Happy New Year Finally Writing in 2009!

Well Happy New Year to anyone and everyone. I'm going to try and commit to writing at least once a month if not more if I can. At least that is my hope for now. The Holidays are over and we had many challenges as you might have expected since our honeymoon stage with N4 & X6 is over and done.

Thanksgiving is a blur, but definitely manageable since we had it at our house and we were able to put the kids to bed in their own beds at bedtime. Christmas was however quite different. It seems like we have been celebrating Christmas forever.

For Christmas we went to Arizona to be with my in-laws in their 2 bedroom apartment and of course we brought all the kids. It was let's say not quite the vacations I remember from life without kids and 7 people in a 2 bedroom apartment with only one living area was quite hard. We were there for 2 weeks and had planned a trip to Vegs for my DH and I while my MIL watched the kids, but we had 1 date night before our overnight trip and my MIL had to call us home and told us it would be too much for them to watch all the kids for 2 days. Such is life. I understand that they didn't sign up for this, but her being an Early Child Development Teacher I thought maybe she could handle it for a couple days! Whatever! She did let us have another date night while we were there so it was nice to get away for a night.

I have been really struggling with mourning my old life. I think maybe because DH and I have had 9 years of just us time it has definitely been a hard transition to add N4 and X6 to our family. J was easy because he is a baby and how could you not love and bond with a helpless infant who coos and cuddles with you and thinks of you as his mom, but N4 and X6 come with lots of baggage and lots of attitude and lots of "my mom does this and my dad let's us do this." Well guess what "My house my rules - end of story."

N4 has had some behavioural issues such as tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and direct disobedience when he is told to do something. He also does things on purpose to have a reason to act out. Like he knows he is not allowed to take toys to school except on Fridays, but will ask repeatedly to take toys after we have told him not to ask again, which escalates into him getting a time out and throwing a tantrum. All things I really don't have time for in the mornings.

X6 on the other hand we thought was sweet as pie for the first couple months, but just recently he has turned this corner where everything N4 has he wants or if we ask X6 to share with N4 he will silently cry, wimpering like we just took away his favorite puppy. On top of that irritating behaviour he does not seem to comprehend anything we tell him. We can call him over to us and say no running in the house and he will turn around and run back to his room. He constantly is saying he is hungry even though we have eaten less than a 1/2 hour ago and he can never remeber what he ate at the last meal and don't get me started on when he scares me telling me that he threw up yesterday and I find out what he means by yesterday is last month!!!!

They can be very sweet kids and we do enjoy them, but life as I new it is over and that fact seems to magnify N4 and X6's behaviour as I am selfishly thinking "Why am I doing this." Has anyone else ever felt this way? I feel like maybe I am too selfish to be a foster parent to kids who aren't mine and will never be mine. At least with J there is more of a chance he will be ours and even if he never does become ours there is something about having an infant who is so very helpless that makes them easier to care for, plus it helps that everyone else wants to hold an infant and take care of him for me if I need to run an errand, which is more than I can say for wild 4 and 6 year olds.

We had J's dispositional hearing last Tuesday and within the first 5 minutes it seemed like the Judge wanted to terminate his BM's rights, but when he asked our caseworker what she thought all she said was "it is DCFS's goal to have reunification within 12 months." I about had a coranary. When we got out of there my husband point blank asked her what the heck and she explained to us, that DCFS wants to give them enough rope to hang themselves and who are we to say that she can't change and she has to be given the same opportunity as any other parent to get her crap together. I sort of understood her point, but I'm not happy with it, however, at least we know we have J for another 6 months which means we get to throw him his 1 year birthday party, which I am soooo excited about.

I have to go because N4 and X6 do not know what sit quietly and read books and do puzzles means so I have to put them downstairs to watch a movie so J can nap.