I just looked back at my (few and far between!) blogs from since Joel was born to see if I had said anything about Princess and Little Guy, our two-time foster children. I found that I hadn't written about them, but in fact, one of the pleasures of our life post-Joel has been our ongoing relationship with those two. After they went home for good, just a week before Joel was born, their mom was open to us continuing to see them. In fact, they spent a couple of nights at our house when their own baby brother was born a couple of months after Joel.
Eventually we got our paperwork and training done for the mentoring program run by our foster-adoption agency and were officially signed up as their mentors. We saw them several times a month for fun activities: a trip to the playground, our library's lifesize Candyland game, our church's trunk-or-treat, or just eating and playing together at our house. It was the ultimate happy medium: we got to keep our relationship with them, but without the level of work and stress involved in integrating two more children into our household. And they got to have their mommy back, but still have us around like a favorite aunt and uncle to enjoy them and cheer them on in life. There were a few bumps in the road, of course. Their mom changed her phone number pretty often and without warning, so then if we wanted to set up a time to see them we had to stop by their house in person and hope that someone was home. And I was dubious about her new boyfriend, but as time passed and I witnessed him competently caring for the baby and adding needed structure to the household, I started to be more hopeful that she had finally found a winner.
So all was well, except that from time to time I would observe some little bit of information that didn't quite feel right. For example, one day when we were dropping the kids off after an activity, Princess called me back to their bedroom to show me something and I saw that their bunk beds, bought new shortly before they moved back home, were gone. It looked like the kids had been sleeping in a pile of blankets and pillows on the floor. Mind you, there was nothing abusive or neglectful about that; it looked cozy and warm. But I wondered what had happened to the beds and why. Then in February we had a weird incident when we took them to a Valentine's Day party and their mom stayed in the bathroom the whole time I was there picking them up and dropping them off. I know she is a private person so I hoped she just didn't feel up to socializing that day, but I worried whether she was hiding something, and what it might be. And then the weather got bad and Tim was extra busy with work and their mom changed her phone number again and they weren't home when we finally made time to drop by...and weeks went by without us seeing or talking to them. And when we stopped by their house a second time, they still weren't home and everything on the front porch looked the same way I had remembered it looking a few days ago, as if no-one had been there in the interim. Even Little Guy's toy plane was lying at the same angle on the steps.
It was a really scary feeling wondering if they had moved and whether they were in a bad situation and whether we would ever see them again.
After worrying and driving myself crazy, I finally made an effort to pray and put them in God's hands each time I started thinking about them, instead of endlessly turning over in my mind what could be going on. That helped, but I was vastly relieved when we stopped by their house a third time and they were home.
Everything seemed normal. Princess had a few not-so-great stories to tell, the next time we took her to a park, about things that had happened while we were out of touch, but it was all behind them now. And then one evening in the spring, just as we were putting Esther to bed, we got a call from a stranger. He was, it transpired, friends with the kids' mom and grandma, and he had happened to stop by their house just as a situation was unfolding that required somebody else to take care of the kids for a time. He had brought all three back to his house, but he was also caring for an elderly uncle and didn't see how he could manage three children as well. He could take the baby, he thought, but could we manage the other two? It would just be for a couple of days.
So they came to stay with us for a couple of days, which turned into a week. I didn't even attempt to do school with Esther that week, given how busy I was with Joel and Little Guy. Princess's school, meanwhile, gave us fits. First we realized that, although we could drop her off at school (or could have if it didn't interfere with Tim's work schedule), we couldn't legally pick her up because we weren't on her emergency card and her mom wasn't available to give her permission. This is where having a good agency is priceless! The head of our foster-adopt-mentoring agency called the school and got permission for agency staff to pick Princess up. Then our mentoring team coordinator, who was in the throes of planning two major special events at the time, heroically showed up early every morning to take Princess to school, and went and retrieved her in the afternoons. So that solved that problem, but then we had issues with Princess's homework, because her backpack was at home and she had no way of getting in to get it, so she was going to lose points for being unable to complete her reading assignments. A note to her teacher solved that problem after a day or two, and she brought home an extra reading book that she could do her assignments in. To cap it all off, Tim had a conference planned that week. He did go, and the kids and I did fine with a lot of help from Daniel, but Tim cut out a planned and much-looked-forward-to visit with dear friends who lived near the conference in order to get home to us more quickly. So it was a crazy week! We were happy when the kids' mom's situation resolved and they were able to go back home.
So then things went back to normal again...except for the occasional unsettling blip like the text message from the kids' mom worrying that they might have to go into foster care again and asking if we would please take them if they did because she didn't want them to go to strangers. And then one night in June, just after our trip to my grandma's house for Daniel's family day, the drama resumed.
It started with a doorbell ring. I was back in my bedroom putting Joel to bed, and Tim and the kids were at church. I made it to the edge of the living room in time to see the back of someone I didn't recognize heading towards a van I didn't recognize, so I figured it wasn't important enough to run to the door, and I went back and finished getting Joel to sleep. Then the phone rang. This time it was Tim. When he had come out of church, he had been greeted by Princess's paternal grandmother, who had all three kids with her. She, it turned out, had been the unfamiliar driver of the unfamiliar van. And once again, the kids needed a place to stay, this time all three of them. She would have liked to do it herself, she said, but she was already raising six grandkids. Well, we could understand that! So we agreed, but told her that we would be calling their social worker in the morning. If this was going to be longer term, we wanted the protection and support of a formal foster care arrangement, and we also felt that someone really needed to know if the kids were going to be constantly left in a crisis.
And that is how we began our summer as a family of eight.
