Crash course in parenting - Life as a foster mom

The boys are at respite this weekend and it has been a much-needed break for us. We have spent some time together, and spent some time working on the basement getting it cleaned up and organized. It looks SO much better. Hopefully our friend will be able to come over soon and help us finish it, and then we can have a play area downstairs! We are getting rid of a bunch of "stuff" too, hopefully (if the kind people on Craigslist will purchase it!). So I am pretty excited. I'm not feeling real well for some reason, I've just been having a hard time sleeping at night. The boys have court next Tuesday. Also the Foster Care Review Board is reviewing their case, so we are going to that meeting (hopefully) on Wednesday night. And their GAL is coming over Wednesday night too. I am feeling kind of over-booked but what are you gonna do! It's always a mad rush to get everything done before court, it seems like. Their SC called me and said he is "very hopeful" ...

I ask because this is how my day went: 6:50 - Y crying, went into bedroom, both boys were awake. Put C on the potty, he went (supposedly!) and I got them both dressed for the day. 8:30 - Y was down for a nap. C said "Hi Bwin!" and I looked over at him....to see that he was currently peeing his pants. Seriously. I asked "Are you peeing?" and he said "No!" which obviously, he was. I grabbed him, stripped him from the waist down, put him on the potty, where he peed some more. Couldn't get more clothes for him because Y was in the bedroom sleeping, so I just had him stay bottomless. 9:30 - I took the potty to the bathroom to empty it, so that I could put C on it to go pee (normally I do it every two hours but i figured hey, just in case...right?). I came back, and C was STANDING THERE PEEING! He said "I need to pee! Can I pee?" Clearly, he was already peeing! He peed on EVERYTHING. Seriously. He started peeing on one side of the living room...

As far as we can tell, the visit Saturday went well. Everyone came home in a good mood so that was good. C left for the visit with no fuss whatsoever - I think he really missed his mom. :( Poor little guy! During the visit I ran 9 miles and my husband and I went out to eat together (yay!). Sunday morning, Y woke up screaming at 4:45 a.m. I have no idea what his problem was. He may have just been over-tired, may have been teething, may have just been unsettled because of seeing his mom again...who knows. I tried to get him to go back to sleep, and he would sleep for a few minutes and it would start again. I finally got him up and fed him, and even while eating he would just randomly start crying again for no apparent reason, other than the fact that I'm sure he was incredibly tired. I tried to put him down for a morning nap at 7, and again he slept for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and then he was back up screaming. So off to church we went and hoped for the best. I had to stay a...

Got a call yesterday that visits will be starting again. No one wants us to know where bio mom is staying...it's like this huge secret or something. Like...what are we going to do? Go try to visit her or something? So basically she is in some sort of facility or hospital, getting help for some issues she is having. I told the kids she was sick, though I am confident it is not necessarily a physical sickness that she is dealing with. But I figure whether it's an emotional sickness, a mental sickness, an addiction, or whatever else, it's still a sickness. And how else do you explain to a two-year-old why he hasn't seen his mom in three weeks? So the kids are going to go on a visit today and D is going to know where his mom is, but we don't know. Also, on Thursdays, we normally pick D up from after-school band practice and drop him off at visits. Obviously that isn't going to work since we aren't allowed to know where to take him! Hopefully he doesn...

You know it's been a long winter when you are wearing a t-shirt and your almost-three-year-old touches your bare arm and says "What's this??" Uhm, that's my arm. Which apparently you have not seen nearly enough of in the last 4 months or so.

Because this blog has been entirely too depressing lately! Saturday we went to a race as a family. Even one of our dogs came! My husband and D ran the 1-mile race, and my husband pushed the little boys in the jogging stroller. I ran the 5K with our dog. D took 2nd place overall, with a time of 7:32! That was pretty awesome. I was going to take 2nd place for the women, but our dog decided she needed to poop about 1/4 mile from the finish line. Six women passed me while I waited for her to get done. :( Oh well! This was my first 5K (even though I've run 2 marathons and several other distance races). Now I am waiting for the next 5K to arrive so I can run it solo and get some revenge! :) Yesterday was BEAUTIFUL outside, so I took the little boys for a run (them in the stroller, of course) and we went to the lake and played at the park. I have the spring itch officially. We have about 1 week left of nice weather, then back to highs in the 30's...but April has to arrive ...

Well, we got notification today that visits are being suspended until bio mom can get some stability. I will not say on here what it is that happened, but I hope that now she is able to get some of the help she needs so that she can be a mother to her children. After I got the news I just started thinking about D, and how part of me is mad that I have to tell him about this (though I didn't tell him everything, of course). And part of me was very sad as I stood there holding the sweet four-month-old baby girl of a woman who may never be able to have her own baby at home with her, and I cried for her. I am very sad that it has come to this and I can not imagine what bio mom is going through right now. It is so easy to sit in judgement but honestly I cannot imagine enduring some of the things she has been through: becoming pregnant at 16, having 4 children at the age of 28, never having been married, having a weird family life, growing up in poverty, struggling with health issues...

The visit got canceled today, because bio mom did not call to confirm it would take place. It has now been a week and a half since the kids have seen their mom. Part of me wonders if the requirement of having her call by 10 a.m. the day of the visit is going to cause more cancellations. I think that might be kind of early for her to be up. But honestly, she could just call in, and then go back to sleep for a few hours. She doesn't have a job so it's not like she was up all night working or something. It was nice to be able to tell C this morning that there would be no visit. He cried for only a few minutes and then went on with his life. I am getting irritated with her, and with the lack of consequences for her actions. Wondering if she is going to try to put on a good face as we get closer to the court date. Wondering if they are going to terminate her rights at 15 months (June) or just allow this behavior to carry on. Wondering if there is something really bad going on with...

I doubt we will get it, but it can't hurt to ask, right? We got the boys all ready to go to their mom's. They haven't had a visit since last Saturday. Today we got the kids all ready to go, with shoes and coats on, and were waiting...waiting...waiting. I should have taken my husband's advice and called the transport company to confirm that the visit was actually happening before getting them ready...but I didn't. I thought to myself, "Surely if it was canceled they would have called us by now!" By 2:45 I was having second thoughts, and gave them a call. "Oh, I'm sorry," said the person that answered the phone, "I meant to call you and tell you it was canceled, but I called everyone BUT you." She did not sound remorseful at all. C was heart broken. And this is why I asked for a new transport company. We'll see what happens.

Because hey, that's pretty much what it always is! I'll give you the bad first, so that I can cheer you up at the end with the good. :) First, apparently bio mom is already on a call-ahead basis, unbeknownst to me. I guess she is on a 24 hour call ahead, so she calls the day before to confirm there will be a visit the following day. Apparently she is calling the day before to confirm, then calling the day of to cancel. Very strange, methinks! They are looking at putting her on a same-day call ahead where she has to call by 10 a.m. to confirm that the visit will actually happen - if she doesn't call by 10, then no visit. This will be really nice for us and for the kids too. I feel so bad because C asks to see his mom and I tell him that he will see her after nap time...then I get a call at during nap time that the visit is canceled. Of course, there are also many days where I tell him that he will see his mommy tomorrow, and then the visit gets canceled, and he doesn...

I think they speak for themselves. Email number one, sent to Service Coordinator, Caseworker, and Family Support worker: Hi guys, Just a heads up that more and more C has not been wanting to go on visits. Today I actually had to have DH hold C's legs so that I could get his pants on him, because he was screaming and kicking and fighting so hard and did not want to get his pants on because he didn't want to go on the visit. He was clinging to me for dear life when the worker took him away. He asks about going to his mom's house and seems like he wants to go, until the moment comes when he actually has to go. Sometimes he goes with no issues, but on days like today it is a huge ordeal to get him to go. I have no idea what is going on with him or what is causing this behavior. I know that previously when I asked about therapy for him I was told he is too young, but now he is almost three and is talking more and more (though still not really able to talk about his feelin...