Where Do I Start

I'm not going to apologize for neglecting my blog. It had to take a back seat in the gi-normous van I call my life... a WAY back seat. Life happens.

At the end on January, we were notified by the case manager, that the boys in our home were going to be reunified with their mother within a week! EEK! We all (case manager, everyone) thought that these boys were in our home to stay. We were planning to adopt them if that was an option or something they were interested in.  >> FF Nine days, they're all packed and we deliver them to the designate place to reunite them with Mom. My heart was ripped out, tossed - no thrown hard - to the ground and stomped on.

>> FF Ten Days - We get a call from the agency that we do foster care for. They have a sibling group of five children that need placement. Child Welfare Supervisor asks if we could take two or three of them. I ask the necessary questions and decide that we can take on the younger three children... ages 4, 3, and 3 months. The three month old I was told needed to be on oxygen. Didn't sound very complicated.

>> FF to today -

That baby that "just needs to be on oxygen" according to the Department of Human Services worker has MAJOR medical needs. When she first arrived, she weighed less than 8 pounds. Was on 5 different oral medications - one of which had to be given 8 times a day! She also had a nebulizer with medication she would need to breathe in twice daily. For those of you familiar with nebulizers, you know how time consuming this is. Oh! And the Apnea monitor!

Weekly home nurse visits. Weekly weight/growth checks at the clinic. Monthly appointments with specialists - since there's a cardiologist, an opthamologist, a hearing specialist, a pulmonologist (among others) - I've spent most of my past five weeks sitting in waiting rooms and being "interrogated" by these doctors.

The children (including the baby) have visits with their biological parents and their other two siblings once a week for two hours. More sitting in a waiting room for me. While they're visiting, I don't mind sitting there. That's my two hours of peace and quiet for the week. I usually take a book or magazine and read. My hubby got me this awesome laptop for my birthday - the intent was so that I could do some digital scrapbooking while I was sitting at the agency during the visits. With all of the equipment I have to carry for the baby, I just don't feel like taking my laptop also. Maybe once the baby is off of all this equipment.

My house is a shambles most of the time. I owe my friend, Pat, so much. She comes over once a week to help me clean - unfortunately, I'm so exhausted most of the time, she ends up working on it by herself. She's also a regular volunteer babysitter! Without the support of my friends and my family, we'd never be able to do what we do. The case manager is amazed that we've got it all pulled together - she feels the need to tell me this regularly (along with her periodic calls to see if we're still doing ok).

Yes, I'm stressed out. Yes, I'm tired. Is it all worth it, you ask?? YOU BET!! I wouldn't trade providing a loving supportive family to a child in need of that for anything in the world. Being a foster parent is the toughest job I've ever loved.

On the digital scrapbooking front - I've gotten a new laptop with 2GB of RAM, so when I'm scrapping, I don't crash anymore!! YAY! Unfortunately, I don't have as much time to scrap. In 2006, I did over 120 layouts. So far, for 2007 I've got 56 layouts completed. My original goal for this year was to average one layout per day. Not gonna happen! I need to eat and sleep some time and the laundry doesn't wash, dry, fold, and put away itself.