Boys bedroom

Everyone: Why is it taking you so long to get that bedroom done?

Me: I don't know, I have so much help!

I continue to work on the boys bedroom. I can't quite decide what I want to do with it. I just know blue walls as per Benjamin's instructions.

Busy Summer Days

We are enjoying our summer here in spite of the heat.

Joselin celebrated another birthday and requested strawberry shortcake. I may have made a bit too much whip cream and fit as much on as I could. All the kids got spoons and finished it off.

The kids barely lasted an hour at a picnic at the park. Too hot.

Sno cones are more my thing for this heat!

Our short term placement of only 2 weeks is still here. The older boy has learned how to swim. They are enjoying the pool quite a bit and have settled in rather well. Our biggest challenge is their eating. If there is food in the house they seem obligated to eat every last bit of it. I spent $1000 in groceries in one week! Normally we spend about $2000/month. I try to leave out fruit and crackers for snacks. Fruit gets expensive when they go through a bag of oranges, apples and bananas a day. Heck, they even ate up my celery in the fridge.

The 10 year old has a birthday next Saturday. I am not sure what to do. I hadn't budged for it. If they don't go to their aunt soom then they will be on vacation with us. Then I have back to school to get. That is a lot of expense I wasn't expecting and since they both are in school that dramatically increases my costs. I haven't started shopping for school yet! Has anyone?

ER Visit

At midnight I was working on cleaning out a garage when Larissa came to me telling me that her chest hurt and she couldn't breathe. After watching her roll on the ground struggling to breathe I decided to take her to the ER. The ER was quite busy. People coughing on us and all. After a while they called her back to check her vitals. She didn't appear to be in distress but was complaining about her chest and was breathing in short breaths. They did all her vitals and her oxygen was good. I knew based on that we had a long wait. I asked her how she was feeling and did she just want to leave. She did, she didn't like all the people coughing on her! On the drive home I had her do some coughing and it seemed to help her chest pain.

After talking with a lot of friends the though of panic attack came up. Hmmm, this is actually her second chest pain/hard to breathe issue but the first time it was rather mild. I wouldn't rule out panic attacks.

I took her to her doctor and she wanted to rule out asthma. She gave us an inhaler and an appointment to have a pulmonary function test at our local hospital. We received a call the next day that they don't do them on children. So today we went to the doctors office where they did a spirometry test. Tasha says it will not rule out asthma. The nurse said that her results looked good so I will have to meet back with her doctor to see where to go from here.

Kids, never a dull moment. Anyone with panic attacks? Asthma? Chest pains with shortness of breathe?

Racism

Sat with Larissa today at lunch and she was talking about what she felt she needed to work on. She mentioned not shutting down when she is upset. If you know Larissa that is a real thing. Then she talked about how she needed to stop allowing others to steal her joy. This led to a discussion on racism.

She says that her first experience she remembers is from Emma and how Emma turned a bunch of girls against her and they all started bullying her at school saying racist things. Her own sister. The pain and mistrust is still there. She wonders if the impact of one child turned many kids to be racist or was it there anyways. I wonder too.

Then recently she had another issue at VBS where a girl just came up and started attacking her. The girl came from Emma’s group. She strongly feels that Emma said something. It hurt her to the core. Can’t be proved but she doesn’t think her heart has changed.

 Attack from within the family hurts in a way that is different than from strangers.

She says that now she sees racism all the time. That it is sad, you can’t judge someone by the color of their skin.

She said that many black people are racist. She has watched me come under attack from some black women and that they were just so wrong. (Actually in one incident she was so terrified she was crying and shaking.) 

She says she loves people of all races and colors, more people should try it.

Foster Care Finances

There are some people who believe that people who do foster care are in it for the money. I don't know the rates for all the other states but it just doesn't seem to me that you can make that much money in South Carolina.

Yes, you get paid a stipend of about $400 a month. But with that $400 you are supposed to provide everything for that child. They also pay a quarterly clothing allowance of $100. So a total of $400/year to clothe a child (if you receive it). The challenge with clothing a child is typically they arrive with next to nothing. I am often amazed at the cost of underwear, socks, shoes and pj's. Things I won't buy used. Right now many folks are not getting those allowances because the state didn't request enough money to fund it. Heck, we aren't even sure when we will get our subsidies, any time between the 10th and 16th.

One thing to realize about the subsidy is that you will not receive it until the middle of the next month. So if you receive children on the first of the month, you won't get any money for about 6 weeks. You have to be sure that you are prepared to clothe, feed, entertain, buy school supplies and such for 6 weeks before you receive any funds. If you receive more than one child the costs are multiplied.

I try to keep some clothing at my house so I have some stuff for the kids. The $100 placement check doesn't go far. There are also foster closets around. When I got the two boys I just didn't have any clothing for them. I had not had any older boy placements in a long time. I contacted the local closets and got them some items. They even supplied some boy toys. Because of the clothing closet I was able to fill in the needs; swim suits, shorts for the older boy, socks, slides and such. I like to have enough clothing for a week. It will grow over time if they stay. Our current placement is supposed to be short term and if it ends up being that way we will have spent much more on them then we ever received. Right now I have to put in the back of my mind that if they aren't short term I have another birthday to buy for, two more kids on our NC vacation and school supplies and clothing. We will receive about half a month subsidy for them right before school starts.

So, no we don't do it for the money. However, we do need the subsidies. We got out to eat, go to the movies, travel, do activities. We include our foster kids. We couldn't afford to do so without the subsidies. I don't know of many people who could, yet they want to deny foster parents the financial means to offer the kids a "normal" lifestyle. The sad thing is that some folks will spend the money on other things and not provide well for their foster kids. They make all foster parents look bad. I would hope that people would get to know folks before making a judgement all across the board.

Fun Day

Yesterday was quite a day, all I did was run around. Larissa went to her orthodontist appoint and then Sarah to her cardiologist appointment. Her heart continues to beat too fast so her medication was increased. Not sure why she is having this problem but her racing heart makes her anxiety worse.

Then I drove to Tasha's house to drop off a bassinet I had. We were lazy and didn't want to take it apart, it fit in my van but not in her car. While on the other side of town I stopped off at a foster closet and picked up some items for the new foster kids.

At this time it looks like we won't get any placement checks for the kids. The previous foster mom actually requested placement checks for the three kids she had last mid-week and then Friday told them not to bring the kids back. The combination of our foster association check and the state check means she will get $600 for those three kids and she supplied them with very little. Sad but not unusual. That means that the folks who end up with the kids get no funding.

Today we had some fun. We decided to do the cow appreciation day at Chic fil A. Dress in some cow garb and get a free entree or kids meal. The kids enjoyed getting a little creative.

I paid for drinks and fries. Pretty good deal for our size group. It was also the first time the new kids had been to Chic Fil A.

It was also Miguel's first trip and Joselin's first food mishap with her son. Ooops, mayo.

Home to chores and swimming and I pretty much wore the kids out! 

A little couch cuddle time ended our day.

Anyone else do cow appreciation day?

Calm Day

It was actually a calm day here. Well, calm for us. I suspect that our calm is not the same as calm for others. We successfully got everyone to church on time and signed in to their classes. As we were leaving Joselin called and did that she was being released. I dropped everyone off at home and went and picked her and Miguel up from the hospital.

I took that bit of time to stop and get some groceries. Literally every day or two I have to shop for groceries. The bag of oranges I bought today is gone, a few bananas remain so I may make it through tomorrow as I saw 2 gallons of milk left. Well, perhaps not, I am not sure what I will be cooking for dinner tomorrow.

I spent a large portion of my afternoon cleaning my bedroom. It is a mess and laundry accumulates there. Washing clothing isn’t a problem, putting it away is! It doesn’t help that so many kids are always outgrowing their clothing and I need to organize that somewheee (not successful with that at this time). Although I did get some laundry put away and sorted a lot does remain. I did not meet my goal of cleaning my bedroom this weekend! Anyone accomplish anything this weekend?

I promised the kids that I would take them swimming after dinner and chores were done. The new boys actually helped with chores so that they could swim. I  need to look at giving them some chores like all the other kids.

Tomorrow I have a few appointments and need to make a few more. I sure do get tired of driving!

Hope everyone has a great weekend! Had to be better than mine, cleaning my bedroom.

Nite