Miss A's Story

Here is a somewhat longer look into the story of our first foster placement and subsequent adoption story. I can't and won't share some details, as they are private to Miss A and her story, and legally to the case itself.
We finished our training, interviews, inspections, and home study finally sometime in July of 2009. We were told that our file was officially complete and we could potentially be ready for placement any time now.
Hubs and I were so incredibly excited to be ready. We had worked so hard since January to get everything completed and checked off of the list. At this point, it had been almost three years since we had begun our journey toward parenthood. (I may cover our infertility journey in detail in another post I may share at another time.) To me, the entire time felt like intense waiting, even though really we had been actively working with the foster care program for seven months. Some handle waiting better than others; I am not one of those people!
During the last week of August, we received our VERY FIRST CALL for a placement! It was for a 6-month-old Hispanic baby girl. I remember racing out of my youth ministry office across the hall to Hubs''s classroom, my heart racing, palms sweating. We could potentially be parents at this moment!
When I called our caseworker back to follow up, she told me that a placement had already been found in that short time for the little girl. She explained aspects of the placement process that I hadn't realized: most of the time, for a foster care placement, a case is brought in, and any caseworker that has a good match of a family can "claim" it, so to speak, first come first served. Your caseworker may contact you about a child, but other caseworkers are doing the same thing. We hadn't realized that, as we had the picture of a "regular" adoption agency, choosing "just the right family" after carefully narrowing it down. In these placements, action needs to happen quickly, as the child/ren may need a home that very day, or even that very  hour. Sometimes there's not the luxury of a long matching process, but simply quick responses.
That afternoon, feeling a little dejected, I received another CALL. This time, it was for a family of THREE! A sibling group consisting of a kindergartener, two-year-old, and infant needed immediate placement. Without even consulting Hubs, I told her that three would be too overwhelming at this point, but to keep us in mind in the future.
Labor Day Weekend happened following this weekend. We have a loose tradition on Hubs's side that we more often than not rent a beach cabin at Crystal Beach near Galveston over Labor Day Weekend. We talked with his parents and siblings about THE CALLS. I remember venting, "This is just taking so long!" However, just the fact that we had had some contact with placements, and how excited both of our families were, helped us have good attitudes while we kept waiting.
That Tuesday, which was September 8th, my birthday (!), I checked my e-mail sometime during the course of the morning and saw a placement notice for a 19-month-old girl. I sent a quick response saying we were interested and then ran across the hall to tell Hubs about it. After missing the 6-month-old baby girl last week from not moving quickly enough, I was determined to get in touch with our caseworker as soon as possible! Our caseworker, Kelly, said that several families were in consideration for the placement, and a decision would be made sometime soon.
Sometime later that afternoon, after a lunch I barely tasted and constant checking of my phone and e-mail inbox, we received THE CALL that the little girl was ours! I remember running into Hubs's room shrieking, "You're a Daddy!" I went around telling the whole staff at the church/school where we worked, caught up in a whirlwind of excitement. It goes without saying that she was and is the best birthday present I've ever received!
Kelly explained that Miss A had been removed from her home two months previous and was currently in a foster home placement. The case was progressing, and it looked like an adoptive home would be needed eventually, and the home she was currently in was only a fostering home. There was still almost a year to go until a decision would be made about her permanent placement, so nothing was guaranteed to us. We arranged to see Miss A for a one-hour visit that next Monday at her caseworker's office, then take her for a weekend visit that following Friday.
We arrived for the first visit and were buzzed in through the doors to the back where the offices and visiting spaces were. It was such a surreal moment, knowing that in just a matter of seconds, we would see our first child. Filled with these thoughts of the gravity of the moment, we approached the visiting room. However, when we walked in, Miss A barely paid us any attention! We were just a fixture in the room that she tolerated when we tried to pick her up at the end of the visit for a picture.
Little miss had physical challenges as well as speech challenges ahead of her. One leg turned at a strange angle from an underdeveloped hip combined with lack of use, and she only spoke three words: "puh-puh" (puppy), "cup", and "more". Her blonde hair, big brown eyes, and shy smile captured our hearts immediately; we couldn't wait to take her home.
It was hard to leave her for four more days until we saw her again. We drove back to the office on Friday after school to take her for the weekend. At the exchange, we spoke with the caseworker and foster parent, and a plan was made that, if Miss A adjusted fine, we would not return her to the foster home after the weekend as planned, but begin her time at our home for the long haul. This was incredibly good news, as we were having a hard time thinking about leaving her again after the weekend.
She did great as we put her into the car seat, and as we drove down the road. We kept expecting her to cry, but she simply looked around and took it all in.
Halfway home was a little barbecue joint on the side of Loop 1604 outside of San Antonio - Texas Pride. We had planned to stop here for our first meal as a family. Our Pastor had recommended it to us, and we were looking forward to trying it. We beamed with pride every time someone came up to compliment our little girl - she was oozing smiles and charm all night to everyone!
We expected for the other shoe to drop all night, so to speak, and for her to realize she was with people she didn't know, in a place she didn't recognize. We got her home, and showed her the house and her room and toys. After playing a while, it was time for bath and bed - and wonder of wonders, she fell right asleep with no fuss! (Of course at the time, we took the credit for being such amazing parents - especially for first-time parents! - and our egos have since been deflated, five kids, four years, and MANY bedtimes later!)
For the next five or six months, we kept up the pattern of monthly caseworker visits and three or four visits back to the caseworker's office for Miss A to meet with her birthparents. The case plodded along, and nothing drastic was happening. In the Spring, birth dad started missing visits, and soon after, birth mom stopped coming as well. Pretty soon, they had missed so many that they were cancelled. Court dates came and went, but we didn't have to appear because they were held in another county more than an hour away.
In August 2010, the trial portion was set. We were expecting for parental rights to be terminated and to move forward with the adoption. However, birth dad didn't show up and his lawyer was able to file for an extension. It took until the next Spring to officially have the court terminate the rights of Miss A's birthparents.
At that point, we began working on the adoption, updating our home study,  getting an adoptive caseworker, etc. Finally, on September 7th, 2011, in front of our Texas relatives, we officially became forever parents to our little girl. On the way back home, we stopped at the very same barbecue restaurant where we ate with her on our first night together as a family.
We are so incredibly blessed for this little pistol of spunkiness and sweetness, who made us a family after waiting for so long for that dream to come true. We love you so much, little one!

The Waiting Game

Baby girl - Child #5  - left us on March 1st. The Man of the House and I were assigned a new caseworker a few weeks before this. We told her the day we found out that Baby Girl was leaving that we were fully invested in our foster care lives and would love another placement whenever it would occur. In May, we received two placement e-mails: one about two girls aged 8 and 10, and another for two other siblings, a newborn and a 2-year-old. We had decided the first situation was a little too old for our family, but we were very excited about the two littles. We waited around for a day and then heard that placement had been found elsewhere.  

Another e-mail came in mid-July about a placement for a 3-week-old baby boy who is currently in the hospital with medical issues pertaining to the issue behind his removal.(You don't get full details on everything before you accept a placement, so we didn't know exactly why he was in the hospital, just that he was currently receiving treatment.) He would need to be there for three more days. At his release, he will need to go to a foster-adopt home. No family members are available to take him in. Our caseworker wrote that she forwarded our home study for consideration and would let us know when she heard about his placement for sure. I called her to confirm that we were interested and asked her to please keep us posted. The next afternoon, I called the caseworker again to follow up, and she said she hadn't heard anything back, which probably meant another family had been found.

We have been hopefully waiting for "our" next child. We became incredibly attached to Baby Girl and adored being a family of five for two months. I love hearing Miss A pray for a new baby to come to our house, and it makes my heart hurt as well to hear it.

Yesterday, we received an e-mail inviting us to a family matching party in October. At this event, prospective families come together and interact children available for adoption, in this case at a carnival-type setting. Over the course of the several hours, hopefully parents and children identify each other and, once they give information to the caseworkers, a match can happen. We have never been to one of these before. It seems to us that this would probably consist of mostly older children, as infants and younger children seem to have quicker and easier placements. I'm especially interested to see how this works and see if this could be the path in which God blesses us with a new addition.
I'm not a patient person by nature. (Are any of us? :-)) The actual process of waiting and hoping and praying can definitely be fraying on the nerves. I feel most times on a thin wire balancing between contentment - "I'm ready to follow Your plan, God, and if that means waiting, we'll honor You in our waiting..." - and irritated impatience - "Seriously? I'm waiting again?!"

In our heads and in our hearts, we know that this is God's plan and everything will unfold in his timing.

Such is the life of a foster/adopt parent - hurry up and wait!

10 Things You Should Know about Foster Care Adoption

My husband and I cannot have children biologically. That is a very difficult sentence to type, even though it’s getting easier. I purposefully write “biologically” instead of “children of our own” because we currently have two amazing blessings that ARE our own children! Spunky Miss A, 5, and dynamite Little Guy, 2, joined our family through the foster care system. The path was a long one, but our lives have been forever changed by this journey and our hearts and eyes have been opened to the plights of thousands of children who wait every day for a loving home, whether permanent or temporary.

When people ask us about the foster care system, there are many questions and sometimes confusion. Everyone has heard of it, but not a lot of people have experienced it – either as a foster child or a foster parent. My husband and I have been a licensed foster home since July of 2009 and we love taking every opportunity to talk about this unique yet unknown pathway to parenthood. I’d like to shed some light about the route taken by my family as we fostered-to-adopt.

There’s a foster care path… there’s an adoption path… and there’s a foster-to-adopt path. When we went to our first informational meeting, this was explained to us in this way: Most people know about fostering and adoption. Fostering is taking in a child in state custody while his/her/their parents work on set goals and objectives to enable their home to be safe again. Adoption is a legally binding agreement to permanently parent a child that was not born biologically to you. There also is a “middle road”, with kids who are in the foster system and whose parents will more than likely lose their parental rights and need to be adopted. Instead of placing them in a foster home, then uprooting them to move to an adoptive home, foster-to-adopt parents agree to take on a little risk in order to help provide as much stability and continuity for the children in this situation.

10. You receive a lot of training and preparation to be a licensed foster home. It took us about six or seven months to officially be ready to have a child placed with us. We are in the state of Texas, so other states may have varying paths. We had PRIDE training, which for us was eight weeks of Saturday classes on everything from behavior management to illnesses to psychotropic medication. As with any adoption, there are home inspections and interviews and the official home study. We have to keep up to date with classes several times a year, and have fire marshal and health department inspections (the big ones!) every other year as long as you are licensed. Once you adopt the child (what is called consummation), and if you are no longer looking for additional placements, you’re on your own! It may seem overwhelming and/or superfluous to consider, (who else is actually REQUIRED to keep a home that is constantly clean and safe, to make sure their fridge is at exactly 42 or 43 degrees, or to fill out a form every time you even give your child Tylenol), but I remind myself to have confidence in the fact that we are definitely prepared!

9. It’s not for everybody. Many, many people have just shaken their heads at my husband and I, sighing, “I could never do that.” I feel either like a phony sitting still and letting them think we’re some amazing saintly people for being foster parents (we’re not – just ask my husband how lovable I am in the mornings!) or a little defensive if I sense they are “judging” our choices. I feel sad that they assume they couldn’t serve in this way. Some have asked if our already-adopted kids will be hurt too much if we continue to take in others and they end up leaving our home. I would say that dealing with the foster care system is not for the faint of heart, but it’s not for “perfect parents” either. You just need a love and a willingness to roll with the punches!

8. There can be many reasons why a child is removed from his or her biological home. There can be issues of drug or alcohol abuse, physical or emotional abuse or neglect by the parent/s, or risky exposure to someone else who may put the child in danger in any of these ways. The home may not be a safe place health-wise, as in it’s literally too dirty for people to live there. Each child is different, and the state and caseworkers try to treat each case differently as well and give individual attention.

7. When a placement happens, it happens quickly! Fortunately, we didn’t have to sit too long for our first placement. We received an e-mail about Miss A two months after we were officially ready to receive a foster care placement. She was already in a foster home and needed to be transferred to a foster-adopt home, so we were able to take our time about the transition. We had a week and a half to prepare her room, find clothes and diapers (she was 19 months old), and effervesce over her picture. We were able to spend one hour playing with her at the CPS office a few days before she came to live with us. Little Guy’s story was different: I received a call from our caseworker around lunch time and he was dropped off at our house that afternoon! Just enough time for a Target run and quick cleaning of the house!

6a. You won’t go in blind about your foster child. When you are given information about a potential placement, you learn age, gender, and basic information about the child and his or her situation. You are free to ask questions. Once you agree and placement happens, you receive a big binder with every piece of paperwork correlating to that child’s case and you learn a LOT! This definitely helps you keep perspective in remembering the tough situations some kids have gone through, and you will be prepared

6b. BUT You won’t know everything about your foster child (right away)– and sometimes that’s a good thing! With both of our little ones, once parental rights were terminated and the adoption process actually began, we received the complete, intact, whole, inclusive file on the kid to read before the adoption. The thought is to give you now every single confidential piece of information now that you are going to officially and legally be the permanent parent for this child. With both of our adoptions came some monumental surprises when we read the nitty gritty details. It absolutely had no impact on our decision to adopt them, or changed how much we love them; I’ll just say we live in a rough world and some have experienced it far worse than others. It’s easy to lose your faith in humanity when we dwell on the negatives and horrible events in these kids’ lives, but we never lost sight of the future and where the kids were able to go now. That’s something that will be a refrain for us in raising our kids, especially as they get older and (very gradually and at the appropriate times) learn their whole history: it doesn’t matter where you’ve been - what’s important is where you’re heading now.

5. Most parents who have their children removed by the state have one to two years to work their service plan. They have classes to go to, weekly meetings, tests to determine if they have been using illegal substances, therapy, etc. Weekly visits are standard, supervised at and hosted by the CPS office doing the investigation. There can be an extension for various reasons, but caseworkers and judges will not let the case run on indefinitely (even if it can seem that way sometime!).

4. Caseworkers and CASA workers and lawyers, oh my! You will have a large group of people working together on each child’s case to determine the best outcome. We ourselves have a personal caseworker who matches us with children, visits us in our homes, ensures that we have completed the proper training, etc. All children have their own caseworkers as well. Two of our kids had a CASA worker; in Texas, CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. These men and women dedicate themselves to the child’s case individually; they only take on one child or family at a time. This means that they become very attached to the kids and their well-being, present and future. They attend the supervised visits with the biological parents, therapy, home visits with the foster parents, and all court appearances. We cannot say enough about our first CASA worker, who bled her heart out for our two foster kids who were reunified with their biological parents. In addition, all children in foster care are represented by a lawyer, appointed by the court. All of these individuals are there to speak for the child and in his or her best interest, but they need the foster parents to be very communicative. As foster parents, you are with the children all day and night; you have the most interaction and deserve to have your voice be heard. One note in dealing with the team of the children’s representatives: while outcomes may be disappointing, stay confident that caseworkers, CASA workers, and lawyers are all trying their best and really do have the child’s best interests at heart.

3. They can go back. I inwardly roll my eyes when I see movies about “normal” adoption, with birth parents coming back years later and attempting to get custody of their child they placed for adoption. Once an adoption is finalized, and papers are signed and filed, nothing, barring huge fraud or unforeseen events, can overturn an adoption. Well, that’s “regular” adoption. The rollercoaster of foster care adoption is another story. Each week, the state of affairs can change, and it can change depending on whom you speak to. Miss A was our first placement, but we had two foster children after her (a pair of siblings, 3-year-old girl and a newborn boy) that were placed back with their biological parents at the end of the year-long case as the caseworker and judge determined that parents were rehabilitated enough. Little Guy’s case took a surprising turn when his birthmother showed up to a court hearing saying that she liked us and wanted us to adopt him and she was ready to sign over her rights. This winter, we received another emergency placement in one afternoon of a beautiful newborn baby girl. From the information given, everyone thought that her birthmother would lose her rights fairly quickly – unfortunately for the birthmother – and be able to be adopted by us soon after. We assumed this would be an easy ride and looked forward to adding to our family permanently. However, a month or so in, the baby’s grandparents came into the picture and wanted custody. Since the court tries to keep families together, even though the birthmother was estranged from her parents and they were both sixty-five years old, the baby was placed with the grandparents after we’d had her for two months. 

2. It’s so worth it. Through the hurt and trying times we have encountered as we have built our family, we have remained convinced of this calling we have to serve the children around us. No matter how painful it is for us, these kids and their families are going through horrible circumstances as well. Who are we to try to protect our own hearts when someone is in such dire need of a loving home? If not us, then who will step up?

1. All of the things they say about attachments and adoption are true: there will be no difference in your heart, no less love, for an adopted child compared with a biological child. I wondered if this would be a reality for me. Now, I sometimes am taken aback when others are sharing pregnancy and birth stories and I remember, “Wait, I didn’t experience that!” These two precious gifts are as much a part of us as any child could be – they just came later than birth!

Welcome to My Blog!

Welcome! Thank you for coming to read a bit about our story. We have been led only by God's grace to where we are now - sometimes kicking and screaming along the way, as I often joke.
My hope is that this blog is a place I can share, and also help network with others who are traveling along the same journey - or are just curious about the level of crazy you have to have to be a foster parent! May God bless your path, wherever He takes you!

"Trust in The Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths." Proverbs 3:5-6