Fatherhood

Sleep at Last; Sleep at Last; Thank the Lord, We Have Sleep at Last!

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Yesterday was full of firsts. It was our first time to leave the home since getting the kids, our first time for the kids to meet my sister and her fiance, and our first time to get a good night’s rest.

We still went through the rigamorole with the kids before bed time. Apparently, nobody really likes baths (though Bess loves brushing teeth) and sleep is the worst. We’ve found the secret to getting Bess to sleep, though. You put her in the bed and sit with her while she tantrums until, in a sudden reversal of fortune, she’s asleep. It really does happen in the blink of an eye, like Dorothy stepping out from the tornado and into Oz. Without munchkins and singing and candy. We’ll have to do something about the last part–in the midst of the exhaustion and occasional frustration, sweets are an easy pleasure.

Abe is starting to settle in, and we’re getting used to some of his rhythms, his different types of crying, and what he likes and dislikes. Though most of the progress we made yesterday had admittedly little to do with K and I; a friend of ours brought several types of bouncers and bascinets to try and the little man quickly found one to his liking. This is a Godsend, as he previously was only happy while being held, if not rocked or bounced. As K puts it, we’d have to Indiana Jones him into the crib when we hoped he was in deep enough of a sleep not to immediately awaken upon being set down. Like the victims of an alien predator, it’s our body heat that gives us away.

We can tell there’s bonding going on with both Abe and Bess. We’re starting to see Abe smile more and more (which we saw none of on day one), so we’re taking that as a good sign he’s starting to feel safe and comfortable. Bess is getting more and more talkative, surprising us that her vocabulary is broader than we first believed. We’ll need some work on speaking clearly, but I don’t think that’s too much of a concern at this age. She’s clearly very intelligent (which every parent says ever about their child; the difference is I don’t believe all those other guys).

K has taken the kids with her to church while she works; we’ll both have a little break at the expense of the church nursery. Time for me to write this post, try and catch up on a few work things, shave for the first time in three days, and hopefully get in some time for some fiction-writing, now that I’m actually rested enough to do some of those things!

More to come!

Ask and You Shall Receive

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No sooner had I published my post about our false alarm earier this week, than my phone rang. One of our placement workers on the line; they had another potential placement for us. This time, a 3-month old boy (We’ll call him “Abe”) and a 2-year old girl (we’ll call her “Bess”), just taken into custody by Child Protective Services today. We didn’t have much information to go on about the situation they’d come from, but we were ready to take the plunge. A quick conference between K and I and we were back on the phone with the placement worker.

She submitted us for consideration for the placement and we waited  an hour and a half that seemed to drag on forever. We got a call back just before noon that we’d been accepted and that the kids were coming to us that day. I rushed home from work to make sure everything was in order. K joined me sooner thereafter and we tried to busy ourself as we waited for the call from CPS that Abe and Bess were on the way.

They arrived around dinner time Thursday evening. After signing all of the CPS paperwork, our time as parents had begun.

I had intended to post something on Thursday, but I found no time to do so. Here we are, two mostly sleepless nights, and the sun is coming up again. We managed to get Bess to go to sleep around eleven last night (for some reason unknown, trying to put her to bed is one of her triggers, although after last night we may be easing our way thr0ugh that), so K spent most of the night up with Abe. Since I’m a morning person who doesn’t nap, K let me try to get as much sleep as I could last night. She’s a night owl who would much rather sleep in, so we switched off with Abe about twenty minutes ago.

Abe is asleep (only so long as he’s behing held–he’s currently comfortable in one of those wrap-carrier things so that I can type). Bess is still in bed and has a decent sleep debt from Thursday night (when she wouldn’t go to bed until after 5 a.m.) to catch up on. K is resting while we can. I sit at the kitchen table, a mostly-empty bowl of cereal beside the Ipad and a pot of coffee brewing. It’s the most peace and time for myself I’ve had in two days. We’ll see how long it lasts…

False Alarm

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Monday night I got a call from our agency informing us that we are now open to receive a placement! It was after five when we got the call (I didn’t answer, so it was a voice message), so I called back Tuesday morning.

When I called, one of our placement workers informed me that they had a potential placement and asked if we wanted to be put it to take them–a brother and sister of 5 and 6 that, based on the information we had, looked like a great fit for us. I quickly called K (pulled her out of a meeting) and consulted with her.

After giving her the information, she had to go back into the meeting (a staff meeting at the church where she’s the director of children’s ministries) and give the devotional. I waited by the phone for her return call. It didn’t take us long to decide that we wanted to try to get the placement.

I called the placement worker at our agency and asked her to put us forward. Then we had to wait an excruciating few hours to know whether Child Protective Services was going to choose us for the placement.

They didn’t. As it turns out, when CPS sent out the message looking for potential foster homes, they neglected to state that there was a foster home already familiar with the children and that they were likely going there–which is exactly what happened.

Needless to say, K and I were exhausted by the emotional roller-coaster of the process, and understandably disappointed that things didn’t work out this time.

On the other hand, we now know what it’s like to go through the potential (emergency) placement process and the experience quickly built our relationship and trust with our placement workers (who were also left out of the seemingly-important information CPS had, otherwise they would have let us know up front that that might be the case).

We had an in-person meeting with our placement workers yesterday afternoon. This is a standard practice and I’d called Tuesday morning in part to set it up. We understood going into the foster-to-adopt program that there are a lot of variables and that there will often times be things we just do not know when we’re asked to make decisions regarding placements. To the extent that we can, we’ve made peace with that.

I can’t say enough how great our placement workers are–we came away from yesterday’s meeting extremely thankful that we have them in our corner.

And so now, we go back to waiting, watching our phones for that call from the special placement number, which could come at any time, wondering who the children will be and what kind of situation they’ll be coming from, imagining what it will be like but trying not to set up expectations, struggling to keep our minds and hearts open. Impatient.

Approved

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Today, K and I received word that we have been approved for the foster-to-adopt and adoption processes (we’re not sure which path we’ll end up being led down, but either is open to us). We have another week or so to wait while our file is finally audited and the licensing procedure is complete.

It was five years ago that we started seriously thinking about becoming parents in this way. Almost three years ago when we started an application but stopped because we were told that we could not be approved while I was home-officing and meeting with clients at home. Eight months since we turned in our application for real. And now we’re potentially just a week or two away from becoming parents. The reality of it hasn’t fully sunk in yet, but we’re excited.

Fittingly, it’s also our tenth wedding anniversary this week. Lots to celebrate. And this section of the blog is about to become far more robust!

Patiently Waiting…Sort Of

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I’ve had a few friends or family members comment to me, “Hey, I saw you have a ‘Fatherhood’ section on your blog, and I was excited to see what you have to say about fatherhood, but there’s nothing there.”

So maybe a little explanation is in order. K and I are a few weeks away from finally being licensed to foster and/or adopt children through the Texas foster care program. No little ones in the house yet, but there could be two or three by this time next month. Am I ready? Is anyone?

Obviously, that makes this section of the blog a little premature. I have no special insights into fatherhood. Sure I’ve read books and been to training on being a parent, and K and I even had a sixteen-year-old exchange student live with us last year. But parenting strikes me as learn-on-the-job sort of thing, so I’m trying not to be overly confident in my expected skills at being a father. I’m not finding it difficult.

I used to joke with friends in law school that, when going into a final exam, it was the students who weren’t afraid who were in the most trouble—they didn’t even know how much they didn’t know. This feels the same. I’m excited and nervous at the same time, and that’s probably a good thing.

K and I have been married for ten years this month; we’ve been thinking about adoption for five years. We started the process in 2013, then stopped, the re-started in November of last year. It’s been a long journey.

If you’re wondering, I have plenty ideas about how to parent the children, how to deal with their particular situations and difficulties, how to love them and be firm about the rules, and all the other things that are part and parcel of parenthood. But I’m smart enough to know that they only thing that will happen if I share all of these ideas with you now is that you’ll all be quite amused when you start to hear about how different my reality is from what I’d imagined and how quickly my perfect-case scenarios fall by the wayside.

So, as I am doing, you’ll just have to wait.