I suppose having been to the recruitment meeting last night put me up on the radar of a few people because today I got a call from Amanda asking if we could take in a 2 month-old. A whole year has gone by without anyone calling to see if we have space, which of course, we don't.
So it made me feel like we were really missing out on this one. That maybe this one was so special that Amanda felt we needed it. I didn't even ask if it was a boy or a girl. I just had to say, "no". Because we don't have the space. And really, honestly, not really even the time right now, either. And I'll probably always be wondering who it did go to, and how that baby is doing and if I should have said, well, sure, we can make room. If the blessings would out-weigh the trial. I mean, I know it wasn't my baby, but it was almost my baby and that is a weird feeling. So there's that.
I told Amanda that really, we would love to, a baby just sounds so nice right now. Especially since Talmage is not really a baby anymore (he's 2 and some change) but we really don't have the space. Talmage is sleeping in a porta-crib as it is because we have the two girls sharing the bedroom and then Steve and I in the master bedroom with Talmage in the closet. The girls' room is full with their mini-bunkbed, two dressers (although we need three) and a toy shelf that books and toys are kept on. There's not even an option of how to take any of those items out to make room for another bed. The only thing that could be done is to switch rooms. Have the master bedroom be crammed into the girls' room and then put all the kids in the bigger room and there would be room for a toddler bed in there and then a new baby could use the pack-and-play. But I am not sure if I am up to that kind of transition right now. So it was easier to just say, "Nope, we don't have the room right now." Plus, plus! What would I do with a baby while I substituted? I mean, Talmage was three months when I went back to work last time and he survived just fine. But it's another person for the babysitter to transport, and frankly, with what would then be 4 kids, and none of them being able to ride in the front seat yet, then the babysitter would need to drive a car big enough. And that just isn't going to happen. So I guess we are where we are for a reason with how many kids we have. I'll have to be a full-time stay-at-home-mom before we add any more numbers to our kid count. Right now, though, I am saving every penny I can so that we can buy a house.
We need a house. I cannot stay in this little apartment for much longer without going crazy and if I am not saving what I earn it aint gonna happen. So basically, I am racking up whatever jobs I can while keeping my sanity of working two days a week and I can't jeopardize that to take care of someone else's problem of not being able to take care of their kids. I gotta put my own first and then when I've got the time and the house space to do it, I will do it. It's nearly a miracle in itself that we have one extra girl at all! You should have seen us that first night. Taking down Talmage's crib, moving a couch piece around, setting up the pack-and-play for Talmage, running to walmart for another crib mattress. It was a lot to get done in just a few short hours. But we did it. And got to bed at 12 am that day.
But see, see all this that is rushing through my head just by a simple question of could we take one more in? It's a lot of emotional energy.
I called Steven at work to tell him that Amanda had called, even though I had already given our answer. I just needed to share the emotional baggage of saying no, with him. Of the possibilities.
After 5 minutes of the shock wearing off, I e-mailed Amanda saying that if it was an emergency and the baby needed a place for the weekend, we could handle that. 2 month-olds don't really sleep at night, anyways, and I could make sleep happen in our big armchair, in-between getting up to make formula bottles. Talmage was 3 months old before I was putting him in his own bed at night. For three months I spent every night in that chair with him up on my chest. He could do naps on his own, but at night I was too exhausted to fight the crying.
She graciously e-mailed back a, "Thank you for your message, we found another good option and the family is following a safety plan for the weekend." Which basically means, no emergency, and if/when placement happens they have a place. A safety plan is the last resort before removing a child. It's where someone who is approved to be a safety service provider is with the kids and gives 24/7 supervision for the parent, if the parent is there. It is this person who has a lot of say in what goes down afterwards. If the kids are just way too much/parent can't give the safety that they need, then they go into the foster system. If the parents can have a little bit of 'getting it togetherness' then they can keep them. Is how I understand it. That could be all wrong, but that is how I have seen it work in our case.
Fun fact: C gave her little sister, and herself, a haircut the weekend of the safety plan and I am sure countless other things happened, but that is the one that was the most obvious to us, the foster parents. Safety concerns/supervision has been a big deal in this case. And we're not talking small hair cut. We're talking the little sister had to have it all trimmed off to a pixie cut and C looked like she had been given a bad bang job that was trying to be grown out. Thank goodness it wasn't short bangs. It was just chunks of hair missing their length. But it made doing ponytails really tricky because a lot of it wasn't quite long enough to make it into the rubber band.
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