Why I Do It

Some of you locals knew Kyle and I's foster sibling set of 3 sisters. They arrived on our doorstep just before Easter Sunday last year. That Sunday Kyle heard Matt Redman's song, 10,000 Reasons for the first time sung in Easter service. It's a beautiful song and he went around singing/humming it for the next several weeks. Because of his constant singing of the song (and it's recent release and frequent play on KLove) the girls immediately took to the song as well. They christened it, "Daddy's Song" or sometimes, "Oh My Soul." From then on they went around singing it the best they could. Their lyrics were comical at best, but the intent was pure. They had finally replaced the trash they had walked into my home singing (songs with lyrics that actually made ME blush-think the Discovery Channel song and worse) with something much more appropriate and for that I was thankful. Every time it came on the radio all 5 children in my van belted it out. It was like a chorus of angels (or at least that was what I had to imagine to keep from going crazy from the earsplitting, off key voices!) For 5 months that song was a constant presence in my house. It was a frequently requested bedtime song and I soon wondered if they would ever move on to something else. I was getting a bit of tired of it despite the beautiful song it was.


Fast forward to a few weeks before the girls left us. I had to take them to emergency respite with a fellow foster mother in Fremont whom I had never met. I was not happy about it, but I had no choice.  This amazing woman was not only a veteran foster and adoptive mom, but she was also at that very moment hosting 2 Italian high school foreign exchange students when she agreed to watch my girls. While there, the girls of course went around singing their song. KLove was also playing pretty much constantly at her house so eventually 10,000 Reasons came on and the girls shouted, "That's Daddy's Song! Turn it up!" Granted they could have asked a bit more politely, but hey, it was a big improvement from the grunts we got when they came. Anyway, as the day went on the girls asked to watch TV or a movie and instead this fellow foster mom got on You Tube and looked up the video to 10,000 Reasons. The girls were thrilled and watched it on constant replay for almost a half hour. All this time the foreign students were just watching, listening, and taking it all in (they had just arrived in the US the day before!) and probably wondering what on earth they had gotten themselves into. I picked the girls up at the end of the day and took them home and that was the end of the story. Or so I thought.

Fast forward  again 3 more months. The girls have moved on to another foster home. We have another foster placement. Today I took Hannah and Tater Tot to Fremont for the National Adoption Day celebration. The foster mom who had helped me out happened to be there with her family (biological, adopted, foster, and foreign exchange). We chatted briefly and she asked where my girls were. I explained they had moved to another foster home closer to their birthmom. Beginning to choke up, my new friend said, "I think about them every day." She then went on to tell me that because of the insane number of times the girls watched that Matt Redman video, one of her exchange student daughters grew to like the song and bought the CD on itunes. She listened to the whole thing and eventually began asking questions about the messages in the songs. She then borrowed a bible from her host mother and started to read it. Because of my girls and that one song, this young woman was now very close to accepting Christ as her personal savior! My friend said that every time she hears that song she tears up and thinks of my girls and the eternal impact they've had on her exchange student.

Who would have ever thought that 3 little girls being neglected and abused coupled with an inept and unethical DHHS caseworker could ever have been used for good, not just good, but GLORY!?! But it happened my friends, it did. If my girls hadn't gone through what they did they wouldn't have come to my home. They wouldn't have heard that song and grown to love it. If their caseworker had done her job I wouldn't have needed respite that day. If I hadn't needed respite, if I had refused to leave them with someone I didn't know, I would have never met my friend and her new exchange students. If my girls hadn't played the heck out of that song who knows if that young woman would have bought that CD and grown to question the message on it. I often wonder if what I do makes any difference. Many of our kids will be destined to head right back into the same awful circumstances they came from. Our care won't have really changed anything. BUT God has a plan. Just because I don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist and just because I don't see the fruits of my labor doesn't mean they aren't there. I feel so fortunate to have seen my friend today and heard her story. It was the wake up I needed to snap me out of my pity party. To stop me from wondering, "Why on earth do we do this? Why do I subject my family to this chaos and upheaval that is foster care?  Why do I allow myself to get attached to these children only to have my heart broken when they leave me for less than desirable situations? Can we really make a difference? Does their time with us even matter at all? Why do I set myself up for the lifetime of  pain from not knowing what their future holds when they leave me?" This is why I do this. God can use me even if I don't know what He's using me for. I just have to be willing.

Tooth Fairy

The tooth fairy finally made her first visit to our house last week. During our trip back to Indiana for Kevin's wedding we noticed that Hannah's permanent tooth had begun coming in behind her baby tooth. We were worried there would be a big gap in her mouth for all the wedding pictures, but that baby tooth held on. It finally agreed to come out one night last week and boy was Hannah excited about the impending visit from the tooth fairy. I bet she checked on her tooth a dozen times after she placed it under her pillow. The tooth fairy left her a shiny new half dollar and she was pleased as punch. A few days before it finally fell out we noticed that the tooth next door to it was also already coming through and it didn't seem loose at all. Now it seems to be at least a little bit loose so I'm not going to get too worried about it yet unless that adult tooth starts to get big and we haven't made any progress in getting the baby tooth out. Tiffany, Hannah's birthmom, said that the twins' teeth did the same thing and they never had to have any of them pulled so that is an encouraging sign. This must just be a genetic thing that runs in her family.

We had our homestudy visit this week and it went very well. We were disappointed to learn, however, that it would be after the first of the year before our finger prints were cleared and our homestudy finalized. Hannah was actually mad about it. She shouted at me, "I want kids NOW!" I couldn't help but think, "My thoughts exactly!" It is a bit frustrating to just sit and wait on the government red tape when we know via our social worker that they are really struggling to find homes to place children in in our area right now. We are ready and willing, but can't take a placement until the government takes it sweet time to process our finger prints. UGH!

Hannah continues to do well in school. Her teachers are really good about staying on top of her behaviors and she's getting plenty of academic challenge. Yesterday I actually just got an email from her teacher to let me know that Hannah had tested out of all of the sight word lists to meet the benchmarks for the entire school! This means that for the next 3 years she won't ever need to be assessed on them again because she passed the kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade tests! Way to go Hannah! We weren't really surprised since when the lists came home to practice Hannah didn't have to practice. She said every single word correctly the first time on all 30 lists. Still, it's good to know that she's displaying her knowledge at school as well as at home since that hasn't always been the case with her. In math she continues to get faster and faster at adding and subtracting and has also been working on word problems where she has to decide whether or not she needs to add or subtract to get the answer. She also likes to find the missing sign in equations. Her spelling and writing continues to improve and I'm often blown away by the number of words she just "knows" how to spell without having to sound them out. She can also spell many of the sight words that you can't sound out. Her comprehension skill of retelling a story is also improving. At the beginning of the year she was not only below her actual reading level of 3rd grade in this skill, but she was actually below her grade level on it. Now she's above grade level on retelling, but not quite up to her current reading level yet. We'll keep working on it.

Flower Girl

Last week we traveled back home to Indiana to attend my brother-in-law's wedding. Both Kyle and Hannah were in the wedding-Kyle as the best man and Hannah as the flower girl. I was nervous about this trip for several reasons. First, we were driving. It's a long drive, at least 9 hours, and we intended to drive straight through overnight leaving as soon as Hannah got out of school. Second, it was a Catholic ceremony which meant it would be LONG and Hannah would need to participate the entire time. Third, there would be late nights and long days with no predictable schedule. Fourth, we were driving home the very next day after the wedding on little sleep and with impending sugar high crashes.

I should not have worried. Hannah did brilliantly in all aspects of the trip. She rocked the ceremony, the reception, and both the drives out and back. I was SO PROUD of her. Never in a million years would I have expected our trip to go as smoothly as it did. It truly was amazing. AND since it was so amazing I'm going to regale you all with the play by play of the ENTIRE weekend. Feel free to simply skip all the words and just look at the pictures!

Thursday I picked Hannah up from school and while walking home she crashed face first into the sidewalk and got some pretty spectacular looking scrapes-two on her arms, one on her leg, and one on her nose. Just what we needed two days before having to wear a white dress for the wedding. We eventually made it home and then waited for Kyle to get home from work so we could leave. We hit the road at around 5:00pm which was a little later than we expected, but not too horribly bad. The plan was to drive straight through to Indiana and arrive at the hotel around 3:00am. Well, that didn't happen. We hit some horrible fog that slowed us down dramatically and made Kyle super sleepy. We pulled off at a rest stop and took a little nap to perk ourselves up. While Kyle and I slept for an hour and a half Hannah sat quietly and read! I could not believe it. She won't even let us sleep in on the weekends! She really behaved brilliantly on the trip and we rolled into the hotel at 6:00am local time on Friday morning. Oh, and I almost forgot, we also found out on the drive that Hannah was about to lose a tooth and it was bleeding. Another thing involving blood that we did not need paired with a white dress!

Upon arriving we found that the hotel had given away our room because we did not check in at the appropriate time. I was about to panic since we were pretty much dead on our feet, but the lady at the front desk worked her magic and found us a room that we could have for our entire stay and didn't even charge us for the night we missed or for early check in. I think they must have felt sorry for us because we looked terrible. Once up in the room Kyle and I crashed and slept until 11:00 while Hannah happily watched cartoons. That kid had probably 5 or 6 hours sleep total and she didn't even nap! We then headed out for lunch and errands before the rehearsal. While waiting at the church for the rehearsal to start Hannah happily ran around the sanctuary and played in the holy water of the baptismal. Try as I might I COULD NOT keep her out of that darn water. It became the bane of my existence. After rehearsal we headed to the rehearsal dinner where Hannah got a little wild, but managed to hold it together mostly. At this point it was 9pm and she'd been up since who knows when. She crashed so hard on the way back to the hotel that I was able to get her out of the car, carry/drag her up to the room and take off her clothes and drop her in bed all without her waking up. I haven't been able to manhandle her like that while she was asleep since she was a toddler.

Saturday morning we slept in a bit and then got up and went swimming at the pool. Hannah had a blast and made friends with another little girl who was swimming that was also adopted. While the girls played, I enjoyed chatting with her mama about adoption. After swimming we headed out to get lunch and take it to the church. There we ate and got all gussied up for the wedding. Hannah LOVED being in her dress and holding her basket of flowers. At one point there was a minor crises where she began picking some of her scabs and made herself bleed, but the blood was kept off the white dress thank heavens. And of course there was that darn holy water I had to keep her out of only this time not only was she splashing in it, but she was also dropping flower petals into it! During the ceremony I left her in the charge of one of the bridesmaids and took my seat. She handled the ceremony like a pro and even managed to get a little chuckle out of the audience when she flashed everyone the thumbs up sign as she took her place at the front of the church. It was quite cute watching her sashe down the aisle acting like she owned the place. All eyes were on her and she was in heaven. She managed to stay mostly still and quiet the entire ceremony and stand up and sit down with the rest of the girls at all the appropriate times. I was quite proud of her.

At the reception she was the life of the party. She charmed every person that would look her way. She skillfully made her rounds to all the tables collecting the beanie baby dogs the bride and groom had at each seat for guest favors. She managed to charm her way into the possession of six of those dogs! It was pretty amazing to watch her work. There was a chocolate fountain for dipping fruit and other deserts in and Hannah was in heaven. I'm not sure how it was possible, but from the several gallons of melted chocolate she consumed, only two tiny drops of it manage to make their way onto her dress. Once the dancing began Hannah launched herself onto the floor and danced every single song she was there for. She danced alone or with anyone who would dance with her. She had quite the audience. While at the reception I received several compliments on what a wonderful little girl I had and how she behaved just like a mini adult. If they only knew!

Around 9pm I took Hannah back to the hotel and met up with her birthmom and siblings to swim again. The kids had a blast swimming for about an hour and a half and then we headed back up to our room for some snacks and visiting. We ended up visiting until 1:00am! Hannah was BEAT, but I was so thankful for the opportunity to spend some unexpected time with Tiffany and the twins. Now that we are so far away we have to make the most of every opportunity we get.

Sunday morning we were loaded up and on the road by 10:00am and this time we did manage to drive straight through and got home at about 8:00pm. On the drive home Hannah read an entire chapter book to herself in one sitting, colored about a million pictures, and quietly watched a few movies. She dealt with the boredom like a champ. Really the whole trip she handled like a champ. I couldn't have been happier.

Testing

Before Hannah's IEP meeting, the resource room teacher performed some assessments on her to determine her level of academic functioning in reading. The classroom teacher also performed the kindergarten benchmark tests that all students take at the beginning of the year. While we weren't exactly surprised with the results of the assessments, it's something altogether different to see the numbers right there on paper in front of you. Hannah is indeed reading at a beginning of 3rd grade level. She even comprehends at that level as far as answering factual questions. Her weakness lies in making predictions, relating what she reads to her experiences appropriately, and most of all in retelling. It appears that it doesn't matter how difficult the text is (first, second, or third grade level) she has the same problems with retelling the story in her own words. I wasn't surprised at all to hear that. I've noticed that myself when reading with Hannah. I'm not sure if it's truly a problem of comprehension, a lack of interest in the task, or not paying attention to what she's reading. After her IEP meeting I read with her at bedtime that night and I had her do some retelling of two easy readers and two chapters out of different chapter books and I noticed a very clear pattern. In the books where the topic or story was of interest to her she could recall the story perfectly and gave plenty of details to create a complete retelling. In the other two books where she had either little interest or little personal experience with the topic she was unable to tell much at all in her retelling. I wonder if this comprehension problem is simply a matter of age, immaturity, or lack of varied life experiences due to her young age. Time will tell on that I guess.

In both reading and math Hannah exceeded all but one of the end of the year kindergarten benchmarks during the first week of the school year! Once again not surprising, but it was definitely an eye opener for her teachers to see that they truly had a kid that they were going to have to think out of the box to academically challenge. On one benchmark, instead of exceeding the required score she met it exactly. Not bad if I do say so myself for the first week of kindergarten!

Yesterday Hannah brought home a coloring page that had the standard Name____________ Date__________ heading at the top. On the line next to Name she of course wrote Hannah. On the line next to date however she had written Jadin with a backwards J (should be spelled Jayden, but I would say she did a fantastic job of sounding out a word she'd never seen written before). When I questioned her as to why she had put Jayden's name on the Date line she informed me that she wrote Jayden because that's who she likes to go on dates with! I about died. It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing. Jayden is the son of one of our friends from Indiana who recently just moved into town as well (small world huh?) and whom Hannah has a HUGE crush on. Why oh why I wonder is it always the older boys? Jayden is 7 and in second grade (although Hannah is exactly the same height as he is!).

In other, non Hannah related news, we are settling in well here in Nebraska and beginning to make friends and develop a good support system. We've found 2 (actually 3 now that our friends from Indiana have moved to town since they also have a teenage daughter) teenage girls to babysit and both have done a good job with Hannah. One of them actually happens to be the daughter of Hannah's kindergarten teacher! I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, but Hannah loves her so I guess we'll ride that wave as long as we can! We've completed our foster care training classes and most of our paperwork. Now we're in the waiting phase until more paperwork is sent to us so that we can be finger printed and get health checks and such. We are slowly getting the spare bedroom set up for foster children and have even bought a really cool crib. Now that drop sided cribs are banned I worried what on earth I was going to do with a stationary sided crib. My arms are too short to reach down to the mattress on those cribs on even the highest settings. Well, I found this crib on craigslist that wasn't part of any of the recalls that has a fold down gate of sorts instead. It's called a safety gate and they are really high end cribs only made by one company called Baby's Dream. Click on the link to see the crib we got. The picture is of the same model, but a different finish. I'm IN LOVE with this crib and now this company. You should really check out their site. Their furniture is so thoughtfully designed. It's hard to believe that no one else has bothered to make baby furniture this safe or well made. Oh, and by the way, no I was not paid at all to gush about the company. We simply stumbled onto them via craigslist.

We've also been busy hosting guests and installing an invisible fence for Sally the Wonder Dog. Sally isn't sure what she thinks about the fence yet (it's only been operational for 4 days so far), but I'm fairly confident it will make her life happier and our lives easier.

Photo Notes: The pictures are of Hannah and my mom celebrating their belated birthdays together when my mom and stepdad visited in the middle of August. Hannah was THRILLED to have an excuse to make and eat cupcakes!

Five Years Old

My baby girl turned 5 years old yesterday. I can't believe the time has gone so quickly. It seems like just yesterday Mike was calling us to tell us that Tiffany had gone into labor and was already at the hospital so we had better get there quick! She was so beautiful. A perfect complexion. Deep blue eyes that were wide open instead of the sleepy newborn daze. A headful of strawberry blonde hair. 10 fingers and 10 toes. LONG legs and gigantic feet. She never did fit into those newborn diapers or newborn clothes people showered us with! Unlike most newborns, she didn't sleep all day. She needed constant stimulation. I cursed all those dispensers of advice that told me to sleep when the baby sleeps. My baby didn't sleep! Little did we know that this was a sign of things to come! She seemed to take in everything from the very start even though all my books said she couldn't see more than a few inches. By a week old she was entranced with the ceiling fan and studied her pacifier with the intensity of a PhD thesis. Yet more signs of what lay ahead! She was stubborn, oh so stubborn and her personality has only grown stronger and more interesting as she has grown. We had some friends who used to joke about Hannah being a "super genius baby" because she just seemed to know everything. Speaking before most kids were saying even their first words. Conjugating verbs correctly before her peers were putting 2 words together. Little did we know how right they would be. Sarah and Jason, you guys called it for sure.

She's had many struggles as she grown, but now when I look at my beautiful, precious little girl I'm so proud of the young lady she's become. I don't know what I would ever do without her. I thank God every single night for bringing us together with Tiffany and Mike and making us parents of this absolutely amazing little girl.

I leave you know with a multitude of pictures of my baby girl from each year of her life! Enjoy!

Things I Love about my Little Girl

• The way she sticks her tongue out when she's concentrating.



• How she just can't control her body or her joy when Daddy walks in the door.



• The little whimper she does just as she falls asleep that lets me know it's safe to leave the room.




• Her insatiable desire to read.




• Her love of animals.



• When she says, "Mommy, how about this idea?"



• How she makes up crazy words to sound older and most of those made up words bear a striking resemblance to German!


• Her love of music and dance.



• Her ability to create creative song lyrics to familiar tunes (she's been doing this since two years old!).


• Her super amazing memory for everything. That girl STILL remembers the seating chart at Easter when she was not even 2 years old yet!


• Her uncanny knack for directions and recognizing places she may have only been once a very long time ago.


• How she notices EVERYTHING.


• Her ability to charm just about every adult she meets.


• How hard she works to behave.



• Her excitement about turning five and the belief that the world changes when you turn five.


• Those beautiful blue eyes of hers.



• The excitement in her voice upon seeing a firefly.


• Her love of thrill rides.


• Her amazing ability to dry swallow large pills. (This one scares me as well!)


• The way she struts about with her long lanky legs pounding the ground and her hips aswaying!


• Her crazy intelligence.

It's Okay Mommy

We've been hearing, "It's Okay, Mommy/Daddy" a lot lately whenever we tell Hannah to either do something or stop doing something and she doesn't want to obey. We've really cracked down on the "NO!" so she's been censoring herself a bit and has switched it up to "It's ok" AKA I'm not going to do what you want me to do. I plan on doing whatever I want to do. Though it's pretty creative and it does make me want to laugh sometimes it's driving me crazy. I keep having to take deep breaths to stop from going off the deep end.

To top things off, it's getting really frustrating (for both Kyle and I and Hannah) that Hannah can't hear. We are only 1 week into our 4 week wait before we head back to the ENT and I find myself constantly wondering how on earth we are going to make it that long if her hearing doesn't start improving on its own before then. It's to the point that we basically have to shout everything we say to Hannah VERY slowly and 3-4 times before she comprehends what we've said. I listened to her talk to my mom on the phone today and it was all I could do to not laugh as I heard Hannah saying, "Huh?" over and over and over again. I lost count while trying to keep track of the number of times she said, "I can't hear you." My poor girl. :(

On a happy note, we had Hannah's first parent teacher conference at her new preschool last week and we came away from it feeling very pleased. They do assessments on the children every 3 months using a skills inventory based on their age in months. When Hannah started she was 2 standard deviations below the norm in the social and emotional areas. Now, 6 months later, she's scoring completely at grade/age level in both of those areas! YAHOO! Now I know we aren't out of the woods yet and that some of her deficits will become more apparent as the social demands grow, but this assessment confirmed what I was already observing which is Hannah is making great strides in her social skills under the guidance of her teachers. I am so proud of my little girl. And to boast a little bit more, she also maxed out her scores on all the verbal, academic, fine motor, and gross motor skills on the assessment as well. :) The only "bad" thing the teacher had to tell us was that Hannah often "questions authority" AKA she's stubborn as all get out! and has a hard time listening to her teachers when she doesn't want to do something. The good news is that even though she often balks at what she's told to do, they aren't seeing any meltdowns when they push the issue and make her do it anyway. She saves that for us! When Miss Karyl was explaining about the gross motor portion of the assessment, one of the skills listed was throwing a ball overhand. I asked if they needed to have any aim at this point or just be able to chuck it wherever it will go. Karyl assured me that chucking it was just fine at this point and then told us a little story. She said that Hannah is actually developing quite good aim from playing with one of the other little boys in the class. Because of the extremely cold weather the kids haven't been able to go out on the playground very often so they've been spending a lot of time in the gross motor/sensory room. They have a kid's basketball net in there and Karyl pointed it out and said that Hannah plays with the hoop a lot because "Antonio is a big fan of playing basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" I had to laugh about that one because it's true. Hannah is definitely a big fan of Antonio. Those two are like two peas in a pod. My girl really does like her boys. Practically all of her "friends" are boys and sadly this has always been the case. Even as an infant, she's always preferred men over women. I'm looking for this boy crazy trait to diminish a bit soon, but I won't hold my breath. As a side note, I had a note about this little story written down on some scrap paper to remind me to put in on the blog and Hannah found it and read perfectly and without any help, "Antonio is a big fan of basketball and Hannah is a big fan of Antonio!" and then laughed like crazy! UGH! Now I not only can't spell words out loud that I don't want her to know, but I have to be careful what I write down and where I leave it. I may just have to start writing anything I don't want her to read in cursive! Seriously, I shouldn't be having this problem with a 3 year old!

This past weekend the full moon wreaked havoc in our house. Hannah was WIRED to the max. She was running around and shrieking and jumping, and singing at the top of her lungs and grabbing everything she could touch. I thought I was going to go crazy. At one point I was trying to get her to try on some summer clothes from last year to see if any of them still fit (so far only a few do!) and I could not get her to stay near me long enough to get one article of clothing off and another one on before she was off and running all over the place. I found myself becoming almost hysterical and grabbed her by the waist and gave her a little shake and said quite manically "Hannah! CALM DOWN!" Kyle came into the room at that point and said, "Natalie, don't shake the child." It was then that I realized I was over the edge and I needed to pass her off for a little bit or I was going to lose it. I think things are back to normal now, but really it remains to be seen. She had a rough morning getting ready for school, but that's not unusual. We'll see how she is when she gets back from school. It's not too terribly cold outside (in the 20s as opposed to the single digits before the windchill) so maybe they'll get some extra playtime outside to run the crazies out of her.