End of Summer Fun

We've been keeping busy!  Isaiah's sleep tends to be incredibly erratic, so every night when we go to bed, we have NO IDEA what to expect.  That's been very frustrating-- I thought after being here a month we would have this under control a little better.  But no-- last night he was awake from 11pm until 4:15am!  Fun!

They had an AWESOME primary activity a few weeks ago-- someone arranged for an owl handler to come and show off the birds that they can't reintroduce back into the wild!  How are owls so cool???

A great horned owl

Okay, this is actually some sort of hawk.  It was hit by a car and its eyes were damaged so it couldn't survive in the wild.  But it's still so regal!

For being a screech owl, this little guy was surprisingly quiet and cute!

Craig caught this impressive shot as the barn owl flapped its wings

Everyone got to take a picture with the owls at the end!  (And yes, we brought Sydney and Beth-- who wouldn't want to come to such a cool activity?)

We also had the swim team awards banquet.  Usually this is a pancake dinner and everyone gets a trophy, but this year it was bring-your-own-food at an outdoor park and the coaches had painted rocks for all the kids?  I have no idea why they didn't just do the trophies-- the rocks were a TON of work and I just can't imagine the trophies are all that expensive, but no one asked me.  Anyway, Bentley and Kendra had to leave for YM/YWs but the other kids picked up their rocks awards for them, so that was nice.

Ryder got "Best Debater"

Colton's was "Most Published Swimmer" (he's still telling everyone about his Christmas book!)

Camille's whole group got the "Knock knock joke" award because that was they loved telling jokes all during practice

This was Kendra's rock-- yay for her!

And Bentley's, because his goggles fell off during a race once, and he just kept swimming and didn't bother trying to put them back on.

Isaiah snuggling with Camille

Camille and Sydney having fun playing Outfoxed together

Of course I blinked here, but this is Craig and I celebrating our 16th anniversary at Maggiano's!  (Much thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for watching the five kids and further thanks to Chris and Julie for watching Isaiah-- we really needed a night off!)

This is what happens when you don't sleep at night, kid!!!

He LOVES the slide!

...and the neighbor's flowers!

Bentley continues to take excellent care of Isaiah

He even introduced him to the trampoline, which was a HUGE success!!!  (Zoom in-- can you SEE Isaiah's enormous smile?)

And Ryder is just plain cool!

Camille is losing teeth faster than the Tooth Fairy can fly!  I'm not even sure how she eats any more...

And I finally got bored with my hair and chopped it off again!  It feels a lot cooler and Isaiah can't pull it as easily, so I'm a big fan!

And last but not least, TWO videos for your viewing pleasure!  First of all, Craig finds something Isaiah LOVES:

And, we learn a trick Colton can do that we hadn't known about:

School starts on Monday.  I'd been looking forward to that day for many many years now, but suddenly I'm dreading it because I have NO IDEA how I'm going to survive without all my wonderful helpers!  What do I do with a 2-year-old all by myself?  😬

More Isaiah (and a little bit of Jonah!)

As planned, we got Isaiah together with his big brother last week and it was... disappointing.  They honestly didn't acknowledge each other at all.  They didn't even seem to notice each other, let alone interact in any way.  And it made me really sad.  I also learned that Jonah's foster mom was asking for him to be moved, so he's now a couple hours away from us and in his third home, the poor guy.  I found it all very defeating-- I felt like if his mom could quit, then maybe I was an idiot for continuing on.  (Can someone be a sympathy quitter?  Like, if you and I are running buddies and you want to walk for a bit, I will stop jogging the SECOND you slow down.  No question.  Probably not my most impressive trait...)

It was super hard to even get them in the same frame.  Props to Jonah's mom for managing to get his hair out of his face!!!

They definitely LOOK like brothers!

Anyway, I haven't quit.  Yet.  Although part of me finds it that much harder because in the back of my mind, I know it's an option.  You just don't have that choice with your biological kids!  But yes, we still have Isaiah.  We're still struggling with ups and downs and trying to figure out how to get him to sleep better.  When his pediatrician gave us the go ahead to try melatonin at night and he promptly slept 11 hours straight, we thought we'd cracked it, but the next night he was up from midnight to 4:45 and we despaired.  Just a little bit.

Fighting me over nap time.  (YES, I'm wearing a muumuu.  So sue me.)

Literally five minutes later.  This kid needs so much more sleep than what he's getting!

In our training, they warned us that foster kids love to try and hoard food.  Because they've often had spells with no food in the house, anything they can find, they'll try and hide it under their beds or in weird places for later.  Isaiah isn't really old enough to do that, but I think his version of this is to grab whatever food he can find and eat it immediately.  Or if he's in his high chair and I'm actively giving him food, he'll throw it all on the floor for later.  It's not that weird for a 2-year-old, but that doesn't mean it isn't really frustrating.  For now, all we can do is try to be better about keeping food out of his reach, but it's a tough habit to form now!  And clean up all the mess...

This is what happened when we left a box of Cheerios within his reach.  And he'd just eaten!!!

Who sleeps like that???  How exhausted do you have to be to finally fall asleep like this?

A rare picture where you can see his face and he's awake!  I'm really hoping we can get permission from his father to cut his hair so he can actually SEE.

The kids have continued to be WONDERFUL with Isaiah.  Their love for him is the one of the best parts of this whole adventure.

I love that protective arm around him

Another best part is watching him just casually playing with toys like a normal 2-year-old.  He didn't do that the first couple days and it's just so healthy and great!

This is still really hard.  But we're not giving up yet!

And Everything Else from Last Week, Too!

In what proved to be remarkably bad timing, I'd managed to sign my little kids up for summer school the same week that Bentley and Kendra were going to their various church camps.  This would have been AWESOME if not for Isaiah's sudden appearance in our lives.  That messed everything up.  Because when you're trying to make sure a 2-year-old doesn't get into too much trouble, the more eyes on him, the better.  But suddenly I was all alone for the bulk of the day with no helpers at all!  So that was kind of lame.

But I was still excited for Bentley and Kendra to get to do outdoor camp, since it didn't happen last year!

He could barely lift this-- fun!

Kendra didn't have to carry quite so much

And in a completely jerky move, Bentley grew taller than me right before leaving!  I don't think it's right that TWO of my kids passed me by in the SAME YEAR.  Aren't there rules against this???

All this to say, I was very excited to get my kids back at the end of the week!  And each afternoon, I'd just be waiting until I could pick up the little kids from school.  I totally missed them!  They'd beg to get to stay the whole time and I'd be like, "I'll just pick you up an hour or so early..."  

Collecting my kids again after a week of camping!

We got home and Bentley and Kendra were both understandably anxious to take showers.  So we let them stay home and relax while the rest of us went to Adam's house to make pizzas!

We started out with him showing us his beehives and explaining how the bees live to the kids.  Can you see them all clustered on the outside of the hive?  That's because it was a hot day, so they were cooling off there!  (Craig took this picture while he let Isaiah wander a bit further away from the hive.

Next, Adam let the kids pick tomatoes to put on our pizzas!

And then Adam showed them how to roll out the dough!  (At this point, I think I was outside wrangling Isaiah, who kept finding dirt to throw in his hair.  Also fun!)

Adam had this awesome pizza oven that heated up to like 900℉ or something, so the pizzas would cook in about a minute-- it was so cool to watch!

Everyone had a great time (even Isaiah, once we gave him graham crackers and let him run around on the lawn with a very long leash!) and the pizzas were delicious!  And as we traded off holding Isaiah's leash, Craig and I were able to make ourselves some pretty amazing pizzas, too.  (I'd forgotten how much I LOOOOOOVE roasted garlic!)

Adam had made a trip to Lynchburg that day, so he'd also picked up cinnamon rolls from Mrs. Joy's for us!  Notice Camille making herself right at home!

As we drove home, the kids said, "Adam's house is so much fun!  Let's go there every day!"  Watch out, Adam-- you were too good of a host! 😂

So July ended on a high note!  It was a wonderful month, even if it was all a little insane!

Craig Keeping Busy

In addition to all this other chaos, Craig also started a new job the week he got home from Seattle.  It's pretty normal in his school district for the assistant principals to move around, so with Craig being at Albemarle High School for 5 years, he was feeling it was time for a change.  He'd also wanted to try switching up what grade levels he works with, partly because it's good for him to be more versatile (there are a whole lot more elementary and middle schools out there than high schools) but also because there's usually less work at the lower grade levels.  They have less sports and after-school activities AND the schools tend to be smaller.  Less students = less problems.

He'd told HR that he was hoping for a change, but we really had no idea how that would work out.  Would he need to watch the schools and apply for an opening, or would they just move him?  It was a little scary.  But as it turned out, he just got a phone call one morning informing him they'd like to move him to Lakeside Middle School, where he'd be working with a principal who'd been an assistant principal with him a couple years earlier at AHS (who he quite likes and worked well with), so it was all easy peasy and he was really excited for the new opportunity.  It's all turning out about as well as we could have hoped for!

So that's another thing that's been on Craig's plate.

The OTHER big thing is that his birthday was coming up and it was a bit one-- Craig turned 40!!!  Two days after we got Isaiah! 😬

I'd planned a pool party for the occasion (Adam had offered to help, but we ran into trouble when he asked me what the theme would be and I said, "Um...  Happy birthday?"  It turns out I do not throw fabulous parties).  (But really I'm just glad I wasn't trying to do a surprise party or anything-- that would have been SO HARD with everything else going on!)  This seemed absolutely insane all of a sudden, but I also couldn't very well cancel it, so we moved forward and hoped for the best.  Fortunately, I'd already bought all the food.  On Thursday, I got an email saying the pool had been closed for maintenance, but within a couple hours (and before I completely panicked over that), I got another email saying it was fixed.  Phew!  A pool party without the pool would be pretty lame.

Craig had also asked that I make cookie dough cupcakes for the occasion, so I gave Kendra the choice of watching Isaiah while I baked, or doing the baking herself and she chose the baking, so she got to work and did a WONDERFUL job with them!  I was so proud of her.

Colton made this awesome crown for Daddy!

I was looking for an excuse to visit Craig's new school and see his office, meet his co-workers, all that stuff.  We figured his birthday would work well for that, so I got him a cake from Costco and me and all the kids brought it to work.

Craig is kind of excited about his standing desk!

It was really fun to see the place-- it's a nice, new building and so much more manageable in size than AHS was!  I think Craig is going to be really happy here.  And once we were done torturing Isaiah by making him stay in the office, we took him to the gym and let him just run for a good thirty or forty minutes and he was SO HAPPY.  So that was also nice!

And the party that evening ended up being really fun!  Our friends Chris and Julie totally saved the day by playing therapist to us.  They've been foster parents for years now (they've fostered 19 kids I think?) so they were able to reassure us that Isaiah would fit in with our family in no time, and they also held him for an hour or more while I ate dinner, which was a break I really needed at that point.  We were able to relax and enjoy all our other friends there, as well, and it was just wonderful.  I'm so glad Craig got to enjoy his big day!

YES, I made everyone sing to him!

The day before, Craig needed a picture of himself to go in the school newsletter, so I snapped this:

That's my man!

But I also got this amazing shot, and I have to admit, it's my favorite:

You'll be relieved to know this did NOT go in the middle school newsletter!

Happy birthday, Craig, you stud!  Many happy returns!

Isaiah

*Kudos to alert reader Jen for noticing my teaser in a previous post!  Here's our big news finally!

When I was visiting with my family, several people asked what was going on with fostering and I told them it didn't really seem like it was happening.  People Places had told us they try to limit homes to five children, and since we already HAVE five children, we were at the bottom of their list.  Which was fine with me.  I slowly started to get rid of some of my baby things-- the diaper bag got tossed, clothing that wasn't in particularly good shape anyway got thrown out.

So, naturally, a week ago Tuesday I got the call, nearly a year after completing our training.

There were two brothers, ages 4 and 2, who had been placed with a foster mom and she was quitting after having them for one day.  In her notes, she underlined that they were feral.  Would we like one of them?  We said we'd take the 2-year-old, mostly because they're both nonverbal and not potty trained, and that felt more manageable in a 2-year-old.

People Places brought us Isaiah the very next morning and he's been with us for nearly two weeks now.

And it has been a RIDE!

Trying to slide out of my arms-- he does this a lot

I was a little judgey about the first foster mom quitting so quickly, but just having Isaiah has been hard enough, I can't imagine doing this with an equally challenging 4-year-old, also.  I can't even tell you how many times I've burst into tears over all this.

Isaiah is very sweet, but he's also very difficult.  I know that doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's hard to explain.  The first few days here, if we were ever in a room with the door shut, he would freak out and be absolutely DESperate to get out of that room.  I would sit or stand in front of the door, and it would be like wrestling an octopus trying to keep him in the room.  Plus, he tended to drool when upset, so not only would he be pulling my hair out, he'd also be drooling all over me, which was just gross.

Playing on the swings during the other kids' swim practice (and then napping in the car)

But as awful as that is, I also appreciated that he wasn't trying to hurt me-- there was no punching or biting involved.  He just. wanted. OUT.

In the short time we've had him, he's made huge progress.  He'll go into his room and close the door and play by himself for a little bit.  He'll let me read books to him (he even has a book, Ten Little Ladybugs, that he loves!).  He's sleeping better, although it can still take three hours to settle him down (especially if he took a long nap that day), so that's awful.  But even then, he isn't wild that whole time, he just isn't sleeping and he needs us to sit with him until he's asleep.  Otherwise he'll leave the room.  (And one of the things about foster kids is that you can NOT lock them in a room, so my normal solution for this annoying toddler trait is out.)  

But he's SOOOO SWEET when he's asleep!

He now looks at me and smiles and laughs and we can play little games together.  The first couple days here, I don't think he looked at me once, and if he needed something, he either climbed on the counter to get it (he managed to grab and eat three bananas that first day before I finally moved them to the top of the pantry!) or tried to get my kids to help him out.  He's slowly learning that Craig and I are safe and helpful.

He's still a 2-year-old, so he's going to be a lot of work even on his best days.  But this is changing to more normal 2-year-old behavior and less of wild-kid-behavior, if that makes sense.  

Just cuddling up to Dad's croc, as one does!

We have no idea how long he'll be with us, but I think it will be a long time.  Maybe around a year?  I tell myself that to get geared up for the long haul, but then I feel overwhelmed and tell myself instead that maybe a grandma or other caretaker will turn up?  Perhaps?  But it's not looking too likely, honestly.  The not knowing is really hard, but I suspect if you told me I'd for sure have him for a year that would ALSO be hard, so maybe not knowing is the softer answer for now...

The kids have handled all this beautifully, and that's probably my favorite part about all this.  Camille struggled the first couple days (she kept referring to Isaiah as "the foster kid" and I had to have a chat with her about how that wasn't very kind), but now she just loves him and is always telling me how happy she is that he's staying with us.  And without their help, I have no idea how I would ever manage to take a shower or accomplish anything, so I'm truly grateful for their help.

I'm sure I'll have lots more to say and MANY more pictures to post in the weeks (and months?) to come.  Feel free to ask any questions and I'll answer them in a future post!

Home Again

We got home and things were immediately busy.  My birthday was the same day as a swim meet and book club (which I was hosting), so that was nuts.  Next year I would rather just go out to dinner and not bother with any of that other stuff.  But what can you do?  It did give me a perfect excuse to make my favorite brownies for myself.  (Craig apologized for not being able to do any of that stuff for me, but he'd just switched jobs-- another thing I should probably blog about!-- so he was pretty busy with his own stuff.)

Ryder and Owen hanging out during their older siblings' swim meet

Kendra and Eliza are still buddies!

Camille remembered her duties as birthday unicorn!

And Colton made me this adorable ferry!

The next evening we were meeting up with friends at Carter Mountain, which is always delightful!

Our friends the Nowaks happened to be passing through, so they also joined us!

It was so great to get Ryder, Cedric and Martin all together again!  These guys (plus Lilyann) used to do preschool together our first year in Charlottesville!

We weren't done with the Nowaks yet-- we all met up at Lake Monticello and let the kids splash for a couple hours, so that was also great.

Fun fact: I have NO IDEA who that kid on the right is.  Weird!

So that was a busy, but fun, week!