The Crazy Week

Foster parenting seems to be a constant learning curve. Even with all the training, you just never can expect some of the things that will transpire.

Lesson learned from the night before thanksgiving: never let a social worker drop off a sleeping child and then leave! Yes. This happened. The poor kid was worn out from his day for sure, but the terror from waking up in a new house surrounded by strangers had to have been worse. Lets just say there was a freak out moment on his part that made Chris and I think, "oh dear God what have we gotten ourselves into??!!!!" Luckily this was relatively short lived when we offered to take him to get a happy meal (I feel like this was around 9pm??!!). He definitely perked up and things seemed like they wouldn't be as bad as we anticipated.

But then bedtime came and that was a WAY bigger hurdle than we anticipated. A five year old that can process what they have been through is pretty much night and day different from an infant. This little guy was seriously a sweet heart, he had just been through SO much. Let's just say sleeping in a dark room was not his favorite thing. At all.

[One important thing to know is this is what is called a short term placement. Now, short term can mean 6 months, but basically you're saying you are available as a temporary home. For the baby, we said we are a long term placement]

Thankfully, this was Thanksgiving weekend, so Chris and I were really able to do this as a team. I don't know what I would have done without him! (Locked myself in a closet maybe.)

The good news is things did improve (even over the span of five days) which I think is truly amazing. It goes to show how much a stable, loving home environment does for a child.

Due to the holiday, court wasn't set to happen until Monday. At that point we would know more about the plan, or if they were able to find any qualified relatives for him. In the meantime, we made plans for him to attend a full day preschool and really believed things were improving. We were prepared for him to stay longer if needed, but really felt that relatives would be the best situation for him, especially considering he had siblings that he was currently separated from. If there was a way for him to be with them, that would really be best. So we just prayed they would find someone!

Sure enough, Monday at 5pm I got a call from his social worker saying they had found some relatives on dad's side and she would pick him up in the morning! I think I waited until the morning to tell him, because I wasn't sure how he would react. He took the news well though and seemed excited, mainly concerned about making sure he could take his new boots with him :)

These were definitely some intense five days, but I know Chris and I both do not regret saying yes. It was a really great learning experience, and obviously more than that, a blessing to be able to help this little guy when he needed it the most.

Sometimes I look back on pictures of the fun things we got to do (late night happy meals, snowflake lane, playing with ninja turtles) and I miss him and his spunk. But I'm grateful we had that time with him, and trust that our prayers for him still count.