It's been awhile...

Let's see...the quick update is that things are going pretty well. We had a rough week right after we decreased their medicine, but things seem to have leveled out. Horah! Little lady has started riding therapeutic horses, and Mr. Muscles has started gymnastics. We got invited to our first birthday party, but had a flat tire on the way there and missed most of it. Still got ice cream cake. We've bunked the beds and put away the summer clothes. Shelly has taken advantage of our distracted nature and has eaten half a pan of brownies, a Little Caesar's pizza, and a half dozen cookies...to name a few of her snatches.

The official process is getting closer. There is a pre-trial next week and the actual trial in December. Visits with their parents have been reduced to bi-weekly, but we are worried about when our social worker will make the move to tell the kids. We hope they don't have to go cold turkey...for their sake and ours.

The wetting has significantly reduced to being mostly a night time issue. Little lady does periodically still have daytime incidents, but they are much less often! Yay for less laundry!

Skype has been a lovely tool to get to "meet" family. I'm kind of bummed that we can't post pictures or include them in our Christmas letter. They seem like part of our family to us! Technically they're not though, so we just have to wait.

Gum

I feel like these kids are a piece of gum being pulled in so many different directions. If I were them, I would have snapped by now. I think I have been doing a good job of buffering a lot of the behind the scenes stuff, so these kids can have a "normal" day. A lot of you probably know, but it's pretty difficult to set up appointments at a time that's convenient for you, especially if you want to get on the schedule in the next month! I've tried hard to schedule around the school day. I'm starting to feel like I have appointments coming out my ears though, so I'm happy that I set up a couple for myself. I guess it's time for me to see the eye doctor, dentist, etc too! :) Hopefully we don't have any major meltdowns while I'm being seen and kiddos aren't getting 100% of my attention. I have to mention that at their therapy visit, we walked by the guy in the entryway who reeked of alcohol and then sat in the waiting room only to find a documentary on suicide playing on the TV. I looked around the waiting room and saw countless faces glued to images of war, jail, etc. So uplifting.



On a happier note, our pastor and his wife have graciously insisted that we go out on a date while they watch our kids, and another lady from our church came to watch TV at our house for an hour or two while we stole away to Perkins. Mom has sent a couple fun filled care packages too. And we joined the gym, where there is usually childcare available. So thankful for tangible support! We are on Skype if you want to connect that way!

Wow, 3 weeks!

We have officially passed our "longest time with kids" mark and have had them in our house for 3 weeks now! It's busy but good. Sticker charts seem to be magical. The kids like their school, and the teachers have been gracious about their special needs re: constant trips to the bathroom. I've started picking up one kid about an hour earlier than the other each day so that we can have some 1:1 time. It surprises me that they are so independent from each other even though they're twins. We recently had them start hugging each other goodnight: about as awkward as junior highers, but at least it's a start.
Just found out that their previous foster home was with a Christian family, so that is a blessing. They had lived there for about a year. Also ran into a previous foster dad at the grocery store this week. I feel it's only a matter of time until we run into their parents.
Mom came up last weekend, so Dave and I could do Bike SUX & go out for his birthday. We also got to take the kids rock climbing-fun for everyone! The boy, who I will refer to as Spiderman for the time being due to his climbing ability, is becoming my personal trainer as he continues to bike faster and make me jog faster!

A Routine?

I have attempted to create a routine. It currently exists on my piece of notebook paper, but not in real life. I think that's good enough for me. It at least gives me the illusion of some normalcy and control.
I'm quite pleased that the kids have gone the whole week at daycare without having accidents at naptime. (What would you do-oo for a Klondike, er piece of candy?) We have resorted to having them wear double pull-ups at night. Yay for less laundry!
We did get a spot in a pre-school only about a mile away from our house. It's a nice set-up for us where they will have preschool in the morning, but the afternoon is daycare. This allows us to have some flexibility of when we pick them up, which is good considering the amount of appointments we have to schedule for them. I'm also planning to pick up one earlier than the other for some 1:1 time alternating days. I hope this is good for them!
We have been told that they are "honeymooning," but can't help being pleased that their behavior is improving. Sticker charts seem to be pretty effective so far, and setting a timer helps them stay on task. Overall, they're respecting the boundaries we set.
Last night we had a friend over, and they asked if they could please take our plates to the sink. Um, yes please! They were also cute, delivering the pie & ice cream to our guest & Dave.
Oh, and they brought their bikes to our house now. Living on a hill was great for the flood season, but it's less conducive to bike riding. Dave, doesn't seem to tire of running alongside them, ready to redirect a poor steering job.
Overall, they've been a lot of fun & we see a lot of potential in them!

Even the Dog is Worn Out

It's the good kind of tired. The kind when you have a really full day with lots of activity and laughter and then you crash at night.

Saturday was Dave's work's annual company picnic, and it was fun to take the kids! There were huge inflatable obstacle courses, balloon artists, and face painters not to mention tons of food and candy! Yum!

Shelly has been helping wake the kids up by jumping from one bed to the other, nosing the kid, and then jumping back. It's pretty entertaining. So glad we got our fence finished off so everyone can run around in the backyard!
I've spent a lot of time looking into schools, day cares, etc. lately. It looks like the kids are going to be in preschool, so they'll have a little more time to get some consistency before starting kindergarten. I think we found a place, and we should know by the end of the week. If so, they'll start right after Labor Day (like the smart Minnesotans do-enjoy that summer!).
Time for sleep...

Here we goooo!

Well, we went for about a month with no kids and only 2 calls: both for emergency placements. We went back to the Twin Cities for a week, and school started. I had hoped to have kids placed with us before the school year got going. I found a sibling group of 3 adorable Hispanic girls on adoptuskids.com & clicked "inquire." A local social worker got in touch with me and said they had received permission to release our home study to the other state, which is actually pretty uncommon. DHS owns the home studies, and it's in their best interest to keep their "investment" (you) in the state. Home studies done through agencies like Bethany usually run about $5000 & the state lets you have it done for free. I was set to meet with her on Thursday to learn more about the 3 girls.


Wednesday we learned about and decided to accept a placement for 5 year old twins-a boy and a girl. It was uncommon that Dave was home in the afternoon after working the night shift, so we could spend a lot of time on the phone with their social worker and make a quick decision. We met them Wednesday, and came Thursday evening. We're taking them as a foster placement, but their social worker feels strongly that this case will go to adoption since this is their second removal from the home. I would anticipate them being with us for at least a couple of months while the legalities get sorted out and we even find out if they would be available to adopt. So for now they're just "staying with us for awhile." :)

Today I dropped them off at daycare and was pleased to see a woman from our church working in their classroom. We are hoping to get them signed up for KDG next week.

I think we're blessed to have a great social worker who has been doing this for 15 years and has supervised the kids the whole time they've been in foster care. We have a team of people helping us: a child therapist, a behavior management specialist, a parent liaison/transportation specialist (I'm sure that's her official title! hehe), the kids' social worker, our social worker, and soon we'll add teachers to that list. We really are thankful that their worker has done everything she can to get services set up for them.

Please pray for
patience and the ability to stay calm while constantly redirecting them
for the kids to feel safe here and "settle in"
fun times together & to settle into a routine

Thanks!

Had to say "no"

Well, we had our first opportunity to adopt, and we had to say "no." I don't know how this is supposed to go, I guess differently for everyone. The kids who were offered (is that PC?) to us were probably lovely kids who "had no behavioral issues." I'm sure they would make someone very happy. But, grandma & grandpa were going to stop taking care of them (after years of caretaking) because they wanted freedom to move and travel. That's just not our hearts. It feels enabling. On some level, I expect that most situations we'll encounter will have an element of feeling like we're taking over because of someone else's irresponsibility. However, I think there will be other situations where at least it's clear that it really is in the best interest of the kids to be placed with someone else. Adoption is a funny thing. You wait and wait & then you get a call, and it's all so exciting. And then you realize that it's still not quite the right fit. So, you wait some more. It's worth it, I'm sure. So, we shall see what comes next!

In the meantime, we've been taking care of a little girl who shows some of the typical behaviors you might expect to see in kids who are in limbo, taken away from their parents, uncertain of where they are/why they're there/how long they'll be there. She has a very difficult time being left alone for even 5 minutes and goes straight into this awful sounding cry of desperation. She buddies up to any person. She spends a lot of time saying "I want my mom." I don't even know the situation, but I wish she could have her mom. A little girl should be with her mom. How long will her life be in limbo?

Sad Stuff

Doing foster care makes you think about stuff that you don't want to think about...like how adults could do things to little kids that make them end up in foster care or how parents don't show up to their weekly visit with their kid, leaving the kid heartbroken again. It makes you sad when you see their behaviors change after visiting their mom or dad. You wish they had the words to explain how they're feeling, and then you're sort of glad that they don't because if it's unspoken you can sort of convince yourself that you're fixing it just by cuddling them. And sometimes that's all you can do: cuddle, pray, and move on. Believe that God has a plan for this life and that He will see it through since I can't.

Sink or Swim!

We had 2 girls for 10 days, an 18 month old and a 5 year old. They were a challenge because they were both a bit delayed and needed a lot of assistance. With the age difference, it was a bit difficult to find things they were both interested in. Swimming was one of them though! We ended up also buying a pool for Shelly (our dog), and it was pretty fun to watch them all having a good time. One day I managed to read a whole chapter in my book while they were swimming. Wow, what a treat! My other proud moment was when I fingred out that I could put both of them in the bike trailer/stroller and take a walk around a small lake with our dog! Everone had a good time!

It was fun to see how after a few days they sarted catching on to the routine, what we wanted from them, and started having more confidence. The baby started talking more and the older girl had less issues with accidents. It reaffirmed that we would like to be able to invest in kids' lives long term through adoption.

For the last three days that the girls were here, we also had a three year old. They played well together, but she is still adjusting to our house and trying to understand what she can and can't do there. I suppose this is the norm with taking care of foster kids. We try to be explicit about what is ok or not and give them the benefit of the doubt for not knowing that we expected that of them. You never know what is expected of them where they are living before you. It's fun to tell them how good of a job they're doing and watch their confidence go up. I'm suprised how often they say "I can't" and want to give up easily and also how pleased they are when they realize that they did accomplish what they thought they couldn't do.

We are now down to just the one 3 year old, who will be with us for a couple weeks. She typically goes to daycare, so now we get to see what that is like too.

You can keep the bio mom of the 2 girls in your prayers as she expressed her desire to find a church. We invited her, but she didn't come.

Getting Connected

Happy to say that things went better than we expected with the girls last weekend. They were helpful, good with the dog (and she was also very tolerant of them), and just lots of fun to be around! We did all sorts of coloring, sidewalk chalk, play dough, reading, etc. We were bummed when we found out at the end of the weekend that although they are available for adoption, they wouldn't be available to us because there needs to be more distance between them and their bio parents. We hope and pray that they find their forever family soon! I also wish we could put a picture of how adorable they are, but confidentiality laws won't allow for that!
We're learning a bit more about how this system works. We sort of had the impression that kids were either

a) in foster care or
b) on the waiting list (website) to be adopted.

Since we have been browsing the waiting list for at least the last year with only a few sibling groups coming through Iowa's site, we were thinking we would need to look out of state. Well, going between states is apparently in some ways harder than going out of the country! (Seriously!) So, I was encouraged to find out that there is also

c) kids who are available for adoption, living with a foster family who can't adopt them but are not on the waiting list because there is a list of waiting families who social workers are trying to match kids with.

We are now one of those families. :) In the meantime, respite is a good way to get a little experience and get a better idea of what type of kids we fit best with. We already got a call to watch kids again this weekend but had to turn them down because of prior plans. Looks like we'll have kids again the following weekend (July 1) though. We're thankful to be getting involved and connected.
Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. There are little things that I feel can only be explained as answers to prayers. For example, usually our dog is so excited we have to try hard to keep her from jumping up when she first meets people. We've been teaching her to sit, but when she saw the girls she immediately laid down before I even asked her to. That was grand!

:o) Blessings!

First kids!

We got our license last week, and we already have some cute kids to take care of for the weekend! We have two girls, ages 3 and 7 who are full of energy and things to talk about. Although this is "just for a weekend," we did find out that they will be looking for an adoptive home. There are 2 more siblings in the middle who are staying with a different family this weekend, but I got to meet them when mom dropped them off.

So far, their favorite things to do are play the recorder and color. :o)

Getting close!

Our last bit of paperwork went through, so as far as we know we are simply waiting on the formality of our official license to come in the mail! :o) Horah!

The Waiting Game

Surprise: things aren't moving very fast! (lol) We've received our certificate of completion for the classes, so now we have to wait for DHS to officially process our whole file and accept us as a family. So, we wait.

So Close!

Our classes are finished. Tomorrow is our last homestudy (kind of a formality). The bedrooms have been stripped of wallpaper and painted. Furniture has been purchased. So...next step is bringing in some kiddos. We will be getting our license in April and hope to open our home on weekends for respite care in May!

Help me out!

Here are some thoughts that resonate with me, but I hadn't yet been able to articulate:

Adoption & Foster Care: My Personal Experiences: I Could NEVER Do Foster Care!

http://mamamem.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-could-never-do-foster-care.html

2nd Homestudy Down

Well, we seem to have successfully navigated questions about discipline, assessing impact, finding support, etc. Our second homestudy (of 3) is finished! :) We're pleased to be making connections with others in our class. We'll be done with classes in March, and should have our license in April or May. We're hoping to start with respite care initially, which means we'd basically take kids for other families for a couple days at a time while they go away for a weekend or something to that effect.

A few things adopting requires you to do that we might not have otherwise done:

1. Buy a locking cabinet for prescription meds (probably not a bad idea anyway)

2. Draw a floorplan of your home including where beds will be placed (We had fun with this one. It was like HGTV. Dave drew everything to scale.)

3. Detail your discipline strategies before you have really used them.

4. Disclose your family history and what you would do the same or different as your nuclear family. (Proved to be helpful.)

5. Get a statement of good physical and mental health. (C'mon, get off that couch!)

We're excited to move forward. We're still stripping wallpaper in what will be the 2nd bedroom we use for kids, but we hope to have it ready soon. Then the bunk beds go up. :)

Thanks for reading~Sarah

Social Workers as Telemarketers...uh-oh!

In conjunction with last week's class about "culture," we seemed to be magnets for frustrating stories. Although they have you fill out forms about what you prefer in kids, etc...apparently the reality is that when they're in a pinch to find a home for a kid, they pretty much just start going down the list to see who will take them in.

A family that has recently become foster parents has described social workers as "telemarketers who know what you want," so they just tell you that's what the kid is. Then the kid shows up, and that's not what they are at all. This happened to them with blatenly obvious things such as misreporting race, availability for adoption, and how many previous homes the kids had been in. Imagine getting a call that they have "a nice young boy for you," and when you open your door it's the girl in the picture. Are you going to say "no" to her face? This puts the foster parents in a really bad position.

We had been thinking that we would like to foster to adopt, which means you take in children while they're still technically working toward reunification, but the social worker doesn't see it going well so they're doing "concurrant planning." We had thought it would be better for the kid if we could essentially lessen their time in the system by beginning to parent them sooner. However, it sounds like it works out out better if you are just willing to be foster parents in general and when a kid comes along that you like and they're available for adoption, you say "sure!"

So, we are now leaning toward taking kids who are "waiting." It may take longer before kids enter our home. You have to be approved as a good fit for the kids, meet each other a few times, and then they start to live with you. Then there's a 6 month sort of trial period where the social worker regularly checks in to see how it's going. Finally, the adoption is legalized. This actually sounds nice to have the support as opposed to having the kids just show up one day-sink or swim!

We're learning. We're a bit disgruntled that the decision seems to rest so much on the parents when it comes to foster kids. We're learning that we will more than likely have to say "no" for quite a while before we can say "yes."

Good thing that we're trusting God to know which kids are right for us more than we're trusting the system! :o)

Barbie visits the "Barbie Mansion"

Pink. I never thought I'd own a pink house, although I suppose you wouldn't guess that by my blog. Anyhow, I'm always looking for a deal, and we found one! When my sister saw the house, she nicknamed it the "Barbie Mansion." Well, our social worker's name is Barbie. Isn't that great? Not Barb, Barbara, or any other version but Barbie. I got a good chuckle out of this! I have to say, she's neither blonde nor ditzy. In fact, she was very professional, encouraging, and a great listener. We enjoyed telling her how we came to the decision of being involved with the foster care system. We felt very accepted by her, and she really applauded us for understanding our own backgrounds and what we would do the same or differently. And Shelly, our new puppy, was uncharacteristically subdued. She just laid under the table most of the time as opposed to her usual hunting for cardboard to shred. Fantastic! Finally, we met a family in our neighborhood who has a connection to the children's emergency shelter in town. We're really thankful that things are falling into place.

Classes are Fine

Well, we're done with week 2 of 10 in the licensing classes. Next week we'll get scheduled for our first home study. We hadn't anticipated them coming out quite yet, but we are excited! We're mid way through remodeling a bathroom, but hopefully they'll overlook that for now. Smoke detectors, check. Carbon monoxide detector, check. Adequate bedroom space, check. We've been blessed by our new church, Central Assembly. Although we've only been there for a month, we're connecting with people. Our pastor and his wife used to be foster parents, and there's another family who has adopted kids in their extended family. :)