Nothing Personal...Hun

"Nothing Personal...Hun", the 3 words that could have brought me to the low level of Tiny's birth family. Hearing those words made me want to hit someone. But of course, I didn't. I was my normal, sickening sweet self.
I guess I should back up an hour to tell you what would give those words so much influence over my attitude.
We had a family meeting with Tiny's bio-mom today. One of the purposes of the meeting was to change kinship care from Tiny's Aunt & Uncle over to me, which Tiny's bio-mom agreed to previous to the meeting today.
When the topic was brought up Tiny's biological grandmother (who had her rights terminated for bio-mom when she was a teen), pipes in that she has a woman she works with at McDonald's, they want the baby to stay with for Kinship care. When asked for the woman's name and contact information, the grandmother could not produce a name or information. So needless to say, I did not get to sign the kinship paperwork today.  So this got tabled for another month.
As if this wasn't depressing enough, the bio grandmother says to me on the way out..."Nothing Personal Hun"
Well, it is personal! I don't understand how a woman who lost the rights to her biological child has a right to have input into this situation. And I do not understand how biomom has a say in where Tiny goes...she is the one who has gotten Tiny into this situation. How can the state say that you can't have your child unless you do x,y,z but you can pick who ever to take care of your child?


I think what makes this worse is I am coming off a week of Tiny being very sick with bronchitis, which has caused severe vomiting and diarrhea. The Dr. feels this is from being subjected to cigarette smoke while living with biomom and she is ruling out asthma She now needs Nebulizer treatments every 4 hours to keep her cough under control, as well as Singular. With all of that, Tiny has not been sleeping well, which means I am not sleeping well.

I knew this was going to be a long, bumpy road. But it still suck when you hit one of those bumps.
This was the first real time it hit me that we really can lose Tiny at any time. The amount of pain that causes is so incredible that I can not even find words to describe it. But for the first time in my life I really felt as if my heart broke today. I mean, I physically felt pain in my chest as I rocked Tiny to sleep tonight. It is amazing the amount of love that we have developed so quickly for this little angel.

I have now purged my feelings and it is time to put my big girl panties on and buck up for the battle that is front of us.
We need your prayers and positive thoughts more now than ever! Thank you for your support, we love you all!

Kinship Care

You know it is going to be a crazy day when you get a milk shower at 4 in the morning! Yeah, I started my day with Tiny vomiting formula all over me and herself. The day had to get better after that.

I did a lot of running around today but at the end of the day it was all good!
 But we got some real good news. We don't have to wait for our foster license to come in to get Leah officially. The babies social worker should be able to transfer kinship care from Aunt & Uncle over to us! We will be discussing doing this at next Friday's Family meeting :) One step closer to making Leah our daughter legally. There is still a very challenging road ahead of us. But this is a big step in the right direction. The social worker seems very knowledgeable. With Kinship Care she will have to do home visits 2 times a month until we are able to adopt Tiny.

I am wiped out but overall I am happy. I just feel this is going to happen.

Meeting With Bio-Mom

Today was my first meeting with bio-mom. I am thinking if we can get to know each other that she may relinguish her rights vs having them TPR'd (terminated by the state). The meeting went as good as could be expected. She was so young. As much as she wants to be Tiny's mom, she just doesn't have the capability to do what is required. My heart is sad for her. But, what is in Tiny's best interest is what is most important. 

My hope is that bio-mom will see that Tiny is really doing best with us. She is thriving in our home. 

Tiny will be 8 months old in a couple more weeks. This is when major bonding occurs. I know that the more she bonds with us the more difficult the weekly visits with her bio-mom will become. 

We have been getting Tiny a lot which make us super happy. Life is just complete now. Even when we get up in the middle of the night I am happy. To go in and see her little smile when she sees you is enough to melt your heart. So this is good for us and for her. She has really bonded quickly with Cris and I. 

I took Tiny to the pediatrician yesterday for a cough she has had since she came to Charlotte. I loved Dr. Anne Walker! She spent over an hour with us and this  was not even her full exam. She gave us a prescription for Ventolin to try to open up Tiny's airways . She was also worried about her lazy eye and wants us to see a specialist. We may need to do patch therapy on her...which means they will cover the good eye with a patch, and for the lazy eye to work harder, thus making it stronger. 

If we don't do this, she can eventually lose sight in the lazy eye. But more immediately she would have depth perception issues. If the patch therapy doesn't work she may need surgery to correct it. 

On another front, we received bios on a sibling group a Sister who is 5 and a brother who is almost 2. They are legally available for adoption. Cris and I are requesting additional info to see if this is something we can handle. We have discussed it and ultimately we are open to having 3 children. So if the children;s issues are not too severe we may decide to try to meet them. The way we look at it, if things work out as we hope than we will have 3 children, If for some reason it does not work out, than we will have 2. 

That is the most difficult aspect of our process with Tiny, there is no guarantee. I wish there was, but sadly there is none. 

As always I am in awe of the amount support,gifts and love we have received from everyone. Our family is blessed to have each and every one of you in our lives. 

GUESS WHAT?

Our Home Study was APPROVED!!!

We still need our state license...but I am super happy to get this step done!

In the process over a year

Well, it's been a year and 2 days since we started our process, and we have yet to be approved, even though our paperwork has been sent to the state. Actually we just got another email on Friday asking me exactly how old was I when my bio-mother died. Seriously! Does it really matter if I was 4 or 5? Like it makes a difference? That makes almost as much sense as being asked where my dogs slept! In reality, since we have this arrangement worked out with Aunt & Uncle the approval from CHS is kind of not needed this very second. But it would still be nice to get it. We have worked so hard on this, it will feel like an enormous accomplishment to get that stamp of approval. That has really been the hardest part of this process. They study every aspect of your life and then keep digging deeper and deeper needing to "clarify" more and more information. I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem in the manner in which they do it. It really makes you feel like something is wrong with you. 

On a happy note... we have been having a lot of time with Tiny Bit! We are really enjoying every moment of it. She is absolutely precious and sweet. You can't help but fall in love with her. We have been receiving all kinds of gifts and hand me downs, which is awesome. Everything from toys,clothing, safety equipment to books. We appreciate every one's generosity! 

As much as we are falling in love , we still need every one's prayers, good thoughts etc to help us through the next year. So far we have had all good. But we know that the challenges of dealing with bio-mom are ahead of us. And there is always that nagging knowing that there is a chance that bio-mom can get all her stuff together and get Tiny back. The chances are slim, but there is still a chance. I look at the situation as if for some reason she does get her back that we have made a significant contribution to Tiny's development. I don't think that will comfort me all that much if we were to lose her, but it is something positive. But I am going to live in my world where unicorns fart rainbows and plan that all is going to continue to move forward smoothly. In my perfect world bio-mom will see how much we can offer Tiny and relinquish her rights to us. So that is what I am going to ask for peoples prayers and thoughts to be directed towards. Thank you for all of your support, we love you all! 

Happy New Year

I sit here on New Years Day more tired than I can remember being in years, but happier than I have ever been in my life. We had a nice get together last night with Tiny Bit, Little Bit, Aunt, Uncle, our friends Kim,her hubby,daughter and other friends. It was nice low keyed. We ate lots of food, the kids played Wii and we watched Transformers. We got a special surprise and Tiny got to sleep over!!! It was the best gift that anyone could ever give to us. It was about 1:30 by the time we got to go to bed, Tiny woke up for a bottle at 4:00 for an hour and I was back up at 8:00. I had a hard time sleeping because I was so excited. Cris had a hard time sleeping too, he kept going in to check on her. He is around wrapped around her little finger.
The pups have been fabulous with her and her sister Little.

We will have tiny over night for a couple nights this week, it will be good to see how we are going to do things with work. It is actually a little more complicated now than it will be, because we are having our friend Kim baby sit and she lives about 30 minutes away.
We have been interviewing babysitters for when Tiny comes to live here. We have narrowed it down and found a really good one about 10 minutes from our house, she is a licensed day care provider buy limits her care to only a couple children at a time. She has a separate floor of her house for the day care which I like. I am going to do reference checks and background checks and if all clears we will secure her.

Now all we need is the state to approve our paperwork ( About 45 more business days)!

So, 2012 has started at an all time high. my friend Kim put this video on my facebook page  and it is going to be the song of our year...