exhausting and all-absorbing.) Maybe I thought Jane would be the same way but instead it's just going to be a more gradual, subtle process for her. She coped well with the visit ...

Days like this I'm glad I started this blog. Full on vent needed. Today was family visit day. First time taking the girls to aunt and uncle's house. I have a good relationship with aunt. As our social worker said, "they're good people". They are. (It takes a big person to say that they'd rather the girls stay with us than be adopted by them. They're truly capable of thinking about the children's best interests and their own limitations.) My problem is with grandma. There's a reason she has been deemed unfit to adopt. Here's what began my day: At every previous visit grandma has loaded the girls with bags and bags of crap. Like 3-4 shopping bags full of old clothes, used toys, cheap kiddie jewelry...and all of it reeking of cigarette smoke. I understand it's her way of showing love. Stuff = love. At first I thought it must taper off so I kept mum. But every visit brought more bags of crap. After the last visit I sent pictures of t...

Today was a good day for no discernible reason. But let us celebrate every good thing. The sun was out. About 11am I asked the three littles if they wanted to go outside and they cheered. I scrambled them through potty breaks and then into snowpants, boots, mittens, coats, and hats in record time. They piled outside and then explored the whole front yard, bending thick at the waist to pick up sticks and pluck dried stalks of grass like astronauts just landed on the moon. It was 34 degrees but it felt balmy and lovely. They came inside sweaty-headed and red-cheeked. Oohed over hot chocolate with marshmallows. Guzzled down a thick bean soup without complaint and then collapsed about the house with bulging bellies like old men who've explored and foraged to their fill. I put on a cartoon and didn't care that I was starting screen time 6 hrs too early. We were all still in our pajamas, after all. I'd been down with the flu for the past two days and figured they were all a...

Theo and I nearly became foster care parents about five years ago. There was a child in my classroom who was in foster care and I felt this deep burden to bring him, or others like him, into a true home with a real family not a semi-group home with a sharp divide between the "real" kids and the "foster" kids as I knew was the case for this boy. I told my husband that we could do it better. So we started the process. And then quit. Because we weren't ready to do it better. We weren't mature enough, our marriage wasn't strong enough, our kids were too young. On the first night that the girls were with us I sent a panicked, rambling voicemail to their social worker, repeating and spelling out letter-by-letter my name and the girls' names three times (because we got the girls before we even met their worker since they came from another agency), begging her to please call their mother and tell her that they were okay. The realization that another moth...

Yesterday I spent the evening with two old friends who have been my friends for so long I met their mothers at the same time that I met them. Our mothers have strong opinions and a fierce love for their families. Diana and Mary Kay and Eileen* have always figured largely in our lives. As we talked about other things our mothers kept coming up in the conversation; woven in as seamlessly as our husbands and children and pets and new cars and favorite restaurants. As they talked I kept seeing their mother's faces super-imposed upon their own. I saw them in the sagging jowls and crow's feet, in a certain wave of the hands and deeply familiar fake-scowl expression that I've been seeing since I was five. And I know they saw my mother's face in my own. And also in my hands and sagging breasts and well-padded hips. I am now the age my mother was when these girls were becoming teens and rebelling against my mother, the principal at the school we all attended. In conversati...

During our six-month check-in with our licensing worker, he asked some of the same questions he'd asked at our initial visit and then chuckled at our responses. He said we did the same thing everyone does. When asked, "what do kids need most?" everyone says "love" at first. Six months into fostering, when asked the same questions, everyone says, "routines and boundaries". We chuckled along with him but shared that husband-wife look over his head. Why? Because they're the same thing. Routines, boundaries, discipline, rules, consequences, correction, explanation---it's all love. Our society is familiar with the harm that comes when a child is physically neglected. It's easy to see the kid that appears dirty, hungry, hurt, etc. But equally harmful is the parent who neglects to instruct and correct their child in how to be a functioning member of society and a generally nice person. Who fails to discipline. (Ugh, I hate that discipline ...

Jane has a few habitual behaviors that I find difficult to correct. When she first came to us she had frequent potty accidents. Now, almost 3 months later she still, EVERY DAMN TIME she uses the bathroom, announces in a most-important-and-super-surprised-this-is-amazing voice, "I didn't pee my pants!" (I simply do not know how someone can summon that much enthusiasm 10 times a day.) She says it most aggressively whenever I'm busy helping Kate or James go potty. If Kate drops her spoon at the table, Jane immediately pipes up, "I don't drop MY spoon!" If I've been angry with the girls she will start saying in a pathetic, questioning voice, "I love you, mama?" If I'm just casually busy with basic housework she'll say, "Hi, mama," every time she's near me. She could say it 10 times in 10 minutes if I didn't respond. How do I correct this incessant need to be noticed and the accompanying emotional manipulation...

When my husband was in college there was a weird guy on the floor who would sit in the common room and stare at people. He wasn't reading a book or doing homework, or even pretending to, he just sat there and watched other people's social lives with a full-on, unblinking stare. It was creepy. But then he was a sociology major so maybe it was all a big experiment. They nicknamed him "The Stairmaster" as in, stare-master. There is something positively annoying about being stared at.  And there is something deeply frustrating about not being able to explain why it's annoying to a young child. It feels ridiculously petty to say, "Stop looking at me!" I am, for at least the fourth time, relaunching a potty training effort for James. At 3.5 he is way past due. He's dry for long periods of time and obviously able to physically control his body...but until now he's lacked the vocabulary and comprehension skills to understand what was required. All ...