Foster Further

Today has been a momentous day. And the stress just keeps rolling off... A good, good day. 1) I got my book to enough of a polished rough draft that I'm willing to show it to initial readers. This blog and this fictional book have both been outlets for my worst fears and most constant anxieties. They got me through a lot of anxiety-induced insomnia. It felt amazing to watch my "manuscript" (hardly seems I have the right to use the word, but maybe I do) get bound at the printers and then shipped off. A tiny step toward a long held dream of mine. 2) While I standing there at the printers Theo called and told me that the state agency that approves adoptions had signed off on the girls' adoption. That's it! We're done! The next step is a quick signature by a judge on all the legal paperwork but that's really a rubber stamp. They're essentially adopted. What a relief! No more foster care social worker harassment!! That's like ten pounds of worry off...

Today was Jane's last therapy appointment. Last January I began earnestly looking for a family therapist experienced in the foster-to-adopt world. It was hard to find one who also accepted Medicaid. I wasn't wowed by her but she was nice enough and I certainly welcomed a listening ear when I needed to vent and ask for advice. I've felt for the past few weeks that I'm kinda done with seeing a therapist. I don't see her doing anything astounding with Jane. I'm past the point of desperately seeking advice. The more Jane has become "my" daughter the less I've needed outside help. This seems like a natural and healthy progression for me. But, I couldn't end, or more accurately, put on hiatus, our time with the therapist because I won't do anything that'd trigger more paperwork and delays from the agencies. I do believe we'll need therapists at times in our future but right now it's okay to take a break. I wish I could've had ...

Jane is struggling since we were at Ken's house for a pre-Thanksgiving meal a few days ago. She is clearly distracted and sad. She says to me that she wants to be alone, doesn't want Kate or James to bother her, that she just wants me to hold her all day and read books to her. During one of our holding sessions today she cried about a whole range of things. It started with Ken and the toys at his house and went to her cousin, Gabby. Then on to missing her birth mother and all the stuffed animals and her Minnie Mouse bed. Objects figure hugely into Jane's world. She is very much like her grandmother, who absolutely must bring gifts to every visit. No matter how raggedy or cheap it is she has a deep compulsion to give gifts to show her love (she once brought me an entire grocery bag of worn out teen-sized shoes reeking of smoke that she said her friend had 'pulled out of the back of the closet'. They went straight to the trash). And Jane is thrilled every time. Th...

Kate has begun this touching/grooming behavior on me that is sweet and weird all at the same time. She gets herself cuddled up to me and then just gently touches me all over my head and arms and chest and back. It's somewhere inbetween how primates in the wild groom each other and how she might fondle a new baby doll she'd just been given. I realize that I always did this touching/stroking behavior with my babies. Theo says I did it to him when we were dating and newly married. During rock-a-bye time each night I stroke the girls hair while they talk or rub their backs or arms. (Now I do a full brushing and joint compression protocol with Jane at the beginning of bedtime so she gets both.) It's weird to have it done to me, though. It reminds me of the power of touch in human connection and bonding. It feels like she's "falling in love" with me--but obviously not in a romantic sense. And, I gotta say, it's very relaxing. She about puts me to sleep. It r...

I've been using FB to find out more about family relationships and about the people who say they want to be a part of the girls' lives. I feel like an anthropologist delving into another world. I'm also weirdly obsessed with knowing if any of these people post pictures of the girls that I shared. It makes me strangely angry to see them reposting a picture that I took, at our house, of a special moment that I wanted to capture. And to see who shares pictures with whom (or perhaps, who steals pictures from whom). Here are my main discoveries: a) I discovered that Ken (a fictive relative, is the official term in social work lingo--a person who doesn't have a biological or legal relationship but still considers themselves to be a member of the family, usually a long-term boyfriend or girlfriend of a relative) has a pattern when posting. He posts one Scripture verse, one pro-gun rant, one hate-Democrats meme, one homo- or trans-phobic meme, and then begins the cycle ag...

We're home from an early Thanksgiving at Papa Ken's house. Safe and sound--except for the girls' emotional rollercoaster that will, I expect, play out over the next day or so. Reading all the scary stuff about the girls' pasts last night, as well as my FB stalking of maternal grandfather, Mike and his guns definitely freaked Theo out, too. This morning he was hunting through our paperwork to take with us legal documents proving we're their foster parents. I took a picture of the girls just before we left in case I needed to give it to the police. This is how we both think now and I am not okay with it. We got there around 11am. Ken's house is a run down 20 year old mobile home. He has never been married or had kids and he's been employed in good jobs his whole life--where does his money go? I was surprised to see how dumpy his property is. Except that maybe an old bachelor with a tendency to hoarding just doesn't care.  There were piles and piles of ...

We are finally reading deeply thru the paperwork we were given when we assigned the adoption papers. At first, skimming through, I thought it was all stuff we already knew. Nope. Theo is finding some real gems buried in there. Like, Grandma who knows our last name and address and has been to our house and driven the girls off in our car has a prior conviction for FELONIOUS ASSAULT. What the hell??!! Nobody thought to inform us of this? Back when I was quizzing every social worker and relative all about grandma?? When I was directly seeking info on whether we should trust her and let her have contact?? That little tidbit didn't come up? In case you're wondering, here's what felonious assault is: " Felonious assault, also called assault with a dangerous weapon, occurs when you assault another person with a gun, knife, brass knuckles, or some other weapon that has the potential of causing serious physical injury or death." And while Theo is doing his deep...

Tomorrow we take our whole family to spend an early Thanksgiving dinner with Papa Ken*, who is a sorta grandfather figure because he was maternal grandma's boyfriend during Ava's early years. Ken and Laura (Leah's mother) had already broken up by the time we got the girls but somehow he was still getting the girls at his house, every weekend, for the year before they came to us. In addition to Jane and Kate going every weekend he also got Gabby, the girls' cousin (Leah's sister's daughter). He still sees Gabby fairly regularly. Gabby is about 7, I think. Gabby's mom, Nikki, is Leah's twin sister but luckily they don't look anything alike. Imagine if she did--would we let her see the girls for fear that they'd think it was their mother? Would I fear that it was Leah for real, pretending to be Nikki? Gah, thank god they barely even look like sisters, let alone twins. I truly could hardly believe they were related when looking at them side-by-si...

Long story, short, the lesson of the day is: I will not wedge my head into a space so small that I am then trapped and panic and begin flailing about nearly breaking my neck until I can be found (under the furniture) and rescued. This is the lesson Jane, the girl with no spatial perception, logic, or impulse control, learned today. Remember that character from Family Ties who kept getting his head trapped between the banister railings and it was a joke that he did it over and over again? I always thought that was a ridiculous plot line that had no basis in reality. I was wrong.

Yesterday, Sunday, I was supposed to drive an hour to an indoor playplace to take the girls to see their grandma. It was our typical every-two-week visit. But ear/sinus infections were going through the house and I felt miserable. We were supposed to meet at 2:00 and by 10:00 I had Theo send Grandma a message that we couldn't come but she could come here and take the girls out. Of course he needed to try out some new Google number method and she never got the message. When I hadn't heard from her by 1:30 I texted her from my phone. Instant reply--she was already on her way there, starting from a town closer to ours, so, hence, driving an hour in the wrong direction. She finally got here. I'm awoken from sleep by Gus, equally sick and miserable, telling me she was knocking at the door. Theo was working outside all day yesterday on a yard project. Where was he? Oh, he'd gone to the store. WTF?!? So I try to use Gus to relay message to Seth to tell Grandma what car t...

Last week I had to drop off some paperwork at the foster care agency's local office. We haven't been there since last February, when the girls had their last family visit in that office. If my memory serves, they were in that building exactly four times: twice to visit birth mother in December, twice to visit aunt and grandma in February. There were no visits in January. (After those initial visits I suggested we begin meeting off-site every two weeks with grandma and aunt and that's what we've done ever since.) The office is in a bland office park and the reception area literally has almost nothing in it but three chairs and one table. We walked in and Jane instantly said, "I've been here before!" There were two doors out of the room. She pointed to the correct one and said, "That's where Mama Leah is! There's a kitchen in there! Can we go play with it?" I was utterly astounded. That girls' memory is bizarrely accurate someti...

Today Theo and I went to the adoption agency to sign a bunch of paperwork, write some checks, and receive the super secret documentation about why the girls were removed from their birth home that we'd been asking to see for months but were told would only be made available to us at this stage in the adoption process. There was no new super secret information. We already knew it all. I guess our first foster care social worker was a total blabbermouth who told us stuff we weren't supposed to know. Plus, I'd sat in on the termination of parental rights hearing where, I recognized from the awkward legalese of the reports I read today, this stuff had all been read aloud by the judge to all assembled there in the courtroom. Let's think about that--I had access to deeply private stuff as a random member of the public that I, as a foster and potentially adoptive parent, did NOT have until a year after the girls were placed with us. Our system is seriously screwed up. I ...

This morning I took the girls to a Quaker meeting. It was lovely. The time change occurred this morning and as I lay in bed with an extra hour to think about what I really wanted to do I realized that I simply could not abide another Sunday morning of talking and sitting and standing and flipping to the right page and bowing and reciting and singing, followed by awkward attempts at socialization in the five seconds I have to make eye contact with another adult inbetween ferrying plates of cheese and crackers and glasses of juice to two little girls who lose their minds at the sight of any buffet spread because they want it ALL and they want it all for MYSELF so they grab and spill and break down into tears unless I can perfectly do the parental dance of dodging and distraction. It's two hours of being on! when I just want to sit quietly and turn everything off. So I lay there thinking in the extra hour I had and remembered the blessed stillness and companionable quiet of th...

A week ago Ken* invited us to come to a Thanksgiving dinner at his house, along with some of the girl's extended family, so the girls could see people they haven't seen in a long time. In discussing the guest list I reminded him that the girls' mother and half-brother were not to be invited. I just got this angry message from Mike, the girls' biological maternal grandfather. "I just talked to Ken he said he was working on letting the girls come down to the house so the family could see them. he informed me that you would not allow Cameron to be around the girls?????? What was the reason behind this?? Ever since those girls came into your possession we have been cut out of their lives. I don't know who makes these decisions you or did the judge you won't write me back to let me know what's going on with them I'm just going to have to go back up to the judge I guess to CPS won't get ahold of me either what a corrupt system" Here's t...