and now, for the rest of the story....

(Anyone else listen to Paul Harvey on road trips growing up or am I the only one who will get this post title?)

The Babe's social worker came to our house to give us the news that he would be going back to his family.  We had a pretty good idea that it was coming; the social worker seemed enthusiastic about the Babe's family's efforts over the past few months, and had told us the judge would not consider his foster family at all in the court's decision.  But still, we held on to a little bit of hope.  When we heard the decision, I lost my breath and felt numb at the same time.  So you can imagine we weren't really in the right state of mind for what she told us next.

Social has been inundated with children this month. We need homes.  Are you interested in a newborn?

My husband and I are Catholic, and believe that marriages should be open to new life.  Our situation has turned out a bit different from most families who have to consider adding another biological child to their family, but we try and follow the same guidelines.  We have actually never "gone looking" for babies (besides signing up for fostering), but somehow babies keep coming.  When we get a call that there is a baby that needs a home, our question is: do we have any grave reason not to accept this child?

We need a little time to think about it, we said.

To add to our emotions, in December we had been in the exact same situation.  We got a phone call-- there is a baby due in a week and the people who were going to adopt have backed out.  Would you be willing to adopt this baby?  At that point we had a 2 1/2 year old and a 7 month old.  I had a ticket to go to the States a week after the due date to take my boards.   We took 2 days to decide: Yes.  We will take him. 5 days later he was born.

He was with us for 2 days, we gave him the perfect name and admired his 5 dimples and fattened him up.  Then we got a call: his birth mother changed her mind. We had to give him back.

In Belize, the mom has 90 days after the child's birth to change her mind about adoption.  In that time, the adoptive family can care for the child, but has no right to keep the baby if the mom decides she made the wrong decision.  We knew this, but were still quite blindsided by her decision.  No one had been given any indication that she was uncertain about her decision at any time.  But we had no legal rights to him, so the day after we got the phone call we handed him back to his mom.

So as you can imagine, we had a lot to think about when the social worker told us about the newborn.  This new baby most likely would eventually be up for adoption, but there is always a chance it won't happen.  We will be sad about our little Babes, and oh by the way we have an 8-month old and I babysit a 2 1/2 year old 5 days a week.

And.... a week after our Babes went to his family, we went to the city to pick up little Lu :)

So this is our life right now.  It is crazy and I seriously question my sanity at least once a day, usually when everyone is crying at the same time.  The pace is a lot different, more "I-need-more-hands" then "little-boy-with-SO-MUCH-ENERGY." Another challenge has been getting out of the house with three under three.  The current solution is front pack, stroller, and leash, although sometimes I end up carrying the stroller occupant....while still wearing the baby in the carrier.  I'm getting a good workout.

 Lu and Miss M are 7 1/2 months apart.  Hopefully both of them will be with us forever.  I can't wait till they are old enough to play together, I am so excited to have 2 little girls who are almost-twins.

I hope this explains a bit also why we don't let friends know ahead of time our plans.  It can be so uncertain, and it just makes it that much harder to have to send emails and explain that we don't have our baby any more...  we are excited, and want to tell everyone, but we need to be sensible.  With Lu our parents didn't even know till the evening after we got her! I can't imagine we will be adding more kiddos anytime soon, cause two babies and a toddler seem to be our limit.... give us a year or two to recover.

catching up, and a story

So many things have happened in the last few months that getting stung by a scorpion, something that should rate an epic post based on my past history of talking about every critter I encounter, seems unimportant.

So let's start.

I passed my boards in December (thank goodness, now I have another 10 years to forget everything I learned again).

We also learned in December that our little Babes, who had been with us a year and a half, would probably be heading back to his family soon.  Then early in January we got the call, and he headed to his new (old) home.

Because of privacy concerns, I have never talked about being foster parents here on the blog.  We probably won't be getting into another long-term fostering situation any time soon,  so I feel like I can be a bit more open about things.  And maybe I can be a source of information for others who are interested in learning more, because there really isn't a lot out there about Belize's system.

Belize's foster system is probably a lot like every country's, in that it is government run and holy cow it can be super frustrating to try and work with the system.   It's just a fact, and anyone who wants to get into fostering needs to know that up front, and have a really solid reason to become foster parents, because sometimes you will need to repeat that reason like a mantra to keep from poking your eyes out with a spoon in frustration.  We decided to become foster parents as a sort of ministry, I guess you could say.  I am trained in health care but am unable to work in Belize, and I wanted to find another area to serve.  I've already worked with teenagers, and I felt like my husband and I could offer something to the littlest needy ones. So we signed up to foster children two and under (we figured we could squish a couple of tiny ones into our tiny house :)  There is a process of interviews and paperwork to go through, and then they called and asked if we could take our Babes.  We said yes.

We saw him grow from a shy little baby, to a giggling crawler, to a tantrum-throwing 2-year-old, to a confident, crazy, athletic, and caring little boy.

And then we had to let him go.

In Belize there aren't enough foster parents, so those kiddos who can't stay with their families are put in children's homes, which unfortunately tend to be overcrowded. I can't imagine the challenges of running a children's home, and I'm sure those in charge do their best.  But I believe that if it is possible, a child should be with a family.  That is what we think about when we are sad about our little guy.  We gave him a family when he needed one.  We accept the sadness as our price to pay for his comfort and safety and happiness.

We are still foster parents, but we have chosen to move towards adoption and foster-to-adopt for the moment.  Perhaps in a few more years we will go back to long term fostering.

As for the scorpion sting.... short story is it was in my closet, on my skirt, and stung my STOMACH when I went to put the skirt on.  It felt like a needle punched into my belly.  I panicked and googled and then was quite relieved to find out that scorpions here aren't much more dangerous then a bee sting.  My lips did go numb for 4 hours though...

This update is not over, more to come....

newest niece

My newest niece is one month old.  Her mom let me take some pictures, I think they came out nice.

Crazy hair, huh?