When You Least Expect It

 In July of 2009, we had made arrangements to take our Little Buddy home to visit my WHOLE family for the first time. We had our paperwork to leave the state in order, and were counting down the hours until he would be dropped off. I had just one shift left until my Holiday Weekend off from the hotel, and on that Thursday at 3pm I received a call. We were asked to take our first foster baby. They were not sure when the child would come into care. I was told, “it could be today, tomorrow, or a month from now”.

Since there was no definite boundary, I left for work, as my shift started at 4pm. At 3:45pm, I received another call. They had located the child and would be at my home within the half-hour. I arrived at work, arranged for my co-worker to stay late, called my husband, and ran home. The baby was waiting for me with two caseworkers. Within minutes I was handed a baby and a diaper bag. There was an outfit, maybe two, in the bag and enough diapers and formula to get us through the first 24 hours. I now know that this is more than one usually gets with a foster child.

My husband was home by 5pm, and I handed over this confused baby. I left for my shift at work, but was barely able to focus...how could I? In an hour we had become parents!

Remember that we were scheduled to leave for my parents' home the next day? Well, thankfully someone was working late at our Child Welfare office. This angel of a worker stopped at our home at 10pm to drop off the necessary paperwork to show that we were the child's placement and could leave the state with him. The child had been asleep for a few hours by this point, and our Little Buddy had been dropped off hours before so that we could leave first thing in the morning. **First thing, being relative with two infants in our home.  

Livin' on Love, Buyin' on Time

In February of 2009, I had to privilege of introducing this amazing vampire-toothed bundle of joy to my sisters and niece. They had come down for a weekend at the beach, and I had (purposely) double-booked myself with the baby and with them. They immediately fell in love with him, which I knew that they would, and were happy to help me with feeding, changing, and entertaining him. I have many precious photos from that weekend, especially from our walk on the beach, photos that I will cherish forever.

As time wore on, we got to the point where instead of waiting for a call to ask us to babysit, we would call to “borrow the baby”. He was such a joy, that we would make up excuses to have him or to keep him longer than agreed upon. By June we knew that we wanted him, that if he went up for adoption, we had to have him. We thought we would have that answer soon.

In June there was a “permanency hearing” held in regards to him. The name in and of itself, is really deceiving. You would assume that a permanency hearing would decide to future of a child, however in reality the hearing is to ensure that DHS is moving forward (at least in a minimal fashion) and to check on the parents progress in complying with the court's orders. If the parents have done anything then the court can (and often will) extend the amount of time that the parents have to meet the court's requirements. At this point this little boy was 13 months old, and had been with his foster family since he was released from the hospital. By federal mandate, parents of foster children are given 12 months to get it together, or longer if they have made some progress. Since they had made some progress, they were given more time, three months to be exact.

We could wait however. We had our paperwork completed for both adoption and for foster care certification. We had gotten our physicals done, required to adopt any child, to ensure that we were both in good health. And lastly we had our “nursery” set up, complete with a farm-theme! As “expectant parents” went, we were ready...or so we thought.