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Stevie Wonder Bailey

January 26, 1995 – January 13, 2010

Today was a sad day. Today our little Stevie Wonder went to sleep. We knew the time would come when we would have to make this decision. Stevie was stubborn. He wouldn’t give up.

We adopted Stevie about 3 ½ years ago. We were not in the market for a dog at the time but I was checking adoption agencies for my mom and came across this old guy who had been in foster care for ages because no one wanted a blind dog. I cried. I always want the ones who no one else wants. Stevie was blind with only one remaining eye when we adopted him and he was already 11 ½ years old. Setting myself up? Of course. Within a week of having him we had his last eye removed and for a while he was simply our old blind dog. About a year ago his hearing went and then almost immediately he just became very demented and confused all the time. He was plain old. In 13 days he would have turned 15 years old. Dogs just aren’t supposed to live that long especially without their sight. He had been blind for some time when we adopted him so he lived many years being blind. I decide a few weeks ago it was almost time because I began to worry about the ‘what ifs’ if I didn’t make the decision for him. We have six children in our home right now. Do I want this poor dog to stop breathing while I am home alone with these children? I also worried about our foster boys and how they would handle it. They have been through a lot. Seeing a dog die before their eyes wasn’t something I wanted for them. Our boys have known for quite a while that Stevie was on his way out and have had plenty of time to cope. It was still very hard, nonetheless. We told our two older boys, Wheat and Lake, a couple of days ago. We chose not to tell River, our 4 year old, until this afternoon just before I took Stevie away. Jason simply told River that Stevie is too sick now and it is time for us to take him to the doctor so they can help him go to sleep and then mommy and daddy are going to take you all to a movie. River said, “Ok. But can we get milkshakes, too?” Jason and I looked at each other with teary eyes and giggled a bit. We thought for a second we had narrowly escaped a meltdown. Just before I walked out of the room River came up to me and chokingly said “But mommy….I really want to go say goodbye to Stevie and tell him I love him”. Here came the tears. There are not many things in this world harder to witness than a child’s heart genuinely breaking before your eyes. I cried the whole way to Sweetwater to our veterinarian. I couldn’t stick around and I didn’t bring home his body. I couldn’t bury his sweet old body in the frozen ground. I am sure he left this world just moments after I left the office. I have a sweet friend who had been by our side for many years with our dog Atraeu and then Stevie and she promised to be with him when he went. I hate this part about the world…losing things we love. I have to hold on to the childlike faith I have held within me since I was little and had to deal with the loss of pets repeatedly. I have to know they are with God frolicking and perfectly whole again just as we will be. I totally told my children the same things my mother told me. I reminded them that Stevie was very old and very sick and hurting. It would be selfish of us to want to keep him here just because we didn’t want to be sad. Stevie needs to be happy and he is living with Jesus now and has a brand new set of brown eyes and perfectly good ears and is running for the first time in years because he can see where he is going and he isn’t afraid to run. If we didn’t think these thoughts how would any of us make it through things like this?

So as a parent I am torn. Our boys love dogs and so do we. We have now experienced the loss of two precious dogs since Jason and I married and began a family. Do we do it again or do we spare our boys the pain of losing them? As a child and seeing many of my beloved cats and dogs die or be killed I always immediately said I never wanted another pet because this was the hardest thing ever. Time passed and I always ended up with another furry friend. I am sure we’ll be there again one day. For now, we’ll remember Stevie.

My angel boy, Wheat, has been reading since he was about 4. I worry about him often because he would rather sit and read books all day every day than do anything active. He is already reading big kid books like Treasure Island and Moby Dick, you know, books we weren’t forced to read until high school in which some of us never read and just bought the cliffs notes.

The other night he was granted permission to sleep with Jason and I, something they all still love doing because we co-slept with all three of our boys up until just about 2 years ago when our king size bed just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Now they all rotate from time to time sleeping with us. So he was laying in bed beside me and we were all reading. I noticed he was holding his breath for several seconds and then letting it out repeatedly only to hold it again. I remember him doing this at a very young age and I don’t know why he does it. When it finally became a disturbance to my reading I asked him why he was holding his breath. This was his answer:

“Well, you know how reading is kind of like talking in my head? If I breathe while I read then I might not be able to hear the words.”

This sweet kid has so much traffic in his head he needs street signals. He told us this same night that one day he wanted to hand write a dictionary….whatever that means. I cannot wait to see how this child chooses to use his brain for the greater good.

River has a friend named Greg in the form of a wart on his right pinky finger. Greg has been River’s friend for a year or more. When Greg first appeared, River was not too thrilled. I quickly made up a story about how sometimes little friends in the form of warts hop on for a ride because they want to be a part of your life for a while, encouraging you and protecting you along the way. We often talk about it. When he gets discouraged about Greg, I remind him that one day Greg will decide to hop off and go protect someone else and that he should enjoy this time with him. River doesn’t tolerate discomfort or pain very well and the last thing I want is to unnecessarily put him through a lot of pain over one silly wart.

A few weeks ago River came to me crying his eyes out. Just when he had finally become content with Greg, Greg had two babies on the same finger. River said “Mommy, Greg had babies!” I guess it’s time to get the doc to take a look. River reminds me every other day about the ‘Greg babies’ and wants to go to the doctor to get them removed. He has no idea what he’s asking for.

There is just never a good time to sit and write. I am so busy but yet I don’t particularly feel it. I can just always think of other things I should be doing rather than writing. But it needs to be done. For me.

We have been very busy the last week or so. Things are finally slowing down and I am glad. There is nothing I despise more than for the holidays flying by without time to simply enjoy little things. We had our first snow of the season which was amazing! The boys had so much fun and were so pleasantly surprised to wake up to everything covered in a blanket of white. After several hours of play I was left with a mound of laundry but it was worth it.

Our original Bailey boys were also in a small drama skit as an opening to a beautiful little dance recital given by Lighthouse Artistic Ministries. They have been taking drama there for several weeks and were the only children in the class so the three of them performed their skit last Friday evening. It was so sweet. Hopefully I will be able to post a short video of it later.

Our three foster boys are doing well. They received their biggest disappointment this past Friday as they were “stood up” for a weekend overnight trip to their grandmother’s house. It was a trip that had been two weeks in the making with their mother and grandmother creating a great deal of hype over all their fun plans for the weekend. They have not been on an overnight visit anywhere since they came into our custody four weeks ago. They have only had two supervised visits with their family lasting only an hour and a half each. We were scheduled to meet the grandmother at the DCS office at 3 pm Friday. The boys and I were there but after 45 minutes no one showed. I was forced to leave and not wait another minute for them. It turns out that not only were they late in arriving, there were several misunderstandings involving rules for the weekend that the grandmother was apparently not going to abide by such as making sure she would be in the presence of her grandchildren at all times. These boys were taken from their mother and are not allowed to be with her at all unless supervised by DCS or an approved/cleared individual. The paperwork had been completed for the grandmother to supervise a visit but she was very mistaken as to what her boundaries were. She thought if she was running late to pick them up, her daughter (the boys’ mother), could simply pick them up in her place and take them on to her house. Wrong. She had also not taken Sunday off work and was apparently going to leave them with their mother then, too. Aside from all this, even if this were possible, the mother never showed up at 3 to pick up the boys. When I got home and had them calmed down I called her and she gave me multiple excuses about getting “caught up” and losing track of time. Puh-lease. Not only were the boys devastated but I was pretty ill, too. We had made several special plans for the weekend to do with our boys that we simply could not do with 6 boys, some being holiday traditions, and were not able to do them. We had not told our boys so they were unaware of their loss. Thanks to my mom agreeing to keep 5 out of 6 of the boys, J and I were able to get some shopping done on Saturday with only the 2 year old in tow. We have been so busy that we had not even purchased one gift for anyone. We are having a very simple gift giving year this year but there were a couple of things we needed to spend time shopping around for. My mom is a saint. She managed to decorate her entire house with 5 boys. Thank you, mom!

So our next adventure will be the amazing celebration of our Lord and Savior! The foster boys are scheduled to go to grandma’s again that weekend. If that falls through, I will be contacting the president!

After getting to sleep very late (early to bed, late to sleep…it’s a chronic thing with me), tossing in my sleep having had a very odd dream about my mom and an alpaca, then back up at 5:30 in order to spend 20 minutes with my husband… I am awake, fresh, and ready to tackle the busy day ahead of me which is of course chock full of a hundred things to do. So what do I decide to do to gear up for my busy day? Drink coffee and blog, of course. I just put one child on the school bus and the remaining 5 are still asleep so why not? Forget that my kitchen is a wreck from last night’s dinner, there is no less than three loads of laundry crammed in one basket screaming to be folded. Forget that I should be waking up 3/5 kids to feed breakfast, make them get dressed and do chores before their drama class. And forget that I have a list of things I should be writing down in preparation for my meeting with my resource parent support worker this morning and finding something to wear to Jason’s company Christmas party tonight. Need I continue? Seriously. If I am going to blog, it is going to have to push other things to the side. That’s all there is to it.

Yesterday we went shopping. When I say “we”, I mean myself and the 5 children who are not forced to attend school outside of the home. I can actually tell a difference with only one missing even though I still have 5 to care for. That one when couple with his 4 year old brother is a handful. When they’re apart, they are manageable. I thought fostering a school-age child would be difficult but so far it’s actually quite nice. The only major adjustment is having to make sure I do not forget to always be home when he gets off the bus. Although I am truly a stay-at-home-mom who never runs the roads shopping or doing mommy groups all day every day, I have never been bound to my house for any reason. I have just done it by choice. So it has taken discipline to remind myself I can’t hop in the truck to make a run to the bank or the post office when A will soon be getting off the bus. So, yes, the crack must be in our drinking water because I was positively on crack yesterday when I decided I could go by myself with 5 boys to spend the 3 foster boys’ DCS clothing allotments all in one trip. $200 for one, $175 for the next and $125 for the little man. You have to spend it all at one time so I had a spreadsheet of what they needed; pretty much consisting of everything except socks and underwear since we had already bought them that with our own money weeks ago. When the caseworker arrived to pay for it all, even being a bit late, I had only gathered goods for one child. She was less than thrilled but when she saw my two buggies filled with nothing but children, she understood. She was nice to help me collect things for the remaining two boys and after a total of 2 hours in Target, we finished. All the boys got one giant bag full of new clothes and a new pair of shoes. Whatever they need after this is up to us. In my opinion, for babies who grow out of clothing quickly, there should be more than one allotment issued. I’m just sayin’.

When we got to the truck and all bags were loaded, all kids strapped in their car seats, I issued a warning to all that for the next 5 minutes I did not want to hear a single noise….”or else”. I just sat in the driver seat and took nice, long and deep breaths. That’s the best time….when I am in the truck and everyone is strapped in car seats. If any one of you wants to come hang out, please do. We’ll just have to go sit in my truck.

So as if shopping with 5 boys isn’t crazy enough…..while I was shopping, the boys’ caseworker called and said she needed to pick up A from school and T from me and take them to the dentist. This was a 2 hour notice. I felt blessed to even have that. So instead of taking everyone home for lunch as I intended, I got the privilege of taking them all out to Chic-fil-A for lunch. It was bitter sweet because T had never eaten there before. I later learned that A hadn’t either. Have I mentioned how many odd looks I get when I am out with my crew and all the many “Are these kids all yours?” and the “Where’d you get all these boys at?”. Since after lunch I shed yet another boy and was down to only 4 I decided while the crack was still in my system I should stop by Earthfare for some food. Luckily, Wendy, my fellow-former-foster-parent-now-mom-to-six-kiddos-friend works there and walked around a bit with me and then proceeded to check me out (charge me for my food, not look at my bod). This was all I could handle in one day. We came home, put up groceries, and then the boys came home from the dentist, one having had two cavities filled. God made 8 o’clock bedtimes for days like this.

I delivered a child to elementary school today for the first time in my life. I remembered the smell from when I went…it never changes. I am so thankful that I already know A’s teacher, his teacher’s aide, the school secretary and many others as I have coached one or more of their kids in soccer or I grew up with them. They all plan to look out for A. They are all so happy for him that he is in a loving home, wearing clean clothes,  shoes with no holes and someone willing to help him with his schoolwork at night. He is very behind in school since he has been primary caregiver to his younger brothers for so long and has been tossed around from couch to couch as his mother ran around never offering them stability. Please pray for him today. I am sure many kids will ask him where he has been for two weeks and that has to be hard for him to explain. So I am down to 5 kiddos during the day now and I think it will be nice. A is very sweet and largely well-behaved but fights with his brother, T, almost every hour or more. Hopefully with a bit of separation again they will treat each other more lovingly. All the boys have their 2nd visitation with their mother today, supervised by DCS, of course. This was hard for them last week as they still missed her quite a bit but are now much more attached to us so perhaps they won’t all be crying when I pick them up. The baby, J, cried his eyes out when I dropped him off at the church nursery yesterday morning. That was different. He didn’t do that the first week. He and I have cuddle time at night, rocking with a bottle (yes, he just turned 2 but I am sure he didn’t get this as an infant and I would hate for him to have Reactive Attachment Disorder because of it when he is older). I think the cuddle time has helped he and I connect.

So we’re all doing well…everyone is adjusting better and better each day (the foster boys, anyway). My boys have a ways to go but I know that deep down that know that these boys need us and that no matter how badly they are becoming frustrated by the additions, they will appreciate it. Thank you all for your prayers and help! There is another court date on December 8th where I am assuming the judge will give the mother a time frame in which she needs to have a job, a home, and all the means to care for her children adequately. From what I see and have heard, she has done nothing in the 2 weeks we have had her children.

Oh it’s been a while. Oh blog, how I love thee. I don’t know why nuts have found it amusing to attack my blog and insert malicious files into it but it just isn’t cool and all my computers are fixed, high tech in fact, so I believe I am good to go with hopes that no more hackers are able to corrupt my outlet again.

So to recap what we’ve been up to…..well, there’s just not enough time for that. In a nutshell, our foster home was officially approved and open for business on October 15^th when I received a call that there was a baby who had just been born and was being removed form her mother. A few days later I learned that after several tests they learned the baby was going to be mentally retarded due to her mother’s drug abuse during pregnancy so that is why they never called us. We have on our home study that we do not feel competent to parent children with extensive special needs. A few days later we received a call about a 2 year old little girl, in perfect health, who’s parents were arrested on drugs and theft charges, We took her. It was our first placement and they boys were so excited. We were told we would have her through the weekend (we received her on a Thursday) and perhaps even longer, however, she went home exactly 24 hours after we got her. Her dad was released so he was able to get her back. This was very hard on us. My boys absolutely fell apart. They loved her so much in just the short amount of time she was with us. I prayed for another placement very soon just to get our minds off of Leelee. It’s an odd thing to pray for as if you are praying that you hope someone hurts a child badly enough that they are removed from their home. I received a call a few days later for….wait for it….three boys. Oh yea. You read that right.

The boys’ ages were 3, 2 and 6 months. All in diapers, of course. They were removed from their home because of environmental neglect and both parents tested positive for meth. They weren’t going home anytime soon. Unfortunately, I had to say no. When the DCS placement guy began describing the boys to me he began with the baby. “He seems to be in perfect health with an exception of a bad cough” he says. No problem, we can fix that. The he moved on to the 2 year old. “Well, this little guy is showing signs of having some developmental delays.” What 2 year old WOULDN’T be showing those signs from the environment they had been being raised in? Still likely fixable, move on. “The 3 year old is autistic.” Stop. Hold the phone. Are you kidding me? Three babies, all in diapers, all way behind developmentally and the oldest of the bunch in turn would need the most attention and supervision. Unbelievable. This was hard for me. Autism cannot be fixed but I do not necessarily look at autism as “special needs” and am very intrigued by the condition. But when I called Jason to ask him, he begged me to say no. I knew I was going to have to say no. I just also needed to hear him say no so I wouldn’t feel so bad. Oh but if he had said yes or even hesitated, we might have found ourselves in a different situation.

Three days after I had to turn down the three babies, I got a call about a 2 year old who had a little baggage himself. The baggage was in the form of a 9 year old brother. I didn’t even call Jason on this one. I said no right off the bat. No way can we take a 9 year old, a child older than our eldest son. A child whose parents had also tested positive for meth and who has seen more of the world than my children may ever see. I hate it, but I just couldn’t do it. I like my house. I don’t want it burnt down.

So an entire two and a half weeks go by without a single call. I had a missed call one time and later learned they were calling me about a teenager. I am glad I missed that call. I would have blown up and yelled at them for wasting their time and mine about a child they know I will say no to. My many friends who have fostered children have told me that there is often a calm just before the holidays. It seems like an odd thing but I can see how it can be true. I was patient. I didn’t call DCS even one time asking if there were any children needing to be placed. I knew the call would come when God wanted me to get it.

So on Monday, November 16^th, I got the call. It was my local DCS placement guy, Joe. He had an offer for me. He knows me already, knows what I am willing to take in, but said he wanted to run this by me just in case. It was a sibling group, two children, a little boy 2 ½ and his 5 year old sister. The little girl was in Kindergarten and Joe knows I home school and do not want children in school because that would throw my family for a loop having one child going to school and no one else. This wasn’t the biggest concern. He once again began describing the brother to me. He was almost 3 but not potty training. That’s about all he could say about him. Then he started in on the little girl. She was 5 years old and they were removed from the home because she had been sexually abused. She had also contracted herpes from her abuser. I gasped as you can imagine. I gave this one thought as I had no idea what herpes really was and wanted to do some research. I had some time on this one as Joe had a full week to find a home for them. They had been in state custody since September but were needing to be moved to another foster home because the single foster parent (female) was having knee surgery and wouldn’t be able to care for them for a while. I made some calls, sent out some emails, asked for prayer, etc. I prayed myself. How incredibly dreadful of a situation. This beautiful little girl needs a home. A good home. Her life has been so shattered and she will have to deal with this until the day she dies. I wanted to be her angel. I wanted to fix this broken thing. If I did not fix this, who would? I had to think of my family. Was this disease contagious? Was there the slightest possibility, even a 1% chance, that one of my family members or her brother could get this from her if she were to have an outbreak? I reached out to all my family and friends in the medical field, even got a call from my pediatrician, and more than one person told me that if I was this worried or had any doubt that I could just say no. They were right and I knew what I had to do even as hard as this was for me to do.

I still waited about another 30 minutes and thought about it while folding laundry and just as I began to pick up the phone to call Joe the phone rang. It was Joe. Joe told me he knew I was facing a hard decision and he thought he’d help me out by giving me another offer. He had just learned that three boys were being picked up from school and day care and were being brought in and needed to be placed. I immediately felt something. I felt like this was an answer to a prayers. An answer to the prayers of many who had been praying all morning for us and the decision about the little girl and her brother. Three boys, actually three anythings, had always been my biggest fear; doubling the children in my home in a single moment. I had always intended on saying no to a sibling group of three just because I felt it was a bit much. I can of course see myself parenting 6 children but gradually, not instantly. At the same time, something inside me said I needed to say yes. I called Jason, I told him my feeling, he was a bit perplexed and fearful of taking in three as I was but ultimately said I would decide either way because I always do (which I disagree with but sometimes, yes, I do). After all, who would this burden more….me? Or him? He works no less than 12 hours a day so of course this would be way more on me than him. So I did some checking before I called Joe back. I went to my truck and made sure I could fit that many car seats in it. I could if I bumped Wheat out of a booster seat a month before he was legally able to ride without it. I could live with that. Just before I called Joe back the phone rang again and it was Jason. He had had time to think and said I should say yes if I felt it was what we needed to do. I did feel that. I didn’t necessarily want to do it, but I felt like I needed to and that by obeying God my family would in turn be blessed for it. So I called Joe and I said yes. Oh my.

I officially resigned my position as Vice President of Better For Babies, Inc. this morning. I have not worked much if any since May of this year. My employer is having a very hard time economically and needed to free up funds so offered for me to have the summer off with the boys. I gladly accepted. I have missed them tremendously the last 2 1/2 years since I began working for BFB. I was hired to work only about 20 hours a week as a virtual office manager of sorts but after barely six months was promoted to VP and rarely worked less than 30 hours a week. This isn’t easy to do with three boys who are all home schooled. As a long time cloth diaper and natural parenting advocate I was thrilled upon taking this job. However, I quickly realized many things about it that I did not like and things I would indeed do very differently should I choose to start my own little crunchy store. I strongly believe that the core policy for any business should be honesty. Without it, failure is an absolute. I had fun doing what I did but I do have regrets most of which are based upon the fact that I gave so, so much for so very little (non-monetarily speaking) and I was the one who lost in the end. I lost a great deal of time with my family which I had available to sacrifice or I would not have applied for the job. However, the cause was not what I had hoped for. I will not fret. You live and learn through living and learning. One can only become better. I am always in search of what I can do and how I can give an ounce of my self toward the greater good and I am happy I have the freedom to move on once again and find that opportunity.