Archive for December, 2009

Greg babies…

Posted by KK on Tuesday, 15 December, 2009

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.

Never a good time…

Posted by KK on Tuesday, 15 December, 2009

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!

All the time in the world…

Posted by KK on Friday, 4 December, 2009

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.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted by KK on Wednesday, 2 December, 2009

If you can see this, then you might need a Flash Player upgrade or you need to install Flash Player if it's missing. Get Flash Player from Adobe.