New Kiddos!

Our newest kiddos have been in our home for almost 2 weeks now.  We have a 1 y.o. boy and a 3 y.o. girl - siblings.  As the story goes, they were in another foster home for 4 months and that home had a total of 5 kiddos, one who was medically fragile, and they were overwhelmed and needed these two moved.

I had immediate flashbacks to the conversation I had with the CPU worker who placed our last kiddos - they too were being moved because the foster parent was overwhelmed.  It didn't get any better as she went on to tell mie how developmentally behind they were, how overweight they were, and other eccentricities about these kiddos who we were being asked to take in.

I was extremely nervous.  I called the hubby, as usual, hoping he'd say no and I'd be off the hook.  

He said "Um, sure!".  

I asked for a pre-placement visit so we could meet them, but with the scheduling challenges that didn't feel right and with hubby's reaction I decided to say sure too.  They told us it would be a week before they would get placed with us.

That week was torturous.  There wasn't much excitement as I usually get with expecting new kids.  It was all nerves and "what did I get myself into".  As I did everything in our home with 2 kids I wondered what it would be like when these two arrived - I pictured worse case scenario and predicted how bad it would be.

Even as we waited the final minutes before they arrived I felt the doom and gloom nerves.  A huge weight of fear and anxiety on mie.

Then they arrived and all of that went away.  We immediately hit-it-off in a parent-child relationship sort-of-way.  These two kids are GREAT!  Since they arrived they've been mild-mannered but fun and spunky, they run around and play with Logan and Summer and everyone just has a blast!  

Maybe it's a good thing I had such high anxiety about it and prepped myself for the worst because I ended up with huge relief and reinforcement that this is what we're supposed to do.  Apparently in the last week they've "changed so much" so says both CASA and the caseworker.  

I can already tell this one will be more difficult when they leave, which may not be for a while.  There was a relative they were looking into that could have happened by Christmas but apparently that will not happen at all now and though there's an interstate kinship placement they're looking into that will take quite some time and who knows how it will work out.  Until then we're enjoying our happy little family of 6 now and helping these kiddos heal while they're with us.