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.

That all sounds complicated, but I can at least say that everyone’s on the same page and we have the sort of plan I expected. In another two or three weeks, there will be a court hearing where the family’s social worker recommends that the parents no longer be required to have supervised visits (which I actually thought had happened already and certainly should have given what we’d been told about how much progress the parents had to make to be granted this) and that the relatives whose house they live in be granted temporary custody of the kids while the parents finish everything on their case plan to regain permanent custody.

I see no reason the judge wouldn’t accept that plan, though I suppose I should prepare myself for the possibility. The plan will be that the week the decision comes through, the kids will stay with us through the school week, as usual. Then when their parents come to pick them up that Friday as usual, they’ll move out permanently to live with their extended family.

This sounds like a good plan, though I’m frustrated that we still don’t have a date for when anything will actually happen. I’m frustrated, too, at how much their worker kept assigning blame to other people and minimizing her own involvement or what she’d told all of us in preparation for what turned out to be a mediation session. I could say more about that, but there’s no point.

At any rate, we’re going to make these last few weeks as fun as we can. I gave the family and the social worker a page where I’d written out all the children’s medical providers, their contact information, when the last appointment was, and when the next appointment should be. That way if it ever gets lost in a move or whatever, the worker will have a copy of it all in one place. So that was something that the worker actually appreciated and I’m glad it felt like I was doing something right. I’m glad that progress is being made, but as always it seems painfully slow. I guess we should be used to that by now.

First, I’ll skirt the issue by saying that Lee has been fantastic lately and I think that our relationship is getting to be in really great shape. The tension that was there between us has faded to a reliable comfort. Having the week while Val and Alex were with their family and we were home as just a family of three made a huge difference, I think. I still don’t leave her with all three kids while they’re all awake, but doing extra work myself to keep her from getting too stressed seems to be working without completely destroying me. (The sleep thing is brutal, but I only have to get through one more night of it before I can sleep! And that makes it doable.) She also impressed me by putting barrettes on some of Mara’s twists before they left for school the other day, the first time she’s ever done that. Often she’s unhappy with how Mara’s hair looks but I can’t intervene since I’m on my way to work/school dropoff by the time she wakes Mara and so Lee has just been ignoring it. This is a big step too. And I don’t mean any of this to sound dismissive. There are things that are hard for her because of emotional blocks or whatever and so getting over them is huge.

Our worker came over for our annual homestudy update and her regular monthly visit. She was very complimentary about how we’ve done with this foster placement, though she knows about the hard parts and how close we got to disruption. She thinks that the case wouldn’t be at reunification if I hadn’t worked so hard to create a united front with the parents, which helped us connect with them so that advocating for the kids meant advocating for what was best for the whole family but also because they trusted us and got more than the minimum level of contact and were able to use that as an inspiration to do what they needed to do. I still really look at this as just having done my job, but going to our local support group has made it abundantly clear that lots of other foster parents disagree and our worker certainly thinks we’re exemplary in this regard. (Oh, and things also got done mostly because Lee would get fed up and send a strongly worded email to the family’s worker, sometimes copying her supervisor. I wasn’t always happy about this, but it was certainly effective.)

I told her that my goal long-term is to be one of the experienced parents who teaches the various classes required for licensing. She countered with something even better that I can do now, some sort of committee on best practices. Some caseworkers, foster parents, and biological parents (I’m assuming whose kids are no longer in care, but I don’t know all the details) meet to talk about what can be done to improve foster parent-bio parent relationships. I think that could be a great fit for me and I’m very excited about the opportunities.

Oh, and she looked into the sibling group I’d asked about, two older (tween and teen) kids available for adoption. There are no red flags, but there might be some benefits to keeping them in their home city. There’s just something about one of them that made me feel like I had to ask, even though we’re not ready for more kids yet and even though Lee is really going to have to prove a lot to me before we ever are ready again (and maybe vice versa) but I’m glad I got my answer and I’m glad we’ll get a few more answers from their worker. And there’s also a local girl who’s going to need an adoptive home but will spend the rest of the school year with her current foster family. I wasn’t immediately thrilled by some of the description, but I think that’s because I really, really want older kids, not early grade school. Still, our worker thinks we could be a good fit for cultural and other reasons and we’re not ruling anything out.

One part of me would love to keep fostering but just do it in a very mindful way, only taking placement of children who really meet the criteria for what we think we can handle best. But I’m also terrified, because it puts a lot of pressure on me to be the more primary parent when my job is not always flexible. Well, I’m hesitant because of that. I’m terrified because if we did this again and Lee’s response was as negative as hers initially was, I don’t know how long I could keep running everything. For way too long, I was effectively being a single parent plus dealing with tantrums and seemingly unrelenting hostility from Lee, not to mention all the extras that come along with being a foster parent regardless. With the imbalance we’re dealing with now, it’s doable and would be more doable with older kids who were more independent and definitely if I could sleep through the night more often. I know there are no guarantees, though, and I really don’t want us to get in over our heads. But I like that the agency staff and the kids’ parents think I’m a good foster parent. Even I think I’ve been one. And so if I can use that to do something positive for other kids in care even if I don’t get to foster again, that’s going to be better than nothing.

Lee has been trying to talk to Mara more about her thoughts on Val and Alex leaving. Last night Mara’s input was that Val should go with her mom and dad but Alex should stay here and play with her! We explained that it wasn’t going to happen that way, but I suspect Mara still thought her version was better.

I know she’ll miss Val and Alex a lot, but I think she understands what’s happening. I love that all the possible duos within their little group of three work well. Val and Alex are used to being together at all times and love to play and sing together. Alex and Mara both have ridiculous four-year-old senses of humor and make each other laugh and laugh and laugh as their stories or jokes get more inventive. Val is very much into gender segregation, which is appropriate for her age, and she’s gotten Mara doing more “girl” things like getting frustrated trying to put shoes on Barbies and spending ages working together to fill the chalkboard with drawings.

Tomorrow, we’re supposed to pick up Mara’s three oldest (half)siblings — a 16-year-old I’ll call Desiree, 9-year-old Franca, and 8-year-old Andre — and take them to watch a game at Lee’s school. This will be the same scenario in which we met Samara’s brother last year, but these are three of the kids being raised by their mom’s sister Odelia rather than the one being raised by mom’s former stepsister Samara, so I haven’t gotten to hear through the grapevine whether he’ll be there too. This will be our first time with Mara’s siblings when we aren’t also with their guardians, which is why I’d initially asked to take the younger two. I think it will help Mara and us get to know them better (and vice versa!) to see them in smaller groups instead of among the dozens of extended family members who seem to be involved every time we have a get-together. We’ll keep doing those too and I know that Mara’s grandma and others will be there to see us when we get the kids tomorrow, but I’m looking forward to forging more personal connections too.

Oh, and Mara’s aunt asked us if we could find a mentor for Mara’s oldest sister, Desiree, or mentor her ourselves, which would be my preference. She and Lee love the same sport, so I’m hoping they’ll hit it off and I can bring her into my ACT prep tutoring at church when she’s ready for that. (If anyone remembers back in the first year of the blog when we used to formally mentor two young girls through a local program, one of them is now 17 and also will be part of this group because she’s reached out to me for help, which is pretty cool.) I’m hoping we’ll click with her and the one time we met her was very pleasant, so I’m looking forward to getting more time to talk, even though having three extra kids means having to borrow my mom’s van to do safe transport.

I’ve been thinking about open adoptions and the relationship I want us to have with Mara’s siblings and extended family. I was reading somewhere online (probably on Open Adoption Support) about a family saying they’d never let their adopted child’s birth family spend time with the child without their being present, and I realized that that’s not really my goal. I mean, at this point Mara’s not comfortable enough to be at her aunt’s house for the afternoon without us there but that’s because that’s how she is at this age, not because I have any reason to believe she wouldn’t be safe or cared for there. In fact, I expect she’ll eventually have overnights with the sister closest in age to her whether with us or with them, that I may even loosen a little of my control and leave her there to get her hair braided while I go out to get groceries or something. I read this comment and remember thinking huh, that I didn’t feel guilty about asking Mara’s aunt to let us take some of her siblings out, though I’d specifically asked for more than one at a time so it would feel more comfortable for them and for her. And I wonder if general classism would say that of course it’s fine for us to offer to take these kids who are living in public housing out for a meal and a sports event or to the zoo when the weather is nicer or whatever else, but actually taking our beloved daughter to the housing projects and leaving her there is something really different. I think my goal is to do what I can to help not just Mara but her siblings too feel comfortable with the kind of code-switching that means you can go to the projects or to the zoo or to a college and know what the local rules are, know how to behave and feel comfortable.

I think Mara’s family is in the same boat. They’ve made a commitment to considering us family, just as we’ve done with them, but it’s not entirely clear yet what that will mean. The aunt, Odelia, said something like, “Anything you or anyone can do for these kids is great. I never turn aside a blessing.” I do think that’s her attitude to parenting, and it would sort of have to be to manage being the single parent of eight, I think. She’s not trying to use us, but anything we can do to help enrich the lives of any of Mara’s siblings or cousins is going to be welcome. We’re interested in helping because it’s good for Mara to spend time with her relatives and keep them part of our larger family, but also because they’re all sweet, smart, funny kids just like Mara is and it’s a pleasure to be around them. I don’t have any idea how our little family is going to grow after Val and Alex leave, but I know that incorporating Mara’s family into our collective extended family is going to be a part of that. I think it will be good for Lee and me too. Knowing and loving Mara certainly has been!

It great to see both how happy and relaxed both kids were with their parents, but it also seemed good for all of us that the kids got overstimulated and exhausted and emotional and they got to see their parents and foster parents address it in a consistent and supportive way. When Alex went into the living room with a sippy cup, his dad said, “Well at least he can’t spill that as easily as usual!” and I said that he was doing better, generally getting almost to the end of the meal before spilling his drink. His mom laughed and said, “Yeah, but how many times has he fallen out of his chair by then? He always does that!” And maybe that sounds cruel written out, but there was sort of a palpable exhalation then as the three of us acknowledged that yes, our interactions with him while he’s been in my care, at home with both parents before entering care, with the other parent at the visits during the incarceration have all been about the same kid we all love and mop up after with stunning regularity.

It’s always been clear how much their parents love them, but seeing Alex’s mom cry because she’s so proud of him as he showed her how he can write his name now (albeit with most of his letters mirrored) was just awesome. Seeing Val curl up between her parents as they casually draped their arms around her showed how ready they are to go back to normal day-to-day family life. Val showed off her homework and the hairstyle her half-sister had given her over the weekend. Meanwhile, I was able to empty the dishwasher and tidy up the kitchen without having to worry about what the kids were up to. They were being parented. They were safe, secure, happy.

I’m tying up the loose ends to get us ready to transition them back to their parents’ care, whenever that will happen. We’re still a week or two away from the meeting where the details will be decided, but I’ve gotten their cavities sealed, taken them to the eye doctor. I’ll print out a list of all the doctors they’ve seen and when they’re supposed to go back again. I gave their parents a big stack of photos, but I’ll also have to gather all the pictures I’ve taken and make sure I burn cds or something to make sure the parents have copies of all the originals and can get more made if they ever want to. I need to finish the kids’ lifebooks, which in this case will be a little bit about where they lived before coming to us and then mostly just what they did while with us, and get them printed.

Assuming everything stays on track, starting after school Friday the kids will get their first weekend with their parents since before they came to us in September. They’ll be spending the school week with us and their weekends with their parents until we have a plan to do more time there (which would be logistically difficult as they’ll be living almost 30 minutes away) or move them permanently.

Lee has been doing so much better these past few weeks. She’s taking a more active role in parenting to some extent, but mostly it’s just that she’s supporting me in ways that are actually helpful. When we have our weekends without Val and Alex, our little family, she’s been making it a priority to stay with us and be actively involved with us, where in the past she’d have wanted to go out and socialize with her friends or take long naps or watch sports with minimal interruptions. I still don’t know whether this means fostering again might be in the cards for us, but it’s made my life so much better and improved our relationship significantly.

I know there’s been a lot of grief in this whole process — Val and Alex missing their parents and the relative who’d been raising them, their parents deeply hurt by their lack of access to the kids, what I think was Lee’s trauma-influenced response to having extra kids around, the way I had to put my life on hold to pick up the slack, Mara’s chance to love another “brother” and “sister” who won’t live with her forever — I also think it’s been as positive as it could be in many ways. I don’t think the kids’ parents would have been as open with us as they have been if this had been the kids’ first placement after removal, but they’d had time to get used to the idea of separation and were able to want the kids’ needs to be met while they got themselves ready to parent again. Our worker thinks that it helped that I laid the groundwork for trusting and supporting them from the very beginning, made it clear that they were welcome in our family and our lives because their children were going to be a part of our family and our lives. The more time I spend at the foster parent support group, the more I realize how rare that is, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes I really think just because the foster families are insecure. While I assume Val and Alex will have to switch schools and that grates when the reason we accepted a placement outside our parameters was to keep them in their schools, they’ve gotten through half the year with that stability and security and I’m sure that being with their parents will help smooth the transition to a new school. And the odds are good that if they’d gone to another home rather than ours, it wouldn’t have been in the rural area where their relatives live and so they’d be changing schools for a second time this year, which is definitely not good. Val and Alex have had their ups and downs, but their teachers and parents agree that they’re thriving here, that we’ve helped them do well in school and emotionally, which I hope will help give them the grounding to get them through their next move.

They could be with us another month, but it was clear to all of us that yesterday was the beginning of the end. And it was a beautiful thing.

For now, though, I want to tell the whole long story of Mara’s Christmas dinner. I’ll put the spoiler first by saying that when Lee was asked later in the week what her favorite Christmas present was, she didn’t hesitate before saying, “Meeting Mara’s mom.” (She may have said “birth mom” or something like that; I wasn’t there. But she speaks about Mara’s mom/birth mom/bio mom/first mom with a lot more respect than she does her own and often without any qualifier.) And yeah, that was my favorite too, and probably Mara’s.

See, Mara’s grandmother (her mom’s mom) had called me a few days before Christmas and asked us to have dinner with the family. Saying yes was a no-brainer, especially since Lee had gotten all mopey about how we weren’t going to have a traditional Christmas feast and I was not at my best in responding to that whining. But the family was going to be attending a free meal at a local convention center, complete with free toys for all the kids. Obviously this was geared at people who couldn’t afford a big celebration, which is not really a group that includes us. I got all mentally twisted up about it, whether it was us taking advantage of the system or if it was a way to do what we want to do in helping Mara learn to comfortable cross class lines. Eventually I looked up the website of the sponsoring organization and saw that it was listed as being for people who wouldn’t otherwise have a large celebration (us!) and that the main sponsor was a local grocery store, where I’d made donations toward their feeding-hungry-people programs several times already. So I felt fine justifying it and would have gone even if I’d felt a little uncomfortable just because I think it’s important for Mara to see her family, and especially good for all the kids to link that to Christmas.

We arrived a few minutes before the rest of the family, which was a group of 15 or so, her grandmother, two aunts, and their children plus Mara’s four siblings that her aunt is raising. We’d already gone through the buffet line, where I did in fact take one of the last little servings of cranberry sauce even though someone hungrier than I might have wanted one, and were trying to get a big table when the others arrived. Mara’s aunt immediately took me aside and said, “One of the kids said she saw that Mara’s mom is here.” She looked a little nervous about this, though I’m not sure if that was because this meant the kids she was raising would see their mom, which hadn’t happened since summer, or because she wasn’t sure how Mara’s mom (and let’s call her Veronica) would respond to us, or maybe just because she was trying to herd 15 kids through a lunch line.

I went back to our chair, told Lee this, and we had a second to think about what we’d say, since surely we’d end up interacting with her. Before we had a chance to do much more than take a few breaths, a woman came up to us and introduced herself as Veronica. She has Mara’s forehead and cheeks exactly, though I read a sort of slow sadness about her. She’d come with friends and was finishing her meal before dashing off to her job, but she wanted to make sure she said hi to us. She’d gotten the photos I’d sent her social worker, which was news to me, and she appreciated seeing that Mara was being cared for well. She told Mara how much she loves her, that she thinks of her every day. She told us what a relief it is to know Mara’s safe and that she got all the paperwork for the termination of her rights and knew what was going on, which tells us that as we’d suspected she didn’t want to fight the process but didn’t want to sign away her rights either. (This is sort of too bad since now the state has grounds to remove any future children at birth, but they might have anyway if she’d had another voluntary termination with Mara.)

We talked a little more, but I was amazed both that she was brave enough to come up to us and just talk to us and by how easy it was to talk to her. I told her a little about how we talk to Mara about her and she and I both cried some. Mara was mostly quiet during the whole time, but shyly and carefully watched her mother. I know she has more mixed feelings about her mom, whom she’d last seen around her second birthday and who did fail at parenting in ways that eventually got Mara removed, than the seemingly all-positive feelings for her dad, who left her life much earlier and seems to have been almost entirely a positive part of it before then. Mara wasn’t scared at all, though, and didn’t hide against one of us the way she sometimes does with strangers. She sat and looked her mother over, drinking it in. I got a great photo of Mara with Lee on one side of her and Veronica on the other where it’s clear how much she gets her looks and her smile from her mom.

Veronica went to talk to her other children, but I’d brought extra photos of Mara and her siblings from the last visit, so I gave one of those to Veronica with my phone number on the back and she gave me her number to put in my phone. We’ve been in touch since then, and I hope we’ll meet again this weekend, which should let Mara feel more comfortable with her and let all of us talk a little more. It’ll also almost certainly mean Mara will grill her about breastfeeding, which has been her most common question since we saw Veronica. I do know from medical files that Veronica breastfed Mara at least sometimes, though she was pregnant again when Mara was awfully small and so it may not have lasted long. Mara’s fascinated with this and will probably be disappointed to learn that Lee and I are right and Veronica does not in fact have milk for her anymore, but I’m sure she’s going to ask.

Veronica never seemed to talk much to the adults in her family. Mara’s grandmother insists that this was a Christmas miracle just like it was God’s plan that Samara’s brother recognized Mara and approached us almost a year ago, setting off the chain of events that let us finally reunite Mara with her siblings on her mom’s side and basically bring her back into the family socially even after she’d legally left it. Lee’s on the same page she is, seeing a divine plan in all of this. I’m not convinced, of course, and I’ve always expected that we’d run into family someday just by luck but also because I’ve put a lot of work into looking for her family members, letting them know we’re interested in contact, laying the groundwork that is helping this go smoothly.

Mara was able to celebrate Christmas with us, with her brothers and sisters and cousins, with her and aunts grandma on that side, with her mom that day and her dad a few days later, with my parents a few days before they left to visit my grandmother and again when they returned with gifts from the relatives who’d been there, with Val and Alex at our house and by phone at her request on Christmas evening, when the social worker did her monthly visit and brought donated presents for Val and Alex and I supplemented with presents I had ready so Mara would have some too, at Lee’s office where coworkers threw an adoption shower, not to mention at school with friends and probably other places I’m not thinking of now. For a little girl who came to us fifteen months ago seemingly so disconnected from everyone, that’s a lot of connection to people who love her. I’m so happy they all get to see how amazing she is and I’m grateful to have met some wonderful people I probably otherwise wouldn’t have. Last Christmas, I was connecting Mara to my extended family and grieving the absence of hers. It’s not an either/or now, just love and love and love. And that’s a gift.

So yeah, it’s Lee’s birthday. Leah (her birthmother) sent her a card yesterday and she opened it and read it, which is good. I love that connecting to Mara’s sadness and to Mara’s family has pushed how she feels about her own. She’s been hanging old family pictures from both branches of her family in the hallway toward our kitchen, and I love it!

I’m also super proud of Lee because initially she’d hoped I could get Alex and Val to stay with their former family caregiver for the evening so we could have a family dinner out, then decided that they’d realize it wasn’t fair to them. (I was pushing for a babysitter and a dinner for just the moms, but that may have been for reasons that were more selfish than celebratory.) After looking at her options, she decided the best thing to do was go to dinner together as a full family and then a basketball game at her school. That’s the kind of decision I’ve wanted her to make for the whole time Val and Alex have been with us, and so she got all sorts of praise from me for that.

Then it turned out that the basketball game wouldn’t start until 7:30, when the kids need to be in bed. And then today we found out it was actually canceled. So she gets the credit for being willing to go, but a friend of hers who was supposed to go to the game is going to come over so we can sing and do presents and then they’ll go out together while I do kid care. Once the kids are in bed and Lee has had some fun and got to feel like the kind of grownup who has fun, she’ll come back home and she and I can watch a tv show or something before we fall asleep.

It’s been such a huge help to have Lee as a more active parenting partner lately. I understand some of her reservations and hesitations before, but she’s embraced her role and is making great progress. The fostering part of this year has been so tough on her and thus us, but she’s thrilled about being Mara’s adoptive mom. And we managed to buy a house, move into it, and start making it our home! (Oh, and sell our old house, which was also a huge relief.) She’s a year away from one of those huge milestone birthdays and I think Mara and I and whatever other kid(s) we may have at the time will be better able to make it a celebration than I was this year, but she has a lot of people who love her and have benefited from her presence and activity in their lives. She and I are still learning about what we can do as parents and as partners, but we’re managing to do it in ways that pull us together rather than dragging us apart. That alone is a big one.

So happy birthday, love, and I’m glad you don’t read here but that you respect that blogging helps me and that sometimes visiting the friends I make from blogging helps me even more. Once Alex and Val go home, I think we’ll take a trip to a big city where I can see some blog-adjacent friends and we can build some exciting new memories as a family. We have a lot to look forward to before then, too.

I’ve been thinking a little more about Pippi lately, about to what extent her bravado covers up her fears or whether I’m being silly to even think about that. I think about how Val really isn’t a good liar and yet she sure seems to want to be believed when she’s telling her stories, so I try to let her know that I don’t believe but that I respect her need to feel heard. I think about how Mara alternates being fearless and too nervous at the playground and how I wish Alex would show a little more of the latter, though his feats of athleticism haven’t led to injury yet. I see how gentle all three of them are with our animals. They all have that mix of too old and too young for their ages that is really probably just part of being their age but also part of having complicated histories.

Mara’s sisters called on Saturday. I was supervising one of the other kids in the bathtub and my phone rang with a chipper nine-year-old on the other end. Mara was so excited about the call, but from what I could hear mostly talked in nonsense words rather than trying to explain herself. She was ecstatic about it when I talked to her about the call, just glowing. Then she had a horrible night where she didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin and seemed to be fighting bad dreams, after which she woke up itchy and eventually frighteningly bumpy. The hospital diagnosed hives when I got her there and it was a relief that they went away as quickly as they’d arrived. I can’t think of what other than that unexpected family contact was something new that might have been a trigger, but if family visits mean we’ll have to load up on benadryl, I’m okay with that and I know Mara would be too.

One essential thing we learned on our last visit with Mara’s family was that one of her older siblings also has pica, that in fact this sibling once ate almost an entire shoe, which is funny in retrospect but I’m sure scary at the time. While Mara’s preschool director had suggested her pica could be part of a sensory processing disorder of some sort, I’m more inclined to think it lies somewhere on the OCD spectrum and that it’s one of several self-soothing techniques she developed as an underparented baby. When she drinks out of a cup with no lid, she often won’t touch her hair, but drinking out of a sippy cup or a straw seems to take her back to her “bottle” feeling and she immediately starts tugging gently on her hair, which is also something she does at bedtime.

Because of the pica, we get Mara’s lead tested twice a year and she’s still in the safe range and I’m pretty sure the documentation shows that the one time she tested high (well before she came to us) was because of contamination on her finger rather than in her blood. She knows not to eat her hair if she pulls it out when she’s bored at naptime or her blanket when she’s bored at naptime, but eventually being bored will take over and she’ll do those things if one of her teachers doesn’t notice and pass one of her chew toys to her, in which case she’ll chew that and not eat anything and also not pull out her hair, though she may pat or tug it. We still rock her to sleep at night in part because I don’t think she’s ready to go to sleep on her own without eating inappropriate items if she’s frustrated. The incident report from when she ate a plant at school last week signals that it, too, was during naptime, so we know that’s the key.

Beyond that, though, I just have to be aware that things might go in her mouth for her to chew and possibly eat. I’ve been trying to avoid hair beads because I want protective styles for her fast-growing healthy hair, but also because beads and barrettes often end up in her mouth and then maybe her stomach. She’s only eaten a few really worrisome things, but occasionally there will be a stick or some dirt or ice (and I’m so guilty of that last one, and yes, I’m probably generally anemic) and no real pattern to what might have made them appealing one day and not the next. Well, ice is always appealing to her and to me, but she doesn’t show any of the deficiencies that sometimes can trigger that. She doesn’t have unfettered access to the freezer, so ice is a rare treat and usually only available when we go out to eat.

We had to reschedule her four-year checkup because she had a sinus infection back at her birthday time, but she’ll get checked by a dentist and by her doctor in the coming weeks and I’m sure we’ll have more official input from people who know more about what we should expect and what’s going on. For now, I’m inclined to think (as I said) that this is partly a remnant of her time alone as a baby and the nutritional deprivation that at least sometimes went along with it. It’s also probably got a genetic component since a sibling she was never raised with and who had (I think) a different sort of upbringing has the same issue. I’m not sure if I’m inclined not to call it sensory just because I’m inclined not to or if I’m missing out on insight there, so I’ll check into that and also maybe let her start trying gum and seeing if I can get her to spit it out rather than swallow it.

Part of all of this is that I want Mara to be healthy, but it doesn’t really bother me if to some extent she wants to metaphorically walk backwards, do some of her Pippi thing. She needs to learn that she doesn’t eat anything that isn’t food (or, um, ice, which is basically a food because hello, water!) and we’ve been working on that since she was first placed with us, with considerable success. That doesn’t mean she’s not going to eat anything inappropriate or that I’m going to take away her chew toys, but her pica episodes are getting much more rare and (at least until the potted plant) less dramatic. Because I see progress, I’m hoping that as she gets more attached to us and more comfortable with her life, she’ll feel less need for the satisfaction pica brings her. She’s growing up, and I hope pica is one of those childish things she’ll be able to put aside, at least to some extent as she finds her way. As usual, I have faith in her.

Val took her own advice from yesterday and made herself a “letter” from her incarcerated parent with pictures drawn in and lots of wiggly lines to be the words. She has it in a pocket of her backpack so it’s there when she needs it. I complimented her on her initiative and I really am impressed that she decided what she wanted and then made sure she got it! We also had a better morning because I woke her by telling her it was time to put on her dress rather than a shirt. Well, also probably because I made her go to bed extra early. That’s going to be the norm for a while, because she really does need 10-11 hours of sleep, though that means we don’t get a whole lot of time at home awake in the evenings.

On the not-so-great side, she’s been doing a fair amount of stealing, though she’s not very good at it and so far I’ve been able to either head her off at the pass (easy since she’s drawn to fancy pens and markers, so I know to do a tally before letting her leave school) or get her to return things. I’m not really sure how to deal with this other than by just saying, “Welp, I know you took that from somewhere, so was it the afterschool program or the museum?” She’s not necessarily going to tell me the truth, but I can strong-arm her into returning it somewhere. Her at-home parent hadn’t noticed her taking things she wasn’t supposed to have but is definitely fed up with her talking back and just generally not wanting to be compliant. We all attribute this mostly to feeling emotionally mixed and out of control in her life right now. (I also think she was a lot more successful at manipulating people to get what she wanted in previous family setups and I know she’s still managing that pretty successfully at school.) It’s just hard to deal with, especially when she’s started feeling like she’s a bad kid because she keeps getting caught doing stuff she’s not supposed to do. Here, too, extra sleep has a huge positive impact. If I can get her into a time out at a strategic moment (soon after getting home from school, especially) she’ll take a nap and then do much better, but I can’t make her fall asleep. Lee and I are both making efforts to spend more time one-on-one with her because I think she’ll do better if she can get attention in positive ways and we reinforce that.

Alex is holding up well and doing better at preschool and daycare these days. He no longer needs an elaborate good-bye ritual and he trusts that I’ll be there to pick him up at the end of every day, though he’s occasionally irate when the driver is Lee instead, which isn’t ideal. He needs a lot of time with me, and I’ve been carrying him in the backpack sometimes. (I needed to do that with Mara too this weekend. It helps them feel better and lets me get things done, but when I’ve already been dealing with intense back pain is probably not a great long-term plan.) He’s doing a lot of “repembering” (his word for “pretending” and one of his few consistent mispronunciations) and does a good job playing by himself when the girls are paired off doing their own thing, though he’d really be happiest if I watched him all day and all night. He plugged the end of a paper towel roll with a pinecone and slid it over his arm to turn himself into a robot, which was awesome. I love his creativity and how intensely he feels things, though it can be hard to redirect him without hurting his feelings.

Mara is going through a defiant phase with us, but doing well with Val and Alex. I think that she’s headed toward a growth spurt, which usually seems to be preceded by this mix of what seems to be misdirected fury and emotional neediness. I haven’t spent enough time with Val and Alex to do more than just guess about what signals they might be sending (though, really, a year with Mara is in some ways not a long time) and I appreciate having their parents’ input too. It’s another reason I feel like we’re working as a team to provide consistent care. For the most part, though, Mara’s still being hilarious and she’s always friendly and fun when interacting with Alex and Val. She’s gotten better at having boundaries, knowing when she wants to share her toys and when she doesn’t want someone who tends to break or lose things to get a second chance.

The only school problem Mara has had lately is that during her nap time last week she ate a houseplant, although I’m not sure exactly how much she got down before a teacher noticed. The preschool director was in the room at the time and yelled at Mara to stop and not eat plants, which made Mara break down and cry hysterically since she’s never disappointed the director before. Lee was called and came up to check on things while I googled poison control details. Mara was fine and didn’t seem terribly bothered by the experience, though she’s said, “When I ate a plant, I crying!” many times since then, which is useful since we get to remind her NOT TO EAT THINGS THAT AREN’T FOOD! Ah, parenting pica is not one of my best skills. And the program director wants us to ask her doctor whether maybe it’s some sort of sensory processing problem where Mara likes the feeling of having something in her mouth, so I guess I’ll do that. The director said there’s a medicine she’s seen work for kids in the past, but she told Lee that and at this point I think the message is so garbled that I have no idea what she’s talking about. We’ll see and I’ll talk to her, but clearly the pica is much, much better but still not gone.

Here’s where I point out before the commenters do that I said all the kids are seeming needy and I know I’m only doing some of what I should/can/must to meet those needs. I’m feeling pretty needy myself these days, but I have a day off work this week to rest and knit and take a bath and maybe recharge myself to the point where I can have a child on each hip without them kicking at each other and complaining that they each want to be the only one being held. Now that Lee is willing to spend more time doing childcare, we’re able to parcel out more one-on-one child-with-adult time, which I do think (and 1-2-3 Magic also insists) should be key to helping them feel connected.

A friend has been talking and thinking recently about what it means to be a good-enough parent as opposed to a good one. I didn’t have an answer and I still don’t. I do think I’m being good enough in getting the kids dressed, fed, washed, nurtured, but I’m still not giving them everything they want. Because all three of them want access to parents who are inaccessible to them, I can’t give them everything they want and I’m usually but not always okay with that part of the job. I’m not trying to raise any of them to be spoiled and that’s not what I mean in giving them what they want, but all of this is just complicated. It’s sometimes hard to know what’s the balance of what’s acceptable normal child behavior and what crosses the line, whether it’s counter-productive to have different discipline strategies for different kids, how to deal with three different sleep schedules and preferences that don’t always overlap with my own desires for sleep. I guess it’s worth reminding myself that I’m good enough at taking care of little kids but don’t find it rewarding the same way I do dealing with kids who are older. So much of this is drudgery, repetitive drudgery, and I’m having a hard time with that. Luckily we’re all working with good intentions and trying to, as Val would say, “be easy” with one another. I think that will eventually get us where we need to go.

I’d been planning not to talk about this directly, but I’ve changed my mind and am trying to do it in as careful and respectful a manner as possible. About three weeks ago, one of their parents was arrested. I wrote about it somewhat obliquely at the time, but there was a week or so when none of us knew what was going on and what this would do to the case plan and so on. There have been times where because I have internet access and can look at jail and court records that are publicly available, I’ve known more about what’s going on and what the timelines are than the family members of the incarcerated parent, which feels very odd to me. Even though dealing with an incarcerated parent is pretty common in foster care, the way this has happened has been hard on all of us in different ways.

First off, as I said in my previous post, this change in circumstances is not a sign that the incarcerated parent has done anything “bad” or slipped back into dangerous habits. The arrest was for an administrative issue, that the summons to appear at a court hearing were sent to the family’s old address and then the parent either knowingly or not missed that hearing, which meant that a warrant went out for the parent’s arrest. The parent was apprehended and then taken back to the jurisdiction for a preliminary hearing. That was all happening during the week we were trying to figure out how to manage family visits for the kids.

When the kids went on their first family visit, their at-home parent didn’t tell them that their incarcerated parent was incarcerated. (I’m not criticizing the decision here; I hadn’t brought it up either and none of us wanted to worry the kids if this parent was going to be released at the preliminary hearing and back home in time for the visit.) Instead, the at-home parent said that the other parent was sick with something contagious and had to stay away. I was really uncomfortable with that tactic since I don’t like lying to kids, but again I can understand why it seemed appealing under the circumstances. But then came the Thanksgiving visit and still the kids were being told their other parent was just inaccessible for medical reasons, and I was really unhappy after that. Val had started worrying about her parent’s health, worrying about why she hadn’t talked to that parent in weeks. And while she was definitely enjoying visits and more frequent phone contact with the other parent, it was clear that she in particular felt a loss. (Alex isn’t as verbal or as obvious when something’s bothering him, but I think that he too was having a hard time and specifically demanding more from me, so it wasn’t just Val.) I had to call the other parent and make an ultimatum, though the parent immediately agreed that the kids deserved to know the truth.

The truth is that their parent is going to be in jail for another month, missing Christmas. I’ve made it clear to the social worker and their family members that I’m willing to take the kids to jail to see their parent there. The kids have been to jail for visits before they came into care and I know they don’t see it as something deeply stigmatized from the way they’ve mentioned it to me openly in the past. Right now, it sounds like their incarcerated parent is so embarrassed and angry about this turn of events that a visit isn’t the parent’s preference, but if that changes I’ll be ready.

The truth that we haven’t discussed much with the kids is that while their other parent is able to keep doing all the things the parents are supposed to be doing to regain custody, that’s just going to be harder as a solo person with only one income coming in. Lee and I both pushed their family worker to finally get on the ball and do her part of trying to help the family find housing, and she finally did do that. The timeline hasn’t officially changed and honestly I hope it doesn’t, that we’re halfway through our time with the two kids and their parents will be home and raising them soon.

I don’t know what it will mean if things go badly at the sentencing in January. Could they really reunify with one parent who’s going to have to work and get them to school and manage everything when they’ve been used to having both parents share the load? Money goes into this question too, where a family used to living on two incomes is going to be pressed by having just one. Plus there’s the twist that Lee and I said that if something happened that was going to significantly delay reunification, we’d want the kids to move to a home where they could stay more permanently. I’m choosing not to think about that side of things. I love the peace we have when I’m not caring for three little kids, but I want them to go somewhere better, go home when they go. I’m just figuring that for a non-violent offender who’s been holding down a full-time job, working hard to be an appropriate parent, avoiding any of the situations that caused the parents trouble in the first place, time served will be plenty and the parents can be reunited outside jail and get back on track toward reunification soon after.

I haven’t talked much about the future with Val and Alex, but they know that they’ll be with their family for Christmas and that their incarcerated parent won’t be there. I think they were both a bit relieved to hear the truth, and I’d given Val’s teacher and counselor a heads-up and let her know that they were both prepared to talk to her about it. I just found out that her school has some sort of support group for kids with incarcerated parents, and while I’m not sure that’s necessary or helpful for her in kindergarten, I’m glad to know about it. Val said she wants to have a letter from her incarcerated parent that she can keep in her backpack to look at when she’s stressed or sad, and I think that sounds reasonable. We’re going to work together tonight to send a letter and some photos and ask if we can get a letter for each kid back. Even though neither kid can read, having that should help them feel better.

I know we have a lot of big conversations coming and that the kids are going to have bigger negative feelings. They’d been facing a lot of that anyway, I think just getting more conflicted after they’ve been with us for long enough (two months) to feel settled here but also extending their family visits so that they’re very much aware of what they’re missing. It’s just hard, maybe more so at the holidays. I’ve talked with the kids a lot about when they’ll do Christmas with us and when they’ll do it with their family and that they won’t be missing out on anything, but I’m not sure if they believe me. To cover my bases, I’ll have St. Nick leave them presents overnight, because my classmates from German families always celebrated this and I don’t want them left out if schoolmates are getting little presents and they’re getting nothing. I haven’t had the chance to ask the parent I get to talk to whether this is a family tradition, but I’ll be doing it anyway. If St. Nick doesn’t come next year, well, that’s about a different kind of lie that grown-ups tell children (and one I feel very conflicted about, but it’ll be a “Well, these are your presents for St. Nicholas Day and what a surprise!” and I hope I’ll be able to avoid any conversation about supernatural invaders in the night) and all I know is that for this year there are a lot of people who love them and are hoping for the best for them and their family. That’s not a bad thing.