Halloween & Surprises

Halloween is this week.  Boo! We got invited to a Halloween party so we all bought costumes and took Sue to her first Halloween bash. Sue chose to go pretty, her costume was a Greek Goddess. Dave chose to go scary, he was an old-time gentleman ghost (or something like that). I chose to go weird, as a winged fairy…that was a zombie.  For Halloween night, Sue is going to pass out candy to all the little kiddos in the neighborhood.

An interesting thing that keeps happening since we got Sue is surprise mandatory meetings. Foster kids that are 16 years or older have to participate in a program to help kids learn independence so they can live on their own when they age out of the system. Sue is turning 16 soon so she is starting to be included in that program. They called her to a mandatory meeting and I wasn’t very happy about it. She isn’t 16 yet, so technically not in the program yet. They are going to teach her stuff that we will teach her as her parents. And it was on a day where we already had stuff scheduled. I called and told them she couldn’t go due to a conflict. They are going to invite her to the next session they hold – and she has to go…never mind the fact we will probably have adopted her by then.

Just this week Dave and I had to attend a Foster/Surrogate Parent Training program put on by the school district. It was mandatory. It was during the work day. It started 30 minutes late and went for 2 hours. It was all stuff that would have been super useful to learn about before the school year had actually started. Seven weeks into the school year, not so much. We have already been through all the things they talked about.  I could have taught the class…we would have started on time if I had, that’s for sure.

Happy Halloween!  Everyone be safe out there.

Football and kisses

Dave and I love football.  The football season is our favorite season of the year. We watch every Thursday night game, all day on Sunday, and every Monday night game. It doesn’t really matter who it playing. We just love the sport. Guess what Sue doesn’t love.  If you guessed football, you are correct. She is so bored on Sundays that she cleans the entire house. Seeing as how her room looks like a tornado hit it by the end of the week, cleaning it up on Sunday is perfect (for all of us!). We have all had to get used to new things…like now Dave and I are watching Glee and the X-Factor.  We are becoming Gleeks!  AGGG, someone save us!!!

We are an affection family. We are all about the hugs and kisses.  But, we have been told that we have to do our kisses correctly.  When I kiss Sue, it’s usually 5 quick kisses on her forehead.  When Dad kisses her, they are one or two long kisses to the forehead.  One day Dad gave her 5 quick kisses and was quickly reprimanded and then told all about mommy vs daddy kisses. Little did we know that there were kissing rules!  Mom does the 5 quick kisses and Dad does the long kisses – we can’t cross over.  So now we make sure to give to correct kisses and Sue is happy.

As fast as things seemed to be moving along last week, nothing new happened this week.  No new lawyer for Sue, no news from our lawyer, & no news from our case managers.  We all figured out what we are going to be for Halloween though, so I guess that’s something.

 

Things are a’ movin’

Things are on track for us to be able to adopt Sue. We hired a lawyer and requested Sue’s name be legally changed, her social security number will be changed, and her birth certificate will be altered to show us as her parents. From her side, Sue’s lawyer ‘resigned’ and requested a new lawyer be appointed. We have not yet be informed who that person is. But her CPS worker has started the paperwork from their end and is getting this moving. We have to foster Sue for 6 months. That date is December 18th. Our hope is to be able to have a court date set up and adopt her on December 19th. Cross your fingers, say a prayer, sing a song or dance a jig…let’s all hope everything from the court continues to go smoothly.

Sue’s arm has a radial fracture and she has to wear a case for four weeks. She chose a bright yellow for the cast. The thing is so bright it can be used as a night light if she needs to go to the bathroom at 2am. It’s crazy. We went to the store and bought markers and glitter glue. Now the bright yellow cast has drawings, well wishes, and sparkly dazzle.

The 6-week school report cards are coming out. We were very worried about how Sue would transition from her small school into the public school system. She is doing amazing. She has great grades and works hard every day to study and keep her grades up. We are very proud of her.

Abuse Hotline

Dave and I went from being by ourselves all the time to suddenly having a teenager.  To make sure we get some alone time, we decided that we’d occasionally meet up for lunch.  Our schedules finally allowed us to do that this week. We met at the restaurant, ordered some chicken wings, got 2 bits in, and got a call from the school nurse. Sue fell down the stairs and (after x-rays and a doctor visit) fractured her wrist. I secretly think she knew Dave and I were meeting for lunch and she had to break it up.  🙂  I am joking, of course.  She has a 6-week recovery time frame and is getting a cast put on this week.  Other than now being functionally one-handed, she is doing great.

A foster kid getting hurt means we have to file an incident report within 24-hours of the diagnosis. If you ever need to report child or adult abuse (in the state of Texas), here is the website: https://www.txabusehotline.org/Login/Default.aspx.

Things I learned while filing this report:

• It provides a secure way for reporting suspicions of abuse, neglect, and exploitation of children, adults with disabilities, or people who are elderly (65 years or older).
• I didn’t like the way the questions were all worded – I felt like I was being forced to say Sue is being neglected or abused when in fact she fell and I was being forced to report it.
• Because I didn’t like how it was all worded, I called my case manager twice and Dave once to see what they thought of the questions.
• Because of all the calls, it took me about an hour to fill out the form – which was 11 pages long.
• Page 11 was the summary, and the summary showed that I was missing data.  I clicked that button and it proceeded to erase the entire 11 pages I had entered…because at 45 minutes the form times out.
• Did I fill that form out again?  Hecks no.
• I called.  I waited for 10 minutes on hold. I talked to a very nice lady named Shannon and she filed the report for me.  It was a much less frustrating way to file the report.

If you ever need to call, the number is 1-800-252-5400.

Laundry

Sue is a 15 year old girlie-girl.  Meaning she likes clothes. Sue has the option of doing her own laundry as a chore for money or letting me do it for her and not making any money. More often than not she chooses to let me do it because there is ‘too much to do’, as she puts it. Yeah – that because this girl can wear 5 completely different outfits in just one day! I was shocked the first time I did her laundry twice in a row – meaning 6 days apart.  There were 10 pairs of jeans or shorts to wash.  TEN PAIRS in SIX DAYS!  We asked her why and she explained: you have your pajamas, your clothes to get ready for school, your school clothes, your gym clothes, the clothes after you finish PE and go to class, you doing homework and getting ready for bed clothes, and a new set of pajamas. That’s one day!!!  We tried explaining that you can re-wear jeans between washes, that it actually loosens up the material and makes the jeans feel better.  And you can re-wear pajamas…it’s not like you are doing anything but sleeping in them. But we have been informed that re-wearing them is just gross.  The washing machine is getting a work-out!

Sue’s lawyer is once again not responding to any calls or emails from us. So Sue requested a new lawyer. Her CPS worker will take the written request before the judge this week. The current lawyer is really something.  She didn’t respond to our first efforts to contact her. She finally responded once Sue’s CASA workers contacted her (the lawyer). She came to our house and was just as nice as could be and made all kinds of promises.  And now nothing, back to square one – the no contact square. I hope the judge grants the request for a new lawyer and Sue is assigned someone that will actually care about what she is going through and maybe try to help her get adopted.

Firsts

We are getting to experience a lot of ‘firsts’ in our lives right now.  We had our first experience with enrolling a kid into school. Our first asthma attack…where we had our first over-reaction…leading to our first visit to the ER. Our first ‘please excuse our kid’ note to school. Our first experience with finding a babysitter so we could go out (thanks Mom!).  Soon we’ll have our first birthday party for our kid!  What do we do for that?  She’s too old for a bouncy house…or is she?

Each year, to keep our Foster/Adopt license current, we have to do 30 hours of training.  We attended a conference this past weekend and got 9 training hours each from the different sessions we attended. If you go over your training hours for the year, 10 hours can carry over into the next year.  After we got done with the training, we sat down and figured out we are 15 hours over for the year.  Oooppppsssss.  I guess we are done with classes for a while.

The training this weekend was interesting.  It was a lot of stuff like how to deal with the schools, how to keep the sibling relationships together even if the kids are split up, and how you still need to take time for yourself so you can recharge your batteries. It made us realize (although we really already knew) that Sue is a pretty easy child for someone coming out of the foster system. Listening to these other parents talk about what they should do when their kid continually skips school, or gets arrested, or fights with their siblings, or refuses to take their medications…we don’t have do deal with any of that kind of stuff. Thank God!

What’s in a name?

We have hired a lawyer to take care of our end of the adoption process.  The law firm is sending over all the paperwork we need to sign to put them on retainer. My favorite part is that the lawyer’s fees are covered so we don’t have to pay him. He will get everything started and filed so when our 6 month ‘foster placement’ ends and becomes an ‘adoption placement’, we can hopefully have the court date already set up and just adopt Sue the next day.  That is what all of us are hoping for. That will make the adoption final right before Christmas, and it’ll be the best Christmas present Dave and I have ever received.

When we adopt Sue, we get to change her identity – if we chose to. As a family, it was a pretty easy decision that her last name be changed to ours. We discussed changing her first name and quickly decided to leave it alone. Her middle name was discussed and we’ve decided to change it. Sue wants us to pick the name…and when I suggested Moonbeam and Dave suggest CrimeFighter, she asked for veto rights. We are going to come up with a list of 5 names and let her pick one of them. We have 4 months to come up with something we can all agree on. Any suggestions?

Oh, the things I say…

School has started.  Sue survived week one. She loves her dance class, and she has already informed us that she just doesn’t see the importance of Geography or History because she’ll never use them again in life.  She’s made a few friends and loathes riding the bus.  Yeah, she’s a pretty typical kid.

Dave and I fell into parenting pretty quickly. I have already been heard saying things like, “Because I said so” and “You’ll go deaf with your music up that loud”. Dave has used, “If you keep making that face, it’ll stick that way” and “Go ahead. Stick your finger in there and see what happens.” I have also used a phrase that didn’t exist when I was a kid, but had it been around I am sure my parents would have said it to me – “I am not going to talk to you while you have those headphones in your ears.”  Also, we have been informed that we are just embarrassing (which I think is the actual job of being a parent and we are doing awesome at it!)

On the adoption side of things, we have not heard back from Sue’s lawyer. She was on vacation so I am giving a small window of patience to her. If I haven’t heard back from her this week, she’ll be hearing from the unhappy me all over again. We have to find a lawyer to represent us (the parents) in the process so we’ll start interviewing the people who have recommended to us. Once we have our lawyer in place, he/she can start the mound and mounds of paperwork that we’ll need done for the adoption. We can adopt Sue in December so it’s been suggested that our lawyer will need to start on the paperwork in October to make that happen.

If you have any good parenting catch-phrases for me, let me know  😉

Dog Days of Summer

The last week of summer vacation is upon us. We suddenly have a child starting high school. She is really bored at home so ready to go meet some new friends. But she doesn’t necessarily want to do the ‘school’ part of school. She has 8 classes.  I asked her what they were and she said, “Dance, the cooking class, lunch…”  Yes…and the other five are???  “Ugh, math, and a science, and something else.”

It’ll be an interesting change for all of us. She texts me a lot during the day. The school has a very strict no cell phone policy so she can’t do that anymore. Dave works from home so she spends a lot of time with him during the day. She can’t do that from school. She has to get up earlier, so go to bed earlier (which we’ve been doing for a week now to get her used to it). I’m happy about the new sleep schedule because I was already getting up that early so I’m happy we are going to bed earlier.  🙂

Send prayers her way for great new friends, great new teachers, and a successful year of school!

 

Ah, some people…

When a foster child gets put into care, they get assigned a lawyer. This lawyer’s job is to represent the kids interest in court. They are supposed to stay in touch with the kids they represent and with the CPS workers.

Sue’s lawyer does represent her in court. She doesn’t check in with Sue though. Sue has asked multiple times over the years for a new lawyer. Apparently, getting a new lawyer assigned is a very difficult task. I have tried contacting the lawyer several times via phone and email for over a month. My case manager at Arrow has tried too. I finally convinced Sue’s CPS worker to take Sue’s written request for a new lawyer to the judge. Wouldn’t you know it, the lawyer called Sue the day before the judge would have received the letter.  Ah…it just figures.

The lawyer came to the house and talked to Sue for a while. Then I was invited into the conversation and she answered all of my questions for the next 1.5 hours. After the meeting, Sue decided to let her stay as her lawyer…figuring we plan to adopt her in 4 months and she’ll not have to deal with her after that anyway.

The fun part of the week was Prep Day at school. Sue got her locker assigned, her class schedule, and her yearbook photo taken. She has one week to go before school starts. She is excited and nervous – hopefully more excited than anything else.