The Kid's Got It

I'd love to tell you I gained great peace last night and woke this morning to a crystal blue Indian summer day, complete with rainbows and butterflies, but, I kinda live on Earth, the fallen world, so ya know...

One of my very first waking thoughts this morning was I only have about 20 days left with Little One.

Yeah, I'm a real bucket of optimism.

Oh, and I'm so not a morning gal. This is really helping.

And The Mr. is on the other side of the country. And Little Mr. had a tantrum about walking to school. And Little Miss is tired. Like bone dead tired. And Littlest Mr. forgot his lunch and has a brand new backpack that now smells like stink foot socks and dirty Fox River.

And did I mention, there's no blue sky? It's getting darker by the minute. It's gone from gray and dreary with the hint of sunshine to be had later in the day to down right gloomy and turning on the lights. I'm guessing last nights forcasted rain hasn't gotten here yet. Or something like that. Weather is something of an after thought in my days and nights. I just don't get into it.

I sat down with each of my kids last night and began the talking process. We started working out that Little One is going to a forever home that isn't ours.

With different kids comes different reactions. Little Mr. basically refused to acknowledge that I was even talking. That's pretty much his normal response these days to anyone talking. It's a partial tween hormone fog. Or at least that's what I tell myself between cleansing breaths and bites of chocolate.

Little Miss became increasingly agitated and insistent that "this is his home, I'm his sister, we're his forever family." Insert exhausted painful sigh here. She is trying to understand why she got to stay here and call us her forever family and he will not get too. Ah, sister, I have a moment or two of that myself.

Finally, I talked to Littlest Mr. and I should have known that wisdom would be encased in my little jokester. This one really has been listening all these years that we've been doing foster care. With all seriousness, he said in response to the news, "But Mom, this is a good thing. This is what the goal is. He's going to go home to his sisters."

And you know what? He's right. This was the goal. It is the goal. He will grow up with his siblings and his extended family and even some contact with his parents. In fact, he may even grow up with a good relationship with his parents even if it isn't the typical parent/child relationship. He'll have a lot more of his culture and heritage than he would have had living with us.

Know what else? The family he's going to be a part of isn't a bad family. Matter of fact, they're doing a pretty great job with his sisters.

All that said, we'll miss him a ton. You don't take a kiddo in and love and care for them for this many weeks without really loosing your heart in the process, but that's the way it is.

My crankiness is aimed at some of the different legal, county and state people. There is a lot of misinformation and false statements being thrown around as truth, and that stinks. I'm not sure we'll get an opportunity to say, you know what, this is what really happened, after all we're the only ones left that have been in this case from the very beginning, but hey, what do we know, we're just the foster parents. Anyway. In the end, I don't believe it would make a difference.

This child is going to be moved in a few short weeks, and that's the way it is. As sad as it is for me to think it, he will adapt and in a matter of months we will be a distant memory. By the time he has another birthday, he'll think he always lived with his siblings. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I know, sounds weird doesn't it? But really, it's not bad. It's been a great 2 years. We've all grown a lot, our friends and families have been touched and challenged and blessed and that's good. It's been a good run and in the end, we're all going to be okay. Each one of us.