Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Alaska age 5

Alaska's birthday. The Punky has turned 5. I can't imagine it. One, little, young me having a 5 year-old and two, hello! She's 5! Kindergarten! And new friends that I won't know their moms. And bigger clothes and opinions. It's hard to imagine - which I suppose is why you get older one day at a time rather than any other way.

Her favorite color seems to change with whatever Disney princess is currently her favorite. Right now she loves Rapunzel and thinks purple is the bomb.

Favorite Foods: Ramen noodles, chocolate cake, blueberry muffins

Favorite thing to do: Dress-up

Best Friends: Ethan and Lilly and Allen and Rowen

Song: Let it Go and Shake it Off

I am good at: Dancing to Elsa (let it go)

Love to do with Dad: Crawl on him. But he usually doesn't let me do that. So I like to spend time with him.

Love to do with Mom: Like to spend time with me snuggling.

Love to do with Talmage: Love to play pegs with him.

Love to do with C: Playing house with her.

She has wanted a Princess Sofia birthday party since the day after her last birthday party of Elsa and Anna. Not exactly sure why - it's a mystery. But we did Princess Sofia this year and it was a success due to Grammer's (Tamera) excellent experiment with fondant the cake looked like a pinterest masterpiece. Because I am still not feeling well, like, at all, we did the party at Sunshine pizza and invited all the family. As we were turning into the pizza place I thought maybe we should get balloons, but as soon as I climbed out and dry-heaved I was just grateful that I could be there and it would have to be what it was. Thank goodness she's 'only' 5 and I can be sick and unglamorous and low key as humanly possible while still making it a special day for her. And thank goodness for my parents and Steven's parents for pulling through with awesome presents and cake to make it a party.


TPR

TPR = termination of parental rights. The most biggest, most horrible and imposing thing the government can do to a person besides the death-sentence. And it's what is next for our case.

I am really relieved. These kids have been in care for a year and their parents are still months from getting them back. They need a home to call their own and need to be together, if at all possible. The parents can still work at getting their rights back, but after tpr has been done, DHS can start looking for an adoptive family and then it's all a big race from there.

The paperwork from the children's program showed that no one person can handle all 4 of these kids. It's need to be a team of at least two. Which means that the kids would be split between mom and dad, back when we were still entertaining the idea of them going home. Two to mom and two to dad.

A month ago things were looking really good at returning home. But housing continues to be an issue. Not just because there is none, which is true, but because of mom's rental history and dad's personal history, both of them are having a really hard time of finding some place that will give them a break.

And then court happened. DHS suggested postponing pernamnency for another three months to give dad a chance to prove himself a fit parent. Why this hasn't been done since the beginning, I don't know. And is dumb. The law favors return to mother most of the time, especially our judge, so it was never double-checked, the amount of work the dad was putting into the case. The judge over-ruled that and said that tpr needed to be served by Jan 15th. That these kids are young and deserve some stability in their lives and that adoption needed to be a real step in their case. Thank goodness. Maybe now things will start moving along.

What they do first is serve the papers to the parents. The parents then have a right to a trial. This trial is done by jury and can sometimes last 3 days. It is usually really ugly and terrible - all of the parent's faults listed on and on for reason to give these kids a chance at a new family. It can go a couple of different ways. 1) the parents can fight until the bloody end and it gets nasty and there are lots of tears and words and the jury makes a decision. 2) the parents hold on for as along as they can, but it is such a brutal process that sometimes a trial that could have taken 3 days get shortened to 2 days because the parents get so depleted of hearing all their faults and sign their rights away. 3) the parents could have a head on their shoulders and know that if the case has come to this, they are basically already esteemed as not fit parents and they sign their rights away within the first day. 4) our county is so backed up right now with these kinds of cases that once the date has been set, it's usually 6 months out. The parents could come to their senses anywhere between those 6 months and say that they want to relinquish their rights without the trial.

Our parents that we are dealing with are very much 7th graders. Purely emotional and cannot foresee long-term consequences or plans and pay very little attention to detail. It's a wreck sometimes to try to communicate with them. So super frustrating. I am not counting on number three or four being us. Although it would be amazing.

Then DHS does an extensive genealogy search. Digging up relatives who would have no idea who these kids are and asking if they would like them. If that doesn't work, then they do 'recruitment' which is where they make up an advertisement and send it out to all the adoption sites and hope some innocent bystander will take all 4. You know, where words like, 'spontaneous' mean "never know what the child is going to do, very unpredictable" and words like 'high-spirited' mean something like bordering ADHD. I can't imagine a house with all 4. Just reading the report from the children's program and what all went on while the parents were supervised with the kids is a nightmare. No one failed - but it was chaotic just reading about it all. I can't imagine being there, with all the noise compounding as well.

Right now it seems like DHS would rather place all 4 kids together in a home that could handle that as opposed to splitting the kids, 2 and 2, even if that was between family.