Achoo!

I have been in the throes of a sneezing, wheezing, eyes running, nose dripping allergy attack for several days now. It always happens in the Spring just as the last of the trees are blooming. Often it coincides with Easter and I am a mess for Easter Sunday and can't even help hide or find the Easter eggs. This year with Easter so early that was fine. But the last few days have been a bit brutal. With more cold weather and rain coming in for the next few days I am hoping a lot of the pollen will be tamped down and I can go out side again. My bulb gardens are in full flower and I have to view them from the window, sniff, sniff, achoo!

Well, I got the job, we finalize paperwork and details on Tuesday. I am not sure why I am not more excited. I think I just don't do change all that well, even when I initiate it and will benefit from the change. I am looking forward to getting to work, I have lots of ideas. It will also be so nice to have some co-workers again. Since we no longer home school, my social life has become smaller.

Kendra is having a birthday sleepover and the girls just got back from seeing "Horton hears a Who", their very own choice of movie. Maybe next post i will put up some pictures of her room. She has a fantastically funny decorating sense. It is odd, but it works. She is so her own person, no following the crowd for her.

Since I took the anti-histamine to stop sneezing long enough to get anything done, I am now so sleepy that I can't keep my head up and I think I am off to bed, hoping to get to sleep before the sneezing starts again.

Out in the Garden

What a glorious day, actually another one since yesterday was glorious as well. The trees are all flowering, we have Bradford pears, red buds, dogwoods and magnolia trees all gloriously in bloom up and down the streets. On Sunday Dancing Baby Girl got all excited when we drove down one street because we were in a white tunnel of Bradford Pear blossoms.

I am so proud of myself, I have persevered and gotten my project from idea to reality. I made myself a raised bed garden in the back yard. I used all materials we already had. It took a lot of work but it is ready for transplanting the seedlings.

Now will actually come the hard part, trying to keep the rabbits and squirrels from destroying my hard work. Anyone have any words of wisdom. I am currently threatening to keep the dog outside all summer to guard my plants. But as that is not realistic what are some other methods I could employ? I don't mind sharing but these critters are ravenous and will eat the seedlings before they even produce.

On another note I haven't heard anything on the job front. It is making me a little nervous. We need me to have this job or a job, but this is the one I want. I am trying not to get all anxious about it and just let life flow. I have never been very good at that.

California Dreaming

Wish I was out in California right now. I am a little jealous that Kendra is out hanging around with James, my 22 yo son, and I am not getting to see him. I just love the Northern California shoreline and Santa Cruz where James is at the university has gorgeous views. Apparently he can see the ocean from the dining room window of his student apartment.

But I don't know what I am grumbling about, we had the most beautiful day today. Spring has really sprung. All day yesterday Dancing Baby Girl sang me improvised songs about flowers and pretty trees and Spring. She said, "I told you Mommy, after Fall is being Spring!" as though somehow I was arguing with her :-)

My daffodils are up and blooming away and the greens of the tulips are getting tall, hope I have a good bloom of tulips this year, last year was pretty disappointing. And I just about have the new bed of my raised vegetable garden ready for transplanting. It will be the first time in years that we have had our own homegrown tomatoes and beans. We participate as a share partner in a CSA organic farm so we always have fresh veggies and eggs, but there is something special about my own.

We live on a small city lot and there just isn't much room in the yard and much of it is shaded. For the longest time it was a priority to have as much fenced in play space as possible, but now with only a part time 3 yo we can use some of the space for a garden. I am really ready.

However, I have apparently been using some muscle groups that I don't use very often, so I am going to retire to my bed with a heating pad on my back and read a little.

A Messy Life, Sometimes

Everything feels messy right now. Its been another crazy, busy weekend. Dancing Baby Girl has been with us since Friday, Kendra and her friend flew out tonight to San Francisco for their Spring Break/College Visit trip, my oldest son, Bart is off to Columbus, OH to see an old friend and meet up with his girlfriend who goes to school not too far from there, and my dh is off at a sleep clinic for the night getting his sleep monitored and analyzed. And I, I am pretty much a mess.

I had a first interview for one of the jobs on Friday and it went well. So I should be happy right? But taking this step means that I am going to be giving up an identity that has defined me for 20 years, if I take a job I will not be a foster mom any more. And I really think that once I get out of it, there is no way that I will convince my dh to get back in again. So I am doing grieving stuff in my head.

Dancing Baby Girl's situation is not improving and I am very concerned that she and her birth parents are not bonding. The parents seem way too eager for me to come get her at every opportunity and DBG resists with every fiber of her being going back to be with them. There is no specific concern of abuse but things just don't feel right to me. On top of that DBG is developing some behaviors that I find very difficult to deal with, a lot of attitude stuff, and screaming instead of discussing, etc. Makes me really wonder if anyone is listening to her.

On our walk to day, actually our pull since she sat in the wagon, when I started to turn down a street she was yelling and screaming at me. When I told her she only had to speak nicely to me and ask to not turn down that street and I would listen to her she looked at me like "OH". Anyway at the next block she says sweet as can be "Mommy, go that way, not this way." and she remembered to speak respectfully the rest of the walk. It is like she thinks that she will not be listened to at all so she has to start out fighting at the top of her voice. She didn't use to be like that.

So there is that. On top of all this coming and going we have been in contact with our oldest daughter's placement and she is sliding quickly downhill following the typical pathways. First she holds her bowels and despite repeated medical intervention she will not poop, so then she gets rashes and bladder infections which trigger her PTSD something awful. Then she gets paranoid that the staff are not helping her, they are trying to hurt her, ditto for medical folk and for the medicines she is prescribed. Fairly soon she will slip into psychosis and then she will either hurt herself or others. Then she will put into the psych hospital and it will be very horrible for a few weeks. Even when she has gotten "better", she will have in all likelihood lost her placement and she will have to sit in the psych hospital indefinitely until another provider decides to take a chance on her. I do not mean to be pessimistic, it is just that we have experienced this cycle with her since she was 8 years old and in 12 years I have learned to see it coming from afar.
Often it is frustrating because there is no specific triggering event, but this time it is even more frustrating because there is one. Last week her SW went down to talk with her and got her all excited about going to court in a few months and becoming her own guardian. (Without our knowledge) Now this is a young woman with an IQ of 55 (on a good day), with repeated psychotic breaks, who has major medical issues that might require surgery in the near future and who takes many medications each day that she has no clue how to take on her own. I think she is a great candidate for emancipation don't you? This has obviously scared Brooke quite a bit and she is beside herself with anxiety.

A little background, three years ago when she was 16.5 we had to let her go into the temporary custody of the state in order for her to get services. There is a good program called Supports for Community Living but she would not be eligible until age 21 and even then there would be a 10 year waiting list. Except that there was a loophole, if she was in state's custody they could get her into the program through the backdoor and when she turned 21 and aged out of the state's care as a foster child she would have a backdoor right into the funding source. Good plan, on paper anyway. What is now happening is that the state is trying to get her emancipated before her 21st birthday so that she will not be eligible for the SCL waiver.

We will of course be fighting all of this, but boy it makes me tired and messes with my head.

To add to the messy theme, my house has reached gross and disgusting and I have little to no interest in getting in there and doing the deep cleaning and organizing that needs to be done. One of the side effects of the depression that has gripped me since Dancing Baby Girl was reunited is that simple organizational tasks around the house just become impossible. Partly I know it is because there is too much in the house that reminds me of her living with us.

I need to go to bed. Sorry for the late night ramblings.

A New Training Class

Last night I started a training for a new class of foster/adoptive parents. It is a small group after last time, only about a third as many participants. But it is a good class, there doesn't seem to be a lot of naivety, they were not shocked by the some of the stories and they asked good questions.

One question that is always asked is whether very young foster/adoptive children (not infants) have issues from the abuse and neglect that they suffered. And I have to explain that for many of the children the abuse begins even before birth when the mother is drinking or drugging and the long term effects on the baby's brain. People also do not want to struggle with the idea that small children are getting hurt by their parents and they would prefer to think that the children "forget" or "get over it" just because they are young.

I assure my families that I train that I do not sugarcoat anything, it is all painfuly real in my classes. That has scared away some folks but better for them to be scared away before they have a child in the home then for them to be one more failed placement for these kids.

Sometimes I even depress myself though, we are such a dark place with 2 out of our 3 adopted children living away from home in treatment facilities, and our last foster care placement ending in a traumatic reunification with the birth parents. I am not exactly the most positive person to be representing the foster/adoptive system right now.

I will try not to scare away this new crop of potential families as they are so desperately needed.

PS the picture doesn't have much to do with anything, just a happier time in our family.

A 15th Birthday

This is my beautiful dancing girl a couple of years ago but it is a picture that expresses her well. All beauty and grace, in constant motion, reaching for the best things out there.

My darling dancing girl turns 15 today and she is taller than I am. It is bittersweet to see your darlings grow up. She is doing a much better job of this whole teenage thing than any of her brothers and sisters. She reminds me that she had lots of opportunity to observe what wasn't going to work, and how not to win friends and influence people from her older sibs mistakes. Thank goodness she was one who could watch and learn. So many of our others had to prove it to themselves by doing it the really hard way.

For her birthday we are giving her a trip out to see her second oldest brother in Santa Cruz, California. It will not be the first time she has flown by herself, but it will be the first time she needs to change planes without an adult to guide her. She is going with a friend and they are so excited they are walking on air, or maybe leaping on air as they are both dancers!

I am thankful everyday that we have this darling bundle of joy and I reflect on how close we came to losing her, both in utero and then immediately after she was born. It was touch and go the first 2.5 years of her life but with God's help we managed to pull through. We were told that she was not a viable fetus, then that she would not live long after birth, then that she was dying of sepsis when she was 4 days old, then that she would never be able to digest food properly and would need to be tube fed and lead a restricted lifestyle. And now she is a vibrant, incredibly intelligent, socially savvy, beautiful and loving 15 yo! I thank God every day for the joy and happiness that she brings into the world and I am so grateful that we did not give up and insisted that she could do anything she set her mind to and then some. My miracle baby is 15 and healthy and wonderful!!

Ironic Break

We have been very busy here, lots of things going on.

But now that our team is out of the NCAA playoffs we don't HAVE to watch basketball till late in the night. Of course, at least some of us still will but attendance on the TV room couch will not be mandatory!

Most of my time at the end of last week and the weekend was taken up with teaching other people how to blog. Nothing like the new convert to get out and proselytize:) It was fun but demanding as we were setting up a private group of blogs and I got to be the administrator with all of the admin tasks to accomplish.

Other news on the horizon, I have two jobs that I have to consider and we have been weighing the pros and cons here. So many choices, so many people's needs to factor in. I have been tossing around going back to school and getting my MSSW. I have found a school that interests me and have been working out details. But we have also been struggling with a lot of finance issues and my husband's business is very effected by the downturn in the economy as many businesses put off technology upgrades whenever they view a questionable future.

Both of these jobs popped up this weekend and they are almost a perfect match for me. One is to be a full time Parent Recruiter/Trainer for a private therapeutic foster care program and the other is to be a part time Recruiter/Certification Specialist for another wonderful therapeutic foster care program. Both of these are located in my city, actually in my end of town! Since I have been a freelance trainer for many years now I have actually worked with both programs.

The dilemna? Well, I don't really want to work full-time as we have so much on our plate with 3 special needs young adults, 2 of whom we retain guardianship over and the other one we just wind up being responsible for, and my youngest child is just finishing her first year of high school so I do lots of schlepping around for her and her activities. Not to mention, my 3 yo former foster daughter is still a big part of our lives and spends most weekends with us, lots of time extended weekends. But the full time job offers benefits and one of the things that is killing us is paying for health insurance through my husband's business. The part time job is actually far more attractive in many ways but I am not sure that it will answer the financial issues. However with the part time job I could still go back to school and get my MSSW.

Its not a bad dilemna to have, as my darling teenage daughter sarcastically pointed out the local burger place is hiring night managers so there are jobs everywhere, but not good jobs like these that fit my profile so well. These jobs come along rarely so I have to jump one way or the other.

It is even more complicated by the fact that my dh is not exactly excited about me working, full time or part time. I am an assistance to him in his business and have actually given presentations and done some teaching/training for his clients. I do some of the paperwork, the finances, and edit his white papers before publication. I think I could still do a lot of this with a part time job. He is rightly concerned about job creep, as in part time job becoming more full time with out full pay. One good argument from his perspective for me getting a job is that I would not be able to foster also and he is feeling very done with the whole state system and foster care in general, although not the kids, just the system, but they are indivisable unfortunately.

So my mind is spinning around and around. I have one interview on Friday and the other place and I are playing phone tag to set up an interview. Last night at dinner I enlisted everyone's help to make a list of pros and cons for all 3 options, no job, part-time job, and full-time job. It didn't really help me but I think my daughter enjoyed feeling included in the decision making process.

Anyone out there have any opinions? reflections on their own experiences with juggling everything?

This will not be the first time I have worked, but since I got very ill in 2000 and quit work after a cancer scare and a hysterectomy it will be the first time I have been an employee again instead of an independent contactor.