Worst Day Yet!

I've now had my worst day as a parent. The day started out OK, normal, like all other Saturdays. Cindy's soccer game was at 9:20, so I took her and left her with her coach while I went back for the rest of the angels. Will's game was at 9:50 (have you ever watched 3-year-olds play soccer? It's hilarious!)

Anyway, I was carrying 2-year-old (he needs a name on here...Drew) I was carrying Drew to the van, and my foot slipped off the side of the sidewalk. I fell, and as I was going down so many things went through my mind! I had flashes of granny almost ten years before slipping while carrying my 2-year-old cousin, and twisting her leg, shattering everything from the mid shin down. I could see Drew falling head-first and was trying to catch him. I felt my foot and ankle twist horribly. I tried to reach my hand under Drew's head so he'd have a softer fall and only managed to twist myself worse. His head hit and I grabbed him up at almost the same time. He was crying and scared, I was in shock and scared. Granny came and got him, and I just sat there.

I finally got up and tested my foot and ankle. It seemed sore, but not horribly bad. Obviously, nothing was broken. I went to the van where Granny had put Drew, and he was still sniffling, but generally OK. I couldn't believe he wasn't hurt worse. (I've kept my eye on him ever since for signs of trauma, but he's still just fine.) So we went to the park for a day of soccer.

After Will's and Cindy's games, we all had lunch, then went back for Annie's game. She played well, the other kids played in the volleyball sand, and on the playground where I could see them. Granny sat in the van in the shade with Drew so he could snooze. When the game was over, I was able to get all the kids' attention and tell them let's go. We were gathering up chairs and sweatshirts. Will came running over from the sand with his shoes in hand, and as I was telling him to sit down so we could put them on, he dropped them at my feet and headed for the van. The others came along and ran past, and I picked up the shoes and started moving to the van. I noticed my foot becoming much more sore and harder to walk on. It took me a while to get there, so I assumed all the kids would be in and ready to go when I arrived. But they weren't. Kevin and Will had never made it to the van. Great. We thought they couldn't be far, so the girls started running through the park and I started limping, yelling their names and looking for them.

Kevin was found very quickly and I saw Kristy dragging him towards the van. So I concentrated on looking for Will. I could hear the girls at different locations yelling his name, I was doing the same. It's a fair sized park with 15 different soccer fields marked off and approximately 1500 kids with their parents and families running around and playing soccer. In the whole time I was looking and yelling, becoming more frantic with each step, and not one person looked at me or asked if there was a problem. After all four of us had walked the entire park each, I was almost hysterical. I couldn't believe this was happening.

Then Granny called my cell phone, "Cindy found him over here in a tree." I went towards the van and saw, in the corner of the park, a giant evergreen with shadows moving around inside it. I looked in and found Will playing with a rather large boy and thanked God we found him. I don't know who the boy was or if he was just innocently playing with a child about 10 times smaller than himself, or if he had other intentions. Right now I'm happy we found him unharmed. He, of course, is oblivious...they were just playing with sticks, and he told us all about their game.

On Sunday I came down with a stomach virus...penance for dropping one child on his head and losing the other. It's days like these that make you appreciate what you have!

Talk About Normal!!

These are the days that make me remember that I mom first and foster second!! Friday night we loaded everyone up in the new van...gotta say, it's the most wonderful thing, I never knew these kids could be so quiet in the car!! (It has a DVD player.) Anyway, I digress...we loaded up and headed to Boise to a support group meeting and things were just fine. About 3/4 into it, Kevin came running in to say his tummy hurt. I rubbed his back for a few minutes, then he went running out again, so I assumed he was fine. Well, we all know what happens when we assume!!

He threw up twice at Health and Welfare, twice on the way home (in the new van!!), and all night long. When he woke up Saturday he was just fine. We chalked it up to him eating too much pizza. Until granny ended up being up all night Saturday vomiting, and I spent Sunday trying to get the kids to maintain an even keel so granny wouldn't bite their heads off. (Cindy asked what was wrong with granny, and I told her the same thing Kevin had, and Cindy said, "Granny ate too much?" I wish!! When does granny ever eat enough let alone too much!?) So we got through the weekend.

At about 11:30 Sunday night I heard a horrible sound coming from the boys' room. 2-year-old was retching, dry heaving, and all together miserable. I was up taking care of him when I heard a noise in the bathroom, and look in to find Kristy camped out by the toilet also retching. Good grief! It's not flu season!! Both kids finally settled down and went to sleep about 2:30 am. Somewhere around 1:00 am I remembered I was supposed to go to our Boise office by 8:00 am on Monday...trying to get from our town to Boise in the morning is a little like...trying to get across the Big Eye in Albuquerque on a Friday evening at 5:00 in the rain. If you've been there, you'll know. If you haven't, imagine LA rush hour times whatever.

I did get up after my measly 3 1/2 hours of sleep, got the boys to daycare and made it to Boise only 15 minutes late. Then I spent the rest of the day in a fog. Everyone at home was feeling fine and dandy like nothing ever happened. Is that enough normal for the week?

I Feel Myself Coming Back

You know, for a long time, I was starting to worry that I was losing the ability myself to attach to new people. I wasn't getting as close to the new kids in the house as I used to, and I wasn't getting horribly upset when they left. I really was worried that I wasn't feeling anymore. But I think I'm back!!

We have two new angels, one I've told you a little about, she's been with us over a month now, Kristy. The other came to us last week, Kevin. He's 6, and has no sense of boundaries or rules. When you go anywhere with him you literally have to hold on to him, and pin his arms to his sides to keep his hands off things. He hears adult voices, and he immediately starts talking and whining to drown out their noise. He doesn't hear anything you say. He's a CHALLENGE!!!! And that's putting it mildly.

So both of these new angels are a lot of work. Both have already wreaked havoc and tried my last patience. And here I am falling in love with both. I have to say, Kristy looks so much like a very good friend of mine did when she was young, it's hard not to think of her as one in the same. My friend came from a difficult situation as well, went through so much of the same things, and was probably also considered a challenge to the adults in her life. She and I are, I believe, soul mates, as far as friends go, even though we had no contact from age 13 to 31. Her mom had taken her away, and we lost touch. I found her 5 years ago on Classmates.com, and we've renewed our friendship as if we were never apart. I understand that this is probably what made begin to feel a connection with Kristy, she looks so much like my friend. But in the last few weeks, I've begun to really enjoy her for who she is, challenges and all!

Kevin also reminds me of someone. A few years ago I had two brothers in my home for a few months. The younger one was so hard to handle, he was into everything and always up to something. He made me want to tear my hair out. But at the same time, he'd look at me with those big 6-year-old eyes and make me want to cry. He'd say, "I don't want to be bad." And he meant it. It's so hard for kids afflicted with FAE because they know they are different in that they can't control their impulses and before they know what they are doing, they are getting themselves in trouble. He was so adorable, and demonic at the same time! When they moved him to a relative I hoped he would do well. I found out later that the placement failed. He's now in a residential treatment home and not with a family at all. There are times when I feel like I failed him. Kevin is a lot like him, and I don't want to fail this one. He, in only a weeks time, has wormed himself into my heart. I don't think I'll let this one go so easily.

This feels good. I'm attaching again, not afraid of being burned again. It's good to love even if they leave. I was a lonely person before I started taking in kids, and I think I was starting to get lonely again while trying to keep myself from getting hurt. But in protecting myself, I was starting to not feel at all. Now it's like I'm coming out of a coma, I'm alive!!! And I love!!!

CARS!

This is what I did in the boy's room when the teenager moved out...

Lightning McQueen looks a little demonic in this picture.





They love their room. It's nice to feel like I can do something like this and don't have to worry about having to change it any time soon. I'm finally just weeks away from finalizing my 3-year-old's adoption!!

Training the Trained

This weekend I did something I haven't done before. I co-trained a group of foster parents who have been fostering for a while already. Most of the were kinship providers, meaning that the foster children in their homes are related to them in some fashion. This is much different than the usually training I do because of the experience these people already had when they walked through the door. It's also different, because the people who foster their own relatives view their role in foster care much different than those of us who foster children who have no relatives to go to.

Before it started, I wasn't sure I'd be up to the challenge. I remember when I took this training. It's a shortened version of what we usually train. People just getting in to foster care now have to take this 27 hour course called Pride before they can be licensed. But Pride wasn't always required, so after I'd had my license for about 2 years, it came along, and I had to take a 10 version of it. Basically, Pride is part of the movement to make foster care a team effort, get the foster parents working with birth parents, and making all of it a lot more open in the best interest of the children. This isn't the way it always was, and to be honest, when Pride came along, I wasn't real open to working with birth parents. I was afraid of them, afraid they'd find out where I live and harass or harm me. I still thought most of them were monsters and didn't always deserve a second or third chance to get their kids back. So Pride scared me. The Pride curriculum also bothered me because it includes videos with actors and scripts that did NOT give an accurate picture of what situations with foster children and social workers looked like. I scoffed at it.

Knowing how I felt when I took the class, I knew how these people would feel when they came into it and how they would feel when they left. But I also know, even though I was laughing at it when I left, it had planted seeds in my mind, and it wasn't long before I was blossoming as a Pride Foster Parent. I found that it wasn't scary to work with birth families and it was good to be part of a team rather than an island on my own. This is why I jumped on it when they approached me about becoming a trainer. I still laugh at the videos, but feel as though I have a voice in the class to be able to bring some reality to it when they watch the videos. So when I was training experienced foster parents last weekend, I hope I was able to break the ice by relating my own feelings about the videos, especially how I felt the first time I watched them. And in doing this, I saw these foster parents start to open up and warm to the ideals of Pride.

Now, the other challenge, that they were kinship providers, was a whole different thing. People who foster relatives tend to feel like they don't have to follow all the rules and policies of foster care because, hey, this is my niece or grandson. But the truth to that is, they are in the state's custody whether they live with grandma or me, and the state is liable either way, therefore, their rules abound. I didn't know how to poke through this wall at first. But finally, about 3 hours into it, I was trying to get a certain point across, and these words came out of my mouth, "I realize you are kinship, but these are the same kids I foster because if they don't go to you, they go to me. You have to see them the same way I do, they have the same issues and struggles my kids have." And people nodded, and their faces relaxed. I may have audibly sighed. Sometimes these types of epiphany statements come forth from my mouth when I least expect them, and always welcome them most!

In the end, it all turned out well. I made some new connections, and I may have even talked a few kinship providers in to changing their license to do general foster care as well. I hope so!