The Joys of Toddlerhood

The past few weeks have seen us quite busy. Toddlers are by definition busy, but when you add in birthfamily visits, case worker home visits, abuse investigator visits, team meetings, and ANOTHER hotline call and you have a recipe for exhaustion. Don't forget an active ADHD 5 year old and regular old family life! I'll start with the good. M1's language has been blossoming the last few weeks. Today he even spouted off a completely intelligible 4 word sentence completely unprompted! I was so proud of him. He's really starting to enjoy listening to books and will even sometimes bring one to me to read AND sit in my lap voluntarily! That's a BIG deal for him. He doesn't like to sit in laps. I think that physical contact is uncomfortable for him. Scarecrow said jokingly the other day that our true goal in fostering is to instill in every child that passes through our home a love of books! We might have succeeded with M1. M1 seems to be really bonding with Lion. I'm not positive he's begun bonding with Scarecrow and I at all. I think we are just nice people who feed and care for him as far as he's concerned, but Lion, she's different. He calls for her all day long and wants to know where she is every moment of the day. He's concerned when she cries. He loves to waller her and hug on her.


There have been some definite cute toddler funnies recently. Today after church we went out to eat and I put a napkin under M1's bowl to keep spills from ending up on the table. He moved the bowl to the middle of the napkin and placed his sippy cup at the upper right hand corner just like a place mat would be set. Then, each time a piece of food would fall on the napkin he would remove the bowl and cup, crumple up the napkin and ask for a new one. Then he'd replace everything just the way it was and begin eating again. This exact same, methodical process repeated itself probably 4 or 5 times during the meal! It was all Scarecrow and I could do to keep from rolling on the floor laughing. Do we see some control issues cropping up here? Another funny story has to do with M1 and the cat. For some reason our cats like to steal toys. They have their own cat toys, but they prefer children's toys, especially illegally obtained children's toys! The thing is, they don't just bat the toys around with their paws. Our cats seem to have super hero powers in their jaws and they will pick up incredibly big or heavy toys in their mouths and carry them off. The list of impossibly large and hard to carry toys that they have absconded with is too big to even write. It makes M1 seriously angry, I mean REALLY TICKED OFF when the cats run off with his toys. It doesn't matter if he was currently playing with that toy or not. He doesn't appreciate them taking his toys and he does something about it. My days are a chorus of "DAT!" followed by a shrieked war cry and the pitter patter of toddler feet as he chases down the offending feline and attempts to obtain the stolen toy before the cat hides it under a piece of furniture. It's pretty hilarious to watch. Well, last week M1's caseworker and a new employee in training stopped by for a home visit and they got to witness one of these little exchanges between the cats and M1. To me they are commonplace and I barely even raise an eyebrow anymore. The women, however, were astounded. They couldn't believe what they were seeing. Just while they were there one of the cats took off with a very large lacing bead, a plastic shape sorter block, a dollhouse doll, the blood pressure cup from the toy doctor kit, and a racquetball sized ball. Each time M1 took off after her and either returned with the missing item or called me in to retrieve it from under a chair where the cat had hidden it from him. The ladies were beside themselves in hysterics. I'm convinced that even though the cats did this before M1 came to live with us, that this particular cat enjoys toying with him and does it on purpose when he is looking just to annoy him! It's her passive aggressive way of getting back at him for all his tail pulling, eye poking, and face squeezing!


Of course there has been rough stuff since my last post as well. The hotline call generated an investigation. I had to talk with law enforcement, meet the bio dad and his family for the first time face to face only days after it happened, and speak with numerous investigators from DHHS. Then, just when I thought it was all behind us, another mark showed up after a visit that was eerily similar to the first ones and I had to call the hotline again! I was so dreading that. I had to go through the entire process again and of course I'll also be seeing bio dad soon again too since M1 finally has his pre permanency hearing next week. We've been asked, and will be asked again at the meeting, if we would be willing to adopt M1 should his case go that way. Our answer is most definitely yes. He's a perfect fit for our family, but my heart grieves for him and his life, both his past and his future. We can give him a loving future, but we can never replace his past that was lost. I wish his life could have been happy and safe with his bio family. It's clear that they love him. They just don't know how to parent. Really, they don't know how to care for themselves either, but that's a whole other issue in itself. If we were to adopt him, while it would be similar to Lion's adoption in that it would still be an open adoption, his life and experiences would still be so much different. His early life has been filled with so much confusion and uncertainty, so many transitions, so many caregivers. How I wish I could have held him and snuggled him when he was a tiny baby like I did with Lion. I wish I could have taught him how good it feels to be cuddled. I wish I had seen his first step and heard his first word, taken pictures of him with his first birthday cake smeared on his face. But for him, those memories will be lost. Too many people passed through his life for them to be passed on. When Lion asks for stories about when she was a baby and the things she did, M1 won't be able to hear similar stories about his life because they've been lost in the shuffle of too many moves and no one to care enough to write them down. Hopefully this week we'll learn what forever holds for our little Munchkin 1. Wherever he goes I hope that it will be his forever home and that he can start making memories to last him a lifetime with people who love him.

The Hotline

In the state we live in, every suspected case of child abuse must be reported through one central hotline phone number. Even if it is a person from the child protective services reporting the abuse, they have to use the same hotline phone number to report and record their complaint the same as a general citizens. Yesterday we had to make our first hotline call :( We aren't even a month into our foster care gig and we've already had to report possible abuse.

On Friday night M1 came home from his visits with his birthfamily and he reeked of smoke. We took him straight up to the tub and when we took his clothes off we found suspicious looking bruises on both of his upper arms in the same place on each arm and they looked like finger marks. They weren't there when he left on his visit, but they were painfully visible when he got back. He had visited both birthmom and birthdad on separate visits that day, both of which were supposedly supervised. I'm not sure how bruises like that could happen if supervision was occurring, but apparently they did. When the visitation worker dropped M1 back off she did not mention any incident that could have caused those bruises like a fall or other accident. I called her as soon as we got M1 in bed and she again didn't mention anything and then when I told her what I had found she stated, "Well, maybe dad played a little too rough." A little too rough? Um, I don't think so. Playing doesn't make bruises like that.

It just makes me sick that M1 could have gotten seriously hurt while on a supervised visit. Thankfully all he has is bruises, but still. Even though M1 is not my child I've felt funny from the very beginning turning him over for hours at a time to have his visits and then having him returned not knowing what went on during his day at all. This of course seals the deal. I'm never going to feel comfortable letting him go now. Unfortunately, I don't have a choice. I have to do as I'm told and if the state says he has to go on a visit then he has to go no matter what I want or think. I'm sure there will be an investigation of some kind about the bruises, but until then he may still have to go on visits. I'm so not comfortable with that and my heart breaks for M1. I want to be able to protect him, to keep him safe, but if he's not with me I can't do that.

M1 is supposed to have two more visits tomorrow. I'm dreading it, simply dreading it. There is also a team meeting later in the week and for the first time I'll meet his birthdad and the birthdad's family as well as some other key members of M1's case. I assume my hotline call is kept anonymous, but I'm sure it would not be difficult to figure out who reported the bruises. That's probably not the best first impression to make. Still, I had to do what was best for M1.

Affection

M1 doesn't seem to know how to express affection. From what I know of his case he didn't get any himself for the first part of his life, but he's been in foster care for over a year. Surely his former foster parents were affectionate with him, right? How could you not be affectionate with a cute little baby/toddler? Still, it seems as if he has no idea what to do when someone tries to show him affection and he certainly doesn't show affection back to others. He will hug or kiss when prompted, but he has no eye contact and is off to the next thing before even finishing the request. He won't cuddle period and you would think I was jabbing hot pokers into him whenever I try to get him to sit on my lap or hold him and get him to lay his head down on my shoulder. When you pick him up, he doesn't hold on or mold into you. It's just so sad. I want to snuggle and cuddle him, to rub his back or stroke his cheek but he hates it. Even if he gets hurt he doesn't want to be cuddled. The most he'll let me do is sorta kiss the place where the boo-boo is and then he's back off.

It was always easy for me to show affection to Lion. She was my little girl and we snuggled her from day one. Even as an infant she returned the affection by cooing and smiling at us. We were definitely rewarded for our efforts and we kept it up. With M1 it is so different. I find that I have to be very conscious about showing him affection and persisting in my expressions of affection even when he rebuffs me because it just doesn't come natural to me. When affection is not returned it's not so natural to continue giving it. I'm sure that's what got M1 into his current state of mind and I can see it happening to me with him if I don't make a conscious effort to keep up the flow of affection. I'm definitely going to have to Fake it until I can Make it with him. He deserves to be loved on even if he doesn't know how to give it back.