Time to see a Pulmonologist

I hate it when I find a blog I love and forget to bookmark it and can't find it again. This has been happening to me whenever I go online. I will have to get better at remembering to bookmark my favorite blogs. It is all quiet right now. Kids are taking naps - all of them and DH and I are taking a break from cleaning out our room. As I told you all before DH is finishing the room downstairs to be his office, so we are trying to make room for the treadmill in our room upstairs. I'm hoping when I get on the treadmill that it stays on the second floor when I jog!

Actually I have been trying to count points (WW) and have been doing fairly well. Yes, I'm trying to lose weight for my BIL wedding in March. I think I can lose a good 10 pounds in 1.5 months if I really try. Hence, putting the treadmill in our room. We just received the itinerary for my BIL's wedding and it's going to be so much fun. It is going to be on the beach in Charleston, SC, but they rented out a beach house for everyone to stay from Wednesday till Sunday so should be fun.

We have already decided that we are not taking N4 and X6 on this trip, there will be too much going on. I'm trying to convince DH that we need my mom to come with us so she can watch J when we need her to and have to do wedding stuff or pre-wedding stuff, but he is adamant about her not coming as of right now, especially since we are driving. You know too much of a good thing can be bad. I'm sure that's what he's thinking.

So J's Dr. wants him to see a Pulmonologist. That is progress, because before he would just tell us kids get coughs in the winter and sometimes don't get over them until Spring. That's that! So needless to say I am happy to hear this news. I think we are going to keep J home another week from daycare or at least until he sees the pulmonologist.

We have decided to enroll X6 in our school district so he can get some services once he gets his IEP done. This way there is no red tape about who's paying for his services. We just now have to take off more time from work to get over to the enrollment office which is conveniently only open from 10am until 3pm. I would love to have that job!

Well I better get going I have to go explain that sharing does not mean getting the toy you want when you want it!

More Pnemonia

I took J to the Dr. last night and he said he thinks he has the pnemonia back. I cannot believe this! I asked him if we should get a chest x-ray, but Dr. is concerned about too much radiation so we are going to treat him as if he has it so back to every 4 hour nebulizer treatments and steroids. DH was not happy at all and feels like this Dr. is sorely lacking! J has to stay home all week and no going out to daycare or visits with BM. I already notified SW, and she is very supportive so she is going to notify the BM.

I guess this means we have to call WIC and put that off another couple of weeks, which means no formula checks until we get our appointment. J's SW home visit is scheduled for tomorrow night so hopefully we will still be able to do that without any gliches.

I got a phone call from N4 and X6's SW today and he told me that the best way to get services (IEP) for X6 is to enroll him in our school district, otherwise we will have a hard time with our school district paying for his services. That really burns me up because I have been paying taxeas in my district for over 6 years and now that I have a child that could use those taxes, they tell me they won't pay for his services. I should be able to send my FS to any school I please and they should pick up the tab for his IEP because I pay taxes in this school district and he lives with me. I love how the system loves to get around helping kids in need!

Well I am off to go home and relieve my DH from nebulizer duty. Hopefully the house is clean and laundry is done!

IEPs and Coughs

For the past 2 weeks we have started to give the boys some chores around the house such as letting the dogs out and feeding them. Well at least 3 times X6 has left the door wide open after he lets the dogs in, so this morning I had to tell him he is no longer allowed to let the dogs out until he can be more responsible because like all our parents have said in the past "we are not paying to heat the whole neighborhood."

I just heard from X6's caseworker and it seems he is having a few snags trying to find out what school district is suppose to do X6's IEP. The kids go to a daycare/Kindergarten near my work, but we live in a different school district, and X6 last IEP was done in a third school district and all of them are saying that they are not the right resource!!!! Does this sound familiar to anyone!

J now 7 months andstill has a bad cough. He sounds like he is hacking up a lung and all his doctor has done is put him on albutorol for 7 days back in September and he still had it in October so then he added a steroid to the albutorol and then he got pnemonia in November and he was on albutorol through the nebulizer and we have contacted the doctor many times to tell him the cough is not going away and all we get is "some kids just get bad coughs during the winter." Alrighty then! He told us we could keep J on the nebulizer as long as he needs it so we try to give him a treatment only in the mornings because we find that he has a harder time sleeping at night if we give it to him all day. He seems to be doing better, but every once in a while we get reminded that he is not completely healthy when we hear his smokers cough and everyone asks him if he needs another cigarette!!! One lady suggested I switch him to soy milk because it might be an allergy. I jumped on that one and tried it for a week - no such luck - it actually got worse and then his poop was hard as a rock so we switched back to Gentlease, which is the only formula we had any luck with soft poop for him when we first got him. Any suggestions! I know shockingly doctors are not always right!

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.

Now that I have more time the here is the continuation of my updated on X and N. X can be very challenging a times because of the brain trauma. I believe his memmory has definitely been affected. He sometimes has moments where he goes off into a daze and can forget what he is doing. I know I tend to do that sometimes, but it's different, you can almost tell he has nothing going on up there for those brief moments. I at least keep moving, but have too many things going on up there that I can't see straight!

Speaking of seeing straight - we ordered glasses for both X and N today because we went to the doctor Healthworks recommended and they will not get their glasses for 2-4 months because they are on medicaid and we were told that the correctional facility makes these glasses. If that's the case I would think that there would be a plethera of glasses to be had. Unfortunately, the inmates must be too busy getting their degrees on tax payers dollars. Such is life! The glasses we bought for them should be done tomorrow by 1pm.

I haven't even touched on our caseworker for X and N. This was his first case - need I say more! Basically this guy is delusional and all he sees is rainbows and butterflies for these kids. When we first met B (X and N's case worker) he was showering the boys with toys and picking them up for thier parent visits and it was really hard because all we ever heard from the boys was when was B picking them up, because they equated B with fun, food and fellowship with thier birth parents. Needless to say that came to an abrupt hault after this guy's case load got full. Now we are the one's picking up the pieces as to why the kids don't see another person they got attached to. B is very slowly giving us more and more information regarding X's accident report.

On top of the accident and all of the traumas that come along with that, we found out that X and N have a blood disease. It is not contagious it is hereditary, but again this means lots more doctors appointments and specialists. We had blood work done and the kids have the symtoms of the disease which their father said they had, but we have to take them to a hemotologist to confirm the findings.

This blog is seeming to be a little muttled, but I'm just trying to write down as I remember things from the boys first couple of months with us.

We did meet X and N's birth parents in court 2 weeks ago and they seem pretty nice. They seemed like monster's on paper, but meeting them made them real and we really are cheering for these parents to get their acts together and hopefully get X and N back. We never thought we were intended for foster care, we just thought we would do foster/adoption, but I believe the Lord is tryint to make it clear to us that we can do foster care. We've yet to experience a child leaving, but I'm sure the Lord will give us the strength to endure!

New Kids on the Block!

Well 3 months has passed since my last post. We still have J, but now we have 2 more foster children. Things with J have pretty much stayed the same. No news is good news I guess. His BM has been admitted to the hospital a couple of times and been unable to make her visits and we are told it is no fault but her own so that can only be one of two things, she is not taking her medication or she is taking non prescription drugs if you know what I mean.

Our 2 new foster children are brothers who are 4 and 6. We will call the 4 year old N and the 6 year old will be X. We actually received a call on September 10th and our foster care specialist asked us if we would be interested in taking these 2 boys. We said we would like more information, but we would consider it. We got a call back and they told us they had already found a bilingual home for the boys, because we are not bilingual, however my parents are so we are considered for bilingual children if there are no other alternatives because my parents live behind us so the children would have Spanish exposure. Anywho, long story short the bilingual home fell through and on September 12th we were asked to take these boys and I had prayed about it that if the Lord wanted us to have these boys they would come to our home and so we had to say yes, because the Lord was definitely at work especially since there was another home in the process. That was the only catch the boys had to be moved ASAP so they would have to come to our home that very evening. I had a work outing to go see Wicked so my husband and my parents received the boys. When I got home that night the boys were already in bed so I could hardly sleep because I was soo excited to meet them. I asked my husband a bazillion questions about them, but I had to see them for myself. I did ask my husband if they asked if either of them wet the bed and they had not, so sure enough when we woke up the next morning the little one N had wet the bed. So began our journey with X and N!!!!

We have had X & N for over 2 months now and have done the whole gammit of check-ups ie: shots, dentist, eyes. X was 2 years behind on his shots and N was 2 months behind. We thought only N would have a problem with his eyes because he has a crossed eye, but it turns out X has 20/50 vision and needs bifocals!!! Remember he just turned 6. Anywho, we are finding a lot out about X that we could not tell at first. We recently found out he was in a car accident when he was 2 and N was 2 months. X, however got the brunt of the accident and had moderate brain trauma, a broken pelvis and a broken humorous. He was in the hospital for a month and then in rehabilitation for a month and now we find out he has had an IEP done and Occupational therapy that he should be having as well as speech/language therapy he should be having. At first we thought maybe he was just neglected and no one ever worked with him on numbers and letters and getting dressed, until now we see N passing him up on all of the same things they are learning at school.
to be continued . . .

First Foster Placement

Where to begin! So much has happened since my last post on 6/27/08. As I had said we met with the foster care specialist on that night and 1 week later on 7/3/08 I received a call from her and she asked us if we were interested in fostering an infant and if we were we needed to pick him up from the hospital that evening. We had to remember that this was strictly foster for now and that the first goal would be to reunite with his mother, but of course there is always the chance that he may become adoptable. So we took a leap of faith and 2 hours later we were signing papers ready to take J home, however, there was a little snag and the dr. had not done his final physical so we were asked to come back and get him in the morning, but we did get to see him (we will call him J to protect his identity) and he was as cute as a button. So on July 4th, 2008 we recieved our first foster placement of a 17 day old caucasion, mostly healthy, newborn baby boy straight from the hospital. I say mostly healthy because we have to take him to a couple of specialist to make sure he doesn't have any long term problems with his kidneys or heart, but for the most part he his healthy and not on any kind of medications.

I can't believe we have had J for over a month now and he will be 2 months old tomorrow. He has gotten so big and we just love him to bits. He does have his parent visits 3 times a week and I am still working so my hubby watches him during the day and when he is working my mom watches him. We have no idea when or if he will go home, but we are just praying for J's best interest. We absolutely love having him and honestly I don't feel like it has been that big of a transition. We definitely have a huge support team and would not be able to do it without my MIL who was here from Arizona when we first received the placement to help us and my mom and dad who help us whenever we need them.

Just a side note I was told to contact WIC to get J's formula and the first available date they had for my area was in October!!! Can you believe that! So needless to say I made an appointment for a different office and I still had to wait, but only until August 18th. I shouldn't say only - it was still quite long. I just can't believe there are that many children and families on WIC. That was really eye opening.

We are hoping for more foster or adoptable children, but who knows what the Lord has in store for us. We would love to adopt J, because how perfect would that be to be able to adopt our first placement who was placed with us straight from the hospital never knowing any other home. We can only wait and see! Such is life, right!