two-week wait

I hope I’m not offending any of my readers who are trying to conceive in using this title, but it was the first thing that sprang to mind when I heard that (assuming that the judge rules the way we assume the judge will rule) Val and Alex will be transferred to their family’s care and custody two weeks from Friday, meaning my birthday will be the first day as parent of one again.

Right now I’m getting the practicalities done. I’ve informed all their teachers. I have loads of laundry going so we can send some clothes back with them tomorrow. I called my parents to see if instead of a dinner for my birthday we can go to the restaurant where we took Val and Alex for their first meal with us and have a goodbye celebration of sorts. I’ve collected and disseminated all sorts of information about what they’ve done with us and what they’ll need to do in their new home.

All of this is hard on the kids. They’re thrilled about going home, of course, but they’re also sort of scared and conflicted. We’ve been loosening up a bit because it doesn’t really matter if Val plays for an extra half hour and doesn’t get her homework done since in two weeks she’ll have a new classroom anyway. Her teacher knows we’re doing this (though pushing homework when we can) and said she’d do the same thing, just as Alex’s teachers have noticed him acting out and being wild more as he tries to deal with the transition and have chosen not to confront him about it too much but to let it slide because they know where it’s coming from.

At first, it was easier to connect to Val because she was excited about living with us and she was so verbal, whereas Alex seemed to just zoom around and never take in anything any of us said. It was clear pretty early on that he was taken with me, though, and by now he’s extremely attached. When he started talking today about how maybe I’m his mom right now, I think it wasn’t the manipulative testing I might have heard from Val but something more plaintive, that he feels conflicted about how much he cares for me. And even Val, with all her manipulation because she’s so desperate to be loved and respected, has clearly come to care about us a lot. I wish I’d made more progress with her than I think I have, but I think she’s learned a lot in her time with us and she knows that I love her and hope for a great future for her, especially if she can learn to push herself when she doesn’t want to do something. (Um, I struggle with that myself, though having kids helps on that front.)

Alex’s teachers are worried about his transition but positive about his resilience and how much he loves his parents. He doesn’t deal well with changes anyway, but the brusque director of his daycare is convinced that the stress will mean he won’t be able to be prepared for kindergarten. I generally tend to discount her because she’s such a grouch, but I do worry it’s going to really hard on Alex. He’s made a lot of progress and already is more prepared for kindergarten than Val was when she began, but I realize that they’re both coming from academic backgrounds that are less than ideal. Alex can write his name and recognize many (all? most, at least) of his letters and some of the sounds they make.

Then there’s Mara, who may or may not believe us that after two more visits with their parents Val and Alex will go back there for good. (After all this I expect to hear more about how she wants to go live with her parents like Val and Alex got to, though I know she recognizes all the things they’ve done that her parents didn’t.) She’s going to get the benefit of having two moms with their attention on her rather than more like one and a half moms caring for three kids. I know it’s going to be hard for her, though every sort of “sibling” she’s lived with before has ended up not living with her.

We have two weeks with three kids and two weekends of Thorn-Lee-Mara and Val and Alex with their family to make some sense of all of this and get some closure before this era comes to an end. I do think the relationship between the two families will be ongoing, but I don’t know what it will look like or how it will work. I do expect a lot of fallout from all three kids, and it’s a weird feeling to know that I’ll only be dealing with one of them. It’s not that I don’t trust the other kids’ family to be there for them, but I think it’ll take me a while to not be in the mod of thinking about what they’ll need next and what I can do to help them. I’ll get to deal with Mara, a little girl who’s had a whole lot of loss in her life and is about to have a lot more, and trust that she can handle that loss with help from the moms who love her while I trust that Val and Alex will get what they need from the family that loves them desperately and intensely. Hard as it’s going to be, I’m glad we all get to go home.

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