Kids 2

Kids update continued.

Sarah is home and still working on her master degree. She was supposed to go on a mission trip on September but that has been cancelled. She will have a semester off and then I believe she just has one semester and student teaching to do. She is teaching English as a second language. She is a huge help with cooking. She enjoys trying new recipes but even she is growing weary of meal planning. I am proud of how hard she has worked to overcome her disabilities and for her huge, serving heart. I don’t have many pictures because she doesn’t like me to take them!

My goal is to get Sarah pictures! (Don’t tell her)

Anthony is doing well. He has worked hard and raised his GPA this last year in spite of the distance learning. He has worked hard on controlling his anger but his sarcasm has strengthened. I remember a time when he didn’t understand sarcasm and I can be very sarcastic so it is hard to say much about it.

He is another kid who is hard to get pictures of, I pretty much have to trap him. I am proud of how hard he has come with taking responsibility with his own education and working hard to get into college as well as controlling his anger. His closest relationships with his siblings are Larissa and Benjamin.

Kids

Curious how the adult kids are doing? In a nutshell....

Jason is living home. His job is gone so he is working with another man who lost his job and is trying to start up a business. He and George are doing well. No wife, no kids. Guess no grandkids from him! He says he doesn't want any kids. I can respect that. He takes good care of George. He also has the great hair that Tasha is jealous of! He helps me with my projects, spoils Benjamin and recently did his first paint pour.

Tasha is working as a respiratory therapist so is busy. Her husband was working from home but just went back to work. Their two kids are growing and doing great. They own their own home but plan on buying a bigger home in the next 5 years.

Kissing his sleeping sister.

Joselin, uh, well, when she insisted on taking Miguel back I told her I couldn't do back and forth because of this virus. She had him less than a week and she asked me to take him for a week. This was when Benjamin was sick and so I told her I couldn't take him. So, she is currently mad at us. Can't forgive us. A lot of stuff went down between the adult kids and not good stuff. She has a lot of anger. I wish she could find the right person to talk with.

Kassi is struggling. She is a hard worker but I really wish she would go back to school. She has so much untapped potential that she is not using right now. Her kids are growing up so fast and Noah starts 4k next year. She is a great parent and has learned a lot over the last few years. I hope that once he is in school maybe she will go back to school. She used to be the tallest daughter but has lost that spot! She also learned to swim, yay!

I realize that all my pictures of Noah swimming include my foster, he sure loves the water. And no pictures of Kassi swimming, no pictures means it didn't happen.

 

 

Quick update

Good news, Benjamin’s bloodwork all came back normal. For now we are not seeing a specialist. We will wait and see if he has more fevers. He has been healthy with no new fevers.

On the foster front we still have our three. We have had the second visit for our adoption homestudy and will be completing that soon. We are not getting any of the flack that we got with our last child. I guess not many people are waiting to adopt 17 year olds.

We have been doing a lot of projects around the house. I will do a separate post on those. Anyone accomplishing anything at this time? Most are posted on my Instagram if you want to follow me there.

Little man, who I miss, has been adopted. He is an only child and grandchild. He is getting all the extra help he needs. He isn’t talking yet and still has his issues related to his drug exposure. Not adopting little man was the hardest decision we ever made and I am so happy that he has a young family that can pour into him. But, some days I miss him terribly. I sure love that boy and pray for healing.

Overall we are all doing well here. I sure am restless though. I want to go places without fear. I want to see a movie and go out to eat. But I don’t want to complain because I know how good we have it here.

I hope everyone is doing well. I really have no way to help anyone but feel free to email me if you need a human to talk to.

Stay safe out there.

Fosters

At this time we have three foster kids. We still have our foster teen who we are trying to adopt. After our visit from the adoption worker I haven’t heard a word. I am not sure what we need to renew! So frustrating as we have limited time.

We also have our 4 year old. She is kind of destructive. I notice that she always has something in her hands and is tearing it up. I wonder if she would enjoy beading. I am thinking of making something with blocks and shoe laces to keep her hands busy. On a good note her aggression went way down when her brother left. I know that grandma is trying to get them but that takes months on at a good time, I can’t imagine how long it will take at this time.

Last Thursday evening we got called asking if we would take an overnighted 17 year old boy. We said yes. Then Friday they asked if we would take him for the weekend. We said yes. He is a runner and had been gone for months. He ran from a group home and told everyone he would run again if he went to a group home again. He is also a therapeutic child. Well, he was doing great rooming with Anthony so we said we were willing to keep him. On Monday they said that they were going to let us keep him as a permanent placement. Yesterday morning his worker called all upset and said that placement decided that he needed moved because he was therapeutic. They were moving him to a group home! Ummm, and how is that in his best interest. The worker was trying to stop the move. I got on the phone and started working up the line. Well, something worked and placement decided to keep him in our home. The whole incident upset us, they were not doing what is in the best interest of the child. In 5 months he will be 18 and plans on going to family out of state so we have 5 months to get his GED and drivers license.

Although we are full, we are still getting calls for placements. We sure needs more foster homes! Anyone interested? I wonder if I scare people off from fostering.

Benjamin

I know I have gotten behind again. I just find that I am busier now with all the kids home. I hope to make several posts to cover many things that have been going on! How can I be so busy when I barely go anywhere?

Tonight I will catch up on Benjamin. He had a second episode of fever. These episodes last about 5 days and if you don’t give him fever reducers around the clock his fever jumps to 105 and he gets dizzy, cries, gets a headache, complains his body hurts, says he can’t remember stuff. Generally really miserable. That means I have 5 days of giving medicine every 4 hours. It is exhausting.

We did blood work in the middle of his fevers and his SED number was high. Honestly I don’t know what it really means but that number combined with his history of having high fevers for just one night at a time leads his doctor to believe that it is possible that he has some type of autoimmune disease. He has a referral to a rheumatologist but apparently it takes a while to see one. Last week he went in for more blood work with his doctor. I am waiting to see what those results are. We are hoping that he was just fighting something. If not we hope to get some answers so we know what we are dealing with.

Anyone else dealing with this type of health issue? New one for me.

Tomorrow, our foster update...