Riding the Train

Thing 1 is obsessed with trains. Seriously. Any time he saw one, it was a big huge excited exclamation, "Oh Mommy!! A TRAIN!!" In the first full week they were with us, we had tried to go to the Train Museum in Old Sacramento. That was a full on bust. They couldn't climb on the trains, they didn't move and they didn't make any noise.

The Old Sacramento Train begins running in April, so we planned a big surprise trip to to that, and to go to the several kid-centric stores in Old Sac. We drove down, and I let them watch music videos on my phone. Their favorite was What Does the Fox Say? while James and I were partial to Phillip Phillips' Home.

When we arrived, we sat them down to tell them what we were about to do. We had learned that we couldn't tell Thing 1 our plans too early or he would obsess, so we waited until we were just about 30 minutes from departure time. At first he was confused. We tried to pump him up, explain that he would be riding a "REAL Train." Finally, we were waiting in line for our tickets when it clicked for him. He started dancing and singing, "Riding a train, uh, ride a train, riding a train..." It was really funny.

We enjoyed the train ride immensely, except that it wasn't going nearly fast enough for him. Thing 2 enjoyed it too, for the most part. He would have liked it more if I'd let him climb over and under all of the seats to his hearts content; I would not.

After the train, we stopped at the candy store, the kite store, and the costume shop. Then we went to lunch. Their good behavior was wearing thin at this point, so we opted to skip the other stops we had considered, including the zoo. That was just too much for one day, and it was a long drive home. We did stop along the way to have some ice cream. It was a really fantastic family event.

Epiphany

We had just sent some photos to the boys' Oregon family via email. They'd asked for an update.

I was daydreaming in the car on the way home for lunch a few days later. Listening to the radio, and I glanced back into the back seat and saw the car seats. Out of nowhere, I imagined buckling those car seats into someone else's car, strapping the boys in, and saying goodbye. Closing the doors of someone else's car with MY boys inside.

My boys. My. Boys.

My stomach lurched, and I pulled over to the side of the road for a minute, surprised that I was about to cry. When I got it together, I drove the rest of the way home and told James what had happened. I said that I couldn't let them go. He started to grin..."I knew it. I knew you weren't going to be able to let them go." Despite everything that had gone on for the past 2 months, despite my assertions that going to be with biological family would be the most beneficial solution, despite my earlier feelings of despair, they had become my kids and I loved them. We were making a difference--Thing 1 rarely had a tantrum anymore, Thing 2 was speaking more and more and hadn't run from us in weeks. We were really making progress.

I called my mom. She too said, "yup, I knew you weren't going to give them back." My sister said the same thing. Am I so predictable, so transparent that everyone knew that about me but me?

We informed the social workers, who let the Oregon family know. They weren't upset--they were planning to take them out of obligation, but they were nearly done raising kids and weren't looking forward to starting again.

Birthday Party at the Gymnastics Studio

Our friends' daughters celebrated their 5th and 7th birthdays together at the local gymnastics studio. It was a place we hadn't even heard of and we had some expectations that we would likely leave early due to meltdowns. We were hopeful, though, because the boys did like active play so much and this place has trampolines, bars, and a foam pit.

We arrived and removed their shoes. It was like a little kid wonderland. They could climb, swing, jump, tumble and yell all they wanted. This was their dream space. Despite the soundtrack from Frozen blaring in the background, this was quite possibly one of the very best days we had had together.

The boys needed a lot more direction than the other kids, obviously. Thing 2 completely refused to take turns, so I spent most of my time at the activity he liked best, swinging from the big rope, keeping the peace--and often holding him while he screamed and kicked because he needed to wait his turn.

And Thing 1 had a great time. He didn't feel as much like a weird outsider when they had these organized activities to do. He had to be reminded of the rules repeatedly, but he could do everything in the room quite well (they are both very strong).

Bikes, and keeping our expectations in check.

You know how you buy someone the perfect present, something you are sure they will love, and you imagine their reaction? The excitement, the delight that you had gotten something so totally cool for them? If you have foster kids, be prepared to dial it back.

We started considering getting them bikes/trikes around the end of February, since they had started noticing them. Thing 1 routinely mentioned the bike and scooter he'd had at Aunty's. We ordered a 2 wheeler with training wheels for the very tall Mr. Thing 1 and a Ninja Turtle (Minger Tootools) Big Wheel for Thing 2. When they arrived I put them together in the basement after they went to bed. We then smuggled them upstairs and outside along with their new helmets and the next day told them we had a surprise for them, got them in jackets and shoes and took them to the patio.

They ran out, and both went for the Big Wheel. We redirected Thing 1 to the "big boy bike," which he checked out for a moment, then said "where's the surprise?" Uh, okay. So once he figured out that the bike was a surprise, we put him on it. He couldn't work it, which we figured would be the case, but he got frustrated immediately, since he was watching his brother use the Big Wheel very successfully, plus realizing that it had sounds and a toy CB radio. Crash. And. Burn.

No amount of coaxing would get him to focus and learn to use his bike. We finally had to put the bikes away after about an hour since every time our backs were turned he would take the Big Wheel from his brother, or coerce him to give it over.

Field Trips

We had started a habit of taking drives on the weekend, trips Thing 1 had dubbed "fieldtrips." We got a membership to Natural History Exploration Park, so we took them for the first time to check that out. The park had a huge bridge over the river that you could cross, with large beams, glass floor tiles and such. The boys adored the bridge, we got a really pretty family picture taken by a friend and we all went in. The friends' kids had been to the park before and had their favorite spots, haunts and exhibits. True to form, our kids wigged out about being in a new place. The inside walls of a large portion of the park were made to look like river banks, so up they went, climbing. I spent much of the time either peeling Thing 2 off the walls, or chasing him or crawling under things to drag him out.

Overall they had a good time, but it was definitely evident that they have no experience with or understanding of such things. While we had hoped the trip would wear them out, in reality, we were the ones who were exhausted by the end of it.

Another trip we took was up to a historic gold rush town just north of us. This was more their speed. We didn't bother with the museum as we knew they wouldn't be able to handle it. We let them run through the barns, around on old wagons and such. There was an old, restored general store that they got to check out and the docents were so patient. It helped that, unlike our trip to the exploration park, there were very few visitors so they weren't getting in people's way. We also walked through the ruins of the town and discovered an earth and wood staircase up the hillside, so while James stayed below we went up and explored. This was DEFINITELY their cup of tea--climbing, running and not being told to be quiet...they loved that.

We did trips to the mall in bad weather, since they like the play areas inside, we visited different lakes/rivers to throw rocks. We also went to local parks to burn off energy. Thing 2 could CLIMB...like, really climb. Higher than older kids. At first it made me nervous and I tried to follow him up everywhere he went but I realized that, since he didn't get scared about the heights, he was quite comfortable and stable, and was only really unsafe if I was following him and he felt I was going to pull him down or tell him to get off. Then he got reckless.

Roadtrips were a really lifesaver on weekends when there was no break afforded by Thing 1 going to school. When they were strapped into car seats, they were safe, in our control and relatively happy. I could actually relax.

What's in a name?

So, at a visit, the social worker casually mentioned Thing 1 by a nickname that we weren't using for him. Its a child's version of a male name, like Robby for Robert. Well, we'd been calling him by the shortened version (Rob in this example) or the full name. Our Foster Family agency, when we met the kids, called him the full name. We occasionally shortened it to the very abbreviated version, never being corrected by either the social workers we met with or by Thing 1 himself. They were with us for better than 6 weeks by the time we heard this...

You know, if a person has a preferred name, shouldn't that be one of the first things you learn about them?

Hosting a party.

We hosted a birthday party for a friend. Between wrestling Thing 2 off of the various items of furniture and answering the same question for the thousandth time Thing 1 asked, we were cleaning up, making food, and greeting people arriving at the house. By the time people arrived, I was exhausted.

We had adopted a fairly strict household in order to keep them safe. We also had sort of rigidly scheduled the mealtimes, not offering too many snacks. We had noted pretty early on that they were accustomed to eating mostly crackers, chips, fruit, granola bars, etc. They only wanted to drink soda or juice and refused (vehemently) to drink water. We had to eliminate snacks almost completely to get them to eat real meals. They were kind of obsessed with food actually. If any was out (bowl of popcorn, tray of cheese and crackers) they would devour it. They knew virtually all of the fast food places by name but were aghast when I made pizza at home. Any time they saw food, food was mentioned or they were bored or unsure, they wanted to eat.

So for the party I was doling out the snack food and party foods slowly and carefully. That is pretty hard to do when friends with similar age children allow their kids to eat snacks freely. If Thing 1 and Thing 2 didn't want to eat dinner, they would be offered something else at the table of nutritional value, but no snacks or desserts later. Friends kids would refuse to eat, and complain they were hungry later to be given chips and cookies and soda. We basically seemed like jerks because we refused to do that. I was judged pretty harshly that night by the wife of a friend, so much so that I wound up in the bedroom crying.

It is pretty tough having to be the hard-ass parent in a sea of mellow parents. During the first few months of our having the boys, it was very much like I was being judged for every move I made, having my decisions circumvented at every turn by our friends (oh, here have some of this before your mom comes back. no, its okay, you can go ahead and jump on this item of furniture). No matter how many times we explained our kids and their need for structure after a lifetime of none, our friends just assumed we were being assholes. It got to a point where I would rather James left me home alone with the kids, as hard as that was, to go hang out with his friends at their homes. It was hard, I hated it, but at least I didn't feel judged.

But alas, damned if you do and damned if you don't--once I started staying home, people decided that I hated them or that I was being unfriendly. But taking the boys to other people's houses wasn't an option either--they would destroy the place, find the hazards I didn't even think to bar them from, take out every toy they could find and generally get frantic and crazy. And it wasn't like they enjoyed playing with the other kids--the same wife of a friend had everyone over, including our boys. Now in truth, our kids are sort of weirdos. They don't really know how to play with other kids and they are generally hard to play with. But I had to respond to I don't know how many yells of "stop it, go away Thing 1" or "give it back, Thing 2" until at one point I went looking for all of the kids and found that her kids and another friends' kids had barricaded themselves in one of the bedrooms while our boys were left on their own in the other bedroom to play alone. I asked the kids what had happened and the other kids said "we don't want to play with THEM." We went home pretty quickly after that.

It was lonely. Our friends thought we were making up or exaggerating the issues we were having; "that's just kids," "that's what you'd expect from foster kids," "oh, they'll grow out of it." I hated having more people over than the myriad of foster-related visitors we already got, so James and I had our fair share of fights because he felt that I was preventing him from being with his friends. I was destroyed for a while. I came to dread weekends. I mean, I wasn't happy at my job at the time either, and besides trying to work, I was the contact person for all of the medical people, agency people, social workers, and therapists. I was also on call for the crazy stuff that popped up at home, splitting my lunches to take Thing 1 to school and home again...but still work was a relief from the abject terror that was my home life, feeling like I was always doing everything wrong and hating myself.

Haircuts...finally!

So, one of the most ridiculous things about foster parenting...I can authorize medical treatment for them. If they need surgery, I can sign off on that. But without either a signature from their birth parent or a judge (or social worker? We aren't sure) we couldn't get their hair cut. And they needed it. They were crazy shaggy.

At their visit with birth mom, the visit monitor was supposed to get her to sign the haircut waiver. She didn't. We talked to our agency social worker. She didn't know but gave the "helpful" suggestion to call the county social worker (um, I'm sorry, but isn't it your job to get questions answered for us. and further, isn't it your job to know answers to, what seems to be, a fairly common question?). County social worker said that they might have to get the judge to sign it if mom hadn't. Mom doesn't live nearby for them to just drop by and get it signed.

They're not American Indian, with strong cultural ties to long hair. They didn't have cool haircuts, and we weren't trying to shave their heads or give them mohawks. Good grief.

Finally, someone called birth mom and got her verbal okay to cut their hair (no buzz cuts!) How lame is that?

Meeting the Oregon Family

We made plans to meet with their Oregon family members on Friday Feb. 14th. We would meet with them at 11am since Thing 1 had school at 12:30.

They woke up feeling sick. We had to call him in sick, but it was too late to cancel, since the family was driving from Oregon. We got to the McDonalds a little early and ordered food.We saw them come in, a nice looking couple. The adoption social worker came in right after. We all sat down to talk and let them meet the boys. They were excited and happy since so many people were paying attention to them. They had children of their own, the youngest was 10. They are licensed for childcare so getting a foster license would be no problem.

I sat and talked to the adoption social worker for a while, and told her some of the difficulties we were having, and got some information about what was going on with their case. She said that this was good, having the Oregon family as an option but it would be difficult since they would have to get all sorts of out-of-state waivers. I said we would really like for any transfer to happen after school lets out since his education had been so disrupted to begin with. She also said that, as their guardians, we actually had far more claim on permanency than these family members, since the boys don't know them and we have been caring for them. I mentioned that we were having trouble getting a waiver to get their hair cut.

Our visit ended with the boys getting gifts from their new friends--stuffed doggies.

Gathering history

What a gift having State Preschool available for Thing 1 was for our sanity. He would go to school from 12:30 to 3:30 each day, get some much needed academic and social teaching, and James would get some much needed respite from having near-constant power struggles and tantrums. One of the things that the preschool insisted on was that he not wear pull-ups to school. When they came to us, that was all he wore, and he would go to the bathroom only if he felt like it or if we made him. He also only pooped at night in the pull-up. That was another source of complete meltdown--if we insisted he poop on the potty, or merely suggested it sometimes, he would freak right the hell out.

We were going through underwear pretty frequently at home, but most days at school he did okay. He had to use his emergency change of clothes now and then. I asked his teacher if he has the same outbursts at school as he did at home. She was surprised--she had never seen him do that. She suggested that he may be able to keep it together in one element of his life so he chose school and then let loose at home.

We were slowly gathering a better picture of their life before us. They were with their former foster parents through the FFA for about 2 weeks. These people, I believe, are a major source of a lot of the bathroom issues. Thing 1 would just freak out about poop--his own, his brother's, any he saw outside. If we were cleaning him up, he would apologize profusely. It got to wear we figured he was made to feel ashamed about it, We would just reassure him that poop is no big deal, we can clean it up, and if it gets on our hands, oh well, we can wash them. Our mantra became everyone poops, even mommy, daddy, and the president of the USA. I was so hurt and angry for him though, that he was made to feel that way.

Before that family, they were with "Aunty" whom we could not figure out if she was biologically related or if that was just a title. They were with her for a fairly long time, maybe 9 months or a year. When she lost custody of them is was traumatic, with the kids being removed abruptly at night with little more than the clothes they were wearing. When their adoption social worker first visited our house, Thing 1 got agitated, then finally walked up to me, got really close to my face and asked "Where are we sleeping tonight?" We found out that when they were removed, she was the one who took them into custody.

We learned that Thing 2's birth father was incarcerated, in some sort of work camp at the moment, and that birth mom had recently married to the father of her infant daughter.

Keep in mind that none of this information came from the FFA. They claimed to know nothing about them. Each bit of information came to us through conversations with their county social workers, Thing 1's counselor, and through piecing together what the Thing 1 would tell us.

One thing that the counselor told us that ran chills down my spine--Thing 1 is a high level placement and if a permanency plan wasn't found for him, his next stop would be a group home and they would be separated.

My Break Down

James and I were tense all the time. It was difficult for me, the one who grew up with 2 younger siblings, who has a Masters degree in Human Behavior, who has made a career of working with kids, to be this overwhelmingly bad at being with THESE kids. I dreaded the moment each morning when I first heard them stir, and I was on edge all night, waiting for the next cry of "Mommy?"

I finally broke down one morning and as James was trying to calm me down, I blurted out "I just don't love these kids. I thought I loved all kids but I don't." I was at my breaking point. We were have 2 to 5 45 minute tantrums from Thing 1 a day, no matter what we were doing, Thing 2 was trying to run away or climb something, our cat was refusing to eat or groom himself so I was certain he would die...I was just done.

James was so much better at it than me. He kept calm and cool, he didn't yell like I kept finding myself doing on a regular basis. He was able to ignore things that I couldn't. I was counting down to the end of the 6 month placement.

We heard from their adoption social worker that they had a distant relative that might want to take custody. They live in Oregon, have never met the boys, and have no contact with birth mom. We were given their email address and decided to meet at McDonald's on Feb. 14th.

A visit with Birth Mom--or so we thought...

They had a visit scheduled to see birth mom. We had been told that she wouldn't get a visit until the end of February so that they could settle in for a while but apparently not everyone was on the same page with that.

James took them to Shasta County for the visit. He dropped them off at the door, and the visit monitor took them from there. I guess the parents are to enter at a different spot so that there's no cross-over. He hung around, got some food, and came back just before the hour was up. The social worker stopped to talk to him for a while. I guess grandma attended the visit. Mom was going to come, but had a fight with grandma that morning and didn't show up.

The boys came back out, happy to see James, and got into the car. When they got home, though, that is when we began to see some behavior issues. Thing 1 got really belligerent and had a few more tantrums than usual over the next several days.

Making Observations and Getting Validations

While we were in Sacramento, we made some contact with various people connected with the boys. Their "adoption social worker" called, as did Thing 1's counselor. We heard from their county worker as well.

We met with the adoption social worker. She came over a couple of days after we got back home. The first thing I did was relate a bit about the issues we had had, particularly with the tantrums. She said that, yes, that was an issue with him at a previous home as well. She seemed surprised we didn't have any history there. I let her know that any time I mentioned it to FFA staff, they seemed dismissive or surprised that he was acting like that. The worker stated that if kids fell on a scale from 1 to 10 of easy to hard, our boys would be 8s or 9s. I don't know why, but I felt so much better after she said that.

We also met with the counselor. He, too, confirmed the tantrums and the issues with obsessive behaviors. He noted that, as we would have a bio mom visit during the next month, we might experience some behavioral issues. Mom, he said, is a very unsafe entity and her presence makes Thing 1 uneasy. Not that he doesn't love her, but he acts out and mom doesn't really have good skills for dealing with them even for a short visit. He said his goal was primarily to work with us on how to work with him.

We were making lots of observations. Like, Thing 2 only really likes to eat cheese and bananas and he walks on his toes. A lot. Which really worried me. Thing 2 would claim he was hungry all the time, but most especially when he was asked to do something. He also asks questions, but not the way I have experienced before with nieces and friends kids. He would ask the exact same question over and over, with the same inflection and tone akin to panic, regardless of the question. We finally had to start telling him that the question has been answered and we weren't going to answer it again.

Thing 2 ran from me on a regular basis. Once, with friends over, we had all the kids playing in the yard. He watched us, growing steadily closer to the edge of the back yard. When he seemed to determine that we were too far to catch him, he bolted. I chased him down but couldn't catch him until he reached the neighbor's yard--across the street. He also had almost no language. He could understand us, but he mainly only could say "no wan' that" and nod or shake his head.

Pluses and Minuses

The huge plus to working where I do is that I work closely with the preschool department. My supervisor also supervises early childhood education. They expedited Thing 1's enrollment into preschool. He started that first Thursday.

The second full week we had them, I had a conference in Sacramento, so everyone went with me. While packing, we first pulled out their FFA issued duffle bags, but the boys got very uneasy seeing those, so I put them back and got out a regular suitcase for them. We went to our hotel, and proceeded to spend a very wet week with two moderately out of control children cooped up without a whole lot of entertainment options. James had them in the room most of the day while I did my work. Each evening we went to whatever indoor playgrounds we could find, spending an inordinate amount of time at either McDonald's or the mall. It was fairly miserable.

Steel My Resolve...

One thing that did steel my resolve to at least keep the boys with us for the 6 months we had signed on for: we woke the first morning we had them. We told them we would be going bye bye later. Thing 1 walked over to where their bags lay, in the living room since I hadn't had time to put them away yet, and asked "But these are staying here, right?"

At the very least, we were going to keep them until a permanent option was on the horizon. Even if it killed us.

Going to bed angry

Our intake social worker came over that first weekend (on Sunday afternoon I think) to bring us more screen material. I sort of broke down to her. She was fairly unmoved by the difficulties I related, saying that she hadn't known anything about tantrums or the like, and telling me that it was normal for kids to act out in a new foster home. She said that we would hear from our actual worker the following week and was out the door.

We finally got a call from our worker on Wednesday or Thursday, nearly a week after we took custody. She came in and one of her first questions was, " On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being find a new home for these boys ASAP and 10 being I want to adopt them and keep them forever, where were we at?" I about lost it. I told her firmly that such a question was extremely unfair to ask after the events of the past week, we were completely dropped without any thought or care, these kids are hard and everyone is downplaying the difficulties and everyone is worried about the goddamn window screens instead of the fact that I can't do anything with these kids.

She said that we should have called on-call guy when things got bad and that he would have helped us out, come over and checked in. She said he should have called to see how we were doing. We told her we had called, when Thing 1 hurt himself, but we didn't know we were allowed to call for non-injury issues. We described the way in which our taking custody went down and the fact that on-call guy barely acknowledged us in his hurry out the door. (Later, she asked him about us. He claims that he had no idea that we were brand new foster parents and that the boys were a new placement or he would have checked up on us. No one told him...uh, right).

She, too, claimed that there was no history of the tantrums and severe outbursts or the running off that we had experiences so I began getting paranoid that I was somehow causing this behavior or that it was newly manifested. Or worse, that I was overreacting to their behavior. I went to bed really angry that night.

The start of weeks of sheer hell, terror and sleeplessness...

The first night was scary. We showed them their rooms and the new toys we got them. Thing 1 wanted Thing 2's toy--we went to walmart to exchange his for an identical one, as he was completely uninterested in the one we picked out for him. Thing 2 immediately grabbed any and every cup and can he found and drank out of it, so we spent the whole evening removing our drinks from his hands and replacing them with his own. They went to bed easier than I expected but we were wrung out when that magical hour came around.

I don't think the sinking feeling that we had made a mistake ever relented that first weekend. It felt they were just hell bent on getting into every thing they could find that would cause the greatest amount of damage. Thing 2 climbed. They both wanted to jump on or off things. They scared one of our cats so badly that he ran away--and has never returned.

And the tantrums, oh lord the tantrums. We would tell Thing 1 to do something, anything. Go into his room. Take off his shirt, go potty, anything and he would refuse or ignore us, so we would count down, if I get to three its time-out...one, two, three. No movement. So we would send him to timeout. Ignore. We would carry him to his bed. He would start screaming, hitting, grabbing tables, lamps, door frames, anything, thrashing about. We would put him in the bed and he would begin yelping and slamming himself into the bed frame, or pacing and go catatonic. It was terrifying. 

I cried. If I wasn't actively doing something with them, I cried. I was so stressed I couldn't eat. I wasn't sleeping at all because I was afraid that they would wake up. We went to a friend's children's birthday party and so I was constantly paranoid that they would hurt themselves in a new environment, which Thing 1 did--falling off a swing on his back and scraping it up pretty badly. We called in and reported it to the on-call guy. He just said to clean it up. Didn't ask how things were going (though if I he had I might have lost it right there and told him to come and get them). 

That first weekend was the start of about 3 to 4 weeks of sheer hell, terror and sleeplessness.

Our Life was about to change...

On January 17th, I left work slightly early. I was too antsy to stay, knowing we were picking up our very first foster kids that day.

We headed over to the FFA. I knew this was a big moment, and actually grabbed James' arm and stopped him on the sidewalk outside the door, took a deep breath, and realized that our life was about to change.

In the waiting room, at the train table, were two very cute little boys, a receptionist I remembered having met before, and two women I didn't know. I assumed that we would be introduced to the foster mom. To be honest, I had sort of rehearsed how our meeting would go, asking questions about their eating habits, bedtimes, and schedule, wishing her luck, etc. Nuh-uh. One woman leaned over to the other, said something, and then walked out. I don't think she even made eye contact with me.

The receptionist began talking to us while we got down and started talking to the boys. They seemed comfortable, if disinterested in us, until James got up and began taking their bags to the car. The older boy (Thing 1) said "hey, where's that guy going with that?" I told him he was putting them in our car so that they could come and stay at our house. He then shouted, excitedly "That guy's gonna be my new daddy?!!" I asked if that was okay and he said yes.

The littler boy (Thing 2) didn't talk, but was way into playing with the trains. Then he got it into his little head that taking a run down the hall would be a great idea, so I had to chase him (little did I know that was going to become a pattern...)

We sat down to talk to the staff there. I asked when they last ate was. They didn't know. I asked when bedtime was. They said, well I guess you get to start creating a schedule. We were introduced to the on-call guy (we were heading into a 3-day weekend) whom we could call in case of emergency. He said hi, then sped out the door. We had noticed his car was already running in the parking lot when we arrived. 

Barely 30 minutes later we were shown the door, our new charges in hand. We strapped them into the new car seats we got the day before and were on our (befuddled, overwhelmed) way.

Dinner was at Denny's, we stopped at the grocery store, and then took them home to see their new room

Frustration

We had our fair share of frustration from our Foster Family Agency (FFA) before we had even become official foster parents. The worst happened on Jan. 15th, just 2 days before we got custody of Thing 1 and Thing 2. The Executive Director of the FFA came over himself and did the home study. We showed him around the house. His first comment--from the smell in here, you can tell you have a cat. The tour went downhill from there. We showed him the boys' room. We had been gifted a beautiful crib/toddler bed. We had also purchased a wood/wrought iron day bed, almost new condition with a trundle underneath. He was unimpressed. He said that kids, when put in daybeds, feel like they're not permanent. I argued that it was a solid, permanent piece of furniture, unlike the particle board pieces of junk I could have purchased at walmart that fall apart after three weeks. 

He also had an issue with our windows. Specifically, their lack of screens. Now, we live in a 70 year old rental home with huge rooms, a beautiful back yard, detached garage and a basement. The windows are typical of the period, with handles on the inside. To open, they swing outward. There is not a way to install screens--either the handles would be inaccessible or the windows would not be able to open. But this was a huge, hairy deal to him. 

I came up with a work around, screening material velcro'd to the insides of the windows. Easier said than done, since each bit of velcro has to be hot-glued or sewn to the screen as the adhesive isn't strong enough. Plus, the expense. Yet, our intake social worker called the following evening to ask if we had screened all the windows yet! I am still ticked off about that!

What's it like?

People ask what it is like working with our FFA. I will relate our first interactions with them to illustrate what it has been like.

When we decided to go through the process to become foster parents, we were given a lot of advice. Go through an FFA. No, go through the county. Do an FFA outside of the county. No, stay in county.

We chose the FFA that we did due to their reputation for being hands on and supportive, giving foster families more support, lots of family events, foster parent groups, and benefits to the kids. We were also told that they reimbursed at a higher rate, but as we just wanted to be parents (more on that later) and were not in it for the money, that was not a factor for us.

We submitted an interest form. A few weeks later we got a call and made an appointment. Then the appointment was cancelled on us at the last minute. We made a new one. That one, too, was cancelled last minute. We were mildly frustrated, but finally came in for an initial application. The woman we met with did not understand James' sense of humor at all...

We made a follow up appointment for a week or so later to turn in our paperwork. Then, on the day of that appointment, as we were driving over there, the woman we had met with, whom we were headed out to see, called to apologize for cancelling our previous appointment and make a new, introductory appointment! We explained carefully that we were on our way AT THAT MOMENT to see her for our SECOND appointment. We hung up with her. She called back immediately to say, no we're supposed to meet at YOUR house for your home inspection...

So, after a very flaky and confusing phone conversation we agreed that she did NOT set up a home inspection with us, and we would meet at her office. I must say, this gave me serious misgivings about working with them.
 
After the process moving like molasses for two months, on January 15th, 2014, we completed our homestudy process to become a certified foster home. We are fostering through a local Foster Family Agency (FFA). They sped up our process because on 1/14 they had two boys who were in need of placement. The foster family they were with (who had them for 2 weeks) had put in a 7-day notice. We were told "we have no where else for them to go. But you don't have to take them if you don't want to." Of course we were going to take them!

We only knew that they were little--2 and 4 years old. We were told that the older boy was clingy and had potty issues (that was the reason the current foster family was moving them). We were scared to death and totally excited. About $400 at Walmart and Costco later we had bought all manner of stuff we thought we would need...good thing we had just gotten our tax refund back!