Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothering people. To mother is to "bring up with care and affection" or to "look after kindly and protectively".

Today, I ask that when you are out and about or when you see your various friends' posts on social media, please remember to be kind. Mothering comes in so many forms.

Whether you have mothered through birth, adoption, fostering, or just leading and supporting, thank you for caring for and mothering others.

Fostering Love: First Goodbye

Us with Baby C

Well the time has come to say goodbye to our first placement. Sweet Baby C has left our home and gone to a relative placement. We are happy that he has family that was able to get approved and take him in. We know that being able to be with family will be good for him.

However, it doesn't make our hearts ache any less that he left. We've cried and cried some more. We expected the heart ache, but goodness you really can't prepare yourself for it.

As we prepared for his departure and since, we've made it a point to put away things that were kept behind. Things like some toys, play pen, bottles, etc. that were ours. It has helped to not have these things still laying around as reminders that he left. Lil Man has been an emotional wreck this week as he doesn't do well with emotions, and he was really smitten with Baby C.

Honestly, we're looking forward to more placements. We know we'll get a call in the near future.

Did you know the state of Georgia has over 15,000 children in foster care? You can help by becoming a foster parent, becoming a relative placement (if you have a relative in care), becoming a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA), or just reaching out to your local DFCS for information on volunteer opportunities.

Fostering Love: First Placement Call

Baby C has been with us for 2 weeks now. Yep that's right 2 weeks! Let's rewind a little...

So as you know, we received the call that we were approved on April 9th. Well on April 12th I received a voicemail while I was at my afternoon car duty at school. It was from our new foster parent case manager. She was introducing herself and letting us know they had a potential placement. As she said, "Yes, it really does happen that fast."

I mean wow! 3 days?!?! Granted, we were comping at the bit waiting for a call, because we know there's such a high need. But honestly, we didn't think the call would come that fast. And we thought for sure we would have to have the transition meeting before we received a call, but nope!

I instantly text Manda to get her to reach out for more info since I was still at work for my after school tutoring. She called me and said they had an 8 month old little boy, and we knew instantly that he would be the perfect fit for our first placement.

Once he was dropped off that evening, we headed to Wal-Mart to grab some necessities that we didn't have at home yet. Then we when home, snuggled, and got ready for Friday. Friday meant he had to start daycare. We definitely had some adjusting to do with our schedule, but we're figuring it out.

Like I said we received the call on April 12th. He's been with us for 2 weeks now. We're still somewhat adjusting to life with an infant, but it's definitely starting to feel more routine. We're all so in love with this sweet baby boy.

Lil Man has stepped up and is already a great big brother. The boys are both smitten with each other. Baby C adores Lil Man so much. Baby C really has just fit his way into our lives perfectly. We already fear the day that he may have to leave us. We keep reminding ourselves that's what we signed up for, but it doesn't make it any less scary. But one thing is for sure, as long as he's with us we will love him and spoil him rotten!

Fostering Love: Journey to Approval

It's been a while, but we are so excited to start sharing an exciting journey with you! See, fostering is something that we have talked about for a long time. We always said that it would be hard to love them and lose them. We also said we'd probably do it after we had more kids of our own and they were older. I'm going to share a brief (super brief) snapshot of our journey from inquiry to approval.

Sometime in early 2017, a friend (who was already a foster parent) shared a couple of things about foster care. First, she shared the numbers for our county. At the time, we had less than 20 DFCS foster homes and nearly 200 children in our county that were in state custody. Later, she shared a post that was basically "If you've ever said _____ about becoming a foster parent, you'd be perfect" and it was a list of 3-5 bullet points. We realized then that it wasn't about how much it would hurt us when they left, it's more about the love we can give them while they're with us. That's when we decided to find out more about the process.

On May 15, 2017, we attended a prospective foster parent information meeting. It was a brief session where they told us what we could expect of the process and more about the need in our county. We were able to complete our IMPACT pre-service training classes in June 2017. All that left was finishing up the paperwork and home visits.

We finished up all of our visits in late fall and had our last bit of paperwork submitted in early January. The sub-contractor that wrote our home study report submitted it to our county DFCS at the end of January. Now it was time for three people to review the home study and gives us the final decision. Our case manager had to come out and take a few more pictures of the house per her supervisor's request. Then just more waiting.

After nearly eleven months after we started the process, we received the call on April 9, 2018 (two weeks ago) that we were approved. Our case manager said that our new case manager would be reaching out soon to set up a transition meeting so that we could begin accepting placements. Receiving that call brought so many emotions. We had waited for this, and now the time was finally here!