T minus 88!

I'm counting down the hours until my boys are here for good! This last weekend was another amazing weekend in the books! The boys all experienced a little taste of school, church, and some cousin time. They finally got to watch "the pizza man throw the dough up in the air", went to a free movie at the theater, and revisited the sledding hill in town!  Amidst all the busyness of the weekend, there was a lot of playing, dressing up in costumes, building nerf war forts, painting, and just hanging out. 

It is so fun to watch each of the boys and observe how they are taking all this change in. 

 (6) is the most ready and excited to just be here already!  He wants a family, loves his siblings, and is attaching well to my hubby and I.  He is pumped to be the new kid at school especially after he had such a warm welcome on Friday! He is very conversational and asks a lot of questions, always starting with "can I ask/tell you something?" He is a natural firstborn - leader of the pack, watches out for the littler ones, coordinator of all the details. He was adorable in church when our pastor made reference to them being there. "Mom, how does he know us?" "Well the whole church has been praying for you boys for a couple months" "([huge smile spreading on face] Really!?" He raised his hand for prayer requests to pray for our army, and then his face lit up when the Pastor did so. 

(5) is a thinker. He processes things in his mind and then asks questions, always following our answers with, "ok, I got it!"  The first weekend we met them, I had picked him up and danced around the room humming a song from Cinderella, and ever since he asks me to dance with him. Melt my heart! He is such a sweetheart, he doesn't love kisses but he does love affection. He is attaching well, but still iffy on whether he will call me by my name or Mommy. Sometimes it's "Mommy. Mommy. Mommy! SARAH!" He will randomly be super sweet, like at bedtime when he said, "Hey, you know those things you put on your face instead of in your eyes?" "My glasses?" "Yeah! You look kind of pretty with those."  He's excited for school and asked me about 1,672 times what his teacher's name was again.

(4) is a little brute by appearance (and sometimes by action when interacting with his brothers), but don't let that fool you! He is the biggest softie of the bunch! "Mommy, can you hold me?" "Mommy, I love you." "Mommy, will you snuggle me?"  He has a mischievous little grin and a contagious little giggle. He, like (5), likes me to dance with him, and he loves his sister Caroline!  He liked seeing his class and meeting his teacher and Sunday School teacher, but doesn't gush about school like his brothers. He's so little yet, and this is all so new.  The exchange on Sunday was so hard. His emotions were on high as we sat in a conference room with his bio grandparents and colored. I colored something the wrong color and that let loose all the emotions he had been keeping inside.  When it came to say goodbye so that Grandma could drive them the rest of the way to their foster home he was still bawling, and when Grandpa lovingly took him out of my arms he scratched his nails on my arms trying to grasp tighter, screaming "Mommy! I want my mommy!"  Break. My. Heart. 💔

It's just so much for their little hearts and minds to understand.  They want and love their new family, but in order to move forward they have to say goodbye to the foster mama who has been with them through thick and thin the last 3 years. They have to say goodbye to their house, their school, everything that is familiar to them. I try to imagine my bio kids being in a situation like this and I can't even fathom.  

With adoption, it's easy to say "they are so lucky", but in reality they are so unlucky.  It's easy to assume, "they are so young, they are resilient", but they are not.  All kiddos who have experienced the system are deeply affected and suffer a profound loss.  Generally speaking, it doesn't matter how good their foster home(s) or foster parent(s) have been; they didn't enter the system because their home life was great. They endured trauma, or neglect, or exposure, or abuse, or some terrible circumstance(s) that made removing them from their biological family necessary.  It's so unfair that in one of the richest countries in the world, there are 428,000 kids in foster care and about a quarter of those kiddos are just waiting to be adopted. For these 111,820 kids, the biological parents and next of kin have all been eliminated as options. They've likely already tried to see if their foster family is interested in adopting and have explored any other non-relative connections to no avail. So there they sit, waiting for their "forever family". It's just so sad.

So now that I've gone down that sad reality of a bunny trail, I will pep back up and remember that in 88 hours we are picking up our boys and bringing them home forever! Yay!

The Final Weekend

We're coming up on our fourth and final weekend visit with the boys before they officially relocate to our home on November 17th! I shared about our first amazing weekend together in my last post. The following weekend we had our 2nd weekend visit. This time we brought all our kiddos and spent two nights at the hotel.  We had to rent two hotel rooms to accommodate all 9 of us, but seriously, if money were no option, I'd choose adjoining rooms regardless of the number of people!  We created a "dining room" on our side by relocating/rearranging tables and chairs and utilizing the couch as a bench.  We spent a ton of time in the pool and playing in the room and had to laugh when we made up half the occupants in the hotel ning area for the continental breakfast!  It was so nice to have the kiddos all together! I am so thankful though that we had that first weekend with just the boys so we could connect with them one on one... or two on three at least!  We finished off that weekend with a trip to a trampoline park, which was on the boys wishlist, before bringing them back home!

The third weekend, the boys' current foster mama brought them up to our home and saw them into their new space. I had set up the boys' room in a superhero theme and they were so excited and immediately put on the capes and masks that were hung on the wall. We had a super fun-filled weekend, playing outside, making homemade playdoh, sledding at the hill, and playing at the house. We carried on our Saturday Night tradition of pizza and root beer floats followed by popcorn and a movie party! We had to bring them home on Sunday so most of that day was spent driving.  My biggest takeaway from the whole weekend was the importance of pillow talk. 

We have a pretty well-established bedtime routine at our place. 

1.Hygiene - brush teeth, go potty, get a drink 

2. Clothing - change into pjs, dirty clothes in basket, next day's clothes picked out 

3. Bedroom - remove toys from room, discard any garbage, clear anything left on floor

4. Routine - read books, highs and lows, prayers

Justin took care of putting our bios to bed and I focused on the boys.  We went through the usual routine, but per the advice of many other adoptive families, I stayed in the room until they fell asleep.  There is something about bedtime that makes kids want to talk. That makes them want to share what's been going on in their minds all day or week or even over the years. I could not be more grateful for those who advised me to stick around after the bedtime routine - I learned more about them and their history, firsthand. I know it is valuable even with my bios, but truth be told sometimes I am just ready to clock out at bedtime. But after my experience that weekend, I want to stick around a little longer than I would usually stay.  And as it has been said by those much wiser than me, if they know they have this time with you now, they'll know they will have this time with you in the future. I'm looking at you, future teens of mine!

This weekend starts tomorrow! They don't have school on Friday so I requested a Thursday pickup and they approved it! We have a lot of fun things planned - their first school experience at ECFE, a free showing of a movie at the theater, pizza at "the place where the guy throws the dough in the air", sledding at the hill, homemade cinnamon rolls (we've got 3 new sweet tooths on our hands) and maybe even church if they are up for it! Can't wait to see my little guys!  

And by the way, I can't share photos publicly because they are not legally my children until we finalize in court, but man do I wish that you could see just how cute these boys are!!