Foster Further

Today I've spoken with, or exchanged emails with, the adoption caseworker, the adoption caseworker's supervisor, the clerk of the court, and the guardian ad litem. All have given me different information about how and when the adoption paperwork progresses through the courts. The supervisor is obviously lying. The caseworker thinks she knows stuff and uses phrases like, "in my experience" but I know she's been on the job about six months. The clerk of the court tells it straight. According to the clerk no, we cannot switch over to the "quicker" judge and whoever told us that was lying (supervisor). Also, we should expect the signing to take up to a month, not be done in two weeks and whoever told us two weeks is lying (again, the supervisor). The supervisor called me in response to my pestering emails and phone calls and I called her on all her false promises by saying the clerk told me something different and she tried to backpeddle and claim she ...

Why is tentativeness annoying? For the past week or so Jane has entered his scaredy cat/hovering/tentative demeanor that drives me crazy. It's hard to define exactly how her behavior differs and why it's annoying and yet it's so, so real. It really is. Here's an example. About 30 minutes ago, after kids and dog and cats were fed and pottied and dressed and started on their day, I sat down on one side of our loveseat/double recliner and began working on my laptop. Jane immediately crawled up into the other recliner and began leaning over the console so her head was hovering less than an inch from my shoulder. She was mouth breathing all over me and staring at my screen (which was just text as I was working on a document). I'm working hard on being patient and kind when correcting her. So, with a neutral tone I said something like, "this is mama's time to work. I need some space when I work. You can be near me but please sit in your chair and don't le...

Kinda sickly sweet but then, birth announcement are super sappy too, right? I want the mixed emotions adoption announcement card. Something along the lines of the image of the cat hanging on by one claw to the tree branch and the slogan about hanging on, or something like that. Maybe I want something religious with a patron saint and a plea to pray for us. But maybe this isn't the time to be honest. Most importantly, maybe this isn't all about me. I realized the girls are going to look back on this and wonder what we did to mark the occasion and I instantly felt so guilty that now I'm all in and over the top.  Luckily, because we're so close to Valentine's Day, I went to the store today and bought an obnoxious amount of heart-shaped doo dads and sometime this weekend Seth, my photographer son, will set up a backdrop that I'll bling out in hearts and then we'll take pictures and it'll be so sickly sweet I'll cringe every time I look at it. (Bu...

Every time we inch a little closer to the adoption I take note of how I feel in hopes of gaining insight into how I'll really feel when it's really all done, for real . Because I have absolutely no idea and not knowing how I'm going to feel seems very, I dunno, unnatural, or something. In the days leading up to each birth I already knew that I loved this baby fiercely. Of course there were the usual fears about the health of the baby or complications from birth, but under-girding those fears was the deep knowledge that I would absolutely, unquestioningly, unwaveringly, love my baby. I knew I was the kind of mother who could look a seriously deformed baby right in the face and love it no matter what. I knew I was the kind of mother who could do a horrendous stint in the NICU and still show up every day, a fierce advocate for that child. Regret was never going to be a part of my relationship with my birth child. But adoption, especially after 14 months of foster care w...

Just got this email from the adoption worker: "We will be filing both girls’ adoption petitions tomorrow in [ ] County." Now I just want to sit right here with my cell phone and landline phone and email browser refreshing every thirty seconds until we get the final word. And today at 4:15 there's another social worker meeting at our house. I'm not doing this one. Theo is taking it, per my request, well, demand. I can't even think about them derailing us, again, when we're so close, again.   

January been a rough month after 2019 was a rough year. Theo and I were spending some time together this Sunday afternoon talking it all through. I told him that in many ways I'm, weirdly, feeling like I'm in that 3 month postpartum zone. I always said my pregnancies were 12 months long because I wasn't really myself until my newborns were about 3 months old. Well, I feel like this adoption process has been a 15 month pregnancy that still isn't over. I've got so much to worry about that I'm not sleeping.  I'm having all these perimenopausal hormonal fluctuations that make my thinking foggy and my emotions too raw. I feel too tender and exposed, with no capacity for maintaining a thick skin about anything anymore. I have three little kids who need contact with my body all day long and while I've always been a hands-on mother at some point I am just done with other people needing access to my body for 12 straight hours a day. And I have to have my h...

So I've been working with Jane, and the other two kids somewhat, on being mindful of where they play with toys. If they scatter and hide things, oh look, pick up is difficult. Same lesson--several times a day. Yesterday, after several good days of pickup being easier, I got lax. Here's all the reasons why dealing with this girl with her FAS lack of reasoning, history of trauma leading to overly-emotional responses, and personality that leads to self-victimization is just so damn hard. 1. Yesterday I got down a tub of toys. James got the item (a school bus) that Jane wanted. Jane got the baggie of people. I told them both to play awhile and then switch--standard response I always give when two kids want the same toy. I watched her face and knew she was pissed. I knew I should monitor that baggie of toy people but I got distracted and didn't. There was no toy pickup last night so we had to do it this morning. Over breakfast I told the kids that I had a special surprise ...

Today I began my grand plan to convert Jane from an ADHD-addled squirrel to a real human girl--when it comes to playing with toys, that is. I shared this description with Theo and he about busted a gut, by the way. Exclaiming: yes! That's it! I can totally see it! What finally pushed me into focusing on this area was thinking about how she plays by herself during Quiet Time. She's totally different during that hour of the day. Every kid is alone in a room with a special set of toys that only comes out during this time. Jane loves it! She takes her little doll house and its miniatures into her room and plays with great imagination. I hear her and she's so happy! Contrast that with play downstairs where she's like a squirrel/tornado scattering toys as wildly as she can, hiding bits and pieces all over the house in a perpetual attempt to hoard a stash all her own that no one else can touch. She looks unhappy and stressed and is prone to bickering and meltdowns during...

We got back from our trip to holiday trip late on Friday night. Everyone exhausted--nothing but unloading the car and minimal feeding of children happened over the weekend. Monday I woke up feeling awful. Thought I was in for full-on flu. Aches, nausea, sore throat, cough. I did not move from bed except to feed myself. Meanwhile, Theo took the day off from work and worked like a Tasmanian devil. Fixed a leaky faucet, fed the kids, cleaned the kitchen, worked on figuring out a possibly broken dishwasher, and did mounds and mounds of laundry, and then took the older boys to the bank to open new accounts, and, finally, ended his day with a church council meeting which sucks the soul out of him every time. So, the man worked and worked yesterday. Our road trip generated a carload full of items to be washed--we had clothes for cold and warm weather, swimsuits and beach towels, bedding for five kids... so much laundry . I realized at some point yesterday that he was just pulling things f...

So this just happened. Jane got up from breakfast, waded into the mess of toys that were gotten out yesterday (while I was sick in bed most of the day) and never put away, and looked at me and said: "I want fancy toys. I saw them at the store. I wish I could have those kind of toys. Fancy ones like I saw at the store. That's where they are; we could go get them." It took me about 30 seconds of silence to process what she was saying. The little brat was, mere days after getting all new Christmas toys, asking for better toys. Fancy toys. Sparkly, plastic toys. Wow. I seriously wanted to burn it all down. Take every one of her toys and throw it away and leave her with nothing but sticks and dirt to play in. Teach that girl some gratitude. Instead, I calmed myself and led her through the thought process of acknowledging all she'd been given and how disrespectfully she was treating her new toys by leaving them all over the place. But, I gotta say, what a lesson...

We have returned home from an 8 day road trip to visit family over the Christmas break. We left about noon on the 26th and spent that night in a hotel. The 27th was spent visiting the girls' aunt, uncle and cousins who moved out of state last summer. They live in the mountains and it was a new experience for we flatlanders to visit this beautiful area. I climbed straight up the small hill that is their front yard five times in two hours to take three kids on five potty trips from where they were playing with the neighbor's toys. Theo, the big boys, and the cousins all hiked to the top of the little mountain behind their home. It was the steepest hill any of them had ever climbed and to get back they simply sat on their butts in the dried leaves and slid back home. (Only later thinking about snakes.) This aunt has been invaluable to me and I truly enjoy her. It was a great visit and makes me committed to keeping in touch with their family. I drove away with lots of thoughts ...