A month in and counting

We are officially very attached to our lovely girl. When she crawled into my lap today and wanted me to read to her, I felt such affection for her, my heart melted. :) I love having two kids and I really enjoy the extra laughs, the new perspective, and the interesting personality that having a new child in the home brings. The kids are both continuing to do well in school. F- is seeming to really beginning to feel comfortable, stable, and secure with us and is thus acting more and more like a contented child every day, rather than a frightened child constantly testing us. It was super fun to take them to the skate park today- our first time!

Just cause

Well, there is acutally not a whole lot of new info to share... I recently read the blog post of another woman who has a new baby in the home and I felt like I could relate to her comments:
"I don't know what I do all day except take care of him, don't get much else done" - I think that's pretty much the life of new parents whether your child is a new born or not. Our foster daughter and our son are beautiful children and I love getting to see the world through their eyes each day. Building this new relationship with F- has been so sweet and its amazing how quickly your heart opens and you fall in love if there is even a little room for it. In our case, we have been so lucky because she does have a good heart and she has a lot in common with us so it hasn't been too hard for her to fit into our routines and our family structure. At the same time, she is a child who has been hurt and she is needy and demands supervision beyond what might be expected for a child her age -so being vigilient 24/7 is tiring. She needs a lot of emotional support and help setting boundaries. Its hard work, but its also heart work and it is as gratifying as it is tiring. I am so lucky to get to have this experience and to get to share it with my awesome husband. He's the best father and husband and our kids are so lucky to have him set such a good example of what it means to be a dad. In many ways, we have a new "baby" in the house and our ability to interact with our extended family has changed because we have to protect her the the safe "cocoon" of our immediate family - luckily she has come along way already and seems more and more able to handle longer activity times and being around more people in our family.
We had a good visit with our aunt, and cousins this weekend and it was great having her around to share it with us. A- is doing well too and I feel that he is stretching and parts of his personality are developing and maturing -I think that this is a good time for him to be a brother and that he's learning a lot from this experience.

I love our family so much and I am in awe of what life holds for each of us if we are willing to step out of our comfort zones once in a while and just take a leap of faith.

Two Weeks In

Being a foster parent is rewarding and gratifying in ways that I didn't expect. It is also quite difficult, but not in the day to day kind of way that I expected. At least not at this point. So far, the most difficult thing I can imagine is actually the time when we will have to let our foster daughter go. Yesterday evening we thought rode our bikes to the pizza place, then played in the park. It was super fun! Today we've been doing chores, watching t.v. and we went to a "kid's fair". The kids had a good time "mining" for money in a pile of pine shavings. It was a pretty cool idea! I think I might create my own sawdust mine for us to play in. :)