I had a major breakdown last week.  I cried for most of 12 hours and for parts of 36 hours.  I felt overwhelmed…no helpless, scared…no panicked, and angry…no furious.
Every transition for T-6 is hard, especially if it is a transition away from playing.  The playground is right outside of her classroom.  From the beginning, we […]

For weeks, I tried to write a blog entry. Every time that I sat down, it was between 10 and 11 pm after the girls were asleep.  Sometimes, I was so exhausted that my eyes would literally start to close when I sat down to try and write.  Other times, I was so frustrated that […]

During our homestudy, it became clear that my weakest area of parenting was discipline.  The ways that my parents disciplined were largely inappropriate according to modern standards and I really couldn’t offer up a lot of of alternatives to those methods. So, I dove into parenting books to fill this void. 
We got recommendations from our […]

My first experience in hearing about schools was meeting teachers at preschools and private schools that had insanely long waits.  I heard stories about people getting their kids on the waiting list in their third trimester of pregnancy. Soon after, I started hearing horror stories from people working in Oakland Public Schools about how horribly […]

Slow transitions are supposed to be better for the kids. Even if they know their current home is not permanent, they still have attachments to their current caretaker. In the crisis that many foster kids have experienced, they have been yanked from place to place, potentially with little notice. When possible, it […]

I didn’t think that this match could get any better. But, this weekend we realized that we were matched with foodies! Well, maybe pre-foodies. Not only do T-6 and T-4 think about food all the time and maintain an eating schedule that is above and beyond any kid that I know, but they […]

I can’t describe to you the feeling. The first official meeting of our new daughters and we are LATE!  Crawling on the freeway because of a fire beside the road. We left early.  Not really early, but early enough that we should have been there.  During the drive, we recognized that we had originally been […]

I hate secrets! I hate it when people keep things from me and I hate not being able to share what is on my mind with others. I fundamentally trust those around me and I have worked really hard at creating a life in which that trust is justified. I get a […]

I had spoken with a few people who had been to disclosure meetings. They hadn’t met the kids or the social worker and they didn’t know much more about the kids than what was on a 1-page profile in a binder full of profiles of lots of kids.  It sounded totally nerve-wracking to know that this meeting […]

 We are experiencing a rather short matching process.  All of the families that we have met that were in situations like ours waited about 4 months between the time that their homestudy was finished until they received kids in their home.  Some people wait over a year for infants and the average matching time is […]