Lucky 13

Anyone who really knows us, knows that Joseph and I are huge Taylor Swift fans. Yes, I said WE. Don't Judge.

In this house...

~ We call her Tay Tay

~ If one of us makes a half hand heart, the other quickly has to fill the gap
~ We know all the lyrics....

~ J. bought US tickets to see her Red tour last year, and sent pictures to his co-workers of our matching butterfly shirts.

We're dorks. Its our little family...and it is what we do. We listen to Taylor Swift and we force our kids to also. I see so many cute videos of other people's two year olds singing along to their music....but I am sad to inform you, the only song I catch my 2 year old singing is "Good morning God" or "Jesus Loves Me." Is it bad I am disappointed? I'm trying to teach her the Tay song "Red" because I figured we are learning colors and she could relate.... A snippet of me trying to brainwash my kid
ME: "T, say 'loving him was like driving a new Maserati down a dead end street'..."
 T: " Jesus?"
Me; "yeah yeah, we love Jesus, we can sing his songs too " *sigh*.
Me: "say, MASERATI,....MAS-ER-ATI"
T: "....." "Biiibbblllleee....GO!!" (for the bible tells me so)

Oh, and before anyone says anything about Frozen, we showed her that movie too.  Except she does not watch movies or TV much, she only paid attention when there was actual singing, the rest bored her. For the next week when I would run up to her and sing "do you want to build a snow man?" She stared at me blankly, and shoveled pretend pasta into my mouth. Seriously kid. I play her all types of music..ALL the time, Veggie tales, Beethoven, Mozart, Sigur Ros, Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Gaslight Anthem, every musical I can think of, particularly the Newsies...and of course country. I want her to be diverse, well rounded. If she doesn't respond to Taylor though...Lord knows what her favorite type of music will be.... ;-)

She's getting into hand hearts though..... Maybe someday she'll be a fan....

Inferno

The kids have trifling colds. Nothing major, just snot noses and minor coughs. Nothing to sneeze at. Pun intended as they sneeze over everything 10-15x a minute it seems. Today I saw my 2 year old pretend to blow her nose over and over by making the honking noise into the tissue. Obviously the sound was coming out of her mouth, so I was guessing it was fine as the tissue was catching her mouth spit....but then I saw her take said tissue and start to pretend clean/dust the furniture, the floor, her brother saying "scrub, scrub scrub." As I watched her spread her gross tissue over everything I knew I was in my own level of Dante's germ hell. At least its just a cold bug.

Good News

My husband told a co-worker that we had a great day in court last week! His co-worker replied "you're probably the only person in the world who could ever say that!" I got a kick out of this, of course it's not true, but having a great court hearing in many circles is very rare.

Our kiddos are lawyer-ed up I like to say. They share their court hearings with each other and an older half brother. I won't go into details about the half brother, just understand he needs prayer, protection, and will most likely never be made aware of these other siblings of his.

We were not expecting an eventful court hearing, and I guess to some degree it was as expected. The plan for our kiddos still is adoption by their grandmother.  HOWEVER, there is now going to be a "best interest" review conducted in AZ if the grandma gets approved. Essentially saying that, as this family (US) wants to adopt both kiddos, and the relative has seemed only marginally interested in the kiddos, perhaps we will see if it is really in their best interest to move them. We were ECSTATIC. Perhaps I am putting to much weight on this twig of hope. Yet, I feel that when this is all said and done, no matter what the outcome, everyone has done a lot to try. I know I have done everything in my power, I can't say that for sure on all parties, however, I know that my kid's connections in CPS and therapies etc. have really seemed on board with Joseph and I from the start. This is not the case for many foster families. I feel our concerns have been heard and addressed...and that can only be God's hand in this situation.

The Lord's will be done. Amen regardless.

Addendum: ONE STEP FORWARD ONE STEP BACK:  Their adoptive relative has scheduled a visit. a week long visit, where I imagine I will be supervising (EVERY SECOND) in an office somewhere as my kids "get to know" them.... blech.

expendable crewman

Captain's log star date 03202014...

The little people have taken over the house. The paralyzed one has made a miraculous recovery in his 9 months outside the womb, and has become mobile. He now roams freely causing destruction and mayhem at his own peril. He has begun to demand things, time, and his neediness in general is now summoned with the making of aggressive noises.


We are on day 5 of the she-child's strike on nap time. This coincided with the tossing of the infamous nuk  "night night" cup. Today we are on hour 1.5 of constant crying. She is sleeping at night, but these nap time strikes are causing excessive crankiness, irritability, and hoarseness from the incessant tears and screams. 'Tis heartbreaking to behold, but we must remain firm with our demands on said nap time.

Kind of says it all...

#newparent

Really, this blog should be called HASHTAG NEW PARENT!! because seriously... that is the number one thing in my life that shapes my day to day: and thus, my life/blog. The only real thing that is interestingly relevant in my life,  is us being NEW parents. (ok so by now we are only SORTA new... not AS new,but still relatively new...and keep in mind I started this particular post in August haha)

 Sometimes it has been hard to tell what is unique to fostering and what is just parenting. Minus my non-hormonal introduction to mommy-hood, NOTHING is different as far as I am concerned. Not when it comes to my kids. Sure I have way more people and paper involved my parenting process.  But lots of people have kids in occupational therapy, with behavioral challenges or baggage.

Part of my transitions has been especially noticeable when pertaining to my toddler, i.e. the child I JUMPED in the middle of life with...ok so realistically I missed 18 months of her life..so she is hardly in the middle...but it sure felt like I missed a whole bunch. With the baby I only missed 3 days. And even then I have wondered what specifics of his life I missed... But with T I have struggled with what's a behavior from a neglected baby/preemie/possible exposure vs. typical two year old?

I am typical mamma bear... I don't want to be told that my kids are missing milestones or are delayed...but if negative observations are made I want justify these aspects of my kids ! "Behind!? Don't you see how smart she is and how fast she's learning?"  On the flip side, in my moments of humiliation regarding either my inability to parent, or an out of control child I wish to justify these un-savories also" yeah so what of she's screaming and slapping me on the middle of Walmart..she was a preemie and she's my foster kid I haven't had her that long...and I don't beat her! AND DON'T YOU JUDGE ME" I mentally scream to the sympathetic passerby...

At Target the other day, I felt super proud of myself for not once mentally screaming these excuses. I owned my toddler's bad behavior. I was there for 30 ish minutes. she screamed and whined for 3-4. It was a long 3-4, (it actually might have been more like 1-2 but time stood still for mamma) but I not once wanted to justify her behavior, in my head or to the world. She knew what she was doing, she knew the consequences. And I knew her enough to know she would get over it. My kid threw a tantrum, not because she was a preemie, or neglected, or in foster care, but because she wanted to hold the plastic cups and mamma wouldn't let her.* So what? they were cool cups!

embarrassed my kids throw tantrums over plastic cups? ha newbie #newparent

This post seemed to make a lot more sense in my head....#newblogger

ps....

*The issue was not her holding the  plastic cups, but she is not allowed to hold anything mom puts in the cart only to prevent the meltdown when we have to hand everything over to the cashier, for some reason the cups were the biggest enticement today. This system has worked well for me in the past *sigh*.

Resilient?

The beginning of this year has been a bit on the blah side of life. Health problems for everyone in the family to varying degrees. House hunting troubles and successes that turned to troubles again. And of course the ever prolonged custody battle, which is having kids in the system.

The husband and I enjoyed our continuing education training classes over the weekend, and our now equipped for another year of foster parenting. There is something very motivating about being surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of foster parents with countless years of experience who still love what they do...who still love these kids. It seriously put into perspective any "troubles" I have with my babies.

I surveyed the people surrounding me over the weekend, and I wondered how many of them have ever felt beaten down emotionally as I have lately...and then I  laughed at myself because "DUH!" Who in this world has not at one point in their life felt emotionally beaten on!? All of us have at some points, or thousands of points. Because we need Jesus in our lives. We can't do it alone. Whatever it is. I know I can't do it. I feel stuck sometimes even when life is smooth sailing. Throw a mild stomach bug in the mix and you see k8 in a tailspin. Although I am trying to be content, mindful, and resilient in my faith, my life, and my spiritual journey, I feel I am constantly failing. A quick trip to http://www.resilient-faith.com/ *shameless plug* reminded me of this verse:

"I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need."~Phillipians 4:12

I met people in this Foster care training that embodied this verse in powerful ways. To be content, in every circumstance, can only be done through the strength given by Christ. It was nice to see people living this faith in ways I can only hope to emulate.