Crash course in parenting - Life as a foster mom

I never came back to update. Working with the reporter we determined the family mentioned before was not my kids' family. In a way it's a relief, in a way it's kind of a bummer because now we are back to square one as far as their family history is concerned. Which is to say, we know basically nothing about their Dad's side of the family. We made it through Christmas, and it was actually pretty pleasant. This was the first year in a while that I have felt not stressed out. Granted, I also didn't accomplish all that I wanted to but hey, I kept my sanity and that is saying something! We went to go visit my family in Kansas this weekend. It went pretty well all things considered. Ben slept horribly, he refused to nap for the most part and insisted on sleeping in our bed with us at night which he literally hadn't done in 5 months. We survived, and all the kids are asleep in the car now as we are driving home. :) Hoping Ben will slide right back into his routine at...

We subscribe to the Sunday newspaper. I like reading the newspaper, and coupons come on Sunday, so it's really a win-win. I was going through the paper throwing out the copious amounts of advertisements, and a news story on the front page caught my eye.  It was a big spread about a notorious crime family in our city and the number of crimes that has been committed over the past 40+ years by members of this family. The reason this is news worthy is because a guy in the family is accused of killing four people, and that is just the latest in a long long long string of crimes committed by him and obviously other relatives of his. So inside the paper they have a family tree. Parts of the tree are missing, they only included people with several crimes to their name as well as a few upstanding citizens in the family. There are probably 50 or maybe even more people on the tree. I'm pretty sure one of the guys listed was C, Y, and M's bio dad.  It only gave his name, age, a...

So, I (or I think I can more aptly say "we") are a little bit concerned about Mr. Ben.  He is getting darn close to 11 months old (!!!!!), his adjusted age is 8 months and 1 week.  It is hard to know if our expectations are too high, or if we are being overly sensitive about these things.  I am posting these videos to maybe get some more feedback from other moms who have been through this. The first video is of him army crawling. He started doing this about a month ago, shortly after he got up on his hands and knees for the first time.  He can move pretty quickly and can go about anywhere he wants too, even now he can go on slippery floors without a problem. My main concern here is he seems to be using his right arm to power through and propel himself, his left arm is kind of just there and moving a little bit but doesn't appear to be providing much assistance. When he gets up on hands and knees he uses his left arm to try to grab things while his right arm su...