We are now parents of a teenager! We managed to spring her from her facility for the last time yesterday and she now lives with us. We picked her up, stuffed my vehicle with all of her belongings, and brought her home. She’s still in a room full of boxes but it’s officially her room now.
The timing seems perfect. This coming week is spring break week, so she and I will have some time to hang out and do some fun things. We’ll get our nails done, and she’s got some money to spend at the mall so we’ll do a mall trip too. And she’ll have plenty of time to unpack and settle in.
The woman who chairs the welcoming committee at our church gave her a gift of money and a very sweet card to welcome her to our church community. For the millionth time, I feel incredible gratitude for the forces at play in the universe that brought us to our church. The community supports us in so many ways, and I am so glad they’re eager to welcome our teen. The church will actually be open for Easter – it’s been closed because of Covid – so our teen will get to experience at least a small part of the community next Sunday. Long term, I don’t plan to force her to go to church every week if she really doesn’t want to go. She’s previously spent time with a foster family who was super religious and she wasn’t into it, and I am not into forcing religion on anybody. But I do hope she’ll decide she likes it. After all, I’m not really in it for the religion so much as the community myself.
Of course I have prepared Easter baskets for all of the kids: our teen, Kiddo, Brother, and Tiny. I had way too much fun making the Easter baskets for the three big kids by gluing theater size boxes of candy together. And each little kid has some little toys and some goodies in their basket, and our teen has a small but expensive item in her basket. Tiny’s basket was the most fun to fill because I don’t want her to have a ton of candy, so I got her more toys. She’s got a basket full of stuff related to her favorite movies. My personal favs are (from the movie Frozen) an Elsa dress, and (from the movie Home) a little toy Oh with Pig Cat on top of his head that spins around when you push a button. She’ll be delighted.
Anyway, back to our teen, in theory she will start school right after spring break. There may be a one day delay since I’m not sure how many folks are working at the school this coming week and whether they will be able to sort out her schedule in time for her to start on the Monday after spring break. But they have most of her documents that are needed for registration and are working on figuring out her classes.
I hope they choose her classes appropriately so that she has a smooth transition. In New York, we have what’s called the Regents, which is the state-wide curriculums. Unfortunately, it wasn’t offered at her facility’s school and I’m so worried that it will set her up to be behind in classes. I’ll be furious if that’s the case because a bright, hard working kid shouldn’t be penalized for having been stuck at a facility rather than having a family who can take care of her. I guess only time will tell.
Anyway, I’m so happy to be embarking on this journey! It was a joy at dinner last night to look around the table at the four of us and think, “Hey, this is my family now.”
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