Between placement call and arrival

Crocodile is a busy boy.  He is sleeping better, but the days are tiring.  I'm trying to keep them simple, but they're still just full of "We don't climb on that" "Wait, where did you go?" "This is your plate.  This Rhinoceros's plate."  These early days are full of teaching how we do things here, and of course I have no idea what is brand new and what is known but pushing boundaries.  And really, he is such a sweetie, just FULL of energy and he is EVERYWHERE.

It feels like such a long time such his placement call already, a crazy fast-paced night.

You get a call for a child, you're chosen for placement, you get the child.  Seems straightforward, right? Yet every placement has been quite different for us.

Pterodactyl: We get the call, but it's not certain she'll need a foster family, as there is a possible relative placement.  We say yes if we're needed.  She's a newborn and discharge is expected the next day.  Next morning, we get the call that yes, we are needed as a foster family.  I meet her at the hospital and she's discharged into our care.

Beetle: We get the call.  We're chosen for placement.  But he's a newborn in the NICU and still has several days before discharge.  We meet him at the hospital and eventually he's discharged into our care.

Caterpillar: We get the call at 3:30 pm.  We say yes, and soon get a call back that we're chosen for placement and CPS will call us when he's on the way.  But then we hear nothing.  Our agency closes.  We go to bed.  11:00 pm, we get a call that they're on their way.  He arrives asleep in his car seat.  We have some medical questions and the two tired CPS workers have to hang around awhile, calling around to mom, to the hospital.  Eventually they leave sometime after midnight and call us back when they hear from the hospital.

Cricket: I get the call late morning I think, I don't remember exactly.  We say yes, and soon get a call back that we're chosen for placement.  She was removed the night before and is at a shelter.  I still don't know why they didn't call us when she was removed; I asked recently and got no answer.  I had a work meeting and asked if I could pick her up afterward since she was at the shelter, and that was fine.  I met an agency worker there, a few things were signed, and we were on our way.

Crocodile:  B gets the call around 6:40, and I find out around 7:15 when I get home.  After Caterpillar's placement took so long, I start "nesting" and cleaning up a bit, but I'm thinking we'll probably go to bed still waiting.  Then by 8:30 a CPS worker calls to say she is in our driveway and wasn't sure if we were home.  I'm totally caught off-guard by this, thinking we'd have a few minutes to prepare that yes, Crocodile was on his way.  Crocodile was a bit scared and quite reluctant about coming to us.  It just crushes you to see a small little boy backing away from you, knowing the hurt he's going through.  We slowly got him settled with a show and a snack after a few attempts.  Maybe the CPS worker didn't want to drag things out so that he'd settle better with us, or maybe she was tired and just wanted to be done for the day, but she definitely didn't give us a chance to ask questions.  I'd hoped to give her our Google Voice number to pass on to his mom, but by the time I thought of it, she was out the door.

So, it was a whirlwind.  And then, as usual, a weird lag time.  After 3 days, we had a home visit with his caseworker, still with little information.  No contact with mom, no visit schedule yet.  Just us, adjusting at home, having to learn about this kiddo as we go.

Introducing Crocodile

I sat at Dinosaur's baseball practice, telling my friend that we'd surely get a placement call the next day, because I had plans to babysit my baby nephew all day.

I came home to B sitting expectantly by the door with some news to share.

So, now we have a 2-year-old boy in our family, who I will call Crocodile.  Thankfully not for biting (though, hey, if that's going to show up I'm not worried), but for his first toddlerspeak conversations with me centered on his Crocs.  "I want them off.  I want them on.  I want them off."  He wore them to bed.  I just checked on him while writing this post as he's not asleep yet, and he was walking around his room with them in his hands.

He's a strong and coordinated little guy, but with these wonderful tiny chubby fingers.  He has some heart-melting big grins.  He gets quiet around other kids, but when it's just me or sometimes just Dinosaur or Rhinoceros, he starts a long toddler monologue.

So far he has not been wailing about bedtime, but he has not been sleeping either.  Very restless, just can't settle.  He was pretty scared and reluctant when he came through our door.  Poor guy.

Dinosaur and Rhinoceros are slowly adjusting to him.  Rhinoceros seems a bit confused, as he's not the partner for conversation and play that Cricket was, but he's also not a baby.  They've got some big brother roles to figure out still, but no major issues yet either.

I am tired.  I am cheered by friends' support and surprise fresh-picked strawberries.  I am charmed by this little one, my heart warm with affection for him.  I am hurting for this little one and his family.  I have no idea about the future.  I am a foster parent in the first week.

Catching up

Despite not having a foster child in our home for the past ten days, we've still had a fostering family life eventful enough for me to do a catch-all update.

We went on a trip to see my grandfather, my mom's dad.  My mom's mom passed away last year.  My boys never met her before she died, and I really wanted them to meet Grandpa before waiting too long.  He's in pretty great health and has sisters in their nineties still mowing their lawns, so I hope he'll be with us quite awhile, but you never know.  He also happens to live (many hours) south of us, so it was a good Spring Break trip to somewhere more springlike while our trees still have no signs of leaves.

It was a renewing, wonderful trip.  Seeing spring's green everywhere was so energizing when I've been so weary.  I was worried about the long drives with the kids, but even in their annoying or tiring times, I didn't regret the trip a bit.  We made fun stops on the way down and back, we camped near where my Grandpa lives and enjoyed the campground, we zoomed around his yard in a golf cart, climbed trees, and fed farm animals.  A very good outdoor, slowing down, time with family kind of vacation.  B and I admitted to each other that Cricket's placement was hard on us, no two ways around it.  We had fun moments, and we had peaceful moments.  We talked over future fostering, considering a family meeting that we'd present different age options to Dinosaur and get his thoughts.  We're leaning toward just infants for a little while.

Unfortunately, two foster care things ate away at that peace.  Gina's license still has not cleared at the state level. It should have two weeks ago.  I feared this meant she would come back to us and we had phrased her move not as respite but in very permanent terms: she will live there, she won't live here, she will live with her sister.  As much as I miss her, coming back here should be a very last resort, definitely not for some bureaucratic hangup.  We still don't know what's happening besides the caseworker saying they're trying to push it along.  Sigh.

The other one was a placement call.  Yes, though they knew we were on vacation, though Cricket hasn't officially moved.  I know they called because they had very few options; there is a sibling in a placement with our agency, so then they try first to keep siblings within the same agency.  A toddler with a sad story, one of our saddest so far.  We said to each other, of course not, but my heart ached.  Could we take him Saturday night when we got back?  I didn't reply right away.  We talked more.  We asked Dinosaur what he thought about fostering a new kid so soon, a toddler that might not be easy to live with.  He was excited, undeterred.  But finally we settled on our answer: Cricket's situation needed figured out first, then we would talk about it.  By the time we replied, they found a placement in another agency.

So, there goes that "infants for now" idea.  I am not against limits.  But I think here we were grasping for control, for planning.  While this little toddler was not for our home, we are going to be open for one if we're needed.

If Cricket's situation ever gets figured out.  Gah.

And so, at the end of a mess of foster care, I leave you with peaceful pictures of a lake and throwing old bread to cows.

Caterpillar Update

I said in this post that I sometimes avoided looking at pictures of our former placements because I didn't want to feel how I miss them.  That's part of it.  If I'm completely honest, I avoid it also because it's tempting to look back on those placements as rosy and wonderful compared to the battleground I'm living in now.  Don't get me wrong, God has us in this place for a reason and a good part of me is very glad we have Cricket.  This is the kind of hard work we wanted to do.  I love her deeply, and she needs our love.  She needs us to stick with her.  But a small part of me just wishes for the babies that looked up at me sweetly.  Caterpillar is especially hard to think about because he was such a happy, easygoing guy with us.  It was a pretty rosy life, and even B admitted it was hard to let that go.

That made listening to a recent voicemail extremely difficult.

The relative he moved to is having him moved, so they called us.

We have to say no.

1. We already said no to Cricket's siblings.  If we had another child here, we should have one of her siblings, like her baby brother that's about Caterpillar's age.  I can't justify keeping her apart from her siblings just to have Caterpillar because he's Caterpillar.
2. The reason we turned down Cricket's siblings still stands: Cricket needs a ton of attention.  She and the boys are just now starting to have more frequent positive times together.  Giving her less attention now would be a disaster.
3. Caterpillar is now linked to his sister who came into care later than he did (long story).  They want a home for both, and she would not be a good fit for our family age-wise.
4. We don't have a room for him.  He would need to be in our room and that has not been good for us as parents in the past.

I don't think the hardest part is saying no.  I think the hardest part is feeling like all of this should have been avoided.  He should have just stayed with us.  The relative didn't have to take him.  He will be moving to his fourth home before he turns a year old.  Will it even be the last?  I'm so scared of what that will do to this sweet, happy baby that I knew.  My first reaction to the voicemail was a physical pain, just hurting for him.

My only choice is to trust that God hurts when we hurt for these children, and he knows better than I do.  I had to go to work soon after this news and in the car every radio station was wrong for the particular pain I was feeling.  B had a practice CD for gospel choir in the CD player, and two songs preached to me: one about God as a healer, and one about God being able.  Thank You God that these are true.

Well, that was quick.

Just three days into being on the list for placements, we got a call for a 2-year-old girl.  She's now sleeping upstairs.

I went straight from a work meeting to pick her up from a shelter.  I'm not sure why we didn't get a call last night to prevent her from going to the shelter.  She was happy and doing her thing at the shelter, then fell asleep on the ride home, then when I woke her up, she was not so happy.  Not sobbing, but it took her awhile to smile again, and explore and check out the toys.  Somewhere in there were the words that stopped me cold.

"Go buh-bye?"

I know, honey.  I know you want to go buh-bye.  I know you're so lost and confused.  I know you miss your mama and your siblings.

I'm sure for a toddler placement, the first evening went quite well.  She ate.  She didn't want to go to bed, but let me rock and cuddle her, and she was asleep after an hour with minimal crying.

But it's still so, so sad.  You can see it in her face, hear it in her voice, in a way that you couldn't with our infant placements.

Plus, we're buckling up for our family adjusting to a walking, talking foster child.  She is a year younger than Rhinoceros, but they're the same size.  She also seems much more independent than my kids at her age.  It'll shake us up quite a bit, I think.

I'm glad we can be here for her.  But I am worn out and need some sleep before tomorrow's adventures begin.

Vacation complete

Complete vacation.

It was strange.  I'm not sure if it was the week offline or just the way grieving a goodbye happened this time, but I had almost zero foster care-related emotions on our vacation.  I stopped, and enjoyed being there.  Sitting with B by a camp fire almost every night, just the two of us.   Reading.  Playing hypnotically long games of War.  Lots of walks and hikes.  Throwing rocks into the water.  Being far, far from civilization.

It was magical.

I'm so glad we got away, and when we did.  I was a little nervous about being just a family of four in such a remote place for so long, but it allowed us to just pour attention into our two boys.

I did have my phone, but I barely use it, so almost no one calls it unless I've specifically told them to.  One voicemail earlier in the week was someone pocket-dialing me.  Today I saw another as we were about to use a slingshot to send zucchini into a field at the farm we were playing around at.  I didn't check it during the family activity (and who would want to leave the squash-flinging action anyway), but checked it later to get a message from a placement worker.  She wasn't sure if we were open for placements or not, but was calling anyway.  We were still very far away from home and the message was already old, so I didn't call back, and e-mailed when we got home to explain we were still off the list.

But still, knowing a 3-day-old baby was placed yesterday brings me back down to earth.

So does walking past the bedroom our foster children sleep in.

I admit I didn't spend a lot of time journaling and reading my Bible on vacation, but when I did, I went straight for verses about preparing, thinking about preparing ourselves for our next phase of fostering.  All verses bounced me another direction than what I had been thinking: God is preparing us.

So, here we are, prepared not in the way that I really feel prepared, but prepared in the way that God has made everything fit together in his mysterious way.  Tomorrow, laundry.  Oh man, the post-camping laundry.  Monday, starting toting that phone around, waiting for calls.

Hello, Caterpillar

4-month-old baby boy Caterpillar* joined our home this week.  He's our first placement that's had a home before ours besides the hospital.  Also my first real interaction with Child Protective Services, as so far I'd only dealt with my private agency and hospital social workers.

He's big!  Yet he fits into 6-month clothes, so maybe he just seems big because we had Beetle most recently, who was both a little younger and on the skinny side?  He's had some sad spells, but overall we're shocked at how you can actually lay him down and he stays. asleep.  Even if he doesn't sleep long, it's still amazing compared to Beetle.  I guess I'm a comparative parent.  Sorry, kids!

Dinosaur and Rhinoceros are thrilled, though Rhinoceros can't say his name.  He did start pulling his baby doll on a wagon around the house and putting it down for a nap in the closet.  Dinosaur has been asking more questions about why babies stay with us than he has before, but I think it's going well.

I hold Caterpillar close as he experiences the loss of his home, his mom.  I was rocking him and started singing, thinking it would put him to sleep.  He perked right up and started cooing back!  Mom must be a singer.  So I've been singing all day, especially He Knows My Name, which I'd never connected to my foster babies before but now it'll always remind me of them.
 
I have a Maker
He formed my heart
Before even time began
my life was in his hands

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
and hears me when I call

I have a father
He calls me his own
He'll never leave me
No matter where I go

He knows my name
He knows my every thought
He sees each tear that falls
and hears me when I call

*I have a knack for choosing nicknames that are hard for me to spell, and I'm a pretty good speller.  I always want to type Rhinocerous and Pteradactyl, now Catepillar.  But I like it too much to change it.

What our placement calls are like

We said goodbye to Beetle on Saturday, his foster family home from their trip.  When people ask how the week was or if we enjoyed the time with him, I have to say that mostly we're happy we could do this for his foster family, but the week itself was hard.  Grueling.  He really, really wanted to be held 24/7, and not even in a carrier sometimes (which is usually my lifesaver).  However, I know deep down that the mundane moments of foster care have their own beauty, to hold a baby that needs us to make his life a little better.

As we wait for our next placement, and just said no to the call we got last week, I was thinking about placement calls.  First, the process is probably different everywhere, but our county changed recently.  Private agencies handle a large number of foster care cases, so they had them on a rotation of weeks: if it's your agency's week to be first in line, CPS calls them first, and they contact families.  If they don't have anyone, CPS goes to the next agency on the list.  While this is practical, it wasn't placing children necessarily with the best fit for a family, but the best family that the agency on call had.  They also used a shelter for a temporary place for kids, and so "emergency placements" aren't really common here.  Most agencies wouldn't call you after 11 pm, but just have the kids go to the shelter.

Now, CPS contacts on-call workers from all the agencies giving a profile of the child who was removed.  The agencies have a short amount of time to find their best placement options, then they have a conference call and decide the best among all the options.  They are also doing this at any hour, so the shelter will be much more rarely in use.

So, we're getting ready for our first 2 am call.  They say they aren't very common, but I'm not convinced.  I'm okay with being woken up, but I am a little concerned about making a good decision when I've just been woken up.  Also, comparing the one placement call we've gotten since this change and the placement calls before, the new system seems to have the pressure of time.  They've got to find someone quickly to make the conference call on time, so with our call last Wednesday, I barely got in a hello before I heard a string of information about the child, no time to find a pen.

I've been surprised at how I've responded to the calls.  When we have said no, I have said it pretty quickly and firmly.  I am usually an indecisive person, plus of course I want to say yes to every child, so this was not what I expected.  B was about to say yes to one placement when I told him to stop and ask the birth date.  Sure enough, though we were licensed 0-2, this child was almost 3, which at the time was older than Rhinoceros.  That's a line we decided not to cross.  I said no.

I have, however, felt bad about those words five minutes later and have to be talked down from calling back.  But each time, I think my gut reaction, which has been set on the parameters we've set for our family, had been correct.  It's so hard, though.

So far, I've made sure to consult B before saying yes, usually needing to call back.  We've decided that unless there's some aspect of the placement that we haven't discussed and decided on, and the placement isn't anything we've already ruled out for now (more than one child at a time, older than or very close to Rhinoceros' age, known violent behavior or history of sexual abuse), I will say yes without talking to B.  I know they want to find placements quickly, and I don't want to slow it down unnecessarily.  The changes in the placement process have happened to avoid kids being in limbo longer than they need to be, and I want to help with that as much as we can.

"We know you're not licensed for two, but..."

This is the second time this month that a certain social worker at my agency has called and talked about how things are going in general, then slipped in a placement request.  Sneaky.

So, Beetle will not be moving to grandma to join his sister, because the GAL visited grandma and wants the sister removed.  Yikes.  This means that his sister needs a home, and we already have the brother, so of course we got a call.  And of course I want to say yes, but we decided to say no.  (Well, okay, I wimped out and said please look for other homes that could take both and if you can't keep them together, call again.)

I don't want Beetle to leave, but it's not extremely compelling for them to both be here.  Beetle has only had a week at home with us, and a week with me visiting in the NICU.  It's not a bad time for him to move.  I've met his sister at visits, and I would love to scoop up that cutie and bring her home, but there are at least three big issues.  1) She's almost 3, and we said we wouldn't have a foster child the same age as our bio children.  We want to stay at least 6 months younger.  2) She has night terrors.  As it is, we are taking turns holding Beetle all but one hour of the night.  I literally do not know how we would be able to help her, too.  3) She's moved around a lot, and this will be another traumatic move.  Beetle needs a lot of attention and has tons of appointments, so with that combined with the needs of our bio kids, and my part-time teaching schedule... we shouldn't do it.

I'm praying the right family is found for both of them.  If not and they call again, this will be a hard one.  Even though there are all the reasons above for not taking this placement, I've got a lot of love for Beetle from these two weeks and would like to see him through withdrawal if I can.

Babies, babies, babies

Those were my first words to B when we talked on the phone about... a new placement.

B and I had just finished discussing that we would say a conditional yes to to the twins, that if they were born when we happened to be available for placement, or if it meant staying empty for a month or less, then we would take them.  Then the phone rang about another baby.

He's not here yet.  He's a baby boy still in the NICU, possible discharge this weekend.  We just took a drug-exposed infant training, and good thing.  Or not a coincidence at all... as I think the agency saw this placement coming and tried to get a few more of us ready to say yes!

Some new factors compared to our last placement will be NAS (Neo-natal Abstinence Syndrome) and a father that has visits to schedule as well.  Some familiar factors will be picking up a newborn (he's a bit premature, so he'll seem like a newborn) from the hospital and a relative who hopes to be placed with the baby once some barriers are out of the way.  The latter didn't go as expected last time, so we'll see what happens.

I'm very tempted to get this Mamaroo swing that I hear is excellent for infants in withdrawal, but I always have trouble plunking down money for anything but the most basic baby equipment.  There's one on Craigslist for a little cheaper.  Hrmmm.

I'm going to try to get like 9 hours of sleep every night until his discharge.  I am looking forward to the Olympics lining up with having a newborn.  Hours of stuff to watch when in a daze.

Multiplying before our eyes

There's one bit of news about Pterodactyl and her mom I didn't blog about yet.  Before she moved, we learned her mom was pregnant.  What seems like impossibly soon to be pregnant.

So, we knew when that baby was born, or shortly before, the agency would probably want to match us up.  We decided we wouldn't stay empty just to wait on that placement, but if it all fell into place, that would probably be a good thing.  We know the family, and while I wouldn't say we had a positive relationship with her mom, it wasn't clearly negative either, which is better than her relationship with some others at the agency.  The grandma who has the siblings knows us and actually said she wanted this baby with us.

So, we're ready, waiting on the next placement, come what may.

Then I got an e-mail from our licensing worker that there are BABIES due in June, Pterodactyl's siblings.  Twins.  Would we consider taking them, if they came into care?

Sooo... we were only planning on taking one child at a time.  Maybe reconsidering in the future, but we weren't there yet.  And oh man, twins.  I have friends and family with twins.  It's insane, especially as newborns.  And have I mentioned that B is not a newborn person?  I'm like 50% a newborn person.  I can do it, but I'm a much more cheery person when they get to 6 months or so.  But poor B is in near misery.  And TWINS.  And he kind of just wanted 2 or 3 kids originally.

So, we asked some questions about whether the agency is hoping we would stay without other placements to wait on the twins.  We're trying to figure out what the need is.  Figure out what this "if they come into care" is about, because it really seems unlikely they wouldn't.  Lordy, if Pterodactyl's mom was in a good place to try out parenting, it doesn't seem like twins would be the best bet.  And B, bless his heart, says of course we would take them.  He had his head in his hands and swore a bit first, though.

B: "This is how it starts!  Then you turn around and you have 10 kids!"
Me: "They are literally multiplying before our eyes."

Oh, foster care.  It's true we wouldn't write these stories this way.  I did feel led to pray for Pterodactyl's mom Sunday night with our small group.  This must have been why.