Foster Further

Today we held Jane's 4th birthday party.  On the whole the party went well. I mean, none of the major things I was dreading happened. No surprise visits by banned people. Jane had fun. We got nice family pictures. She was thrilled with her cake and balloons and presents. She was polite and kind when opening gifts, saying thank you and giving genuine hugs. All the kids were thrilled to see each other and ran around on the playground together. They got tons of attention from adults. From her perspective, it was great. From my perspective, it was miserable and annoying. I'm never again going to get roped into doing all the work for a bigger party than I want to host. Here's how it happened. Several months ago I stayed home and Theo did the visitation with aunt/grandma and they dreamed up the idea of going to this park (farther away from our house so it'd be halfway for each of us to drive) plus renting a pavilion to house a bunch of people. They assured me there were...

Here are all the things I'm worried about tomorrow: Forgetting some food or serving item (100% chance that'll happen despite my lists, oh well). The half-brother, age 13, who was uninvited after the girls cried and told me stories of him hurting them, coming anyway. If his grandpa (all the kids' maternal grandfather) brings him, despite our request not to...what do we do? Tonight I coached the girls that they can say, "NO!" loudly if he tries to pick them up or touch them and then say, "I'm going to get my mom!" (Sadly, Jane said, "sometimes he hurted me...but he still loves me!" Leading to a message from me about not letting people, even those who loves us, hurt us. Oy. Grandma dragging out the good-bye and making an already emotional day even more difficult. Like the fear about forgetting a party item I'm 100% sure this will happen. There's no prevention; just degrees of coping afterwards. It being cold and wet and a m...

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!