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Gorgeous Brown-Skinned Girls

Yesterday, I prepared everyone for the parade by demanding they apply sunscreen in case we were facing 3 hours of unabated sun.

It didn’t go well.

I had picked up a spray-on sunscreen by Babyganics, but dayum. It’s the most whitening mineral sunscreen I’ve ever applied. I put it on myself which was fine. No one noticed the whitening effect because I’m the color of new milk. I put it on Sprout and no one noticed because they were distracted and Sprout doesn’t care.

Then I put it on Sunny. Her lovely brown skin went about three shades whiter and slightly chalky. “I look like I’m trying to look like I’m white! No way! I’m never putting this on again!”

Kiddo, for her part, took one look at Sunny’s chalky arms and, after she stopped laughing, refused to apply it. “Dude. It would make me look all ASHY. I’ll just get browner instead. I don’t care if I burn. I’m not putting that stuff on.”

I tried to hide my happy tears. A few short years ago, Kiddo would have begged to put it on because she desperately wanted to be white. Now? She’s super proud of her lovely brown skin and Black heritage.

So what changed? Lots of little things that we are doing, like endless books about Black heritage, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Tulsa Race Massacre. The most important change, though, came this year with a Black teacher she adores. Having a male role model who is Black is massive for Kiddo because until now she’s tied her Blackness to her father, with whom she has almost no relationship now, and who has not been good to her in the past. Suddenly Kiddo is proud of her heritage and I can’t begin to express how joyful that makes me feel.

Then there’s Sunny, who struggles with lots of aspects of her identity, but is proud as hell of being a brown-skinned Asian girl. Living with us (very white) hasn’t erased that, and her saying it out loud made something in my middle region jump for joy.

Upshot: I am still internally celebrating their reactions today.

And I need a new sun screen. Recommendations for non-whitening mineral sunscreens for kids of color are welcome!

Solo Momming Challenges

Parade going while autistic

Today is Memorial Day. It’s parade day in my household! I naively planned not one, but two parades with the kids today – one in the next town over and one in our own little village.

Bright and early, we all (3 kids and I, Seth is working) piled into the car along with Sunny’s wheelchair and folding chairs for the rest of us and a backpack full of snacks.

Every few years there’s a reunion at my former school district for the marching band, and they get together and rehearse like mad for the weekend and then march in the Memorial Day parade that goes through the district’s village. It’s always a spectacle, and this year was no exception. There were about 460 former marching band members who came back for it. If you’ve never heard a matching band that’s 460 strong, you should try it. It’s a sight to behold!

My dear friend – a friend much beloved by the kids – was marching and playing in it so that was an added incentive to go. But honestly, even if she hadn’t been, I would have taken the kids to see it. I love a good marching band!

We arrived early enough to get good parking and decent seats but that meant a long wait for the start of the parade. The kids squirmed and whined about waiting “For-Ev-Er.” But we got through it, full of every snack I’d brought.

Just as the parade was about to start I realized I’d forgotten hearing protection. Dangit. I can’t comfortably do parades without hearing protection. I can get through them, but it’s so much stimulation that I find it very disorienting and uncomfortable.

I knuckled down, plugged my ears with my fingers like a 3-year-old refusing to listen, and got through it. I even enjoyed most of it, fire trucks excepted. They are too loud for everyone. I saw my friend and got a video of her playing, and enjoyed the heck out of the reunion band. Then we packed up alllll our heavy stuff, used the bathroom at the church (bless them for being open for that purpose!), and made our way back to the car and home.

I fed the children an oh-so-nourishing lunch of spaghettios, and dragged the smallest fry to nap with me.

I had to nap. I have to nap every dang day whether I want to or not. Most of the time I don’t want to. With my autoimmune disease collection, fatigue is a major factor, even with daily doses of stimulants. Add to it that I’d completely overloaded my tender autistic senses with a blaringly loud parade, and I was stick-a-fork-in-me done.

I slept like the dead for 2 hours and woke up utterly disoriented and still exhausted with three kids expecting a second parade.

Ultimately I had to tell them I could not do it. I tried caffeine and water and a snack, but nothing could make me feel grounded again. I offered to take them for ice cream at a nearby quiet ice cream stand instead, and they had to make do.

I can’t take another minute of it

Let me set the background for this next bit: the girls argued with each other all weekend. The older two (Kiddo -11, and Sunny – 9) ganged up on the little one (Sprout – 5) to exclude her. Sunny drove me bananas all weekend by repeatedly leaving bits of trash on my sitting room floor and making a general mess and refusing to clean up after herself. Then Kiddo and Sunny argued with each other about everything they did. It was honestly a long and not-so-fun weekend.

During ice cream eating at a picnic table outside, the oldest two got back into it. They were arguing, of all things, about whether Sunny had fallen off the picnic table while we were sitting there. Either she did or she didn’t, right? Not so fast. Apparently it was up for debate. Strenuous, nasty debate. I cut them off and told them if they uttered another word about it they’d both be throwing out the rest of their ice creams and we’d head out to take Kiddo home to her Mom.

After a brief moment of delicious silence, Kiddo muttered “She did, though” under her breath.

Something broke in me.

They threw out their half-eaten ice creams as threatened (thankfully Sprout had already finished hers), and we took Kiddo home.

At present, the sisters, Sunny and Sprout, are sitting in separate rooms. It’s a wise choice, because they started an argument in the car over whether it’s called “McDonalds” or “Old McDonalds,” and I threatened an early bed time if they say another antagonistic word to one another this evening.

I honestly can’t tell if I’m just in a bad mood because of autism overload from this morning coupled with my standard fatigue? Whether my Vraylar is not working on my autism irritability as well as Abilify did, as my psychiatrist suspects? Or whether my threats to the kids are reasonable given the level of nasty, snotty, snide bickering they’ve been doing?

Maybe I’ll gain perspective tomorrow morning and feel bad and apologize to them. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll wake up and find I feel like I wasn’t being unreasonable.

Honestly, autism and fatigue aside, there’s only so much bickering moms can take before we crack, right?! Gah!

Good news though: there’s school tomorrow! Thank the lovely gracious heavens above! I’ll have time to pick up the house and sleep a ton and recover. God bless public school education for taking my much beloved children away for hours per day during the week!

Waiting Game

I suck at being patient. Just ask my long suffering husband!

Court was more than three weeks ago. The possibility of the girls’ third sister moving here at least temporarily was discussed at length at court. The judge didn’t order it, but told the agency they had to make certain medical things happen for the sister that will be hard, though I don’t think impossible, for them to do.

There’s supposed to be a meeting today with the agency we are with, and the agency the other three kids are with. It was supposed to be held last Friday but got postponed a week. I’m on tenterhooks waiting for an answer.

Either:

1) Life will keep trucking along predictably, and I’ll have my big toe surgery soon (an arthritic toe joint will be fused and a giant bone spur will be removed so I can walk comfortably again). Sunny will go to summer school, Sprout may go to a camp or two, and we’ll do all the usual fun summer stuff like beaches and camping. We’ll get a new car when we can afford it.

Musical Bedrooms

Or 2) Life will be dramatically upended with another child in the house – a teen no less – adding to our already considerable chaos. We will swap rooms in the short term, and put the three sisters in our master bedroom while we take the smaller room they’re currently in. Later on, after a potential surgery, the third sister would likely have to move to a temporarily-created room on our ground floor because she likely won’t be able to do stairs for a while.

Long term, Kiddo wants to move into our attic bedroom which is currently just storage. This is a fabulous solution. I don’t want kids with stair-climbing-limiting disabilities on the third floor but Kiddo has no disabilities so she can handle the steeper stairs up there. She’s getting older and wanting her independence and wants a whole floor to herself. We’ll need to redo the floors up there and get rid of some more junk, but it’s doable to convert it back into the bedroom it’s meant to be.

That will give us her room to put Sunny or Sprout in, or the other sister if she’s here for long. It’s like a relief valve on our overcrowding sitch. We’ll move Kiddo regardless of whether we get the sister but it’ll be crucial if the sister is with us for long.

Midnight Thinking

Late at night, lying in bed, I have figured out where the beds will have to go, and the nightstands, and the dressers, and the artwork for each potential configuration. I’ve created a wish list on Amazon of stuff we’ll need if we do get the girls’ sister. I’ve contemplated when a move would make sense, how quickly I could get her insurance changed and get her to the specialist in Delaware that the girls’ have an appointment with at the end of June. I’ve contemplated conversations with our school district, our dentist, our optometrist, the girls’ pediatrician, the woman who handles referrals at the pediatrician’s office, the cardiologist, the local orthopedic surgeon, etc., etc.

The only thing I’ve been able to actually do is contact our homefinder to increase the number of kids we are licensed for from 2 to 3. I got push-back about that which weirded me out. You’d think the Homefinding unit would be thrilled we were opening up another bed? It didn’t sound that way. Regardless, the girls’ case worker said she could take care of that piece for us.

So. I just sit and wait and stew and wonder and fret. Are we about to need a minivan, like, yesterday? Should I grab the spare daybed friends of ours have and start moving rooms around? Or should I just focus on things to do with the two girls for the summer?

I hate waiting.

I swear I am going to be the first person in recorded history to die of having to wait. Ha!

The School “About My Family” Project

Schools seem to have universal taste for “about my family” or “my family tree” projects.

I loathe them. And they seem to happen every year in some form or another.

They’re a lot of pressure on foster kids to open up about being in foster care, or have the project raise questions when they talk about different people than the ones who pick them up at school. Talk about awkward and embarrassing for kids. Children can be cruel, and foster kids are easy targets. These projects expose foster kids to ridicule, and even if they’re not bullied for it, it sets them up for a lot of stress. How much are they going to reveal? They have enough stress without school projects adding to it!

A lot of adoptees are vocal about hating the school projects about their families, too. Again, they have to say they’re adopted, which is something they should be free to address or not as they see fit. Or else they have to admit they don’t know about their family tree. Either way, adoptees often feel deeply uncomfortable about such projects. A dear friend of mine who is an adoptee said about family tree projects “I was always at a loss how to answer.”

Even kids with just complex family dynamics feel pressure about such projects. Another friend says “family tree projects give me hives.” Admitting your parents are getting a divorce when the situation is new and raw is not something kids tend to relish, even if divorce is super common these days. It’s still deeply personal to each kid who is experiencing it. Or the kid who doesn’t have a dad involved. Or the kid with same-sex or trans parents. My list could go on and on.

The family tree projects are especially awful in another respect. The children’s book “Born on the Water” talks about a child who, unlike their peers who are listing European countries, can’t identify the country of origin for their family because their family came to this country as enslaved people and that history was lost along the way. Yuck. While it might turn out to be a good lesson for their peers, no kid should have to be the subject of a lesson if they don’t actively want that.

I could go on and on. But today? I just read an absolute gem of a book.

It was suggested to me by my friend Brooke, who edits vast lists of books for work. She stumbled on this one and recommended it because the main character happens to be a foster kid. The story is about a foster child whose class is doing an “about my family” project, and they’re nervous because their family is not typical.

The book handles the issue in a great way. The upshot is that several other kids in the class have non-nuclear or different types of families, and the narrator sees some commonalities among all the kids’ descriptions of their families.

The narrator remembers a moment with their foster mom, that made them feel included.

I’m stealing this response! I don’t get asked this all that often now since my foster kids are of a different race, but I do still get asked “are they your real kids?” sometimes. I’m definitely going to answer that they aren’t imaginary! Ha! I also get asked if my kids are adopted, to which I simply answer “no,” and change the subject or walk away. People are curious, yes. But nosey too!

I feel that “A Family is a Family is a Family” is a great book for any kid with an “unconventional” family, and especially foster kids. It’s definitely entering our regular repertoire!

Sproutlet Delight

From the fourth day she was with us back in April 2020, I knew Sprout was a ham with a huge personality.

The first three days she was here, she spent sobbing if I put her down. I held her for more than 3 days straight, including overnights, which I spent in an armchair not sleeping. We could not get her to handle not being held so I just went with it and snuggled her nonstop.

We had the added growing fear that she would not EAT, and was dangerously ill. She had failure to thrive and was badly malnourished. So I spent those first 70+ hours cuddling her and trying to get her to ingest anything. She arrived on a Friday evening, and we spent much of the weekend on the phone with her amazing pediatrician who was coaching us through every idea he had to try to prevent hospitalization and a feeding tube. We spoon fed her tiny drops of pediasure, and eventually discovered we could use a medicine syringe to get the stuff into her in a volume that would actually make a difference. We still were taking care of the twins, too, for that first weekend. It was hellaciously stressful, and by the time we got to day four I had to get some sleep.

She howled in fear if I handed her to Seth, so I’d been doing all the holding up to that point. But I had no choice. I was so sleep deprived I was bordering on delirium, so I handed her off to him and fled upstairs.

Three hours later I came back downstairs feeling much more human. There was no crying. There was… giggling?!

I found Seth and Sprout at the dining room table making silly faces at each other, and both of them were cracking each other up. I think that’s the moment I fell in love with this kid. She clearly had a hell of a lot of spunk! Sick and scared as she was, she found the strength to be goofy and giggle.

Within a week, there was a secret dark place in me that was hoping this was the kid who would finally stay with us for good. I never want to wish that on a child – separation from family is a terrible thing. But I knew letting this one go would tear me apart, too. Yes, that’s what I’d signed up for in becoming a foster parent: heartbreak. But all the friends who went through the training course with us had already adopted kids and stopped fostering, and we were still sending every kid home. A part of me, which I hate to admit I have, wanted one kid to stay for good. And damnit, this one was the one. She just suited us and delighted us endlessly! I still carry guilt about feeling that – wanting a child to suffer the permanent loss of a parent. It’s not a pretty thing to admit to.

Fast forward three years, and this kid a) is likely to stay, and b) is every inch as funny and sassy and quirky and lovable as I found her in those first weeks. She’s an absolute trip. The things she says crack up everyone in her life.

This was last week’s gem:

Sunny: “Look at my new pencils! I got them from my speech therapist!”
Me: “Wow, those are awesome!”
Sprout: “Are you going to share them with me?”
Sunny: “No!”
Sprout: “What if I touch them?”
Sunny: “No, they’re mine!”
Sprout, with a wicked grin: “But. What if I LICK them?”
Sunny: “Don’t you dare.”
Sprout, whispering to me: “Do you think she’d kill me if I lick them?”
Me, whispering back: “Yes. Yes I do.”
Sprout then gives Sunny a grin and an evil chuckle.

Before the morning was out, Sunny was washing her pencils in the bathroom sink. Ha!

Sprout’s fashion sense is highly developed and powerful. She’s opinionated and insistent about what she’s going to wear. Right now I’m adoring her emo phase. She’s 4 years old and is serious about her black. Ask her her favorite color and she’ll tell you it’s black. In the morning, she’ll ask to wear black, or will pick out something colorful with a tutu and pair it with black combat boots and a black pleather jacket. It’s absolutely amazing. Her favorite character is Wednesday Addams. Her second favorite is Cat Noir. In class pictures, all the girls are in pink and purple and blue, and there’s my kid on the end, shorter by a head and dressed in black and leopard print with a black bow in her hair.

Some of her fashion choices lately:

It’s a Wednesday shirt and Wednesday braids and mesh arm sleeves that her teacher gave her. The other kids got yo-yos and pencils and whatnot. My kid got goth mesh sleeves. And she won’t take them off. Slept with them on last night.

She still loves twirly and floofy skirts. Just loves them with black and leather.

Her favorite brand is Desigual, because they have lots of black-base fun colored and patterned stuff. Note the patent leather combat boots. And the ‘tude.

Easter. Sunny is dressed in lovely girly things. Sprout reluctantly agreed to wear something fluffy and pink IF she could wear her boots and jacket with it. Ha!

Looking grunge, wearing my jumping spider hat.

Her other favorite hat – a vampire pirate with bloody fangs.

Her favorite outfit is black with a colorful “skellington” on it. It came with a massive tutu which sometimes she wears with it and sometimes she scorns. This gets worn the second it comes out of the wash.

I honestly don’t know what I would do if something fell through on this adoption path. It’s utterly selfish of me, but I can’t help it. This kid has me firmly by the heart strings. The next step is a proceeding to terminate her father’s rights which should be straightforward since he’s never participated in any services and has fallen, apparently, off the face of the planet. That’s scheduled for June. Then we get an adoption worker assigned and it will be another 4-8 months from that point before the paperwork is all complete and we can do the actual adoption.

I can’t wait. I want it final that this beloved kid who lights up my life with her black wardrobe and fabulous sense of humor isn’t going away.

Odds and Ends

Visit Fallout

I wrote last about the visit last Saturday being especially hard on the kids. What I should have predicted was the continuing fallout.

On Sunday, the girls woke up late and were just off somehow. So I asked them if they needed hugs and they both exclaimed “Yes!” and rushed over to me. I flopped down in a big squishy armchair and they climbed on me and we hung out in a cuddle puddle, listening to music for probably almost half an hour. My legs and arms were all pins and needles by the time they got up.

Luckily, we had plans on Sunday. My sister and niece were visiting from out of town, and the *very cool 18-year-old big kid* was the focus of the girls’ attention all day. I mean, my niece is completely awesome. So I get it!

Monday was a school morning. Nothing unusual occurred. But when the girls got off the bus in the evening I caught the exchange Sunny had with her bus driver and it was wildly inappropriate on Sunny’s part. He’s a big fun dude with a giant beard who likes to banter with the kids, but Sunny took it way too far, bellowing at him and taking a swipe at his face. She missed thank god, because he has good reflexes. But when Sunny got down the bus stairs and took a look at my face, she knew she was in for it. “Mommy, why don’t you look happy?”

Gee. I wonder.

So we had a long talk about appropriate behavior with adults. At the end she apologized to me, at which point I told her she was apologizing to the wrong person and she owed Mr Bob a big sincere apology the next morning. I supervised that apology. Thankfully he’s an understanding guy.

I figured we were good. But Tuesday afternoon I got a note from Sunny’s teacher. Sunny had been rude and aggressive for two days, interrupting friends and teachers, talking back, telling tall tales, and generally being disruptive. Fabulous.

Soooo, Sunny got the second lecture in two days, this time about appropriate behavior in school. We talked about how I knew she was upset about her visit but that she couldn’t take that out on other people, and there were healthier ways to cope with being upset. She’s got a fabulous time-out room in her classroom that she can use, full of soothing sensory inputs and away from the class. She can use it any time she needs to. She can tell trusted people that she feels sad or mad. She can ask for hugs, or to be left alone. But she can’t be rude and talk back. And interrupting and bossing around friends tends to make them mad and that doesn’t help with how she’s feeling.

Apparently between my lecture and the soothing passage of time, something worked. She apologized to her teacher this morning, and I got a note from her teacher that she had a much better day today. Hooray!

We’ve been blessed with a kind teacher who knew Sunny had gone for a visit and rightly attributed her behavior to being upset by it. There weren’t any harsh consequences, and none were deserved. My kid’s behavior was met with understanding and guidance rather than punishment.

I’m so glad her teacher got it. But many teachers don’t understand how visits can throw a kid off, and I wish more trauma information were taught to teachers so they could know why John was lashing out after seeing his mom for the first time in three months, and why Jane was terrible every Tuesday when she had visits on Monday evenings. It matters so much when you understand why a kid is having behaviors. Somehow it triggers compassion rather than frustration.

Update on their Sister

We still don’t know what’s going to happen with the girls’ big sister. The internal meeting to discuss what the agencies should do (send her here, or try to meet her needs where she is and how they’d do that) won’t happen until May 5th, so now we wait and wonder, plan but don’t plan, worry and get excited and try to temper the excitement and plan some more just in case.

I’m due for another surgery, this time on a severely arthritic toe with a massive bone spur. I’m going to have the joint fused and the spur removed. But I can’t schedule it until I know whether we have a new household member coming to us or not. The recovery should only be about a month, but I will have a week off the foot, so can’t be running around getting clothing and moving furniture right after I’ve had it done. So scheduling surgery is on hold for now.

Nemours

We have official approval for Sunny to go to Nemours now! We just got the word this morning. The insurance company issued the approval less than 24 hours after they got the last little bit of paperwork. It took them longer to change the name of Sunny’s PCP in their records than it did to issue the approval!

I immediately called Nemours, and they are working on scheduling. The plan is to have Sunny seen for the first time, and Sprout have her knee surgery, both in the same week. That way we could go down there in one trip, all 4 of us (5?) and save a drive down and back. We should know more about when they can make it all happen in the next few days. Hip hip hooray! We’re in for a round trip to Delaware and a Ronald McDonald House stay this summer.

I think that’s all the news from Lake Woebegone! TTFN!

Visit Blues

Visits are hellaciously hard.

Leading up to the girls’ visit with their family today, I could feel the tension climbing. They fought more about stupid things, and Sunny’s mood soured. She got short tempered and cranky, biting her sister’s head off at regular intervals, and sniping at me with anything she could think of to hurt me.

Why? I don’t know. I would guess it was a mix of worrying about whether things would be the same when they got there, whether it would be hard to leave again, and whether it was betraying her Mama to love me or feel any happiness here. That’s just a guess.

We packed hijabs and put on the girls’ gold necklaces that say “Allah” in Arabic. They wore leggings and tees, ready to put on the new dresses their Mama had gotten them. Then we wound up leaving early because killing time is no fun and they were so excited to go.

It’s a two hour drive, and they asked if we were there yet possibly 100 times.

The visit itself was a bit strange. I was expecting their relative with the other three siblings to come to it, but they never arrived and no one explained why. (I’m super sad about this because seeing their siblings was something they were very excited about.) But after being very shy for the first 45 minutes, the girls warmed up and had fun with their cousins. We ate good food, including some kind of sweet tangy coconut soup with noodles that I need to find a recipe for. And the girls took turns snuggling with their Mama.

Eventually, long after the two hour visit requirement had passed, Sprout was getting super tired as it was well into nap time. Mama kept asking if it was time yet, and looking out the window. I couldn’t tell if she wanted us to go or stay but I never want to overstay our welcome. So I told the girls it was time to head home. At first it seemed fine, and Sprout said she wanted to leave. But then she melted into tears in her Auntie’s arms. Auntie started to cry. Then Sprout cried on her Mama’s shoulder and got Mama crying. That set Sunny off. Even the cousins got weepy. I never cry – like truly never. But even *I* got going while holding my sobbing beloved Sprout in my arms as she clung damply to my neck.

We eventually made it to the car, and I hugged Mama. Then as soon as the car doors closed, the girls started to actually wail with grief and sadness. It was absolutely horrid to sit there, utterly helpless, while my beloved girls sobbed and sobbed like they’d never ever feel whole again.

Honestly, they never will feel fully whole. Not really. This grief is too primal. Sprout will always feel it when she thinks about it. Sometimes it seems to just creep up on her – the missing of her Mama. And even if Sunny goes home, which seems unlikely but is still possible, this time of missing her mother will have left a deep trauma scar.

Is their being here the best thing for them? God only knows. Medically and academically it is, without question. But is that enough? What about emotionally? Could they possibly be safe and have a stable life there? Which part of them should take precedence, the physical or the emotional? Is there a better way to do this?

I have so many questions but really no answers. I just have two kids who came home today heavy-hearted and sad and missing their Mama to the core of their being.

Oh boy. Exactly what just happened?

Yesterday was a rough day for me. We had a service plan review (“SPR”) meeting for the girls, which means the case workers and Mama and a third party reviewer go over her case and what she needs to do to get her kids back. I get to attend as a foster parent.

Then later in the day, the case worker came for her monthly home visit.

The story told at both of those appointments was basically that Mom is on track to get Sunny and the three siblings who are with a relative back.

I know Mama loves her kids tremendously, but believe she’s ill equipped to care for the three children with medical problems. One of those three – Sprout – is already on a path to be adopted by us mostly because she’s too much for Mama to juggle because of her medical needs. But the other two kids with medical needs it seemed were on a path to go back to her.

The care we are providing for the two who are with us requires tremendous effort, strong English skills, basic medical knowledge, a drivers license (I don’t think Medicaid cabs go interstate? Maybe I’m wrong), a strong backbone, the fundamental inability to give up, a basic working knowledge of insurance and how to work through and around it, a legal background, and the ability to turn rage into fuel for pursuing things further.

Sadly I’m not joking nor exaggerating. Navigating the Medicaid system and medical system for a child with severe medical needs is horrible.

Mama doesn’t speak English, and even with a translator would never push roughshod past the first 15 “nos” to get to the “yes.” She can’t understand the process of changing insurance carriers, getting diagnoses, getting recommendation letters, getting referrals, and pursuing appeals to get approvals for out-of-network providers. And that’s before the care even starts! Hell, honestly? The case worker doesn’t even get it all! How can we expect a woman who doesn’t speak English, doesn’t drive, and is completely unsavvy about medical care to get done what these girls need?

I went to bed sad and frustrated.

I woke up sad, frustrated, and anxious because we had court scheduled for this morning and I expected it to go like my meetings yesterday had gone.

Instead, the judge got it. So did the children’s attorney. And court went nothing like I expected it to.

At the end of the court appearance, I had signed up to take the third sister (age 13) on a temporary basis to work her through this medical system and get her to Nemours and get her through a critical surgery with a complex recovery process. I don’t know if it will happen as the case worker is still working on getting her the care she needs while she’s at the relative’s house, but it might happen.

After court, when I told my husband that we might take her for a little while, his head didn’t completely explode so I take that as a good sign. I was worried he’d go draw up divorce papers but he didn’t. God bless him. He never does draw up divorce papers over my bleeding heart decisions about kids. At least not yet. I know he’s been losing sleep about this sister’s medical care too. He’s probably also been losing sleep over the possibility I might take on something else like this too though! After all, after 23 years together and nearly 20 years of marriage, the man does know me.

Today I learned this judge understands how complex the medical care system is, and how significant the care is that these three girls need. I learned that a judge can totally rattle the County’s plans and make their lives more complicated in a very short period of time. I learned that even the most mild-mannered judge might have a line that can be crossed.

What’s next? Well. We carry on as usual. We wait. So really nothing changed. And yet lots sort of changed, too.

In order to take this third sister even short term, we would need a minivan STAT. Getting one in this car sales climate would stink. And more pressingly, we would need to shift some things around in our house in crazy ways. We don’t have a downstairs bedroom and would need one. Could we come up with a makeshift one that would pass the county’s scrutiny? I hope so. Could we put the girls in our room and use theirs? More plausible, but how would she access it with her medical issues and upcoming surgeries?

Maybe she won’t come here at all, but if not I’m concerned her medical needs won’t be met. She’s a super sweet kid who deserves the best possible health and medical care. Gah. There’s no good answer, that’s for sure.

The Difference Nine Healthy Months Makes

My Concert Weepies

Last night, I sat in a crowded theater full of cheering parents and likewise cheered my kid, who was singing in the 2nd grade chorus concert. Sprout was the wiggliest wildest audience member, along with her BFF, whose parents we got to meet finally for the first time last night. I found myself going back and forth between exasperation at my hyperactive almost-five-year-old Sprout, and being super emotional.

Why was I emotional at a 2nd grade chorus concert? Two reasons:

1) As always, I love my school district, which still invests in music education and the arts. A boatload of 7-8 year olds were up there singing and dancing, and they were clearly (mostly) having a great time. And you know what? They were actually GOOD. The last song they performed was a compilation of 90s hits that made every parent there grin and applaud, and those kids knew every movement and word to the long compilation. That music teacher put a whole lot of time and energy and enthusiasm into those kids.

Arts education matters. Thank you school district for getting that even in this age of restricted budgets and cuts in the arts.

2) More importantly, I was watching my kid sing and dance along with all the confidence in the world. She also exhibited compassion, when a friend from her class got scared and started to cry. It was my kid who insistently waved her hand and flagged down the teacher to help her crying friend. That took courage in front of a theater full of parents!

We ended the concert evening with ice cream, and for the second day in a row, Sunny got to choose the food. She selected chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. Yum.

Her Teacher Cried, Too

She’d selected her dinner the night before (spicy wings!) too, because for the first time ever she had managed to read a sentence on her own at school. She came home and proudly announced that fact to me on Wednesday, then followed it up with a question:

“My teacher cried so much Mommy. I don’t understand. Why did my teacher cry?”

As I noted in a proud Facebook post, her teacher probably cried because at the start of this school year, she was assigned a downtrodden kid who hated school and who had been given up on by every school district and teacher she’d ever had. And now she’s reading.

It just so happens we had her CSE (Committee on Special Education) meeting yesterday morning, also. It consisted of her physical, speech, and occupational therapists, her teacher, the school psychologist, the director of the special ed program, Sunny’s case worker, and my husband and me as the foster parents.

Every single person raved about Sunny. They all talked about how cheerful and cooperative she is, and about how very hard she works. All that hard work has paid off, clearly! She started the year defeated and with no self confidence, knowing a couple of letters and the numbers 1-5, and thoroughly believing she’s too dumb to learn. Now she’s doing subtraction and addition, knows the letters and their sounds, knows some sight words, and is actively sounding out words. For a kid with an intellectual disability and for whom English is a second (maybe arguably third) language? That’s nothing short of incredible.

It’s a tribute to an educational team that has endless faith in their kids, and isn’t deterred by hard work. In fact, the speech therapist noted that she’s been “stealing” Sunny to work with her whenever she has a spare minute all year just because she likes her so much, even though she wasn’t officially assigned to work with her until recently. That blew me away. I guarantee the speech therapist has more than enough other work to do!

I can’t believe I have the same kid I had when she came to us 9 months ago. She’s grown so much. Having a cadre of people cheering her on and believing in her has transformed this kid. She still has struggles with self confidence, particularly around her appearance, and we’re working on that in therapy and just generally. But overall, the change feels nothing short of miraculous. I’m just so proud of her!

What’s next for her? Well, the district has done the testing on Sunny that will qualify her for additional services for folks with intellectual disabilities through the OPWDD, or Office of People with Developmental Disabilities. Contacting them is first on my day’s agenda. Second on my day’s agenda is to contact the school board president. I’ve been invited by a neighbor to find out more about serving on the school board. I’m curious about it. I don’t know whether I really have the bandwidth for it, but given how much I adore this school district, I don’t object to the idea of being part of keeping it awesome.

“Do you trust me to be your kid?”

We have lots of conversations lately about what “family” means. Sprout, whose adoption is in the not-too-distant future (in theory anyway), has been super aware of the fact that she’s not a permanent part of our family yet. She’s very insecure about it, and asks almost daily if she can be a part of our family for good. All I can do is reassure her that we want her to be our forever kid, and are working on it as best we can.

The next step in her process is termination of her father’s parental rights, which I think may happen in April at the next permanency hearing. We shall see. Sprout’s attorney is horrified by the pace of things to date, and is on top of it.

With all these conversations about Sprout wanting to be part of our forever family, Sunny is overhearing it all. Up until this week she has either said nothing, or she used to point out that only Sprout was getting adopted and she wanted to go home.

Yesterday, to my great surprise, the following conversation occurred while Sunny – at her own insistence – was making Sprout and me some very dry scrambled eggs for dinner.

Sprout: “Can I stay in this family forever?”

Me: “Of course you can!”

Sunny, quietly: “Can I?”

Me: “It’s going to be a long time before things are decided in your case, but you are always welcome in this family.”

After a pause, Sunny: “Do you trust me?”

Me: “Trust you… to do what?”

Sunny: “To be your kid?”

Me: “Yes of course!”

I was gobsmacked. I don’t know where Sunny’s questioning was coming from. It may just be that she wants to know if she’s wanted here like her sister is, and she still 100% wants to go home. That would be perfectly natural. It may be that she’s getting used to being here and doesn’t think it’s an entirely terrible idea to stay. I really don’t know. But either option marks a significant shift for her.

Overall, Sunny is doing great. She’s conquered the kindergarten curriculum nicely this year, and since it’s her first real year of academic instruction, that’s appropriate despite her being in 2nd grade. It’s amazing given that the IEP we got from her prior school district wrote her off as being incapable of learning! Too, she has started wanting to go to school some mornings, which is an earth shattering shift – this is a kid who previously loathed school and insisted she never ever wanted to go. Her sight words are going better too, even if she’s learning them through phonics at home rather than memorization. I think she’s starting to feel some sense of accomplishment and recognize how far she’s come.

Her self esteem is still very low overall, but I think a few weeks of therapy have already helped a bit. Yesterday, she came out of the play room to ask me for something, and her cheeks were flushed from roughhousing with her sister, and her eyes were bright with merriment, and she struck me as being spectacularly pretty in that moment. I said as much. Instead of getting mad at me like she usually does, she smiled. She still insisted she’s not pretty but she was pleased by the compliment for the first time. That’s huge progress.

There are still plenty of tense moments surrounding her feelings for her family. The other day, Sprout was mentioning something that happened at their last visit to their Mama’s house, and Sprout said “You know, in that dirty little room next to where we were playing.” Sunny was livid, and insisted the room is “not dirty!” She didn’t speak to Sprout for a good half hour afterward because she was so mad Sprout had referred to something relating to Mama as “dirty.” The loyalty is still strong, as it should be.

I cannot, and will not ever be able to wrap my head around how complex a child’s feelings must be when they’re in foster care and missing home and family, but in a good foster home where they also feel loved. I’ve got to imagine it’s some horrible stew of anxiety and sadness, intense grief and betrayal, relief and comfort, love and back to that feeling of betrayal. Ack. The poor kid. My head hurts just thinking about it, and I don’t have to feel it all at the tender age of 9.

Religious Ed Fail

We are still struggling mightily with how to raise this child in her faith, too. She’s Muslim and loves being Muslim. She gets excited when she sees girls in hijab, or t-shirts or dolls or books depicting girls in hijab. But we are failing horrifically in her Islamic education. We were taking her to a mosque for religious education on Sundays, but she was being bullied badly at the school, and the 20-something young women running the girls’ classes didn’t manage to stop it.

After bringing it up to Sunny’s therapist and a family friend, we are finally making progress. The director of the program Sunny was attending is now aware of the situation and has invited Sunny back with an extra watchful eye and a vow to put an end to the meanness. We also finally have the phone number of another mosque that does an education program for kids. So within the next few weeks, or at the very least at the end of Ramadan, we’ll see if we can get Sunny attending classes again. We may see if we can send Sprout with her once she turns 5. Even though Sunny would never admit it, outgoing little Sprout is sometimes Sunny’s woobie in social situations that are intimidating to Sunny.

In the mean time, Sunny has been going to church with me on occasion, and attending religious instruction at our United Methodist church. The director of our Sunday school program is wonderfully patient and conscientious about Sunny’s being Muslim. She has prayers be to God rather than Jesus, since both faiths pray to the Abrahamic God. And she answers all the questions Sunny peppers her with about Jesus and Christianity.

Part of me feels verrry guilty for sending Sunny to Christian Sunday school. But, part of me thinks it’s ok, too, because she’ll choose whether to follow her Islamic faith or not when she’s good and ready anyway, and a little basic knowledge about Christianity is useful in this country regardless of what path she ultimately chooses. I think so long as I get her back into Islamic education of some kind, a little Christianity mixed in won’t hurt her, but emphasis on getting her back into Islamic education. I’ve got to find a way to do that. It’s only fair to Sunny and to her family. And I’d like to do it for Sprout too – I want her to know her family’s faith.

The sense of overwhelming responsibility I have to these kids is incredible. It’s up to me to shape their lives and determine whether they’re going to be ok in the end. It’s up to me to provide the reassurance they need about being wanted and welcome and loved. It’s up to me to make sure they learn all they need to, in school and in religious ed. I’ve read many anecdotal accounts by adults who feel strongly that their ability to participate in their family of origin’s faith traditions is part of why they’re ok with having been adopted. I can’t underestimate how crucial this religious ed piece is. And I can’t underestimate how important it is to convey to Sunny that yes, of course we “trust” her to be our kid, for now or forever or for anything in between.