I’m supposed to be writing ‘a letter providing information to help us understand the reasons for your interest in adoption, and to tell us more about you and your family’.

Instead I’m reading blogs about adoption, open adoption, international adoption, domestic adoption, failed adoption, fostering to adoption, …

It’s not helping. You’d think the letter would now write itself, because I iz doing useful research right? No? Huh.

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I have had a week of woe-is-me. You ever have those? Total self pity party. I should have sent invitations. I think I actually walked up the stairs saying to MC ‘That’s it. I have no friends. I’m going to go eat worms now.’ It’s still ongoing; I’m trying so hard every day to just be! happy! but it’s not working very well.

Of course, I have amazing friends who email me with beautiful messages of friendship and warm heartedness, who call and hang out whenever they can, who share their belongings and time with me whenever possible.  My brother & sister sent me these for Mother’s Day:

And they were delivered!!

They made me feel special. Then I went and dealt with the fussy baby again, because I had five minutes of peace so my quota was filled for the day.

I think it’s just been a week(s) of poop. But I digress.

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Last night at youth, I played pretty much ALL of the games, which is rare. I like to use and abuse my leadership power, y’all, because when you’re at the top IT’S AWESOME. I walked into the kitchen when snack was being made, and they were putting the rice krispies in the pan, and I just tore off a huge chunk and started eating it. And they told me hey! There’s a big pot of melted chocolate over there you can dunk it in! And life was good.

Then I went and joined red rover, british bulldog, and worm. There was a lot of pain experienced, mostly not received by me. The worm game = they all get on the floor and intertwine with each other (this can get a little risque), and then you have ‘robins’ or whatever come and try to un-intertwine them. And I was always one of the robins, because well, I HAVE POWER WHEEE, and I kicked some major glutes y’all. They were all complaining of the bruises I gave them on Facebook today.. Although, they all totally loved the game – they only have bruises because they play hardcore (they don’t let go, even when you put your elbow in their face! Troopers!!)

New surprise for the youth too = we is running a missions trip to Central America next Spring Break. I know, we are insane. It’s half a lot of fun, half a lot of anxiety. I should say less anxiety, because I am trusting God to make it work, a la VBS last year.

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MC is off buying a motorcycle (!), and I am alternating between blowing my nose (yay! colds in May!), writing this adoption letter, and watching mindless tv on the compew-pew. I shall leave you with this:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Yes folks, I am that good. I can get workers hating me ALL OVER!! Wheeee!

Really, it’s just the one department that currently has a grudge against me. The department I don’t really care about. OH, I went there :O

Backstory is:

I have this notion, which is apparently wackadoo, that it is good for Maria to see me physically give her over to her parents at access, whenever possible. Same goes for VD’s (volunteer drivers, that take her for 5 out of 6 drives to and from access each week; I do the one other), I like to hand her over physically to them, almost making a big show of it so she can see that it’s okay, they’re not total strangers.  You can see how it would be important for development, yes? For a foster child? Hell, for any child? Especially for one with so much change in their lives, and so many ’strangers’? For one with delays? YOU GET IT YES? I know. It’s not rocket science, is it.

I now have a scheduled drive once a week that I do rather than a VD – meaning once a week I go from my house with Maria and physically take her into the agency and into the access program.

The snag I ran into the second week I did this drive, is that you aren’t allowed as a VD or a foster parent acting as a VD to go from bringing the child in to taking them to the actual access. That’s the job of the access coordinator. The policy here makes sense from a bureaucracy standpoint: there are lots of families having access at the same time in the same building, and therefore logistically this system makes it all much smoother and less chaotic.

May I be frank here? When the hell did we put logistics above a child’s best interests? I know, I know, my knowledge of child welfare and the history that I was made to learn (so many hours in new worker training that I will never get back) shows that well, it’s always been this way. But that. is. no. excuse.

I pushed for this initially, was told by Maria’s worker that this wasn’t okay because of policy (why the access program couldn’t tell me to my face? Because it’s policy to go through the child’s worker instead! YAY POLICY!). Then my worker found out, and was all ‘ooo child you right on the money I gonna get this fixed’ (my worker has a drawl in my mind). So she talked to Maria’s worker, who agreed with me in the end, and apparently told the access program that I could indeed bring Maria to the parents. Whew.

And then… Today happened. I went in, and I remembered hey! I can take her in fully this time!

Not so fast, said the just slightly bitchy access coordinator. The same one, incidentally, who told the worker about my slip up previously – which I apologized for and have yet to repeat.

HEHEHEHE, I wish you could have been there for our ‘conversation’. She tried to bully me into giving her Maria. I refused, and said I was going to take her to the parents because that’s what the worker said I could do. There was some checking of files, etc etc, she hasn’t given us written notification and her phone call wasn’t good enough. I stood my ground, best game face on. (I was all passionate and HELL NAH roztime)..

Then the best part. The coordinator told me, in the middle of the waiting room for the parents (of whom there was a couple waiting around us), that the reason I wasn’t allowed to take Maria to the parents was because I said inappropriate things to mom before!!

(Referring to the link above – once I told mom information that she would have received had she been with me at the doctor’s appointment like usual that day, except it was sensitive information that the coordinator felt I should have let the worker tell her. And that coordinator made a big deal of it. Whatever, I’m with them, I apologized, I shouldn’t have told her. Get over it, it’s not the worst a foster parent has done, team).

So I, uh, was kind of kickass at this point. Didn’t allow her to usher me into the hallway like she wanted, didn’t allow her to bully me into letting that go. Told her the actual written policy, told her the actual reasons, told her how I had been ‘forgiven’ for that mistake. Told her that this was what inclusive foster parenting was. That I was going to continue giving Maria to the parents, as this was what was best for Maria.

And then I did just that.

BOO YAH.

And then I got home and immediately covered my ass by calling both my worker and Maria’s, because you know that coordinator will already have left them messages.  And I am not having anyone come in between what is best for Maria. They can SUCKIT.

Or, they can spend a year dealing with a fully addicted infant and manage to get it to the year’s growth that I (we, my community) have today. EAT ME ACCESS PROGRAM.

**Update 16/04:  The program manager called me today, saying Maria’s worker had contacted the program this morning, and had told them about how I was allowed to take Maria straight in, and that the coordinator treated me poorly. So guess who got a MAJOR apology by the head of the access program?? Oops. Now the coordinators really won’t like me!