Friday, August 31, 2012

Sometimes it's hard...

"I am starting school! And we have no food."
-Sabrina


(We went to visit our first ever foster daughter today who was returned to her bio mom over a year ago. This is a quote from her today.)

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

The two year old.

Her smile melts me and the thought that her whole little world is about to get flipped upside down has her new mama's heart in knots. All I can do is pray God prepares her little heart to heal quickly and fall in love with us.

Husband.

In the words of my husband, after leaving our visit with the kids:


"Well, that sealed the deal."


We are excited :)

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Could it really be...

tomorrow I am going to be "meeting" 3 sweet kids...which just might be my kids...

Monday, August 27, 2012

i heart questions.



Q: Foster-to Adopt or Pre-Adoptive?

A: I think technically both lol. I don't think it makes a difference, but in THEIR agency's eyes it is probably pre-adoptive and in my agency's eyes it is probaby foster-to-adopt...we are looking at is as an adoption that will be finalized when it is allowed to be.




Q: How is your son doing?

A: He has moved from apprehensive to excited! We are so happy about this. He needed time to get used to the idea. You can read about his reaction here. Tonight in the car he informed us that we can NOT get more than 20 kids. 20 is the limit. (*snicker*)



Q: Is your first meeting with them on the blog?

A: A little bit, here it is, and this is the part out them:

"Anyway, when we went to meet Joseph for the first time at his foster home we also met his three new foster siblings that his foster mom had taken in. As we walked out the door with Joseph I had the weirdest feeling that I was visiting with the wrong child. I wanted to be taking the new sibling group of three out with us, not Joseph. As we left my husband even turned around and said to the foster mom, "Let us know if they ever come up for adoption.". Which is not very like my husband."





Sunday, August 26, 2012

Anxious.

As we put the bedrooms together to accommodate all these kids, we are getting more and more excited.

The little girl's room is so cute and will be even cuter once it is done...and as we put it together I could see glimpses of our 4 girls all playing together in there someday.

Lizzy has claimed the top bunk for herself and is asleep there as I type.

Only two more days until we get to go see our kids.


Friday, August 24, 2012

Bedrooms.

Where I live, everything has to start with this because it seems like every policy is different everywhere, you have to have 40 sq feet per child in a bedroom. So, if you have a 120 sq foot bedroom you can have a total of 3 kids in it, foster or biological.

There are different rules about ages and gender of kids that can be in the same bedroom. Also, you can have a baby in your bedroom if you are a foster parent, they can't sleep in your bed though.

I only have a 3 bedroom house. I have me, my husband and my baby girl in our room. My son and our adoptive son will share a room, and then my daughter and the two adoptive daughters will share a bedroom.

That is a lot of people in a 3 bedroom house! Here's hoping that something crazy happens and a bigger house is in our future!!!

(We have a finished basement so we are thinking about putting a bedroom down there as well. We actually have room for 2-3 bedrooms down there, but we shall see)

Switch.

I am busy painting our bedrooms because EVERYONE is moving to a new room so that we can fit three new kids in this house under foster care policies.

Biggest room had to go to the girls, so they get our bedroom. We get the 2nd largest room (but has the biggest closet at least) and the boys get the smallest.

I am excited to re-do all the rooms though :)

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

"God is primarily concerned with receiving glory from our lives. Perhaps the daunting circumstances you are facing are just a platform from which God desires to demonstrate a mighty miracle to an unbelieving world. The eyes of God are going to and fro throughout the earth looking for someone through whom He can show himself mighty."

Real.

It's getting real.

We are going to go see the kids for the first time in nearly 2 years next Wednesday!


We are so excited!!!



Seriously, can this really be happening?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?!??

Monday, August 20, 2012

Again.

So, this Wednesday at 11 am we shall have our rescheduled meeting...

Sunday, August 19, 2012

My kids.

My baby is growing up so fast.

Her first tooth came thru today and she got up on all fours.

She is five months old.

We took her to a CHRISTmas store that is open year round here.

In August.

Why not right?



We also are looking a 8+ passenger vehicles.

Because we have lost are minds and are seriously thinking about adopting 3 kids.

If you hadn't heard yet.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Meetings.

We were supposed to have a meeting today about the three kids, but foster mom had an emergency and couldn't make it so we are re-scheduling.


This is what it is like to adopt out of foster care :)

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Big Brother.





With talking about bringing 3 more kids into your family you have to be ready for different responses from different members of the family.


For a few months now, I would say ever since I had the baby, my oldest child has told us on occasion that he is "fine with the amount of kids we have now" - alluding to the fact that he doesn't think we need any more.

This child was an only child for 6 years. And then, we added children in the most volatile way possible, foster care. Kids have come and kids have gone. Them leaving has by far always been the hardest part for my son.

So, when we brought up the idea of adopting THREE more kids my son had his reservations. I GET THAT. I have my own reservations.

But, that doesn't change the fact that these three kids NEED a home.

It doesn't change the fact that we have "wanted" these kids for two years...even when they weren't the first thing on our minds.

It doesn't change the fact that we are a family and we can make this work. I didn't say it would be easy, I said I believe we can make it work.


So, we have talked. And talked. And talked.


Tonight at dinner we ALL said prayers, one at a time, starting with Lizzy of course who LOVES to pray and reminds us often (seriously, God knew we needed that sweet baby for more than one reason).

When it was my son's turn to pray it went something like this:

"Dear God, thank you for our food and our house. Thank you for my mom, and dad, and Lizzy and baby sister. And for the three kids that might be moving to our house. Amen."






Relief washed over me because I need him to be on board with this too.


God is working in us.

Changing us.

Getting us ready.







Saturday, August 11, 2012

11 Years.



a 17 year old and a 21 year old




11 years later




2 biological miracles




and 1 adopted miracle




perhaps 3 more on the way




6 foster children




a life we never saw coming





so glad I am doing this with him.





Happy anniversary to us.





Thursday, August 9, 2012

Ring.

They are setting up an informational meeting, I think next week, for us to meet with all the workers involved and ask any questions we would like to.


It's getting real.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Search.

I have looked every where and I can't find any proof he is dead. I am guessing he isn't...but I did find a tab bit of evidence that may mean bio mom and legad dad got back together...which, for real, would be nuts.

Texts.

to me from Lizzy's bio dad:

"Lizzy's mom is in jail for breaking and entering...and her legal father is dead...i think of an over dose..."

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Boundaries.

Imagine you have just had a 6 year old boy that you never met dropped off at your house.

Now it is YOUR job to make sure his medical needs are met. His emotional needs are met. His physical needs are met. And everything in between.


So, lets say he gets to your home in the evening, right before bedtime. You put him to bed and then the next day he is still there. You know you have to meet all of these needs so you spend the next day trying to make him feel comfortable and making phone calls.

Because that is what we do.

Then, after dinner, it's bath time. But he's six.


Does he know how to clean himself?
Does he clean himself properly?
Does he have anything going on "down there" that needs to be taken care of, but you don't know about it?


Yeah. It's about to get uncomfortable.

So...what do you do?



For the first night I probably would just ask if he needs help after turning on the shower for him. But, this kid is going to be in your home for at least weeks...probably months...maybe even years.



So, do you ever find out if he is cleaning himself correctly?

How do you handle this once he has been in your home for a few weeks?



Sunday, August 5, 2012

Next.

(and no, these are not really a picture of THEIR feet, nor does the link take you to pictures of the actual children we are thinking about adopting)


So, I read the "child assessments" (where I live it is called that, it is a report about the child's whole foster case, family history, child's behavior, ect.) and we just sent off an email saying "Let's go ahead with the next step".


Holy crap.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

^

So, since I saw my blog on pintrest because of the list of foster blogs I have under that tab up there I finally updated my list.


About 25-50 posts ago I asked if anyone wanted to be added to it....and then I never got around to adding them all. Well, I finally did it. Everyone was added so you can go check it out.


Also, if you missed it before and want to be added feel free to leave your web address and a brief summary about yourself in the comment section of this post and maybe in 3 months or so I will get around to adding you. ;)



Also, if you would like to guest post on "mama foster" leave me a comment and we can arrange it. Anything about foster care or adoption would be great, especially personal stories.

Growing Up.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

Beginning.

When you first start to tell people that you plan on adopting (through fostering or the many other ways) have you noticed how many people try to give you someone else's baby that they have no business offering you? Or how everyone suddenly is an adoption coordinator that "has a friend that knows someone..." who maybe wants to give their baby up for adoption?

We had that happen a lot when we first started.

And NONE of it even came close to having us meet a child that we would ever have the opportunity to adopt.

It isn't until the paper work starts flying that you have any reason to believe that you may get to parent a child, well, at least that is true in most cases. I think I have seen one or two exceptions, but we have not been those exceptions.

So, today, our paper work started flying.

Which means those kids might just be ours.

You never know, but I am excited to figure it out.


(their adoption worker contacted our adoption worker asking for our home study and is sending us the child assessment so we can decide if we are officially interested)

Surprise.


Imagine my surprise when I found myself on Pintrest.

(notice the pic of my header?)

How funny :) Thanks for the shout out who ever pinned me.





Is it bad that I didn't re-pin myself? lol

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Wait.

No new info today.

Got all paperwork to our adoption worker that she may need.

She hasn't heard anything so I am interested to know for sure what is really going on.

Thinking about calling the kid's adoption worker, but don't want to bug her...