Category: Blog

I refuse to reiterate the Thanksgiving lie of pilgrims and Indians (sic) eating a meal together celebrating their mutual joy in each other and their joint endeavors.  BUT I do believe that taking time to celebrate family, friends, and anything else for which we are grateful has meaning, and taking the time to reflect upon and then express gratitude is very important.  The last year has probably been the hardest year of my life.  And as a result, I could not have more to be grateful for, or more thanks to give.

I am so grateful for my amazing partner.  He has worked so hard to overcome massive familial and social masculinity training to make himself emotionally present and available to me and our children.  He does an insanely hard job (staying at home raising our young children, and supporting a spouse with a high intensity job that includes a significant amount of late nights and travel) that I would not survive, and he keeps getting better at it.  This week he made a massive quantity of special bread I can eat so that I can dry it out and make it into stuffing because stuffing is my favorite!

I am so grateful for my beyond anything supportive friends.  As a child, teenager, and young woman, I do not believe I understood that friends could BE this amazing.  I wish every person in the world a ride or die posse like mine, but you cannot have mine I because I cannot live without them.

I am so grateful for a family, both biological and chosen, that I can text or call 24 hours a day, with any stupid question or fear or rant, and they are THERE.  They give me the little breaks from the intensity of parenting that I need to continue at all.  They support me through literally everything and anything, including tonight, a little girl becoming feverish and falling to pieces in the middle of dinner, followed by a baby throwing up all over everywhere about 20 minutes later!

I am grateful for a career that keeps my family financially secure and which matches my intellectual strengths.  I am so lucky to have colleagues that support and encourage me, and that my personal style of “head down, work hard, be excellent” can be recognized, even if I do things like wear cat ear earmuffs on the way to argue my biggest case.

And, most personally and immediately, I am so grateful to have all the decisions essentially done for the kids, all appeals completed, and to have signed the first set of adoption papers TODAY!

We are so lucky to have these two amazing children, who will absolutely be ours (in about 5 months! Governmental speed!!). I am grateful for every smile, every hug, every song, every snuggle. (I’m  a little less thankful they are both feverish and coughing, poor babes.)

I am so grateful for how hard X3 is working, her treatment program, and the amazing incredible progress she has made in 6 months.

Make no mistake, October was a shit-show of regression and difficulty and maybe some day I’ll write about it more.  But the last two weeks have been nearly magical (yes, I know that bodes ill for the inevitable tragic backsliding!).  But there have been more moments of actual pleasure than difficulties.  She has learned so much about expressing needs, and emotions, and kind of amazing self-knowledge for a tiny little girl.  Last Saturday, she got up and asked to wear her dragon halloween costume (which she wasn’t all that stoked on at actual Halloween, in the middle of emotional chaos).  And she did, all day, including to the grocery store.  And I looked at my partner and said, “truly, all I’ve ever wanted in a kid was a desire to wear a dragon costume everywhere.” And now I have one (and another one who cannot yet fight me when I also dress her up all the time!)

I am sure that I am doing plenty wrong, and I am certain that there are needs and hopes I am not meeting.  But she sings all the time, and six months ago she was barely audible.  So we are full of hope with our gratefulness (and terror and exhaustion and excitement and and and).

Thank you to everyone who supports me – and if you read this, you are one of them – in the life I have chosen, which is perhaps not always the life that is the easiest or straightest path for me.  And may you all have the good fortune to have as much to be grateful for as I do.

It’s been an exhausting weekend, I’m honestly relieved to be going back to my exhausting job, because at least there are rules and guidelines and understood deadlines and just sort of general expectations you can sort of brace yourself for.  This parenting kids of trauma thing is NO JOKE.

The last few weekends have actually been pretty great (outside of work) – our family has been doing a decent job of adventuring, spending time together, and getting through the still somewhat stressful days with moments of pleasure.  I managed to do not one, but TWO things with people who are not my kids or married to me!

Including spending time with some of the most bad-ass, inspirational, and supportive, women that I am so lucky to have in my life and who don’t even call me out for my sort of crappy job of friendship maintenance.

And against all odds I managed to find time to get a (significantly overdue) great haircut, which included stopping at Sift, a gluten-free bakery that has FOOD I CAN EAT!!

But this weekend was literally a nightmare – at one point I looked at my partner and I said I feel like a character in a movie, there is just no way this is real life.

It was a hard week. Truly, even with reasonably good weekends, it’s been a lot of hard weeks in a row without any breaks in intensity – still feeling like I’m failing at work while simultaneously neglecting my family during the week.  And I always think if I can just get through THIS week to the next one, I can get work under control.  These are the lies we tell ourselves to keep moving forwards.  Each new week comes and it’s just an ugly surprise that should have been anticipated.  I got a pretty significant speeding ticket this week – because I am ALWAYS FUCKING LATE because I AM ALWAYS FUCKING BEHIND and ALWAYS DOUBLE-SCHEDULED (and I am NOT a later person).  This is my second speeding ticket in three months.  Before that, it had been TWENTY YEARS SINCE MY LAST SPEEDING TICKET.

So we weren’t rolling into the weekend with the greatest equanimity.  But still the expectations were of a bit of stress and emotional work.

Saturday, we attended a 5.5 hour training on working with children of trauma.  We were a little stoked because it was NOT offered by the foster system so we hoped for something a little more practical, a little more advanced, a little more engaging.  We dropped the kids off for the day with Auntie and headed over.  The first 90 minutes was a really great non-sugar-coated presentation by Dr. Nancy Binford, a neuropsychologist (Ph.D. doctor, not medical doctor!).  Neuropsychologists are best know as the people who do a billion tests on a person who claims to have suffered a traumatic brain injury (at least, that’s how I know them).

Dr. Binford said a lot of useful things, like “it’s almost never ADHD”, and “you cannot have ALL of these behavioral diagnoses (ODD, ADHD, etc.) at the same time”.  Now, she is speaking to my confirmation bias already, but it’s so NICE to finally hear someone say, in summary, “they throw diagnoses at children of trauma because it is easier to sort them into a box they understand and can medicate”.  And, to then note that medication does not WORK in these situations because they are treating a cluster of symptoms not an underlying physiological issue.  AND that these diagnoses (ESPECIALLY ODD in children of color) are a pipeline to prison – they treat some symptoms (unsuccessfully) do not teach self-regulation, and these children end up “bad kids” followed by “criminal” adults.  She addressed generational trauma and social concerns.  Her lecture was better than any of the foster training we have attended in the last 2 years.

Dr. Binford closed her lecture with a statement I have seen frequently, again summarized, that “there is no evidence these children of trauma get better without intervention and help”.  BUT she did not say the opposite and no one ever DOES they just leave the question hanging – the question that plagues foster parents day and night – IF WE DO intervene and help, what are the odds our kids can “make it” and have healthy happy lives?  I found her afterwards, and she gave the following incredibly depressing answers:

• We really cannot say.  There’s a decent change you cannot help these children.  Children who are severely neglected during those infant years suffer irreversible damage.
• She believes that humans are “meant to be” with the humans who birthed them.  The longing and emotional chaos at adolescence can happen even in children who are adopted at birth my amazing adoptive parents.
• Our job as foster parents is make sure we do each and every thing we can possibly do to intervene and help our children so that if things do not go well, at the moment we have to sever these ties, we know OUR slate is clean – we have no guilt or regrets and we know we did every single thing that we possibly could.  (Like I needed MORE pressure towards perfectionism.)

The lecture itself, with the videos, and the information, and the history, and it’s interaction with my our own current lives, was emotional in and of itself.  The best part of training and education around trauma effects and behaviors is that it re-centers my parenting in compassion instead of the (very real) every day difficulties and frustrations of life with a child with RAD/trauma.  But at the same time, the worst part is that if I truly spend even 10 minutes at a time thinking of the neglect and abuse my child suffered while AN INFANT I just can’t even handle it and I become a person who cries all the time.  I had to excuse myself briefly at only 45 minutes in because I just couldn’t stop eye-leaking.  But then, to have a person who gave a lecture I respected with science that I have read and believe, to basically give me a diagnosis of “hopeless” was really. . . a lot.

I prefer that people give it to me straight but even so, I don’t entirely believe her.  Partly, I don’t think there is enough years of evidence yet of treating the trauma itself – I think we have a lot of evidence of what DOES NOT work.  But I just don’t think we have a lot of generational evidence of what CAN WORK to address these both historical (often racial) traumas and the immediate (abuse, neglect, abandonment) traumas.  And, so far, what I’ve seen of MY kid, and through five years of therapy with my partner, is that we can’t fix our brains that were broken by trauma, but we can grow through and around it to become the people we want to be, who can create healthy mechanisms to deal with our PTSD trigger responses.

The rest of the training day was kind of “eh”.  A presentation on neurofeedback training was so unengaging I just gave up and read my kindle; a presentation on EMDR therapy was somewhat interesting but wasted a ton of time showing a person working through her trauma that (a) was for sure terrible to experience but had an ENTIRELY HAPPY ENDING; and, (b) her positive mentation was rooted in god and the belief that “god has all control” which does nothing for me or pretty much anyone I know; a presentation on nutrition was just kind of lame and could be easily summed up by “just give your kid water to drink” instead of crap; and the presentation on Occupational Therapy was too basic for where we are and really most useful for teachers.  The final presentation about movement was pretty good, had yoga moves that were easily implemented and helpful at our house already, good handouts on things like “heavy work”, and good websites for family meditation, yoga, and general mindfulness.  It was an exhausting and emotionally draining day, but was actually tailored to children struggling with trauma, was useful for us, AND got us almost half our yearly training in one sitting, so it seemed like a good use of time.

And then we went to pick up the kids…who had played great at Auntie’s house all day, and it was great to come back and see them, and then X3 just… fell apart… in a complete and entirely overwhelming way. She didn’t rage, she didn’t fight, she just completely dissociated back to infancy right before my eyes in a matter of seconds.  When we talk about dissociation today, almost no one means multiple personalities; it’s more commonly used and understood as “a mental process that causes a lack of connection in a person’s thoughts, memory and sense of identity.”  We had been told by her day treatment about dissociative episodes she experienced there, but ours had always been in the midst of big anger/rage/fight/trauma, with activation being so intense that getting through it was pure screaming by her and survival by us.  Here, I somehow, seriously magically, spotted it immediately and so managed not to escalate, but the calm result of experiencing it WITH HER was entirely overwhelming.  First, she hit the ground with a “scratchy back” – this is her usual “upset” symptom, so, it’s always a red flag.  Then her eyes went dead.  Then she started TWITCHING everywhere.  Then language was gone… her face itself actually went soft and LOOKED like a toddler or baby.  She couldn’t function.  She couldn’t walk without being supported. She could not put on her own coat, or shoes.  She could hold my hand and move like a robot, but boneless if left to rest without support and direction (and not like your floppy tantrum child).  I did everything I have ever been taught, used every advice I have ever been given, and doing a very intensive touching limb by limb, constant calm voice narration, and alternately squishing her (gently, obviously) we got THROUGH it but it lasted like 45 minutes and it was… HORRIBLE.  I thought my heart was going to explode out of my chest, while simultaneously staying calm, encouraging, gentle, reassuring.

I should mention that currently, if she can see me and I am not BOTH holding her AND being really FUN X2 screams non-stop.  She especially screams if I am hugging or otherwise focused on her big sister.  This adds spice to a TOTALLY FUCKED UP SITUATION.

We made it through to dinner.  Bath, snuggles, books, bed all ok.  I was SURE she would be up at night but she slept totally great! And was totally normal this morning… when we unfortunately had ANOTHER emotional event (adult-family-therapy), during which the kids spent 1.5 hours with grandma.  It was the first time they were BOTH with her solo, and it went GREAT!! Such a complete relief.

And then X3 fell apart again. Again, in SECONDS before my eyes the child we are raising just ceased to exist and became this… sassy, verbally limited, horribly confused little girl.  She started walking in circles pointing at grandma and asking “Mommy?” OVER. and OVER. Explaining who we are had no effect at all.  She couldn’t put on her shoes or coat or remember where we were or where we were going. She kept the ability to walk, and was definitely more like a 2/3 year old instead of an infant or her actual age.

I cried the whole ride home.

The rest of the day had somewhat normal but more extreme – more like last spring – ups and downs.  We had one BIG rage flare-up, but she managed, somehow, amazingly, to self-regulate back during very monitored and controlled time-out.  We had family dance-party.  We read her back-story book and she asked us to use the words “Mommy” and “Daddy” instead of our names when reading it to her, and had me go back and read it that way.  She passed out immediately at bedtime – I cannot even imagine how exhausted she is, because I am still considering collapsing on the stairs.

I honestly cannot remember ever being a part of something so painful and overwhelming and so entirely out of my control. Everything I did, every trick I’ve been given, every idea on how to manage it, just kept her STABLE while it was happening, but none of them brought her back to me.  I can’t imagine what will happen if this happens at school, or on the bus.  Or away from us as she gets older.  Or if we are gone overnight and someone is babysitting the kids and has this happen.  And it is so disorienting to SEE I cannot even imagine what it is like to EXPERIENCE, and I just have no frame of reference or education or ability around this.  And after a lecture about “no hope” I just feel so scared for my peanut – who spends her life so so scared.

I know the trigger, here, which is that she never believes we are coming back and she always wonders if this time when we leave her is “forever” and she is moving to a new family. It’s why we only leave her with a very select few people, either our family or our near-family, because we want her to always know OF COURSE we are coming back, and these people are already always our family.  And we HAVE to start moving towards being able to leave the kids, it is necessary to all our lives.  We are so lucky that our family is so insanely supportive and, especially, our sisters seem to have a “well, we will just get through it if it happens” mentality.  So, we are going to persevere.  We are going to ask for therapeutic advice and guidance, and possibly make MORE babysitting appointments to see if we can normalize the situation.  But, seriously, WOAH.

 

 

 

Today, I didn’t fuck up.

All I’ve ever wanted in life is to be exactly perfect at everything I do.  This, to me, is the exact average goal that everyone should have, and failing at this goal means life is hardly worth living.  I have a couple friends who are more failure-adverse than me; I wonder constantly how they do it, and sometimes think “they should relax”! I never think that about me; I AM relaxed, other people are comatose or something.

Generally, parenting has represented a new way to fail at every expectation and goal; there is never enough of me to fulfill my kids’ needs, my partner’s needs, my family and friends needs, my employment’s needs.  My needs aren’t even in the room where needs happen

But today…today I fucked up nothing.  I wasn’t a jerk to my partner.  I saw my kids eyes light up at me more than once, and I never got snippy or dimmed the joy or clipped the wings.  I ate more than once, sometimes healthy, some just yummy, and never to excess.  I started reading a novel just for pleasure. I enjoyed my wonderful and supportive family.  I felt reasonable sadness at missing a desired event, but was content with my reasons and did not berate myself.  There is a long night to go, but at 7:45 pm both my kids are asleep, the dog is curled in, the cat is purring, and everything is, right now, this minute, OK.

Forward progress is so exciting, backwards slides are the worst!!

After a few great weeks of sleeping either through the night or at least putting herself back to sleep after waking up, X3 has been up screaming three nights in a row.  It is so sad… and so FRUSTRATING.  A long close look at life seems to show she has been triggered by my super-intense stress over the last few weeks.  This kid is actually EXACTLY like me (although expresses differently) – she is hyper vigilant to the moods of those around her and she has a mind like a steel trap for any event where she is wronged or feels an injustice.  It’s not exactly less stressful to know that I have to hide my stress more to prevent days of meltdowns and screaming all night.  But it’s also ok to remind myself that I am going to just have to (somehow? some day?) decrease the level of intensity that I am bringing home.  It also shows we CAN help her get herself back into feeling secure – I came home early two nights and spent two evenings giving really intense “mom loves you always” repeated feedback and time – voila! Wake up crying, but put herself back to bed!

Hilariously, we have been specifically instructed to let her watch more TV and movies!! Here we are, trying to be perfect parents, with activities and learning and outings and imagination games and educational games all the time…turns out, between therapy every day, and starting school, and sleeping alone, she is freaking EXHAUSTED and OVERWHELMED at the constant “trying hard”.  We are supposed to give her time to literally zone out and turn her brain off.  OK!  This I can do!!

Unfortunately, X2 is ALSO screaming, day and night.  This experience confirms that early attachment (I.e. starting parenting a child right from the beginning) makes a huge difference in getting through the hard times – baby really IS kind of awful right now, but it is (usually) not as emotionally overwhelming as jumping in to hard behavior with a stranger you want to make your child was.

Currently, X2 just SCREAMS whenever:

she is not being held

is being held but wants to get down

the food is over

a dangerous toy is taken away

she is redirected to a less desireable activity

her diaper is changed

And so on!  And now, she has a cold, is teething, and maybe going through a sleep regression.  The last two weeks she has been waking up, screaming, then going back to sleep.  Last night, (first night X3 managed not to wake up screaming) she screamed ALL NIGHT! And she liked being held, but still would not SLEEP.  There was a middle of the night moment where I wondered how we made it through those first 9 months where she just didn’t sleep unless being held…but last night she wouldn’t sleep EVEN being held.  I really feel for parents whose children just CRY endlessly – this was our first time being really inconsolable and unsleeping and it was horrible!  She was thrilled to get up in the morning and play with alternating screaming inconsolably so I know she just doesn’t feel good, but I’m not sure what to DO!! She’s too little for anything but baby painkillers, and they’ve had no effect.  I  have a really hard time with things I cannot control or solve – this I CANNOT do!!

So, I’m debating taking two sickish crabby kids to a fall outdoor festival while it’s 40 degrees out, because they both stop screaming when we get outdoors.  I think the Finnish would approve. Or, sitting at home stewing in my likely better decision that has less judgemental looks.

 

 

HOOPS HOOPS MOTHERFUCKING HOOPS YA’LL.

So, this blog is currently (like me) VERY WHITE.  It will be pinkified again when my partner has some time… but currently he says it’s not even on his list. I can’t imagine many things that are higher priority, but we are going to make it work, I guess.  Thanks, Mr. Gunn, you help me persevere.

So, things that are generally a standard level of chaos and a-ok…let’s see! Baby X2 is SO BIG!

She can say “thank you”, “whoa whoa whoa” (or a singular whoa, but she IS my kid, and a singular whoa is rarely enough), “gentle”, “hi”, “Roma” (the dog), occasionally “hello”, and has been trying to sing along to ABCs without any understanding of words, just trying to go with it.  She can walk, eat any food, and tries to put things where they go – socks on feet and combs in hair.  She screams ALL THE TIME.  OMG who knew this is what 1 is like?  She has OPINIONS about…like…EVERYTHING.  And she has a new not-so-cute but sort of hilarious action of very gently laying herself down on the floor and then rolling back and forth screaming in a mini-tantrum.  It is entirely ridiculous.  She loves to eat, dance, imitate sounds and actions, learn new toys, mom, dad, big sister, puppy, grandma-a, kitty, books, and playing.  She has 6 teeth and a great giggle/laugh. Most importantly until the last few days she has been sleeping like a champ, which has been a great to relief to all. She is now having a growth spurt, or just a stubborn spurt, and is refusing napping/sleeping generally – not ideal but going to be ok.

And, wait for it…X3 IS KILLING IT! 

She is intense, she has needs, she has to fucking touch me every 30 seconds or less, and it all of my current fantasies are of being ALONE on an island where no one EVER touches me ever again, BUT, all that said, she is really working hard and doing an amazing job. Her school gave her a new IEP and, unlike the last IEP we got, they NAILED it, they hit on her strengths and weaknesses perfectly, they actually seem to have a plan I can get behind, the kindergarten teacher has told us that things are going better than expected, and no one has called to tell us to come take our kid home early yet! She loves going to school, and she has made amazing progress SO FAST – like, the first week of school she could barely color near a line… the other day she sat down and colored in this butterfly (made at a lovely butterfly art fair!):

She has started to participate in imaginative discussion – I read blogs about developing language and vocabulary and one recommendation is to discuss and imagine what everything is or is doing – so every drive I look for things to play “can you imagine where that bus is goings?”; “there is a man on that roof, can you imagine anything he could be doing”?  It used to be a resounding NO but the other day she played with me all the way to school (I think those people are going to take a bus, I think they are going to a park, I think they are going to learn a song), ALL the way to morning school! She is meeting so many goals and just growing and developing in so many ways, it’s really amazing.  And, the school break from CONSTANT parenting has meant that my partner and kiddo are able to interact freshly each day, and are playing and bonding and it’s great – she has been asking dad for hugs and cuddles and playing and it’s really really refreshing and relieving to see them able to enjoy each other and start building that attachment. 

Most most most importantly – X3 has transitioned to sleeping on her own!  This is probably the single greatest thing that has happened in the last 5 months for all of us.  She worked REALLY HARD at this transition, and she keeps working hard at it. She is actually sleeping through the night most nights now, and when she does get up, she can usually put herself back to sleep (we watch on the monitor, of course).  Her therapy recommended a build-a-bear with my voice in it and I was all “eh, that seems silly but they have been right about everything else” and doggoned if they aren’t right about this too! Having an hour or two at night most nights with my partner to just chill and watch TV and fold laundry or speak about life makes a huge difference in livability.

Which is lucky, because right now is intense at work. I just had my first ever civil jury trial and it went as perfectly as could ever be expected, but it was still A LOT of work and was hard on the family – work in the early morning, get kid ready for school, work all day, maybe home for dinner, work late into the night.  Exhausting on all of us. A colleague has a sudden significant illness and I have to step up to take up the slack, and it’s A LOT of work and hard on the family.  Honestly, my partner just looked at me the other day and said “you are being a real jerk and you need to stop”.  And he wasn’t wrong! To my credit, I DID stop – BUT neither my mom of the year nor my partner of the year award were in the mail for sure…  And even not being a jerk, I am operating at a really high anxiety level which means I never relax and I can’t enjoy things – even when nothing is specifically wrong.  And this stupid shoulder (that acts up when I work too much) just won’t stop hurting. WHY did I stop going to PT?  Why did I not keep on top of the PT exercises and do everything perfectly so that it somehow magically or scientifically stopped hurting?

But what is MORE painful than this stupid shoulder and anxiety dreams about work and letting my family down all the time is the sheer number of constant annoying and ridiculous hoops that we jump through to keep moving forward (or at least treading water) in making these kids our permanent family.  Adopting children through foster care has a lot of financial advantages, as well as being socially and emotionally fulfilling (and socially and emotionally difficult!) but the number one drawback of fostering generally, and fostering to adopt specifically, is THE ENDLESS HOOPS.  Here is an example of the general hoops on top of, you know, PARENTING these children:

Foster care training – must attend 13 hours of foster care training each year.  No child care is provided.  Also, most of it is CRAPPY.  And you have to take awful FAS training EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.

Adopting? – Must attend a 3 hour session (I did mine last month).  No child care is provided.  There are two locations – a 45 minute drive OR from 1-4 p.m. on a week day!  There is actually good info in this session – but it is ALWAYS derailed immediately by someone with an entirely case-specific inquiry that derails the entire discussion FOREVER and then all the useful information is rushed through to get back to FAS info and video!

Home Inspections – Licensing worker comes 4 times a year for one hour each to make sure everything is ok with your home. My licensing worker and I do not get along.  She doesn’t know how to do her job, she is always wrong about what she is saying, AND she went back to her supervisor and created some annoying problems for us – that were immediately solved as soon as her supervisor ACTUALLY HEARD the real situation – but it was SO ANNOYING AGAIN.  And, it’s not just us – I met other parents in situation very similar to ours, with very similar complaints!

Child Inspections – Social work for the kids come once each month for an hour to touch base with the kiddos.  Our recent social worker has been AMAZING! She is our third so far… and of course, now she is gone… we get a new one next week! So, we have to have an extra inspection this month for transition purposes!

Guardian Ad Litem – GAL comes to the house once each month for an hour or so to touch base with the kiddos.  Our GAL is ALSO pretty great!  Recently, I’ve felt a lot of pressure to do something I disagree with – but she has really listened and understands our position – and is supporting us.  But her presence is really activating to X3 so it’s pretty hard on the household to have her visits.

Court Appearances – Currently, ours are every 3 months.  They always call your case an hour late, so that’s half your day.  You do not have to go, but it’s your only chance to speak on behalf of the kids and/or find out the actual stage of your case.  In my case, I went to the last hearing SPECIFICALLY to speak to a very specific adoption issue.  An issue I was told was being addressed at the hearing.  So I filed a statement a full month before the hearing.  Then, at the hearing, was told it would NOT be heard, because it was a brand new issue that no one had had time to address – EXCEPT I HAD FILED MY RESPONSE TO THE ISSUE A MONTH EARLIER.  I work in the system, I am comfortable in court, and I just cannot believe how difficult it is to have any sort of reasonable forward progress in any case.

Visitation –  Our first placement we had 2-3 three visits with parents per week, often not scheduled until 8 p.m. the night before, and yes, foster parents provide all the transportation.  With our kiddos, the parent often didn’t show up so by the time we got our baby, the visits were down to once a week, so we only had to transport once a week – but we know foster parents transporting 4 or more times per week, sometimes for up to an hour each way.

Therapy – All of these kiddos should be in therapy, and many are.  For X3’s treatment, we meet with her personal therapist quarterly, with monthly check-ins and we have two required in-home 90 minute sessions. (That’s another 3+ hours/month if you are counting!).  Plus, we transport her there and then to actual school every day.

Injury Reports – any time blood is drawn on your kid, you have to fill out an injury report and send it to the social worker.  DO YOU KNOW HOW OFTEN KIDS HAVE NORMAL THINGS? like falling on the playground? Or getting a scratch? Or hitting their lip on a table?  I know TWO separate kids who knocked out their teeth on the playground – in addition to the usual parenting stress of a hurt kid that you desperately want to help, I also live in mortal terror of being called out for my kids getting hurt just being normal kids!

JUST OTHER STUFF – until you adopt (if you ever do) DHS says what you do or do not do – and you often have to agree to it if you want to adopt too.  We have other family members, so we have two additional visits a month, meaning we drive our kids 45 minutes each way for a visit every other Sunday (and will continue to do so even after adopting!).  We can’t approve medical treatment like dental care or psychiatric care, but have to schedule and provide it, so if we get there, and don’t have EXACTLY the right form (which providers often do not tell you about in advance) then you get to the appointment and it doesn’t take place! And you already drove through rush hour, and now ALSO have to reschedule and do it AGAIN hoping you get the right everything! This horrible experience has happened to my partner with X3 twice.  You can’t travel with your kiddos… we live an hour from the Wisconsin border and need to obtain special court pre-approval any time we want to drive across that line.

In August, between foster care hoops, and parenting stuff (doctor appointments, IEP meetings, extra pre-school starting meeting, court preparation filing) I spent AT LEAST 20 weekday hours jumping through hoops (not including transportation) most of which just served to make life harder for all of us. I have no problem with the CONCEPT of most things, especially accountability, but when you actually start to DO it, you see why people foster for the money – because if you are already devoting that much time to in-home meetings, and trainings,you might as well have 5 kids at your house instead of two – way more money, and most of the hoops can be done at once for all 5 so you get a lot more bang for your hoop jumping.

I want to get through to adoption because these are my kids and I want the legal document that says it.  But from a practical standpoint, I want to be DONE with other people telling me every single thing about every single thing, and being all up in my business every second, and taking up all of my already limited time, and holding requirements over my head with the threat of taking away the kids if I do not agree to things.  The complete imposition of constant unending hoops, including ones that are just…unnecessary and annoying…is the number one reason we are discussing dropping our license as soon as we get through adoption.  WHICH WE WILL SOME DAY GET THROUGH!

 

And then some big progress was made!

Literally, every day since I wrote that last post, X3 has made such enormous progress! I attribute it in part to the brilliance of her day treatment program which wrote her a book titled “X3’s Story”.  It chronicles, in a very simple, and not blaming way, her life:  How when she was a baby, she lived with adults that called her (her real name); when she lived with these adults she was often scared that she would not have food, or a place to live, or that adults would hurt her.  Then she lived in a lot of different houses. Then she lived in a house with a lot of kids – that made her worried that she would not have enough food or toys.  But now she lives with us.  We take care of her in (variety of ways).  She still gets worried that these adults will not take care of her and will not giver her enough food, or clothes, or toys, or might hurt her. But these adults are good at the adult job of keeping kids safe.  They will keep her safe.

Seems pretty simple right? SHE LOVES TO READ THIS STORY.  We read it OVER AND OVER AND OVER. And it’s like the tension melts out of her.  I am sure it won’t work forever, but right now, this story is giving her the exact magical reassurance she needs, over, and over, and over.  Before this book, she liked to hear the story of how our dog came to live with us – that before us she lived where people hurt her and broke her tail when she was just tiny.  But we wanted a dog so much, and had so much love to give a dog, we went out and found Roma to come be our dogger forever and we take good care of her.  She TOTALLY got this allegory and, if you hang out with her a while, she will tell YOU the story of Roma too!

Since “the book” she has been really practicing being a kid in sort of hilarious ways.  My…difficult…FIL was over recently and she followed him around the house saying things like “in this house, we put the toilet seat DOWN after we use the bathroom”; or, “we don’t yell at Roma, she is a GOOD dog”.

My amazing beyond belief sister took the kids for their first overnight – AND IT WENT PERFECTLY! She had a hard time saying good bye, and I doubt my sister got any sleep (neither did I when my niece and nephew slept over at my house!), but EVERYONE SURVIVED, pretty much as well as can be expected for even a normal five year old and an 11 month old having their first ever sleepover.  And she was not overly activated when I picked her up – a little more need for reassurance, but not significantly more.  AND my partner and I were able to celebrate our five year wedding anniversary by really partying like adults – i.e. going out, but still being home and (for me) fast asleep by 9:55 p.m. ROCK STARS!

She is also practicing having OPINIONS.  We went shopping on Saturday, which she usually LOVES… and every clothing item I held out to her, which she would usually love, she said “I hate that!”.  So we didn’t buy any for her!  But usually she looks at me to see what I think about everything and then parrots it, so even though this will likely get old pretty doggone fast, it’s lovely seeing that she is feeling safe to test boundaries by hating everything!  On the way to school yesterday I kept asking her questions and she said “I don’t want to talk about stuff every day”.  And, when I switched topics, said, “I SAID I don’t want to TALK, OKAY?”  And so we sat in silence ALL THE WAY TO SCHOOL….today, she chattered the whole way and noted “before, I didn’t want to talk, but now I DO want to talk, so let’s talk about some more things, ok?!”

Because we had already had almost 48 normal hours in a row, and I’m not travelling or having any crazy plans for the next week, we also finally made the move (with medical and therapeutic support) to take her off her psychiatric medication.  She was put on it to control behavioral outbursts, ADHD, and to get her to sleep at night.  And it has honestly been such a relief to KNOW that she will go to sleep at EXACTLY X time every night, and it was hard to give that up for the unsurety of “will she sleep again?”.  BUT – at her old home even with her medications she never slept – so we know she can fight through it if she is anxious enough.  And she reacted really badly we accidentally gave her an extra dose one day – so we know it is disorienting in some way.  And we don’t fully believe in the ADHD/ODD/etc diagnoses, we think she is likely trauma and anxiety induced chaos – but we cannot know unless we get her back to baseline and see who she IS in a safe, supportive, and therapeutic environment.

So far, we are actually HUGELY pleased with her progress.  Going to sleep has been a little less like turning a switch – she used to fall asleep while we read the second story, now she is awake through both, then turn off the light time, and then she goes to sleep with us laying with her in about 10-15 minutes.  Not bad, really.  She is waking up probably more at night right now – but more importantly, she is JUST waking up, checking we are there, and going back to sleep (she has had one multi-hour marathon awake session, but at least no crying). Not waking up screaming, or weeping inconsolably.  We suspect that when she woke up on her medication she was super disoriented, so everything was terrifying and inconsolable.  This means she can now start to LEARN how to go to sleep.  WHICH MEANS SOME DAY WE WILL NOT HAVE TO SLEEP WITH HER!

I’m not trying to oversell it her – she is intense, and demanding, and needy, and delayed, and scared, and difficult, and exhausting, and adorable, and smart, and sassy, and often full of it.  But it’s important to chronicle the moments where she is also just a kid. My kid!

 

 

When I was creating this blog I vaccillated between the names “icanhazbaby” and “bloodfromastone”.  I can be a little overwrought and maybe wasn’t in the best place? Luckily I chose the lighter-hearted name, because the content is serious as a heart attack (which I often think I might be having, but instead is just endless stress that leads to pressure bands around my chest!). I sure don’t describe much that is cheery…but really, there is nothing particularly cheery about adopting a child through foster care – before that can even be possible, it means shit has gone WRONG, and gone wrong in a way that has seriously hurt children.  There are no children in this system that have not been hurt.  The VERY LUCKIEST are ones like Baby X1, who was taken for her protection, was lovingly cared for, and went home relatively quickly (about three months) after parents got everything fixed up.  Or, like Baby X2, who came straight to us from the hospital, so she did not experience the direct abuse, neglect, and trauma that her older siblings did (except in the womb, which it turns out is a thing!).  But she will still have emotional scars when she grows – the need to know WHY and HOW she came to be here, displacement from growing up black with white parents, and possibly some guilt that she doesn’t bear the scars her sister does.

X3 on the other hand is a classic case of everything being as fucked up as it can be – and how hard it is to be a good person and to fight through love as a verb in the hopes of arriving at love as a noun. The months since we transitioned her to our home have been the most challenging, heart-wrenching, overwhelming, exhausting, and doubt-inducing, time of my entire life.  There is nothing I have ever done that has as severe and profound a consequence on another life; and nothing I have ever done that has so permanently changed my own life for, in the immediate, the worse. And if those aren’t facts to make you doubt yourself and all your life choices I am not sure what are!

Every day is just…exhausting.  Because X3 is exhausting.  I was so amused when a friend said, after an afternoon backing up my partner, “I’m really not sure how you do this everday.  It’s just…so much.”  It really is.  And truly, my partner is the hero, because he does it EVERY DAY while I actually work A LOT, which creates a different level of chaos right now.

Every day with X3 is “fake it till you make it”.  None of what is happening is her FAULT but it is … just kind of awful to be living with all the time. Like, for example, her constant, unending, need to touch me.  Not a little. Like, have legs and arms wrapped around me, sometimes writhing, often panting, and, sometimes, licking or sucking on my skin… which seriously squicks me out.  Luckily, she is not as weirdly physical with my partner, who I think would run screaming from the room.  She just really, truly, entirely, has attachment terror, particularly with moms – she wants to be same/same with me every second on everything (dealing with the fact that we do not have the same skin and she did not grow in my tummy are already, somewhat early, being addressed very very frequently).

We are pretty sure that she was just left alone, starting at a very, very, young age.  And she has had 6 moves in foster care, aside from the instability of her original life.  It makes SENSE.  It’s just…way way too much.

Or recently, finally, realizing fully what we already knew, that poor babyX3 has an average 2.5-3 year old vocabulary; and that’s a BIG DIFFERENCE at that age…  She is not giving you that blank sullen look because she is, again, displaying ODD, ADHD, some form of dissociation, she actually has no fucking idea what you are saying. Words that only in the last week we have identified she does NOT understand include, light switch, home, uh oh, winter (any season, actually), creature, forward, turn, tomorrow, colors, and about a billion more.  I am pretty sure she wanders through life in a fog of having no idea what anyone is saying, like being in foreign country, hearing a word here and there that she knows, and trying to guess? ignore? the rest.  And the most frustrating thing, that she really cannot start learning, not intensively.  Presumably, simply being in our home she is learning (for example she now, at very appropriate times, says variations on, “woah, everyone, there’s a lot going on here, let’s all calm down” – surely a phrase I have uttered about 8 times a day for the last four months…).

But she cannot learn, not truly, because she has complete trauma brain – any attempt to push on anything causes freeze and dissociation.  I’ve been trying to encourage speaking and sharing experience and understanding – so, the other morning, we talked about things we like, i.e. I say “I like playing outside, and reading books, and so on” and then say, “What are some things you like?” to her…NOPE! Complete meltdown… after 20 minutes of my partner and I going back and forth…she GETS IT, starts whispering things she likes, and then chattering non-stop, and can’t be stopped! But, like…the whole experience of getting there. The same is true with school, where it literally took 8 weeks before she could remember her teacher’s name… And, it’s all because she is scared.  Every second.  Of every day.  And I know it is only time that can heal it, but it is so so hard being in this stuck position.

In fact, today, she broke the button off her dress.  She was scared about it and crawled into a corner, and was hiding in the corner when I walked in the house after work.  Just before I walked in, she had asked my partner if I was going to hurt her. FOR A FUCKING BUTTON!  When I walked in and said, “I would never hurt you, or hit you, or even be mad that you hurt a piece of clothing – we always have more clothes in this house” she just collapsed screaming and crying.  And this is the EASY part! This I get, while still not ever being able to actually “get it”.

The other parts, the tantrums, the fighting, the need, the jealousy, the not-sleeping, the not-eating or binge-eating, the never-stopping-moving-for-even-5-minutes, the having to be treated as a baby, the demanding to do every single thing the baby does, the itching, the hoarding, all of this is the fake-it-till-you-mean it affirmative decision to parent.  In theory, some day, we will feel love, instead of 10,000 forms of panic, resentment, sadness, pity, hope, hopelessness, and every other exhausting emotion that is just not the love you want to be exuding for your kid.

There are plenty of things that are good, they are just so…mild, or mixed in with the chaos, that it is hard to be focused on them – especially, when truthfully, we are resentful of the time she takes – we haven’t slept in the same bed in more than 3 months, we never see each other alone, we rarely speak of anything except her and how to help her, survive her, manager, her;, and, especially of the way that X2 is getting less attention than she truly deserves or than WE want to spend giving her.  But, I am killing it at this hair game! We go for long walks, her on her bike and me pushing the stroller.  During these walks (unless she turns into a nightmare and we have to go home) she is the most kid-like I have ever seen her.  We stop and look at bugs, and flowers, and sticks, and helicopter seeds, and smell things, and find beautiful stone treasures.

She has moments where she laughs, and it is not the nails-on-chalkboard fake horrible sound she made when we first starting spending time with her.  Sometimes she dances, and sings, and makes up stories that do not have violence in them.  She has been learning to swim, and she LOVED going out on a paddle board (“the tippy little boat”) and jumping into the water!

She loves to help. She is brave, and strong, and fast.

When she is calm and in control of her body, she wants to please; but when she is not, she is more than the standard child as tyrant.  She is, in effect on our lives, that abusive partner you once dated – demanding 100% of everything you have, giving little, controlling every moment, and doing it mostly because she is the victim of abuse and that’s the only way she knows to interact.  But, she’s only five.  So it’s our job – that we took on voluntarily –  to somehow get her through this so she can become something more than her past, more than her trauma, more than the shell that she reverts to in bad moments.

 

My baby is almost 1!

I’m totally stoked and also having kind of a hard time with it.  I’m so excited and delighted by her every day.  But she’s almost not a baby any more.  She is too big for me to easily hold on my bad shoulder.  She crawls super fast and knows the word “uh oh” (throw pacifier, say “uh oh”, repeat for endless good times!). She can stand for 20-30 seconds unaided.  She waves “bye bye”, blows kisses, and throws her arms up for “so big”.  She has two bottom teeth, and is growing four upper teeth at once. She loves all food – even sour kraut which I handed to her as a joke two days ago.  She mostly cries if the food is done or the book is done – although she is becoming much more opinionated, and more likely to fuss, cry, and throw herself backwards if she doesn’t get to do what she wants – and she wants more and more exploration and freedom every day.  As always, you are missing out horribly by not being able to see pictures of how doggone ADORABLE she is.

I think it’s normal to feel pangs as the baby gets bigger…especially when this is (almost certainly) going to be your ONLY baby.  I also have a big girl, and she is mine but she was never my BABY.  And I still have some FOMOS for not growing a baby.  And I didn’t get a maternity leave, and I work so so so so much, and when I am at home my big girl demands 110% of my attention, and is super jealous of any time I spend with the baby.  The baby is great, fine, thriving, growing, securely attached, chattering, babbling, and essentially fantastic.  But I missed so much already, and I never got to spend the time to get bored with the baby, to be over it, to be READY to go back to work and have adult conversation and to really love my time away from the baby.

Not that everything was easy with baby-time, DO NOT WORRY, I have NOT FORGOTTEN!  A friend just had a new baby and I had the simultaneous THRILL OF JOY and SHIVER OF SADNESS/JEALOUSY as I thought of that new baby… and then I also thought… wait, wait, wait, I GET TO SLEEP ALL NIGHT TONIGHT!  Yes, miracle of miracles, at just about 9.5/10 months, BABY FINALLY STARTED SLEEPING IN HER OWN CRIB WITHOUT BEING HELD BY AN ADULT AT NIGHT! The relief.  The serious, fucking, relief you gulls, I can barely describe it.  I admit that I had an actual moment of hesitation about whether I would want another baby, because while I am constantly EXHAUSTED from stress, and emotional need, and chaos, I am actually NOT tired/sleep deprived every second of every day the way we were just a few short months ago.

Baby will even, (most times), sleep in her pack and play when we travel now!  (Truly, there is no way we could handle another baby, but that’s because big girl X3 is 7,000 screaming monkeys worth of constant need, not because we wouldn’t want another).

We are now debating the 1 year old birthday party.  Babies do not care about their birthdays – but WE care that we have survived ONE WHOLE YEAR! But we also are not even through the appeal process, and impressively, in the five months since parental rights were terminated the State adoption worker has started…as far as we can tell…NOTHING! We know the date for the appeal decision (look for update in November, friends!) and the court hilariously said that adoption could be “just a couple weeks after the appeal”…yeah right.  The timelines we are hearing, and which seem to be true for us, look more like a year or so after TPR – so, we are hoping to adopt early next year.  This is literally one of the fastest foster to adopt stories I have ever heard… and that is still going to be 1.5 years.  So there is something hard about holding a birthday party for a kid that STILL is not ours – but don’t worry, she IS ours.  If they tried to take her now (other than to return her to parents) I would have legal standing to intervene and argue our case and I have no doubt I would prevail.  And, I have no fears of them being returned to their parents – I finally went and pulled all the court documents, and I now know the general history and, yeah, these kids can never, ever, go back there.  Knowing only the little amounts I actually KNOW I cannot believe there was ever any question about it.

I was never a “baby person” – although more baby than kid, because warm sleeping squishy cuddly things are always easier than energy-sucking-perpetual-motion-machines.  But we ALL wondered and worried how I’d take to having a baby.  Pretty freaking great, actually! And, I’m just a little maudlin that this time I wanted so desperately, and only got to half-experience, is already coming to a close.

This baby though. This baby.

And there’s the moment you can’t turn back and have so many regrets but would not make any other decision. Probably.

• T-Minus Two Weeks (previously described in part!)

It’s our last weekend with X3 before she moves in FOREVER.  This is the worst doggone possible time in life.  I could not be more under the gun at work, and the weather is crappy, and we are out of town next weekend, and it’s all just happening.  X3 comes Friday afternoon, and we give her her new tablet for starting school! She is excited.  I take her to the park for a quick run it out before dinner.  It’s wet and she falls in puddles and her boots get wet, but no biggie, she’s a kid! Time to leave – she refuses to buckle in her seat. I can’t find the child locks, so I can’t even keep the door shut.  I can’t FORCE her to stay buckled in her car seat and I can’t drive without her buckled.  We are in the parking lot for 45 fucking minutes while she throws every item she can find out the door onto the ground screaming “PICK IT UP” at me over and over.  I do.  We can’t litter.  A car full of teenagers pulls up in the (mostly empty) parking lot and weed billows out the windows at us. I regret my life choices.  During bathtime she escalates and breaks the soap dish out of the wall while yelling about beatings, guns, and police while playing with toys. We reassure her she is safe and exchange stressed out texts.

Saturday morning we are up at 5.  Obviously.  We play, and hang out, and play tablet. She wants to go outside. Her boots are wet from the park last night, and we don’t have any other shoes for her – no one sent any shoes for her.  And every time I’ve thought of this issue before, and texted to ask her shoe size, no one got back to me, so I have never bought her shoes.  I am furious that I have failed to anticipate this situation and have shoes and now we have a hyper kid that can’t go outside and OMG we are going to die if this kid cannot go run it out.  I decide to go to Target to get more shoes.  X3 doesn’t want to come, she want’s to stay home.  I take the baby and go to Target to get shoes, and new stretchy gloves because she is ruining hers, and her bio-mom gave them, and we would want to save them for her to have those last things in the future.  Target doesn’t have ANY shoes in her size.  FUCKING NONE, and I look forever.  I find one pair on clearance – they are AWESOME.  There is snow on the ground, but there are no gloves of any kind – only swimsuits, obvi.  I rush home, texting my brother for back-up.  They are going to a pancake breakfast.   The shoes I bought are too small, even though they are the size of the fucking boots.  X3 assures me she can shove he feet into them, she LOVES THESE SHOES THAT DO NOT FIT,  and now I am breaking this kids heart with these new shoes that have rainbows on them and she wants them so badly and they do not fit and I cannot even live through this feeling of failure and I literally lie on the floor and consider if I can possibly not cry.  Now WE are also going to a pancake breakfast, because fucking hell, we are NOT GOING TO MAKE IT.  At breakfast my brother and sister laugh because we look so exhausted; my sister hands me a five hour energy. I’ve never touched one and they creep me out. I drink it immediately.

The rest of the day is aces.

Sunday is remarkably not hard, all things considered, and getting her back to foster-home is the easiest it has ever been – because we have promised this is the very last time.  She has heard, and repeats, this is the very last time, after this I will live with you FOREVER.  Yes.  We have said those words.

WEEK 1

IT’S TIME! And I can’t go with to pick up my new kid for her official transfer to our household because I am in court all day.  Which is my job but like…seriously?! WHY?! I make it home and we go to Perkins for a celebration dinner, because she loves Perkins.  She now has to be a baby – the therapist has told us to lean in to those desires when we can, because she probably never got a chance to be a baby and needs that attention and development.  So I am at Perkins with an almost five year old with a pacifier in her mouth yelling “GAH GAH” and squeaking the baby’s toy AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE NON-STOP.  We are totally those people.  I have a work emergency to deal with that escalates me off the charts and stresses out my partner.  She won’t eat HER food, only my food.  She fucking LOVES her food, WTF? My partner is losing his mind between my stress and the noise.  We leave.  CELEBRATE GOOD TIMES, COME ON!

Saturday my partner has scheduled a brief meeting with some friends.  We go to the park with my sister and niece and nephew.  X3’s leggings are too warm, so we take them off.  Her underwear are too big and keep sliding down without the leggings, so we take those off.  We try to leave, and she takes off running into the street, holding her dress above her head, screaming.  I explain that she cannot show her vagina in public, but more importantly, has to hold my hand for safety when crossing the street.  She won’t buckle and screams for 20 minutes straight. She finally stops and we go play at my sisters with the kids.  She is great the whole time.

We get home and she just. won’t. stop. fucking. with. me.  I have never before thought that a child could BE unlovable and unlikeable. Her laugh is maniacal and like nails on a chalk board. I cannot think of one thing I have enjoyed with her.  I cannot believe that I have made this decision and told this child this is forever.  I could never take something like that back, but I really, truly, want to.  I go and cry and cry and cry.

 My partner is both supportive and frustrated that I am such a complete disaster.  I am not certain I have ever in my life said “I cannot do this” to anything, ever.  I am absolutely, positively, certain that I cannot do this – that NO ONE COULD DO THIS.  I have never been this miserable and hopeless, and full of self-doubt that I am even a person who should ever have a kid because who can feel these awful things about a traumatized kid?

Sunday we go to the May Day Parade.  We give her her medications as described on the bottle. It’s ungodly hot.  She is a weird flat-faced basket case.  She cannot deal with people.  She whines and says the same things over and over. (the baby is great and easy and charming)  Then she says she wants to go home.  My partner and I are totally irritated by the entire experience. We get back to the car and she immediately passes out.  We realize that she doesn’t usually take her medication during the day, and we have accidentally knocked her out by giving them as prescribed.  The rest of the day is a nightmare, she cries and whines non-stop, and we know it’s the medication but HONESTLY.

The week is a blur.  Thank goodness for her day treatment program.  I cry every time any person asks me anything about her, or me, or the baby, or life.  I feel like I will never again have a day I don’t cry.  On top of everything, we are needing to finish our annual hours for foster-care licensing training, so I have to do that too, meaning my partner is alone with the kids at night.  It’s way way way too much for everything. The social worker and guardian ad litem come visit and she gives a complete and full range of behavior, so they really get the whole picture! They are very encouraging.  Both comment on how easy and charming the baby is…

The baby X2.  I have barely seen the baby. I work, the baby is in bed right when I get home or before, and X3 demands every. single. waking. second. of me that I am home. I can’t hold or play with the baby, because X3 needs me always. always. always.

WEEK 2

The weekend dawns intense, with a horrible Saturday morning, meltdowns, and constant constant pushing.  I have to work a couple hours in the morning, and have arranged for back-up so my partner can take a couple hours away from the house.  My partner misunderstands timing, my back-up is later than expected, and my partner is gone 10 minutes when kidlet melts the fuck down, and I spend the next hour being kicked, hit, spit on, slammed by a door, whipped with a cable, and other joyful activities.  I am so angry at every person in my entire life who is not here at this moment to help me not traumatize this kid more and also not kill either her or myself. I am a calm-faced internal rage-monster.  Back-up and my partner arrive and diffuse for the rest of the day, but the stress and exhaustion is already there.  It is noted by everyone that I look awful – just tired and exhausted in a completely unexplainable way; it’s an accurate reflection of my status.

Sunday is mother’s day.  We have multiple melt-downs.  We do manage to capture a picture where the kids and I look great – it is a false picture, and I will always treasure it.  We are going to grill.  We get a text invite from my brother and immediately throw all food in bags and walk over so the kids can play together.  My brother is not a hugger.  He looks at me and hugs me.  I cry, obvi,

The week passes in another blur of pure chaos.  There is not a single thing at which I am succeeding and each new task is just another moment to fail to fulfill expectations. I get a lovely review and a raise.  I celebrate by working until midnight.  We have a babysitter one night because I have an evening work event and my partner needs to get HIS foster care hours; our babysitters come as a duo, and that’s for the best!

In fact, we try never to be alone with the kids.  Our family and friends come every evening while I’m working, so my partner doesn’t have to deal with babyX2 (normal) and babyX3 (approximately 7 small tornadoes) alone. She is much better with him than with me, but “better” is so much more than any human can understand.

WEEK 3

The weekend arrives with the expectation of chaos but a semi-plan to get through it…my partner will be gone all day each day, but returning at night.  My sister comes first thing Saturday as a brief backup, planning to leave for a few hours, and then we are all going to my dad’s for a gathering.  EVENTS ARE GOOD! X3 melts the fuck down all the way, swearing, hitting, self-harm.  I am, amazingly, able to stay entirely, ridiculously, calm. It goes on so long, my sister leaves and takes the baby with her, because there is no way I can care for her while keeping X3 from destroying everything and hurting herself.  We get out the other side and I am just. so. sad.  I have not held my baby for 5 days. I have worked and worked and given every single ounce of energy to X3 and this is all I see forever.  And this is the only baby I am ever going to have, and I have made this choice, but I am so so sad that I am missing this time.  It’s not fair to her or to me.  No one in this house is wearing their oxygen masks, all we are doing is holding them up for X3 to use.

At my dad’s, the gathering is full of the very best of the people that I could be spending this time with, warm, loving, understanding, socially aware, and well-educated people.  I cry every time anyone tries to talk to me.  They take it VERY WELL. I am selfish and hold my baby (instead of sharing her) while X3 plays with other people.  It is the best afternoon that could happen.  I am still exhausted and miserable, but at least I am supported, and I cannot overstate how lucky I am in my family support.

Sunday morning my bonus-mom is at the house for backup.  We have another meltdown, but I stay entirely calm again, and it is much shorter.  Still lucky to have family there to take care of the baby all morning.  In the afternoon, kidlets go to their first comic-convention.  It’s pretty great! But I was woefully unprepared and we stay a very very short time.

We survive the next week, mostly I am not there, and there is backup for my partner at each moment.  But in some ways, she and I seem to be turning a corner.  She is still constant, intense, angry, difficult.  But she is also being very responsive to the constant love and attention I am giving her and we have no complete meltdowns.  On the other hand, now she is starting to fight my partner at every transition.  And he transports her three times per day.

WEEK 4

It’s her birthday! Birthday party is just fine – presumably, about the intensity level of most 5 yr old birthdays.  It’s small and that’s good – in fact, she disinvited some people and they listened, so less presents for her!  I do too much and not enough – why do we torture ourselves with this pinterest crap?  But also, she wanted a giant cucpake all her own and I DELIVERED!

Saturday we head out of town to in-law cabin.  We were worried about packing up the car because of her history, but she is UP FOR IT and shows no signs of trauma or stress response to a weekend away.  She actually does a great job, both getting ready and then travelling a loooooong distance for a little kid.  The cabin was…fine. X3 took her first speed boat ride, resulting in her first ever look of PURE JOY. She bravely jumped (stepped a little) into the water from the boat (wearing a lifejacket, into my arms in the water). I taught her to roll down hills. This kid has never been a kid.

But, Baby was so sick, sickest she’s ever been, and I was so nervous. Partner was also so sick.  X3 kept the tantrums to a minimum, coming across as just sort of a poorly-behaved kid.  Which is a mixed blessing.  Less tantrums is great! First tantrum without self-harm, yasss!  But the judgment of people who simply do not understand her history and what psychology teaches about how to heal and address trauma make it really hard to parent – we literally CANNOT just threaten to hit her (we wouldn’t anyway, but legally CANNOT) but even if we could IT WOULD NOT DO ANY GOOD.  And without first learning it, and then living it, people just DO NOT GET that this kid is nothing like any other kid…her trauma-brain is 100% in control.  The best we can do is steer until she begins to heal.  In addition to being sick, partner throws his back out.  It’s all not his fault, but I’m so freaking ANNOYED.  Bonus-sis is amazing, and so so so helpful with the kids. But even with her, I am exhausted by the time we get back from “vacation” and back to…work!

AND NOW.

X3 and I are actually doing” pretty well” at this point, where “pretty well” is still a lot of wondering “is anything ever going to be ok again?” and plenty of tantrums, horrible moments not described here, and just general emotional pain by both of us.  She is so much, and I get so mad, or frustrated, or sad.  The tension of never being able to parent X2 is a constant underlying sadness.  But overall, we are pretty much doing it.

Meanwhile, she and my partner are NOT doing it.  It’s really hard to judge if you are making progress when she screams at him “Momma is keeping me safe but you don’t even like me”.  Like…YASSS WE GOT A MESSAGE ACROSS! But…shoooooot, there are some other issues now developing!  Because he is the SAH, he is the one that needs the most functionality.  She has never picked at him like at me, but now she screams, hits, and kicks in every car ride.  Which is three every single day. That’s a lot!

We have no minutes to figure anything out, like what the hell to do now that school is ending and no one will call me back and having her home all day all summer really might kill him.  Or how do we get swimming lessons, and dance class, and therapy, and life all fit in (and paid for! holy schmoly kids are ‘spensive!)? Or like, when will I EVER be a human being again and see another adult for like, adult conversation? (Expectation: never.)  I truly do not know what I think about the decisions we have made.  I do not see a different decision I could live with at any turning point.  It’s honestly hard to imagine how we will make it 6 months, a year, through life generally.  But it’s also hard to think about how much easier this weekend has been than weekends 1, 2, & 3.  I am so exhausted, and I’m bored with being home with neeeeeeedy kids, and I want to go out for drinks after work like everyone else, and I want to make plans with friends, and I want to read a book I haven’t read, and I want to sleep in bed with my partner (one of us sleeps with X3 every night – otherwise she has night-terrors).  But I’m also…ok.   Today was ok.

We are at one of the many moments of major change.

Baby X 3 moves in next week!  She has expressed that she wants this, which is about the biggest win we could have in this complicated and heartbreaking story.  We have talked a lot about the concept of small-ball family – we are going to be a family, everyone who lives in our house, and we also have lots of other people we love, that wrap around us like a bigger ball – that’s our big-ball (teehee) family.  Family is the people we love and the people that take care of us and keep us safe.  She seems into the concept – but like, with all the ups and downs of uncertainty and change that you can expect in a little person with no history of stability.

Last weekend went MUCH BETTER than the weekend before, although I will note that I was already on the floor in tears by 9:00 a.m. on Saturday as the result of a long, nearly inexplicable, saga about shoes, which was specifically designed to trigger all my control issues (and was 99% NOT even remotely the fault of babyX3).  But it came after a very intense Friday night that included her refusing to get in the car and instead throwing every single item out of it while screaming at me to “pick it up”.  She doesn’t handle transitions super-well…

Thank GOODNESS for my brother, bonus-sis, and niece, and nephew, who accepted that we were not going to make it without backup and totally allowed us to come with to their already-scheduled pancake breakfast.  Outings, park time, other kidlets, playing outside, and stream of “big-ball family” visitors meant that the day went as well as could humanly be hoped.  BUT the more relaxed our kidel gets, the more insight we are given into her history and emotional status; end-of-day bathtime involved incredibly intense violent make-believe play with her toys. Stories of threatened beatings, shootings, calling the police; she actually broke the soap tray right out of the wall she was intense (not her fault, no one was angry!).  Her therapist has said to let her process and that the best signs of trust is her letting us join her in her play, so we let it go as long as she needs (with occasional requests to lower her voice a small amount since baby is sleeping right next to bathroom).

Oh, therapy! THERAPY! I cannot overstate how helpful therapy has already been in (1) helping US feel supported and like there is longterm possibility for healing and good relationships; and (2) giving us practical statements that have ACTUALLY HELPED in the moment.  An actually helpful foster-class suggested leaning into negative behaviors in safe ways if you can – i.e. kid throwing things? Offer to sit down and throw soft things (pillows, stuffies, etc.) with them.  So easy, and so not intuitive to me! Totally did this and it WORKED PERFECTLY a few weeks ago – throwing things has not been a thing since.

Recently, the therapist reminded us to look for the need triggering the behavior and suggested that our little miss both wants the attention the baby gets and never had the chance to be a full baby that she should have.  Leaning into that idea, we have responded to her like the baby and she has actually been asking for baby-specific things: Carry me like a baby? feed me like a baby? This is again, SO EASY, and she has responded so well! And, hopefully, is getting those long-term needs met and learning that we love her AND the baby.  It’s almost re-attachment-parenting. Being so intensely present and constantly available and fulfilling any and all needs until she is safe and secure enough that she WANTS to be a big girl and feels safe to explore the world, not feeling that everything is survival mode. It’s not EASY but it makes SENSE and is a practical thing we can do!

This week and weekend we are having our last time without babyX3 because I am travelling for work, and then we are out of town for the weekend. It’s been a time to refocus on baby, who is growing, developing, chirping, starting to move around in funny ways that aren’t crawling but are purposeful (often still backwards), and DEFINITELY now knows who her parents are; she is still a friendly happy baby, but she is always clocking us, and doesn’t like to be set down to play on her own much.  She has been giving sleep a try for the last few days, which has been downright miraculous – we are not counting on it lasting.