Q & A

Mom and Legal Dad are still married. The court does not acknowledge the "bio" Dad because legally he is not the Dad. While Mom was living with "bio" Dad he was involved only because of their relationship. Once they broke up "bio" Dad is no longer involved as far as the state is concerned.

Great idea, but right now Mom and Legal Dad are being open about the fact that they are getting along so the social worker sees no need to move the visits. Plus, with the amount of times these people cancel I would rather have them only ruin one day of my week instead of two.

Lizzy's mom was still married to, but separated from, Lizzy Legal Dad when she got pregnant by Lizzy's "bio" Dad. In the state I live in, that gave "bio" Dad literally zero rights to his child and he would have to adopt his own child to become her Legal Dad, but that is only if the Legal Dad signs over his rights completely.

In Lizzy's case this is a HUGE problem because she was raised for 16 months by her "bio" Dad and her Legal Dad was a complete stranger to her. When she came into foster care, because of her mom's actions, the legal process started-thus offering services to Legal Dad, which has been a nightmare ever since.

Thankfully, no you did not read that here :). I imagine maybe you are thinking of me saying that Federal law states that if a child is in foster care for 15 months the goal must be changed to termination if it does not appear that the biological or legal parents will be able to care for the children in the immediate future.

I have heard many a social worker say of a foster parent "They got too attached", which is ridiculous because you want these children being raised by people who love them, but that is something that gets said, but rarely is a child moved because of it (though I am sure it has happened).

And here is where I have to fess up to where we stand when it comes to adopting Lizzy. Once I saw that things actually began to head toward adopting her I started to pray that if we were supposed to adopt her that God would change my husband's heart and make him want to adopt her.

Guess who changed his mind and is ready to adopt Lizzy.

Then, there was still ALL the reasons that I was worried about adopting Lizzy. So, I actually had to start praying for myself, that God would change my heart and make me want to adopt her. While I have not forgotten my post where I literally spelled out each reason while I basically didn't want to adopt her...God has changed my heart too. I am open to adopting Lizzy if God wants us to and if they terminate her parental rights I believe that we are her family and that we will be adopting her.

Because of all my previous concerns I have now begun to pray that if we are not supposed to adopt her that God will step in and not allow it. He always answers our prayers so from here on out it is in His hands.

We have seen a lot of good progress from Lizzy. Shockingly (sarcasm) the less she sees her family the better behaved and more "normal" she is. We are working very hard with her to be kind and act appropriately in public and at home. When we are at home she is just part of the family, she fits right in. She still makes things a little harder when we are out in public...but she is two years old.

We are the only family that she knows. She came to live with us at around 18 months old and has been here for 15 months. She has lived with us as long as she lived with her mom and "bio" dad. She still asks about them, but as I said before, I am pretty sure that is because I let her talk on the phone to them and obviously when her mom shows up for a visit that stirs it all up again.

I can't imagine her going to live with strangers after all of this, she really has become part of our family. Right now we are working on breaking down some walls that we all had put up in anticipation of her leaving. I know that I personally had put up a HUGE wall thinking that she would be leaving. I know that I would tell myself about all the things I didn't like about her in order to make myself not sad about her "going home" and I had even pretty much kept her at arm's length emotionally for the past few months because she really should have been gone by now. So, I am having to rebuild my relationship with her and it is coming along. I am enjoying her and can laugh about the things she does that are funny...I had gotten to the point where I ignored all of that so I wouldn't get hurt in the end...again.

I still worry that as I rebuild this relationship something will happen and they will send her home just to see if mom can do it or not, and if that happens I will take it as God saying she wasn't supposed to be with us. It won't be easy, but we have already done it too many times before, one more time won't kill us.