Crash course in parenting - Life as a foster mom

Just kidding. But the police did come to our humble home yesterday! They had a little chat with D about the ipod, and took it into their custody. They will investigate who it belongs to and hopefully it will get back to it's rightful owner. D had to give up the name of his uncle, his aunt, and his bio mom to the officer. He was less than thrilled; in fact he was downright rude. He wasn't scared at all, which I think part of me hoped that he would be. But I'm guessing that isn't the first time he's had to talk to cops about stuff. And if this kind of stuff continues, or if he returns home, I'm guessing it won't be the last time either. So he is mad at us, his mom is mad at us, and I'm sure his aunt and uncle are mad at us too. Probably the rest of the family too. I tried to explain to the mom via our notebook why we did what we did. In response, she wrote absolutely nothing in the book. Because she's mad, isn't that nice? We tried to expl...

I just have too much to say, and not really sure how to order it. So it's going to just be a mess. Bear with me! I don't know if I've said this before, but D's mom has something like 16 siblings. Some of them aren't approved to be on visits...as in, the couldn't pass a background check or whatever to even be present while a visitation worker was there. So without going in to detail, that tells you a little bit about this family. On Thursday, D's uncle gave him an iPod. I assume this particular uncle isn't allowed to be at visits because his aunt had to go to the uncle and pick it up and then bring it over to his mom's. Anyway, he brought it home, and my DH looked at it...and it has pictures of a bunch of white 20-somethings on it (D's uncle is black, and there are zero black people in the pics). Some of the people in the pics are smoking pot. And there are some videos of white people smoking pot too. It is also entitled "Ty's iPod...

I know no one cares about this but me, but here you go anyway! At the doctor today for his 18 month check up, Y weighed 24.6 lbs (40th percentile) and was 31.5 inches tall (30th percentile). So he has grown over an inch in the last three months (if I remember correctly), and gained a few pounds to boot! And can I just say, this is the first time I've ever seen a child that has a higher percentile for weight than for height. Maybe all my friends just have tall, skinny kids; I don't know, but it seems like the height is always higher than the weight. It has been for Y too, up until now! Also, I held baby M today, and compared to my wee little niece M looks like a giant! She's got to be pushing 11 pounds by now, or close to it. She is a solid chunk, too. Man they grow up so fast! *sniff*

First of all, my niece was born. I am already an aunt to two little boys, now I am an aunt to a teeny tiny bundle of joy that was only born a few days ago! She is beautiful and precious, and I got to hold her yesterday for the first time. THEN my sister, who is also pregnant with my OTHER niece which will hopefully be born this spring, asked if we would be her baby's god-parents. What an honor! So I am really excited about that. But I did make sure to tell her that, in the event that we adopt these children living with us right now, she and her husband are not allowed to die for at least 3 years. :) Oh AND to top it all off they are naming their baby after me and my mom which is also such an honor. I get teared up just thinking about it! So anyway, I have no idea what we are doing for Christmas. Yes, I know, it's like 5 days away. I have been emailing with our SC since December 4 asking if the boys are having a visit on Christmas or not. Because if not, we are going to be i...

OK I'll admit it, it's been a while since I have done a Not Me Monday. Not for lack of material, I assure you! I did not feed the children an early dinner at 4:30 p.m. last week so we could go to the Y and swim. Even if I would have, I surely would have checked the schedules to ensure that the pool was actually open for swimming prior to loading up the entire crew and driving several miles, and going into the locker room and changing clothes and diapers. Of course we did not find out that the pool was, in fact, closed for swimming. We definitely did not then have to change ourselves and children out of their pool gear and deal with C's inevitable tantrum over not being able to swim. Instead of heading home, my husband found a little gym for families with children under 12, filled with all sorts of balls and things. Never mind that we were in our street clothes because we hadn't exactly been planning on hanging out at the gym. I was definitely not shooting baskets i...

It was pretty dull, I'm not gonna lie. I was a few minutes late, because I had to walk like a half mile from the parking garage to the courthouse because the mean down town drivers would NOT let me over. Did you know the court has it's own parking lot? And that you can park there for free if you are there on court business? Because I did not know that! Anyway once I made it to the court house, the underwire in my bra set off the metal detector which was great. They just had me cross my arms in front of my chest and go through, and it didn't go off. Does anyone else think that's kind of scary? I mean, what if I had a gun in there or something? OK, so I probably couldn't hide a gun in my shirt without it being obvious. Oh sorry, is that TMI? :D So basically everything in their case will remain status quo. Also the judge didn't ask me any questions so my appearance wasn't really necessary. I think it's good that I went though, and I think it wil...

Baby M turns 2 months old in 2 days. Today she weighed 10.2 lbs, which is 50th percentile for her REAL age (not adjusted for being born early). She also rolled from her tummy to her back about 10 minutes ago! I am so excited that I got to see that. She was totally confused when she ended up on her back but then again, she's probably confused most of the time anyway. :)

OK there isn't any. See, that was easy! The SC didn't have anything groundbreaking at all. So I kind of wonder if he just needed to come out before court on Friday, or something. See, I got myself (and you!) all worked up over nothing! But that's how things go, I guess. He did say he wants to get D back in therapy, which I think is good considering all this adoption talk and the amount of visits that have been canceled lately. He also said he is going to try to get the visits to be on fewer days, but be longer. So instead of being 2 hours 5 days a week, they will maybe be only 4 days a week and be a little longer. I think that will be really good. 2 hours is just not very long to parent. That's a short enough time that the kids don't get bored with whatever it is that you're doing, you might not even have to change diapers, it just seems easy. Now once they get into the 3 or 4 hour range, I think it will get more difficult. Not that I want it to be diffi...

Y has taken to giving big, giant bear hugs to everyone in the family. It is precious when he hugs me or my DH, but C is not quite so fond of the bear hugs. In fact, Y, even though he is shorter, is much more filled out than C and I reckon that at this point there might be only 2 or 3 pounds difference between their weights, maybe even less. So Y wraps C up in a big bear hug...and tackles him right to the ground. At which point Y continues said bear hug, despite the screaming and wriggling of C who is trying desperately to end the overwhelming affection being shown to him by his little brother. Y laughs the whole time and it is kind of hilarious to see the difference in the two boys' reactions. :) I'm not really sure how to handle this. I feel bad for punishing Y when he is just trying to show affection, and I think C gets a little carried away with showing his dislike. But at the same time, if C doesn't like it then I don't want to make him endure it! Sometime I r...

OK so let me tell you about my last 24 hours. Yesterday I remembered that we were having small group at our house at 10 a.m. today, and that I was supposed to make food (as was everyone else). I also needed to go grocery shopping, which has suddenly become a very difficult task to accomplish as I am really not able to go to the store during the weekdays now, and our weekends have been super busy lately. So I decided to go at 7 p.m. last night when the little boys went to bed, and figured I'd pick up something at the store to make for this morning. So anyway, got home from the store at like 8:20 p.m., and...realized I forgot to get anything to make for this morning. What can I say, it wasn't on my grocery list and so, therefore, nothing was purchased. I do a good job of sticking to my list like a good wife!! :) I filed this information in my brain and decided I would wing it in the morning. I had at least 3.5 hours from when I woke up before guests started arriving, right?...

Well our SC called yesterday and said "I need to come out and talk to you guys." I asked if the kids needed to be there and he said no. So that's kinda weird...normally he really only cares about seeing the kids. He is coming out today so I'm interested to see what he says. Also court is next Friday and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, I am going to be able to go! I am excited but also nervous. D has a band concert coming up. He has said several times that he doesn't want us to go. Last night he finally said "All my good memories are from when I was in foster care. I don't want to look back at my first band concert and say 'Yeah, my foster parents were there.'" I asked him why that would be a bad thing and he didn't respond. We are still going of course. His mom has never said if she is going or not...I'd hate for him not to have someone there. C is supposed to have a program at church this Sunday but I think I am ju...

is what I'm doing right now. Oh this baby is spending more time awake and, alas, more time crying! Not that it's a lot of time, mind you. Because it's not. I truly have nothing to complain about. Anyway. I'm teaching C colors, or attempting too at least. I read that you should focus on one color for one week. I wasgoing to do blue this week, but then it snowed so I just HAD to do white. So every thing that is white in this house has been discussed and looked at multiple times. Today we did white crafts: It's kind of hard to see since it is all white. I'm going to hang them up in their room and we will do one for each color. C cried when we were done. Maybe we need to do stuff like this more often! It's hard when they are so little though. I explained to D that we were working on the color white this week. He looked perplexed and asked "Where do you cone up with this stuff?" He also teased me about reading about gardening. I told hi...