Growth

The weather was beautiful here this weekend. The kids even got to get out of the house without coats.

I have been practicing with my camera but struggle with taking pictures in the shadows. They always seem so dark. I guess I will need to figure out how to compensate for it......later, sometime when I have time.


Uh, maybe this summer....uh, second session since I should be taking two classes the first.

I realize now that taking 4 classes this semester was suicidal. But, I am committed and know that this time will pass quickly....perhaps too quickly. I have a few projects to do and have no clue what I am doing.

I know that some things slide when I am taking classes. Housework being a big one. Yard work....yea that too. I am thankful that it is winter right now and nothing is growing in the yard. All too soon the weeds will start to shoot up and will grow quicker then anything I have planted. I have a hard time keeping up with the weeks....and the grass that doesn't grow where I want it to grow but loves to flourish in the flower beds. I guess the nice weather has me thinking of spring.

One thing that is growing around here is my kids. I received a notice that kindergarten registration is this month. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that I will be registering my baby for kindergarten. It is also hard for me to believe that I am registering a child for kindergarten when I have grown kids! I know how quickly kids grow up....but it still catches me off guard every time I notice it.

I think that I have had some growth myself this last week. We were attacked by the medical community. It tested us in ways I hadn't thought about. Our integrity was questioned, our ability to take care of a child was questioned. We found that to be very painful. In the end a biological parent defended us. I still find that surprising. They said that they recognized that we were taking good care of their children.

Sometimes it feels like foster care is an "us versus them" type of situation. To us it is not. We truly are not out there to try and take someones child. We have worked with parents to help them get their children back. We have been mentors to the parents and have helped them after their children went home. We know that the goal is reunification.

We have treated the parents of our foster children with respect. We meet them in the hospital and answered all their questions. We treat them as the parents that they are. I have sent them pictures of their children. I ensure that they know of any growth their girls have in my home.

So, why does it surprise me when a parent of my foster child stands up and defends me? Why do I expect the worse? Why has the foster/adoption system made me so jaded?

I guess that I have some soul searching to do.

Any how was your weekend? Hope your Monday is great!

Balance

Well, we are trying to find our new balance after last week. It seems like the one who is most affected by chaos in our home is Larissa. She becomes afraid of separation and will frequently sleep in our master bedroom.
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She is our first child who has slept in our bedroom at this age but seems to need it so much. Right now she is sleeping on the couch on top of Lucy. Obviously she will need carried to bed again tonight.

The baby is doing a little better after two days of iron supplements. I feel that in some way we are just patching a medical issue. I would like to know what is causing her to be anemic given she is eating a healthy diet. I probably will never know. The foster babies have a court date in mid-March and may go home at the time. If the bios do not continue the iron supplements I wonder if she will have this same problem again.

This entire medical episode has been so frustrating. We feel as though we have been under attack. I hope that the baby continues to improve. Today she was awake for about 6 hours and her eyes looked better. That is a big improvement over sleeping more then 20 hours a day and looking like she wanted to go right back to sleep when she was up.

While preoccupied, I have neglected my classes. I haven't done any of my reading this week so I will have double reading to do next week. Ugh, I feel like I am so behind. Well, at least I have been keeping up with the laundry!

On our adoption front, we actually received more paperwork in the mail. The SWers name is different so I hope it is from the new SW versus just a temporary worker. It would be nice to get our homestudy finished so our name could be put on the registry. We do realize that there are no guarantees on finding a child, but we won't know until we at least get to the point where we can look.

So, we are getting back on track and finding our balance again. Hopefully, we will get back to our "normal" soon.

I hope that everyone has a great evening.

Almost

Today we almost quit foster care. We are worn down. All because I am concerned about how lethargic my baby is.
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This morning the baby's SW and bios took her for a follow up appointment with her doctor. The one who sent her to the hospital and never visited her. He said that the reason she is anemic is because we are watering down bottles! Wow, it is a good thing I wasn't there. It is also a good thing that the SW and the bios both said that they did not believe that we are watering down bottles.
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Having the bios stand up for us is a big thing. It could have very easily gone a different way. They could have gotten mad and requested that their baby be moved. They could have accused us of not taking proper care of their baby. But, they chose not to. They actually stood up for us based on what they have seen of their kids during visitation. We have only met them once, at the hospital.
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So, after such a strong defense of us the doctor determined that the baby has a virus. He didn't even look at her. He didn't even feel that she needed any iron supplements.

So, what do I do if she doesn't improve? Yes, I went and bought some iron supplements today. It is not a prescription so I can do this. I hope that it helps her to become more active but I worry about what is causing the anemia. I know it is not because of her diet and this concerns me.

Can she get proper medical care as a foster child?

Home

John and the baby are home. I have started this post several times and can't seem to be nice. It was a terrible experience and we believe that the fact that we were the foster parents is to blame.

I get more and more cynical every time I try to write so I will take a break and continue tomorrow with, The Perils of Foster Parenting..................

Long Day

Well, after about 3 hours of sleep I started my day in the usual manner, getting kids around. I had a full schedule for today. Clean out the sink area for our new dishwasher, go to the local school for 3 hours for my practicum, call the SW, be here for the installer, pick kids up, get to class and go to the hospital.
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I knew that things would not go smoothly when I got into my car to take kids to school and my glove box and center console were open. I didn't have anything of value in there so I just closed them up and took off.
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I got home at 8:30 and had to be at school in an hour. I needed to talk with the SW, take a shower and clean out the old dishwasher. I was able to talk with the SW and let her know that the baby is in the hospital. I was working on cleaning when the neighbor came over. Apparently his car was locked last night and someone had broken his window to steal whatever he had in there. I guess there is an advantage to not locking your car door. We have never had this problem before, I assume it is teens.
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Shortly after the neighbor left the high school called me. Joselin had a ring stuck on her finger and it was swelling up. I had to go get her and they said to take her to the emergency room. I ran up to the school, brought her home and looked for something to cut the ring off with. I couldn't get it to cut so I went to take a shower and had her put her hand in some ice. I looked in the garage for a bigger cutter and found one. I was able to get the ring off. I had no interest in sitting in the emergency room waiting for them to cut a ring off. She got to stay home and clean out under the sink for me while I went to school.
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After leaving school I picked up Larissa early and headed home. At 12:50 the dishwasher installer called and said that he would be late, he would be here at 2 pm, not 1. Ugh, this was not good. It conflicts with picking up Anthony. So, I went and picked him up early from school and got home in time for the installer.
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The dishwasher got installed and the installer left at 3:15. I needed to leave by 3:30 to get to class. However, I had to pick Kiwi up first. I went to go pick her up and brought her home. I left at 3:40 and made good time getting into town. I actually got to class on time.
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However, I was so tired that I couldn't hardly stay awake! I left at break time to go to the hospital.
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I got to spend some time with John and the baby.

She may be able to go home tomorrow. Her blood results are just off enough for them to be concerned. Tomorrow they are doing an MRI. Apparently we may have missed a major head trauma because we have too many kids. This morning when they determined that she was anemic it was because we didn't feed her properly. I told John to tell them that we do feed her properly and that they should be looking at a medical reason as to why she is anemic. The doctors do not know what the problem is. Seems like all their scenarios involve us either abusing or neglecting her. Oh, and apparently we didn't take her to the doctors on Sunday and she doesn't have an ear infection.

After leaving the hospital I headed to Walmart. I needed to get a toilet donut for Cindy. She lost her bottom teeth over the weekend and thought that they might have dropped in the toilet (long story). No such luck. I also picked up milk just in case and got home by 9:30.

Tired.....I am so very tired. This was my day and it didn't help on top of my lack of sleep last night. I imagine this post is pretty rambling, I guess it matches my brain activity right now.

Natalie, you will have to let me know what I missed in class tomorrow.

I am heading to bed early tonight. Another busy day tomorrow.

Long Night

Well, it is going to be a long night for John and Sarah. I wasn't happy with the ear infection diagnosis for the baby. It just didn't answer my concern for the amount of time she has been sleeping. After she had been on the antibiotics for 24 hours she still hadn't improved so I wanted her seen again. This just happened to coincide with the time I needed to leave for class.
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So, I left John a car seat and he took the baby to the doctors. The doctor sent him to the emergency room. Sarah went with him, I am not sure that she realized that she would be gone all night. They are running tests and want to keep her for the night. I assume that now she will get better because that is the way it seems to go sometimes.
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I would have to say that day care will not happen for her this week. I am not sure if I should drop my class that requires me to go to public school every week. Managing classes, kids schedules and a sick child is challenging.
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I hope that we get good news tomorrow morning. Please say a prayer for her. Her sleeping really worries me.

Urgent Care

We got to spend some time in a new urgent care facility today. The baby has been feeling poorly since her immunizations on Monday. All week she has been slowly getting worse. I had hoped that with a quiet weekend at home that she would bounce back.
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However, today I felt that she was actually getting sicker.
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So, off to the new urgent care facility we went. Let me tell you, it was a much better experience then going to the emergency room. We were actually seen very quickly.

The baby is teething and has an ear infection. She has had a very bad week, so many things combined to make her a miserable baby. We got her prescription filled at KMart and after getting home we realized that they hadn't mixed the medicine. Naturally they were closed by that time so we mixed it according to the directions on the bottle.

I hope that she is able to bounce back quickly. I don't have to go to class until 3:30 tomorrow and I am not scheduled to do my practicum until Tuesday. That is good because she won't be going to daycare tomorrow.

So, needless to say, I didn't get much accomplished today. It is amazing how much a sickly baby wants to be held.