Month: March 2018

We are in the process of wooing BabyX3, who is no fool and knows that shit is going down, even though none of us have told her.  The process is exhausting for us, but I cannot even imagine what is going on in her brain.

On our end, we have managed to get her room together, which means getting all of our stuff OUT of the room (formerly partner’s office, now 4 yr old bedroom) and minimilist stuff into room – enough to be welcoming and to give comfort and fun but leave very little to be destroyed in fits of rage.  It’s a complicated balancing act!

On X3’s end, no one has really told her anything, but she knows that she is going to have to leave the house she is in, and she knows we are probably her next stop.  We have already had at least one victory; today when given an option of library and dinner at Perkins vs. shopping for flower seeds and then going to McDonald’s she chose…LIBRARY! YASS! This was our third library trip, our first (very minor) meltdown, and the latest in the evolution of her attempt to make sense of her life and who we are and what we will be to her.  FYI we ARE going to tell her shortly, we just wanted to get started on WHO we are before we said “oh, and here is the rest of your life”.  But, she knows.  The list of questions/comments we have fielded in our last two outings have included:

• -” I want a present.  For my birthday.”  (me: when is your birthday?) “I don’t know.  I don’t have any birthday.”
• – “I want my VISIT MOM” (bio-mom)
• – “Is my mom in jail?”
• – “Is my mom going to jail?”
• – “Does he [partner] beat you?”
• – “He [partner] isn’t going to shoot?”
• – “He [partner] doesn’t have a gun?”
• – “So he [partner] is nice?”

My poor partner, by the end of the last two outings he has been breathing carefully and holding it together. I am beyond stressed out by the multiple daily updates from current foster mom regarding “behaviors”…but I am weirdly calmed by the questions – it means we can address things head-on rather than dealing with secret volcanic eruptions of hidden trauma.

X3 will hit our house head-on next week, for our first real time without the exciting distraction of being “out” for eating and treats and adventures. I hope the pets are up for their task of being charming!

Ugh.  We are in a sort of living hell of NOW NOW NOW.  We have to get our (too small!) house ready for new babyX3 ASAP.  I have to W.O.R.K., and have a couple of huge things in the hopper that I am failing to feel in control and on top of.  Because once X3 is in the home, we will not be leaving for A. LONG. TIME. we have been trying to get out of town these last couple already planned times.  And, FTW, our foster care license has to be renewed before June (why? we were licensed in July! BUT FOR SOME REASON IT IS BEFORE JUNE, LIKE RIGHT  NOW), which means we need 13 hours of classes RIGHT F-ING NOW when we have NO TIME and all the classes are CRAP WE DO NOT CARE ABOUT!  It’s a mix-and-match of anything that you can get on the schedule that gets us to where we are going. 

And, for the cherry on top, we have to take two classes EVERY SINGLE YEAR that are just…honestly trash.

I am smart and self-motivated and I hated these least-common-denominator classes the first time through, and I would read and research and learn SO MUCH including finding my OWN classes to attend if I could that have specific relationship to the children I am actually fostering…but no.  They must be the state-classes.  And they are. so. painful.  But the real issue is…the FASD classes are a literal information dump of nonsense and useless that serve literally no purpose except to “scare straight” a bunch of people who are NOT ACTUALLY HAVING BABIES!

So…FASD – Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.  Why yes, it’s a spectrum now! Everything is a spectrum now! “On the spectrum”? WHICH ONE? In foster care you can be “on the spectrum” or “a population” and it could mean literally anything!

Next, FASD is permanent, physical, brain and other body damage.  But! There is no medical diagnosis! You cannot ever take a test and know if you have it or not.  Instead, it’s a grouping of symptoms, plus “you were exposed to alcohol”.  Except, the grouping of symptoms looks exactly like all the symptoms of all the diagnoses that children in foster are always going to have… PTSD, ODD, general developmental delays, rage/temper, and attachment disorders.  So, if you go to doctors that treat THOSE disorders, they will diagnose your little with those things! But if you go to a FASD specialist they will tell you all those other specialists misdiagnose FASD, and THEY will diagnose FASD! And, if you do this wrong, you will spend forever getting the wrong treatment! AND, the best outcome for FASD requires diagnoses by the age of…6! Yes, 6! BUT! Also, even if you bring your little in, they cannot be sure (because, remember, no tests) for years – so you should get your littles assessed every two years JUST IN CASE every fucking thing you are doing to treat the 10,00000000 symptoms and behaviors you are already dealing with has been wrong all along…

Also, we have kidlets we are dealing with.  They have NO signs of any FASD.  We could focus our education in areas that are RELEVANT to what we are doing here – but no. We must do this FASD thing.

Also, FYI, there is literally nothing that can be done for FASD so….in some ways…why do we even care? Let’s treat the symptoms and behaviors we are dealing with and NO spend so much energy giving apparently useless diagnoses… The class is also always full of a great grouping of entirely NOT HELPFUL personal anecdotes.  Such as “one of my FASD clients has a 6 figure job as a _____”.  Without any discussion of HOW this individual’s FASD has effected her life – ’cause it sounds like that person is pretty much doing ok… Or, the family next to us who has decided they are done with the very difficult FAS-diagnosed foster child they have had for THE LAST 11 YEARS.  That’s right, they are giving her back (to who?!) after 11 years.  I am so certain they are not doing it lightly, but it sure is a painful horror story to those of us about to boldly adopt children with plenty of “behaviors” that fall on the “spectrum” of possible signs of FASD.  My favorite was about a family that had an FASD diagnosis removed from their child and replaced with PTSD and others, and the teacher talked about it like she was appalled…guess what? I would totes do that exact thing! Hey, let’s get a diagnosis that gets us good services rather than one that gets everyone a judging stigmatizing look?! And they treat the same symptoms? Fuck yeah! Ok, I probably will not, but also I really get it – and this teacher just gave me no reason at all to think this was a bad idea.

Which leads to the last horrible side-effect of this (required annually!) training…after every class like this I am CERTAIN that the children in my care have every single thing that everyone has talked about, and the complete “nothing to be done, no hope, no solutions” that goes with FASD leads to emotional meltdown, and my poor partner, who has already devoted hours of his life to this trash class gets to spend the next few hours calming me back down and backing me off (1) quitting this shit forever; and (2) signing us up for every analyst in town; and (3) writing lengthy and detailed correspondence to every individual involved in foster care system about the absolutely complete awfulness of the training requirements and specifically the FASD requirement (now required by statute!).  FYI, they gave us swag.  Fidget-spinners, and baby onesies that say 049 (zero drinks for nine months).  A message that is probably TOO LATE if you are already in the position of being able to use a onesie!

Well, there is not only movement, there is SO MUCH FORWARD MOVEMENT it’s honestly overwhelming.

We have now received the judge’s decision, and … baby is 98% likely to be ours! There is never 100% until those papers are actually signed…but barring completely unforeseen events we will be adopting baby at some point (again – timing is a question of many, many, many, factors).

AND… also her big sister! Which is a mixed bag of terror and joy and all the emotions. INSTANT SO MUCH FAMILY!

TAKE THAT FOUR YEARS OF MISCARRIAGES! WE ARE CAUGHT THE F UP!

We spent time with BabyX3 officially for the first time yesterday and had an outing to McDonald’s.  Judge all you want, people who are not in the position of trying to win the trust of a 4 yr old who has been moved through at least 4 moves that you know of.  She may not remember my name after meeting me 10 times plus being told 7 times yesterday, but she sure as hell knows the name of McDonald’s AND what she likes to order there, AND that they have a play-place.

Everything about the outing was sad, and hopeful, and scary, and complicated, and good, and hard. I am convinced that any time this tiny peanut gets in a car she has NO IDEA if she will ever go “home” again.  No one can learn, or grow, or develop, or make any healthy attachments under those circumstances.  We made a reasonable and not bad at all amount of initial progress on our outing.  On the way, she did not speak at all, except to answer my question about what she likes to eat for breakfast as “cookies”.  She was shy and quiet, and played in the play place.  After eating I asked her if she wanted to go play or read a book I had brought. She was ALL IN on book.  I had been warned she does not know colors from shapes from numbers, so I brought a baby color book, and we spent the whole time saying “one red car”, “two pink flowers”.  And we will continue doing this for a good, long, while!  She then went and played some more, and then came back and wanted to read again! So we did.

When we left, instead of walking limply next to me she was skipping and bouncing.  When baby started crying, she held toys up to make baby happy. She giggled and laughed about baby the whole ride home.  When we got to her house she asked if her baby sister was going to live there.  We explained her baby sister lives with us, and invited her to come to our house to play with her in the future – she indicated interest in this activity.

We know that after we left she indicated happiness with our outing.  She also lorded it over the other kids in her home in a pretty negative manner…oh, but wait… She is in a home with NINE kids.  NINE. NINE. Before I went to the home I had a LOT of judgment in me…after being in the home and briefly interacting with the older teenage kids, I was impressed by its warmth and happiness.  But my future kidlet is a giant black hole of need for attention, love, and stability, and there is just no way that environment can give it to her. We know there will be a honeymoon stage (like all neglected kids, she knows to to act in a way that is most likely to obtain affection and care) and we know that will be followed by a time of nearly indescribeable anger and acting out (like most neglected kids she has a whole bag of diagnoses that appear to be the absolute result of [lack of] nurture with no indication of an innate inability to thrive).  We know the form of her acting out, the triggers for her rage, the psychological bases and the many, many, questions about the future.  We have such open eyes it’s giving me heart palpitations…

There are moments where I think about how easy it would be to say “no, we will just keep this perfect baby, thanks”.  Literally NO ONE has pushed us to take BabyX3 – in fact, early on they tried to talk us out of it – now that there is no one else, they really are hopeful we will take her, but they cannot exactly force us.  But really? Leave behind this child who is blameless in her circumstances because there is a much easier path for us?  And say what to BabyX2 when she grows up? “uh, yeah, you have an older sister, but…it just seemed pretty hard…”  And be a person with means, opportunity, and ability who just left this eminently lovable child adrift?

Yeah, I don’t think so.

We are now in panic mode – not specifically about new kidlet (not really a baby, although they are all babies to us), but the MECHANICS of it all.  We have obtained one quote for basement renovation and will have a second this week.  We need to remove everything from her room AND the basement and store it, get a room together for her, have our basement renovated (seriously, our house as-is is TOO SMALL for a working from home artist/webdesigner dad and two kidlets with different sleep issues therefore in need of two separate sleeping spaces- and buying a new house was contemplated but discarded because we have actually PAID OFF our house and we cannot take on another debt while keeping a parent at home to fill the black hole and create constancy and safety, security, surety.)  We have to find time for IEP meetings, my usual ridiculous work obligations, getting the house and room ready, spending time with new kidlet on longer and longer visits for comfort, OH and my partner is taking a two-month out-of-home work contract so cobbling together two months of child care for BabyX2 AND realizing SOMEONE ELSE is going to be caring for my babe most hours of the day EVERY DAY for two months and then (hopefully) immediately adding new kidlet to our household…AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

My baby is six whole months old!

BabyX2 loves puppy, kitty, me, my partner, cousin-Connor, bouncing, babbling, flying, being gently tossed two inches into a pillow in the love-sac, being sung to, and sitting up by herself.  She does not roll over, because she don’t give a fuck what you think her goals should be – she wants to sit UP not roll onto her stupid stomach where she cannot even do anything.  When faced with something she REALLY WANTS while on her tummy she can pop her booty in the air and get on all fours and …then scoot backwards – but this mostly leads to frustration for obvious reasons.

She is more in to the experience of being read to now, and vibrates with joy when the book is BIG and BRIGHT, both favorites!  The book Go, Go, Planes, bought on a complete whim because it was so bright (seriously, 50% of day at Thrift Store is the best) despite being about planes (who cares?!) and having no people, story, or even information, is a huge favorite!

Baby is not that into sleeping, and we have (mostly!) decided we don’t care.  We could get more sleep if we sleep trained, we know! But, we are prioritizing baby-bonding.  This baby will get every single attaching advantage we are capable of giving her – and this one is just fine (while there are two of us, that is…).  And, JUST LAST NIGHT, she woke up, cried… AND WENT BACK TO SLEEP.  I admit I did consider crying with joy.  It’s not like it’s GREAT to be sleep deprived. It’s just, for our particular lives, a reasonable trade.

Since we’ve had her, Baby has gone from 20th percentile to 50th percentile, and she is right on target for everything!  She only spits up like 20 times a day, a HUGE improvement!  Baby is now 17 whole pounds, and her butt is finally big enough for our cloth diapers!  And, fortuitously, some amazing geek’s diapers just ended up at my favorite thrift store on 50% off day and whoever was doing the pricing does not know their value, so now I have 7 more diapers for a dollar each AND my baby gets to have what appears to be hand-painted Tardis-butt!

For the cloth diaper I’ve been making a pretty simple recipe of butt-wipes, with water, olive oil, witch hazel, and Dr. Bronner’s pure castille soap. Easy, fast, and green! My partner bought these plastic wipe things on Amazon and I laughed hysterically when we got them…and they turned out to be GREAT! As long as I off-set when I fill it I can pull them out one at a time through the top hole just like the store bought wipes!

Baby is eating more foods all the time! She is DOWN WITH sweet potatoes. Contrary to the baby recipe book, the blank nothing flavor of zucchini was NOT a hit with all…she will eat peas. Rice cereal is eh.  Oat cereal is pretty decent.  FUCK YEAH PEARS.  Also, I wish all MY food was served to me in adorable happy-face everything.  Thank you again, person who gave me the baby-bullet!

The foster-process is doing you a disservice because this baby is amazing and is so. doggone. cute.