2 WEEKS

It has been just over 2 weeks since S & K arrived at our house. The past 2 weeks feel like a lifetime at moments and like it was just yesterday at other times. The "honeymoon period" is definitely over. Foster care refers to the "honeymoon period" as a time when the children behave and act differently at first because they are unsure of their surroundings. K's honeymoon period seemed to end after about 4-5 days, S's however seems to be ending more recently. She is now pushing back on our limits/rules and tries the argument over and over "my mom said....". We can't really say "I don't care what your mom let you do...." but instead we say, "well here, we do it this way." Bedtime for K has gotten so much better. She hardly wakes up in the middle of the night anymore. Occasionally I'll still hear her cry in her sleep but not nearly as often. Going to bed for her is also getting easier. We have progressed to her hearing her stories and songs in her bed instead of having to be rocked. It's so sweet to hear her ask me "mommy please stay" when it's time for her to fall asleep. S is now pushing the bedtime issue. It's hard for her to understand that bedtime at 10pm is actually not unreasonable but since she was allowed to stay up as late as she wanted before (she's told us this herself) then she doesn't understand.

I don't want people to think that it's all bad, it's not. Being a parent these last few weeks has been one of the  greatest blessings we've ever had. These girls are so sweet and fun to be with. Their first court date was last week and they will be with us for at least 1 more month. There are a few family members who are trying to get home studies done so that the girls may be able to live with them. We will wait until next month to see where this is going. However, we have been told by our social worker that it could take a few months to have the family members home studies complete and approved. We will continue to love on these girls and teach them the love of Jesus while they are here. I'm so greatful that my residency program has been letting me spend so much time with the girls and Jonathan this month.

Please pray for us. Tomorrow K has a lab appointment to see if she has a pretty serious medical problem that she was possibly diagnosed with right before Christmas. It's hard for her to have to have blood drawn and it's hard for us to see her cry as well as to sit and wait for results.

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Bedtime Routines....easy to talk about....hard to accomplish....

Tonight is night 5 with S & K. Last night was K's first night to sleep in her own bed by herself. Last nights bedtime routine took an hour and fifteen minutes to get her to go to bed by herself. It involved much ear splitting screaming that was so heartbreaking to listen to. We have decided not to include a bath in her bedtime routine because she doesn't get one everyday. For now, while we are establishing her routine and getting her used to sleeping in her own room and bed we have decided to give her a bath in the morning after breakfast if she needs one. Since she doesn't go to school this will work out fine for now. Maybe once she knows her routine we can start doing baths after dinner or adding them to her bedtime routine on the nights she needs one. The routine that we made last night while flying by the seat of our pants includes 2 books, rocking and singing songs, then just sitting, then her lying in bed while I sit in a chair by her and finally her drifting off to sleep. Like I said, last night took over an hour to accomplish this because she was freaking out so much. Tonight however only took about 15 minutes. I call that success. I'm hoping that with a steady routine things will continue to get easier. Hopefully as time passes she will also begin sleeping through the night. 2 nights ago she woke up no less than 10 times crying out for "momma" which right now means me. Last night it was only 4 or 5 and 2 of them were to go to the bathroom. Hopefully we can keep the numbers down today as well, although she's going to the bathroom more because she has a urinary tract infection.

S really opened up to us last night voluntarily. It was nice to hear things from her side and to hear how she feels about them. She is a very sweet girl who is trying really hard to handle all of this so well. Today we met with our CASA worker, who was really nice, and she talked to S for about an hour. The first court date for the girls is on Wednesday of next week. Hopefully that will give us an idea of what's going on. Our CASA worker explained the process to us a little more today which was nice. I know our agency has explained it before but it gets so overwhelming that I can't seem to remember anything.

Being a foster mom has been the hardest, yet already one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. I'm trying not to fall in love with these girls but I'm afraid I'm already failing miserably. Tomorrow we are all going to church.

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The 3rd Night....

S&K have been here for just over 48 hours and it already feels like so much longer. They are both so incredibly sweet and loving. S (the oldest) has started coming out of her shell today and it's so much fun to laugh with her. K started calling me momma yesterday morning and started Jonathan daddy today. It's weird to go from not having kids to having 2 and one is already calling you momma and daddy. This has been more of a shock to us than I expected and it must be so hard on them. If you could keep praying for them and us. K cries in her sleep and wakes up scared. I know S must be having a hard time but she's not ready to talk yet, and that's ok. She will talk when she is ready. Things are still up in the air since their case hasn't gone to court yet and probably won't till sometime next week. Hopefully then we will know a little more about visitation with family, a semi expected length of stay, etc. It has been such an amazing, hard, trying, exciting, blessing, overwhelming at times, so much fun, loving experience! I am so glad that I have Jonathan to experience this with. Thanks for the prayers and congrats on our new family.

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We Have KIDS!

Wow the last 2 weeks have been crazy. Vacation ended with lots of good family time. I started back to working nights right when getting back from vacation and just finished working nights on Monday 1/3. Yesterday morning we got a call about possible foster children. We said yes but then found out that they had already been placed with a family closer to home. However later that day we got another call about 2 sets of siblings asking which one we would be interested in. We chose S &K a 13 yr old and 2 yr old sisters. They got to our house about 9:30 last night and so far so good. They are very sweet and I think it's going to be great. I know that it's not all gonna be sunshine and roses but it's totally gonna be worth it. Today will hold us trying to enroll S in school and figuring out all the paper work for new kids. Please be continuing to pray for us and them as we all get to know each other and they learn to understand and accept their situation. I pray that they will know they are unconditionally loved here.

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half of vacation already over....

Over half of my week off has already come and gone. It has been an amazing few days. Saturday we got to have a family "get together"  to see family we don't see very often but also to celebrate my grandmother's 77th birthday. My Memaw is by far one of the best people I've ever known and has taught me so much about life. Sunday we went to our old church, saw some old friends, ate lunch with the Burgins (who we LOVE) and spent some time with the Andrew's as well. It was so nice to see old friends and get to "catch up". We love living in Temple but sometimes you miss your old friends. Monday Jonathan, myself, his mom and his niece went to the Gaylord ICE exhibit which was stunning. It's incredible what they can make out of ice. This year the theme was Charlie Brown Christmas. The ice sculptures were beautiful and we had fun. Tuesday we drove to Marshall, TX to see the Christmas lights. I enjoyed being able to show Jonathan around my college town and talk about the fun times I had there. I LOVE CHRISTMAS!!! It is seriously my favorite time of year and seeing Christmas lights makes me so happy. On our way home on Wednesday we stopped in Tyler to eat lunch with a friend of mine from medical school. Our lunch took over 4 hours because we were talking so much. I think the waiters were getting annoyed, oh well, we left a good tip. I miss my friends from medical school so much. Medical school is so hard and your friends from school really understood what it was like and I think that makes the bond so much stronger. We really hoped to be able to get together this year like we did last year but it's not going to happen. Good thing our friend Emily is getting married in December of 2011, we'll all be there for that! Wednesday night we ate dinner with some old friends in Arlington and today we hung out with my nieces, went to lunch with my mom and my mother-in-law, went to dinner with family and are now hanging out. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and it will be busy but full of family and fun.

We should be licensed for foster care now. We submitted our foster care agreement paperwork today which was the last piece they needed. We can't wait to have a child/children!

I'm not ready to go back to work on Sunday and return to working nights but at least I have a few more days off to spend with family. I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas!

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It's The Most Wonderful Time of The Year!

I love Christmas! It makes me so happy to come home every night from work and see our Christmas three shining in the window. Christmas lights make me smile like a little kid and Christmas music warms my soul. Belton has a fantastic drive through lights display out by the lake. It's 5 miles of Christmas lights, each display from a business or organization in the local community. We haven't been yet this year but have gone the last 2 years and it was amazing. This year we are planning on driving to Marshall, TX (home of my college) to see the Christmas lights there. They have a ton of Christmas lights and it is beautiful. I just learned that the courthouse alone has 125,000 lights on it. Jonathan has never been to see the lights and I can't wait to show him. I'm hoping to see some friends while we are in town. It will be good to go back. This next week we are going to be mostly in the Dallas area hanging with our families. It will be nice to be off for a week and hanging out with our families. Plus eating lots of yummy Christmas goodies.

Work recently has been good. I did about a week of nights in the hospital but now I'm doing night time urgent care clinic where I only have to work for like 4 hours a night, which is FABULOUS! Although, working nights for a whole month gets old, no dinner dates with friends, no seeing my colleagues/friends at work. I love the people I work with and I enjoy being with them everyday. Some of the people I work with have become my closest friends.

Our foster care excursion continues. Last weekend we went to Austin to the Christmas retreat. We hung out with 2 great foster kids for a few hours which earned us a few more hours of observation. These kids were so much fun to spend time with and get to know. We also got to talk with some other experienced foster parents, which is a nice resource to have. Now that we are so close to having kids sometimes it can seem overwhelming. We still aren't officially licensed although there have been a few possible children for us in the last week that we had to say no too. They all had higher needs (medical and otherwise) than we are certified for at this point. We don't want to take kids that in a few weeks when they are made a higher level of care and we've formed a relationship with them they have to move because we aren't licensed for that level of child. We've begun looking at bigger vehicles. Our current ones can only hold 3 car seats and because Jonathan is taking care of our friends little girl we already have 1 car seat in the car, which limits the number of kids we can take to 2. We'll be buying a bigger car in the next few months I'm sure.  Here are some of the pictures my sister took recently.

Hope everyone has a safe and Merry Christmas! 

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A Little of This, A Little of That!

The month of November is over, which for means I never have to work in the NICU again. It also means that tonight I go back to working on the general pediatric floor at my hospital. Speaking of my hospital, we are in the running for a $250,000 grant from Pepsi to help fund our new Children's hospital surgical suite. Here are the details on how you can vote for my hospital. I'm going to give you a little information on my hospital first since many don't know we even exist.

The Children's Hospital at Scott and White is the only childrens hospital between DFW and Austin. We provide care to patients from Hillboro to Austin, West of Killeen to College Station and everywhere in between. We are currently located at Scott and White Hospital in Temple, TX. We are in the process of renovating another hospital in town so that we will have our own hospital, just for kids. Once our new hospital is complete we will be the smallest town in the United States to have a stand alone childrens hospital. Having this new facility will allow us to open our doors to more patients, keeping more kids closer to home. The hospital we are renovating is an old adult hospital and it needs some serious updating. The grant from Pepsi will fund part of the renovation for the surgical suites. It will buy equipment and even build a new operating room. Below is information on how you can vote for our hospital. The poll only goes through December 31st and you can vote everyday. If you could please vote for us myself and the children affected would greatly appreciate it.
 
First, click on this link, register and vote for our idea.  You will only have to register once, so remember your password!   Click Here:  refresheverything.com/childrenshospital

Second, text 104716 to Pepsi at 73774.

Next, vote EVERY DAY until December 31st at 11:00 PM.

Ok, On to something else. We enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast with Jonathan's family on Thanksgiving day. We have completed decorating our house for Christmas and I love it! We spent the last few days getting ready for our home study. Last night we had our home study and it went fabulously well. I am so excited to have this step complete. Hopefully we can have our license in the next week or so. We do still need to buy a dresser for each kids room but otherwise we are as ready as we can be I think. We are so excited to be done with this part of the process. Still have about 36 hours of observation to get done before we can have higher than basic level children. Yay for being a HUGE step closer!

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