As many of you know we had 3 foster kiddos (ranging from 1.5-7yrs) come stay with us for a few months. I won't get into that story other than to say it was once again a learning experience & we genuinely do miss them. One of the hardest parts of fostering (when it doesn't lead to adoption or long-lasting relationships) is not knowing what happens to the kiddos in the long run. You put your time & love into them and just hope it made/makes a difference!
Over the holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years) B & I took some much needed time to be a family of 3 again and enjoy all that the holidays had to offer. It's one of our family's favorite times of year filled with so many traditions - buying a new outdoor decoration, taking a screaming picture with santa (who is a wonderful santa, but our daughter freaks out with), making cookies, baking a birthday cake/cupcakes for Jesus, buying an ornament, etc. It's a wonderfully busy family time & we wanted to have that time uninterrupted.
Once we came to the new year we had new restrictions as to what kiddos we were willing to take in based off of our past experiences. Something that was big to us was having K remain the "baby" of the family while she's still baby enough to be the baby & maintain her family birth position. So not only did we narrow down ages, but we narrowed down what we'd be willing to deal with in terms of interacting with bio parents, the number of kiddos we'd take at once, etc. The more & more our specifications grew the more & more we began to debate whether or not this was the right thing for us or the right time for it in our lives. After all, our ultimate goal is/was to foster.adopt & it felt extremely counterintuitive to root for the bio parents to do better while selfishly & secretly (or not so secretly) hoping that maybe they wouldn't do well so we'd have our own needs met. Granted our hoping wouldn't change what they ultimately chose to do - to get better & parent or to lose rights - but it led us on an emotional roller coaster trying to figure out which way things were going or trying to weed out what we thought we were just being told to keep us happy or going. After 6 years on a rollercoaster (1 year of not getting pregnant on our own, 3 years of medical intervention, 9 months of pregnancy, 2+ years now of pursuing an "adoption" route), there comes a time when you just have to step off.
Fast forward to now. with a lot of uncertainty & prayer that it's the *right* thing, B & I have decided to give up our foster license for now. Alot of that uncertainty comes from having spent over 8 months working towards obtaining it! So are we crazy? Probably. But we both feel strongly that we're being led in the direction of just BE-ing. That starts with being the family of 3 that we are. And it means
letting K get the best of us as parents - not dragging her around to other kid's appointments, dropping her off for us to attend trainings, or kept from having a room of her own/designed around her likes just because she may have to share it or move out of it completely for other kiddos to come in. It means NOT missing the moments with her that we craved so badlly when we were giving more of our attention to kiddos who needed it just as much or more.
So for the next year B & I are going to focus on different things: paying things - like our car & mortgages - off, figuring out a budget that allows me to continue to be home with kae & maybe homeschool in the future, getting our house & its rooms settled, exploring hobbies, making memories. So while the adding to our family subject may be off the table for the next year, it's not indefinitely. When/if we both feel like we're being led to adopt or expand our family, we'll try again. Maybe if we've paid a few things off or made significant financial progress, we'll look at private newborn adoption or embryo adoption. Though that's getting way ahead of ourselves.
We don't regret fostering & I pray that we'll do it again in the future b/c I think it's both good for us, the kiddos, & our daughter. She tells us she misses so-n-so all the time. Not only was it a learning experience for us, but it was for her as well - learning to share her mom/dad/toys, getting to have sibling(s), etc. I want her to see her parents helping others & doing what's right, but i want it to come at a time that's right for all of us. And I want to know we will whole-heartedly be rooting for the bio parents next time around, but will have our hearts & home open for a child that ultimately needs it. Plus we're hoping in a few years we'd be able to take in kiddos who are slightly older as K gets older & can become a "big sis" to look up to.
For now we'll BE. And i'll especially take time to process what's happened over the last 6 years & where we've come from and hope I'll move beyond the "title" of T the infertile :)
My first project for this year (or second if you count the bathroom re-do already done) will be to work on K's room. Before pictures to come...
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