Foster Further

Two days after I got back from being gone for five days, Jane let all her insecurities loose. She baby talked all day. She pestered the other kids in every tiny way she could be. She forgot to do things immediately after I asked her to do it. She was just low-grade angry all day. Day One after my return was full of tentative love attempts--creeping up to me, staring at me hungrily like she'd forgotten what I looked like, drawing a thousand heart pictures and presenting each one like priceless treasure and then being hurt when I wasn't enthusing over the twentieth picture in ten minutes. Day Two was angry. And anger for her is extremely passive aggressive. Low-grade annoyances toward everyone without ever once looking or sounding angry. This all escalated throughout the day very gradually until at bedtime I was standing next to her while she was brushing her teeth and realized she reeked of urine. I asked her if she'd peed her pants and she began to cry this hysterical cry t...

I kinda lost my shit and left the state four days ago. I'm back already. Found my shit right quick and made it back, though only because Seth turned 18 today. If I hadn't woken up at 5am with the worst case of mom guilt EVER for voluntarily missing my eldest child's landmark birthday...well, I'd still be looking for my shit somewhere in rural Illinois. But, 18 years ago today...ugh, I can't even do all the maudlin thoughts mothers do on their children's birthdays. Too much. It's just too much. So, in summary, we're all just sick of being cooped up together for months. Normally I'd be throwing the kids in the car every few days and driving off to some typical summertime funtime event. The fact that I can't do that--because the place is closed--or am scared to do that because every other stupid non-mask wearing person in the state will be there--is making me flat out miserable. I deeply crave slowly working my way through a trashy novel inbetween d...

Tonight we had family dinner. All five kids, both adults, eating and talking. And it was good. Easy. Natural. Simple. Delicious. Enjoyable. I've waited a year and a half to say that. I distinctly remember the first time we tried to have a family dinner. I don't remember any details about what or when other than the complete disaster unfolding around me. The girls bounced around like frenetic monkeys putting on the loudest show they could. They could not figure out why we were all gathered in one space so they compensated by attention-seeking. James was afraid of the chaos and hid under the table. The big boys grabbed their plates and went to eat in front of their screens. I lost my temper. Theo abandoned ship. I remember sitting there at the empty table that was a disaster zone of spilled drinks and splattered food and putting my head in my hands and crying. What had I done? For a long time that night has been a symbol to me of the havoc I wreaked on our home by bringing in mor...

We're in another wave of racial unrest. Why, why, why yet another? Where is the leadership? Where are the solutions? Where is the real change that creates a turning point for our country? A few days ago I had a personal experience that went beyond these questions. Backstory: my neighbor, an African-American man named Charles, has a history of setting fires. Four times, that the neighborhood can document at least, he's lit a fire that got out of control and either did do property damage or needed the fire dept there to prevent damage. The third and fourth times threatened my home and family. I have watched this man light a giant brush fire full of uprooted trees in the middle of a dry, tall grassy field (a wild meadow where the grasses grow 4-5 feet tall) and then get in his truck and drive away. I watched those flames reach 6 feet high and come roaring towards my home while I waited and wondered if our volunteer fire department was going to make it in time. I heard the panic in...

This month Kate is 3 years, 2 months old. She is the exact age that Jane was when the girls came. Kate was 20 months old when she came. She is now 38 months old. July will mark the turning point where she will have lived half of her lifetime as a member of our family. From July 30th onward she'll be more ours than not. Jane won't hit that kind of milestone until she is 6 years, 4 months old so...January 30, 2022. Wow. That is so incredibly far away. And what a clear illustration of how many more years of unhealthy living Jane experienced and thus, why she has been much more effected. But, after the growth of these last few weeks, I feel like we have sped up her transition to healthy living exponentially. (Horray!) These milestones don't really matter to the girls, or anyone else in the family for that matter, but they feel really significant to me. Marking the girls movement from their old life to their new life. Perhaps because it is springtime and there is new life blosso...

...an organized mind. Planning, finding patterns, predicting outcomes, maintaining focus long enough to follow through creatively--I am suddenly seeing mental skills I've never observed in Jane before. This week Jane began lining up her dolls when playing with them. She played school with them for the very first time in her life, ever.  In the sandbox area Jane has begun putting on tea parties. Each container (all identically holding mud, but some decorated with leaves while others have stones or twigs) is a different food. There are even condiments such as salt and paper and sprinkles. She does an elaborate explanation for me while inviting me to sit down and partake. It's so earnest and intentional and creative and REAL to her. She's enthralled. She began writing "storybooks" which consist of multiple pages with pictures and scribbled lines that she tells me are the words of her story. She tells me what she plans to write before she makes a book. Her stories hav...

Jane was super cuddly today. The weather turned hot and we don't yet have the window AC units in so bedrooms were too warm last night and nobody slept well. Today was a lethargic day. I was quite busy with work and dr appts so didn't really have time for Jane till evening. At bedtime we had fans set up in windows and she and I were sprawled on her bed talking and enjoying the breeze, when Jane began to talk about Leah, her first mother, as we call her. Her speech is all over the place. Sometimes she uses pronouns "we" and "you" to differentiate between Leah's house and our house. For example, she said, "we have only two cartoons: Robot GoBot and Paw Patrol but you have lots and lots of cartoons." That present tense 'we have' cut me to the quick. But then in her next sentence she says she loves me most and Leah "only a little" because Leah was "mean" and "didn't feed us a lot, she fed us sometimes but n...