I had a vision...

One year ago we entered new and uncharted territory. Bean came into our lives, and by this time last year he was staying with us nearly full time. He would have an odd weekend here and there with grandparents, but generally speaking his time was spent with us. We loved having him, the boys loved having him here.... the fact is, WE JUST LOVED HIM! And soon an image or a vision of how our lives would look in a year or two seemed to include him... hearing his first words, being their for his first steps... all those things a parent looks forward to... all those things we had never experienced we thought would be wrapped up in his entrance into our family.

May 26, 2009

Then, as do so many times in our lives, things changed. The court sent him back to his bio-parents and we were left wondering when we would ever get to spend time with him. We were heart broken, the boys were heart broken, and we worried... still do.

Fast forward a year...

May 27, 2010

Yesterday we received a most wonderful treat... Bean came over and in the early afternoon and spent the night with us. This is the first time since September of last year that we've gotten to spend any real time with him... alone time, and boy was it a blessing. And while I thought this would be how our family looked at this time, things change... and for a fleeting day we got to look like this:

Weekend Sighting

Since Bean left us 6 weeks ago, up until this weekend we'd seen him twice for a total of about 5 minutes. But as luck would have it, this weekend was my parents weekend to have the boys and so he got to come to the party and we got to spend a little time with him.

It is a bittersweet thing to have had him here. It was wonderful seeing him, but so upsetting to have to let him go again (once the door was closed, house put back, and life back to ours... there were tears). I have really struggled over the last six weeks, emotionally, not having him any more. To have had him for a little more than 4 months, and then really no contact... well, it felt like I lost my baby... I've held onto the prayer that at least for those few short months I did the best I could for him, and that was what I was called to do. Now I have to trust that our Heavenly Father will protect him.

A gift and an ending

It all started the first week of May. He came to stay the weekend with us... giving my parents a little break. He was so tiny, when this was taken (on May 8th) he still should have been in the womb for at least one more week), but due to circumstances outside of his control he had already spent a month in NICU. That weekend, we had no idea how much time we were going to spend with him. Heck, Daddio was a little shocked when I brought him home that day... not really sure how to react to the whole situation. We figured that we would have him every now and again when my parents would need a few days to recharge their batteries. Little did we know that starting in June we would have him full time with just an occasional overnight with other family members.

It didn't take long for him to feel less like a nephew and more like a son... and that is definitely how we treated him. I held nothing back (I will speak for myself... I will let Daddio write on his own feelings if he so chooses). I wanted him to know that he was loved no matter what, that the circumstances of his conception and birth had nothing to do with who he was/is. I wanted to gain his trust, and allow him to form a healthy attachment. Those who live in the foster/adoption world know just how fundamental that is and what can result if it isn't there.

Today is a very sad day for me. Today I had to say goodbye to my time with Bean. Today the court system decided the send him (and his brother) back to his deadbeat father. I knew he probably wouldn't get to stay with us forever, although I did pray that Our Dear Lord would make it so. Today I had to pack up all of his belongings, and all the special things that we shared together. Today I had to pack him up in his carseat and watch him leave. I wasn't prepared. I knew there was a chance that it would be today, but I believed that this was not our ending.

This morning as the boys did their school work, Bean played on the floor... and as he played I grabbed the camera knowing that these would be the last shots I would take of his time with me. And as if to give me one more gift... he rolled over... completely unassisted... 3 times. I was able to capture one of them with the camera, and am so grateful to have these images.

Every moment he spent with us was a true gift... a gift that I never took lightly. Every second I spent with him brought with it an amazing feeling. In a sense I feel like this time we had, healed part of my soul that was broken because of my own boys past... a past that I could not protect them from. These few months I've spent having such unbelievable gratitude for those who were there for my boys when things reached the breaking point. I was hoping to be a part of more of Bean's 'firsts', to actually see those little teeth that he is working so hard at growing, hear him call for me by name, sitting on his own, crawling... heck I thought I might be there for first steps. While it breaks my heart that these were not meant to be spent with me, I know I saw first hand something much more important... special time... that time in the middle of night when it was just the two of us, those slobbery kisses when he got excited, the dancing twinkle in his eyes when I came into view (or Daddio and the boys), the clinging to me when he didn't feel well or was beyond tired... I was given the chance to love him, and he loved me right back... and that is much more than all the firsts that I won't be a part of.

And while my heart breaks knowing our time together has come to an end, I wouldn't trade any of it even knowing how hard it was to watch him go. No child is actually ever ours, they are a gift from God... we only have them for a short time and then they must go. He was entrusted to my care when I needed him most, when I was once again letting go of a dream. HIS is a perfect plan.

He is my special Bean.

Gettin' bigger

Bean has finally figured out how to spin himself around in this, and enjoys playing with all the little doodads on it! This is his spot during homeschooling. He enjoys making noises and seeing if he can get the attention of the boys while they are working... he will stare at their backs and just keep on making a particular noise till someone turns around... then he giggles the funniest giggle in VICTORY (then he starts hiccupping... happens every time he laughs)!

You will notice his white diaper cloth there in his seat with him. First, it is his best friend. He loves playing with it, putting it over his face, sucking on it, chewing on it... have I mentioned he is teething... so it is usually covered in Bean slobber.

Other big milestones as of late... he can pull up on your fingers to a standing position and hold it there for a long time just using two of our fingers to balance. Oh, and he now gives kisses. He loves to receive them, but will now plant big ole' wet slobbery ones on you! TEETHING. He doesn't care so much for teething rings, he prefers his cloth or his fingers (or the shoulder seam of my shirt). He is still waking up during the night. He used to be ravenous during those times, now it is more for a 'snack' and a diaper change and he is back down. I'm pleased with the brievty of it... but would love to see him sleep through the night! And last but not least... he's huge :-). He's now 5 months, 3 weeks by birth (4 months, 1 week by gestation)... and is weighing in around 15-16lbs (depending on the time of day). It seems every day that he grows and changes a little more.

What is real?

Adoptive parenting can be a sticky situation, especially in the beginning. Every one's emotions are so raw at the get go, and every minute can feel like a defining moment in how your new family is going to play out. Time moves on, life begins to settle down and normal sets in (at least in the privacy of your own home).

I know we've written about it in the past, how we felt as if we were simply glorified babysitters in the beginning. We had rules we had to follow because the boys were still considered wards of the state. Our social worker was making regular visits for the first six months. There was always this feeling that this was temporary. Then one day it hits you... these precious, rag a muffin heads are yours and you are theirs. They will eat you out of house and home, and you will love every minute of it.

Back in May when Bean first starting spending time with us, all we were in the situation was a babysitter. A way for my parents to get some rest, and we loved the time with him. I knew it was temporary, and it would be rare time. Then things changed. We went on vacation and when we returned we started keeping Bean almost full-time, by June it was full time with an odd day or two off because of a visitation obligation. Now we are into September, today is his 5 month birth age (3 1/2 month gestational age)... and the only time he is away from us is a few hours on Monday nights while we are at rehearsal and he is at his visit. What was once babysitting, now has become our life... at least that is how we've come to feel.

Unfortunately it isn't so cut and dry. We aren't the only ones involved, ultimately CPS has to make the final decision... and they have a protocol they must work from. So we are actually in complete limbo, not knowing how much time we have left with him. Sadly it could be two weeks, 2 months, or more... we just don't know. I can't even begin to put into words how deeply torn apart I am by this. He is mine, and I am his. What is real today, may not be the reality of tomorrow.

Go check out Heidi Saxton's thoughts on what is real!

I may be small

but I have good neck control :-)

Bean's first picnic

This was the best weather we've had in months, so we went off to the Garden for a picnic.

Bean loves the fresh air:

Isn't MommaLlama's new haircut cute?:

A couple of Jedi knights showed up:

Sleeping...

Or lack there of... A few weeks ago we had one GLORIOUS week of sleep. He would go to sleep around 10pm and not wake up till around 5:30am when our alarm was going off. Then he spent a weekend with my parents, and since then he hasn't slept a single night all the way through. This normally would be that big of a deal if would have gone back to his normal 4 hour interval at night... nope, he is now up every TWO HOURS! I'm not sure why this is the case, I guess I'm blaming it on the fact that he is teething and is pretty congested... but goodness gracious, I'm really starting to run out of steam!

Oh, and another weird thing... he used to be able to sleep in the most chaotic of noises... now just the A/C kicking on will startle him out of slumber! This has lead to naps during the day only last about 30 minutes tops. Really only way to get anything more than that is for him to sleep on me!

Not that I would change anything about the little guy, but I kind of thought that since we are coming up on his 5th month we would have moved a little further down the sleep curve by now!

I thought I would leave you this week with two pictures...

Tummy TimeAnd this is the sort of thing that a Snooker will build when he is left alone without any brothers bothering him when he is trying to concentrate!
Next week is Snookie's birthday... my baby will be turning 7! So this weekend is a family party and birthday adventure... There maybe a post somewhere in all the mix... but don't hold your breath. I'll be back next week with pics!

Teach Bean to Read in 10 Easy Steps!

Backtracking...

On July 3 Daddio graced us with his awesome photography skills. For those wondering, yes it was stinkin' hot... that's why we met up at the garden at 8:00am hoping to not completely melt before any images were captured!

This first shot shows my family... my parents, Bean, Monkey (16 month old nephew), and Bee (7 year old neice). Except for Monkey looking elsewhere, it came out great!

All in all we got several really great shots of the group, of different smaller groupings, and even some amazing individuals of the kiddos.

I can't help myself!

Okay, here's another... can you tell that although we (me) only dropped him off yesterday after a nearly two week stint with us... and picking him up again on Thursday... we miss him like crazy around here!

This is a shot of him facing backwards in his bassinet laughing at the little animals hanging from the bonnet. He is finally tracking with his eyes, and lots of smiling and cooing. Oh, and sticking his tongue in and out and rolling it. It is really funny all the new faces he is making.

Bean at 11 weeks

Look at those long legs! (He takes after me.)

We've had company this past week, and I have been at work more than I haven't been at work. Hence, very light posting.

Okay, your turn, Olive!

The Bean, the Bean, oh I love the Bean...

Veggie Tales anyone? (The bunny, the bunny, oh I love the bunny.) Back to what I was saying, the Bean has been spending a large amount of time with us (hence the no posting from me... I'm not so good or fast with one handed typing). I just returned him yesterday after a 7 day stay with us! It was such a magical time... not magical in the pagan sort of way, no, magical in the mystical sort of way. He's a great baby, he prefers being held (but not worn in a sling... really held), and has a fun personality. At just over 2 months now (technically 3 weeks if you count by his due date), he is doing pretty well in my opinion (not that my opinion counts for anything :-).

Here in the Llama household, everyone has taken a real shining to him! Heck, Snookie told me yesterday after we dropped Bean off that he would prefer we not do ANYTHING without Bean around because it just isn't fun without him. I thought that was pretty cute. And last night after I told Daddio we couldn't get him back this week because Bean's paternal grandmother was coming to get him for a few days... Daddio was frustrated and said that she wouldn't know how to care for him as well as we have. I also thought that was sweet... and heartbreaking. We are walking such a fine line with this situation. We love this little guy beyond words, but we know our time with him is so fleeting. Seriously... last week I went and picked Bean up without mentioning anything to Daddio (who was having a terrible day)... and Daddio came home to the Bean Surprise... and was overjoyed to see the little guy! How many people would be happy to see a baby (who doesn't belong to them) after a hard day at the office? That's just how special he is around here, he makes everything better!

So, anyway, that has been the reason for my absence at the computer... more posting to come!

bummed

Okay y'all. I rolled my eyes when she showed up with him. I told us not to get attached. We're just babysitters. Yeah, well, that didn't work. He is too perfect. And I saw our boys in him, and thought of how I hope someone else loved them so much until they became ours, and how I just can't understand, if I am in love after just two days, how a parent - a mother - could abandon them.

Our boys fawned all over him and asked if we could get him baptized. Believe me, I did the research. I almost baptized him last night in the bath tub. It would have been illicit but technically valid.

Plus he has my wife's little mouth and chin and I just. can't. stand it. I NEED to put him in my pocket and take him everywhere and smoosh him and kiss him.

You know all those eloquent prayers about submission and "Thy will, not my will", etc. I can't get myself to say them. All I got is, "Oh, please please please please please please please please please please..."

Unfortunately, the party is over, and the baby had to go "home" tonight. I told MommaLlama that she should be sure to cry - a lot - when she drops him off. She says it's too early and would appear desperate. So I told the baby (hereby dubbed "Bean") to cry all night long and to irritate everyone from siblings to dogs, but especially grandparents, with such terrible behavior that they would want to send him back. MommaLlama told him to make them cry "Uncle!" EXACTLY! I'm the uncle, get it? ;)

Oh, Bean. Hope to see you soon.

Too early

I read this headline:
Pope's address disappoints Muslim leaders
...and thought to myself, "Why don't they like his address? Do they think Rome should be their territory now? What is his address anyway? If you send a letter, do you just write to "The Vatican, Rome, Italy" and some secretary somewhere reads his fan mail for him? If you send him a Christmas card, will he send a reply, like the President of the U.S. does?

Oh, right, the other kind of "address". It's too early in the morning for news. Or maybe I didn't sleep because this guy here woke up hungry several times.

Yup, we have company! My mother- and father-in-law have legal custody of the baby that was written about previously. They got us approved by their social worker as caretakers and invited us to keep him for the weekend so they could get their house back in order and rest up. We gladly obliged!

I'll go ahead and answer the question everybody is thinking right now. The answer is YES, we would. In a heartbeat. But it's very unlikely that he will need us on a more permanent basis. He will probably be in Houston with his birth father in a month or so. But we are sure glad to spend some time with him. Our last chance to play with a teeny tiny baby was with our other nephew whose fifth birthday we are going to celebrate this afternoon. So we are having fun and living in the moment. He didn't mind posing for a few photos. Okay, sixty... but I didn't put the flash in his eyes and he never complained. Very photogenic, ain't he?

Huh?

I should point out that this post may ramble... so if you are having a MONDAY morning you may want to skip it till you've had some coffee and your de-scrambler is up and running!

Do you ever look in the mirror and think to yourself, "Huh, who am I, and where did I come from?" Intellectually you know the answer, but as you take in your environment you start to question those answers that you've held true.

As with most adopted children, my boys will probably go through something like this... and maybe that is why God has chosen my circumstances for me so that in a way I could relate or at least sympathize with them in a way others might not be able to. No, I'm not adopted myself, but if you look at where I came from and the events that have transpired the last 27 years... one might assume that I was. If you are questioning the 27 years, and remember my 30 years old post... well, I'm referring to my sister. Yep, I have a younger sister... which I doubt I've ever actually mentioned here. There's a reason for that... we are siblings by blood only. There is no relationship beyond that there, and there hasn't been one in decades. To say we are different is an understatement, to say we are polar opposites is getting much closer! I know many will say that about their siblings but not really mean it... WE REALLY ARE THAT DIFFERENT (you can ask Daddio). The funny thing is, if you listen to my parents you would not really see that. You would think that we were close, loving sisters and friends who work on making the best out of difficult situations. Truth is I haven't spoken or seen my sister since last summer and it wasn't on the best of terms... and we live in the same metroplex!

But why do I question my identity or my worth? Here I sit, in a lovely home with a loving and a doting husband, three beautiful boys, and a life that has been beyond my wildest dreams. That's the TRUTH, right? When there have been choices to make in my life (hard or easy), I've done my best to follow the right path with no help from anyone other than my husband (even before he was my spouse). I'm a law abiding, morally just, God-fearing woman! And yet this weekend, I looked in the mirror, tears streaming down my face asking what's so wrong with me that I don't deserve love and respect or even the smallest of relationships with my parents? Why is it that after a lifetime of not smoking, hardly ever drinking, and never once taking drugs, that I'm left with a barren womb and all the other nasty side effects of my syndrome... and there is a baby boy laying in NICU in an incubator, born 5 weeks early and had to be resuscitated, drugs in his system, and a whole host of other issues... born to a mother (now three times over, out of wedlock and has lost custody of all the children) who had drugs in her system, and to a father who had drugs in his system and is just as much a deadbeat as the mother?! That mother, no not the birth parents of my children... no... MY SISTER! To make the situation worse, my parents just told me, three weeks after this baby's birth... and the only reason they told me was because they were worried that my 7 year old niece might slip up and mention that there was a new baby!

My parents made it crystal clear that they don't want me involved, they don't want my help, and they weren't going to allow me to go and visit this child in the hospital. This child, whom they can only visit a few times a week because of their own work schedule and trying to raise the other two children (my niece age 7, and my nephew age 14 months)... when I know that I could work something out so at least the off days I could be there for at least a small amount of time. Am I going to fight them on this one? No. Over the last year or so I've just conceided that no matter what I do it doesn't change the outcome, and therefore if my parents don't want me to be involved... then that is what I will do. I am merely a relationship of convience for them. If it becomes dire, then they will use me in some way...

And the sad part (okay, all of it is sad)... the information my parents did give, I know is still laced with lies and cover-ups, because that is what they do, EVERY TIME something is going on (this is just the tip of the ice berg... there is simply not enough time to go into the events that have occurred during my lifetime).

I look in the mirror and I see them... my mother's face at age thirty, my father's eyes and hair, I have their blood coursing through my veins, but it's not enough to build a relationship on (they've made that abundantly clear). I'm not like them, I'm not like my sister, on the inside there is nothing that resembles them in anyway.

I can look at my boys, and to a certain extent know what it feels like to be rejected for someone or something else, to feel abandoned by the people who should always love and cherish you. To even be singled out as different, and not accepted. No, not for the same reasons, but those feelings... I can identify with them. Over the last few years, I've learned that blood doesn't make a family. My love for my husband and my children have nothing to do with blood, and yet I love them more than my own life! I didn't have a choice as to where I came from, but I did make the choice to be with my husband and to bring our boys into our life. Love isn't inherited through genes, it is an ACTIVE choice!

Please don't misconstrue my post... I am completely aware of who the real victims are (and it's not me)... it's my niece and nephews... most especially my newest nephew in this particular circumstance. But it is in light of these instances when I start to reflect on what is happening in my own life, that it brings out certain emotions pertaining to my own existence... my own struggles.

My sister in Christ sent me this lovely quote that I want to share with anyone who reads this and in any way questions their yoke:

"We do not always know why such things as sickness and setbacks happen to us, for our minds are far too puny to grasp God's plan. A person is a little like a mouse in a piano, which cannot understand why it must be disturbed by someone playing Chopin and forcing it to move off the piano wires... Because God's ways are not our ways- because the salvation of a soul is more important than all material values- because divine wisdom can draw good out of evil- the human mind must develop acceptance of the Now, no matter how hard it may be for us to understand its freight of pain. We do not walk out of a theater because the hero is shot in the first act; we give the dramatist credit for having a plot in mind. So the soul does not walk out on the act of God's drama of salvation- it is the last act that is the crown of the play. The things that happen to us are not always susceptible to our minds' comprehension or wills' conquering; but they are always within the capacity of our faith to accept and of our wills' submission."
--Fulton Sheen

She found the perfect thing, don't you think?! Just one more reason I CHOOSE to love her (it's not a hard job, she's easy to love :-)!

For those still scratching their heads, I'm sorry for my randomness... I just needed to write something so my brain could start to assimilate the information.