Misc. Update

Today we continue to lift my sweet 4 month old nephew Noah up in prayer. He had heart surgery and is having problems with his blood pressure, blood sugar, fluids leaking, and a few other things. Please pray for this sweet baby! He is my sister's youngest (of 11) who was adopted at birth :)

As for us...Baby had a 4 hour visit with his bio-dad yesterday. I had that cringe in my stomach letting him go yesterday, but again, I just have to trust that God has this all under control!!! He came back covered in sweat, screaming his head off and practically jumped out of the CM's arms and crawled up me and wouldn't let go of my neck! Poor kid!! He's getting to that clingy age and I hated when Little Man went through this too....they scream when they leave and it breaks my heart!
He came back smelling of that yucky grease that Dad puts in his hair. Bathtime! I prefer the girly smelling stuff :) "A" even said "what's that stinky smell???" LOL!

I contacted our adoption lawyer yesterday to get the paperwork rolling so we can expedite things when we actually do have termination and wait our 30 days. She had mentioned that it takes 90 days to get everything complete following termination. Later in the conversation she asked how long he has been with us and she said "oh in that case you are one of the special ones! " She went on to explain that they should waive that waiting period because he's been here so long! THANK YOU JESUS!! She also said we will push for finalization before the end of the year so we can get blesssed with that nice tax money! That will come in very handy next year as we purchase a house!! :-)

I also appeared by phone for a "surprise" (to me) staffing yesterday. It was all of 3 minutes and they asked me if we plan on adopting him. Ummm...yes...I think filling out all that paperwork and giving you all our personal paperwork made that pretty clear! lol! They asked if we understood the process, have we adopted before, it's a bit different that the licensing process, etc, etc! I guess it was all to just solidify everything. I am so ready for CLOSURE!!!!!

Ready for Oct 24th for sure :)!!!!!!!!!

Crawling video :)

OK...so this isn't the best he can crawl, but he was in a hurry and you can see that he gets from point A to point B, especially when he is motivated by the video game cord! You can hear Little Man laughing in the background too.
I love A's surprised "Oww!" too! They forgot how Little Man got into everything too...here starts the fun!

Forward movement!

Baby started to move FORWARD yesterday!!! Up until then he was going backwards (on hands/knees even!) He crawled the army crawl for exactly ONE day (yesterday)! Oh my...this kid is already crawling on his hands/knees and getting into all sorts of things! His brothers were totally annoyed that he was pulling on the video game cord today! lol!!

He reached the weight limit on his baby car seat too, so he got a big boy carseat today as well :)

He is SO MUCH FUN! I never have seen such a happy child that will laugh/smile for pretty much anyone :)

No movement on his case....I don't know if Dad checked in since his CM won't call/text/email me back. Sigh...we will enjoy every second we have with him!!

Talking!

So Baby has been sooooo focused on the physical side of life that he hasn't worked much on speaking. I have tried for months to get him to babble anything, but nothing came out except squealing. Until yesterday that is! All of the sudden he started saying "mamamamamamam" and then today he started with "dadadadadada" and "deedeedeedeedee" and "gageegageegagee." It is soooo cute!! He is starting to actually crawl forward as well! He is one adorable bundle of fun!!

On the bio-dad front things are just as murky as they were a couple of days ago. I texted his cm today and she said she was still trying to find transportation for a visit. I replied with "so the test was negative?" and she said she hadn't gotten the report back yet. I got another text around 5:30 saying she didn't think there would be a visit this week because Dad's phone was disconnected and she didn't know what motel he was staying at. No problem for me! I am not surprised...I think he's had a minimum of 4 different phone numbers since the case started (probably more). He can't pay the bill, they shut it off, he gets a new one....

As for Little Man's case...both hubby and I were fingerprinted this week and the adoption paperwork sent off. I got an email today saying she was working on going through the paperwork and she'd contact us sometime in mid-October to do the official homestudy visit! I'm hoping the next month flies by!!!!!

New haircut!

 

Little Man went to the barber with Daddy yesterday! He got probably 1/2 his head of hair chopped off and it makes his head look SO much smaller-LOL!!!Such a cute big boy :)

Court Update

So court did not go as we had hoped. We needed the bio-Dad's (adult) daughter to show and testify to her father's behaviors recently and she did not :( Therefore, everything the attorney said was simply heresay. The visits are to remain the same which makes me very nervous. Dad is back to living in a motel (visits can not take place there, so it will be in public...some lovely germ-infested place like the mall probably:( ).

The judge did allow that a madatory drug test be done today so we are waiting on the results of that. If they are positive the CM told me she would cancel the visit for this week and reassess.

The CM also advised me that Oct. 1st she will be starting a new job in the adoptions unit. Yay for her...ugh for us :( I hate starting all over with new people! Thank God she is not new to case managing though...just this agency. The funny thing is that on the way to court I was thinking that this mother has had an open case since 08 and the same CM has been on the case. I thought "how rare!" yep...

The CM also advised me that the FRS is on leave until Oct. 15th. I have a feeling that she is starting her new job and seeing how things are going to work out before she officially quits. Maybe I'm wrong, but with everything that she said I'm pretty sure that's it. That means that everyone on the case will be new except for the GAL and me. AGAIN :( (same with LM's situation). I couldn't say anything about the FRS and her new situation to the CM because I was told to keep quiet....I did :)

So...I guess we will wait for a day or two to hear from the CM to see where we go from here. Dad didn't dispute anything that the lawyer was saying except when it came to the reason that his daughter asked him to move out. He said...she said except instead of a marriage it's father/daughter. Such drama.

From here the AG's office is going to file a motion with the court to subpeona the daughter. Not sure when that will happen or the hearing itself. The next court date given was January 12th at 9:30am. That is 2 1/2 weeks before Baby turns 1!
When Baby was dropped off, never did we imagine that we would still have him at 1 yr old. We thought with a non-offending parent he'd be gone in 3 months....nope!

Court

Court is scheduled for 1:30 this afternoon. Please be praying for TRUTH and for light to illuminate the dark places of this case!!

I knew what I was getting into

My sister posted this song on her blog a bit ago and I simply love it.

"Just don't give up and don't give in. If you don't quit. You win, you win

Everything is in my hands. It's gonna be alright. It's gonna be okay."

God knew exactly what has/is/will happen in my life. He knows my sins, He knows my faults, He knows my ugliness and He still chose me!! Nothing that happens in my life, or how I react to it is going to surprise Him. He loves me! No circumstances that happen in my life need to steal my joy (if I choose to not let them). Everything is going to be alright! :)

Setbacks

So so so so sad :( Just when you think all is going in the right direction and reunification would happen soon...BAM! Bio-dad's daughter has tipped off the CM about things that have been happening in the home and lies that have been told. UGH! We go to court on Monday and this will all come to a head (dad has no idea the daughter called the CM). Let's just say that I am SO THANKFUL that the visit has been cancelled for this week (because of one of Dad's lies) and no more unsupervised visits until after court...maybe not even after court. Please pray for this situation! What a mess! :(

Understanding the system

Being a foster parent really gives you an education into the dependency system! Whew...I had no idea all the twists and turns!! So YES indeed because LM's bio-mom did not show up the court recognizes her rights as terminated, BUT not until Dad's right are terminated will the order be signed and then she will have 30 days to refute.

Additionally, 4 people have been listed as possibilities to care for LM and must be explored. One is his Grandmother (maternal) and one is his aunt (also maternal). Both of these people have had issues with CPS in another state, so they are out. The other two I do not know anything about and I'm not sure they are even actually related.

Am I worried? NOPE! I refuse to worry about this anymore :) God has placed him in our care for the past 2 yrs. I know that it has happened where children were moved after periods even longer than that, but I really don't think that is going to happen in this case. We have TOTAL FAITH and PEACE that LM is to be a PERMANENT member of our family and we just have to "wait it out." It would have been nice if the Dad stuff were done last month and the 30 days could nearly be over, but that's not what happened. We wait on God's perfect timing and plan for our Little Sassy Man! :)

Poll closed

Ok so you all have weighed in your opinion and I can tell you that the winner is not the one with the most votes (John) :) So now you have a 50/5o idea of what his middle name will be :) John was my choice because I liked the way it sounded with his first name and it is in both of our families, but alas I did not win! :(

Name Chosen

Little Man is notorious for simply repeating EVERYTHING we say!!! We will give him two choice and all he does is repeat both choices. "Do you want crackers or an apple?" He'll say the say thing "cracker or apple?" So the other day we were jokingly playing with him and the two names we have been tossing around. Hubby says one and I say the other. We asked him which name he wanted and added in his first name. When we gave him the choices he said "no!" to one name. What? He then walked around saying his full name!!! He had chosen for himself :) I'll leave the poll open for the few days left just for the interest factor, but Little Man has his "new" name chosen! I CANNOT WAIT until it is official !!!!!!!!!! :-) (and you'll have to wait too!) He'll have the same initials as his Daddy :)

Changes

So I haven't gotten any notification since over a week ago until this morning when the FRS called and said bio-Dad is getting a 4 hour visit today so I need to pack extra supplies. Umm...ok. When I asked her about the homestudy, etc she didn't know. Awhile later...a week and 2 days after my initial email I get a response from his CM saying she has been terribly busy, but there was a hearing for Dad on Monday asking for reunification. It was denied but 4 hour unsupervised visits were granted. She hopes to do a homestudy next week or the following. If everything is ok, overnight visits will start. The reality of actually having to say goodbye to one of our babies is happening in my head and it's not pretty :( Of course I am happy for his Dad and *hopeful* that things go well for them together, but reality....

Wah....The FRS...the only realistic one of the bunch just told me she has another job lined up :( The CM is already so busy she can't even return an email...no idea what's going to happen there!