It's been a year since I last blogged. I have been busy-but now I need to write.  To get stress & anxiety off my chest. 

Quick recap of what happened since I last wrote...  Dalton's adoption became final in august of last year.  We celebrated his first birthday early january.  A few days later we got called about Tbug.  He was a month old & lots of sadness had happened in his short life.  We became his foster parents a few days after.  Here we are almost a year later and we are going to court to terminate mom's rights.  And she contests.  We have a jury trial in late January for this case.  We really think she is just doing this because she can, not because she feels for her son.  She has no connection to him at all.  She has not seen him since birth.  I am just so stressed about the what if's & what other little things she can do to get him back because "she can take care of him the best"...   Can I text scream here please......     And on top of that... So adoption is very likely.... but it also will likely take forever to accomplish...  it very likely could take a year and a half until we are able to adopt him...  So that is were we are at with that... kinda crappy.  I am happy he will have a wonderful thanksgiving, christmas & first birthday. Beyond that we will try to live day by day & not worry to much about the future until it comes...

Catch Up & The Future

Wow-again I have not been back at this blogging stuff for a while.  Thinking I may make some vlogs since it may be easier for me... hmm maybe.   So really nothing new other than us STILL hemming and hawing about what we want to do with our license-foster care license that is.

It has really come to a forefront today, and a point of thorough discussion today. Our new license worker called.... yeah.  She is coming to do our home check and have a chat with us.  Great...   She wants us to tell us about some people who continued to foster after adopting.  Ok I thought.  So I brought the topic up shortly after she had called over the phone with hubby.  We discussed further this evening on our way to my in-laws home.   I think we agreed but..it is gonna be hard.  We need prayers people.  We are saying yes again.  But because I am super duper worried how it will affect my SON, we are going to very specific on what kind of a child we are open to.  We are going to reduce our age range from 0-6 to 0-3.  I also think we will take emergency placements.  Some counties people get calls 24/7, but in ours we are able to choose if we wanted to get emergency placement. Early on we did not as we were not prepared.  One munchkin down, we are more ready.

So there is a chance , how ever big or small, that we will get a call after monday.

I must say I am nervous. Nervous of a lot right now.  How will I give my son attention affection... ect while I am caring for another one.  How will I be when we have to say goodbye?

I guess we just need prayers. God called us to this to create a family. We are a family, so....  Ahh I just have a lot of thoughts/emotions going on now.  Are we ready?  I guess we are.

Posts & thoughts...

Well things have finally settled down after the adoption and vacation and all.  I know I haven't posted in a little while, but I keep thinking of these topics at night & forget about them but the time I have a chance to sit down.  So I will hopefully get more active, but guessing with the holidays I may not, who knows!

So before I close two side notes!!!  My son is getting dedicated next sunday! yeah!!  I would have sooner, but obviously couldn't. We picked out the cutest little outfit!! It is a 4pc suit (pants, shirt, vest & tie) but he wont be wearing the vest.  We plan to have him wear the whole outfit for thanksgiving.

Other side note, I think I am going to reach a friendly hand out to D'd bio-grandparents. From looking at some crossover court records & some address website I am fairly certain I know their address.  I know this could end up bad, and we are prepared for that, but I think it is important to have some family connection as he grows up and has questions.  I do not believe his birth parents will be sticking together for very long, and so I may not be able to maintain what little connection we have to them.

Also we are still debating what to do with our license.  We thought we had decided, but then the subject was brought up again.  So I don't know. We have a few options, but only time will tell.

Foster Care Future

So since you all know that we finalized the adoption of our son, for a few days and weeks we weren't sure what we wanted to do with our foster care license.  Well we are staying foster parents.  We ultimately would like to adopt another child for sure.  But now we have that initial "I want a baby" phase taken care of. Yes it would be awesome to be placed with another baby, but it is a lot of work. We ultimately would like someone close to our sons age, but that will likely be unlikely.  There are a few things that go into me saying that.  First, we seam to possible be on the sh*t list since we have not received a call for a placement in 7 months... And that one was totally impracticle for us, we currently had D who was 2m at the time, and the placement was for a newborn girl and another young girl (siblings).  Another reason that I say that is we are only licensed for two munchkins, I think it might have gotten changed to one now, but I don't have an updated license....  It is fairly rare in our county to just have a singleton.  Usually there are sibling sets unless it is a baby or it is a rare single child in home.  So thusly rare for us to get another placement. The third reason is we have a new Lisense worker/CW... who we have yet to meet.  I plan to shoot her an email just to introduce myself, but I probably wont get a chance to meet her and see how her team matches until our home visit sometime in december.  BTW, why don't old license workers notify you when they leave-arg!!

We plan to leave it in Gods hands, but we are in no rush to adopt more kids right now. We have thought about doing respit, but that really doesn't seam like we are helping the kids, just their foster parents.  I  also  feel that  that God is starting to move my heart to waiting child adoptions from foster care.  So I don't know what this path will take us to, but with God leading it will be an adventure :)  

Baby Book

So we have had String Bean for almost seven months. I finally chose to buy a baby book for him.  I finally took the risk of bio parents contesting tpr and bought the dang book my mother has been hounding me about getting :)

I immediately started to fill it out. I could hear my parents in my head as I wrote the truth of his story in certain sections. I could hear them saying "  He may not ever need to know his story"  or "He may hate you for finding out he was adopted" I hope the last isn't true.  Adoption WILL BE a topic freely talked about in my (our) household.  I really don't want my child to feel shame in the fact that he was adopted. I don't want him to be embarrassed because he is adopted. We want him to know there are many ways to create a family, and ours is through adoption. All ways of a family being made are beautiful and special.

So while I work on this baby book, I keep looking at the life book binder next to me.  Ugh... I seriously don't like their book. I understand why it is there and why it is important to have their story written down somewhere, but the binder does not make it age appropriate. If I were to fill it out, SB wouldn't understand his story when he was three or four.  It is geared to the older child who can read and write since there are spots for the child to fill out.  I have been searching for age appropriate life books and the only examples I have seen are for children adopted from another country, not from foster care.  I guess I need to read more. There was a give away a week or so back that I entered for a chance to win one of two books. I didn't win. So now these two books are going to be added to my list of books to buy.  The first one came highly recommended by some of our foster/adopt class teachers:
Telling the truth to your foster & adopted kids  and Lifebooks
They both seem like they would be so interesting to read.

So Fast

The journey that hubby and I have been on for the last six months is about to end. The train is about to stop and let us off to breath and just be. Be what you may ask? Be a family.

SB has been our family since day one, but it will be official in 61 days.

Everyone has said this is moving quick, everyone except us and our friends/family.  But sitting in court yesterday we were reminded yet again on how fast our case has gone. We had also received a round of congrats yesterday.

Yesterday we sat through a heart renching vol tpr hearing.  I silently cried or teared up through the whole thing.  So many questions just to make sure they are for sure on their decision.  The saddest part was when bio dad said he didn't have any family....I just wanted to get up and hug him right then and there.  Parents got released from court room, our cw got interviewed. Adoption date set.

So apparently people are super surprised that our case has moved so fast through the system, we think it is God! He placed us with a little guy he know we would fall in love with so deeply as if he was our own and knew how this was all going to work out even before SB was born.  God is good!!

Future

Future is not something you talk about when you foster. It is a touchy and hard area to bring up to someone who fosters.  I am of course talking from experience here.  I probably didn't go into fostering with the best intentions, I wanted a family, period.  Foster care was our best bet for creating a family, and it looks like we will soon be an official family.

Future is hard because before we got the paper work we lived in the here and now, maybe next month as well. Not a whole season ahead or a first birthday or an adoption party, or even our hopes and dreams for our little Prince.  That is what we are living in now, maybe preemptively, but hopefully.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, we know his future could be rocky, we are excited to just have a future with him in it.

So Thankful

I am not even sure that would be appropriate to title this. Thank you is not enough.  Thank you for giving my soon to be son life, a life that yes, did start out rocky, but a life.  Thank you for thinking beyond yourself. Even though there are so many things that cause you to not be a parent in social services mind, that one glimmer of hope I can see.  You chose for your son- our son, to have a better life. One that you knew you couldn't make happen. We are forever grateful.  We hope that we can maintain the right amount of openess.  We hope to be open and let you in, but at the same time guard this little boys heart, he has been through so much already. We can't wait for the day that we get to officially call String Bean our son.   We hope that the paperwork will be completed shortly so we can hopefully finalize the adoption by early fall.

Today

I am just an emotional ball of nerves. Why-I really don't know. Well Ok I kinda know... my SB had another visit, a visit to which he is entitled to. A visit to which makes me feel more and more like we are going to loose this "sure thing."

Things still have to get worked out in court, definitions and requirements have to be decided. It is early.

Their buying him an excer-saucer or jumper from the goodbye convo.

They are trying...

No previous rules put into effect are being monitored...that is as far as I can tell.

I really need to learn to walk in faith, God knows what he is doing. God knows what is right. It is scary to walk in faith & not knowing what is going to happen.

Have a feeling God heard my prayer early on...challenge us... Yeah that would be what I prayed-crazy huh? He sure listened.

Sorry this is so rambly-just my thoughts coming out after today's visit.

4/15/2012

So this is more of a mixed post. I have a couple things on my mind.

2nd visit went well, or as well as I think it went. bm seemed more appreciative than ever of how much we are caring of SB.  Thought it was nice that he is our only foster kiddo right now.

Sent a notice to SB's GAL in regards to a visit concern and requesting info in regards to court that I have not been privy to. And it isn't anything like what happened-i know that's confidential, but more like when the whoey is it so I can go. I want to go to court to get a little more info maybe on how his case is moving.

Went to our first Foundation course for our license. From what I have read the state I live in is somewhat backwards in regards to foster training. We have to take 9hrs of pre-license training, formal support session once placed with a child, then another 33 hours of Foundation training in the next 2yrs.  I like that we are doing the training while we have a placement-as you can ask questions in each class that pertain to your situation, ect.

Hubby and I slightly snickered at something discussed yesterday at class.  We were being told that there are views that think the removal of a child from a birth family home is more traumatic for the child than the actual abuse the child had dealt with.  Another student brought up the question of, well what if the child has only been in your house and only knows you and your husband as their parents. Well the teachers responce was the standard, they are young, it isn't as traumatizing for them, they can move on better. Hmm ok...sure...

Visit...

So my anxiety was at high levels this morning. I had to prepare for the visit, I had to prepare SB for the visit.  I had to mentally & emotionally prepare for visit.

Well I got to the location a few minutes early & met eith SB's CW who rang the doorbell three times...no answer each time. I thought "Yes, maybe the visit will get postponed & I wont have to deal with the unknowns yet!"  Well CW called BD and he answered, doorbell not working...crap I gotta hand him off after all.

So I handed the bubs off to bd, get introduced by sw, friendly hello's given all around. I leave as soon as it seams right to leave.  When I came back, bd was diapering the bubs. He was apperantly very appreciative of how well we took care of the little man.  SW made a comment that bm & bd said they liked how many cute outfits we had for bubs.  Cw was really happy with all the thought we put into the things in SB's diaper bag (communication journal w/intro note, TONS of pictures, disp camera for them to take pictures during visits & a easter craft I did)

All in all I am a little less anxious about visits, and really trying not to focus on the future to much. It is hard though since much of my family seems to be, I just don't want them to be too hurt in the end if SB goes home with bd... I see some members of my fam already struggling with SB seeing bd... Some family say the kids dont understand when they are this little and if RU happens SB will be wanting me and not bd. I am not so sure-at this point, yes... but as the relationship grows (if it grows) then I don't think so that much.  I donno. Right now I am looking forward to easter and the next weeks and months will play out how how his story will go.  We are leaning on God at every step and we know He knows how the journey will end, sometimes I wish he would clue us in to the next step!

Easter fun & crafts!

Ok, so I know perfectly well that a almost four month old can not do crafts...but we did them anyhow. Ok...I...we...? (whatever)...did an Easter craft. It was cute-I had seen this on pinterest, mostly for older children who don't bawl at you when you trace their hand (yep, that would be what String Bean did...)Here is a picture of the finished product-it is kinda cute, but also kinda basic-I donno...but guessing bd will appreciate it. Oh new term sorry...bd= biodad. Figured bd was better than daddy... so that is what we shall use. Anyhow...moving on, here is the picture!

So yeah, sorry it is sideways, but you get the idea.  So It is cute, but also somewhat ugly? Idk... 

We have also decided to give SB an easter basket, I feel that I should treat him as if he is mine, and if he was mine he would be getting an easter basket.  So I got some cute things for the basket, including a stuffed bunny, a toy & a sippy cup, since SB will be with us presumably for a while and it will thusly come in handy for him when he is old enough :)  Also if you look at the basket closely, you will not only see ripped tissue paper (thanks to my lovely cat....) and an empty space. I am hoping that I get the books I ordered almost a week ago tomorrow so they can be added to the basket.  

I wonder if BD has anything he is going to either give SB or ask me to give SB on easter... I guess I will find out soon.

Part of the reason I have been trying to keep myself busy is because I am very nervous of the visit tomorrow, I don't know why.... The unknowns? Looking to far into the future? Who knows... All I know is it is happening, so it should be interesting.

Happy & a little sad

So as we all know SB is our first placement. As a first placement (and child to begin with) we have ALOT of firsts. First time rolling over, first time smiling when I come to SB, first time standing with support, first time sitting with support, first time in a big boy jumper. You get the idea, a lot of firsts that a mama can be proud of. Well there is a first coming up that scares this adoptive mama. The first visit... with Daddy. I know it will be a long journey if everything works out perfect (which hello, this is child welfare here, not so perfect) These are "evaluation" visits. More so to see if Daddy is serious and to see what skills Daddy needs to work on.  We will see.  I am the type of person where I jump to the worse case scenario. That is where I am now. Oh ok, well I guess we need to deal with the fact that SB is going back to Daddy (again way to early to tell for sure). Or more likely in my case, letting go of the fact that we will probably adopt SB, which again is way to early to tell. I have to say I am more encouraged to work with Daddy after the recent visit from SB's worker.  I am still going to send off photos and we are going to work on a intro letter this weekend for our communication journal!  I am excited for the hopefulness I have now, but I know that could turn around.  So for now I am semi happy about the current visitation that "could" come up next week.  It probably will happen.  I am still trying to take it week and month by week/month.

Smiles to God

So this may be totally random, but here we go!  I have noticed that SB loves to look out the window and will occasionally smile at whatever SB see's.  I have taken to thought that SB is smiling to God. And lately SB has been looking outside and having this serious look of being deep in thought and communication. So now when SB does that I say "Oh are you talking to God? or is God talking to you"  I am loving every minute of SB. Such a gift to our family, even though we know that there will be challenges ahead.

palm to the face...

Seriously, why do I request info when I want to smack myself for asking when I get the news... Sent a heads up email to SB's worker. Asked anything new with visits. Yes um we have to do this than that and will deff keep you in the loop (shortened for confidentiality reasons).....great...   I guess I don't know how to deal with the negative for us parts of SB's case, and to many, the thing may not sound like much, but it is big for me right now. So we will see how this all goes... God I know it is confidential but a little more info would be awesome... thanks- from the mama taking care of SB.

SO I tried to suffice my glum mood by signing up for adoptuskids.org (?). Part of it seriously made me laugh.  They have to verify you actually have your home study-which we do...but they need to contact your worker to verify. Great-I don't think I will be hearing back in the 5-7 business days that my account was approved...the man does not get back to me with anything now in less than a month. Yes I did just say a month... Well I just gotta keep my spirits up.  We knew SB may or may not be a permanent placement, but these little things seam to effect my heart and I get somewhat emotional the longer he is with us.  Gah--I just need to let it go. Give it to God.  And as my wall says "He will bring us through it because He brought us to it"

Status Unknown

We are still in a holding pattern in regards to SB's future. And will be for a while.  I am looking forward (odly enough) to SB's permanency hearing in a few months.  Nothing is moving fast, which I knew would be the case, but one would think if one would want their child back they would move heaven & earth to get said child back-maybe I am wrong? Maybe people have different priorities?  I don't know.  

Today I did get somewhat sad news regarding SB's progress... lets just say SB will be getting continued development monitoring-although she kept reassuring me that I am doing everything fine and to not worry, they just have to make it sound worse/nit picky so SB qualifies...

So yeah that is about were SB is now. I am looking forward to Easter and being able to celebrate it with SB.  I am looking somewhat future forward as I believe as of right now he will be here till at least permanency hearing, but at the same time trying to not look to far into the future and to value every day/moment with SB.  Just in the few short months that SB has been with us, SB has grown and changed so much.  I appreciate the time God has given to us with this little one.  It sure has changed our life.

We shall see...aka... this is interesting...

So SB's worker came by for the scheduled visit. And again goes into that dad wants visits. I knew this would probably happen and doesn't mean he is leaving us...but I am just not knowing how or what to feel.  In one side of my head I am rolling around thoughts of what the heck do I pack for visits-although thanks to previous advice from a friend I have an idea.  Then comes the what the whoey do I write for our intro for our communication journal?   On the other more scarier side... does this mean dad may clean up his act and get SB back? Does dad love SB the way a daddy should?  And last kinda funny thing that I think most foster parents deal with... ok great, now I gotta figure out & distinguish daddy(bio) to dada/papa (hubby) more often with SB.   I know I over worry about this, but it is hard for me not to.  We know dad may not continue visits for very long... or he may just see what a beautiful child SB is & decide to put SB first in his life.  I guess we just have to wait and see and pray. At least SB will be with us for a while still.  Since SB's long term-ness with us is unknown I have been thinking more and more of having a half birthday for SB-so we can at least celebrate some version of a birthday with him... and if SB is here until the real bday great, then another party!

Oh, way back to original topic, I will be transporting, so it shouldn't be so so bad for SB when he has stranger anxiety, and we can build some sort of brief relationship through hand off of SB. But also maybe I am just trying to think positive of the visits that dad is entitled to.  Who knows.. just keeps us all & SB's family lifted up in prayer-we would appreciate it :)

The unknowns

Of Fostering.  About a month ago I started looking for an easter outfit for String Bean, but I chose to not buy anything because at that time I wasn't sure if I would have SB till then.  Nothing had been moving the plan, but I wasn't sure how fast things could turn around. In this case it was good that I waited, as I don't quit think SB will be in the size I thought SB would be in, and yes we get SB at least through easter :)

Future

So lately I have been thinking a lot about String Beans future, mostly if SB were to stay with us permanently. I really don't like thinking/talking about the future because if SB gets reunited with parents I don't want to have this life shattering feeling.  I have thought more and more on how I want SB to have some connection to birth family. I have felt / known since the begining of the fostering stuff that I want whoever we adopt to have connections to his/her family.  So I have been working in my head of how I would do it.  But it is way to soon to go beyond just thinking about it in my head.

Not Much

Not much is happening, that's why not much bloggy blog.  String Bean is still here, the case hasn't moved, and nothing much has changed.  Ugh, it kinda sucks though that we don't really know anything about the possibilities...it is like pulling teeth to get info from the worker....

We also added a bunch of names to the background check list-have I heard yeah or nay about these people yet...that would be a negative. I know they are busier now after the reorg. but some info would be lovely so I don't get my license taken away for having a currently not approved person as a babysitter....

Also, on another note... We got a call....For another placement.  We said no-for practicality reasons mostly.  String Bean's room has a crib and a twin bed-I do also have a pack n play-but that is really for emergencies/travel/naps/ect. So we are limited bed wise for placements. We also currently have a two month old-sooo yeah a sister sib group of 3day and 1 year are kinda out of the picture.  At first though I felt fine turning them down, but now I feel a little stressed that they may not find a home. I am sure they will, but still... I somewhat feel like I let them down.  In practicality we cannot have two more children. I would think about another baby or older - but right now, no to sibs...   Ah well, I guess I just need to let it go and focus on String Bean.