Tadpole

Our little respite guy, Tadpole is here!  He's teeny-tiny and still almost has some new-baby smell on that fuzzy little head.

Dinosaur adores him, of course, and asked about making a photo book like we did for the other kids.  He's only here for a week, but how can I say no?  Maybe I can just make a little one with a pictures from the week.  He asked the foster mom, "What's your favorite thing about Tadpole?"  Melts my heart.

Rhinoceros is a mixed bag.  He's either indifferent or positive toward Tadpole, but he's struggling with my attention being more divided.  He hasn't had an easy time the past month or so, very upset any time I don't answer his needs or questions immediately.  But we'll all get through it.

A bit of the future, a bit of the past

I got an e-mail asking about a respite placement in June for a week, and we said yes.  Baby time!  When we did respite for Beetle for a week, he was at a similar age.  I'm really looking forward to it.

  In the meantime, we're a bit on the fence on whether or not to take placement calls.  I, as usual, want to just see what happens and say no if it's a placement that's beyond our experience.  I feel like we can make it work for a week, especially since I'm off work in June.  B is more hesitant, doesn't see why we don't take as many breaks as we can.  But for me, the breaks are not fully breaks.  Even though I'm not waiting on the phone to ring, I know there are kids that need us.  I try to fill up my empty days but I really just want a new case to dive into if we're needed.  I've appreciated breaks, but after having one when Cricket left the first time, now another after she left the second time, I'm not hoping to extend this one by our own planning.  Now, if we happened to get no calls, great.  We have a few more days to decide.

In the meantime, I got to talk to Cricket last week.  Rhinoceros bounced upstairs when he heard she was on the phone, and their little conversation was hilarious and of course heartbreaking for me, as I miss hearing them talk together so much.  It sounds like she's doing well, and we hope to have a playdate sometime next month.

I reached out to my connections to other past placements as well, hoping for something.  I got a response from Pterodactyl's caseworker (or former caseworker now, of course), and two pictures!  Oh, it is amazing to look at that little face, now a toddler.  To see those same expressions grown up a little.  It was the first I had seen of her in a year and a half.  Somehow the pictures gave me the connection I longed for and helped me accept that I may never see her in person.

First Day March 2015 - Kid-free morning and low-key afternoon

Ahhh.  Foster parent friends of ours had our kids spend the night Saturday night.  They are awesome and insane, as they had six kids for a night, ages 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.  So, this first day started out with sleeping in in our completely silent house with bits of glittery snow swirling outside, lounging around a bit, then having a great brunch date before picking them up.  The rest of the day was pretty nice, too: reading, playing in the snow, etc.  Not a perfect day, but a really good, happy day.  Here are my first day photos as I join with Journey to Josie and other bloggers giving glimpses of their lives on the first day of each month.

8th Day - Respite with Beetle

Whew, what a week.  Beetle is really, really intense.  Dinosaur is home for Spring Break when he's used to being at school all day.  I'm subbing for two classes this week.  We even got a placement call when I didn't think we were even on the list (we said no).  It was hard to say no, but I figured if we were barely hanging on with Beetle this week, we needed to wait until he left to add someone new.  That and if I told my sitter for tomorrow that she was now caring for four kids under 5 plus her own, she might have stopped returning my calls.

So here's the 8th day of April in this crazy week, starting with morning methadone for the baby.

 Morning tummy time with Beetle is a favorite activity.

 

My kids' reality: I am the best mom ever for putting their snack on Luigi plates. My reality: there were no clean plates and these leftovers from a birthday party were the first thing I saw when looking for paper plates.

 No foster care appointments today, so we did all the other errands.

 

Necessary tool for survival.

 Sometimes I have a lovely devotional time with my 1 pm coffee, as all kids are resting/sleeping.  Sometimes that lasts two minutes before it's obliterated by screaming and poopy pants.

This seems like the most boring educational "game" website ever, but the kids eat it up.

Finally our park is not covered in snow!!!  Dinosaur and Rhinoceros already ran ahead to the merry-go-round.

95% of my parenting success this day was in snack form.  We did a reading of Fat Frogs on a Skinny Log while acting it out with pretzel rods, peanut butter, and green jellybeans.

I'm still in work clothes, just home from work.

Gathering materials for tomorrow's lesson on reading nutritional labels (I work in adult education).

And sleep.  Until my 2 am-onward shift with Beetle.

Baby in my lap!

Beetle is here for respite!  Dinosaur and Rhinoceros were all over him for the first hour, then moved on to whatever else it is they do.

He didn't look much bigger until we picked him up.  Little guy has been growing just as he should!

Today is the lovely day that I'm not too tired from getting up with a baby to appreciate him.  I tried to clean up the house and clear our schedules so we'd have an easygoing week, which is good, because he doesn't seem to want to leave our laps.  He's still a fussy guy, but I love that I'm seeing some smiles!

Break, and Spring Break with Beetle!

I got an e-mail last week asking if we would do respite for Beetle during Spring Break in April.  His new foster family had a trip planned and decided that travel and beach time might be pretty rough on him as he's still been very sensitive to light, noise, etc.  Plus, I'm sure they'll enjoy giving Beetle's sister and their other child some extra attention since Beetle is pretty high maintenance.  I'm excited to see how much he's grown in a month and love that we can still have a connection with this family.  It makes me wish for the same kind of opportunity with Pterodactyl, but I need to remember to appreciate this in itself.

Because Beetle will be here for a week, and because I have some extra work hours that week subbing for a co-worker, we're going to wait to go on the call list until after Beetle leaves.  I was tempted to just put ourselves on and see what happened, but I am reminded that not all families say yes in the same way and still can contribute a lot.  We say yes to only one child at a time and only very young kids.  But we are also saying yes to sticking with foster care for a long time.  As our bio children get older, we'll say yes to older kids.  If we stick to saying yes in a way that makes sense with this plan, we may be preparing ourselves to adopting an older child that otherwise would have never had a permanent family.  B and I talked more about this on our drive back from my in-laws' house, and we can't say for sure what we'll do in every case, but we do want to carefully consider that there is a need for experienced foster parents and that there are many parents who would love to adopt young children from foster care.

Though we're still on a bit of a fostering break, I'm done with my online foster communities break.  It was tough, but I'm glad I did it.  I know I spent more time on my devotions and reading things on other topics.  I spent my weekend with my in-laws talking, knitting, and playing with my kids.  But I miss keeping up on all your stories, and I do find it lonely.  Time with extended family can be especially lonely.  I want my foster babies to matter to others, but the truth is that they won't, not in the way that they matter to me, or that their biological grandkids matter to them.  It can be hard with some friends as well.  I'm sure spending time with me and a baby that is definitely going to grow up with their baby is different than spending time with me and a foster baby that will leave any day.  I know none of it is personal and it's not about me, but if I'm honest, I need my connections to foster parents, and I'm going to continue to need them.  However, I know I can depend too much on online communities, and this last week was a good reminder that I need my connection to God and to depend on Him first.

Other firsts as a foster parent

I'm continuing to catch up on our foster journey so far before blogging in the present.  

I thought I would go through a few firsts that threw me for a loop in my foster parenting experience so far.

First Doctor's Appointment

One lesson I learned is that if you call to make a doctor's appointment for a newborn placement and the office says that there is already one scheduled, find out who scheduled it.  If a birth parent scheduled it, and you can still make that appointment, make sure the office knows not to cancel the appointment, that you will be there.  In our case, Pterodactyl's mom had made the appointment at the hospital, and so when I called to make an appointment, I learned there was already one scheduled and planned on that one.  Soon afterward, Pterodactyl's mom called to cancel the appointment, thinking that since she didn't have the baby, she wouldn't have that appointment.  Then the caseworker told her to go at that time.  This caused a bit of a mess of both of us showing up to a cancelled appointment, though luckily we were able to reschedule for later in the day and both make it back there.  Not the best start for foster parent/birth parent interactions that are already awkward.  The awkwardness continued, but this was actually the best interaction we have had so far.  She asked about my boys and why I was doing foster care.  I gave her as much time to snuggle her baby as I could.

I also learned:

• having a birth parent there is very important for getting family history written down
• getting a Medicaid number takes awhile
• telling office staff about confidentiality is important, as a receptionist checked the address they had on file by saying it out loud, not realizing it was Pterodactyl's mom's address.  I made sure they put a note so they wouldn't do the reverse (tell a birth mom my address).

 First Sibling and Grandparent Visit

This one caught me off-guard with sibling questions directed at me.  "Can she come home with us?"  I gave an answer that seemed appropriate to me, but wasn't cut-and-dry enough for a 4-year-old and the little guy thought I said yes.  And the Grandma didn't understand English enough to intervene.  IT was a moment of my heart sinking, wondering what I'd gotten myself into.

First Respite

We did not intend to use respite, but when Pterodactyl was only about two months old, she stayed at another home for the weekend.  We had hoped to bring her with us on a trip to Canada to visit B's family, but it got complicated when her birth mom did not give permission and no one could overrule it because the agency didn't have her birth certificate yet.  The caseworker suggested a family for respite, whom we had met in our training for becoming licensed.  I felt conflicted; I would never leave my biological babies with someone else for a weekend at two months old.  At the same time, we don't know how long we're going to be fostering, and we will need to sometimes make sure our family life has a high enough priority.  The way our agency set it up, we called the other foster parents and arranged the details, paying them our part of the stipend.  They were a wonderful respite placement, happy to take care of Pterodactyl.

 First Questions from Strangers

These started immediately.  Pterodactyl has dark skin; we have light skin.  I got everything from people wanting to know where she was adopted from to people complimenting me on bouncing back from childbirth so quickly.  It was especially awkward with a newborn newborn, as most people know that you don't have an internationally adopted baby that young, nor would you be just babysitting such a young baby.  I also worried about confidentiality and tried to dodge people's questions about exactly how old she was and her birth date.  I felt oddly exposed with all the glances and questions, and this is coming from someone who doesn't mind attention when pregnant.   I'm still not entirely over it, and my reaction is often to share more than I need to.  A library employee asked me if she was adopted, and I could just say no and let them guess at the rest, but instead I say, "No, we're foster parents."  I'm not really supposed to label her as a foster child more than I have to, though at least with a baby, it's not like she understands it.

So, we've navigated our family through some firsts.  Coming up sometime soon will be our first good-bye.  Pterodactyl's grandma had obstacles that prevented her from taking Pterodactyl as a foster placement, but we learned this week that those obstacles are gone.  The caseworker expects she will move to be with Grandma, but it could be anywhere from immediately to weeks.  This will be a very difficult first good-bye.  I know it would be harder had she been here for years, but four months still seems long enough that it's hard to imagine her not being here.  She is not the easiest baby and very attached to me, and I'm worried about what she'll go through when she's uprooted from the only home she has known in her life.  I don't say that as someone opposing the change, but I say it for what it is.  It sucks for me, but it also sucks for Pterodactyl.  But, as I've known from the beginning, foster care sucks.  It's an unnatural system that has frequent feelings of wrongness.  But that doesn't mean that Pterodactyl didn't need a home.  That doesn't mean that there aren't more kids that need us to love and lose and hurt once again.

It's all wrong, but it's happening.  We will face it only by the strength that comes from our God.