3 Days

I’ve survived the first 3 days of being a foster mom.

I can’t believe I am saying that. It’s really just overwhelming.

And overwhelming is exactly how I felt last night when I had to put MYSELF in time-out just to have some peace and quiet and a few tears.

Tears for the craziness that has gone on so far, and tears for the changes my family is going through. Finally, tears for children that aren’t going to be home with their mom and dad for a very long time. Tears for a sibling group of four children that were split up this week for an indefinite period of time. That is the reality of foster care, I guess. The younger siblings (girls ages 5 & 1) are with another family about 30 minutes away from us.

I can’t share all of the details, but this is the third time these children have been removed from the home. It makes me wonder with all my heart just how many chances parents are given, especially when the children are negatively impacted every single time. These children have suffered from abuse, and that’s all I am really able to say about it.

But here’s a little bit of information about the new additions to our family, Cupcake and Batman.

Batman is our 7 year old fireball. He is all boy, and constantly on the go. He’ll be starting first grade on Monday and can hardly wait to make new friends and have recess. He’s a little high-strung, but can be so, so sweet when he wants to be. Since he hasn’t been able to start school yet, he’s been hanging out with me. When I have him home alone, he is kind, considerate and really tries hard to make good choices and be respectful. When he is around his siblings, parents, or former classmates, he has some anger management issues that we are really working on as much as possible before school on Monday. Batman loves well— BATMAN. He also loves playing the Wii, and is completely obsessed with the Nintendo DS my girls let him borrow. The last two days have been a LOT of re-direction for him, as he has a hard time remembering to do what is told. He also has a very difficult time just leaving things alone. Without going to any actual diagnoses or behavior issues, I’ll just say I feel like a broken record for the amount of times I have to stop him and re-direct him to something else. But I know he has a good heart and is such a sweet little boy.

Cupcake is an 8 year old little girl, and is all smiles. She is the sweetest thing ever, but I can tell there is a bit of a manipulative side to her. We’ve seen it firsthand, as she knows when her brother misbehaves– it makes her look all that much sweeter. She’s the mother hen of her family, I can certainly tell. It took her a while to open up and warm up to our family, but once she did– she’s a doll. She loves makeup, nail polish, and absolutely adores my two daughters. They are going to be such good role models for her. She started school yesterday, and had a fabulous day. I just love getting good reports from teachers, and this was one of those days! Cupcake was so excited to bring her backpack home and show us all of the papers she had. After the kids had their 2-hour visit with mom & dad, she came home and worked on her homework. She also excitedly showed us that she had brought home phone numbers of two new friends!

We then taught her our phone number and wrote it down on a piece of paper so she could give the # to her friends, also. She was absolutely overjoyed!

These two came to our home on Tuesday right after they got out of school, and have made such great improvements in the short time they have been with us. The first night was stressful, and now that we are heading into a weekend, I think we can work on getting into more of a routine.

Last night I was able to give them a hug at bedtime. I will call that progress.