What comes next:

Today is a big day for Baby --.  Not only is he now 8 months old, but it has been exactly 90 days since he has had contact with his birth parents.  In Ohio, this means that Children's Services now has grounds to file an abandonment charge, which will sever their parental rights.  Although we the requirements to file for Permanent Custody have been met, we will now wait (probably 3 months) for a court date to make it official.  If his parents request contact between now and the court hearing, they will be able to see him through supervised visits with his case worker.  Once their rights have been terminated, they will have to arrange visits directly with us, something they have never attempted before.  In any case like ours, relatives have the right to claim the baby and raise him from here; in our case, the social worker has contacted the family and they have given their blessing for us to move forward with an adoption.  That means that once the baby is in the permanent custody of the state, we will then be able to file paperwork and schedule a court date for an official adoption.  Based on conversations with other foster-to-adopt families, this process could take up to 9 months, which means that this child we have been raising since he was a week old might be 18 months by the time he can take our last name.  We have also been told that the state assists with the costs of an attorney, meaning that this will be the least expensive child we have in terms of money; but the fact that a relative could at any time step in and we would never see him again, means that he is the most expensive in terms of emotional cost.  When we first got custody, I thought the chances that we would be able to adopt the baby were about 15%.  As his parents failed to meet their case plan and started missing visits, my hopes went up.  Now that we have secured the 90 day requirement, I feel like it is 95% certain that he will be with us forever, but there is still that 5% of doubt that makes me hold back.  I am so glad that we became foster parents, that we have been able to give this amazing little boy the best possible start to his life, and I hope that we will be able to see him grow into a man and bear our name.  Our family has been so accepting of him, especially our biological sons, who have always treated him like a brother.  He has captured our hearts and we want what is best for him, even if it is heart-breaking for us. 

Mother's Day

I had a really great weekend.  I spent time with my family(the family I made, not the one from whence I came).  I spent Friday and Saturday getting things set so that I could just relax on Sunday and enjoy everyone.  My husband did his usual sweet appreciation stuff: breakfast in bed, cards from himself and the boys (signed by James this year!), and then we spent the morning with our new Village, where the husbands all chipped in so the mothers could spend a few hours together but away from our families and just be(the exclamations of excitement when the announcement was made were so sweet).  I absolutely love getting time to just talk to other people, especially since these ladies are all really special and have characteristics that I want to possess, like being an awesome wife and woman of God.  Then I took the afternoon to myself, went to the movies alone, and OH! it was so nice.  I thought about the women who are my "mothers" and the children who made me one myself.

I love that my mom was so good to us kids.  I love that she wanted to raise us to be a certain kind of person, and that we have pretty well managed to reach adulthood and be responsible and happy and loving.  I love that my mother-in-law is a different kind of really good mom.  I love that she had three boys and that they all love her and respect her.  From them, I get ideas about how to be the best mom I can be, like how to maintain boundaries and teach manners and let my kids choose the life they want to live.  And I am so proud when I hear James speaking in sentences, because I know how hard he's worked to get to a point where he can verbalize his thoughts.  I love that I can argue with him now, when he asks, "Why not?" endlessly and I can finally say, "Because I said so, that's why not!"  I loved hearing Winston in the car yesterday carry on an entire conversation by himself.  It went like this:
"Winston, you hungry?  You want to eat, or play basketball?  Which one?  PLAY BASKETBALL!!"
and then today he changed it up a little...
"Time to sleep, or time to go to library?  You sleepy or want library?  Which one?  GO LIBRARY!!"
And then there's the baby, the foster child that was originally supposed to stay with us for maybe two months while his dad got a place to live and a job, and who is now a week away from becoming permanent custody of the state, at which point we will adopt him.  In the last week, this amazing baby has cut his first teeth, crawled, and signed "milk" for the first time!  I look at the accomplishments of my boys, and I know that they got there by their own work and personal development.  But I know that I helped facilitate that development, and I get the front row seat when they try out new skills.  I love love love being their mom.  I love that my husband agreed that I should stay home with our babies.  I love my mom friends who encourage and inspire me.  I love being a mom :)

My mom redeemed herself

It was Christmas 1991.  My family had driven for two days from our home in Dallas to gather with my mom's family in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where she had grown up.  Everyone came from different directions, and being so far removed from our extended family combined with my childhood shyness meant that I spent most of the holiday watching everyone else.  I remember that year I received a doll who drank water from a bottle, then cried real tears when she was squeezed.  I thought it was brilliant, but my cousins quickly dubbed her "Baby Smiles while She Cries" and mocked my new toy.  Just when everyone was finishing the great present opening, my grandparents announced a surprise.  Each of the five families were to remain where they were as my grandpa disappeared, then returned bearing four identical wrapped boxes.  My sister and I sat with our parents and watched as the boxes were distributed to each of my aunts and uncles, then cries of delight filled the room as my cousins discovered that they had just been gifted a Super Nintendo.  I looked at Liz with confusion until my grandma crossed the room to whisper that our mom didn't want us to have a video game console and she had had to return the one purchased for us.  I was outraged at the injustice.  I already knew what a Super Nintendo was; Brian, who lived two houses down from us and chewed off my Barbies' feet, had one, and he let me play Super Mario Brothers with him, although I secretly preferred Duck Hunt.  Liz and I looked at our parents.  My dad shrugged and looked away, but my mom stuck out her chin and gave the first of many lectures about the evils of video games.  They rot your brain.  They make you lazy.  You would fight over it.  Your dad would spend too much time playing it with you.  I couldn't believe it.

So yes, I grew up in a house without video games.  I read books, rode bikes with my neighborhood friends, memorized all the state capitals, learned origami and French, played with the dollhouse we got for Christmas the following year from our grandparents, and watched cartoons.  When I was in high school, another video game seized the nation: Goldeneye.  People would have parties just to play together.  Boys at school would brag about staying up for an entire weekend playing the James Bond game.  I played it a few times with my friends, but I was terrible at it.  I could never get the right combination of buttons and somehow always wound up in that bathroom stall with no idea how to open the door, so I just had to wait for another player to notice and come kill me.  I blamed my mom for never allowing me to learn on that Super Nintendo.

Finally, I met and married Chris, who grew up in a family that didn't have such strong moral objections to video games.  He brought a Playstation into our marriage, and liked to play it when he came home from work.  At first, I would sit and read or sew while he played, and had to insist that he stop playing Grand Theft Auto (ugh).  Then I got curious, and asked him to teach me how it worked.  We didn't have cable those first few years, and occasionally I got tired of watching my Gilmore Girls DVDs.  I wanted to play the fun games like Burnout with Chris.  He showed me how to work the controller, and found it hilarious to watch me careen around the room instead of sitting completely still with only my thumbs moving.  A few years later, we bought a Nintendo Wii.  You'll like this one, he advised.  You're actually supposed to move around to make it work.  And I did like it.  I liked playing Mario Kart, especially when James figured out how to work his own controller and we could race each other.  The thought of banning him from playing video games never crossed my mind.

And then, this past Christmas, two decades after the original Nintendo disappointment, I opened a wrapped box from my parents.  They sat with the same excited smiles my grandparents had worn twenty years before.  I opened a Nintendo DS.  "Is this for me?" I couldn't believe it.  They nodded.  "I thought you would like it," my mom said.  Okay mom, I forgive you for denying me that Super Nintendo all those years ago.  I probably did have a more well-rounded childhood not spent connected to a video game.  And now that I have so many other interests and concerns, I can relegate my DS to its proper place.  Which is why it took me 3 months to open it and begin playing.