Today Might Just Be the Day...

What happens in the daily life of the family.. the drama of foster care, the adventures of parenting, & pictures to share with everyone!

Back again

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Just for kicks.. here’s a photo from 4 years ago… Aren’t they cute?!?

 

So, this is how slow I am at updating… I’ve already taken another vacation. Yes, for those of you counting, that makes 3!

And I am ready to be at home for a long, long time. I am ready for normalcy (whatever that is) to return.

I have a couple more really heavy duty posts brewing. One will be a hugely massive update on our open adoption.

But, for now, I just wanted to check in.

Yes, I’m here. Things are going o.k. My depression has really taken it’s toll this week, but I’m hoping that seeing one of my besties next week will help on that end. And I know that my crafting night with another of my besties was very helpful. Speaking of crafting… We have a couple of shows in the works! It’s holiday time again so we’re going to go out and try to help the people get that shopping done while, at the same time, earn some money for our own shopping. The other night we made a few lovies and some adorable earrings and started work on some fleece caps. If you’re local, we’ll be at the boys’ school for their Fall Festival next Friday night–come by and see me!

Also, next weekend is going to be h-u-g-e! In addition to Fall Fest, next weekend is the MS Walk. Have you made a donation to my team, yet? If not, what are you waiting for?!? It doesn’t have to be much.. a quarter, a dollar, whatever, we’ll take it! We also still have our orange items for sale on our facebook page as well as in our etsy shop–all of the proceeds are going to the same cause.

*And* on top of all of that fun with the walk, I will be jogging in my first half marathon! Last week I did my final long training run.. 10 miles. And I nearly killed me. I’m hoping that adrenaline alone will carry me the extra 3.1 miles. So, on Nov. 6, while you’re watching football and having a beer, think of me out there sweating and trying to push through 13.1 miles of fun 🙂

 

Vacay

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So, one of the thngs that I love about our school district is the modified year-round callendar. In Phoenix, summers are pretty miserable so it only makes sense to have more time off during the beautiful times of the year.

Our kids get a couple of weeks off three times a year and then a little less than 2 months off for the summer.

With all of that extra time, we were planning on taking a weekend to go see my little brother in SanDiego. I told my parents they should meet up with us out there and then, all of a sudden, my parents were olanning a trio to Indio.

Indio, CA, is kind of in the middle of nowhere.. It’s 20-30 minutes outside of Palm Springs. And it turns out that the middle of nowhere was perfect for us.

Daddy couldn’t afford to take a whole week off of work– after all, we did just get back from our last vacation :). So, the kids and I loaded up for our road trip right after school on Friday.

Since Indio is a couple hours from San Diego, I decided to hit San Diego… Or really just Legoland on the way. We got to Carlsbad late at night just to crash and made it to Legoland before opening and were able to fit nearly everything into our full day there. It’s so nice traveling with the kids now that they are a little older! No need for a stroller or diaper bag or naps!

At the end of the day we headed to Indio. My little brother, his girlfriend and their puppy joined us shortly and spent some time with us. It was so nice. Bean fell in love with the puppy (of course) and loved playing with Rachel’s hair. All of the kids attempted to tackle Uncle Andrew… But all together they still weigh less than he does and they didn’t succeed.

Nana and Papa were supposed to come to town on Monday, but the Airline Gods had something else in mind and they were stalled until Tuesday. The kids and I managed to keep ourselves busy with the pools and ducks and the arcade.

With Nana and Papa we played more in the pool and continued fattening those ducks up. We also went to the Living Desert –the small, but very cool zoo in Palm Springs. We also got to see Andrew and Rachel one more time for dinner.

Daddy ended up making it out for our last couple of days–and we hit Seaworld as a family.

It was a great trip, but it’s always good to be home. And, as of today, it’s *amazing* to have the boys back in school 😉

 

And, as promised, here are a few photos of the journey!

Help us Fight!

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Most of you who know me in real life, also know one of my best friends, Renee.

What you might not know is that Renee has MS, multiple scelrosis. She has had the diagnosis for 6 years now.

And as you can guess, her fight is our fight, too. We’ve done the MS Walk as a family several years. And we have worked on fund raising through yard sales in the past. This year, I wanted to reach out to you all, too. If you’re interested in donating–every little $1 helps! You can go straight here–my personal goal is to raise $100 in donations alone.

Also, Renee & I have been crafting for the cause. This year we’ve created what we’ve dubbed “Code Orange” in our Etsy shop. I’ve been concocting some special orange colored items that I am donating all of the profits from to the walk as well.

I’m sure you already a fan of RAD Crafts on facebook, but if you’re not, look me (us) up and you can see photos of all of our orange items. You can also see them at our Etsy shop—here. Because we’re doing this to donate the profits, I’d love it if you’d order through me v. on Etsy–it just saves me some fees.

And, since they’re so adorable, here is a sneak peek at what you’ll see if you click on those links…

 

Putting the Pieces Together

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It seems like the more that I *need* to blog, the less that I do.

There are a million things going on with us right now. The other day I e-mailed my mom and on my second page or so I realized that it was too much stuff for just an e-mail and warranted a chat on the phone. Wish I could call some of you to bounce all of this stuff off of, too.

One of the reasons that I haven’t blogged is because this feels more personal somehow. I have shared so much of myself and my family on here already that I cannot imagine it being more personal. But, I think it’s my “mama bear” instinct.

D has been having issues in school. Now, that’s not new. If you’ve ever met him, you know that he is full of energy. From about the first month that he was with us, we knew that there was something going on. But, it’s been a puzzle for us to solve. When he started preschool, he wasn’t well behaved enough to attend the preschool near our home. They suggested he be screened for special needs. Well, just like we knew, there wasn’t anything going on as far as his motor skills and he was right on course academically.

In preschool, we met with the teachers and the mental health side. He’s such a wonderful, caring little boy, but so full of energy. We tried some play therapy at the end of preschool and kept on just tyring to teach him how to manage his own behaviors.

As he entered elementary school, he was up against the same challenge. It’s so obvious to everyone that he wants to do the right thing, but sometimes those impulses are just too much for him.

So, in first grade, we again pursued some behavioral health help and he was formally diagnosed with ADHD. And we were paired with an amazing behavior coach. His coach met with him and with us. He thrived with the extra attention and worked hard to impress his coach. And we learned more tools to work with him, too.

Throughout our parenting journey, we’ve read tons of books and attended classes and have really worked at learning how to be our best.

But, there doesn’t seem to be an easy answer.

D did so well with the behavior coach that the services were closed out after only six months. Throughout this time D has done o.k. in school. He’s always very close with his teachers, he loves school, and is a fun kid. But, homework is a struggle. Sometimes it’s a battle. On a few nights, I have felt like I was in the middle of a war. Both of us have ended up in tears on more than one occasion. So, even though things have been o.k., there’s always been some room for improvement.

As concepts became more difficult, so did the issues with homework. In third grade, D started slipping behind his classmates.

So, back for help we went again. This time we made the difficult choice to medicate him. I am a believer in better living through chemistry, but it’s hard when it’s your kid. I will say it has been a really good choice for him. He’s done better at managing his behaviors and school work is much easier when you’re able to sit still to get through it. We actually were incredibily lucky because we’ve seen no ill side-effects on him. We’ve read and heard stories of kids and adults having to try medication after medication and dose after dose, but we were able to get something that worked right away and have pretty much stuck with it.

Then we threw another wrench in the plan. We moved.

Our new school has some huge positives for a kiddo with ADHD. They have school uniforms, there’s a ton of structure, and there’s modified year round schooling–all of these are really great for kids with ADD/ADHD. However, they’re also about a year ahead of the typical school academically, not so great for a kiddo who was already struggling. On top of that, last year we started to see some alarming things with D’s school work. He was still flipping around some numbers and letters, he couldn’t seem to lock his basic addition and subtraction facts into his memory despite hours and hours of practice.

So, we all ended up seeking more answers. And it has been a very slow process.

Thankfully, we feel like there was a bit of a breakthrough last week! The school district came in and screened him for learning disabilities, issues with his motor skills and speech issues. And the findings were just what we were seeing and feeling at home. He’s doing well in almost every area… but, across the board he had some problems with his short term memory. The school has also told us that these issues are common for kids with ADHD. And the best part in this is that he qualifies for an IEP (Individualized Education Program). Basically, the school will work with him and us to help him be successful in school. We’ve been very fortunate to have teachers since he started school that have been willing to work with us and him. Now, they’ll all have to in the future, too. And, hopefully, with the added help, he’ll continue to learn the skills that he needs to have to cope with ADHD. Because, like it or not, he will have to learn how to manage this.

The next step for us will be learning what else we can do to work with him and the school.

We know that this was just the next little piece to the puzzle. And there’s still hard work ahead for all of us. But, we left the meeting last week, for the first time in awhile, with hope for him to do well at the school he’s currently attending.

Wow! Long post! But, it’s been a lot of little steps to get here. And that’s only one small area of what all has been happening at our home… more to follow soon!

Learning.

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I took a photo class right before I went on vacation with B. But, then we didn’t take the good camera with us. I will share about out trip and a few photos soon! Today, however, I took out the DSLR and was playing around with Bean. This isn’t the best photo, but I still love it.

If I would have known then what I know now…

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I have so many people around me who are waiting on their phones… families waiting for foster placement, for adoptive placement, for the call to set up travel for international adoption… It’s all so exciting! It makes me miss the days that we were waiting on that phone to ring. And that makes me think about those first few calls when we knew so little.

I thought I’d make a little list of things we would have loved to have known then…

 

  1. Just because they call and you say “yes” doesn’t mean that anything is going to happen. Until that kid is at your door, no need to do much of well.. anything! If you “have” to do something, clean! LOL!  When they’re looking for a foster placement they are really just making a plan. At the same time as the agency is calling you to see if you’re interested, CPS is still looking for biological family. They’re also considering other options–is there another adult who could be in the home with the children as a safeguard? Could bio-mom go to drug treatment with the child? So, just because they call.. no need to panic. We have had a dozen calls or so that we said “yes” to that never were placements. We even had one that we waited 2 days to hear that we wouldn’t get placement.
  2. Don’t be alarmed when they call you the next day to see if you have the kid. Such an odd call to get, but, here, we’ve gotten that call several times. I chalk it up to different departments not talking to each other.
  3. Just because they call you for a little girl who’s 1, don’t expect to have a little girl aged 1 show up at your door. If you know us at all, you’ve probably heard the story again and again, but it’s one that, I think, bears repeating because it’s so crazy that I wouldn’t believe it if it didn’t happen to us. I was at the gym working out when B called because they’d called him about an 11 month old little boy. We were thrilled! Our boys were almost 3 & 4 and we knew that they’d do great around a toddler. Well, a couple hours later, A came into our lives. He was obviously *not* 11 months old! He was, in fact, a couple weeks shy of 2. So, we had said yes to a placement that was a disaster for our young family. All three boys were less than 2 years apart in age and within 5 lbs of each other as far as size. For the time that A was with us, the only time that there wasn’t at least one kid crying was when they were all asleep… which brings me to the next point.
  4. Just because you say “yes” doesn’t mean you’re right. As a foster parent, it’s drilled into to not take placements that you can’t handle and not to let placements disrupt and all that jazz. And those are good and valid points. But, disruptions do happen. And there’s no way for you to know what will come with each placement. Yes, use your best judgement, but realize that you’re human and your crystal ball probably isn’t any better than mine.
  5. Kids don’t need that much stuff. We were always really worried about having the right things. We went out and bought tons of clothes and toys for our boys before we’d even seen them.. and then, when they were finally moved in with us, they came with buckets of stuff! LOL! Don’t get caught up in the drama of trying to buy a whole wardrobe the first day… Or, you could end up like we did with a dozen dresses and a little girl who refused to wear them. As you foster longer, you’ll get to make a network of friends who can help you with new placements. We have been incredibly lucky to have such generous friends and family who have provided so much for each of our spoiled little foster kiddos!! But, the truth is that all of that stuff isn’t important. It’s more important just to be there doing the selfless thing you’re already doing.. they stuff will be there if you need it. It can be expensive taking on a child or two or three who often come with only the clothes on their backs.. don’t stress out about it though. It will be o.k.
  6. Lice aren’t the end of the world. They’re no fun, but they can be dealt with.
  7. Keep some disposable stuff on hand and frozen meals there for the first couple of days/weeks. Paper plates and plastic cups can just give you the extra half our each day that you might need. It’s o.k. to have a little extra waste while you’re adjusting. When people have bio-babies, family and friends bring meals.. Unfortunately, I’ve never had *anyone* offer to do this for us. But, you are going through even more of an adjustment than someone bringing home a newborn. After all, the newborn you’re bringing home will be going through withdrawls. And, yes, the 4 year old is potty trained and should be able to sleep through the night, but good luck getting either of those to stay true through such a traumatic time in his life.
  8. Laugh. It’s o.k. to make really inappropriate jokes. This is a really crazy time, but it will pass.

 

Parental Duties

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O.K. There are some things that you have to do as a parent. You need to feed and clothe and bathe your kids. You have to provide them with shelter and protect them and keep them safe and all that good stuff. And, as we are learning, you have to do a ton to help out with their education…

But, those aren’t the only requirements. After all, just being an adult who is fed and has a home does *not* a good person make.

One of the first ways that we knew that our boys were our boys was hearing our sense of humor mimicked back to us.

At only 2 & 3 they were already learning about pranks and sarcasm and all of that humor that has kept us from killing each other after all of these years.

So, obviously, I think that teaching a kid how to laugh is important… Humor, seriously (pun intended!) is what allowed us to succeed in the crazy world that is foster parenting….

Humor isn’t the only escape that we used though… Daddy, more than I, is a huge movie buff. When we went from 3 kids to 4 (and then from 4 to 5 to 4 to 5 to 4 to 6 and finally back to 4) we realized that we needed help and time. We made a huge effort to have a date night every.single.week. Now, some of those dates ended early so we could sleep. But, movies were an escape for us. A chance to not think about the laundry and work and chaos of daily life.

Teaching the kids our love of the cinema has been about the easiest thing ever. Although, I have to say that their taste leaves something to be desired. Then again, I am a sucker for a romantic comedy… Not just the good ones either, I’ll pretty much watch anything that’s romantic and remotely funny.

The real thought that sparked this post—just like in real life, on my blog, my thoughts wander, too–was music.

When B and I met, I remember him looking at my CD collection (kids, CD’s were what we used before iPods existed) and approving me based on my taste in music. One of my favorite things in the world is a road trip and I love them because they give you hours in a car with music and conversation… What could be better?

We have wanted to pass a passions for music onto our kids as well. But, it’s a challenge… So many songs have questionable (to put it lightly) lyrics. There was a song that was popular when D & D were little called “Smack That”. We convinced them the real lyrics were “Snack Pack” and then started changing what was on the car… One easy solution is country music… The lyrics, most of the time, aren’t as risqué. But, I don’t think that B has ever willingly listened to country without me in the car. So, I remember thinking about oldies. I wanted the kids to listen to the oldies that I did when I was a kid.

But, those oldies are all but gone. They aren’t on the radio anymore… So, we sought them out. Bean’s favorite song used to be “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and all of the kids love the song “Lollipop”. Thanks to the movies, the kids not only love Abba songs, but they can identify the band!

It’s a little more work, but I think it’s worth it to expose the kids to different music. They still love new stuff… And we hear those questionable lyrics still… Nothing quite like hearing your little girl sing, “brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack”… But, I think we’re at least creating a little bit of balance.

Perhaps the band who the kids have had the most exposure to is the Beatles. Big D is far too shy to sing it in front of anyone, but he can sing “Black Birds” very well. All of the kids have been singing “Yellow Submarine” non-stop the last couple of days… And last night the Beatles, in a way, were the big boys’ first concert experience.

Daddy took the boys to see The Fab Faux. Now, I have blogged about this band before.. They copy, to perfection, the recorded sound of the Beatles. And last night was Daddy’s 6th time seeing them. Tonight will be my 3rd. And I will tell you that all of the boys were very happy about last night’s show. I am sure I will feel the same way in a few hours!

And, if you spin things the way I do, we get good parenting points for the exposure!

Hope you all are having a great long weekend!

And, if you get the chance… Check out this site: http://www.thefabfaux.com/wap/

Good News/Bad News

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Time for another round of good news/bad news.

Good news, I have lost 5 lbs this week.
Bad news, I have been in the fetal position or in the bathroom a good chunk of this week.

Good news, I am taking a break from dishes and laundry…
Bad news, I also am taking a break from bathing… Our hot water heater isn’t working.

Good news, I have lots of projects waiting for me.
Bad news, I am several days behind in about every area of my life.

Good news, I am no longer feeling like an alien is about to jump out of my bowels doing a show tune (gotta love a Spaceballs reference!).
Bad news, I have already gained back those pounds I lost.

Good news, Daddy and I have an adult only vacation coming up.
Bad news, I think I need to start getting ready for travel.

Good news, three day weekend with the husband and kids…
No bad news there!

Good news, I have a few photos to post….
Bad news, they won’t be up for a day or so! Too much fun to be had today! The big boys and I are headed to the water park. And, then tonight the big boys are headed to a concert with Dad and me.