J update

Maybe someday I wont have to put a little heart over his face anymore...I wish you could all see how excited he is in this picture! He really is the best picture taker of all the kids. You just pull out the camera and he starts to ham it up.

 

Had some hot chocolate with marshmallows and graham crackers after about an hour in the snow. YOLO right? Of course, it could be YOLOwithdiabetes, but it's tasty:)

We've had J for 6 months now. His case is still up in the air as per usual with foster care until the year mark. He hasn't seen his mom in a month. It doesn't seem to bother him at all since I'm pretty sure he now only associates the words mom and dad with us, but it bothers me. If he goes home or to a relative his trauma will happen all over again! Being taken away from your family once is hard enough, then he adapts to ours only to have it happen again? Anyway, there may be some new family members stepping up to take care of him so we will see how that turns out. He comes from such a broken family, it's hard to see how any of them will be able to take him, but maybe they will and maybe it will be a great place for him!

The other day a friend of ours was over and he made this comment, "J's so different than when you got him. He's......happy." That pretty much sums it up. I'm not going to say life's all roses now because it isn't. He can still be super difficult, but it is fun to see him acting more like a typical child of his age! He gets excited about things now. He's happy a lot of the time. I attribute it to stability.
I see so many studies being done on how harmful all different things are in parenting: co-sleeping, spanking, cry it out, baby wearing, etc. I've literally seen every different type of parenting called harmful. But when you step back from the bickering it's pretty simple: kids need stability. When a kid knows that there is consistency in life and that there are (the same) people who will always be there to pick him up and dust him off, odds are he will turn out to be a fine upstanding citizen even if you (insert controversial parenting topic here). J has been through so much but he is a prime example of the resiliency of children.

New Years!

Around 7:30 PM we showed a video from New Years Eve 1984, blew little horns and popped some party poppers, then went to bed:) But the kids had a blast!

The lucrative business of foster care

I have heard the sentiment from lots of different people that some people only foster because of the money. They always make sure to tell me that they know that's not why we foster, but that some people will only do it to make money. You know, that's like saying, "well there are lots of great teachers, but some of them just want to sleep with their students." Sure in anything in life there are going to be people who make headlines because they are complete idiots, but it would be really nice if the rest of the world could realize that these people made headlines because they are not the norm. I have a few thoughts on this:

~ If foster care were such a lucrative business more people would be doing it. Seriously every agency is starving for foster parents because there is no line outside the door to take in some of the world's most difficult children. And in America we like our money, so where are the lines???

~ If I got a full time, minimum wage job I would make MORE money and I would only have to work 20% of the time I do as a foster parent. Let's see, full time work is usually 40 hours per week but as a foster parent I work about 168 hours a week (that's all the hours in a week just to be clear).

I read a post on my support group that a foster parent had posted in an online garage sale group about needing a couple beds and wanting to know if anyone had some to sell. The people on the group tore this woman apart for wanting to buy used beds when she gets paid to be a foster parent. Isn't that just horrible?!? That's what got me thinking about all the times I've heard similar things. To be clear, that money is payment for child care from the state for taking care of a child that ISN'T YOURS. If someone ran an in home daycare (again they would work way less hours than a foster parent and get paid more no doubt) no one would ever deride them for how they chose to spend their money. But I see this as an opportunity to inform. No one's getting rich or making their lives any easier by becoming foster parents!

Thanksgiving

I took a lot more pictures at thanksgiving, but the rest contain J!

We put our tree up this weekend too and the kids had so much fun putting ornaments on the tree. It may have given me a heart attack, but I tried to calm down enough to have fun while they were running with my glass ornaments:)

Snow day

Well I'm not excited that our first snow day was in NOVEMBER, but the kids sure had fun:)

 



 

 

 

The system

Have I shared that video on here before? I can't remember. I think I first saw it about a year ago and I still remember it clearly. It is very well made and you get to see life through the eyes of an abused child working her way through the foster system.

On that note, I thought I would write a little bit about "the system". Who knew this would be one of the most difficult parts of fostering (besides experienced foster parents I guess!)? I am part of an online support group for foster parents, which in general is extremely helpful, but I keep seeing people call it a "broken" system. Can children's services continue to improve? For sure. But I just have trouble calling the system broken. The thing that is broken is our world. Why do we even need a whole division of government to protect children?!? Because parents are broken and they mostly neglect and sometimes even harm their own children.

When you are taking something that is broken and trying to put it back together again it's a messy process. It's an extremely difficult process. It's not like when my kids break something. In that case I just need to find all the pieces and glue them back together. These are peoples lives that are shattering. How can I make J un-experience something? I can't. So I just have to take what I know and work with it and hopefully establish normality for him. I can say, "hey kid look, this is how a normal family is supposed to function. This is what it looks like to have boundaries. This is what it looks like to have a mommy who is always around and will always come and get you from your crib!"

And I'm not even sure I have the hardest job in this mess. Sometimes I wonder if judges do. How can you make the sort of decisions they have to make? Or social workers. In that video when the worker goes to take the baby from his sister and she screams for her baby brother...can you imagine what is going on inside a worker when they are in situations like that? When he removes every aspect of what a child considered normal for most of her life?

Clearly the ones most affected and influenced by everything is the children. And that is who we should be focusing on always. I've had multiple people tell me they couldn't foster because they just couldn't handle it emotionally. The problem there is the focus: yourself. Yes, it hurts to foster and yes (I'm sure) it hurts to see children leave, but the beauty of this whole thing is that it's not about me! God can heal a broken heart: mine, J's, his parents, etc. He can even heal this broken world:) So that is where I place my trust.

"Look up, the clouds are breaking, The storm will soon be o'er
And thou shall reach the haven, Where sorrows are no more
Look up, be not discouraged; Trust on, whate'er befall
Remember, O remember, Thy Savior knows it all" 

 

Because we don't have enough testosterone in this house...

Yes, I'm proudly displaying my kids' parts already:) This is the first pregnancy where we have found out the gender and I have to say I like it! I enjoyed not knowing in the past, but it is also fun to know. Like a secret somehow! I also have a quotable for this post:

Ian: how do you know it's a boy?

Ultrasound tech: because of the penis

Me (to Ian): are you serious?

Ian: I mean how can you see that?

(Ultrasound tech pans back to the between the legs shot)

Ian: oh, DANG! He's huge!

Our little man looks incredibly healthy and we are SO thankful that God has provided in this way. I've been feeling him move around like crazy for a couple weeks now and I've never been more grateful for these little nudges. It's easy to grow tired of them near the end of pregnancy, but this time around I haven't had much time to sit around and think about this person growing inside me. We've been so wrapped up in the world of fostering and school and church and family things that it's nice to sit down during my hour of time to myself each day and wait for those little kicks to start and thank God for creating.