Wednesday, December 27, 2006

New to this...

I'm new at this. My hubby and I have been foster parents for 15 months. We have been blessed with having 5 children in our home in that short time (brothers 5&3 for 6 months, girl 1 yr for 11 1/2 months, boy 2 and his sister 1 currently have had for 2 months). After a very long and exhausting and stressful court battle we lost "our little girl" to her birth mom's "friends". We had her in our home for 11 1/2 months and had to pack all of her stuff up the week after Thanksgiving. This has been very difficult for us;however, in the end this has made us stronger people. We know that the court system does not always take the child's best interest to heart and we also have learned to trust noone in the court system. Unfortunately, we were/are very naive when we started this process and I am just thankful that we learned these lessons very early on in our fostering experience. The "silver lining" if there is in any of this, is that her birth mom knows that she cannot care for her and the "friends" that she chose are (from what I've been told) good people who have steady jobs and are of sound mind, body & soul. They own a very nice house and i'm sure G will be taken care of.

As for the children we now have, they are such sweet little peanuts. Unfortunately, they came out of a drug bust at their home and there are obvious delays with Jr. At 2, he hardly speaks, doesn't chew his food well, has terrible balance among other problems. There is a lot of anger in him for being 2 years old. I feel so helpless and can only imagine what he has been thru in his short life. This is his 3rd trek thru the system. His little sis is on her 2nd trek thru the system and seems to be developing normally other than some MAJOR attachment issues. She hates men! (Not that this is a all bad thing! LOL) She will let most women console her; however, she will not settle down even from my hubby. I did notice that her 1 yr molar on her left side bottom had popped thru last night so we have 1 more to go and then maybe our moods will improve until the top ones are ready to come thru!

I am keeping this blog as a way to keep notes about their progress and to have somewhere to vent to whomever will listen/read. I am open to comments and would love to hear from anyone out there who is a foster/adoptive parent or just any parent who can comment on any questions I may put out there being a new parent to toddlers.

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