On Friday morning, I dropped off Henry and Baby A but took Miss R to an appointment with Henry's ENT. Sometimes it seems like she can't hear. Is that a reflection of a hearing problem or toddler stubbornness? Before Miss R's CMDP insurance ends, I figured that it was best to get her tested. She has fluid in one ear, where there is mild hearing loss, and a retracted ear drum in the other. Dr. Dean thinks that we should wait two months, have him look at the situation again, before moving to ear tubes.
I dropped Miss R off at school. Then headed to Baby A's hearing. I talked with her lawyer for a couple minutes before the hearing. He'd received the update from his assistant Martha. I told him that I wasn't sure it was a good idea to mention the whole car seat debacle. I really didn't want to anger the caseworker. In his opinion, it was appropriate to mention in court b/c he said that for liability reasons, we should NOT have to be providing the car seat for CPS' driving service. If they lost it, he didn't think that CPS would provide us with a new one. He didn't think that it was too much to ask for the driving service to provide the appropriate equipment to transport a child. He said that he'd also request that we be allowed to take Baby A out of state the second week of August for a family trip. On the breach of privacy over the daycare location issue, he recommended that we not mention it in court for now. His assistant had been appalled that the driving service would hand a sheet with the baby's daycare location to the bio mom. In his judgment, she hasn't shown enough initiative to suggest that she'd take action. So I said that it was fine to let it lie. He asked me if we were still contemplating adoption or whether we'd made a decision. I said that if reunification is not possible, we very much want to adopt Baby A.
Court. The judge to whom the case has been assigned was not there. Another judge heard today's case. She was legal poetry in motion. Efficient. Quick. Fair. Upholding the law. I can't get into the details, but she simply laid out what bio mom has to do in the next three months to get a continuance for more time to complete the case plan. Now that ball is in bio mom's court. Baby A's lawyer said that the baby was doing well. He also brought up the concerns over safe transportation. I'm quite sure that the caseworker wasn't expecting me to be proactive in discussing this with her lawyer. It is unfortunate that I had to have the lawyer bring up safety concerns in transportation. But we've been dealing with this transportation BS since the beginning of the case. I suspect that bio mom's lawyer was loving this. It isn't often that you have a foster parent basically say in court that CPS isn't doing its job right. It doesn't make "the state" look good. Anyway, Baby A's lawyer said that he thought that the driving service should come prepared. He didn't think that we should be providing our personal property to the state for liability reasons. But he said that I was willing to provide it if that was the only way to get the baby there safely. The judge lamented on the transportation sloppiness and thanked me for the offer but hoped that CPS would straighten this out. There is a permanency hearing set for the beginning of September. It will go back to the judge who has never heard this case (although it was technically assigned to him back in March). It is unlikely that Baby A would return to bio mom in September. Either she will make substantial effort on the case plan and get time extended or rights to Baby A will be severed.
A new CPS caseworker has been assigned to Baby A's case. She'll be taking over for the current one. I'm hoping that the current one hasn't poisoned the well. This afternoon, I was CC'd on an email where the current caseworker thanked the driving service for clarifying what had happened in the transportation mix up. The driving service was lying. They claimed to have provided car seats except when I wanted her transported in ours. LIE, LIE, LIE. He also said that it "could never happen" that a driver would take someone else's car seat. AHHH, DUDE, THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED MONDAY. And then the current caseworker thanked him for clarifying the "miscommunication" and said it was unfortunate that I brought this matter up in court. Interesting that she never reiterated to him that she had personally requested that a car seat be provided by the driving service. She told me twice that she had put it in bold letters on the transportation order. I was totally ready to move past this, but these two jerks were obviously trying to cover their backsides b/c it was brought up in court. I haven't responded yet. But as they are trying to make it seem like I made all of this stuff up or am somehow confused, a response it going to happen. Our family specialist is taking up the issue with her management b/c they were the ones who had trouble with this particular caseworker before when they blew the whistle on some of her unethical activities. I just don't want her to retaliate by making bad decisions for Baby A. I'll be relieved when the case is in someone else's hands.
Daycare. Jeff and I don't see eye to eye on the daycare situation in terms of our evaluation of Daisy. No, Daisy isn't as pretty as CLA. And yes, the rooms are smaller so the feel is slightly more chaotic b/c they have a lot of stuff crammed in a smaller space. The rooms at CLA are huge. I suspect that part of Jeff's problem in making the comparison is that he hasn't spent as much time as I have at CLA when I see the chaotic nature of kids. I was the one after all who watched Henry get attacked by that one kid. Not just hit, but attacked. I am still vexed that the kid wasn't written up for it and was left in Henry's room for several weeks. I suspect that Jeff thinks that daycares should always look like Miss R's classroom. Miss Lulu and Miss Diana have an usual gift with toddlers. Their classroom is always in order. Maybe I should investigate to see if they've secretly replaced all of the kids in their class with Stepford kids or something.
It often looks kind of chaotic in Henry's classroom...although since the male-female ratio has changed, the feel of the class is completely different. Yesterday, when I picked up Henry, I noticed that all of the boys minus Henry were sitting in the kitchenette area. The teachers aren't allowed to give kids "timeouts" but sometimes they put them near a wall and let them think for a few minutes. Henry was with the gals in the class being read a book by Miss Valerie. Henry loves his books.
I obviously can't move the kids without compliance from Jeff. It didn't help his impression of the school when we entered the 2 year classroom, which was having PE instruction, and the teacher was holding a child who had bumped his head pretty good. The lump was pronounced, and the teacher was holding a bag of ice on it. I think that Jeff was more affected by seeing that than I was. I can only imagine that parents visiting CLA weren't impressed by Henry's blood gushing chin wound when a classmate hit him with a puzzle piece on the chin.
As Jeff mentioned, the daycare director did apologize yesterday and asked what we had decided to do. I said that I planned to talk about the matter with the baby's lawyer and see what he thought we should do. She also said that if we had to move, she wouldn't require the 2 weeks notice. So that was good. But there is still the issue of Henry. He simply can't stay in a 2 year classroom forever. In reality, I am cognizant of the fact that he isn't yet 3 adjusted. However, based on his developmental evaluations, he was in the 50th percentile for a 3 year old on many skills (slightly better than that for speech) when he was about 2.5 adjusted. That suggests to me that we should move him where he will be challenged.
Assuming that Henry gets moved into a 3 year old class, one of the potty trained classes without the child with the behavior problems, I think I'll be OK with keeping the kids where they are...for now. But I do want the kids to attend the Sonoran Science Academy for kindergarten. And being enrolled in Daisy will help that happen. In other words, come next year, he and Miss R should be enrolled there.
Jeff thought that we needed to do something fun tonight with the kids to take our minds off of the CPS fiasco. We picked up Baby A first, then Miss R, and then Henry. Miss R was in a different set of clothes from the ones she wore to school. She had an accident while waiting for another kid to use the bathroom. She tried to hold it, but the other kid took a long of time, too long. Henry was excited to see us. He got to show off Baby A to some of his classmates. Interestingly, it was his female classmates who surrounded me and Baby A. They wanted to touch her hair. They were very gentle. In comparison, his friend Joaquin came over, looked at the baby, and then hightailed it to where the action was and Baby A wasn't it! I had to wonder if gender difference really are programmed into us at such young ages.
We went to Monkey Business. Everyone had a good time. We played lots of games and ate cheese crisps, mushrooms, zucchini, and onion rings. Plus, we got homemade ice cream. Miss R was most thrilled with the fruit punch and the ice cream.
Henry tried to join in a game of tag with kids who were probably in fifth grade. He doesn't seem to notice age differences. He spent quite a bit of time with the Monkey Business monkey who got Henry to mimic him in a game of monkey see, monkey do. Monkey would raise the roof, so Henry would raise the roof. Monkey would clap, so Henry would clap. Miss R was very shy and hung out with me.
At one point, Henry bonked his head (again) while climbing on the plastic hippo. He started to make a crying-ish sound. He wasn't really crying as I saw no tears. But he needed comfort and recognition of his "wounds," so I said, "Henry, come here. Let me look at it. I am afterall a doctor" and then dropped my voice to add "of philosophy." And I kissed his head. I didn't think Henry was paying attention to my voice, but he said "Thank you doctor philosophy." It was so darn funny.
I read the kids some books when we came home. Henry got into trouble for not brushing his teeth and hitting Jeff. That earned him a timeout before bed. Baby A had a little bit of a bottle, but crashed shortly after and has been in bed ever since. Miss R went to sleep, but she's called out a couple times.
Signing off from the Wild Kingdom...
No comments:
Post a Comment