Over the weekend, the kids went to the park three times. Once with Jeff and Poppy. Twice with Poppy and Grammy. My parents' comments basically revolved around how fast Henry was and how he is fearless. It is true. He shows no fear. That's not necessarily a good thing.
On Sunday, I returned at 11:15AM. Excellent flight. Direct is the way to go! In the car, Henry and Miss R were hilarious. Miss R was the leader in singing/talking something to the effect of "Ah Wah Wah" while conducting the song/talk with her hands. Henry would giggle, copy her, then she'd giggle. They were having a grand old time.
How I wish I could post some video that I have of The Twins laughing and singing. They are so darn cute together.
I was asked this past weekend by a couple friends at the conference and a neighbor yesterday (while walking Roger) the question: "Isn't it going to hurt when Miss R goes back to her biological family (if she does)?" or "Isn't it going to be devastating?"
The answer simply put is: Yes. We have grown to love this little girl very much. And she loves us too.
The natural follow up question: Why do it? Why cause yourself the pain and heartache?
Sometimes it is important to do things, because they are the right thing to do. Although our society caters to a hedonistic world view, the solutions to violence and poverty won't be solved until a large body of people make tough choices and put their own gratifications aside. The cycle of poverty isn't going to be solved by yet another academician writing an article about equality or by sending a check in the mail. It can only be broken at the roots. That means helping and addressing the needs of children. I don't see any other way. Of course, foster care is just one of several ways that one can help in fighting the cycle of violence and poverty.
I'm pretty sure that I have a good understanding of my psychological limits. Having almost lost Henry on several occasions gave me a good sense of where my breaking point probably is. When Miss R goes home, it will hurt us deeply. It isn't as though it will hurt us less than anyone else in our situation, but I'm hoping that our family unit has developed enough coping strategies to get through the ordeal. Of course, we haven't come to that chapter yet. And I hope that we won't have to. I want her to stay with us. She fits right into our family so well. But CPS doesn't seem on the ball, and they seem to tout their statistics on family reunification on their website (alas, their stats on how often children return back into the system isn't mentioned). Based on my reading of their website, she has an 83% chance of returning to her biological family without taking family history into consideration.
If she does return to her bio family, the one thing that would be a deal breaker on taking more foster children in is how Henry deals with the situation. If it causes him too much undue stress, then we would have to put off fostering until he is a little older and would have a better sense of what we are doing and why we are doing it.
On Sunday evening, we went for a walk. We stopped by the horse corral. Both Dakota and Outlaw wanted to be petted on their noses. We didn't let the kids do it though, because Janice warned up that Dakota bites...at least he bites her. So we aren't taking any chances with the kids. Jeff and I were fairly cautious. We only petted the horses when their muzzles were between the bars of the corral making sudden movements less plausible. They are beautiful animals. As we walked up the road, Henry started running and saying "I running" as he did it. We ran into Yvonne, Chocolate, and Banjo. As we dropped Yvonne off at her place, Henry ran up to her and gave her a hug (unprompted). It was so cute. Such a sweet boy.
On Monday, we took The Twins to the zoo. I don't know if Miss R has ever been to the zoo before. I doubt it. She had a good time, but it was clearly a lot for her to comprehend. The animals. The people. The setting. We arrived at the giraffe feeding time. We bought a round of biscuits for Henry and Miss R to hand the giraffes. Henry is a pro at giraffe feeding. He was trying to get past one of the zoo keepers before we had even paid for the biscuits! We got onto the platform, and Henry had no reservations about plopping the first biscuit right on Denver the Giraffe's tongue. He then gave Denver the second one. It was then Miss R's turn. Having seen Henry do it, she had no reservations either. No fear whatsoever. Quite different from the little gal who was anxious around the cats and dogs the first week in our home. She enjoyed it so much that I bought her a second round of biscuits to feed Denver. I would have gotten some for Henry, but he was bounding toward the polar bear exhibit with Jeff in hot pursuit. The giraffes were clearly a hit in Miss R's book.She also liked the flamingos. Henry's favorite part of the zoo was climbing on the railings and trying to figure out how to climb over them. Jeff watched Henry for the most part. I held Miss R who didn't want to leave my side ever since I returned home.
In the evening, The Twins visited the grandparents, while Jeff and I went to see "Terminator Salvation" (Jeff was very disappointed; I thought it was OK except for the last five minutes, which has a typical Hollywood storyline that I knew was going to happen halfway through the film). When we dropped off the kids, I commented to my mom how well Henry is using articles and prepositions. It is really neat to hear. He has gone from demanding "TV" to saying "On TV" to saying "On the TV." My mom noticed it as well. After the movie, we went to Sam Levitz to buy the bunk beds (or "bonk beds" as Henry calls them) during their Memorial Day sale. Incidentally, the sale was a fraud. They were the same price that they'd been two months earlier. I was irked. So we decided to hold off buying them. After looking at them, we aren't sure that they'd come apart as singles, which is what we need at the moment.
When The Twins came home, we watched "Monsters, Inc." for the billionth time. At least it is a clever children's film.
We put the kids to bed. Jeff went to the store. Henry woke up after Jeff had gone and called for "Daddy." I snuggled with him, and he did settle down. That was nice. The only problem was that he tends to push me over to a 6" sliver of bed. I woke up around 5:30AM and snuggled with him until 6:30AM. Miss R was in the center of the bed with her feet at the pillow.
The driver for CPS just picked up Miss R for her visitation with her biological family. We sent along a cute picture of her for her parents.
Jeff and I have been discussing the possibility of putting Henry into daycare. We hadn't intended to do so until he was potty trained and/or 3 years old. But seeing Henry at the park, loving the playground equipment, and enjoying talking to people, we suspect that he would benefit a lot intellectually and socially from a structured, active daycare atmosphere. We wouldn't put him in daycare all day. We want a daycare where we could pick him up at 2 or 3PM. Of course, all of the great day cares have year long waiting lists, we suspect. Miss R poses somewhat of a complication to the situation as we don't want to put her in a separate daycare from Henry, and we suspect that some of the best ones are going to want for us to pay for an entire year. In any event, we are going to look actively the next couple weeks. Day care in the near future may or may not be in the cards, but we'll find out.
Jeff is going to Philly the first weekend of June. We have a busy, but hopefully fun and productive, couple weeks ahead of us at our respective works and on the home front.
That's all from The Wild Kingdom...
No comments:
Post a Comment