1.2.2004: Why Not
Long time, no rant. The main reason why not has been a dramatic reduction in my free time of late. Sequentially, the reason for the drop in my free time has been the arrival of two foster children in our home.
Ironically, just before they arrived I recieved an anonymous email from the feedback page bearing only the enigmatic phrase "You need a kid." I would love to know which part of this site inspired the comment, but in my current situation I tend to wonder more and more about the truth of the statement.
We've never had kids. We don't know what made us think taking in two at once would be a good idea. We'd been through all the training, but we weren't really prepared for... this.
The foster experience has additional challenges to normal parenting, and not just the obvious ones. For example, there is no nine-month warning. You get a phone call, and then you get kids within an hour or two. No 'easing into it', and quite a lot of expenses for things we didn't know we needed (we weren't expecting an infant, so we had no crib or other babyish items in the house.)
The nine-month-old is just fine; everyone who sees him comments on two things: what a good and happy baby he is, and the extraordinary amount of drool he produces.
The four-year-old is a bit more of a challenge. She claims to be afraid of almost everything, including our two cats, the dark, squirrels, and most TV shows and movies. We got her a 'Finding NemoTM' computer game to play, which she liked until Bruce the shark appeared on the screen. She wouldn't go near the computer until someone else quit the game for her.
On the positive side, she is very intelligent (for a four-year-old), is not a picky eater most of the time, and can be very sweet when she wants to be. And although we don't know the details of their mother's situation, we do know things are going well and the agency hopes to place them back with their mother within a month. We're very happy for them all, and at the same time counting the days till we get our lives back.
We barely got our Christmas decorations up a week before Christmas. Ironically the kids are both the reason for the delay and the reason we went ahead and put them up at all. They're still up, but at least we're not alone in this. I can still see darkened trees in many windows in our neighborhood, and the Army installation where I work still has their non-partisan holiday greetings up (one of which is sunk too far into the grass and therefore wishes passing drivers 'PEACE ON FARTH'.)
Six weeks into the experience we're staring to adjust and get into some sort of schedule. This is hindered however by the holidays (no day care when there's no school) and the fact that everyone except the four-year-old has some sort of cold. "You still sick?" the little girl asks, about an hour after we've told her that we are. Illness is a concept she doesn't entirely understand, and "Time" is way to abstract for her. Everything is either Right Now or Tomorrow. And for the Tomorrow things she thinks if she keeps asking about it she can change it to Right Now.
I hope my recent trials have been amusing for you, because from the looks of things I probably won't rant again 'til February...
A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn't act that way very often. -- Unknown
Don't knock the weather; nine-tenths of the people couldn't start a conversation if it didn't change once in a while. -- Kin Hubbard
